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Next World of Warcraft Patch Review
Via Penny Arcade, a review of the next patch for World of Warcraft on Blizzplanet. The author takes a look at some of the new art being added to the game and examines details of the new honor system. From the article: "The horde slowly started to show up in the area to attempt to protect their territory. I joined a raid group to counterattack, and noticed that each kill where my Priest character helped with fear, word: pain, or healing counted toward my Honorable Kills, even if I didn't directly caused damage or killed. Healing and Fear count toward your kill points."
You're bored because you rolled a Hunter. I had to reroll because we are so worthless in groups and it took me hours to get into a 5 man. Im having a lot more fun with my Priest, and feel way more useful.
Actually, depending on how much you play it, it can save you money. God of War, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Timesplitters 3, Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich, and Jade Empire have all gone into my "I'd like to play them, but I don't have enough time now. Maybe I'll buy them used later" category, saving me from shelling out from $250 for instant gratification. If you look at it that way, my last 2 months on WoW have been a money-saving bargain.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
It's the first MMORPG to pretend that Faction vs Faction is PvP, and that presenting a little mini-game with PvP with in-game rewards is exciting.
Actually, wait, FFXI has a crappy in-game "PvP" game too. So it's not even the first in that.
From what I can tell, Battlegrounds is basically like a Counter-Strike game (two sides with various objectives compete, have hit points, and can damage each other), that happens to take place within an MMORPG.
The only reason it's news is because currently WoW has no end-game and thousands of players at the level cap are bored out of their skulls with the game, and this mini-game is supposed to somehow give them something to do.
Even if it's released every month, you can lvl to 60 in 2-3 weeks.
Only if you play non-stop and power level. Normal people (ie ones that put in 15-20 hours a week, and are on their first character) take about 3-4 months to get to 60.
I've seen so many posts (even articles) about how WoW is going to fail because you can get to level 60 in 2-3 weeks, and then you've done all there is to do. As others have said, while doable, this requires some serious power-gaming. First of all, I get the impression that there's a lot more gaming to be gained by playing alternate characters and Horde instead of Alliance, not to mention PVP, but more importantly, I think 90% of the people who play will not be doing this kind of power-gaming. Rather I suspect a major portion of their player base is a much more casual gamer, and in my opinion, the game caters to them for the very reason that it is not an incredibly long process to reach level 60.
In other words, the fact that you can log in for an hour or two and make some notable progress, makes it much more likely that the non power-gamers will stick around as opposed to games like EQ where I could log in for 2 hours and not see a change worth mentioning in my exp bar.
So the power gamers (smaller percentage of player base) get bored and move on to other games, while the casual players (larger percentage) have their interest held and continue playing. I think a year from now, those saying WoW will fail because it's 'too easy' are going to be surprised.
Of course, I don't see numbers, so maybe I'm wrong and everyone but me and my three buddies play 10 hours a day. Could be.