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Traveling_Angel
2007-01-01, 02:11 AM
World of Warcraft is a good game. But it not worth 15 bucks a month. Although the story is mediocre, where it really fails is classes. Every class has set in stone abilities, with almost no customization. Each class in DnD allows for a lot of flexibility, even the monk and druid. However, every Human Wizard has the same stat line at 1st level.
Every.
Single.
One.
AND the same spells. Blizzard also managed to mess up rogues, big time. They have the combat roll of a TWF ranger with higher damage capabilities. The key to a thief is not hitting vital spots. It's non-combat. Only a few abilities deal with this in WoW, which is a big mistake. :smallfurious:

Another good example is the Warrior. This takes the classical roll of melee bruiser, but instead of constants, like DnD feats (Only the Stunning Fist feat has a uses per day limit) they instead get a rage bar that builds over combat. Um, Hello? Being angry does not help with abilities like Combat Expertise.

Comments and questions?

Artanis
2007-01-01, 02:19 AM
That's right, World of Warcraft isn't Dungeons and Dragons. Instead, it's World of Warcraft. How, exactly, is being different from something that it explicitly tells you it's different from a problem?

As for Rage...by now you know the spiel about logic, catgirls, etc.

The Orange Zergling
2007-01-01, 02:23 AM
That's right, World of Warcraft isn't Dungeons and Dragons. Instead, it's World of Warcraft. How, exactly, is being different from something that it explicitly tells you it's different from a problem?

As for Rage...by now you know the spiel about logic, catgirls, etc.


QFT.

I mourn the loss of every catgirl that dies in debates like this... *sniffle*

Logic
2007-01-01, 02:26 AM
*Cracks Knuckles*
I could go for some Catgirl Killin'!

Adventurers (made of hardier stuff than commoners) all have the same statistics? Egad! I thought theat they were not average, or like the "Common folk"

Holy_Knight
2007-01-01, 02:56 AM
World of Warcraft is a good game. But it not worth 15 bucks a month. Although the story is mediocre, where it really fails is classes. Every class has set in stone abilities, with almost no customization. Each class in DnD allows for a lot of flexibility, even the monk and druid. However, every Human Wizard has the same stat line at 1st level.
Every.
Single.
One.
AND the same spells. Blizzard also managed to mess up rogues, big time. They have the combat roll of a TWF ranger with higher damage capabilities. The key to a thief is not hitting vital spots. It's non-combat. Only a few abilities deal with this in WoW, which is a big mistake. :smallfurious:

Another good example is the Warrior. This takes the classical roll of melee bruiser, but instead of constants, like DnD feats (Only the Stunning Fist feat has a uses per day limit) they instead get a rage bar that builds over combat. Um, Hello? Being angry does not help with abilities like Combat Expertise.

Comments and questions?
I may be wrong, but it sounds as though you haven't actually played the game very much, but are just going on initial impressions of the classes (not to mention a somewhat strange comparison to D&D). I would recommend that you try it for a little bit before coming to a conclusion, as in my experience, it's been extremely fun.

Talanic
2007-01-01, 02:57 AM
WoW IS worth $15/month...for a few months...then it gets bland.

The problems with the classes aren't wholly mechanical, but in a pvp-focused game, balance is extremely important, and when a couple of classes simply blow it out of the water compared to others (rogues, shamans, significantly more powerful than others; won't go into details) it gets to suck really hard for classes which are not nearly so powerful (e.g. druid; when a shaman can do everything I can do except he does it area effect, what the hell's the point?...I exaggerate a bit, but that's not the point).

Horde has the more powerful class and race abilities; Alliance has more numbers. Neither side has anything resembling a good community of players like early EQ did.

PvE in WoW is way too easy. To compare it to D&D, D&D would be like WoW if all non-player characters advanced at spellcasting at 2/3 the rate that players do and only got half as many feats--plus all player characters got their hit die bumped up by one level (Barbarians at d20/level, fighters at d12, wizards at d6, etc.) Then proceed to play against the CRs recommended by the DMG without factoring in the change of balance.

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-01, 03:09 AM
Yah, see, here's what you did wrong:

You dared to compare two completely different interpretations of fantasy life based on realism. I mean, HELLO, REALISM? What's wrong with you?

First of all, you compare stat lines. Okay. Let's say one character's stats roll really great. Basically all 18s on a DnD scale, and another character rolls basically 10s on all stats on a DnD scale. Where's the fairness? See, in DnD, the difference in stats are not that bad because class features and teamwork make up for it. In WoW, teamwork is only for when someone needs a good item. In DnD, a Mage-type class relies on 1 mental stat for most things. In WoW, ALL stats are important. When a Mage in WoW fights a creature, chances are that he'll run out of mana. What then? Does he Rely on his buddy the Warrior who isn't there because he has no buddy the Warrior to help him? Wrong. He goes into melee and bashes in some heads.

As for the Rouge not being a lethal fighter? Wrong again. Not only for the above statement, but consider this: There are no Prestige Classes, which means unless you want to make your own MMORPG, there will be no Assassain. Therefore the obvious choice to put the abilities in is the Rouge.

As for no customization, I say this: Has your character ever gotten to level 10? If not, then I can say you are ignorant. Talents define a character. Is a level 20 mage going to be casting frostbolt while he has 20 ranks in Fire Talents? Wrong again.

Hmm... Rage. You say anger does not help with what you still consider 'feats.' Well think of this, does confidence help a real life person in battle? How about some last minute insparation? Yah. It does. So when you're angry, you'll be able to let off some of that steam by watching your enemies bleed. Anger may diminish accuracy, but the boost in strength is pretty good. Oh, and one more thing, Barbarian class feature? Ring any bells? Or how about the Beserk status in Final Fantasy?

Any more questions?

Crazy Owl
2007-01-01, 03:42 AM
Why does everyone think the rogue is just a thief? The rogue represents a lot of sneaky idividuels including Assassins. One of their talents trees is called Assassinatian.

I could comment on the other things but I will mostly be saying what other people have said. But I will say I agree with CaelCyndar that Talents are the customisation and that the game is unblalanced enough without random stats.

Reinforcements
2007-01-01, 04:01 AM
You've certainly managed to come up with some of the most nonsensical objections to the game I've seen (not the MOST nonsensical - I read the official forums). WoW is my no means a perfect game (it is, in my mind, an excellent one however), but you definitely missed all of the actual issues the game has - things like itemization and the viability of the endgame.

The Evil Thing
2007-01-01, 07:21 AM
What WoW did wrong:
No player freedom
Permanent, unchanging, instanced land (Battlegrounds are (is?) the exception that proves the rule)
No player freedom
Cumbersome market system
Narrowly defined, world-based political system
No formal alliance system
Expansion pack costs money
No player freedom
No endgame content (aside from repetitive grinding)
No consequences for death (except loss of time)
Formulaic gameplay
No player freedom
Ease of use attracts members of the 12-year-old-gamer stereotype.
Tedious levelling system
Group combat serves only a PvE purpose
No player freedom

What WoW did right:
Just about everything else
Looks pretty

Jibar
2007-01-01, 07:36 AM
No consequences for death (except loss of time)


You played a warrior?
Death, SUCKS.

Didn't stop me jumping into combat with raid creatures though...


I played WoW for... a year. Yeah, about that. Roleplaying server, warrior. Bloody good fun.
I thought they had put the game together. But then, I was easily the only player not complaining about balance issues or favoritism, and was actually playing the game.
Is it really that hard to ignore the occasional problems, and actually play the game without whining?
I quit because I couldn't afford it or put the time in anymore. Not because it stopped being fun.

Premier
2007-01-01, 08:19 AM
I don't remember where, but I've once read a concise and thought-provoking article on why MMORPGs are inevitably full of stuff that sucks. IIRC, the basic argument went like this:

- An MMORPG will only survive if new players keep coming to it.

- MMORPG players are always "socialised" on the first game they try. Whether that's good of bad, they will assume that "this is what MMORPGs are supposed to be like", and they compare later games to it.

- Therefore, an MMORPG will only attract a constant stream of newbies (and thus survive) if they sport the same design choices as previous games.

- Experience has taught game designers that many design choices presently part of the MMORPG paradigm look like good decisions on short term, but ultimately detract from the playing experience on the long term. Instancing or the lack of permanent character death are examples of such design choice.

- However, game designers are powerless to implement new, better design choices, since they are forced to pander to preestablished expectations as described above.


Any THAT's why WoW is doing wrong whatever it's doing wrong.

Tengu
2007-01-01, 08:53 AM
What WoW did wrong:
No player freedom
Permanent, unchanging, instanced land (Battlegrounds are (is?) the exception that proves the rule)
No player freedom
Cumbersome market system
Narrowly defined, world-based political system
No formal alliance system
Expansion pack costs money
No player freedom
No endgame content (aside from repetitive grinding)
No consequences for death (except loss of time)
Formulaic gameplay
No player freedom
Ease of use attracts members of the 12-year-old-gamer stereotype.
Tedious levelling system
Group combat serves only a PvE purpose
No player freedom

What WoW did right:
Just about everything else
Looks pretty

As opposed to Eve, the game which allows you freedom in everything... if you are lucky enough to avoid gankers and pirates.
And actually, WoW allows a lot of player freedom. And


No endgame content (aside from repetitive grinding)

Made me laugh. Have you ever heard about raid instances?

ghost_warlock
2007-01-01, 10:14 AM
My take on what WoW did wrong. Keep in mind, I've only been playing for about two weeks and it's my first MMORPG

1) Massive bloody patch downloads. I don't want to spend 17 hours downloading patches before I can play a game.
2) Limited race/class combinations (still better than some games, however).
3) Three-year wait for the first expansion.
4) No significant interaction between Alliance/Horde.
5) Identical baseline stats with no customization available. At least give me an ability point pool to distribute.
6a) No new classes...
6b) ...including the alleged "Hero Classes."
7) No multiclassing.

Beleriphon
2007-01-01, 10:15 AM
As opposed to Eve, the game which allows you freedom in everything... if you are lucky enough to avoid gankers and pirates.
And actually, WoW allows a lot of player freedom. And

Made me laugh. Have you ever heard about raid instances?

Thats what he meant. Beyond raid instances there is no end game content. Thus the problem. I'm all of a few thousand XP from 60 and I hate raiding. I'll be looking at PvPing my way to kick ass gear. That I can enjoy.


My take on what WoW did wrong. Keep in mind, I've only been playing for about two weeks and it's my first MMORPG

1) Massive bloody patch downloads. I don't want to spend 17 hours downloading patches before I can play a game.
2) Limited race/class combinations (still better than some games, however).
3) Three-year wait for the first expansion.
4) No significant interaction between Alliance/Horde.
5) Identical baseline stats with no customization available. At least give me an ability point pool to distribute.
6a) No new classes...
6b) ...including the alleged "Hero Classes."
7) No multiclassing.

I'll agree with that, but the patches are hardly unexpected. If you have a first off the line copy of WoW and only just installed you started with v1.00, WoW is currently v2.12 so yeah. Patches away. Blizzard has also added tons of free content through the patches, so a paying for the expansion with adds an entirely new continent, two new races, and whole new zones to the existing game world is hardly unfair.

I'd like to see the hero classes as well, but I don't really see how to implement them at this point. Multiclassing would blow monkeys in WoW. It doesn't relaly make sense with the way the class and leveling system works, and would require a complete rebuild of that.

Leveling in and of itself works the same way any RPG/MMORPG ever made. Kill stuff and finish quests until you level up, D&D works the exact same way. If you're overly concerne by the XP totals needed, don't be. With minimal effort you can get from 1 to 60 in around 15 hours of game play, if you really want to. Personally I've taken my time and experienced as much as possible with the game, so my 59 Paladin is just reaching 60 after nearly a year of playing.

Cubey
2007-01-01, 10:24 AM
There is a reason on why Blizzard did "wrong" some of these things. Examples include:

-All cut and dry stats. They did it because if you were to choose your stats, the following would occur:
1. Newbies would set up their stats poorly
2. Experienced players would min-max their stats even more than the default growth does.
Also, gear you wear affects your stats in a much greater way than the normal stat increase/level.

-No interaction between factions. Blizzard predicted what kind of trashtalk would be going on, so they simply disabled it. People are immature enough even when talking with others from their own faction, not mentioning the "enemy".

-No multiclassing. The classes are difficult enough to balance even without multiclassing.

-No XP loss for death. That's a disadvantage? In my opinion, that's the BEST IDEA EVER. Dying is frustrating as-is even without having to lose experience. Not to mention the possible means of abusing the XP loss - let's just say that sometimes it's better to have a lower level...

Tom_Violence
2007-01-01, 10:47 AM
- MMORPG players are always "socialised" on the first game they try. Whether that's good of bad, they will assume that "this is what MMORPGs are supposed to be like", and they compare later games to it.

