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Review: World of Warcraft
- Title: World of Warcraft
- Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
- Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 10/10
That said, in the interests of disclosure I should state that I've been playing the game since the first round of Beta invitations in March of this year. I've seen the good and the bad as the game's final form took shape, and I've rode all of them out with a high degree of satisfaction. Before I was snagged to be an editor here, I wrote for a site dedicated to Massively Multiplayer games. I've played over a dozen of them, and I follow Massive gaming news with an intense personal interest. As you read my review, keep my level of commitment to the game and the genre in mind.
Character creation is a straightforward process. Once your account is created and you're into the game proper, your first choice is going to be what server to play on. Currently the game has been released to North America, South Korea, and Australia. The rest of the world is officially on hold as the European launch of the game moves forward. If you have associates in the Old World who you plan on playing with, be aware that Blizzard's current plan is to enforce continental segregation. Apart from what continent you're on, Blizzard has recognized that the "flyover states" are more than just places you see in movies when a plot has to reference a train accident. Servers are available in the four time zones represented on the North American continent. They have also taken the step of classifying servers into different rules-sets. The normal rules-set only allows Player vs. Player (PvP) combat on a voluntary basis. PvP servers also exist which allow any player to attack any other player, a no-holds barred environment between the two major factions. Finally, there are roleplaying (RP) servers, essentially "normal" servers with extra GM support to provide an atmosphere conducive to roleplaying. There are only a few RP servers, but there are more than enough Normal and PvP servers to go around. Deciding between the two is literally this simple: Do you plan on participating in Player Vs. Player combat on a regular basis? If the answer is yes, you know where to go.
Once you're on a server, you have a number of choices to make. There are currently eight races available to choose from, and each race has between three and five character classes open to them. On one side you have the members of the Alliance. Brought together by the Humans, the Alliance represents the forces of the Human nation of Stormwind, the Dwarven nation of Ironforge, the Night Elf nation of Darnassus, and the remains of the Gnomish civilization. Primarily based on the continent of Azeroth, the forces of "good" face down their enemy among the Horde across a vast sea. The races of the Horde, primarily based on the continent of Kalimdor, represent the tenuous group brought together under the leadership of the Orcs. The Horde represents the Orcs of Orgrimmar, the Tauren of Thunder Bluff, the Undead followers of Sylvanas Windrunner located in the Undercity below Lordaeron, and the jungle Trolls who have allied themselves with the Orcish chieftain Thrall. Character classes are broken down to fit with established racial history (Night Elves can't be mages because their history is littered with magical disasters) and fantasy tropes (Dwarves can't be mages because they can't).
The actual character classes presented in the game cover all of the fantasy basics, with each class actually having a useful role to play in a group. There are only nine available, but the lack of extreme diversification means that each class can really live into the role they have to play within the game. The standards are all available: The combat machine is the Warrior, the long distance spellcaster is the Mage, the stealthy high damage character is the Rogue, and the healer is the Priest. There are a few multipurpose classes you'll likely recognize from other games. The Paladin (an Alliance-only class) combines combat abilities with healing and backup resurrection duties. The Warlock is a dark caster that has spells but primarily relies on summoned entities to fight and interact with his enemies. Because it's Blizzard, there are also a few classes that may have titles you're familiar with, but have a very different flavour to them. The Druid is the "nature" version of the Paladin, with spellcasting and combat abilities, but their primary role is to become group glue. Druids have the ability to take on various animal forms, enabling them to take on the roles of combat-intensive classes if needed. Their bear form is a nice fill-in for a Warrior, while the jungle cat slashes and claws like a rogue. Shaman (a Horde-only class) are elemental based spellcasters, tapping into the four aspects of the wilderness to produce unique effects within range of their totems. Finally, the Hunter is a crack shot with bows, thrown axes, and guns (yes, guns). Hunters have the ability to train animals from the wilds to be their companions, with everything from bears and wolves to crocodiles and velociraptors being available as pets.
Once you've gotten your race, class, and name picked out, you're introduced to your race's struggle within the World of Warcraft through a brief panning shot inside the game engine. The camera pans over most of the starting area you'll be exploring and a voiceover intones a brief backstory of the problems facing your race.
When it comes to advanced graphics technology, World of Warcraft is not the top dog. If you want to give your graphics card a workout, the normal settings on World of Warcraft aren't going to fulfill your needs. The upshot of this is that the game scales amazingly well. 256 megs of ram and a GeForce 2 really will run this game well enough to have an excellent gameplay experience. The visual presentation of the game actually takes advantage of this. As you can see from the screenshots, World of Warcraft is a stunning place to explore. Instead of aiming for a hyper-realistic approach Blizzard has actually accentuated the unreality of the gameworld, endowing the Night Elves with long pointed ears, the Gnomes with large, limpid eyes, and the Undead with horrible clawlike manipulators. Characters have an almost anime quality, while beasts and monsters wear new interpretations that accentuate their most vivid characters. Moving through the landscape is more like walking through a painting than playing a game. Particularly picturesque landscapes such as the snowy Dwarven home of Dun Morogh or the sweltering jungle of Stranglethorn Vale require real pauses to stop and drink them in.
The visual quality of the world and the introductory voiceover at your character's creation begins the process of drawing you into the game world, a task which World of Warcraft does more meticulously than any other Massive game I've had the opportunity to play. Each race faces specific challenges, bourn out by the quests you receive immediately upon entering the game world. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) with quests for you appear with a yellow exclamation point above their heads, and speaking with them prompts a short vocal interaction and the possibility to add a quest to your log. Each quest is a miniature story unto itself, just waiting for you to carry it through to completion. Quest goals are clearly marked, as are the rewards you will receive from completing the quest. All quests have an experience reward (making questing an integral part of level advancement), but the rewards displayed include the amount of coin you'll receive and any items. Many quests give you the option of choosing your reward from among a few different items, allowing you to customize your character's loot set from NPC quests. Beyond simply providing you an impetus for getting out into the world, these quests are the hook that allows you to stop being just some person wandering around killing monsters and allows you to actually become a hero. From the start, you're participating in events that are keeping your fellow countrymen safe and secure. Beyond just simple "go here and kill the thingie" quests, there are endless opportunities to become involved in the lives of your people. Here, you take a note to an important official notifying him of how a pest eradication campaign goes, while there you collect the pieces necessary for a powerful potion. Your actions have consequences as well, as the NPCs begin to treat you with greater and greater respect (and remember you when you return to them), allowing you deeper into their lives and into the story of the world around you. In some places, questing even pays off in lucrative gains as vendors offer you discounts because of your service to their cause.
Beyond the ways that you interact directly with the world, Azeroth does it's own thing quite well without you. Guardsman patrol the streets of the major cities, keeping the populace safe (and answering any questions that wayward adventurers might have). Children are at play in houses or gardens, and hilarious conversations play out between the folks wandering through the avenues of the racial strongholds. Far from a static world on which you leave your mark, the World of Warcraft is a place littered with it's own history and peopled by individuals with motivations and stories.
This inclusive experience extends beyond just the visuals and the storyline. World of Warcraft has the richest sound environment I've yet experienced in a MMOG. Music, often the most frustrating aspect of a Massive game's soundtrack, is incredibly well produced and judiciously used. There is no "combat music". When you enter combat the only sounds you'll experience are the harsh clash of weaponry and armor. Musical scores are cued based on location, with each city and wilderness area having their own themes. The music isn't constantly on at a consistent volume. Swelling music announces your arrival at a new area, and then fades back into the background to allow you to enjoy the music without overwhelming you with it. In the spare manner in which it's used, the musical score completes the atmosphere that World of Warcraft attempts to create.
Sound effects are also well tended to. Weapon noises and spell effects are very satisfying, with grunts and clashes making combatants incredibly aware of the danger they're in. Tiny audio clues also keep a player aware of his surroundings. Tiny "clinks" announce personal messages from fellow players, and an small explosion of sound announces your arrival at a higher level. Beyond the normal text and animated emotes common to many games, Blizzard has also included voice emotes. The emotes, which are combinations of animations and voices that get across a particular emotion, are very similar to the clicky-conversations you can have with your units in Warcraft III. I especially like the male Dwarf's flirt emotes.
Beyond the game's excellent presentation, Blizzard's reputation for making intuitive game interfaces is upheld. A simple quick-launch bar is available at the foot of the screen, with numerous other bars available with a combination of the shift and middle mouse buttons. Right clicking is the default "do stuff" button, and the action taken changes in context to what you're clicking on. Items are easy to examine, as each features a small portrait next to it's name. This portrait, when moused over, displays a popup detailing the statistics associated with the item. Simple color coding indicates the rarity of the item (green for magic, purple for rares, etc.), and the display lists a level requirement. Every item has a level requirement, which a character has to meet or exceed in order to equip or use the item. Items which are not useable by your race or class have portraits tinged with red. This intuitive interface extends to quests and tradeskills as well. The quest log displays all the information given out by the originating NPC and color codes quests based on the difficulty of the quest in relation to your character's level.
Tradeskills are often the red headed stepchildren of a Massive game because of poor documentation and a high barrier to entry. WoW's approach to tradeskilling allows even the most casual player to get involved, and ensures that every crafter knows where they stand as regards possible crafted items. Each character is allowed to train in two tradeskills, which are called professions. Some options, such as Tailoring and Enchanting are viable thanks to specialized equipment or scavenged goods. Others, such as Herbalism and Blacksmithing, have a counterpart "gathering" Profession that allows materials to be collected from the environment. Mining allows a character to obtain ore, which can be melted down via Blacksmithing for use in Arms and Armor. Training in a Profession is as simple as finding a trainer and saying "sign me up". You are then presented with a list of recipes that you currently have access to. Each recipe has a materials requirement for completion. To create an item, you have to have the required materials present in your inventory, and then hit the "create" button while a recipe is selected. There is no margin for error here. Every attempt to create an item using a recipe is successful. As you create items your skill in your chosen Profession goes up. Recipes are color coded (like items and quests), and as your skill goes up recipes begin to become relatively "easier". Once you've created your hundredth tunic, you've got it cold. As such, new recipes become available for purchase from the trainer, allowing you access to better and more challenging items. Skills without gathering requirements are extremely easy to get into, and even Blacksmithing only requires that you keep an eye out once in a while for a mineral deposit. The Mining Profession even provides you with an ability that makes mineral deposits show up on your local mini-map.
This is, of course, a Roleplaying Game and RPGs are nothing if not fighting intensive. Combat has been as carefully considered as all other elements of the game. The most striking thing about the combat is the interactivity. Combat is a very fluid experience in World of Warcraft. Every class has abilities and spells that allow it to contribute to a fight, with the typical Massive Gaming roles (such as the Tank and the Healer) being filled by overlapping classes. Grouping casually is not a cause for worry, and almost any combination of classes can form a valid hunting party. The actual act of combat follows many other games' patterns. You activate an "autoattack" mode, where your character swings his or her weapon or weapons as often as she can every few seconds. The difference is that, unless you utilize the abilities at your disposal you're likely to lose in a fight between yourself and an enemy of equal level. Constant use of spells and abilities to keep your opponent on their toes is required to ensure that a fight goes your way, and finding the rhythm to your class's combat style is one of the most engaging parts of the game. And if you die?
You don't lose experience. I'm going to say that again, because it's so important. You don't lose experience when you die. There's no debt, there's no recriminations, nothing. You reappear as a ghost in the nearest graveyard to the point where you died, with the world outlined in white and a spooky soundscape playing around you. You just jog back to your body and click the button that says "Resurrect". You reappear with about 75% of your health and mana intact, and go on from there. Many characters can just hop right back into combat. If you're in a group, a friendly Priest or Paladin can raise you on the spot. If you don't want to jog back to your body or don't have a Priest in your pocket, you can speak to an NPC located in each graveyard and resurrect in the graveyard. You're penalized for taking this option by reducing the durability of your items by 25%. Items with reduced durability eventually stop working and must be repaired, so taking the easy way out costs you money but no experience. You will never be penalized experience for your death.
With a good group at your back and a level head, you can tear through levels at a brisk pace. Character advancement in World of Warcraft is anything but a grind. And if you die, who cares? A minor annoyance, and you're back into the thick of things. Leveling up is anything but a chore with the combination of enjoyable combat and risk free death. In fact combining the experience you get from combat with the XP received from questing, and you'll regularly find yourself honestly surprised when you gain a level. And leveling up is definitely enjoyable. In addition to improving your basic attributes, at even levels you're given access to new abilities or spells. These are trained up by speaking to a class trainer. At the trainer you will be given a list of the abilities available for you to learn, with two or three new abilities opening up every other level. Every ability has a monetary cost associated with it, but once you have a new ability or spell in your hands it's incredibly satisfying to try them out. Once you reach level ten you'll begin working on your Talents, as well. Talents are how you take your character and really make him your own. As opposed to being just another Mage or Warrior, you're given three "trees" in which to allocate Talent points. The three trees each correspond to a facet of your character class. Each new level starting at ten allows you access to a Talent point. As opposed to the instant gratification of Abilities, Talents allow you to specialize your character over time. Mages, for example, can choose to specialize in Fire or Frost spells, and their talents allow them to reduce casting time, improve damage, and generally tweak their relationship with a chosen field of abilities. Warriors, in turn, can focus on defensive, offensive, or weapon skills.
