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World of Warcraft Launches
The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.
Is it just me, or does $15/month seem WAY out of proportion for something like this? I could see paying $15/year, maybe. But this is almost as much as I pay every month for my broadbant Internet access, which is FAR more useful.
I am gonna go ahead and wait for "patch 1"
THEN
say good-bye to the wife and kids for a few months.
That price point is fairly common (range) with MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games; I assumed you didn't know the acronym since you posed the question).
MMORPGs are one of those things you are either interested in or not. And whether it's worth it depends on which side you're on. I subscribe to Final Fantasy XI for $12.95/month and I can't complain. That's just two fast food meals.
I was a BETA tester for WoW since early January, pretty much one of the very first groups in after it went to Beta level. Despite the pricing issues I have with any MMORPG, WoW was a lot of fun and it is the first MMORPG that I have considered purchasing.
I haven't made my mind up yet (again, the pricing) but if you're in to that kind of thing, Blizzard has done an excellent job with WoW its nicely polished and as always its graphics are beautiful. Its a lot of fun and very addictive!
This is not a sig.
EQ set the standard but they long ago raised the price. The trick is to prepay for 3-6 months and save money. That is what they want you to do at least, keeps you locked in for a longer period of time.
'Same speed C but faster'
Wow, it looks really pretty. I bet the gameplay is pretty fun too. But you know what the basic problem is: the people. It doesn't matter what kind of look and feel they put into it when the world's largely populated by screaming frustrated adolescent asshats who use "Jew" as an insult, "U" as a pronoun, and punctuate every sentence with "LOL"
... tho perhaps that's just EQ.
Even if one just avoids people like that and approaches it from a pure gameplay point (that is, game mechanics over character, an attitude that can better bear the aforementioned asshats), you still end up playing in one overall league, and that's the power gaming munchkins who squeeze every bit of actual fun out of the gaming experience by very quickly reducing it all to cost/benefit ratios of weapon/spell damage outputs and multipliers, often to the point of converging on a single attack or combo. (Try playing UO without every other bark being "Corp Por")
To say nothing of the soviet-style queueing up (enough with the soviet russia jokes) at spawn points so that your character may have their standardized ration of fun
MMORPG's suck, and it's the players that make it so.
Ok for those who complain lets try something few understand, PERSPECTIVE.
.50 9.00 last I checked.
1 Movie: $9
1 Popcorn and Soda: $9
Movie Runs 2 hours.
That's $9 an hour for entertainment.
Assume for the moment you play an online game 1 hour a day on average.
$15 dollars a month or $15 dollars for $30 hours.
That's about 50 cents an hour.
Now lets add in your DSL\CAble Bill to help this out.
$60 dollars a month or about $2.00 an hour to play. Still cheaper then a movie.
To further the study you could factor your inital $50 purchase of the game over, say 2 years to better tune this.
Even at $100 dollars a month that is about $3.40 per hour and is still cheaper then going to the movies. And thats assuming you can get in and out of the theater for only $18 bucks.
But, to be fair and balanced, a good quality basketball, football, or baseball setup can run you a 1 time $80 bucks and factoring that over a 2 year period throwing the old pig skin, playing softball, or doing a little boot hockey can be a hella cheaper then a video game.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
As bad as they've let Diablo II, LOD get - I will NOT purchase another Blizzard game, as long as I shall live unless they can prove to me that
1) charging for the games will eliminate
a) spam bots
b) duping
c) botting
d) general cheating
2) they will keep the community informed
3) they will update and fix bugs on a timely manner
= Grow a brain...
You must not have played many MMOs if you think WoW is one big level grind. At least there are quests, and not just you killing 585,972 mobs to get to a high enough level that you can start in with the "real" content.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Bring back permanent character death, and I'm interested again. Permanent character death is the solution to everything that sucks about modern MMORPG. If a future game brings back permanent character death, that game will not need to have the level-grind. That game will not have so many campers for valuable item drops.
Hell, just bring back PvP with no safe zones outside towns and no level restrictions (save for the lowest of ultra-newbs who've just started), and that'll be a huge improvement.
I haven't seen anything in WoW that isn't there to appease the whiny brats who can't stand actually having anything in the game at-risk.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Was this during beta or post launch. They bittorrent client was only for downloading the game client itself. The WoW patcher is not bittorrent, as far as I know. You should have no problems playing the game post launch.
If you want to try something different, check out Planetside from SOE. I have to say, I just picked up the Aftershock expansion (more like a bundle of the orginal and first expansion) for twenty bucks, and for that it gives you 30 days trial. You can't go wrong - I'd spend more than that at the movies with my wife in one night.
The learning curve is a bit steep, but it's a neat combination of twitch, tactics, and strategy. So far I'm enjoying it. I think the monthly cost is $13.
It's not everything, but it's certainly different. It's definitely much more exciting than everquest, SWG, or their ilk.
...my relationship with my fiance, or our baby daughter...
Sounds like you got your priorities straight a bit late... 8-)
Good for you though. My group of friends online have been very good about my decline in gaming since my kids came along. They always make room for me on the few nights a week/month I'm able to play.
As my kids get older, I find I'm less interested in games. This coming from someone who has spent the last 20 yrs playing everything he could find. You will probably find that your kids are more interesting than the games. Maybe later when they get interested in computer games, I'll get back into gaming more so I can play with them.
--Rico
I played through the Final Stress and the Open Beta. Of those who say that the game is just a rehash of other games with updated graphics, I can only conclude that you were only focused on the game mechanics, and not on what was going on in the world around you.
Sure, mechanically there is not much new (though instanced dungeons are pretty new, and go a long way to eliminating the dealing-with-morons factor). But where this game really shines, what causes this to be far more immersive than any other RPG I've seen is the environment.
So many RPGs have huge cities that are just ghost-towns. The only NPCs you ever run into are those that serve some game mechanic (weapon vendor, healer, in keeper). In WoW, cities are literally bustling with activity: kids playing tag in the streets, teachers leading a class of students around town, mages hunkered down under trees debating magical theories.
In many MMOs, you're given a quest to kill X bad guys. Then you get another quest to kill X more bad guys. In WoW, you're given a quest to kill X of a specific type of critter, because it makes a really good stew. For completing the quest, you get the recipe for the stew, then never again get a quest to kill those critters.
WoW isn't about the game mechanics. It's about the immersion. It's about the Dwarven mortar team that blows stuff up once you bring them their ammo. It's about the Gnome whos experiment accidentally turn the subject into a hyper chicken. It's about the NPC that mails you a thank-you note for completing her quest. It's about the freelance trader tucked away in a corner amongst the marauding Defias Brotherhood.
If you want a game with really new and different mechanics, go find some other game. If you want a game that you can loose yourself in, go get WoW.