I find that quote dubious at best. I'd be surprised if most players can even remember what their first MMOG was, let alone use it as a basis for comparison. And why is it that this only applies to MMOGs, or does it not and there are gamers out there longing for us to go back to the days of Pacman?

And what's a catgirl got to do with this? Oh wait, I don't think I care. :tongue:

Premier
2007-01-01, 12:18 PM
I find that quote dubious at best. I'd be surprised if most players can even remember what their first MMOG was, let alone use it as a basis for comparison. And why is it that this only applies to MMOGs, or does it not and there are gamers out there longing for us to go back to the days of Pacman?

It's not a question of remembering what your first MMOG was. It's a question of what assumptions you got from it, and that IS pretty deeply ingrained. If your first MMOG (or first few MMOGs) all had a class- and level-based system, you'd consider that normal and any other alternatives "strange". If your first MMOG didn't have permadeath, you'll get into gaming with the firm belief that permadeath "screws the player" and is a bad thing.

It's the same thing with casual computer gamers - you know, the sorts of people who only play ice hockey, football, golf, car racing, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the like on their console or computer (and who are a pretty huge part of the gamer demographics). It will never, ever occur to these people to try a CRPG, a point-n-click adventure game, or a turn-based strategy. They got into gaming with these casual genres, and as far as they're concerned, these products ARE the entirety of the gaming world, and everything else is just a weird and nerdy fringe - they've started on one type of games, and they're stuck there.

As for your Pacman example, that's misrepresenting the argument. There's a huge deal of difference between Pacman, and, say, an FPS or a strategy title. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Within a single genre, however, it does work the way I wrote - it's comparing one type of apple to another.

But let me turn the argument over and ask you a question: if the original reasoning is faulty, and MMORPG tastes are not bound by your early history with the genre, then why are so many of these design memes so ubiquitous? Where's the big, successful MMORPG where you character doesn't respawn after death? Where's the big, successful MMORPG which doesn't have a class and level system? Where's the big, successful MMORPG which gives you an enjoyable experience without any PvP?

True, there's Second Life, which made it really big thanks to the whole virtual economy thing. But I'm sure if someone made a comprehensive survey of its players, they'd find that the majority of them are not the MMORPG-ers who have tried and seen many other games, but the sort of people who started it without any MMOG-ing past. I know it's true for any Second Lifers I know personally. Why? Because "veteran" MMOG-ers already have their preconceptions of what an MMOG should be, and they won't like something so different from it.

Murongo
2007-01-01, 01:05 PM
WoW was a lot of fun up until 60, I had a great guild and all my friends played. But after I'd been 60 for a while and it became necessary to spend hours and hours in massive raids to get "better loot" to "keep up" I realized that the only reason I was still having fun was because I'd talk to my friends and guild while playing... and I can do that without paying $15 a month.

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-01, 01:40 PM
What WoW did wrong:
No player freedom
Permanent, unchanging, instanced land (Battlegrounds are (is?) the exception that proves the rule)
Cumbersome market system
Narrowly defined, world-based political system
No formal alliance system
Expansion pack costs money
No endgame content (aside from repetitive grinding)
No consequences for death (except loss of time)
Formulaic gameplay
Ease of use attracts members of the 12-year-old-gamer stereotype.
Tedious levelling system
Group combat serves only a PvE purpose

What WoW did right:
Just about everything else
Looks pretty

No player freedom? As I've said: Talents. Let's also not forget professions. And the fact that items can be altered.
Permanent, unchanging, instanced land? Well, I'm walking in the deadmines, and I find that ALL the defias are dead, and why? Because some idiot wanted to make it uninstanced and everyone else killed the defias people off! And unchanging? What do you want? A random terrain generator? I could imagine that, with the entrance blocked by a wall, and a large open space behind it.

I'm gonna stop at that because I'm multitasking and too busy to waste time on you.

The Evil Thing
2007-01-01, 01:43 PM
As opposed to Eve, the game which allows you freedom in everything... if you are lucky enough to avoid gankers and pirates.One part luck, 3 parts skill, 100 parts preparation. Beside the point, though. I made a point about player freedom to be facetious, I know Blizzard aren't some arbitrary dictators that'll involve themselves at the drop of a hat. In fact, they hardly involve themsevles in any of it at all. :smallwink: My major greivences are with the cast-iron politics.


Made me laugh. Have you ever heard about raid instances?Raid instances? What are those? Do you mean thing static instances where you do the same thing over and over again until you roll the right number and randomly get some powerful gear, then rinse and repeat? Nah, you must be talking about something that sounds like fun. :smalltongue:Hear what you're missing, Murongo?


Permanent, unchanging, instanced land? Well, I'm walking in the deadmines, and I find that ALL the defias are dead, and why? Because some idiot wanted to make it uninstanced and everyone else killed the defias people off! And unchanging? What do you want? A random terrain generator? I could imagine that, with the entrance blocked by a wall, and a large open space behind it.
Nah, I was thinking the Horde could put that stereotype of completely pwning the Alliance to use and capture a nice chunk of territory for themselves. For starters, it would give the Alliance an indication of how much they sucked. Yep, that's right, I'm talking about politics, matey. By all means keep your instanced monsters. I'd hate for you to waste your precious time waiting for them to respawn.

Tom_Violence
2007-01-01, 01:44 PM
It's not a question of remembering what your first MMOG was. It's a question of what assumptions you got from it, and that IS pretty deeply ingrained. If your first MMOG (or first few MMOGs) all had a class- and level-based system, you'd consider that normal and any other alternatives "strange". If your first MMOG didn't have permadeath, you'll get into gaming with the firm belief that permadeath "screws the player" and is a bad thing.

It's the same thing with casual computer gamers - you know, the sorts of people who only play ice hockey, football, golf, car racing, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the like on their console or computer (and who are a pretty huge part of the gamer demographics). It will never, ever occur to these people to try a CRPG, a point-n-click adventure game, or a turn-based strategy. They got into gaming with these casual genres, and as far as they're concerned, these products ARE the entirety of the gaming world, and everything else is just a weird and nerdy fringe - they've started on one type of games, and they're stuck there.

As for your Pacman example, that's misrepresenting the argument. There's a huge deal of difference between Pacman, and, say, an FPS or a strategy title. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Within a single genre, however, it does work the way I wrote - it's comparing one type of apple to another.

But let me turn the argument over and ask you a question: if the original reasoning is faulty, and MMORPG tastes are not bound by your early history with the genre, then why are so many of these design memes so ubiquitous? Where's the big, successful MMORPG where you character doesn't respawn after death? Where's the big, successful MMORPG which doesn't have a class and level system? Where's the big, successful MMORPG which gives you an enjoyable experience without any PvP?

True, there's Second Life, which made it really big thanks to the whole virtual economy thing. But I'm sure if someone made a comprehensive survey of its players, they'd find that the majority of them are not the MMORPG-ers who have tried and seen many other games, but the sort of people who started it without any MMOG-ing past. I know it's true for any Second Lifers I know personally. Why? Because "veteran" MMOG-ers already have their preconceptions of what an MMOG should be, and they won't like something so different from it.

Its an interesting theory, but since its completely untestable it can only be a theory. And one that I don't find particularly convincing.

Are you defining MMOG players as those people that only play MMOGs and have only ever played MMOGs? Do such people even exist? Cos if not, then why is it that it is only somone's past MMOG experience that determines their views of current games? Why can't games from other genres have an impact, especially since a lot of the games themselves are so similar technically, albeit with much more players?

I noticed that you also said "or first few MMOGs", which just blurs the theory further. What if someone really doesn't enjoy the first few MMOGs that they play, but still like the idea of MMOGs in principle so wants to play more? Does it still follow that they'll think that all the features of their first MMOGs are how it should be done, even when they've seen that those don't work too well?

The theory also seems to be based a lot around what games developers are willing to make, and less around what people really want. 'There is no game with feature x thus the public doesn't want a game with feature x.' Granted, there may well be a lot of risk involved in making a game that differs significantly from the current paradigm, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people don't want such a game, but perhaps rather that no one has dared to fund it yet.

It may well be true that casual gamers only play one genre, but I find it also dubious that the reason why they only play that genre is because its the one that they started with. Maybe people that only play racing games only like racing games? Seems more likely to me. But then, even the most casual of gamers that I know still enjoy games from a wide variety of genres, such as sports, racing, FPSs, etc. The first game I ever played was a turn-based strategy game, I think, and now I play games from just about every genre under the sun.

The whole idea that 'all MMOGs are the same because people only want things that are the same as what they've already played' just doesn't wash with me. Afterall, if someone liked WoW for long enough, why should they ever get bored with it? You can't get anymore like WoW than WoW itself, now can you? :tongue:

Anyway, a MMOG without a class and level system - that'd be EVE Online. Whilst not technically a MMOG, Diablo had a very large online following that contained permadeath (though I find that entire avenue a bit misleading and I don't think there are many games at all from any genre in which all progress is lost once the character dies). And the assertion that one cannot enjoy a MMOG without engaging in PvP is just absurd, as no doubt many many people can attest to.

And I think your Second Life example has a hole in it. It doesn't follow that if someone enjoys the game with no previous MMOG experience, then that lack of previous experience is the reason why they like that game. Second Life is a unique game in that, as far as I know, no other games with its style and gameplay exist at the moment. A far more plausible explanation to me is that the reason why people who play Second Life have no previous MMOG experience is because all past MMOGs simply don't appeal to them - they aren't the games that they want to play. I think your casuality is the wrong way around on that one.

Premier
2007-01-01, 02:48 PM
Are you defining MMOG players as those people that only play MMOGs and have only ever played MMOGs?

Guess you misunderstood me. I didn't say that. Of course MMOG players can also play other genres, but their experience with those genre won't change their MMOG preferences. Why should it? How will playing RTSs or FPSs change my opinion on the matter of (for example) real life money in a virtual MMOG? It won't. What you think is good and bad in MMOGs is determined by what other things you see and like/dislike in other MMOGs. I mean, I personally sure can't imagine someone saying "I used to think that instances were a bad RPG design idea, but then I played Sid Meier's Railroads! and that made me change my mind." If you disagree with that, then please give a specific example of how playing another game genre might change my preferences in MMORPG, because the point seems pretty obvious to me.


Why can't games from other genres have an impact, especially since a lot of the games themselves are so similar technically, albeit with much more players?Technically it might, in the sense of "I've seen other genre games with better graphics, I think this MMOG is visually lacking." or "Come on, I should have a much lower ping then THAT! [Some online FPS] has much better connection protocols." However, that's technical things, not game design, and I'm talking about the latter.


I noticed that you also said "or first few MMOGs", which just blurs the theory further. What if someone really doesn't enjoy the first few MMOGs that they play, but still like the idea of MMOGs in principle so wants to play more? Does it still follow that they'll think that all the features of their first MMOGs are how it should be done, even when they've seen that those don't work too well? Well, maybe saying "first few" kinda threw off my point. But to answer your question: can you show me a specific real-life person like that? One who only had negative experiences with a game genre (or a type of food, or a car brand, or whatever), but he's still attracted to it in general? I don't think such people exist, maybe except for the very rare oddballs (no offense intended). I find it rather irrealistic to imagine that a person who got burned the first few times won't just give up on MMOGs and play something else.


The theory also seems to be based a lot around what games developers are willing to make, and less around what people really want. 'There is no game with feature x thus the public doesn't want a game with feature x.' Granted, there may well be a lot of risk involved in making a game that differs significantly from the current paradigm, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people don't want such a game, but perhaps rather that no one has dared to fund it yet.Well, this is exactly what the theory is all about. We do have examples of companies trying to innovate in the genre, and they almost always bomb. That's what experience taught us, it's a given fact, not a matter of opinion. The only question is WHY it is so, and that's what the theory explains.


[\quote]It may well be true that casual gamers only play one genre, but I find it also dubious that the reason why they only play that genre is because its the one that they started with. Maybe people that only play racing games only like racing games?[/quote]

Again, show me examples of people who have actually tried an extensive variety of genres and THEN decided that they only like one. Sure, such people exist, but they're rare. The afore-described casual gamer, however, is a huge market segment.


The whole idea that 'all MMOGs are the same because people only want things that are the same as what they've already played' just doesn't wash with me. Afterall, if someone liked WoW for long enough, why should they ever get bored with it? You can't get anymore like WoW than WoW itself, now can you?What you're missing is that people DO get bored of WoW, and they do leave WoW. People who've loved WoW for years. (Same goes for pretty much any MMORPG.) Didn't want to get into this matter for fear of going OT, but this phenomenon, too, has a very specific game design reason. Basically, one important part of today's MMORPG paradigm is the concept that the game forces the player to "grind", to level up ad infinitum. Almost always, this is the main mechanics that keeps the player coming back for more and more (and paying more and more in monthly fees). The downfall of this design is that players eventually reach maximum level, they do every single instance in the game, they collect the ultimate equipment - and there's nowhere to go, because they're at the top. And if the company fails to attract their attention with more collectible shinies in the expansions, then they'll realise that they're bored. And leave.