Combat, questing, graphics, backstory, and game design are what bring a player to a Massive game. What keeps him there is the community. While the actual community you find yourself in is highly variable (there's a reason the ESRB sticker says "Game Experience May Change During Online Play") the tools Blizzard has provided for getting into the community around you are very robust. The game has a very versatile "/who" command, allowing you to see the level, name, class, and group status of everyone around you. Finding folks who might be interested in grouping is a snap, and contact ing them is as well. There is a flexible chat system that allows players to congregate as they desire based on their interests. Guilds, always an important aspect of an online game, get a great deal of respect from the Blizzard developers. A charter is required to begin a Guild, ensuring that one person Guilds don't clutter up the Guild namespace. Once the Guild has been formed, a permanent chat channel is formed that connects every member of the group. Guild members that want to show their pride can purchase a tabard, which go into an equipment slot that isn't used for anything else. The Guild leader decides on the tabard design, and every tabard bears the same color and design. Guild pride is something these designers understood. Beyond simple communication, mercantile exchange is promoted through Auction Houses. These locations (one per continent), allow players to put items up for sale and reap monetary rewards through the in-game mail system. Filling an equipment hole that quests haven't taken care of yet is easy and convenient.
World of Warcraft, then, is a remarkable achievement. It has both depth and breadth, allowing old hands at online games to feel right at home while inviting new players into the genre. The game's backstory is easily accessible via the questing system, and the interactive combat system ensures that you're never bored while exploring the vast world you inhabit. Beautiful done graphics combine with a carefully constructed soundscape to transport you to another place. From a game design standpoint World of Warcraft is an accomplishment to be proud of. In my mind, though, what pushes this game from a nine to a ten are the little things. The Blizzard polish that resulted in the endlessly clickable strategy game units has expressed itself as a world that always has something new to reveal to the curious player. Books lie on desks, waiting to be opened and their stories read. Crystal balls allow you to peer beyond a Wizards tower across half a continent. A woman in a shop asks you to deliver a sewing kit to her son. Someone else needs your help convincing a tavern-keep to carry his brew. Blizzard has somehow found the happy medium between an online world and an online game, and the results are satisfying beyond measure. Every gamer who is tired of shooting zombies or killing rats deserves to try this game. I highly recommend it to every gamer, every MMOG player, and everyone who's ever picked up a fantasy book and gone "I wonder what I would do in their shoes?" World of Warcraft is your chance to find out.
I wouldn't know... I can't use the client since AT&T installed Sandvine here in IL and started blocking bittorrent.
more info here
Though I expect WoW to be rather nice, I can't seem to get into 3d mmorpg's. I don't know if its the fact that I hate seeing a 3d world but having such crap control of it.
I know I'll probably get laughed at for this, but FPS's have build a very nice way of controling your players.. and usually its rather smooth movements. Games i've played, like Lineage 2, FFXI, these games make me use my mouse to move my character around.. and I don't like it.. Aim, swing, I could see that for my mouse.. But moving, I would far rather use fingers.
Just my two cents.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
LET THE ADDICTION BEGIN!!!
On at least three mailing lists for open source projects, key coders have announced they won't be available for the time being due to WoW.
As Daniel Foesch from PearPC put it "I"ve hit a nearly impenetrable roadblock in development at this time. It is called, World of Warcraft Open Beta."
I suppose even developers are human after all!
I don't live in America or Canada, and know nothing on the subject. I'm not qualified to help, sorry.
My apologies to the WoW fanbois as I'm sure this is a good game ... but is it a GREAT game in the LONG term?
... oh the grind ... and the same type of fantasy genre again ... uh, why'd I buy this ...
... something completely out of the box.
I played Lineage 2 for a while and it ran out of steam for me. Same with Star Wars Galaxies. So what are the delineating factors for a game that I'd be interested in NOW?
My personal opinion is that snazzy graphics, while interesting, can only go so far. If you've played a game of the a particular genre for so long (oh lets say fantasy - Lineage, EQ, WoW), and there comes along a new game which has --- ooo -- better graphics, does this REALLY keep you in the game very long? Sure, buy the $50 game, snag a few months of subscriptions, then
My opinion is that playability outlasts graphics. Graphics are an immediately gratifying factor, but in the long term, I think peoeple are sick of the fantasy and or sci-fi genre. So what's next? I dunno
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
I played the open beta and just bought the game yesterday, without a doubt the best MMO I've played.
I betaed the game. Good graphics, but it didn't seem like there was much to do than a hopeless level grind.
No monthly events.
No property ownership and kingdom duels like warcraft.
No end game.
No adventures or campaigns.
Given I only played to level 20. I either did a quest to deliver, kill, or meet. Or I just went out killing mobs in the field (boring).
I'm waiting for the MMORPG that isn't just non stop mindless click and kill. Sure WOW has some 'special skills', but you just mash some random keys during combat at its just the same as clicking one button in another MMORPG.
Maybe I'm missing out though. Is there stuff to do other than massive level grinding and sight seeing?
God spoke to me.
Two languages, two releases eh?
500,000 beta testers!.... Wow!.... The only problem I can see, is, just as a city becomes more lonely the greater the population, I only hope these super MMORPG games don't loose the magic of meeting, and making friends with people you meet time and time again.
Worlds fastest Java GUI. iMessage (Java Webstart Required).
from the any-game-with-mechanical-squirrels-has-to-be-good dept.
Um... yeah... OK...
I'd be all over this, if it were available on PS2. I'm not criticizing the graphics, but it would seem that the PS2 sould be able to handle WoW, with the HDD carrying the textures. Any other console gamers that would like to see WoW ported to Xbox/PS2?
VOTE!
It's probably one of the greatest games I've ever played. The attention to detail is amazing, and I would suggest giving the game a try.
;p
I came from playing DAoC religiously for 3 years, and after having not played it for a few months, when I started to play WoW again i start slipping into my long nights of no sleep
It's a great game, but it's still far too time consuming for the casual gamer.
"We're working on that..."
- Everyone on the pro- and anti-Steam sides of the HL2/Steam debate.
> and every aspect of the game was poked, prodded, and analyzed by the legions of would-be players. Once the Beta began, a line was thrown up between the lucky gamers who had the opportunity to participate and those who didn't. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the [developer's] forums, and expectations ran even higher for those on the outside looking in.
Hmm, maybe MMORPGs and FPSes aren't so different after all. *rimshot*
unless you expect World of Warcraft to solve your problems with the opposite sex you're not likely to be disappointed
I dunno -- my wife has been appearing late at night in my office begging me to come to bed, usually dressed in something rather scandalous. So, indeed, World of Warcraft satisfies more than just my gaming addiction!
This sounds like something that I could get into while relaxing on the couch with my wireless iBook (12" G4/800 model with 32meg ATI Radeon Mobility chipset& 384 megs system DDR). The official web site specs the Mac version of WoW above my iBook, but this review indicates that the game is not too graphics intensive. Can someone give me the straight poop on how well this game would play on my little iBook?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I'm not sure how many people here currently play Lineage II or USED to play it, but that was the last MMO I got into and I regret ever paying a dime for it. LII was ALL about GRIND. Kill enemy. Kill enemy. Kill enemy. Pick up gold. Kill enemy. Ad freakin nauseum.
WoW manages to break up this monotony admirably in several ways
first: Quests. Questing is the way ot level up, not killing things endlessly. The quests take you all arond the world and give you some interesting insight into what's going on in th game world at the time.
second: Loot. I expect to be jumped on by a horde of RP'ers admonishing me for liking my treasure but---well, it's exciting knowing that the creatures you're killing may possibly drop something you can use or sell for big bucks. In Lineage getting a useful drop was an extreme rarity--hell getting anything besides a handful of gold was an oddity enough. In short, having critters drop items more often, especially craft items and "trophies" makes the game more interesting.
third: WoW runs beautifully on my machine (oldish, GF3 and an athlon XP) compared to lineage. Granted LII might have had spiffier more realistic graphics but towns turned into slideshows...this is apparent in WoW in bigger towns but not as severe.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
sorry, with their subscription fee at around 150 bucks a year, I'll just keep playing archaic games that don't require subscription fees.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
...you covered all of the points that came to mind about the game and some others that hadn't. I'm currently enjoying the game in short (1-2 hours at a time) sessions, and I find that it's great to be able to play with such a small time commitment and still advance. My previous MMORPG experiences "required" me to invest so much more time to advance that it felt like I was never advancing at all. Anyway, enjoy the game :)
Soundsn like their no-penalty-for-dying is one step closer to progressquest (the best MMPORG)
Let's see.... There's Aleutian, Alaskan, Pacific, Mountain,... Hey! You left out the Central time zone!
Is that necessary? It's just another meal, albeit a Blizzard-sponsored one.
Let me get this out of the way - I really, really enjoy WoW. I played in the first Stress Test up to ~25, I played in the Open Beta up to ~25, and I'm just reaching there now in Retail. What I have played of the game is damn near perfect.
But it's not *flawless* - and by rating something 10/10, you're basically saying that there is *no* room for improvement, and that *nothing* could be done better.
So far, the release has been a little shakey. Yeah, it has only just now been a week, but there has been significant problems for four of the servers, some lag issues, and some unexpected down times. Nothing really serious - it has been a pretty good launch - but nothing worthy of a *PERFECT* score.
It's definitely 9/10 material, 9.5 even, and I would highly recommend it to fans of Warcraft and the MMOG genre.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
I know the game is completely playable on this dated setup. 1.2Ghz Athlon TBird 256MB PC100 ATI Radeon 9000
The game is a perfect 10. The only complaint is with the server lag and the amount of people in the servers, but thats alliviated by moving to a less populated one.
Does anyone know for sure if the rumor is true that Blizzard is going to be adding to the free month you got for purchasing the game cause of the down time and problems they have had?
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
... it runs on a Mac!
There's just no way I'm going to pay $50 for a game that I can't even play unless I keep forking out more money. If they want $13 to $15 per month to play the game, then they should give the game away for free.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I don't know if I'm really interested in WoW. I've tried several other MMORPGs, namely EverQuest and Anarchy Online (after the first few months of chaos) and while the idea intrigues me, I haven't really found one that grabs me. They all seem mostly like just running around engaging in boring combat. AO had an interesting backstory and unniverse but didn't really grab me gameplay wise.
I dunno, maybe WoW is different, but I'm not really inclined to spend $50 to play it for thirty days and find out I hate it. I'll wait for the free trial, or someone I live with to pick it up and play on their account.
Anyone else out there have any opinions on WoW for MMORPG-hating humans? Just curious to see what other people think.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
I'm amazed at how much effort was put in to the believability of the world. The quests you do are actually meaningful - at least the FedEx-related quests are framed in a meaningful way.
:)
:)
I'm a level 14 priest right now, and there has been no grinding so far. I'm also amazed at the extent of solo'ing you can do, even as a priest. I thought I'd just be a lowly healer, but I can open a pretty good can of whoop-ass myself
An interesting note is my fiance got into the game before I did, and she was instantly hooked. Bought another account so we could play together - so no "appeasing the g/f" factor for me to worry about
I used to MUD back in the day, and loved it.. but over the past 5 years or more I just rarely bother to play online games with people I don't already know, because, well, online gamers tend to either be a) 14 years old, or b) just act like it.
I've been intrigued by the MMORPG concept, but never really ventured in, but WoW is really tempting me, if only because I love Blizzard. I'm just wondering if there's any chance that this game won't lend further proof to the Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
This review pretty much sums it up.
;)
The only things I'd add is that, based on my experience with the original Diablo (admittedly not an MMORPG per-se), Ultima Online, and Everquest this is by far the most fun game to play.
For instance, level advancement doesn't feel like a root canal gone horribly wrong (like it did in Everquest). One of the really clever things Blizzard did with the UI was make the "XP bar" take up about 90% of the width of your screen, so no matter how little XP you receive for an action, you can see it advance. The one little trick alone goes a long way to easing the frustration in other games, such as UO where you would practice a skill forever to get it to move 0.1 points, or in EQ where you could fight for hours without your XP bar moving by a single pixel (in EQ the XP bar was maybe 5% of the width of your screen).
The UI is more intuitive than others I've used, but I still found myself lost on a few occasions and that caused extreme frustration. If you turn off the tutorial pop-ups (which can be annoying), you'll have to hunt around to get the right screen for things like trade skills (professions). I certainly didn't expect to find them in my spellbook!
The quest system in this game is OUTSTANDING!!! I cannot believe the sheer volume of quests, and the thought that was put into them. None of the quests feel like after-thoughts and they all seem very natural to the flow of the game. Just when you start wondering how long until your next level up, you return to town and complete a few quests and BAM, next level!
The pace of the game is quite fast in other areas, too. Combat is very fast and furious, perhaps a bit too fast for my taste. I tend to like being deliberate in my actions, and since I don't have the nano-second twitch abilities of a console gamer, it takes me a little time to deliver the right sequence of skill uses (especially on a laptop keyboard). My wife also has trouble keeping up in combat because she's not used fast-paced computer games.
I will point out that this is the first MMORPG that she's ever been remotely interested in. She detested EQ and refused to play it, but she's been drawn right into WoW even so far as to pursue her in-game professions with great gusto. So fellow geeks, there is hope yet that your SO might join you in your addiction
Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
Don't forget the higher level quests take you into contested lands where players from the Alliance/Horde not only pvp each other openly, but compete to finish the quests that use the same components.
