Official WoW Expansion Talent Information

smartidiotaz writes "Blizzard has finally released more information about the talent trees after leaks broke out over the internet. " As typical, every class thinks every other class got a better deal, but the Pallies get to mean it ;)

Comments

What a summary...

[__aaclcg7560]

Slashdot finally releases guidelines for a proper summary length after an extra short summary left readers stratching their mousepads.

Um... Hunters? Druids?

[Generalisimo Zang]

Well, since my main character in WoW is a Hunter, and my alternate character is a Druid... I'm somewhat underwhelmed by the "coming soon" notices contained in the link for those two classes.

Re:Um... Hunters? Druids?

[Cybert4]

I wouldn't worry too much. I doubt they'll just leave them with nothing. Patience!

Re:Um... Hunters? Druids?

[packeteer]

Im pretty sure they left out druids and priests becuase they know that the healer classes are completely screwed with all the other new talents and still ahve not figured out a gimmik to keep the healbots happy enough to not stop paying.

Re:Um... Hunters? Druids?

[teflaime]

They have already mentioned that Druids will have more options for tanking in the expansion. I would expect that some of the new talents for Druids would address that role.

Re:Um... Hunters? Druids?

[Pahroza]

As an end-game raiding priest, I approve of this message.

Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious question, not a slam.

I played through the 1-60 level grind on my free month, battlegrounds seemed a joke with the wait times, and WoW raiding doesn't seem very interesting(at least IMO compared to EQ raiding a few years ago).

I know a lot of MMORPG players and not one of them are still playing WoW - which is strange because the sampling of the people I know has pretty well tracked player populations for every previous MMORPG over the past six to seven years I've been playing them.

Where are all these WoW players and what are they doing while they are logged in all these months since the game went live?

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Le Marteau]

More importantly, where are all the eucher players? It used to be all the rage. I know a lot of card players, but not one of them are still playing eucher.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Generalisimo Zang]

I stopped playing WoW for four months or so, but re-activated my account when I heard about the cross-server battlegrounds and the upcoming revamp of the Honor system.

The wait times on Alterac Valley average about 2 minutes, across all hours of the day.

For Warsong or Arathi Basin, you might have to wait up to 8 minutes in queue in the off-hours, but during peak hours the queues for AB and WSG are less than two minutes.

Also, it looks like the upcoming changes to the honor system will eliminate DKs... so, more world PvP.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Chris Pimlott]

I admit, things are a bit slow now, but when the "Cards of Fury" expansion comes out next month, with two new suits, I guarantee there's going to be tons of people coming back.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[AstrumPreliator]

"Why Are People Still Playing WoW?"

Maybe they're not still playing it so much as they just started playing it? I picked the game up in July as I had no interest in playing it before then (I'm not a large MMO fan). But a friend who recently bought a new computer that could run WoW bought it so I did.

I'm sure there are still players that have been playing since the very beginning but I doubt they're the majority. I'm sure most of the people playing are either those who didn't buy the game until just recently or those who put it down for several months or longer and have decided to pick it back up again.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[WillAffleckUW]

Well, my son played the beta, but found it too boring, and everything I've seen severely underwowed this Starcraft and Diablo II and Warcraft I/II player.

He's mostly playing flash anime games, I'm mostly doing the Sims until the Wii comes out with Spore and Animal Crossing and hopefully a Diablo spinoff.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[0xdeadbeef]

The smug sense of superiority it affords us over people who play Everquest, Guild Wars, and EVE.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[nih]

eh? well that's cleared up the confusion for me, and i hope everyone else.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[mordors9]

Funny. I don't remember any of the things you mention in Wizard of Wor. I will have to get out my Atari 800XL and play it again.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[andy9701]

I can't really say about the raiding (I'm enjoying it, for now at least), but the latest patch did improve the battlegrounds a bit, now that you can be matched up with players on servers other than your own. Generally, it's only a 15 minute wate for Warsong Gultch or Arathi Basin, and 45-60 minutes for Alterac Valley (it'll be interesting to see how the Honor Bonus this weekend will affect these times). Granted, those times still aren't great, but they are much better than the 30-45 minute waits for WSG and AB, and 1-2+ hours for AV on any typical day.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[codeonezero]