And of course there are exception, people who do it only for the roleplaying and the like. However, these are a tiny minority, and many of them tend to keep away from the "mainstream" MMORPGs in favour of off-beat titles which specifically cater to their tastes (and which eventually go under because they don't attract the mainstream crowd and go broke).


Whilst not technically a MMOG, Diablo had a very large online following that contained permadeath (though I find that entire avenue a bit misleading and I don't think there are many games at all from any genre in which all progress is lost once the character dies). And, like you said, it's not a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, so it's irrelevant.


And the assertion that one cannot enjoy a MMOG without engaging in PvP is just absurd, as no doubt many many people can attest to.And that's why I didn't actually make that assertion. However, fact remains that by-and-large, you won't find a commercially successful MMORPG that doesn't have PvP.


And I think your Second Life example has a hole in it. It doesn't follow that if someone enjoys the game with no previous MMOG experience, then that lack of previous experience is the reason why they like that game. Second Life is a unique game in that, as far as I know, no other games with its style and gameplay exist at the moment. A far more plausible explanation to me is that the reason why people who play Second Life have no previous MMOG experience is because all past MMOGs simply don't appeal to them - they aren't the games that they want to play. I think your casuality is the wrong way around on that one.Neither of us have scientific surveys to prove either way. I have personal testimonies from people I know that support my idea. Do you know anyone whose personal experience with Second Life supports your theory? Neither of us can prove his theory, but I guess mine is holding just a wee bit more water right now.

By the way, I wouldn't call second life's economy unique. Can't remember any titles, but I strongly think there have been other similar systems, probably in Asia. But be that as it may, it was still all an evolutionary change. They just took a phenomenon that was already existing out of game (people buying and selling in-game equipment for real money, gold and experience farming, etc.) and put it in-game.


EDIT: By the way, I found the article:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041103/bartle_pfv.htm

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-01, 03:10 PM
Nah, I was thinking the Horde could put that stereotype of completely pwning the Alliance to use and capture a nice chunk of territory for themselves. For starters, it would give the Alliance an indication of how much they sucked. Yep, that's right, I'm talking about politics, matey. By all means keep your instanced monsters. I'd hate for you to waste your precious time waiting for them to respawn.

Turn on the global defense channel. A lot of messages come up 'North Shore is under attack.' and 'North Shore has been taken by the Horde'

Yeah. It happens.

Cybren
2007-01-01, 04:53 PM
WoW is good because it introduced a lot of new players to the MMO market. These players will, inevitably become dissatisfied with WoW (as any given player will with any given game). This pool of players will be able to satisfy the rather large population requirements that are being created due to the number of new MMO's being released.

WoW is bad because it is cookie-cutter, bottum barrel game design that set the industry back about 5 years in terms of immersion, PvP, player freedom (which doesn't mean...freedom in buiding your character. It means freedom in enjoying and exploring the world), and rail-road style quests. Don't forget instancing, which is just brilliant. "Let's play this massively huge game with thousands of players alone"

Tengu
2007-01-01, 05:12 PM
Raid instances? What are those? Do you mean thing static instances where you do the same thing over and over again until you roll the right number and randomly get some powerful gear, then rinse and repeat? Nah, you must be talking about something that sounds like fun. :smalltongue:Hear what you're missing, Murongo?


Over and over again, yeah. Unless your raid community/guild happens to not have the instance on farm status, in which case it will cost you a lot of sweat before you get boss X or Y down. But man, it it satisifying. And if you like the people you go to instances with (the first rule of WoW: though you can solo most of the game, you should find a guild or community you will like. Much more fun that way), it is a great experience. Well, there is farming involved sooner or later, but overall there's less farming in WoW than in other MMORPGs, many of which contain almost exclusively of it. Also less than EVE, from what I've experienced with this game.

I think that Blizzard was smart not to leave anything important about the world's shape to players. Most of the players in WoW (but it's the same in other MMORPGs) are stupid, and you do not want stupid people to make the important decisions, do you?

While most of WoW is raiding and pvp, you might want to visit an RP server and see that you can roleplay in this game. And if you join a good guild or make yourself famous, you will have much, much more to do - while you cannot influence the world itself, you can influence the player population. The game is also great for exploring - the world is full of small, nice details most people miss, and if that's your thing you will have a lot of pleasure finding new, seemingly unimportant, things.

I wouldn't pay my money monthly for anything worse than WoW, which also means I won't pay it for anything else than WoW, as I've yet to see a better MMORPG.

Jibar
2007-01-02, 03:52 AM
player freedom (which doesn't mean...freedom in buiding your character. It means freedom in enjoying and exploring the world),

Missing out instances, I had been to every open area by level 40.
I had taken on 5 raid bosses by level 45.
I had worked my way to raid instances by 45.
I had been in every instance bar the raid instances and 1 by level 47.
And, to be honest, I could have done all that at level 1. If I had really tried.
They give you a whole world, and leave nothing but suggestions on where you could go. It's the players who always seem to decide where you should be at which level.
Nobody told me there was a backdoor into the giant volcano of doom. I found it anyway.
Nobody told me there was a giant portal in Duskwood. I found it anyway.
Nobody told me there was a silithid hive there. I found it anyway.
Whenever the players were saying be here, I was somewhere else. The whole world is open to you, as long as you're prepared to actuall invest the time it will take to explore it.
Besides, there's nothing quite like being eaten by a T-rex after a hard day exploring.

Gyrfalcon
2007-01-02, 08:10 AM
WoW is good because it introduced a lot of new players to the MMO market. These players will, inevitably become dissatisfied with WoW (as any given player will with any given game). This pool of players will be able to satisfy the rather large population requirements that are being created due to the number of new MMO's being released.

WoW is bad because it is cookie-cutter, bottum barrel game design that set the industry back about 5 years in terms of immersion, PvP, player freedom (which doesn't mean...freedom in buiding your character. It means freedom in enjoying and exploring the world), and rail-road style quests. Don't forget instancing, which is just brilliant. "Let's play this massively huge game with thousands of players alone"

Really?

Immersion - this is what you make of it, isn't it? I wasn't at all immersed in AD&D Online, for example, but managed it pretty decently on an RP server in WoW, it all depends on who and what you're trying to do.

PvP - this is pretty subjective as well, since it all depends on what you prefer from PvP. If you like always being a target of opportunity (and outside the very lowest zones, there are PvP servers where this is true), then yes, WoW does set back this trend by making it a choice to enter PvP, not a requirement. It's also what keeps me playing WoW, since I don't have to worry about trying to find my quest NPC and have a PK group come up, slaughter me and steal all my equipment (Ultima Online).

Player Freedom - compared to Everquest, the game it directly succeeded, WoW has a lot of world freedom - with the exception of instances and each continent, there's a seemless transition from zone to zone. And with the exception of avoiding the creatures that can kill you in one hit, you can explore a lot of the world at very low levels if that's what you want to do.

rail-road style quests: Er... yes? Maybe you can give an example of a quest you do not consider rail-road style? Otherwise, every quest I can think of generally involves 'find this person and hand them x' or 'find this person and kill them and bring me their y' or 'kill z number of these people and come back'... and this holds true across Everquest and WoW.

instancing - maybe you're thinking of Guild Wars, where every zone of the game is instanced? Otherwise, Instancing is one of the *better* concepts WoW came up with. Instead of only five people being able to kill Van Cleef, or the raid bosses being constantly camped by the two or three biggest raiding guilds in the game, you can get together a group and go kill Van Cleef and complete your quest (and get your rewards) at the exact same time as thousands of other people. Instead of only five or six people on the entire server getting the rewards.

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-02, 10:04 AM
rail-road style quests: Er... yes? Maybe you can give an example of a quest you do not consider rail-road style? Otherwise, every quest I can think of generally involves 'find this person and hand them x' or 'find this person and kill them and bring me their y' or 'kill z number of these people and come back'... and this holds true across Everquest and WoW.

Really though, a non-'railroad quest' would be this:
Quest-Giver: Brave Adventurer! Help me! A theif has stolen my purse! Kill him and get it back for me! Or, really, choose not to. I don't care what you do. Just do something quest-worthy.

Artanis
2007-01-02, 12:08 PM
Really though, a non-'railroad quest' would be this:
Quest-Giver: Brave Adventurer! Help me! A theif has stolen my purse! Kill him and get it back for me! Or, really, choose not to. I don't care what you do. Just do something quest-worthy.
That makes even LESS sense than most things in RPGs, even MMORPGS. I mean, if they don't care what you do, then why are they asking you to get their purse back?

Premier
2007-01-02, 12:44 PM
Immersion - this is what you make of it, isn't it? I wasn't at all immersed in AD&D Online, for example, but managed it pretty decently on an RP server in WoW, it all depends on who and what you're trying to do.

To an extent, yes, but there are also player-independent design decision that might help or harm immersion. Voice chat would be one example: at first thought it might sound like a good idea to talk instead of typing, but once you think about it... nimble elves, hulking trolls and grizzled war veterans will have prepubescent 14 y.o. voices. The hot chick will sound like a guy, which is just WRONG. Ultimately, it would hurt immersion more than help it, and it's a purely technical issue you, the player have no control over.


rail-road style quests: Er... yes? Maybe you can give an example of a quest you do not consider rail-road style? Otherwise, every quest I can think of generally involves 'find this person and hand them x' or 'find this person and kill them and bring me their y' or 'kill z number of these people and come back'... and this holds true across Everquest and WoW.

But only because these sorts of quests are the easiest to code. You COULD have much more open-ended quests. Say, you're given the task of removing a powerful warlock who's gathering an invasion army. In a P&P game, you could come up with any number of solutions: penetrate his castle and assasinate him; penetrate his castle and steal the artifact that gives him power; rally an army and meet the invasion force in battle; go questing for the artifact that can defeat him; reasearch and cast a spell to banish him to the underworld; etc. etc.. With enough work and dedication, MMORPG designers could implement a similar amount of freedom into their games. Only thing its, it would be very time-consuming, so the company wouldn't be able to crank out run-of-the-mill expansions to keep players happy. And it really wouldn't work with instancing, which is the newest dubious meme on the block.


instancing - maybe you're thinking of Guild Wars, where every zone of the game is instanced? Otherwise, Instancing is one of the *better* concepts WoW came up with. Instead of only five people being able to kill Van Cleef, or the raid bosses being constantly camped by the two or three biggest raiding guilds in the game, you can get together a group and go kill Van Cleef and complete your quest (and get your rewards) at the exact same time as thousands of other people. Instead of only five or six people on the entire server getting the rewards.

However, this is also the big drawback of it. What's the point in diligently leveling up, forming a strong fellowship, and going to all the trouble of killing Van Cleef, if it doesn't achieve anything? Everyone else but you will still have Van Cleef to kill. In instanced games the player is robbed of the experience of being able to make a difference in the gameworld. All you'll have for your troubles is the neat suit of armour Van Cleef drops - and which EVERYONE else will also have from their own Van Cleef runs. Your character will STILL be just the same faceless nobody as he was before.

All this might appeal to someone who's only interest in MMOGs is to level up and collect the ultimate gear; but it cheats anyone whose main emphasis is on roleplaying and playing in a living, dynamic world.

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-02, 03:00 PM
The great thing about WoW instances is that you can bring your party into the instance with you, so while the warrior gets his shiny armor, the mage gets a brand new ice-based wand if the drop odds are nice.

Really though, every complaint you guys make goes for just about every MMORPG out there.

Joran
2007-01-02, 04:15 PM
I've played WoW for almost two years, I was playing right around patch 1.3 dropped. I have two level 60's and haven't raided beyond Molten Core.

A lot of my discussion below requires knowledge of WoW.

Here's my problems with WoW:

Problem 1: Lack of End-Game Content for Casuals

Once I hit 60, I didn't want to raid. First off, it's extremely boring. Second off, I would have to schedule my time around playing, which was impossible. Third, I like playing with my friends.

After Dire Maul, no new five-man or ten-man instances were put into the game. Personally, I liked the challenge of the tier .5 quests, including the 45 minute Strat run. After that, nothing, nada, I couldn't do anything that was fun for me to improve my character.

This should be improved in the expansion with heroic difficulty levels on five and ten-man dungeons.