I played it extensively in pre-release, but ultimately decided I am not interested in a rerun of the experiences of the past. Unfortunately, the major MMORPGs all seem to be converging on a set of features, which involve structuring the players experience to maximize the little mini-rewards such as experience and loot. This takes away from the original appeal of the virtual world, with degrees of freedom allowing the player to seek his own goals and write his own story. Some of the things I've heard about Vanguard have raised my hopes that this game on the horizon, designed by the original creators of Everquest, will both push the envelope in gameplay, and return some of the virtual adventure to the genre.
Games i've played, like Lineage 2, FFXI, these games make me use my mouse to move my character around.. and I don't like it..
As an avid FFXI player, I will tell you that since the game was designed for a PS2 pad in mind, the mouse is completly optional. In fact, I believe you can control the game better without one. All my playing on that game is done entirely on keyboard. (numpad for movement, arrows for menu selection, SHIFT+arrows for camera control, F keys for targeting)
If Blizz wants to charge for a "Premium World", so be it... But they should also allow for free, user hosted shards. THAT would pique my interest.
Murphy was an optimist.
This is the first game to get me to stop playing Battlefield 1942.
I was among the 500K that joined the open beta 2 weeks before launch, and I was then among the next horde of people to sprint out and buy the thing on opening day. The addiction has set in and I'm comfortable with that. My fiance is a different story all together.
There have been reports of server issues, characters getting stuck and other buggy-ness. I play from 2 different machines on 2 seperate networks and rarely experiance any major issues. Sometimes the animations do get stuck tho, but thats nothing logging out and back in can't fix.
The game rocks and I usually hate MMORPGs.
So if you're running through and you see a human warlock named Kaiser, wave. See you in-game.
-KS
Announced at the European Computer Trade Show in September of 2002, before Warcraft III had even reached retail shelves, Blizzard's Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game has commanded attention for years.
Uhm, just to nitpick... maybe you're thinking 2001, and not 2002. I played an alpha version of World of Warcraft at the 2002 E3. (And even back then I knew it was going to be a LOT better than EverQuest...)
I stood in my local game store less than a week ago with a copy of EQ2 and a copy of WoW in my hands.. desperate for ANYTHING to cure me of the extreme case of "WTF is wrong with you people??" I was suffering from regarding SWG:JTLS and SOE. I was tired of engless promises from the devs in SWG and the lack of overall content and was ready for something new. I bought EQ2. Maybe I chose wrong ?
i like eq2, but this makes me wonder if I should have gotten WoW instead ? Anyone played both and can comment on the pros/cons of both ?
IT is Dead. The industry is Shot Join Others Who Feel Your Pain http://www.internalstrife.com/
Both Mac OS X and Windows versions in the same retail box, same CD key works for both.
It would be interesting to see client statistics to see how the host OS breaks out... whether it falls along market lines or has more or less penetration into a particular host market.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
I played the WoW beta from the beginning till around August.
Although it was fun it was also very repetitive and really not something you will want to play for the long haul without some major changes. Up until I left every character of the same class was essentially identical. My major problem with this game is that there is nothing in it that if fun for it's own sake. Grand Theft Auto is a game that is fun to play without the proverbial carrot always taunting you will that new skill/power/loot.
Another major problem with WoW is that you have no effect on the world you "live" in. This may have changed in the final months but when I left you could not even place items on the ground. This really destroys the feeling of living in a world when you have no way to affect any kind of change upon anything. I felt this was more of a game that people just happened to be playing at the same time instead of a really interactive experience. Anyway I got sick of the repetition.
I give it 7/10, decent but nothing great.
A massively multilayer Grand Theft Auto would be a game that would claim may a soul. It will happen eventually but not for a long time I think.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
The servers were overloaded like crazy at launch. That could be expected of most any mmorpg. Even with 2 stress test beta's, the servers were strained well beyond capacity.
To aleviate this strain they brought more realms online, hopeing to even out the population. Worked fairly well, but most of the early adopters who created characters in the first 3 days or so didn't bother to restart thier characters on a new server.
The databases were seriously strained. It is still common for looting an item off a dead mob to take 3 minutes or more. Its a fun scene when you walk into a mining town and see half the characters walking around bent over at the waist because they are still waiting to retrieve a piece of silver they mined a few minutes ago.
As a desperate effort to relieve the strain on the servers, queue's were installed to ensure too many people didn't log in at once. (If you want a not-too-far-from-the-truth queue simulator, check this out.) Wait times of over 2 hours were common on many servers.
The client still crashes fairly often, mainly with numerous spells on the screen. The two most common crashes have been around since about 4 weeks before launch.
The servers crash at least once a day, generaly requiring the entire time zone to be taken down as well. They have instituted a 4am maintenance policy, which they try to follow but the frequency of the crashes make it hard to do so.
There have been a few exploits, again they can be expected. Unfortunately, to counter this they eliminated the entire upper half of the fishing secondary profession, and by proxy seriously damaged the upper half of the cooking profession.
All in all, it was better than most mmorpg launches, but if you want to enjoy a stress free game, wait to buy it for a couple months.
more stories of addiction along the lines of http://eqdailygrind.blogspot.com/
Enjoy flushing your lives down the toilet guys.
Hey! Keep in clean! ;-)
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I remain suspicious of reviews with so much praise and perfect scores. 10/10, is the game really perfect or at they pushing their own agenda?
I think what they are really doing is hoping to convince more newbies to join so they have that many more people to squish with their uber leet loot.
Or maybe since they invested so much time and money in their virtual characters they need other people to join go give that character any kind of relevance.
Could be they just like the game too though.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
I remember seeing World of Warcraft, or at least, the concept for it (from Blizzard's mouth) in a 1997 edition of PC Gamer. It was discussed far before 2002.
While a part of me agrees with that complaint, at the same time....
:)
You could rent a few movies (or insert other form of entertainment) per month for a limited/set # of hours of entertainment, or.... you could pay $15 or less a month and spend as much time playing it/being entertained as you wish to.
When I get bored of it I'll unsubscribe, but for now it's worth the money to me
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This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
I have played Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC) for 3 years now. The reason is the end game RvR. No other game has been able to do what DAOC has done. I tried other games like SWG and so forth but I always went back to DAOC. So far WoW has got me hooked with leveling and crafting but I am still waiting to see how the end game PvP/RvR is done. If it is done like the rest of the game then I will be playing it for a long time.
Quote from review: "Do you plan on participating in Player Vs. Player combat on a regular basis? If the answer is yes, you know where to go."
Yes, I know to go to a different game, like Guild Wars. Not World of Warcraft.
Before subscribing, know that WoW is NOT a PvP game, and the PvP is not fun at all. (At least, not yet -- but I don't expect them to make it fun, because their approach in developing WoW is to appeal to people who just want to advance in the game, and who don't tend to like PvP). WoW is good if you're one of the advancement-oriented RPGers.
However, if you're like me and are interested in strategic, skill-intensive PvP, pick a different game. I've been playing Guild Wars, and THAT is much more along the lines of what I'm looking for.
WoW's PvP servers simply allow random ganking by the opposing faction (alliance or horde) in certain areas. Your faction is determined upon character creation (based on race), and you cannot even TALK to the other faction. This to me is boring and meaningless. Especially since there's no penalty to dying in PvP -- if you are being attacked, simply die; you lose nothing. In Shadowbane I had fond memories of frantically calling for a summon when three people from an enemy guild showed up while I was carrying a valuable rune or something. There's no such rush of adrenaline here.
Try Guild Wars.
Their mantra is "it's the player's skill that determines success, not the number of hours put into the game". Which makes it fun, because you're able to get the "joy of skill" instead of the "joy of getting tiny carrots".
There are still levels, spells, loot, equipment, etc., but you can get to max level and decent equipment/spells in a matter of days instead of years.
You can get a WoW time/game card... This is what I found so far:
:)
Amazon = $26.99
EB = $29.99
Walmart = $29.82
Amazon has a photograph sample.
I am not sure if they are out yet in retail stores (e.g., Walmart and EB). Does anyone know? Also, are there any other stores selling them?
This game is addicting.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...I'm playing (actively) on a iMac G5. while it's video card isn't that hot I'm only getting 15 - 20fps and i've seen posts where the GeForce 6800 on PCs is getting that rate. It may be more bandwidth related? Not sure.
I'm going to try it on my Powerbook 12" with the Go 5200 chipset and see what it looks like.
Blizzard made a fan for life with me on this one. This is the first MMORPG game that I konw of that has simultaneous mac/pc users that have the same server. EQ and others have the 'short bus' for Mac users and the PC users get to interact.
PC kids won't know that Mac users are on from what I can tell
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
1.3ghz G4 powerbook with a GeForce card and only 256megs of ram. But it plays just fine, no complaints.
I have my own reasons for not playing WoW, but they're mostly my own opinions (I don't like the way the game looks, don't like the no xp penalty thing, etc).
I completely agree. I had a financial mishap with play time charges for the first MUDs I played in my youth (One of the very first MUDs that existed--pre WEB, dialup only). Ever since then I absolutely refuse to pay repeated fees to waste my time playing a game.
On the other hand, I have little problem paying one-time purchase fees to waste my time. Bizarre.
Or you could BUY the movies and watch them when and as often as you like without having to pay another dime.
When you buy a house, should you still have to pay rent to live in it?
ok I know that Americans doesn't include Canadians. However Canada *is* part of North America.
I'll probably pick up one or the other during the holidays for some mindless time sinking.
I kind of like what I've read from the review - especially about how leveling isn't a chore. I downloaded the eq1 month-long trial, got my ShadowKnight up to level 30 and am very happy that I didn't buy it. Hopefully eq2 has rectified some of the braindamaged of the first one.
I hear that the graphics in eq2 are phenomenal, but graphics aren't everything.
Does it have a linux client? that's worth at least 0.5 of a point, so I don't see how it got more than a 9.5 without one.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Its beta, of course there won't be monthly events.
Its beta, of course there wasn't an end game...you dont want players playing ALL of the content even before release, do you?
No end game and you only got to 20? How the hell can you see an end game at 20?
-- Yes I'm addicted to this game right now.
Damn - I've been hoping for negative reviews on this but I'm reading tons of positives for it. Which leads me to a problem, I want ot try this game, but am in a hotel 5 days a week and the 'cable connection' chokes out when I try to play an FPS. I'm concerned that this will be the same experience - anyone got suggestions on tweaking hotel cable?
When you buy a house, should you still have to pay rent to live in it?
You do, it's called property taxes.
What?
NO, but you will be taxed to hell depending on where you live.
I'm holding out till they add the Zerg.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
But you can still live in the house (or at least until the bailiffs arrive...). When you buy a game such as WoW, you have to keep paying the "taxes" just to use the damn thing at all.
How much do you spend each year on music CDs? How much do you spend each year on DVDs?
How much do you spend each year going to the theatre?
How much do you spend each year going to sporting events?
In the grand scheme of things, $150 per year isn't that much, especially considering that these games cost less, per month, than a single music CD or two movie tickets.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have to say the view on Thunder Bluff is fantastic. Though I started out as a miner dwarf in there. It soon became apparent that most people were mining and the resources for miners dried up quickly in the dwarven lands. There were even other races mining in my dwarven homeland! Ughhh..
Anyhow I went to Tauren (Minotaur) race and it's kinda nice being a warrior that hunts and skins and makes leather goods. Not as many people and the quests are just as nice as the dwarven ones.
I did try the night elf, but elves just seem to flighty for me. I may go back to my dwarven roots though.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
If you have associates in the Old World who you plan on playing with, be aware that Blizzards current plan is to enforce continental segregation.
:/
That's just great.. Throw me in with the German, French and Spanish, none of which speak a word of English.
Not to mention how my ISP has better peering to the US than mainland Europe and UK..
One thing not mentioned in the review is the fact that your character is not limited to any particular server within a geographical region. For example, if I live in Hawaii, I can still play on any of the servers from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts of the USA. That, and if I want to make more than one character on seperate servers, there's nothing from stopping me in doing so.
Out of curiosity, though, does anyone know how many characters you are allowed to create overall?
I love everything about WoW so far, except that to use the mouse to control your character you need to hold down the right mouse button. Otherwise you get a mouse cursor like in windows which you use to click things onscreen.
In SWG you could use the ALT key to toggle your mouse between cursor mode and character control mode. So long, twisted runs meant only turning on auto run then moving the mouse to make turns. In WoW it's turn on auto run then get a cramp in your finger as you hold down the right mouse button the whole time to steer.
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After playing the Open Beta, I was suffering withdrawals when the servers were taken down prior to general release. Because I had beta-residue on my primary computer, I was suffering withdrawals until I finall got the install to complete... I was expecting a Warcraft version of Diablo2...boy, was I ever wrong! Very immersive. Blizzard always impresses me with their world design (just walking around is impressive) and their UI implementation. A couple of annoyances: It would be nice to have a friend channel, or at least to send messages to everyone on the friends list. Mainly because some people play both factions and it would be nice to be able to communicate with all of my friends at once. Along those lines, it would be nice to organize the friends list so that they could be sorted by the person's name ($#Q@!@ what was his/her gnome's character name?). The method for getting onto a new realm server might want to be investigated. I mean, if you constructed three characters on a relatively new realm, and this realm has low lag, and then everyone and their brother's dog's newt starts playing on it; why should those who originally migrated suffer? Especially with a subscription game! At LEAST they segregate by continents now! That was just a mess with Diablo2. Just my $2*E-02, YMMV.
a polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate change.