[quote]played through the 1-60 level grind on my free month, battlegrounds seemed a joke with the wait times, and WoW raiding doesn't seem very interesting(at least IMO compared to EQ raiding a few years ago).[/quote] This problem was depending on which faction had the most population on the realm you choose. However, they recently added Cross-realm pvp with several realms being put into the same Battle group and now you don't have to wait as long for pvp battlegrounds. Kind of hard to answer your raiding concerns without you actually stating them. Personally, Blizzard has been learning and places like Naxx are a hit. One thing to consider is that the typical WoW MMORPG player may not be your typical EQ or some other mmorpg player. That means that you get possibly a new social group of players entering a game like WoW than you would have had in EQ and therefore unlikely that the sampling of people you know has the same taste for something like WoW than others. Many people I know in my guild have been long time gamers and only a few are hard core mmorpg players from other such games.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[chreekat]

Jesus Christ dude, one month? No wonder you got sick of it. If I got to level 60 in one month, not only would I not want to play WoW anymore, I would also want to kill myself.

-chreekat

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[alexgieg]

You shouldn't have rushed to get to level 60. I played for 4 hours a day at a slow pace, enjoying the storyline, getting to know the game world, learning (and changing!) professions, participating in roleplay events and PvP, helping other players inside and outside my guild, doing lots of non-experience rewarding quests (the gray ones) etc., and by doing so I reached level 60 after eight (yes, eight) months. It was much, much more enjoyable than going the "power leveling" path.

And since I reached 60 I'm still playing the same character, slowly acquiring gold to purchase my epic mount, trying to get some end game gear but not being obsessed with it, going in some raids with my guild, fine-tuning my addon collection, and so on and so forth.

So, I'd say that WoW is kinda like a Mac: an integral experience. If you focus on a single aspect of the game it gets boring pretty fast. If you try to do all it allows you to do, then there's almost no limit to what you get from it. I am very far from getting bored, that's for sure. :)

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Floody]

Serious question, not a slam.

I played through the 1-60 level grind on my free month, battlegrounds seemed a joke with the wait times, and WoW raiding doesn't seem very interesting(at least IMO compared to EQ raiding a few years ago).

I know a lot of MMORPG players and not one of them are still playing WoW - which is strange because the sampling of the people I know has pretty well tracked player populations for every previous MMORPG over the past six to seven years I've been playing them.

Where are all these WoW players and what are they doing while they are logged in all these months since the game went live?

Many of us are still there. Not necessarily with our original characters, but still ....

Myself, I played from beta onwards. Not continously, I've taken multi-month breaks. Early on I spent most of my time exploring the 1-60 content, most of which is soloable or doable in five-man groups. Then I spent much time exploring the pvp aspects. Most recently, I've taken to the end-game (i.e. "raid") content, which is more challanging, but only by virtue of there being little room for error (and learning techniques for getting 40 people to deal w/ some rather intricate encounter mechanics).

Why do I continue with a game that is considered rather pedestrian by the hard-core mmorpg crowd? Mostly, I suppose, because I don't like mmorpgs, and wow doesn't "feel" like one (in the traditional sense). It's fast paced, you kill quickly and you likewise can die quickly. But more than that, buried behind the accessibility of the game that has made it so popular is a rich and sophisticated set of mechanics. These mechanics were originally designed to create as much diversity as possible between the different classes (although I fear those responsible for this design are long gone, as the trend has definitely been towards homogenization). Each class has a significantly different feel to it and requires a different playstyle in order to excel, while simultaneously retaining class-specific complexities. These traits don't usually become fully apparent until one has reached the higher levels with a given class.

While these sophistications certainly exist in WoW, the other edge of the sword is that, quite obviously, mass accessibility was a primary design concern; meaning that while you can become very good at the intricacies of a particular class and playstyle, it's not exactly required in order to experience all the content. The fallout from this is that the majority of the (very large) playerbase isn't terribly good at playing the game (and there exists little incentive for them to improve). Similarly, with a small group of proficient players who have mastered these intricacies, one can easily move through late/end-game content that most players would consider very difficult (without high-end "raiding" gear itemization).