Problem 2: Gear is a main determiner of your character's power in PvP

Gear helps you hit harder and take more hits. The better gear you have, the better your character is. The problem came with the aforementioned lack of end-game content for casuals. Molten Core gear compared to Dire Maul and UBRS gear was not that large of a gap. However, with Blackwing Lair, AQ, and Naxx, the gear gap grew to an enormous level with no corresponding increase with casual gear. This allowed raiders to dominate in the other phase of the game, PvP. The only people capable of matching their gear progression were hardcore PvP people, but the system was set up so that the people with the most time, not the people with the most skill, would get the best gear.

Only recently did they change the system to be more casual friendly.

Problem 3: Sacrifice of lore to suit game mechanics

The lore of Warcraft was fairly well-done, despite the number of ret-conns necessary to get it to a pretty good state. With the coming of the new expansion, they ret-conned it even more, which really bugged me.

The Forsaken and the Blood Elves should not be part of the Horde. The Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren have identical goals and culture and thus it makes sense for them to unite. The Forsaken and Blood Elves are on the other continent and have different goals as well as some traits that would normally not sit well with the Horde. In a role playing environment, the Horde and the Forsaken and the Blood Elves would be an uneasy non-aggression pact or a limited alliance at best. However, to balance out the factions, the developers shoe-horned them into the Horde.

A more egregious assault was the expansion. They ret-conned the Draenei into a completely new origin and new appearance. They ret-conned the way that Paladins get their powers, by creating a new race called the Naaru. They then gave paladin powers to the Blood Elves simply because the Horde needed paladins.

The previous ret-conns in Warcraft III made sense, because they added more depth to each of the races, whereas before the races were simplistic cardboard cut-outs: the orcs are bloodthirsty and evil, the humans were the good guys, etc. The new ret-conns seem unnecessary and contradict rather harshly with the previous lore.

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-02, 04:24 PM
Actually... I can see Paladin Blood Elves.
See, the two opposing factions are loosely defined as neutral, and not good/evil, therefore 'alignment restrictions' don't really apply.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-02, 05:23 PM
Actually... I can see Paladin Blood Elves.
See, the two opposing factions are loosely defined as neutral, and not good/evil, therefore 'alignment restrictions' don't really apply.

Actually Blood Elves are mostly evil.

CaelCyndar1993
2007-01-02, 09:07 PM
Technically no... The mere fact that the Blood Elves oppose the alliance does not make them evil in WoW.

Cybren
2007-01-02, 10:28 PM
Really though, a non-'railroad quest' would be this:
Quest-Giver: Brave Adventurer! Help me! A theif has stolen my purse! Kill him and get it back for me! Or, really, choose not to. I don't care what you do. Just do something quest-worthy.

Actually i mean the entire quest system as a whole. The "Here's the game, go do this this and this".


Really though, every complaint you guys make goes for just about every MMORPG out there.
Yes, that's the point. MMORPGs had a slow rate of moving towards something that isn't crap, and WoW came in and rolled the ball backwards another two miles. Every MMORPG since (and including)the first ones have been bad. But they all made their improvements. WoW was essentially a repackaging of Everquest.

Holy_Knight
2007-01-03, 02:00 AM
Technically no... The mere fact that the Blood Elves oppose the alliance does not make them evil in WoW.
No, but the fact that they imprisoned and enslaved members of another sentient race in order to drain their life forces to feed their addiction to magic doesmake them evil.

To weigh in on the quality debate a little more, let me start by saying that I'm a casual player. Besides that, I might be the only person to have played the game since the night of release, and--by choice--never joined a guild. I usually solo quested, pvped, or ran in pickup groups, in that order of how my time was spent. So believe me when I say I understand about the difficulites of endgame progression for casual players. That being said, I still found and continue to find WoW very fun, and I'm pleased to see that those problems are being addressed to a big extent in the expansion, which I plan on buying. Sure there are problems, and will continue to be problems, with progression, class balance, and so forth. Like everyone else, I have ideas of changes which I think would improve the game. But by and large, it's extremely well done, and a lot of fun, which is why I continue to play.

JadedDM
2007-01-03, 10:10 AM
Technically, wouldn't a 'rail road' quest be one that you absolutely had to complete in order to further the game? As in, you could not advance in the game in anyway until this quest was done? That would be a rail roaded quest.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-03, 10:27 AM
Technically no... The mere fact that the Blood Elves oppose the alliance does not make them evil in WoW.

I said Blood Elves are evil not the Horde are.

Joran
2007-01-03, 11:54 AM
Actually... I can see Paladin Blood Elves.

I can too. I mean, look at the Scarlet Crusade. They're quite evil (okay, maybe just a little misguided), yet they kept their paladin powers. An easy way to establish Blood Elf paladins was that there were some high elf paladins before the third war, and they became blood elves. Easy, well within the established lore.

What was unnecessary and contrasted heavily with the established lore was creating a completely new race that provided the Paladins' power and having the blood elves "hijack" this new power.

I was annoyed that they gave Horde paladins and Alliance shamans, simply because it seemed like they were taking the easy way out of balancing the game and removed one of the major differences in how Horde and Alliance play.

P.S. Blood Elves are quite evil; they're addicted to magic and are seeking to tap various demonic energies to feed that addiction. They are also holding one of the Naaru hostage and draining it of its energy to make paladins. Seems kinda evil to me.

Tormsskull
2007-01-03, 12:06 PM
With minimal effort you can get from 1 to 60 in around 15 hours of game play, if you really want to. Personally I've taken my time and experienced as much as possible with the game, so my 59 Paladin is just reaching 60 after nearly a year of playing.

BWHHAAAAAA. Are you sure you are talking about WOW as in World of Warcraft? There is no way to get from level 1 to 60 in 15 hours. That is impossible. Not even close.

Jibar
2007-01-03, 12:10 PM
Um, actually I think the Naaru are just powerful with the Light, they aren't the source of it.
I mean, Metzen mentioned that as WoW went on we'd get a lot of info about what the Light and Shadow really are.
And one thing you've got to remember; Paladins in Warcraft aren't blessed by the Gods or anything, they're just powerful with the Light, like priests in armour. So as long as they keep that control over the Light, they can stay paladins. Arthas only lost his powers when he became a Deathknight.

Joran
2007-01-03, 01:04 PM
Um, actually I think the Naaru are just powerful with the Light, they aren't the source of it.

Now that I read the lore a little closer, you are correct. However, Metzen did say, "All those paladins are tapping into SOMETHING to pull off those heals!", and that something appears to be the naaru. After all, that's how the blood elves got paladins.

Jibar
2007-01-03, 02:58 PM
Or maybe they're just using the Naaru as a sort of Light beacon.
Like those cardboard boxes with the stick and string. Bit of Light comes along, smells the Naaru, gets a bit closer, and...BAM! Blood Elf jumps it.
And that's why the Horde get paladins.

PaladinFreak
2007-01-03, 03:31 PM
Before I say anything else, I would like to say that I am a WoW fan.

I don't really have a problem with MMORPGs. I have play some of them, and found them to be giant expensive hunks of crud.

WoW is actually the first one that has actually pulled my interest. It does have many problems, such as balance between classes, but a friend of mine and I just have a blast playing. Sure, the quests ar generic and the at the beginning, the classes are uncustimizable, but I have had just a ton of fun playing.

Joran
2007-01-03, 03:58 PM
Like those cardboard boxes with the stick and string. Bit of Light comes along, smells the Naaru, gets a bit closer, and...BAM! Blood Elf jumps it.
And that's why the Horde get paladins.

Nothing constructive here, but I enjoyed that particular image. Too many Looney Tunes cartoons when I was young :)

Duraska
2007-01-03, 04:05 PM
I think a big problem is that the game attracts a lot of jerks. I mean, it's incredibly popular and it's made by Blizzard. That's like putting two jerk-magnets together to form a super jerk-attracting lazer cannon.

What's wrong with jerks? Well, they forget that they're playing a role-playing game, and instead of having a give-and-take attitude, they demand that their character be the "god of the server."

I played for several months when it launched, and I eventually got sick of the "me-first" attitude that ran rampant across Azeroth.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-03, 06:04 PM
I think a big problem is that the game attracts a lot of jerks. I mean, it's incredibly popular and it's made by Blizzard. That's like putting two jerk-magnets together to form a super jerk-attracting lazer cannon.

What's wrong with jerks? Well, they forget that they're playing a role-playing game, and instead of having a give-and-take attitude, they demand that their character be the "god of the server."

I played for several months when it launched, and I eventually got sick of the "me-first" attitude that ran rampant across Azeroth.

Almost every MMO is like that. One thing that I don't like about WoW is the official forums. Its all Nerf this and this overpowered and if anyone posts something serious they get flamed and insulted for it. Any unofficial forums are fine for some reason.

Leon
2007-01-04, 06:23 AM
For all those who want D&Desque things go and play DDO: Stormreach, its a D&D based game or play NWN1/2. WoW is a Warcraft based game and therefore is not going to have your ideal setup in regard to how you would like to play or encounter things in the world

Meeeeebit
2007-01-07, 03:00 AM
What Blizzard(makers of Wow) did wrong in the making of wow.

Combat system
Roleplaying system(only like 3 people in the game do it)
Their classes
The extreme grinding!
The fact the favor the horde so much over alliance that they even accidentaly on pupose make glitches in the game where horde wins 3:1 everytime in a battlegorund.
The fact hackers can get in sooo easily
The glitches
The graphics

The $15 a month just really is'nt worth it because all your doing is grinding
and completeing quests that expand the limitaions of boredom.

Jibar
2007-01-07, 03:36 AM
Comat system...I dunno what you find wrong with it.
Roleplaying system...yeah, more than three people do it. On the European game we had so many people doing it they had to open new realms, and then make some RP-PVP ones.
Classes...apart from the fact that warriors don't get a mount (when we have to spend the most), I see nothing wrong with the classes. Maybe take away some of the Warlock's suff, but that's just because my friend plays a warlock.
Grinding...you get that everywhere. Seriously, any RPG requires you grind. Everquest, Final Fantasy, D&D, all of them.
Favoring the Horde? I don't think so. If you're losing 3:1 then yeah, that could just be because you guys are no good? For the Horde!
Hackers...yes, yes that is a problem. However, they are usually caught, and I've seen no big messes made from that other than the auction house economy.
Glitches...Which glitches? A game this big is going to have glitches, that's understandable, but if there are any that are making the game unplayable, what are they? The Paladin Glitch?
Graphics...nice to look at, fitting the style of Warcraft, and not over the top, allowing you to play in crowded areas without lag (or without much depending on your computer).

Lemme see...so D&D, the game which is all about killing random monsters and completing quests, is apparantly worthy spending more of that on? I dunno.
£20+ for a book, which still requires you to find players, proper arangements to play, and a plethora of other stuff to play.
Or £8.99 for a monthly registration, which only asks that you have an internet connection and a computer that can run the game, and let's you do pretty much the same thing, just with a different setting...

Elidyr
2007-01-07, 03:47 AM
What Blizzard(makers of Wow) did wrong in the making of wow.

Combat system
Their classes
The extreme grinding!
The fact the favor the horde so much over alliance that they even accidentaly on pupose make glitches in the game where horde wins 3:1 everytime in a battlegorund.
The fact hackers can get in sooo easily
The glitches
The graphics

The $15 a month just really is'nt worth it because all your doing is grinding
and completeing quests that expand the limitaions of boredom.


Are you sure you actually played the game? Combat system and classes are not bad in team play. Could use some improvement but making classes/talents too complex would ruin balance.

Blizzard favouring the Horde? Heh, good one. I guess thats why there's about, what, 10 times more alliance guilds that actually finished Naxxramas. Paladins >> Shamans.

And what hackers? Glitches? Huh?

Artanis
2007-01-07, 03:52 AM
What Blizzard(makers of Wow) did wrong in the making of wow.

Combat system
Roleplaying system(only like 3 people in the game do it)
Their classes
The extreme grinding!
The fact the favor the horde so much over alliance that they even accidentaly on pupose make glitches in the game where horde wins 3:1 everytime in a battlegorund.
The fact hackers can get in sooo easily
The glitches
The graphics

The $15 a month just really is'nt worth it because all your doing is grinding
and completeing quests that expand the limitaions of boredom.
-I actually liked the combat system. What were you expecting, Counter-Strike?
-Roleplaying is just as bad in every MMO ever. There isn't anything Blizzard could have done to make this better, so I refuse to consider "the best that any human is capable of" to be "doing something wrong"
-The grinding is nowhere near as bad as many - maybe even most - other MMOs
-What glitches? And how can something be done "accidentally on purpose"?
-Hackers are taken care of as well as any other MMO, if not better
-WoW's got a pretty good level of support - including bugfixes - that's at least as good as other MMOs, and probably a whole lot better
-I like the graphics. LOTS of people like the graphics. Not just like them, but like them more than the graphics of other games with ten times the poly count. Graphics are a matter of taste.

So, in other words, your complaints boil down to "I don't like MMOs." Am I right?