The point you make is a mere technicality as to the timing of the revocation of your privledges.
My biggest complaint, not just with WoW but most new MMORPGS, is that it requires minimal skill to play. You either fight at your level or you get slaughtered. You can't run into a mob 5 levels above you (solo) and survive easily (by running away).. The reason why this doesn't bother me as much in WoW is that you get most of your experience from quests.. There is so much content for a game just released that you don't notice some of these issues. I also find that its difficult to powerlevel in WoW because of the way mobs spawn and there doesn't seem to be a bonus with grouping. ie, I can probably gain more xp running around the wild solo than in a group.
On that note, you can solo alot of this game besides the scattered quest. And it appears to be relatively easy to find a group working on the same one.
Back to skill tho, the thing I liked about AC that I haven't seen in MMORPGS since was that you could put yourself into seemingly impossible situations and surivive. Sometimes you'd gamble and die repeatedly but there would be times that you would survive by the skin of your teeth. I can't count how many times i've recalled out with 1hp left keeping the mobs busy so my friends could escape. Unfortunately i'm a geek and can't properly describe the feelings you experience but I haven't felt the same in other mmorpgs. They are too dumbed down.
In AC you knew the levels and some info on the mob (depending on your skills) but that didn't mean much. You could go against a mob 20 levels above you and easily wipe the floor with it, while another mob around your level would kick your butt. None of this color coded mob crap. You had to know the mobs weaknesses to attacks.. Some were nearly invulnerable to certain types. You had to prep for your adventures.. If you knew you were going to run into mob x, y and z you'd prep different than mob a, b and c. While in other mmorpgs it doesn't seem to matter.
Maybe AC was too arcade like... You could play it safe but if you wanted to push the edge the fun factor was amazing. Maybe this style of game didn't do well because it required a slight twitch factor. Maybe it was bad timing or MS's lack of marketing (did they have any?)
But back to WoW, it is the first MMORPG i've played in 3 years that I have really enjoyed. It doesn't feel like a level grind like most of them. Even tho the quests are the same type, collection, delivery, they do toss in the scattered twist which keeps you on your toes. I personaly give it a 9/10 and forsee myself playing this for awhile.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
1.) Grab a copy of PE explorer from heaventools.com. .torrent .torrent file created in step 6.
2.) Download the patch executable from Blizzard.
3.) Launch PE Explorer and Open the patch file.
4.) Choose View > Resources from the toolbar.
5.) Expand the "TORRENT" resource section.
6.) Look for binary resources in the TORRENT section. Right-click then and choose "Save As". Save them to disk as
7.) Fire up your favorite BT client using non-blocked ports and open the
8.) Play and have fun.
isn't canada the 51st state? :D so you should be able to play !
There's some merit to that argument, but there are a lot of other types of entertainment that require a constant influx of money to participate in. It's not like a subscription to WoW is alone in that respect. And some of the costs are much larger lump sums at the beginning rather than a small sum monthly... though it could be argued some of those are a more worthwhile use of time than staring at a computer screen. Still, I don't think it's so horrible...
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This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
I am growing so tired of people whining about the monthly fee on MMORPGs. It costs less then a night at the movies and delivers far more entertainment. You people need to quit bitching, seriously. I only see one thing happening...the monthly fees going up. Why? Cause there are plenty that find these games far more entertaining then say something like a cable tv subscription which is about 4 times the cost. Hell I would pay 20 bucks even 30 maybe to play my favorite mmorpg. I mean its 15 dollars a month...if you cant handle that then you shouldnt be spending time on slashdot either. You need to go out and find a real job, get an education, or work some overtime.
Once you pick a server, you can't move your character to a different one. I can't understand Blizzard's reasoning for this, it's so damaging to the community. Even Runescape (www.runescape.com) lets you play on different servers, and Runescape is a friggin Java applet. If they think you'd abuse server-switching, then they should put a limit on it like "only one switch allowed every 24 hours", like they do with all the other potentially cheap features (hearthstones, etc). Basically what lack of server switching means is that if your friend gets WoW or you meet someone online and wish to play with them, if they're on a different server, you'll never get to do that, since it'll take weeks/months for them to regain their previous level and equipment on your server.
I beta'd this for a few weeks and got up to level 13 or 14, can't remember which. But combat became very boring for me. Isn't combat suppose to be really exciting? Fear, adrenaline, all of that? Not just holding down a mouse button over an enemy? It would be awesome to have a control type where you controlled your sword arm with your mouse, ala Die by the Sword. If you want, you can have full control over your arm, where you mouse moves, your arm moves. People who find that too hard, it can be dumbed down a bit where simple mouse movements translate into fients, slashes, etc. That is a MMORPG I would subscribe to.
has anyone tried it on the current 12" iBook? according to the official Requirements it should be playable, but since some min. req. are just a joke i'm wondering if i can play it on my iBook.
Anyone remember the pipe dreams of NWN being released on Mac/PC and linux all in one box? They were even preselling it like that!
And then.... opps, we dropped the Mac version... Sorry kids, we know that only the PC platform matters.
years later, NWN Mac still costs $50 due to the price gouging schemes of MacSoft, and Bioware lying out their asses at first about developing it all and releasing it together. The PC version BTW is more like $25, and the linux binary is released for free on the website.
Thanks for making Bioware look like shit.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
you cant pk, and the pvp is pointless.
im extremely dissapointed with blizzard, because unlike the other mmorpgs that set the standard, they have 7-8 years of games to learn from. if i want to play against a computer i wont pay monthly for an mmorpg.
why the pvp sucks:
1: you cant attack anyone of the opposite army unless they are of close level... so if i get jumped by 10 guys of lower level i have to run away. WTF.
2: you dont get their stuff if you kill someone
3: if you die there is no penalty, just find your body
why you cannot pk:
1- horde cannot kill horde, alliance cannot kill alliance... WTF!!!!
WoW has successfully created carebear pvp. LAME.
If you have to pay a monthly subscription, then the game should be free, unless they have a mechanism to allow the creation of user hosted worlds. You shouldn't have to lay down $50, and then not be able to use the game.
Yup, and you probably go to cinema every month for 2h of entertainment.
The only resons why 15$ monthly fee could possibly be an obstacle are a) personal bankrupcy b) no understanding of money / use relationships.
If you even play the game for about one evening a week chances are you get the 15$ back by saved gasoline costs for whatever else you would have been doing.
http://www.blizzpub.net/petition/
Where is Canada if not in North America... ?
The Good Life
Really it is. I played the stress test for a week and was hooked but didn't want to play the open beta. I didn't want to play it so much that I wouldn't want to play it when the masses logged on to play when it went live. I enjoy soloing more than group work unless its folks that I personally know, and WoW is great for this.
Can't wait for christmas vacation, going to be doing nothing but playing.
Could some WoW crafter tell us a bit about WoW crafting in practise? How is it compared to SWG, where I used to play a Master Chef?
In SWG the crafting endgame was to get the best complete fleet of highest-BER medium harvesters on someone else's lots, a 12 factories or so, your bank full of 100k stacks of the best resources, especially meat. After that, when you can sell anything you make for any price you can imagine asking, and your bank account is in the tens or hundreds of millions, there just isn't anywhere to go.
Two points:
1. Why not go to an hourly rate for playing these games? I would sign up for that. Say, about 20 cents/hr or whatever. You could still have the monthly option as well, or just go with an hourly rate instead if you wanted to. I think this would appeal to another segment of the population than it currently does...thus providing more players.
2. Well, in the scheme of things it isn't a huge fee. But on the other hand, when I go to a movie I pay the money. When I buy a DVD I pay the money. Whereas with WoW, even if I don't play at all in a given month (and let's face it we have all been that busy at work/school) then I still pay for the month no matter what. It's the same with EQ, and the reason I will never in my life play an MMoRPG. What if I want to take a month off and play something else? I still have to pay to keep my character active, even if I don't play.
I agree, I don't much like that, though ... if you look at it compared to other subscription services - a lot of those have some type of setup or installation fee as well.
:)
Oh well, people who don't like subscriptions don't have to get it... it will do just fine without them from the looks of it so far
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(^v^)
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This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
I figure I'll be playing a mage if I ever get into WoW, always go for the squishy caster type.
My previous MMORPG experience was the NanoTech class in Anarchy Online, which totally blows due to no defense or healing and is also very bad off on the damage department (and no CC either). Obviously, WoW mages are better off, with working CC and semi-decent damage, at least now in the beginning before mudflation throws weapon damage out of whack.
In addition to being more-or-less ignored from game launch, there are massive problems with client synchronization. Half the time you hit that nuke-button, nothing happens, and your dps goes down a lot compared to weapon users who just hit 'attack', and then keep slapping the monsters around until it's dead or they disengage.
How does this work in WoW? Is it for instance possible to queue up a series of spells for execution (on the server, obviously) like in NWN, or are you relegated to timing them manually in WoW as well?
What are the other casting mechanisms like? Stand still while casting (anything or just non-instants), and cancel by moving? Anything else of interest to tell a poor European mage-wannabe?
You know, they don't just run the server on a PC. It's not like someone at home would have the hardware required to run their own WoW server - not to mention the required database licenses, etc. It's not as simple as hosting a game of DOOM.
XML Database
You don't lose experience when you die. There's no debt, there's no recriminations, nothing. You reappear as a ghost in the nearest graveyard to the point where you died, with the world outlined in white and a spooky soundscape playing around you. You just jog back to your body and click the button that says "Resurrect". You reappear with about 75% of your health and mana intact, and go on from there.
WTF is the point in that? If there is no penalty for death, you can play pretty damn recklessly knowing you can just hack your way thru, eventually.
I would much prefer not having that ghost-jog-resurrect bit. If you can't make friends (or financial arrangements) with a decent level priest, dead you stay and over you start.
I've played too many MMRPGs where you can wipe our monsters 10x your level just by getting in a whack or two each time; getting raised; coming back; repeat until monster is dead, since (other than Trolls) they never heal.
The LEAST they could do is limit that. Like having 9 lives, or something. Auto resurrect/respawn is for pussies.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
yeah, those taxes go to the previous homeowners. That analogy really applies..........
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
Or, I could just buy a game and play it forever for no monthly fee?
No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
Don't act like the only way anyone could not like this game is by expecting it to solve problems with the opposite sex. This game is completely worthless to me and all I expect from it is to be able to have fun. Face it, some people are above the hamster level of intelligence, and require more than a wheel to run endlessly in for fun.
I completely agree. I won't spend the $50 startup cost to see if I like a game. If they get that much lower, I'd give it a shot.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Giving a game 10/10 implies that it is perfect. WoW is a good game but like every game it has it's flaws. The review did not mention that the current build of WoW lacks any meaningful PvP goals and has watered down PvP in general. Blizzard has announced plans to work on the PvP in WoW but a review should be based on a game as it currently stands, not on features promised by the developer at some unspecified date in the future. WoW has other flaws that I won't bother going into but this game does not deserve 10/10.
On a related note perhaps Slashdot reviews should be based on a scale of 9.0 to 10.0. What is the point of having a scale of 1 to 10 if 80% of it is never used?
One thing I liked most about swg was the fact you could start towns, build them, and allow people to live in them and so on. Will wow every allow this to happen? The basic game design was based on this game style, so why not allow this? Think about how great it would be to lay siege on an enemey town/city like in warcraft 1 or 2 in 1st person mode.
TruePunk | Games
And there are plenty of people who have a similar complaint.
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You could, but games that are replayable after the first 100 hours and still fun are rare.
vs. Player (PvP) combat on a voluntary basis. PvP servers also exist which allow any player to attack any other player, a no-holds barred environment between the two major factions. Finally,
Just to clarify, there are no WoW servers currently which allow a player to attack ANY other player. On the PvP servers Horde players may freely attack Alliance players in Contested and Home territory zones, and vice versa. The difference between Home & Contested territories is that Horde players cannot begin an attack on an Alliance player in an Alliance territory, again vice versa. If a Horde player is in an Alliance territory and is attacked by an Alliance player he then may retaliate because said enemy becomes flagged for pvp.
Note that most of the "Home" zones are where lower level (sub 20) characters would level or major cities. On the PvP servers in high er levels you will be spending a lot of your time in Contested zones where you can be freely attacked by enemies (not freely by your faction mates, however).
You can duel your faction mates but that is consenual, not free-for-all.
Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
while I agree with your agreement, understand that you get a free month when you buy the game off the shelf.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
It's not who the money is going to, it's the fact that there are costs associated with a home that continue after you have paid for it. Quite substantial costs, in many cases.
What?
I've seen reports on the WoW forums where some Linux users have gotten it to work and work very well with Transgaming's Cedega (formerly WineX)
One of the things about Wow that is VERY annoying, you pick a server in your Timezone. And you cant move characters to a server with your friends after you choose a server.
While I like the game, I'm stuck to one server after spending all my time building out one character. A true MMOPG needs to be transparent and whole, not fragemented among many servers (Like Counterstrike).
I think a true MMOPG should be big enough that everyone can see each other, talk to each other in game. None of this seperate worlds, this is suppose to be 1 world with everyone on it. There are technical problems but there are solutions and work arounds. Shame that WOW is fragmented this badly.
