Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft - Then and Now
MMORPG.com has an excellent feature up discussing the trajectory of World of Warcraft as it's progressed since its launch day. They touch on the recent honor system features, the added dungeons, and call Blizzard out on their inability to keep to a consistent update schedule. From the article: "So you may ask, 'How well has Blizzard delivered on their monthly content updates?' The simple answer is: they haven't. In fact, a couple months post launch some players challenged Blizzard as to their promise on scheduled updates. Official Blizzard posters denied making such claims but were quickly pointed to their own website where, in plain text, monthly content updates were promised. After some backtracking Blizzard announced that they would not be able to keep to a definitive content update schedule."
Speaking as a former WoW player, the server outages were a far bigger issue than content updates. Constant lag and queues made me quit playing WoW. I think that the servers are the issue that they are currently focusing on more than content updates.
I've been a WoW player since it came out, even an officer in the 4th largest guild on the Bloodhoof server. I play a Rogue with a warlock alt and a new druid.
Being a horde player you have a smaller population, so less people to instance with. And the change of getting ninja looters, who will steal on bosses, hench the change to master loot on all bosses.
PvP is lagtastic, and offsides. Alliance normally has a 2:1 ratio, but with guards, help kinda helps. And when a true zerg 5:1 sometimes, they just storm tarren mill and take the city and camp the graveyard. So, at times, it really is crap.
Highend instances are not Rogue oriented, so after spending 5 months getting my guy to 60, I find out that I should of rolled a Priest or Warrior is rather depressing. But time will tell, but blizzard doesnt answer questions much, other than making people change names. They actually made a guy named "Hellcow" change his name, and disbanded a group called Euthanasia. Rather nazi like behavior of the GM's lately.
There is no player growth other than reach level 60, farm your armor/weapon, reach 300 on your 2 selected professions. The include cooking, firstaid and fishing for everyone. Boring......
No trophies, everyone looks the same, they are trying with new weapon graphics, which is helping some. But it would of been nice if at least some of the taruens the size of houses where not all the same size.
So, it has major issues, balance between horde vs alliance is a big problem. Also not being able for you to see friends on other servers is a big problem. Since it seems everyone I know is on a different server. Really its 2005, the technology exists to have people across servers play together. And before someone says they cant, I work at a telco, ive use and seen technology that can do this. Its possible, some MMO's already do this.
What I like, good graphics, good movement and fighting combat. Even if the lag sucks, its good. Not total FPS style, you dont aim as much.
But, I'm gonna try guild wars, and got a free EQ2 account in the mail from fileplanet.
BTW, other than patches breaking cosmo's a UI addon, they have added most of its functions, other than a CLOCK (With localtime), and a RAID addon, you almost dont need them anymore.
They are trying I give them that, I just wish they would of explored more than the really boxed in RPG feeling you get. Great graphics wont keep people around when every new game has great graphics.
Who know, time will tell how many people churn. (I like using a telco term for MMO's, YEA)
And I've been on the developer end of this situation. I don't know whether it's stupidity, ego, or what, but this situation didn't become a stereotype without a reason.
I've seen more than one instance where the marketing person says, "That? Oh yeah, of course we can do that! Would you like it to toast bread and bring it to you on a silver platter, too?"
Ask the developers? What for? They have the magic to do anything! That's what we pay them for, isn't it? Sleep? Vacation? Overtime? A developer doesn't need those things!
Can you say EA Games? I knew you could. Or not.