Penguinizer
2007-01-07, 04:58 AM
The only problem I have with WoW is the monthly fees. Otherwise I would probably play it, but due to not being able to pay monthly fees I just stick with GW.

Leon
2007-01-07, 05:22 AM
What Blizzard(makers of Wow) did wrong in the making of wow.

Combat system
Roleplaying system(only like 3 people in the game do it)
Their classes
The extreme grinding!
The fact the favor the horde so much over alliance that they even accidentaly on pupose make glitches in the game where horde wins 3:1 everytime in a battlegorund.
The fact hackers can get in sooo easily
The glitches
The graphics

The $15 a month just really is'nt worth it because all your doing is grinding
and completeing quests that expand the limitaions of boredom.

1. whats wrong with it?
2. never been to a RP server i take it
3. the classes fit with what the game originated from
4. only if your mad keen, go quest other wise or pvp
5. HAHAHA, where did you get that silly idea - i could fill a page with the favours Ally have over horde
6. they seem to do a fair job on hunting them down, any large game is gong to have people who try to exploit it
7. fact of game life, get over it
8. Fits with the look of Warcraft - you know the game that inspired it

When it all boils down to it why do all you whiners make a fuss about it - Stop playing and go on to something else.
For the past couple of weeks ive had a friend trying to get me to play DDO as he plays and ive gotten sick of his speil on why its supposedly better than WoW - i care not, ive played WoW for 2 years now and i fail to see the need to leave a game im enjoying and start afresh on a new MMO.

Meeeeebit
2007-01-07, 05:26 AM
Well now for the rebutal.

Firstly in reply too artanis :The grinding
OK, The average time for some player too get to lvl 60
in Wow is 21 days. too make that more understandable
in time thats 504hrs of complete grinding!!!

secondly in reply too artanis :The roleplaying
Well, since there are not just people who live in europe
they decided too make other servers. For the people
who play in the American and oceanic servers the
highest ever role playing is probably ph33r my l337
sk1zz or all ph@ l00t will be min3 !1!!!1 Or pwnage will
be min3! All will ph33r m3 a5 1m l337.

The glitches in reply too artanis : The glitches
In wow it has been noted that on rare occaions you
somehow just suddenly become ethereal in the game
and start too fall thru the world and eventual hit an
solid etheral floor instantly dying.(its all weird and purple)
There are alot more but im not going too mention them all :)

The classes in reply too jibar: the classes
Rouges need too be nerfed down a bit
they are getting too overpowered in their
abillity too do damage. Their are also other
things but once again im not going too list them!

The favoring issue in reply too Jibar:
The horde are gettin all the bonuses!
More xp more money in quest rewards ect.
Heck even their forum admins have horde icons!
I wonda why? The fastest level up too lvl 10
was an undead rouge. Why? Cause horde
has all the bonuses because blizzards endulged
them in it.

The hackers in reply too jibar:
I was once just standing in ironforge
waiting for my bg too pop when I notice
there was a dwaf standing on a gyrocopter
rail haning from the roof. There was no way up
so I ask him how he got up there and he says
"Hacks duh!".

If i missed anything out plz tell me :)

Meeeeebit
2007-01-07, 05:28 AM
In reply too leon
With no. 5

DO IT!

I just did a whole page.

Shadow of the Sun
2007-01-07, 07:07 AM
Meeeeebit, the grinding in WoW is significantly shorter than in other MMORPGs. The roleplay servers do all roleplay, in fact I believe that if you are on a roleplay server it is against the rules to be significantly out of character. Rogues are meant to do damage- that is their role in the game. Just as warriors are meant to tank and priests are meant to heal. Reduce the damage output of the rogue class and it is useless. The Alliance and Horde are balanced- the Horde are significantly smaller than the Alliance, and any bonus they gain is denied by the fact that they get gang ganked by the Alliance. Glitches happen, deal with it. If you can't, why do you play video games? Hackers exist, but they are in minority. They are normally snapped up quickly. The graphics are not perfect- so what? The gameplay is more important, and the graphics fit the game, as well as the fact they have feeling. Everquest 2, for example, has better graphics, but next too no feel, as Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade fame himself noted. Horde wins in battlegrounds because they have a smaller population, thus less idiots, and most 13 year old n00bs play female night elfs anyway.

Elidyr
2007-01-07, 07:21 AM
The classes in reply too jibar: the classes
Rouges need too be nerfed down a bit
they are getting too overpowered in their
abillity too do damage. Their are also other
things but once again im not going too list them!


The game isnt balanced for 1v1. Don't confuse your inability to win against rogues as a sign they are overpowered.



The favoring issue in reply too Jibar:
The horde are gettin all the bonuses!
More xp more money in quest rewards ect.
Heck even their forum admins have horde icons!
I wonda why? The fastest level up too lvl 10
was an undead rouge. Why? Cause horde
has all the bonuses because blizzards endulged
them in it.

What are you talking about? What bonuses -___-. Fastest to level 10? Heh, now there's a feat. Will of the forsaken reaaaallly helps with leveling. I guess this horde bias made every horde player cry in disgust at the overpowering paladin buffs.



The hackers in reply too jibar:
I was once just standing in ironforge
waiting for my bg too pop when I notice
there was a dwaf standing on a gyrocopter
rail haning from the roof. There was no way up
so I ask him how he got up there and he says
"Hacks duh!".

So if I tell you I'm the king of England you'll belive me? Reaching seemingly impossible places isnt hacking, you only need to know where to jump (as can be seen by bored level 60s climbing up the Ironforge mountain or Ogrimmar walls)

Poison_Fish
2007-01-07, 12:22 PM
The fact the favor the horde so much over alliance that they even accidentaly on pupose make glitches in the game where horde wins 3:1 everytime in a battlegorund.


Actually, no. That's because we go into battlegrounds as a pre made group and work together. Alliance can do this too, I've had days where I've won nothing. Just at lower levels people on the alliance tend to do this less.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-07, 01:44 PM
Yes Horde are Easier at low levels, that Is why they have to get extra Reputation to just be Friendly with Forsaken and Forsaken have get Friendly with everything in the Horde. Much easier than super best friends Alliance. :smallamused:

Sometimes I wonder if people who say that WoW is bad have actually got to even level 40 yet.

Meeeeebit
2007-01-07, 07:18 PM
Frankly it would instresting seeing you tryng too get up there like i did.
What would he get by just by lying? How does abosoultuely nothing sound
too you? The new patch before the storm or somthing like that is just going
too put in alot more errors for hackers too slip thru into the game .
The point is Wow has way too many hackers just sliding their way thru the game.

Poison_Fish
2007-01-07, 10:09 PM
Wait, wait, wait. Do you know how hackers work? The reason you gave for hacking seemed like something you could do via bug exploits with walls, not actually hacking the game code, writing your own thing, and then implementing it.

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-01-07, 10:26 PM
after playing WoW for the trial period, the main thing that is lacking is the role playing aspect. The only interaction you have with NPC's it to get quests or buy stuff. To me all the game is a fancy hack and slash with phenominal graphics.

Shadow of the Sun
2007-01-07, 11:48 PM
The best Roleplay is on the RP-PVP servers, and that is for roleplay between players.

Amotis
2007-01-08, 12:06 AM
The art for me. Instantly turned me away. Just personal, but yeah, I might of played it if it wasn't for that.

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-01-08, 01:16 AM
actually, I was on a RP server, and there was still very little role playing. The only place I found any was in one of the guilds. Even then it was a guild of well over 100, and only 5-10 people were actually playing in character.

Shadow of the Sun
2007-01-08, 06:53 AM
I thought it was against the rules to be out of character on a RP server. Ah well.

Tormsskull
2007-01-08, 08:10 AM
I love RP, it is awesome, but I refuse to RP on WOW. Any game that doesn't have permanent death is very difficult to RP on.

As for horde advantages over alliance -> HA! The only advantages that horde have are (arguably) better racial abilities and (on PVP servers this is pretty huge) a non-contested area that they can build up to higher levels than the alliance (The Barrens).

As for the advantage that alliance have over horde -> Paladins. In order to have super tough level 60s you have to raid the end bosses and such. Alliance can do it much easier with Greater Blessings than Shamans can do with totems. Plus there are so many more alliance people than there are horde so we are constantly facing 2 or 3 alliance rather than 1 on 1.

IME Alliance seems to have a higher percentage of young, immature players where horde has a higher percentage of mature players.

As for BGs the 10-19 bracket and 20-29 bracket are dominated by twinks. Whoever has more twinks wins. For 30-39, 40-49, and 50-59 it is all about good teamwork, which horde seems to have the advantage in. For 60 it is all about who has the best gear, which undeniably is the alliance. This is why I intend to PVP my butt off at level 59 to get loads of honor and BG tokens so as soon as I hit level 60 I can buy PVP gear.

So overall, I have a level 55 ally paladin and a level 52 horde druid, and I'd have to say allies have it better in the long run.

Dausuul
2007-01-08, 09:40 AM
But let me turn the argument over and ask you a question: if the original reasoning is faulty, and MMORPG tastes are not bound by your early history with the genre, then why are so many of these design memes so ubiquitous? Where's the big, successful MMORPG where you character doesn't respawn after death? Where's the big, successful MMORPG which doesn't have a class and level system? Where's the big, successful MMORPG which gives you an enjoyable experience without any PvP?

Perhaps these things don't show up in big successful MMORPGs because they're actually not good design ideas if you want to make a popular game. "Hardcore" death may appeal to the hardcore gamer, but most players very quickly get sick of playing a game where they get knocked back to level 1 and have to start over every time they die. Indeed, the system has evolved over time toward less and less of a "death penalty," not because of pre-conditioned audiences but for one very simple reason: The goal of the game is to have fun, and it's not fun to go back and repeat a lot of stuff you've already done.

Class-and-level systems are a lot easier to design and balance than mix-and-match skill-based systems. I don't play enough MMORPGs to speak to the PvP question, but there is probably a good reason for that, as well.


True, there's Second Life, which made it really big thanks to the whole virtual economy thing. But I'm sure if someone made a comprehensive survey of its players, they'd find that the majority of them are not the MMORPG-ers who have tried and seen many other games, but the sort of people who started it without any MMOG-ing past. I know it's true for any Second Lifers I know personally. Why? Because "veteran" MMOG-ers already have their preconceptions of what an MMOG should be, and they won't like something so different from it.

Or maybe because the traditional MMORPG style didn't appeal to them, whereas Second Life's style did, so they played Second Life. Meanwhile, those who liked the traditional MMORPG didn't want to play Second Life because it wasn't to their tastes.

I won't say that we don't get conditioned by the systems we start in, but I think you drastically overstate the impact that conditioning has on game design. There are actual design reasons why things in computer games work the way they do.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-08, 10:36 AM
As for BGs the 10-19 bracket and 20-29 bracket are dominated by twinks. Whoever has more twinks wins. For 30-39, 40-49, and 50-59 it is all about good teamwork, which horde seems to have the advantage in. For 60 it is all about who has the best gear, which undeniably is the alliance. This is why I intend to PVP my butt off at level 59 to get loads of honor and BG tokens so as soon as I hit level 60 I can buy PVP gear.

Level 60 is probably worse than the lower levels for Battlegrounds. Nothing but Arathi Basin premades these days which is why I prefer Alterec Valley.

Because Horde have less players and mature players it is easier for them to get into AB and WSG with premades and their premades tend to have better tactics. But AV is just a massive fight in the middle and Alliance tend to to do better at that stuff.

Joran
2007-01-08, 01:51 PM
The average time for some player too get to lvl 60 in Wow is 21 days.

I have a friend who managed to get all 8 Horde classes to 60 (he apparently has a lot of free time). My first 60, mind you, this is on a PvP server, managed to get to 60 in 9-10 days played. My friend, an expert leveler, managed to get his latest 60 in 4 days played. 21 days seems a little bit of a stretch to me.

Horde loves to complain about Alliance imbalance; Alliance likes to complain about Horde imbalance. Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch apparently favor the Horde, Alterac Valley favors the Alliance.

Pick-up groups PvP, I think favor the Horde, because of the racials and shamans are a better offensive threat (I assume in a PuG that there is little to no healing). However, in group play, it's a toss up, just because paladins are very, very strong defensively.

PvE, Alliance is much better than the Horde just because of fear ward and paladins.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-08, 01:54 PM
4 days? He must have not slept at all for that and have level 60 for every class just makes me think hes played WoW too much.

Artanis
2007-01-08, 02:08 PM
Geez, I take a day off from the internet for a day to watch football, and a page and a half spawns on the thread :smalltongue:

Well now for the rebutal.