BTW, Im a 16 level Troll Rogue on Bloodhoof. I'd be 20 if the servers where not down for early maintenance.... Game is very fun, but after 60 you have to group, this is where you team up with friends. Of course now it has to be new friends on the same server.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
There was an article terribly criticle of the whole MMORPG genre, explaining that Everquest is for morons, and gameplay consists entirely of selecting your attack spell and clicking on bad guys.
While I'm sure Blizzard have advanced things somewhat, I still want to see that original article. And I haven't the faintest idea where to find it. Can anyone help me out?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
According to the official website, if you let your account lapse, you can start paying at a later time and your character will still be there. So don't pay for a month if you aren't going to play it.
I've played EQ for four years, played StarWars Galaxies for a year and a half, and played EQ2 beta.
WoW has a major advantage over all of the above games because of one thing. Blizzard understands math and statistics. Blizzard has mastered the RTS genre which requires a very high compentency of math. You cannot balance 3+ diverse teams in a RTS game without a solid understanding of statistics, non-transitive statistics, and stong skills in mathematics.
In WoW, every aspect of character ablities and spells have the Blizzard touch. They just feel right. They don't feel overpowered or underpowered. The enemies that you face are perfectly balanced for their level. Unlike EQ or SWG where you could easily run into a lower level enemy that would completely wipe the floor with you.
Other game makers seem to play darts with their games. Try something random, see if it works and tweak it if needed. Blizzard obviously has a very strong mathematical foundation for their game. There's nothing complex. The formulas just work and the game just feels right.
This alone is why I think WoW has a very bright future.
No, Guild Wars will have no monthly fee for anyone. And, if you pre-order it before this weekend, you can participate in a beta event starting on Saturday!
New Zealand is NOT part of Australia, you insensitive clod..
One, " North America, Canada," Canada is part of North America, likely it was intended to state the USA & Canada (if Mexico is out), or simply North America (Canada does not need to be stated seperatly).
Two: "Servers are available in the four time zones represented on the North American continent."
Canada has six timezones, and as mentioned above, is part of north america. The six time zones are (west to east): Newfoundland, Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific. With Newfoundland being UTC -3.5, Atlantic being UTC -3, and the rest progressing at 1 hour each.
Other than that, great review!
paul reinheimer
After 3 years of playing UO I know all too well that the real problem with MMORPGs is sustainable gameplay. After you max out your skills, then what? Continue to get stuff which will enable you to get more stuff? Games using the current MMORPG framework eventually become endless loops. Without some sort of overiding plot (preferably with an ending), permanent death, or serious consequences everything slowly becomes mundane. A feeling of detatchment grows as the gamer finds that they have no real or lasting influence on the world around them. IMHO, no MMORPG will be worth playing until some of the cornerstones of all current MMORPGs are replaced.
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
Because they are the ones that are maintaining the servers, sure it would be nice to run your own server but how many people will show up on it? it would be a HUGE world populated by a few of your friends.
At least I know when I pay to access their servers there will be thousands of other players that I can talk, trade and go on quests. You find that on a customer controlled server.
IOK on compuserve? I loved that game. Best MMORPG I've ever played. I think the fee nature of the game added a lot to it, because you really paid for success.
Sheeet... That game was $3 per HOUR to play. I've had several $300 bills from that game, ouch!! Eventually it migrated to a flat fee structure on another service. Some of the most complex team play I've ever done was in that game.
Plus - that game really DID penalize you for dying. You had to be careful. You lost stats that could only be regained by commiting suicide, and completing the undead level which was not easy. I've spent quite some time there. There is nothing more heart pounding than being in a party of 5 high level chars attacking the Leng dragon and dying. All your shit was left sitting there in the dragons cave and if the entire group bit the dust, that was painful. There was real strategy and intense planning on doing the high end stuff and nobody was immune because they were some super tank knight.
Ahhh, the good old days. That was the FIRST MMORPG ever created as far as I know. Anybody else play Kesmai? If you did, you truly know how this genre has devolved into purile drudgery.
I want PAIN when I die. I want CONSEQUENCES. I want to be so freaking scared in a battle that I am sweating, my heart is pounding in my ears and even though its only little ascii chars on my screen, I really felt I was there. I have some really fond memories of that game. Sigh...
BTW totally right about the two things.
"Currently the game has been released to North America, Canada, South Korea, and Australia." ...that Canada was no longer part of North America.
North North America?
Arctic America?
I have an idea. How about giving WoW it's own bloody section, so I can ignore it? One story about the WoW open beta, one about the release, and one about the authentication problems - that would be three stories, and I wouldn't have minded. I would even let the review go past. However, it seems like there's been at least three times that many stories about it already, and not even dupes!
Closed Beta! Closed Beta Ends! Open Beta! Open Beta Ends! Release date announced! Release Details announced! Release Sells Really Well! Release Runs Like Shit! Release Gets Extension!
Come on... most of these are barely footnotes.
A class that lets you make things JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN.
And can you make more than 1? 100s? 1000s? Then new quests are to kill your squirrels? Nice.
Wheels-within-wheels, man...
CosmosUI is a good example. You can change and enhance a lot of stuff on the client side of this game.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
> But they should also allow for free, user hosted shards. THAT would pique my interest.
Comments like this are non sensical. You clearly have no idea what an MMO back end looks like, let me spell it out for you:
10-30 high end SMP rack mount machines per world.
This is NOT a CounterStrike server.
Even on the low end you're looking at 30K per cluster, assuming you're running a free OS and a free DB. Then you need to hook it up to the world.
There have been gray shards written for games such as Ultima that can run on a single PC, but those are highly crippled in terms of their number of simultanous players and available world size.
Maybe he was referring to MajorMUD as well.. I loved that game :)
mouse 4 is so easy
You may find yourself staying up until 5am on a work night just to "finish just ONE more quest", etc... =)
Currently the game has been released to North America, Canada, South Korea, and Australia
Boy, I'm glad Canada finally got out of that hell-hole North America. We've been fighting our way out for years!
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
wtf are you talking about?
a p4 box with 1 gig of ram could probably host a server of 64 players, its just a matter of having the bandwidth. database licenses? where does that come into play and whats wrong with using free db software?
Btw, you obviously haven't tried to run a server of Doom 3 (or even play Doom 3) on a run of the mill 'home box'...
I can host a game of Neverwinter Nights on my box at home, no problem, with custom mods and its as in-depth as it can possibly be.
Managing a database of a few thousand/hundred thousand players on one postgreSQL or mySQL farm on the face is a pain in the ass, but its cake if you have a few buddies that know databases
who the hell is the target audience of your post?
Yes, I'm mostly talking out my ass here, but it makes sense to me.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I've played every MMORPG since Everquest
*EVERY* MMORPG? Meridian 69? ATITD? Progress Quest? Saga of Ryzom? Planetside? Puzzle Pirates? EVE Online? Horizons? Lineage? Ragnarok Online? Phantasy Star Online? The Sims Online? Or just the biggies: EQ, UO, DAOC, AC, SW, COY, FF11 and AO?
In any case, there are a lot of MMORPGs out there, I don't know how you had the time to play *ALL* of them.
(P.S. I know this is a troll, but overexaggeration is one of my pet peeves. That and people who say "They should do this...They are going to do that...." WHO IS THEY?!?!?!)
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
And now I will say, while hordes of you pummel my puny skull, WoW was not impressive. It very much left me with the impression of it being a pretty standard MMORPG, with a few differences. Namely, it is is set in the Warcraft universe, and it is supported by the all-powerful Blizzard machine who, according to the gaming community, can generally do no wrong with their Warcraft + Diablo line.
WoW is solid, and fairly enjoyable. It's a decent MMOG. But that's it. It is difficult for me to understand what makes people drool over its mention.
I find it interesting that your review has a mix of "if you've played an MMOG game before, WoW is better!" and "I assume you've never played an MMOG before, check this out!"
The way you describe the concept of quests, NPCs and creatures having AI, learning how to effectively battle with your chosen class, and the chat and guild sytems are as if Blizzard had come up with these unique featuress. Unfortunately, that's not even remotely the case, and in playing the game, I did not see how they implemented these standard elements in a vastly superior way.
As for some other items in your review...
Great. Way too straightforward, actually. How many customization options do you get in the look/feel of your character? Oh, not many. It's the same kind of basic process that most MMOGs have implemented. You get to choose a small number of attributes, each having a small set of options. This is not really character customization, but rather character selection. WoW is behind in this aspect (and they are not the only ones -- let's not discuss Lineage II), especially with the character customization allowed by City of Heroes, and even Everquest II.
That's a rather strong statement. And probably one that will vary from person to person due to the subjectivity of such an experience.
You go on to describe the quest system, which I think is decent, but only decent. It is the minimum of what should be provided to players, but is by no means groundbreaking as far as I can tell. Quests still fall along the normal lines of what one would expect: go fetch, go talk, go kill, etc. then come back or talk to somebody else and get your reward, which is a combination of loot, experience, cash, and/or other quests. And this is all done in a pretty predictable fashion. A level 40+ quest of "fetch a reagent" is pretty similar to a
While there are a number of MMOGs that don't provide quests, I don't see how WoW's quest system is far superior than others. I can still go to any number of web sites and find a quaint list of quests to perform from start to finish, know where to find them, and know how to complete them.
In my crazed lunacy, I want dynamic quest systems that *actually* change and/or evolve with each player, that *actually* have an affect on the way people play the game -- I want to make choices, damnit, and live with those choices.
Although it's convenient to have the color-coded excalamation/question mark pop above NPC heads, and WoW does have some non-run-of-the-mill-quests (e.g. puzzles, escorts), IMHO WoW's quest system doesn't really stand apart from anything else.
Regarding visual quality, I thank you for being up front with the fact that WoW is not at the top. That's fine. (Other people can roll out their "great graphics != great game" and "great graphics are essential to great gameplay" arguments if they so desire.)
Ya know what the most annoying thing was for me? The identification text
If you have to pay a monthly subscription, then the game should be free, unless they have a mechanism to allow the creation of user hosted worlds. You shouldn't have to lay down $50, and then not be able to use the game.
You make a good point, however there are some things to consider:
First, distribution. The game is around 3 gigs in size, and they're using BitTorrent for the patches. Yeah, it's big. With a publisher and full rollout they can make that available in stores. $50 means a publisher will make their money back quickly, which means you get very good service. At $50 you get some real supply going.
Second, your first month is included. That just about works out to being equal to Blizzard's cut of the box price.
Third (and most important): serial number bans for cheating or chronic character abuse only works when a serial number costs money, and works to the degree that the serial number costs money. At $50 a pop, most people are only willing to go really nuts once.
Lastly, the "pre-order effect" (which may or may not be present with pure-subscription) relieves the stress of the large capital investment Blizzard made in investment. Makes the game much cheaper to make.
Many things are flat out wrong with the review, but probably the biggest is the grind. While yes leveling is very fast and easy (in fact everything is very easy in the game) at the higher level it slows down a lot and takes many many hours to get a single level.
Tradeskilling is described as "even the casual player can participate" the translation is, "no challenge, no feeling of accomplishment." This is an accurate description of the entire game. Monsters can be killed by a single player 2 and 3 at a time. This may be fun for many people but there is no challenge and while short fights against many weak monsters may not feel like a grind to the reviewer, it definetly is a grind to me, a meat grinder, a very boring meat grinder with as much sense of accomplishment as going to a kindergartden and beating up the students.
The review also fails to mention the wait queues to get into the game and the frequent server downtimes for constant repatching. Obviously 6 months of beta testing wasn't long enough. People right now are in effect paying to wait in line and beta test.
The latest uber-MMORPG that revolutionizes the genre and flips the industry on its ear! This one's larger, prettier, faster, flashier, and beats out every other MMORPG to date...
...just like every other MMORPG before it. I give it a month before people start to get tired of it. Before tons of elves start bitching about how their class got nerfed or the magic users are unbalanced or the economic system is skewed. Another few months after that all the l337 WoW players that are 42 levels above any normal player are in every town on the map while Joe-gamer grinds away the free hour or two of free time he has per night trying to get *anywhere*. A few months after that this MMORPG sits on a shelf next to SWG and EQ Expansion #7 and instead of being $40-50 out Joe-gamer is down about $90. He spent more money and less time on this than he did on San Andreas but got really good at repeating the same 4 in-game actions over and over and over again. All the gaming sites come to the realization that, while slightly cooler than the other MMORPGs this one sucks too and anything where there are a 'massive' number of people all doing the same thing you're doing for the millionth time isn't a game at all, it's a poor facsimile of the worst part of life... work.
But I just might be a cynic.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
to be honest, this has been tried, in planetside, the result is one side or more resorts to 'zerg rushes'. not a pretty sight.
Bull. I'm paying my way through college, and money is tight--if I'm going to buy a game, it better damn well get me a lot of playing time, without having to pay for it ever again. For that reason, and that reason alone, I'll never touch MMORPGs until I'm out of school, at least. That, and there aren't any demos. If I'm going to plunk down $50 for a game, I want to try it out first.
FPS have more then just the controls right.
I used to play MMORPGs. I played WoW Beta. I will never play another MMORPG until someone gets a fucking clue and offers me a massive multiplayer role playing world WITHOUT grinding, levels, and dice rolling combat tedium. For fucks sake, are we so unimaginative that we can't possibly see the union of a FPS combat system and advancement (or lack there of) combined with a role playing game - especially a massive role playing game?