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Damvan]

A little offtopic, but if you are a big Diablo II fan, you might want to take a look at Titan Quest.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[NFNNMIDATA]

This is a good point, Molten Core is really an awful instance and feels like it was thrown together hastily. It's basically a big quake deathmatch map that someone added big ass rock monsters to. I was pretty let down once I saw the whole thing and realized that was it. I almost never go back, although most guilds seem to have it down to a one-night affair now. Blackwing Lair is much more interesting (with all the event rooms, each of which has its own peculiar strategy), and so are Zul Gurub, Ahn Qirahj, etc. So people who went raiding in early '05 and quit based on that are missing out, but that is Blizzard's fault for not putting some good stuff in there at release.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Bob9113]

I know a lot of MMORPG players and not one of them are still playing WoW - which is strange because the sampling of the people I know has pretty well tracked player populations for every previous MMORPG over the past six to seven years I've been playing them.

Where are all these WoW players and what are they doing while they are logged in all these months since the game went live?

I play WoW in a decent sized guild. A solid 50% of them are not gamers. My brother is the perfect example. He plays two games on the computer - WoW, and a poker tutorial game.

Which may suggest the answer to your question: You know a lot of hard-core gamers, to whom WoW may not be attractive. It is EQ easy-mode, after all. But, to a great many people like my brother who grew up with video games but were never hard-core about it, WoW is a pleasant distraction for an hour or three a week.

I was once a hard-core gamer, but I got distracted by other shiny things along the way. Now I play WoW a bit, and it's fun. Hard-core me probably wouldn't have liked it much - there is too much chance, not enough reward for mad skillz. Casual me finds it to be just about right.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[metroplex]

And Pokémon TGC? Where have all Pokémon TC players gone?

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Andy Somnifac]

Those of us still playing UO don't even get a mention? Geez...

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[ZombieWomble]

A word of warning to add to this though: This is highly dependant on the realms your server is grouped with, and the faction you play. I know, on my old server, the Alliance are up in arms because their BG queues have skyrocketed, as they were grouped with a number of realms with tiny Horde populations. Conversely, on my present server, any time of the day or night, you can pick a battleground and get in instantly as a Horde character.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[heartless_]

1. WoW is still the #1 selling PC game every single month. So while you may be done with the "grind" there is tons of new players just begining. 2. Some people don't play on l33t mode like yourself. I was hardcore once upon a time in my MMORPG career, but I've learned that a truly good game is better enjoyed casually. You wouldn't understand what "fun" is if it bit you in the ass. 3. I know a lot of MMORPG players that got tired of WoW also. Good luck and have fun on the next game. Guess what in the time I've continue to enjoy WoW they have gone and gotten bored of EVE Online and are starting on EQ2. Some people just get bored of games and move on. We all don't have some unhealthy connection to our avatars within a single game. 4. There isn't much else on the market that makes me jump for joy. WoW is easy to jump in and out of while I wait for Warhammer : Age of Reckoning, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Neverwinter Nights 2.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[NiTr|c]

I started playing WoW in January. I was playing Guild Wars prior to that, but they botched it with Factions, though, that's a totally different topic. My girlfriend (yes, really) play(s|ed) WoW, so she ultimately got me started. She lives 700 miles away from me, so we use it as time together when we can't be together physically. That's the main reason I play.

I don't rush through anything either. I'm not in a hurry to get awesome gear, high honor rankings, epic mounts, or any of that other stuff. Hell, my highest level character in 9 months is only level 40. I like playing with the different classes (and professions) across the different server types. My level 40 is on a PvE server and now I'm working on other characters on a PvP server.

There are days where I don't feel like questing, or doing PvP, so I'll just idle about and work on professions. If there are people asking questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Also, as sad as this is, I love fishing in WoW. It's a great time killer and strangely fun, for me anyway.

So there, that's why I play.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[0biter]

What you are talking about is the entirely valid difference between seeing WoW as a particular kind of "game" and seeing it as a "world."