Firstly in reply too artanis :The grinding
OK, The average time for some player too get to lvl 60
in Wow is 21 days. too make that more understandable
in time thats 504hrs of complete grinding!!!

secondly in reply too artanis :The roleplaying
Well, since there are not just people who live in europe
they decided too make other servers. For the people
who play in the American and oceanic servers the
highest ever role playing is probably ph33r my l337
sk1zz or all ph@ l00t will be min3 !1!!!1 Or pwnage will
be min3! All will ph33r m3 a5 1m l337.

The glitches in reply too artanis : The glitches
In wow it has been noted that on rare occaions you
somehow just suddenly become ethereal in the game
and start too fall thru the world and eventual hit an
solid etheral floor instantly dying.(its all weird and purple)
There are alot more but im not going too mention them all :)
This doesn't rebut anything. At all.

Grinding: yes, there can be grinding. It's a fact of life with MMOs, and WoW does an excellent job of minimizing it. If you don't like the grinding in WoW, you'll HATE the grinding in every other MMO on the market.

Role-playing: yes, it can be bad (or non-existant, depending on your viewpoint), but that's a fact of life in MMOs. Have you tried an RP server? Either way, if you don't like the lack of RP in WoW, you'll HATE the lack of RP in every other MMO on the market.

Glitches: yes, there are glitches, but that's a fact of life in video games. Part of the monthly fee for WoW goes to a live team dedicated to fixing things like those glitches, meaning that their ability to fix said glitches is about as good as it's possible to get. If you don't like the glitches in WoW, you'll HATE the glitches in every other game - MMO or otherwise - on the market.


Basically, what I was trying to point out was that every single one of your complaints holds for every single MMO out there. WoW is anywhere from above-average to one of the best at handling your complaints. So really, if you don't like WoW for the reasons given, then simply put, you don't like MMOs because they're all even WORSE about the reasons given, period.

Long story short, your argument boils down to "I don't like MMOs".

Reinforcements
2007-01-08, 02:36 PM
4 days? He must have not slept at all for that and have level 60 for every class just makes me think hes played WoW too much.
He means 4 days of total time played, or 96 hours, not 4 actual days. Which is still very impressive, but it doesn't speak on lack of sleep necessarily.

Tormsskull
2007-01-08, 02:44 PM
He means 4 days of total time played, or 96 hours, not 4 actual days. Which is still very impressive, but it doesn't speak on lack of sleep necessarily.

Yeah. I know some super-addicted people that play and I have never seen anyone get close to 4 days / 96 hours played to get to level 60. If I was on the WoW forums I would say something WoWish here like screenshots or it didn't happen.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-08, 02:54 PM
And even if he does have a 60 of every class they probably have nothing for gear. A 60 with no good gear isn't worth much at all really.

Premier
2007-01-08, 03:40 PM
Grinding: yes, there can be grinding. It's a fact of life with MMOs, and WoW does an excellent job of minimizing it. If you don't like the grinding in WoW, you'll HATE the grinding in every other MMO on the market.

Role-playing: yes, it can be bad (or non-existant, depending on your viewpoint), but that's a fact of life in MMOs. Have you tried an RP server? Either way, if you don't like the lack of RP in WoW, you'll HATE the lack of RP in every other MMO on the market.

This supports the article I've linked to way back up perfectly. You, and many other gamers, have never seen the numerous MUDs and MOOs (and, for all I know, probably even some graphical MMORPGs) that DON'T have grind and DO have good roleplaying, therefore you assume that such things don't exist. And since game companies make money by serving your preferences, you'll only ever get games with grind and no roleplay, simply because you don't realise that there are alternatives.

Artanis
2007-01-08, 07:11 PM
This supports the article I've linked to way back up perfectly. You, and many other gamers, have never seen the numerous MUDs and MOOs (and, for all I know, probably even some graphical MMORPGs) that DON'T have grind and DO have good roleplaying, therefore you assume that such things don't exist. And since game companies make money by serving your preferences, you'll only ever get games with grind and no roleplay, simply because you don't realise that there are alternatives.
Two points. First:
MUD != MMO
MOO != MMO

WoW is an MMO, and as such should primarily be held to MMO standards. Is its RP as good as MUDs or MOOs? Probably not. Is its RP pretty good for an MMO, which is neither a MUD or a MOO? As far as I can tell, yes (on the RP servers, at any rate).


Second:

Oh, I know that games with good RP - like the MUDs and MOOs you mentioned - exist. What you fail to grasp is that I don't care. If I had wanted to RP, I'd go dig up something with good RP...but I didn't. I wanted Warcraft, and I wanted an MMO, and Blizzard gave me exactly what I was looking for.

Talyn
2007-01-08, 07:15 PM
Well, I guess I'm coming down on the side of the WoW apologists, here, and I came into the thread really expecting to post as a member of the "loyal opposition."

I frankly admit that I've never seen a MUD or MOO that "don't have grind and do have good roleplaying." Of course, that might be because I have yet to find a MUD or MOO that passes the first and most important test of an RPG - is it fun to play! No MUD or MOO has anything like the accessibility, ease of use and simple FUN of even the lousy graphical MMORPGs (speaking as a former player of both UO and EQ1), and doesn't even come close to WoW.

Also, on the subject of grinding - I have managed to get two characters into their 50s and several others into their late 20s without grinding. Ever. Every single point of XP was earned in pursuit of a quest, every single item earned through questing, by happenstance, or made by me.

I do agree that the "death penalty" is pretty nonexistent, which makes the game pretty "easy," but I agree with the previous poster who said that was a compromise to placate the more casual gamers. Also, the counter to it being too easy is that you don't really play an RPG to "win" - to play for the interaction, whether with the world or with the other players.

Now, if there was something I could tweak (besides that really, really obnoxious retcon re: the Light, the Shadow, and the Dranei for the expansion, good point whoever brought that up earlier), it would be that there is no way for your guild to do anything really guild-like. I actually wish they'd blatantly steal the idea from City of Heroes and allow guilds to purchase (instanced) "guild halls" that members of guilds and their invitees can visit, hang out in, display their trophies, whatever. That would be awesome, and an excellent money sink to keep the economy in line and curb inflation.

Pilum
2007-01-08, 08:36 PM
Regarding any death penalty, I usually find a corpse run frustrating enough, especially if (a) I nearly survived and (b) the graveyard is half a continent away. Add to that dungeon runs getting called due to respawns post-wipe and no-one can really be bothered doing ANOTHER two hours of clearing the same monsters again... Well, that's sufficient penalty for me.

And this is what I think WoW did right. It's a nice, quick, easy game to get into and play. No massive learning curve, though I think some zone placements could have been thought through better.

What it did wrong: the last year or so. Standing round IF or Org plaintively spamming LFG for Strat, Scholo or eventually DM while reading about the wonderful new raid instances full of cool stuff (supposedly)... well, that WASN'T fun, hence my frequent breaks, only coming back because of some good friends I've made, or as good as online ones ever get...

But that first ride from 1 to 60? Great :smallsmile: (even if I did do it as prot spec)

ETA: Nearly forgot; the reason Horde generally do better in battlegrounds is simple. Compare the following chat in two typical WSG matches (paraphrased from memory). And note, I don't do premade, my guild(s) don't go in for pvp that much, even lately. My experience is pure PUG.

A typical chat window for my dauntless Orc warrior:
stealthed rogue in tunnel
pally + 2 on balcony
flag in our tunnel
flag gone east
Still east.
Nice return - who's got theirs?
[Druid] - I do, leaving @ gy
Going West
Heading for ramp
nice score everyone, same again eh? ;)

And my stout human soldier:
.
.
Where's our flag?
.
.
.
.
.
Which way?
.
.
.
(thinks in silent frustration - god, is anyone else playing this???)
.

Pretty simple eh? AB is similar, only done one AV ever (alliance-side) and that was silent again. And I can't explain it, I've met just as many good and bad people Horde and Alliance, yet for some reason once Alliance get into the BG any notion of co-operation flies out of the window, yet even on my orc, from the first WSG match, his chat has ticked over at about 2000rpm. One or two exceptions (and boy did I suffer for my honour points in those games!) but generally communication is instinctively understood with Horde groups. Odd.

Shadow of the Sun
2007-01-09, 12:27 AM
Oddly enough, I hate playing as a rogue. I find it far too boring- everything is just backstab, stun, backstab, finisher- you only really need 4 buttons while leveling. I much prefer playing warlocks or priests- it may be slower, but I find it more fun. Druids can level far easier than most classes after level 20- Cat form is a poor mans rogue, but it levels almost as fast as a real rogue.

Tor the Fallen
2007-01-09, 01:23 AM
Story. WoW's expansion ruined a perfectly good fantasy videogame story.

Why are the blood elves allied with the horde? Didn't Thrall swear off demon magic? And why did the xenophobic and very anti demon alliance ally themselves with Draeni, who turn out to be demons. Nevermind that the Draeni are actually not demons, and look nothing like these new 'Draeni'.

Not to mention the ancient blood feud between elves and trolls. The elves would never ally themselves with trolls, nor would the trolls ally themselves with the elves!

And Thrall's alliance with Sylvannas doesn't make much sense, either. She's a traiterous bitch.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-09, 02:17 AM
Because its an MMO and they had to cut up the story to make the game better. Next people will be saying stuff like. "They screwed up the story because every time I kill someone they reappear in a about five minutes and I can't die now because I can just find my body." It's an MMO now so get over it and find a new storyline to worship because I doubt Blizzard will be changing their's anytime soon.

Cubey
2007-01-09, 05:35 AM
And why did the xenophobic and very anti demon alliance ally themselves with Draeni, who turn out to be demons. Nevermind that the Draeni are actually not demons, and look nothing like these new 'Draeni'.


I beg your pardon? Where in the name of all that is holy is there written that Draenei are demons? Are we playing the same game?
And the old Draenei looked nothing like the "new" ones that we encountered so far. They were described in the manual of Warcraft II (yes - they appeared that early! I wonder how many critics actually know that) as a stout, but weak race. Well, weaker than orcs. Show me how the Broken Draenei look stout and I'll show you hateful lies.

So, the pre-destruction Draenei were different. It was only up to Blizzard to decide HOW did they look. Don't like the result? Well, shame. I do.

As for the elf-troll feuds, these were between FOREST TROLLS (name Zul'jin strikes a chord?), not JUNGLE TROLLS, especially the Darkspear Tribe who just lived on their tiny little island near Kalimdor for nobody knows how long.

Now, on the battlefield phenomena: most players are immature brats. However, those who roll horde are (mostly) here for the pee-kay, while those who roll alliance are here for the pron. Results - as you can see. It's a fair match only on rare occasions when both sides get mature players, when the fight really gets interesting. I suppose the situation will change for the worse Horde-wise when the new Blood Elves reach level 60-70...

Having played a rogue up to mid-30's, I must say the class is indeed rather boring to play. A warrior is much more fun, and I'm going to roll a Draenei mage (Oh no! What a fanboy am I! Quick, stone me to death) when the expansion comes out - which is going to happen really soon, and I'm looking forward to it, oh yes I am.

Jibar
2007-01-09, 11:25 AM
Well...he just covered what I was goingto say story wise.
Death penalty; Is very existant for a warrior who has an auction house addiction. Didn't stop me hurling myself at those raid bosses...hehe...Leeroy Jenkins eat your heart out...

I agree with the co-operation on battlegrounds though.
I did a random pick up group for arathi basin, and staying in the raid we formed, we won 5 games straight before anyone began leaving, then we won 3 more, and then I left.
When we got in it, somebody made the raid, we spread out, orders were being given, we all filled our roles, and those damn druids at the stable were the only thing stopping us from holding every position.

Walter
2007-01-09, 12:55 PM
Alright, I'm not going to jump in here and pretend to have read all of your arguments and rebutting statements, but I will come in and say what my personal pros and cons of the game are as a gamer.

I've been doing WoW since Nov. of 05 so a pretty long time. During that time I've gotten a Rogue and Druid to 60, and a Warrior and Hunter pretty close (57 and 48 respectively). All except the druid are on a PvP horde server. First off the idea of a RP server from the perspective of PvPer is one of mild amusement and wariness. All of my WoW buddies on Dark Iron see a RP server as something of a joke for a few reasons. First off, in BGs the RP servers are always better geared, T2, T3 and are all in Premade AB's and, after the Before the Storm patch were running 4-5 pallies each. I rolled some lowbies on an RP server and it usually becomes people grouping for sub lvl 10 quests which anyone can tell you inefficient. Regarding the BGs, essentially now, with the new honor system, BGs have gone from being a fun challenging thing with Pugs to being "oh, looks like we loose," the other one being, "I guess we win because they just want a token game so they don't cap anything and loose." This is distressing but the new challenge (which I find to be more fun) is to get together, either via pug or guild or a combination, a 10-15 man group and get on Vent and work out some strategy. If you can only get around 10, go do a WSG and figure out who has the best armor and DEF rating to be the tanker and man up and work out some strategy.