Is it utterly impossible to picture Morrowind stripped of its inhumanly shitty combat engine and replaced with agile FPS combat? Does an RPG, especially an MMORPG have to have shitty combat in order to have all the other trappings of an RPG? Has no one ever played Fallout and thought how much that game would rock if the combat was like Counter Strike. Has no one played Half-Life 2 and thought of how awesome the struggle between the Combine and the Rebels would be if it was a persistent role playing game with things to do besides fighting? Can no one imagine Grand Theft Auto with a few thousand people and player run gangs and police in a massive online city?
No, I am not talking about PlanetSide. PlanetSide is a FPS on a big battle field with lots of other people. It has all the social interaction and things to do besides combat as CounterStrike. In PlanetSide, if you are not in combat, you are on your way to combat. I am suggesting taking an MMORPG and stripping only one thing from it - its shitty AD&D hold over combat engine. That, or taking a FPS and stuffing all the trappings of a MMORPG into it (minus the shitty MMORPG combat system and skills).
So, did WoW improve the nauseating EverQuest formula? Sure, but it isn't anything revolutionary. It scores a point for being evolutionary, but the revolution will have to wait until someone grows the balls to break the mold and throwing the fucking AD&D book out. Make me a massive online role playing world with a combat engine that doesn't suck beyond all words, and they can charge me $50 a month to play it - money I would happily shell out.
Or you could BUY the movies and watch them when and as often as you like without having to pay another dime.
Actually, that's a workable analogy, except that you're wrong. Say you buy the Lord of the Rings DVD the first day it comes out. A few months later they update it with more special features and a new cover. Since you bought the DVD, do you get this new version? No, you don't. Nor do you get the next several "collecter's editions" that come out in the following months. You must pay again and again to get more updated content.
An MMO has a monthly fee for a number of reasons. Server maintenance and bandwidth costs are high, but the consumer doesn't really care about that. However, MMO's do offer something the consumer cares about: regularly updated content, balancing, etc.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
IOK appeared on Compuserve around 83-84. The Kesmai corporation were the first to do this sort of thing.
I did a bit of searching on this game, and my memory was foggy. IOK started out at $12.50 PER HOUR!! Ugh...
Its mentioned here: http://gamevestor.com/sp.cfm?pageid=920
and here: http://www.gamevestor.com/sp.cfm?pageid=922
They had a bunch of games at the time, megawars was the first it appears.
As far as I know, all facets of online multiplayer games were fleshed out by Kesmai in the early 80's. Pretty much all the things people complain about today, were being complained about more than 20 years ago. This is by no means a new phenomena, it just looks pretty now.
I have long argued this.
People will quit your game if they lose in minutes, levels which took weeks to attain.
Or if people lose equipment that took 3 months to obtain, they'll quit too.
Its bad enough losing your location on the map.
God spoke to me.
Was this review written before the game was even released? It sure sounds like it. Playing the game now is a different experience than closed and open beta's (I know, I played them.)
WoW is currently suffering from massive overpopulation, leading to crowded servers, laggy play, and both client and server crashes. Apparently large connection queues and frequent server downtime didn't figure into this review. When I installed the retail version I had zero ability to play; click a server, get booted back. No explanation. No downtime or maintenance notice.
Spawn contention continues to be an issue, particularly for named quest mobs; quest drop rate can be low enough to make it feel like you're grinding out trash mobs - couple this with contention and it's even worse; lots of cut'n'paste building design and even area design (identical caves, for instance.); mobs that will always aggro you, regardless of level, meaning you will have to get used to training trash mobs whenever traveling, or stop and fight for zero xp benefit; starting quest progession is very similar for some classes: kill critters, find a cave, kill more critters, kill a named in cave - this is a repeated starter theme; falling damage is a joke; lag is not well handled (it's completely client side.)
From someone who starts the review by asking us to note his intense MMO interest, this review is disappointing at best, at worst fanboi drivel that reads more like a description than a review.
The #1 complaint of the non-mmorpg freaks out there is that these games are tough on the casual player. WoW helps because of the number of small, quick quests (no 8-18 hour camping sessions for an item drop) with decent rewards. WoW is also better than many MMORPGS out there because of the mild death penalty. EQ1 is brutal with xp loss. EQ2 is slightly less brutal with the debt system. WoW is very nice. And that's great for the casual player.
.... a hero. All MMORPGS are "cities of heroes". And there's no way for individuals to change the world without the world running out of quests or alienating and diminishing the role of 99.9% of the users. The only way I can see to do it is remember how heroes are created in the first place. By this I mean in table top RPGs, which can have the richest NPC population thanks to a dedicated GM, and in real life.
#2 complaint is heroism...and that's the big one. In Morrowind, you are the hero. In a MMORPG, you are
Examine: TableTopRPG (TTRPG) - the heroes are made by doing amazing things in the midst of greater problems. This is hardest to do in MMORPGS. A GM in a TTRPG has to worry about a group of say, 5-8 players. A GM in a MMORPG has to worry about a group of maybe 2500 players, probably more. Daunting. GM run events will either have to be many (uniqeness problem) or huge (management issues). Kudos to whomever figures out how.
Now, in real life, a hero is someone who is admired by many for a great deed -- and usually the great deed benefits many. This is missing in single player RPGs (sure you're saving the world, but why should you care about them? they arent real!) and in MMORPGS (how can the owners let so much ride on a player, when people are paying?) But if they could figure out a way to have random people at random times save groups of other people, they would be heroes.
Asheron's Call with the ponzischeme system tried to make the people at top to be world altering heroes. It didn't work, since it was also a hybridized guild system, among other things.
The only way I can imagine people feeling like heroes, and being recognized as such is a "quest" that is some sort of battle between the (WoW example) Horde and Alliance, where the winner gains some sort of advantage over the loser (permanent, perhaps control of a zone or city? not sure exactly). There would be (GM run) "turning points" in the battle, where players would have the opportunity to influence the outcome one way or the other, through success or failure. Perhaps rescuing a captured NPC from instantly zonewarps all high level PCs from the zone (of the opposing force). I dunno. But that's all I can come up with.
My question...how do you pronounce "MMORPG"???!
Moo.
(I've played AC, AC2, SWG, FFXI, Horizons and now WoW from Open beta)
I think what is different is that Blizzard has managed to pull all of these elements together in one game, and do them all succesfully.
I can't name any other MMORPG that has been able to do so, that i have played.
A few things that I have seen that I would like to comment on, that I am sure the EQ'ers will get pissed at, but whatever.
Dumbing down a MMORPG because I want to solo?? That makes me not a team player?? I have to disagree with this whole heartedly. That very thought process is what has driven me from EQ, SWG and why I won't even think about EQ2.
I don't want to HAVE to party. I should be able to level on my own throughout ALL levels. Granted, the pace should be slower, but it shouldn't be impossible. FFXI, AC2, SWG all were impossible to level after a certain point solo, and withouth the addition of "side content" for me to do, I would be bored out of mind. I think Blizzard's method here is genius, and should be looked at as a positive move in the industry.
Anyone who has ever played forced grouping knows the frustration of trying to fight in a pick-up party. 1 outta 10 are succesful, the rest usually are just painful.
Another few items I would like to comment since I am on the soapbox already are:
Graphics are too cartoony: This took me a bit to get over as well, at first. But once you get into the game and see what they have done with this "style", you see that it actually opens the door to more freedoms, and lets them do some pretty cool stuff, instead of having to always measure there content on whether or not it passed the "reality look" test.
Grinding: OMG...this one blew me away. People actually stated on this thread that there was a grind WoW and that they had played FFXI and SWG before....good lord you must have missed every quest in WoW...I can't even imagine what you did to get to a grind. I am level 34 and still haven't hit a grind yet. There are a few slumps where things slowed down for me at about level 30...but that was for 1 level until i moved to a new area. SWG and FFXI felt like i had another job when i got home....absolutely the WORST grind I have ever known. I am here to tell you that WoW offers a substantial amount of quests that always seems to keep you busy with something to do, not to mention your subjobs also can keep you busy. (In addition to the 2 subjobs, you can also get cooknig, fishing and first-aid for free which all yield there own substantial benefits as well)
IMO, WoW has been able to do what no MMORPG has been able to do to date...marry all of the elements together that all other MMORPG's only had one of, and did it succesfully, and with the signature Blizzard touches that make them succesful.
10 of 10....damn right
On the official WOW forums I've seen some griping by university students in Washington stating that basically they are unable to play due to Blizzard's bittorrent distribution method conflicting with state law (using state resources to upload bits of a commercial game to others)
Anyone elsewhere running into something like that?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
EVE great game from iceland if you like games like I do
Despite all the similarities to previous games, Blizzard did this one right. If you have been eagerly anticipating this game you have a lot to be happy about.
I was eagerly expecting this game too, and I must say I have been severely disappointed so far. I will address each point individually...
First off, though, I should say I've only played three MMORPGs in the past: Ultima Online (I loved it and played it for years), Star Wars Galaxies (hated it and played it for 30 days) and City of Heroes (love it and currently still playing it).
Character creation is a straightforward process.
Yep... straightforward and very, very simple, since there is very little room for detailed character customization. I expected something better from Blizzard, considering how long City of Heroes has been out now and how rich the character customization was there. Once in the game, everyone looks like a clone of everyone else... even different clothing and armor takes on a bland and uniform appearance.
Moving through the landscape is more like walking through a painting than playing a game. Particularly picturesque landscapes such as the snowy Dwarven home of Dun Morogh or the sweltering jungle of Stranglethorn Vale require real pauses to stop and drink them in.
Yep, plenty of time to drink in those landscapes considering how much walking you will do (technically you are running but running in this game seems like crawling). Unlike other games where mounts are available at early levels, you have to wait until you get to a fairly high level before you can start getting around quickly.
Each race faces specific challenges, bourn out by the quests you receive immediately upon entering the game world....Quest goals are clearly marked, as are the rewards you will receive from completing the quest.
I have to agree here. Quests goals are clearly marked:
1) Kill X number of creature A
2) Kill as many of creature A as it takes to collect X number of item B from them (not every creature A will drop item B though!)
3) Click on X number of container C to collect item B. Everyone else is also looking for container C, and for certain quests you will have to look for several hours to find enough container C's to fill your quest.
4) Go click on NPC D. Maybe you are delivering something, or supposed to convince them of something, or supposed to resurrect them, but really all you have to do to complete the quest is click on them. Also, NPC D may be half an hour away walking distance, even using public transportation. Also, your quest log may say what city NPC D is in but won't say where in the city, which means a long drawn out search door to door unless you cheat and Google the NPC name (quests are being catalogued and categorized as we speak).
Beyond simply providing you an impetus for getting out into the world, these quests are the hook that allows you to stop being just some person wandering around killing monsters and allows you to actually become a hero
I really didn't get much sense that my actions were having much of an effect. When I click on an NPC to complete a quest he might jump in the air, or swallow the invisibility potion I brought them and disappear, but then after a few moments they magically appear again to provide the same experience for the next person with the same quest. I just brought the severed head of the mastermind thief I killed, but so did my buddy. How many heads did the guy have anyway?
From the start, you're participating in events that are keeping your fellow countrymen safe and secure. Beyond just simple "go here and kill the thingie" quests, there are endless opportunities to become involved in the lives of your people. Here, you take a note to an important official notifying him of how a pest eradication campaign goes, while there you collect the pieces necessary for a powerful potion.
Step 1: click NPC "joe with message for important official".
Step
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
I've been a video game player since Space Invaders and even built a game or two, but I have to tell you that as I read this review I kind of wonder, what's the point of it all? Hooray, someone has created a new piece of software designed to consume as much of your life as possible in exchange for interesting combinations of pixels and audio clips.
I guess in a sense this revolts me the same way slot machines do - they look great and I suppose they can be fun in small doses but their bread and butter are hopelessly addicted people with blank faces and lives no better for the experience.
I can't totally kick the habit but I limit myself to 2 of the best games of the year that I play through once. I'm on HL2 now and loving it.
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
One of the few problems with the game is there is no real incentive right now to engage in PvP. Several open beta testers suggested a PvP with risk/reward where anyone could kill anyone else. It's hard to explain *why* this is a good idea for a server, because you get several people complaining it'd be too hard for newbies to get started.
But such an idea works. Darktide for Asheron's Call was a server set up much the same way. So was the original UO. The entire roleplaying aspect is about watching your back, making friends that will protect you to the death, and working for yourself. I hope Blizzard seriously considers a server of this nature in the future.
The simple response to people that say the server will draw players who sit back and feast on newbies is that, "You're right, they will, and if that scares you, then this server is NOT for you." There are at least a thousand players out of 200+ thousand that WOULD support such a server though, and they would like to see it. The discussions on the PvP forums for such a server seemed to justify at least one if not one per time zone.
Also, about death specifically. Death in the game is not as light as the poster seems to indicate. You do not lose experience, but if you cannot get back to your corpse, your armor and weapons are degraded. They are also degraded considerably upon death, so don't die continously, or you'll regret it.
It'd just be great if on death on one of these new PvP servers people could loot a corpse and get 5% of the coin and one of the most expensive "equipped" pieces. It'd give more of an incentive to PvP, and coupled with a "kill anywhere" rule, would be a GREAT server for those of us that want it.
As such, I do not intend to purchase the game right now. I realized after Asheron's Call Darktide that there is no RPG with the level of roleplay as a player-driven storyline, and you can only truly accomplish that by giving the power of life or death to the players themselves.