Since I'm mainly playing the rogue, who mind you is poorly geared (matched up against most rogues now a days) in 6/8 T.0 and both the HWL swords, my contribution is considerably less than that of anyone. In WSG I usually end up "guarding the flag" which is code for "distract them for 10-15 sec to give us a bigger advantage." In AB I usually scout ahead to call incs and do kamikaze attacks on their healers.

Sure, this is less "fun" then having a role where you don't die a lot, but being a rogue we have the whole idea of being a one man squad and thusly get screwed when going solo in BGs. This is something that most people complain about when playing a rogue. When I did ZG, AQ and MC with the druid (also a PvP server) the rogues in the guild would complain about not getting heals. Not all of them or a majority, but at least one each raid would, and you kinda have to explain to them that being resto specked the healers have to heal the main tank. This means that rogues for the most part are on their own. So they get trinkets that proc to heal themselves and rely on bandages. This correlates over in BG terms to having Lifestealing enchants over +15 AGI and "worse" pvp trinkets than other, dps classes. Being one of the few melee dps classes rogues play the hard transitional class between taking damage, and dealing damage. The bottom line being that they can take more damage then clothies, and deal less damage then clothies. The exception being when they attack clothies, and the balance evens out.

Now then, I've talked about rogues and my take on BGs now, but my main beef is the difference between PvP and other realms. Essentially, here's how you should pick a realm. If you want to get good gear, focus on fighting monsters and teaming up to vanquish your counterpart in one of three battlegrounds - play on a non PvP server. You don't have to worry about getting ganked or any of that stuff, which is key in leveling up fast. It took me 10 days to ding 60 on my rogue, my friend rogue 9 days. We're not the fastest levelers, but that's pretty good on a PvP server. The idea with a PvP server was that you could go kill the enemy race any time, any place, (Aside from controlled territories) this is a true statement. The problem with the PvP servers arises when people want to level up and, in my experience, constantly complain about it. I assure you, leveling up in PvP is harder than PvE -- I have some low 30, low 20s on PvE servers and they took much less time than the PvP equivalents. Either roll PvP and except this, or roll PvE and don't. In the end, rolling PvE dosn't make you a weaker player, just different. If you are a prospective player deciding whether or not to roll on a PvE or PvP server, roll PvE. They are more open to newcomers and you'll undoubtedly have a better time.

Other statements people have made comparing WoW to other MMORPGs or even MMOs I have little to say, as my experience with other games is less than with WoW. My primary belief is this: Blizzard is a strong gaming company. I was impressed with D1 and happy with D2. I loved W2 and more so W3. This is their crowning achievement, one that will be around and substantial for quite some time. If you're not the person to spend 15 bucks a month (its actually 16 cause of tax in most cases) on a game, then you aren't the kind of person that would really enjoy WoW. It's a game of learning to play your class and fill a nitch in groups, then transfer that over to groups that are 10, 15 and eventually 40 man. This isn't to say that the game doesn't have single player aspects as well, but the real trick is learning how to move as a team. Furthermore, if you don't spend money monthly on the game, then who are you to judge it? Its one of the few things that pisses me off is people complaining about spending 15 bucks a month on a game when they haven't played it over the trial period to begin with.

I don't know if this will rebute or counter any other statements people have made but I do look forward to feed back on this subject. Since I am rogue I understand the frustration people get when making a character and realizing that it is completely different than a thief or assassin in any other game. Just realize that the people at Blizzard are smarter than you, and they know what they're doing.

Except for Paladins, god -- I hate them.

Jibar
2007-01-09, 01:01 PM
No, see, everybody hates Paladins.
Golden rule of WoW.
Kamikaze mission?
Send in the paladin.
Being the first to hit the raid boss?
Paladin.
Scout needed for a Horde area?
Paladin.

Because there's only one thing that the Horde hates more than a Paladin. A living one.

Walter
2007-01-09, 03:02 PM
No, see, everybody hates Paladins.
Golden rule of WoW.
Kamikaze mission?
Send in the paladin.
Being the first to hit the raid boss?
Paladin.
Scout needed for a Horde area?
Paladin.

Because there's only one thing that the Horde hates more than a Paladin. A living one.

Haha -- I don't hate hate hate Paladins nor will I harbor a strong grudge for much longer. First off, as I said earlier, Blizzard knows what they are doing. They've given pallys a whopping boost after 2.0, but it will go back down in a bit. Its the same with any class, they make them a certain power level and people are happy. Then someone else complains and begs for the other class to be nerfed, so they are. Then the class that was nerfed finds it harder to play because they got nerfed and then they complain and get put back up. This is the case with your WoW Pally, Rogue and Hunter mainly. My 48 hunter's pet can solo a 52-53 decently geared mage. Its just shifts in power.

Also I wouldn't complain about paladins because come BC, I'm rolling a BE one :P

Leon
2007-01-10, 08:44 AM
If you want a Bug to complain about and whine that Horde get all the good stuff - Flag Capping in AV & AB from 30 yards away in stealth... Horde only

Jibar
2007-01-10, 11:22 AM
Also I wouldn't complain about paladins because come BC, I'm rolling a BE one :P

I consider you a traitor to the Horde.
You're a Blood Elf as well. You're just as likely to betray us as the Forsaken.

Walter
2007-01-10, 03:07 PM
If you want a Bug to complain about and whine that Horde get all the good stuff - Flag Capping in AV & AB from 30 yards away in stealth... Horde only

Hmm, never seen that before. Now let me stand up for the brutal horde:

Not sure this is a bug but isn't it odd how much easier it is to defend the Alliance side in AV then for Horde? I mean, SP GY has really 2 entrances (the road or the high road), the horde equivalent is just in the middle of a rudding field! That's pretty obscene right there.

Another 'cute' WoW issue is that in WSG there's a 'quaint' niche in the roof above the main tunnel (Ally side) where you can quite easily sit out of LoS with the flag until you want to cap. Yea, that's a 'fun' bit of information.

I'm not saying all this to contradict you but I mean come on - Blizzard has got to be working pretty hard to keep over 7 million people happy (relatively so) and since the only real problems are the occasional complaints that occur from bugs probably caused by players themselves. That and in game relations between players, something Blizzard can hardly regulate.

The instance of the SP versus FW GY locations AV though, that's just outright retarded. :smallannoyed:


I consider you a traitor to the Horde.
You're a Blood Elf as well. You're just as likely to betray us as the Forsaken.

You know that come the 16th servers will crash because everyone will be /dance with their female BE pallies and what not. :smallcool:

Shadow of the Sun
2007-01-10, 10:20 PM
Do not forget every Dranei shammy dropping totems left and right.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-11, 02:20 AM
Look at it from a person who is on a pvp server. Unfortunately for me when I did start WoW I had never played any previous Warcraft games and never could find any fluff saying otherwise so I was one of those 'the Horde are Evil and Alliance are Good idiots' and I joined the alliance. After about 3 weeks of trying every class I decided to try out Horde unfortunately then a friend of mine got the game and joined me on my server forever annoying me by making me not be able to switch to Horde. The only class I have not played up to about level 20 is Shaman and Ive never really had chance to play one and now I can. (Although Pandaran Shamans would have mad more sense.)

Jerthanis
2007-01-11, 03:03 AM
Well, the things that personally turned me off to the experience of WoW were the following things:

1.) Difficulty of finding/starting pickup groups, lack of communication in and amongst group members, and elitism in how to play. You have to flood the chat window with some LFG message every 2~4 minutes because no one uses the group finding service, and when you finally get a group together they act like they're soloing with backup, and when you avoid that problem it's probably because someone is telling you that you're not playing your class right, and being a control freak about everything. This, I suppose comes down to the community being awful, but that's a significant problem with the game in comparison to my experiences on other games.

2.) The lateness at which you gain your travel power, the extreme distance between quest objectives and areas, the fact that expedited travel requires expenditure of hard earned money (almost always requiring an even longer time period grinding than the time you saved), and the fact that the time spent traveling takes up a larger portion of the early game than any other factor. Before you can get your mount it's reasonable to assume you've spent more than 24 hours holding down the "forward" button, most of that retracing your own steps, and you have to ask yourself at some point whether that is worth it to you.

3.) This one is admittedly a bit of an anecdotal problem, and I'm sure it's no better on any other MMO, but the inability to transfer characters between servers was really annoying for me. This was mostly a problem due to the miscommunications I had between the friends I was playing the game with. We originally were going to play on server X, so I made a mage and played to 15, then we decided for some reason to switch to sever Y, so I made another mage and played to 12, when someone finally admitted they'd rather we play on server Z with their extended family in Alabama... so I got pretty sick of what I thought of as...

4.) Pest control quests. There's a certain point where the twenty third person tells you to kill ten murlocks to prevent overpopulation or to protect a town from their raids or whatever that you realize that no matter how many pests you kill, there will always be more, there is no change you can effect, the Murlocks just get stronger as you do, since the Murlocks you face now would kill the heck out of you ten gameplay hours ago, and in ten hours you will be fighting Murlocks of a different color pigmentation that drop shiny scales instead of slimy scales, and would kill the heck out of you if you tried fighting them now. Other MMOs probably aren't much better when it comes to this, but it seemed to be really driven home to me after redoing the same "keep down population X" missions three times right in a row.

5.) The art... or rather the apparently conscious choice to make certain areas absolutely hideous to look at and miserable to adventure in. Westfall, for instance was a giant, just off poo-colored splotch of barren plains, with some mountains in the distance and shoddy run down houses here and there. Then there's Loch Modan (sp?) in comparison, with its quaint mountaintops capped with ice, and its majestic pines, its elegant lake with peaceful shores... The comparison of absolutely awful to be anywhere near areas in the same game as a beautiful setting like Loch Modan was just painful to behold. Too bad Westfall had better quests, including the only interesting quest I ever got to, Van Cleef.

6.) Too tightly defined party roles. Despite the existence of Talents, and their admittedly extreme effect on gameplay (I played three mages, one with Fire talents, another with ice and the last with arcane, so I know how heavily this can affect gameplay within even just a few levels...) the Mage is essentially doing one of three types of blasting, the fighter's sole purpose apparently is to draw threat (and to survive a far distant second priority), a priest WILL heal... it's like you're not playing a "class", but an incarnation of a party role. Perhaps this isn't as much the case as it seems, but playing a fighter was pretty jarring in what my abilities were able to do and in what people I managed to group with expected me to be doing. Which leads into my final complaint...

7.) Worst community ever? People aren't very communicative, and when they are, you wish they'd shut up. People accuse you of being "high" if you type in complete sentences, people yell at you and squabble over loot (no matter what the distribution scheme is) And various people will spam the broadcast channels enough that you feel the need to turn it off, despite the fact that you may lose out on the only opportunity to actually get in a pickup party. Intragroup interaction is practically limited to "Pulling" and "Rest" except for the aforementioned squabbling over loot. Also, the way the game thrusts you into the world and into the role you play is also fairly non-conducive to roleplay. I played on a RP server as what I think was the first server we played on and from my experiences, no one was quite sure what they were supposed to be as far as background and role within the larger world went. All an RP server meant to me was slightly less public naked dancing and slightly more "Thee's" and "Thou's" added to speech. (along with the not-insignificant lack of "Pwnzor32" and "Yurmom" names)

Now, obviously only a few of these are really Blizzard's fault, except in the fact that they ARE Blizzard and they attract 12 year old jerks like flies to flowers... or issues involving personal problems with the game or its style. I think WoW's biggest fault is that it does exactly what every MMO did before it... slightly better. It IS better, but I really wouldn't classify it as "great" or even "lives up to the potential for an MMO."

Personally I feel that if you took Saga of Ryzom's system, put in EVE's ability to do pretty much whatever you wanted with the world... and included some rich backstory and an interesting world for it to happen in, complete with robust content. And included a unified system of finding groups, allowing people to meaningfully contribute with vast level gaps in their groups (to facilitate friends of different levels playing together), and significant control and customization over the visual representation of your character... and you'd pretty much have what I think "lives up to the potential for an MMO"


(Although Pandaran Shamans would have mad more sense.)

If Burning Crusade had introduced Pandarans, I would have reactivated my account, and would buy the expansion, despite every problem I have with WoW, because Pandarans are just. that. cool.

Crazy Owl
2007-01-11, 10:42 AM
OK Jerthanis
1. This is the one I will give you...

2. If you don't want to hold forward just click fricking Num lock and it does it for you.

3. Sounds more like your friends fault than the game really. Anyway you can move servers now.

4. As you said all MMOs have those quests so you can't exactly say its bad when WoW has a lot more of other quests to do as well.