Anyone know if it's possible to buy a WoW account electronically? I.E. just hand them your Visa# and download the game through BitTorrent or similar?
;)
Anyone with an account feel like asking on the official forums, or perhaps even make an 'official' inquiry on behalf of the slashdot community?
http://maxmeout.com/ has a list of the highest level characters on all the servers.
Xenif on Stormreaver. He's a troll. Ha!
Guild Wars is not a MMORPG. It's just a glorified FPS where "lots of people", not more than 20+ typically, can meet up and beat each other senseless for a 'shared goal/misson'. Think Fantasy Counterstrike....
It's not a TRUE MMORPG, and should not be comapared to WOW, DAOC, Shadowbane, etc....
Like some others here, I was involved in MUDs for some time, before the 'MMORPG outbreak.' Several of which were extremely successful by comparison to the tons of 'yay, yet another boring uninteresting game online' types...and enjoyed success for several years, with many of the starting players still there . To put it shortly, I've got a pretty good idea of what it takes to make a game work for more than the initial checking it out phase...and it's nowhere near as easy as many people (and _companies_) think.
:-), a few of us had already been thinking about building a MMORPG, and were waiting for the right technology...which never really did materialize- most that came out drew people in initially by the graphics + multi-player RPG aspect, but they all lacked depth and weren't much more than MM FPSes in the end. Some had 'the usual quests' and puzzles, but all of them fell short IMHO 'in the long run.' They had the same fundamental issues as their MUD predecessors about Player Killing, Balance, finding and dealing with people cheating (or selling items on eBay ;-)...but sooner or later, most of the players moved on to 'the next best thing,' which is a _critical_ issue.
When the first graphical MM engines were available (Quake of course!
When a game team manages to finally realize that they need to focus on _long term interest_ as one of their major goals, and achieves it, I'll be amazed. They are getting better, but not there yet..
What that would take in my mind, for starters:
1. Keeping in site where the MMORPGs all came from, and what kept players interests there- text MUDs/MUSHes/MOOs etc...the successful ones told a story, or several stories, and (generally) propogated much of that throughout their entire 'universe.'
2. Np pain, no gain. Sorry, but the description of 'you die and lose nothing' makes me think the game's going to have players bailing once they explore the world (pretty pictures) enough, do a few interesting quests and puzzles...and that's about it- unless there's something truly novel to keep people paying a monthly fee for the 'extraordinary social environment' that keeps some people around..(but I expect to see more of the same instead). Skills, guilds, trades, are great...but if you level your character without worry of losing _anything_ significant...yawn, it's just a matter of time. If your char dies, big deal, go back try again. Nothing lost = gains mean less.
3. NPC interactivity. This is getting better (much)....things like NPC warrning factions/countries, natural disasters, economies...going on and being reacted to by the NPCs _in the long term_- in other words, the first time you see an NPC doing 'it's thing,' for example, crying because her husband went off to war and she suspects he's dead...have you any word of him? May be cute/interesting/whatever the first time or two you run into her...but then what? She disappears to never be seen again, or she becomes a player quest...then 'next week' (or whatever timeframe...it's the same thing again, or perhaps exactly the same story form a different NPC. There needs to be more variety in NPC actions, more logic (or 'emotions') that aren't scripted, elements of (changing) randomness thrown in that affect the world...so that when someone wants a break from 'hack n slash,' it's actually _worth_ it to 'people watch' the NPCs as much six months later as the first month when it's all new. THAT goes a long way towards longetivity...
4. Something I can't define yet, but a unique enough form of player to player interaction (besides the 'who needs a free +20 Battle Broom'(or whatever...or for sale etc)...to keep people coming back for that almost by itself.
Some of the above may be a given, and some games have certainly gone down those paths...BUT think of your favorite games, whether FPS or RPG...and the elements of each that you love, versus 'all the other games you _used_ to think were great'...until you got bored. With MMORPGs, I hesitate to
Scott
Unix Developer, Admin and Linux Freak/Geek at Large
Wake me up when they make a MM Action RPG like Diablo. Every single MMO I have ever played caters to people who have no twitch skills and the pacing of combat is something to be desired, I'm an action gamer at heart whenever I am doing third or first person 3D games and MMO's do nothing for me. You have a single character to control and the range of moves and things those characters can do leave a lot to be desired when you compare it against ANY single player action game or even single player RPG, most console / single player RPG's run rings aroudn MMO's most of the time and dont cost $15 a month either.
WoW doesn't radically alter the MMO formula because frankly no one's willing to have an actual game based on SKILL rather then stats and computer controlled attacks where you decide to tell your character to cast this or that or use this or that item every now and then. I'd love if they'd take the mechanics of fighting games and implement them in RPG's, Diablo in my opinion was the first step to truly enjoying combat with different moves for your characters. MMO's have not reached the gameplay nirvana of fun that an action RPG like Diablo has years after its release.
Nope, this was a bit older, before the acronym "Mud" or Compuserve was created, Possibly before the IBM PC was created (I used a TRS-80 to connect). I think the internet existed but at the time it was just a rumor about some magical government experement.
It was called "Scepter of Goth" and was only available as part of a dial-in system that also had a chat room and a couple other games including a text version of a FPS. They fit an amazing amount into 640K ram.
I think the whole thing was written in C/Assembly and ran on a PC with an 8-port board and 8 modems. There was one in Orange County, one in SF and one in Canada.
We're talking circa '83-85 if I remember correctly. And yes there were severe penalties for dying. 1 point of CON and 2 levels (if you make your save) or 1/2 of your levels if you don't. If you run out of CON, you're done for--start another character.
Exciting, but I spent a LOT of time regaining lost levels because I refused to play conservatively (where's the rush in that?)
I was addicted to^H^H^Hplayed Meridian 59 some time ago. How does WoW compare to M59? The graphics look nicer, but I've heard that most of the MMORPGs today are hunt/level up and little else for game play...
EVERQUEST 2
It can NOT compare to Evercrack, there is a reason people played Everquest 1 for years and lost their jobs etc over it.... it fucking rocked, never have I seen a game that can create addicts...
I'm too lazy to look around, so I'll ask here.
:)
I'm a Dwarf Fighter, can I use firearms in WoW? If so, what do I do to beable to use them?
2x2.0 GHz G5, it screams
Ahh, ok, was there some sort of hourly charge? The reason I replied was because you said you had a financial incident at the time, which instantly made me remember of the compuserve system. The kesmai system began development in 75 or so, before being ported to the compuserve system in 83 or so. It had a very large number of concurrent users (several hundred), it was a true mmorpg. Truly revolutionary. Later on, Kesmai corp. created a game called Air Warrior which was a mmofs (massively multiplayer online flight simulator) which had huge battles circa WWII. I mean, we're talking 500 plane large battle groups with 100 B17 bombers, fully crewed, support fighters, troop transports for taking bases, etc. Nothing like it has ever been done since then, I think it went out of business around '96-97. Nothing like flying tail gunner on a B17 bombing run over hostile territory.
I personally think that heavy consequences on death are a good thing. How can you get nervous playing one of these new games if there is no penalty for doing something stupid? It totally breaks the immersion of the game. Having a real stake, especially a financial stake, in your character, is important to that feeling. There were people (myself included) on Kesmai who had spent many years and thousands of dollars building their characters. To willy nilly run off and get killed was unthinkable. A character at a high level commanded respect, because it wasn't just a level grind that got you there. To progress in the higher levels, you had to fight creatures who could kill you in an instant if you did something dumb. It took real skill, knowledge and strategy to get that powerful.
There are traces of these games on todays mmorpgs as well. The clan I belonged to in Kesmai in the 80's is still around today, playing everquest and now WoW.
PS2 game media is an 8 GB disc, which is worth about 11 or 12 CDs.
PC games ... look so much better than console games. Why? ... 1600x1200 looks far superior to 640x480.
There's no reason that a modern HDTV monitor can't do 1280x720 pixels, especially when driven by a console such as Xbox whose RAMDAC is fast enough.
All these games require too much time playing to earn items to make PvP fun anymore. PvP was fun on the original UO because everyone was close to equal, but once PK'ers went from duelling or attacking a lone traveller to ganking him over and over when he was trying to retrieve his corpse, the whole concept of PvP was ruined. I started on PvP's and hated the whole carebear safety on non PvP. I don't feel like that anymore. PvP has too many young dickwaggers, and there is no honor in PvP as there used to be.
I'll play carebear. Find a guild of fun people. Play every night till I get bored. Move to the next mmog and feel good about it. The griefers that have taken over pvp can go to hell.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Or :
.app folder.
1.) get the mac version which has the torrent in its
2.) Err no 2nd
Eh.
I'd rather play Lineage 2.
www.lineage.com
Play on Sieghardt, and join the ACBA.
You'll know what i'm talking about when you jump in the game.
I have definitely slammed my fair share of MMORPGs in the past (mostly for the lack of roleplaying).
I tried City of Heroes because it was unique. It got old fast just like -insert any MMORPG here-.
I tried WoW for one reason and I am surprised it is not mentioned more (if at all) in the review: the game rewards you for being a casual player.
When you log out, you build up XP bonuses which can add up to 2x XP per kill. If you rest/logout in a Inn, that bonus per kill can rise to 4x per kill. Mostly, when you log back in, you notice your XP bar is blue with a marker set past your current amount of XP. The more you've rested, the more to the right that marker will be. When you gain experience, it will add bonuses (the most I've gotten was double) to those kills and get your XP closer to the mark. Once you hit the mark, "you feel normal" i.e. not rested.
Blizzard's thought on this is that if you take a lot of rest, you are going to go back out hunting with more energy and zeal... thus more XP.
WoW and EQ2 are incredibly similar in a lot of ways. WoW's clear superiority over any other MMORPG, including EQ2, lies in rewarding casual/rping players. We pay the same amount so why should we get penalized for not logging on as many times as the 13yoa punk next door on his daddy's DSL with the fresh GED.
The practice of "Extra XP" is not a lot but it helps.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
I don't know about that. I can think of 5 right of hand. 1.) DiabloII 2.) Starcraft 3.) Counter Strike (Okay it's a mod) 4.) Battlefield 1942 (and related mods) 5.) Halo (1&2?) I am sure I could think of more but those are what I am enjoying free of monthly fees at the moment.
No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
This review does not speak of even one of the flaws ot WoW. A perfect score should only be reserved to a game that's flawless, and a game that has washy PvP, a less than stellar performance currently, queues to get in the server extending to 2h30 on prime time and the really annoying regular maintenance right in my playtime make it less than perfect.
This looks more like an ad that goes into the game features in detail rather than a critique. I suggest the reviewer gets himself a marketing job instead of a critical-thinking job.
Of course I enjoy WoW a lot, but I clearly see it has flaws like any other games, it just has severely less of them. But the ones WoW has right now are more than annoying, they are up to the level of downright irritation. It really feels like they don't know where they're going at this point with the game, maintenance hours for example were implemented a short while ago, and in the last 3 days were done twice out of scedule, and extended beyond 1 hour.
I've been trying to play with friends, it's really hard to keep our levels together and have quests we can do together unless we keep the same schedule and pay attention not to do things others haven't done already. This is a fatal MMORPG flaw, the inability to play with friends of all levels without hurting gameplay (twinking, power leveling are some aspects).
I'd like a real review now, this was a colossal waste of my time, which I have a lot but meh.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
I've been playing this game for a few days, and I can feel that nasty little addictive twinge like I havent felt in a long long time for game. 'Just another half hour...'
At no point have I felt this game has lacked anything. It's completely engaging from the get go. I am sure eventually it will reach the 'been there done that' point, but I have confidence in Blizzard's record for evolving their games, and adding features, tweaks etc that make it fun all over again. The potential for this in WoW is probably more so than their other titles.
Eventually 'Hardcore' modes and PvP settings will come in to challenge the game gurus. It even says in the manual that the lvl cap is currently 60, but that will change in the future, which to me indicates plans for a whole new level of and types of adventures for higher level players.
In the meantime though, I've barely scratched the surface.
If I'm going to plunk down $50 for a game, I want to try it out first.
Silly. Haven't you heard of friends? You don't know ONE person who has the game?
Slashdot - where to disagree, is to be a troll
Why bother with levels? What is wrong with a vet grinding a n00b to bits in FPS combat? Isn't that how it is with an MMORPG right now only a thousand times worse? If I were to log onto WoW tomorrow and pick a fight with a level 50 guy, he would grind my ass hands down. I could try a thousand times and I would never kill him. I probably couldn't even hit him. Talk about imbalance. Not only does the guy who has been there longer have more time to develop better player skills, but his character is completely and totally invulnerable to a n00b.
Now, if I log into Counter Strike Source, a game I have not played, I will get kick my ass kicked. The difference is that getting my ass kicked is not a sure thing. Sure, I might die 9 times out of 10, but a good or lucky shot to the head of the uber l337 d00d is just as lethal to him as it is to me. In fact, because I have played many FPS online and off line, my chances are actually much better then 9/10. Within a day I would likely be able to hold my own against (or with) the average player.
People need to get the fuck out of the box. RPGs and massive online worlds are not mutually exclusive. Just make an RPG and then rip its shitty combat and experience system out. This stupid rolling the dice shit is a throw back from D&D. People... we are PAST D&D. We don't need to roll dice to simulate a fight because stabbing your friends with a real sword is illegal. You can fight in real time - behold the wonders of the computer.