5. Its a fricking Desert, what do expect long green grass. I would get rather tired if the entire game looked like Loch Modan. I think more people would enjoy variety rather than repetitiveness and there are about four deserts in the game and about ten nice little forests so I'm not sure what you are annoyed about.

6. Firstly the easy one. If you think priests 'just heal' you are very wrong, have you seen the damage a shadow priest can pump out? Most warriors like to tank, if you want to do more be a Paladin or Shaman. Mages are not just there to blast things. Frost mages are about staying alive be slowing your enemies and immobilizing them. Fire mages are for blasting stuff. Arcane mages are for useful abilities like the god of getting out of low and med level bad pulls, Arcane Explosion.
Also useful stuff like slow and invisibility.

7. I have to ask, have you ever been in a guild? I don't mean some level 20 Guild with less than ten members I mean the big guilds. No one ever talks on channels because they are talking with people they know on guild chat

All these lead one thing which most WoW haters come to. Have you actually given the game a chance at all? Or are you a someone who got level ten and decided the game sucked before seeing about 90% of the game?

Walter
2007-01-11, 12:51 PM
Well, the things that personally turned me off to the experience of WoW were the following things:

1.) Difficulty of finding/starting pickup groups, lack of communication in and amongst group members, and elitism in how to play. You have to flood the chat window with some LFG message every 2~4 minutes because no one uses the group finding service, and when you finally get a group together they act like they're soloing with backup, and when you avoid that problem it's probably because someone is telling you that you're not playing your class right, and being a control freak about everything. This, I suppose comes down to the community being awful, but that's a significant problem with the game in comparison to my experiences on other games.

2.) The lateness at which you gain your travel power, the extreme distance between quest objectives and areas, the fact that expedited travel requires expenditure of hard earned money (almost always requiring an even longer time period grinding than the time you saved), and the fact that the time spent traveling takes up a larger portion of the early game than any other factor. Before you can get your mount it's reasonable to assume you've spent more than 24 hours holding down the "forward" button, most of that retracing your own steps, and you have to ask yourself at some point whether that is worth it to you.

3.) This one is admittedly a bit of an anecdotal problem, and I'm sure it's no better on any other MMO, but the inability to transfer characters between servers was really annoying for me. This was mostly a problem due to the miscommunications I had between the friends I was playing the game with. We originally were going to play on server X, so I made a mage and played to 15, then we decided for some reason to switch to sever Y, so I made another mage and played to 12, when someone finally admitted they'd rather we play on server Z with their extended family in Alabama... so I got pretty sick of what I thought of as...

4.) Pest control quests. There's a certain point where the twenty third person tells you to kill ten murlocks to prevent overpopulation or to protect a town from their raids or whatever that you realize that no matter how many pests you kill, there will always be more, there is no change you can effect, the Murlocks just get stronger as you do, since the Murlocks you face now would kill the heck out of you ten gameplay hours ago, and in ten hours you will be fighting Murlocks of a different color pigmentation that drop shiny scales instead of slimy scales, and would kill the heck out of you if you tried fighting them now. Other MMOs probably aren't much better when it comes to this, but it seemed to be really driven home to me after redoing the same "keep down population X" missions three times right in a row.

5.) The art... or rather the apparently conscious choice to make certain areas absolutely hideous to look at and miserable to adventure in. Westfall, for instance was a giant, just off poo-colored splotch of barren plains, with some mountains in the distance and shoddy run down houses here and there. Then there's Loch Modan (sp?) in comparison, with its quaint mountaintops capped with ice, and its majestic pines, its elegant lake with peaceful shores... The comparison of absolutely awful to be anywhere near areas in the same game as a beautiful setting like Loch Modan was just painful to behold. Too bad Westfall had better quests, including the only interesting quest I ever got to, Van Cleef.

6.) Too tightly defined party roles. Despite the existence of Talents, and their admittedly extreme effect on gameplay (I played three mages, one with Fire talents, another with ice and the last with arcane, so I know how heavily this can affect gameplay within even just a few levels...) the Mage is essentially doing one of three types of blasting, the fighter's sole purpose apparently is to draw threat (and to survive a far distant second priority), a priest WILL heal... it's like you're not playing a "class", but an incarnation of a party role. Perhaps this isn't as much the case as it seems, but playing a fighter was pretty jarring in what my abilities were able to do and in what people I managed to group with expected me to be doing. Which leads into my final complaint...

7.) Worst community ever? People aren't very communicative, and when they are, you wish they'd shut up. People accuse you of being "high" if you type in complete sentences, people yell at you and squabble over loot (no matter what the distribution scheme is) And various people will spam the broadcast channels enough that you feel the need to turn it off, despite the fact that you may lose out on the only opportunity to actually get in a pickup party. Intragroup interaction is practically limited to "Pulling" and "Rest" except for the aforementioned squabbling over loot. Also, the way the game thrusts you into the world and into the role you play is also fairly non-conducive to roleplay. I played on a RP server as what I think was the first server we played on and from my experiences, no one was quite sure what they were supposed to be as far as background and role within the larger world went. All an RP server meant to me was slightly less public naked dancing and slightly more "Thee's" and "Thou's" added to speech. (along with the not-insignificant lack of "Pwnzor32" and "Yurmom" names)

Now, obviously only a few of these are really Blizzard's fault, except in the fact that they ARE Blizzard and they attract 12 year old jerks like flies to flowers... or issues involving personal problems with the game or its style. I think WoW's biggest fault is that it does exactly what every MMO did before it... slightly better. It IS better, but I really wouldn't classify it as "great" or even "lives up to the potential for an MMO."

Personally I feel that if you took Saga of Ryzom's system, put in EVE's ability to do pretty much whatever you wanted with the world... and included some rich backstory and an interesting world for it to happen in, complete with robust content. And included a unified system of finding groups, allowing people to meaningfully contribute with vast level gaps in their groups (to facilitate friends of different levels playing together), and significant control and customization over the visual representation of your character... and you'd pretty much have what I think "lives up to the potential for an MMO"



If Burning Crusade had introduced Pandarans, I would have reactivated my account, and would buy the expansion, despite every problem I have with WoW, because Pandarans are just. that. cool.

For the record, my response isn't to irritate you, but to get you to reactivate your account and make a new character on Dark Iron, Panda Attack needs all the help it can get to crush the puny alliance. Play Horde and look me up: Bartuk.

1) The group finding system was introduced for a few reasons. First off, many players who play WoW only get up to the mid to low 20's, meaning that 1/2 of those players spend most of their time in the Barrens. As anyone can tell you, Barrens chat is hell. Its even worse when you're LFG there. So they put in a system to find groups for people. Since BC is coming out, most people are either waiting till then to make new characters, or busy getting to 60 or getting PVP rewards (since they are ridiculously easy to get now.), meaning that no one uses the LFG system that was recently added to WoW.

2) One of the realistic aspects of WoW I found was the distance between places. Sure, on a PvP server you die a lot on Roads. But it is a "World" -- not a state or continent, but a World, and its pretty darn big. They give Mages, Rogues, Shammies, Druids, and Hunters speed increases before lvl 40. And the Shaman, Druid and Hunter increase is stagnant, its not a cooldown. Usually I found that setting my hearth back in town, then walking huge ways out then hearthing back was the way to go, cause it is a big place.

3) Well, as I'm sure you've heard, but you can now transfer character on WoW -- its pricey but you can. And as for your friends, I completely understand the feeling, although in my case it was worse. I got a Druid to 60, then we switched servers. Got a Hunter to 46 then my friends stopped playing. Got a Warrior to 56 and my other friends stopped playing. Now my first set of friends is back so I got a Rogue to 60 -- very time consuming and, as I look back on it, really annoying. However, I don't blame Blizzard for that -- just blame my friends for being sissies and quitting a game. If they let people transfer characters for free, servers would regularly be crashing and going off line -- there has to be some control to server population.

4) Ok, so the quests become repetitive and non realistic. Well, what would you rather be doing to get to 60? Slaying dragons and rescuing damsels? You do that at the higher levels, after you've tested your mettle against the fierce Merloc hordes. In the end, quests can only be realistic to a point. It is a fantasy game, and there are people who play it solely to get to 60 as fast as possible and those 'grind' quests are key in doing so. I mean, there are quests where the beasts you slay respawn as your killing them, so clearly the population is far out of your control, you just have to look past that every now and then.

5) So, you've only played alliance and only in the low levels. Clearly this is the case because the Barrens is far less 'thrilling' to look at for 5 hours while you quest in it. I recommend you check out screen shots from Maraudon or other instances because they are the more stunning parts of WoW. Consider this though, what other MMORPG has as large a setting as WoW - then wonder how their landscapes compare. I really can't sympathize for the most part because I first started WoWing on a laptop with such a horrible VGA card that the terrain never showed up, it was just 'patches' of color :smallfrown:

6) Well, its not DnD, it World of Warcraft. In W3, each race had 3 hero types. So you had 12 classes essentially, with 4 talent points each. So that was a game where everyone was the same. As for tightly defined roles, this only applies to instancing and raiding. If you make a character called a priest, where they tell you that "healing and buffing his allies are some of his specialties," be prepared to do some of that. They essentially tell you what you should be doing in the character creation screen. However, none of this should have 'turned you off' to WoW since you only made it to Westfall and Van Cleef, a fairly straight forward instance with little organization required. I like to say that there are two games inside WoW. The game by yourself and the game with others. They are completely different and both involve different styles of play. That's why the first time you have to or have the choice to work with others is at lvl 10 (horde) or 15-16 (alliance).

Also, about having preset roles without any difference determined by you talent points. In parties, I have had Warriors deal DPS and other classes Tank, or even pets. I've had Priests do Shadow damage and had other people heal. It all depends on what people are comfortable with. Although, as I said, in parties you have to make sacrifices in the way you play. Since I'm a rogue I usually found that my stunlocks are broken every time I use them, as are blinds and other of my 1v1 tricks. And as for your statement, "Despite the existence of Talents," talents are an always changing variable in Wow. Nearly every patch they are changed or refunded for a specific class or classes, so in a sense the classes themselves are always changing. You mention that you played a 'fighter' (no fighters in WoW, they're warriors) and that, "playing a fighter was pretty jarring in what my abilities were able to do and in what people I managed to group with expected me to be doing." Well, since you wanted to group with people, probably to complete a task or do a quest that you all wanted to do (eg Van Cleef), you should have been more flexible and adjusted to what the party wanted. I'm not sure what exactly the requested you do, but I can only assume they wanted you to use certain abilities over others because they generated more aggro, which is key when playing the 'Tank' party role.

7) "Worst Community Ever." Wow, don't I feel special. Your comment of what RP servers are I'd agree with, you can't have WoW be an RP game. The style of play is far to OOC to do everything in 'first person chat.' And you can't blame a game for the players (with the exception of Counter Strike). So you partied or heard some people complaining about loot. At that low level it really doesn't matter in most cases. There isn't so much as a "distribution scheme," as the simple questions, "Can you use it? Will you use it?" and "Do you need it?" I've had loot taken by people who didn't need it and just wanted gold, it happened a lot at lower levels, but you'll find that when you play with other 60s, they generally aren't of that mindset. Probably because people that take loot they don't need and whine a ton on the chat channel don't have enough stamina or effort to level up and do the end game stuff. I guarantee that if you get a character to 60 (or 70 come tuesday) and do a raid with 20 to 40 people, loot will not get wrongfully distributed. And if it does, whoever wrongfully takes it gets an endless amount of crap from people for doing so.

Now I haven't played any other MMO's aside from WoW, so I can't comment as to how it compares to games before, or after its production, all I can do is stand up for it. Clearly it takes a kind of player that can tolerate 12 year olds with names that have profanities in them and also the kind of player that can customize his or her character and develop a play style and outlook that is truly unique. I'm a rogue, everyone plays a rogue. No one wants rogues for instances or raids, we're truly the worst class at 60 -- no question. I still play because of the PvP aspect of it and the challenge of it. I never find groups now, I never get to 'gear up' like all those who played rogues before me, but I still love the game for the simple fact that I can hang out with my friends, chat it up on Vent, and kill a bunch of alliance in their own towns. :smallcool:

Poison_Fish
2007-01-11, 01:48 PM
As another point for shamans. I abuse Astral Recall a significant amount. Sure, it's wiser to set a hearth in a major town at the level I am currently at, but for me, it's always been easier when I'm working in an area to just astral recall back to the nearby town to turn in jobs or after my bags are full, since it's cool down is only 15 minutes.

Reinforcements
2007-01-12, 02:01 AM
For the record, my response isn't to irritate you, but to get you to reactivate your account and make a new character on Dark Iron, Panda Attack needs all the help it can get to crush the puny alliance. Play Horde and look me up: Bartuk.
Hey, I used to be in Panda Attack, too! Unfortunately I dislike all the Horde races, so I never stuck with it. Blood elves, though!