The problem is that people assume that an RPG has to have dice and experience points to be an RPG. The thing they seem to forget is that RPG stands for Role Playing Game, not Roll (as in dice) Playing Game.
Just imagine an MMORPG in Fallout's setting with WoWs guild system. Add in Half-Life 2's physics engine and combat so you use a crane (or a few strong men) to build your own little car fort town for your guild and defend with FPS style combat. Chill out in a bar and do crafting like it was DAoC, then go on a raid Counter Strike style for weapons. Set up your own merchant stand and sell your l00t for profit you use customize your character's looks and clothing like it is SWG. Build a car using a complex crafting system and drive it like it is GTA. God damn it. Get some fucking imagination. I am so fucking sick of Everquest version 20.3 (also known as WoW).
Take the god damn dice and throw them in the trashcan. Get it out of your collective heads that it isn't and RPG without a pair of fucking dice. At this rate, by the time we get full body VR, we will still be rolling a d20 to see if we hit the monster or not. THROW AWAY THE DICE.
I played the graphical version they put out after, LoK. Was my first MORPG and truly rocked. Soloed Kosh, the Leng dragon the day they shut it down.
It's like seeing a bunch of flies swarming around a steaming pile of shit.
You may as well get used to paying a monthly fee or give up on play games. With the constant revenue that a monthly based subscription offers companies who male the game, I would bet dollars to peso's that most future games will migrate to a system like this.
Since "more peg" is a decent compromise between pronounceability and faithfulness to the acronym. Most people I know who pronounce it say it this way as well.
that that is is that that is not is not
And you clearly have no idea what those 10-30 high end SMP rack mount machines per world actually support. Thousands of players. As opposed to the dozen or so that a typical person would want to host on their home machine. With thousands of people, every zone must be pre-loaded. With a dozen people, at MOST a dozen zones would need to be loaded. At most. That's thousands upon thousands fewer mobs that have to be loaded and maintained.
Have you ever seen a RunUO shard? The actual Ultima Online represent that 10-30 high end SMP rack mount machines per world you're talking about. A RunUO shard supporting 25-50 people runs *easily* on a medium-grade desktop machine. So I'm a little confused how a similar setup for WoW is suddenly impossible?
What's this game like on dialup?
This space for rent
I have to admit that I'm a ::ahem:: Mac gamer and therefore haven't been privy to much of what the MMORPG genre has to offer, but I am stupendously glad that Blizzard's longtime Mac support continues unabated.
;)
I played the game for the first time last night for about 3 hrs, picking an elven hunter to start off. Pretty amazing and easy to get into.
Since I was playing the game at night, it was night-time in the environment, which I thought was a nice touch. I did manage to get some sleep last night, so I'm not an addict, which is fine.
I guess the best sign that this game is good is that I sent an email to my boss last night that I was going to "work from home" today
I want PAIN when I die. I want CONSEQUENCES.
How about LOSING YOUR ACCOUNT and being BANNED until you can set up another one, and then having to start over from LEVEL 1?
It costs less then a night at the movies
Because I'm minimizing how much of my limited money goes to MPAA members, I'm happy with seeing a movie 6 months late on a $300 TV, a $200 stereo, and a $60 DVD player, all of which are Paid For(tm). A "night at the movies" costs $3 plus gas for a new release or less for older films.
Cause there are plenty that find these games far more entertaining then say something like a cable tv subscription which is about 4 times the cost.
You seem to forget that some high-speed Internet providers bundle cable TV with their packages for free (that is, only cable TV subscribers are eligible for high-speed Internet access), especially in geographic areas without DSL.
You need to go out and find a real job, get an education
I have the latter, so how do I get the former? As soon as I graduated with a four-year degree, the jobs went to South Asia. How do you suggest that somebody who lives in northeast Indiana and has a B.S. in computer science but can't move to another city for family reasons "find a real job"?
or work some overtime.
You seem to forget that even people who happened to be born early enough to graduate from university before offshore outsourcing may be "exempt" from earning more money for working more hours, especially in professions common among Slashdot readers.
So that's 100 hours out of a single-player game for $40, or 100 hours out of an MMORPG for how much?
A Linux native version.
I have high hopes that Blizzard will satisfy the Linux gamer. And I don't mean with WineX.
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
There are (were?) quite a few player run shards with hundreds of players at one time.
PS I hate Counterstrike, Day of Defeat is a much better mod. :P
Murphy was an optimist.
There are (were?) quite a few player run shards with hundreds of players at one time.
PS I hate Counterstrike, Day of Defeat is a much better mod. :P
Murphy was an optimist.
Given the caliber of some of the people I've dealt with in MMORPGs, a huge server populated solely by my friends donsn't seem like such a bad deal...
Murphy was an optimist.
And that would be the incentive for people to sign up for the "premium" worlds, as opposed to just paying on the free ones.
Murphy was an optimist.
Oops, I meant "playing on the free ones".
Murphy was an optimist.
I'd believe you, except I hosted my own UO shard on Sphere. I can't compare it to a Doom server, but running the UO shard was easier than making a Steam DoD server run on Linux...
Murphy was an optimist.
I also am afraid that this "subscription" crap is going to spread to other game types. It's easy to see Valve charging a subscription to stay on the Steam service, or even a WON service.
Murphy was an optimist.
Seriously... It's a wicked mmorpg.
:)
. :)
:)
Yes, it's space based.. so if you don't like space.. don't play.
Level advancement is based on skills that are time based...
NOT IN GAME TIME BASED!!!
For example.. I have a skill training right now while I'm offline doing life stuff.
It'll be done in 2 days time.
PVP is intense and adrenaline packed while there's plenty
of NPC combat to fill the void if you like.
Give it a 10 day trial and see if you like it...
No game to purchase and if you direct debit your
credit card... they charge $15.95 every OTHER month
The latest expansion (again, free) was 105 megs and absolutely fabulous!!!
Hardware wise, I use an Athlon 1000 and a GeForce4
Yeah.. I need a beefier cpu before I go into combat with more than 20 ships but I haven't reached that lvl yet
Good luck and see you in game
The mob is fully healed if you flee or die (as long as others are not combatting it) within a very short time.
Honestly I never knew why there had to be death penalities. The idea of a game isn't to punish the players. Stopping the current action through character death is sufficient.
Oh, its not for pussies, its for people who are there to enjoy themselves. They don't have anything to prove to you or others.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Not talking about the MMOG mechanics here - all I care about is immersion. WoW seems like a game that my 5 year old would play on a gamecube. Not just the goofy look (Drow look like rabbits!!!), but also the controls and the general feel of the game. Blaa. Give me the costume customization of CoH. Give me the feeling that I am an epic character. Maybe I should try corpsequest 2?
Found an article that lists both of them I think: http://www.linnaean.org/~lpb/muddex/mud-answers3.h tml.
There were aparently 2 really early MUDs. Scepter of Goth was the one I played on. Its lineage died off because they went commercial then the codebase got lost to debtors or something.
The other was "MUD" which I believe evolved into the compuseve thing. I had forgotten that compuserve existed that long ago--I was thinking it was a newer entity like AOL.
Oh, and yes, Gamenet charged, $.10/minute, and I think half of that between 1am and 6am. We figured it was cheaper than a movie, but you don't go to movies 6 hours a night every night.
I compared credit card bills with a friend, we were both in the multi-hundred dollar range (Actually he might have been over a thousand) for one year.
Then when our local site went down, we started looking around for a fix. There was another Gambit Multisystem in San Fransisco. We found one of those phone codes and started calling it.
Eventually we screwed up and got slapped with a pretty annoying phone bill.
My wife's computer had 256 Megs of RAM and an NVIDIA FX5200 with 128Mb.
In some areas, things ran fine, but in any graphically intensive environment, such as a large city or while riding a gryphon, the game became a slideshow - multi-second long pauses between frames. There were also problems during combat. It was really on the borderline of "playable".
I added another 256Mb and now the game runs like butter. If you're buying the game, drop another $50 and upgrade to at least 512Mb.
I played that one a bit, it was essentially the same game if I remember correctly. I've soloed kosh several times, but never was able to solo vlad. That was just too hardcore, the tower. The first time I ever attempted the leng dragon with my clan, was probably the coolest moment in online play I have ever had. That was intense, and I had to get the death blow. I was a lower level char so it was damn scary.
I haven't played any newer games, I keep looking into them but they all seem the same, nothing really new. Now, Air Warrior, if they ever do something like that again, I'm all over it.
It was the same game with a wierd forced isometric view and different maps. They put in all the Basic Game maps, Kesmai, Oakvael, Leng and Axe and left out the Advanced Game maps.
Friend of mine soloed +mama in her lair but that was pretty hardcore.
The guild I joined back then is still kicking around, most of us reminisce about Kesmai but we never settle on a game to replace it. You can find us at www.fttguild.com
Back on topic of WoW, its a cracking game - the first one since UO or Kesmai that we are all willing to play.
Huh.. ftt. Sounds familiar, but I do not remember if I ever played with your guild back on old school kesmai. I was a very early member of the Sun clan (Lyon.Sun), which I believe is now also going to play on WoW. I read the review of WoW on your guilds site that mentioned how WoW was as fun as IOK. Perhaps I'll check it out now. It still sounds fishy to me, this whole "death not meaning anything" stuff. I just don't see how I can have any real attachment to my char if I can just die over and over with no consequences. Hmm.. Anywho, maybe I'll give it a try. Strong words comparing it to kesmai, IMHO. :-)
... if you'r a european and buy a US copy and try to sign up? That's the talk, they will ban you and never allow you to join again.
Seems rather ridiculous.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I have an idea. How about giving WoW it's own bloody section, so I can ignore it?
Bad news, the world does not revolve around your tastes. Don't like WoW, not interested, nothing wrong in that - but there is something wrong with being a self centered whiner. Clue: You can ignore WoW by not clicking on WoW articles. I hope you enjoy this new found skill.
So really, what you're saying is that you'd like to jump in and start and have your character be as powerful as he ever will be... no experience, or, rather, all the experience on the keyboard end of the equation.
Three things:
One: Some of us play these games to have an alter ego that has different strengths than we do. I guess, since my reflexes are lousy, by your lights I should just be an eternal newbie and never have much fun in the game. Excuse me, but I don't like that; I like games that are about more than just reflexes. In this game, it's a little reflex and quite a bit of strategy. I'm good at strategy, which is why my level 21 druid can kill level 22 and 23 enemies, one on one. If it were all twitch, I'd still be back killing deer. Plus, even if I were GOOD at twitch games, they aren't FUN to me. Ooh, let's see how fast I can mash the space bar! No... I'd rather have the immersive qualities, without the tendonitis, thanks.
Two: Some of us like the idea of our characters being able to do more things, more effectively, as time goes by.
Three: In your scenario, the people who are really good at FPS will just breeze through the entire game in a couple of weeks. If there isn't some kind of differentiation between low level and high level baddies except that the high level is harder to kill, and your character starts out as powerful as he's going to get, then those who are good might as well just go straight to the dragon's lair and keep trying until they kill it, right? And then complain, I'm sure, that the game was far too short for the money you spent on it.
Right?
Basically, if you don't LIKE RPGs, don't PLAY RPGs. If you WANT a fantasy FPS, which is exactly what you've described, then go GET one.
Some of us DO like them.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Absolutely teamwork and strategy.
A group of fighters running into a dungeon will be slaughtered quickly. A group of mages? Even quicker. And priests are not the 'clerics' of D&D fame, able to fight as well as the fighters and heal themselves as well; they're more like mages.
Basically, you need one or two tanks, to distract the baddies and take the damage, and KEEP the baddies attacking them. You want a ranged attacker or two, or a close-up fighter with less defense but a lot of offense, to do a bunch of damage. And you want one or two healers sitting back and healing everyone. And if anyone stops paying attention to his role... well:
- If the tanks stop paying attention, the monsters will start going after the other people, the ones who are doing more damage than the tank is, or the ones who are easier to hurt.
- If the damage-dealers stop paying attention, the monster never goes down at all.
- If the healer stops paying attention, the tank dies and then the monster goes after everyone else.
Now, most classes can fulfill more than one role: priests can do damage at range and also heal, hunters can do damage at range and also have a pet to tank for them. Druids, heck, druids can heal, do damage at range, tank (in bear form), and do massive damage from up close (in cat form) though not all at the same time. But the point is, if you start straying from your role, your party members die.
That's why you hear, in the higher level areas on WoW, 'Group for X quest wants a paladin or priest!' or 'Group for Y quest wants a rogue!'
Teamwork and strategy is not just good to have, it is necessary.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I have the opposite opinion: I haven't been grinding for levels. I have been trying to KEEP from gaining levels... I've been gaining them so fast that my equipment is really suited for a character about six levels lower than I am, for the most part.
Most of this is my own fault... I'm far too generous with other people when I play. I craft things for them for cost, I enchant things for them for free, and I end up losing money.
But level grind? I'm level 21. I know of about 30 quests that I could go on that would be good for me, but I'm holding off until I have the equipment I need. And I've *never* killed something just for the experience. If I wanted experience, I'd just take a quest. In the unlikely event that I'd finished all the local quests, I'd just go off to some other race's areas and start doing them there.
There is a level grind in WoW only if you WANT there to be. If you think all low-level play is automatically boring and you are desperate to get up to high levels as fast as possible, then there's a grind. But that's YOUR problem, not the game's.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.