As a game it is arguably a worthwhile contribution to the RPG genre, and interesting for the social component it adds to that genre. But at 60 when the novel content and the character development stop, WoW stops being an RPG game and turns itself into a giant, complicated slot-machine. You pay the price to play by being competent, and in exchange you get the chance to grind for rewards. Its just that simple. Your comment implies that you don't find this fun, and neither do I.

But I remain a subscriber because I see WoW as a world rather than a game. For me it remains an entertaining place to stop in once or twice a week and fool around for an hour or two at a time, particularly because of the social interaction the whole thing is predicated on. I certainly don't grind for anything, and I'm not that interested in trying out classes outside of my 60 Hunter and 55 Warrior. But if my guild happens to be hitting an instance or playing in the Battlegrounds, I will happily join them for the fun of it all. You might not think that is worth maintaining a $12/month subscription for, but I find it worth what fun and relaxation I get out of it.

I think the lead designer of Regnum Online made the distinction best, as recently quoted on GamesAreArt.com:

"These massive worlds, where you can do anything, are not games. A game is defined by its limitations and rules. What I've been working the last 4 years is just a big massive digital world."

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Das Modell]

I never reached level 60. The highest I got was level 37, but then I deleted the character for various reasons. Now I have no characters at all. Getting to level 60 in WoW is, in my opinion, an epic achievement that no other game can provide. How some people manage to do it in a month, even when they have experience with the game, is a mystery to me.

I'm not sure if and when I'll give it another shot.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Kardall]

Actually, there's a really large population of players that are over 5 months. That's enough to take 1-2 characters to level 60 if you don't have a live (like a lot of people here who play WoW). I stopped playing it about 4 mo. ago, and i don't regret it. But in the advent of the new changes, I bought a gamecard (unopened yet). Waiting to see what else is on the horizong for Burning Crusade. As soon as I find out what all is going down with it, I may join back up and play some more. Otherwise i'm going to stick with life... you know... That which is outside of World of Warcraft. Yes I know it's hard to understand. But you do need to eat real food, drink real drink, party with real people, not kill people in real life. It's hard, but together we can make it through!

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[geminidomino]

One has to envy your faith in Blizz.

After playing the original for 4 months (5 chars, 2 60s), I came to the same conclusions as many of the others who dropped it(not to mention being helped along that decision by incompetant and/or apathetic GMs in charge of the RP server two of my chars were on).

Friend who play/have played suggested I might like it better when the expansion comes out. I somewhat doubt it. New races don't change the fact that the slog to 70 still leads to the same raiding garbage and Gear-vs-Gear "action" that the original offered.

I unfortunately don't have enough faith in Blizzard to pay for the expansion to prove myself wrong.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[SilentChris]

There was a vague notion of an overarching story, but an actual story line?

You must've missed the thousands of quests and literally tens of thousands of lines of text, dialog, etc. that describe the world, giving life to over a dozen books and 3 other games spanning 10 years. Easy to miss.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[anakha]

I feel EQ offers much more differentiation in the tactical/strategic playstyle with its multitude of different classes than WoW does. Of course it has its own issues as well including diminishing player base and less than stellar content designs in some of the later expansions.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[kaysan]

i think you have a point. I never played WoW, but I've seen friends play it and from the looks of it i don't like it. it says somewhere along this thread that in the game you 'kill quickly' .... Kill quickly? ever played Diablo II (a 6 year old game, max 8 players per server.. repetative insanity) with a level 70 Lance Barbarian? watch your character Plow through 600 beasties per second on Whirlwind mode! Don't like hack n slash characters? No Problem! build your own level 60 Sorceress (max her spellcasting speed out with the increadibly huge amount of items available) and lob frozen orbs at literally HORDES of bots.. still not satisfied? Try a Bowazon .. see how you can SPRAY the entire screen full of arrows while the Cows are being Pushed ever backwards by your Knockback bow... Dudes!.. you've been had, WoW sucks!; sure, it looks neat-o-rama in a Disney kind of way, but this better be one pretty looking game if that keeps you going for long (a-la DS2 graphics perhaps?), the map is big (so was the Ascii map of Medevia = large mud server, but these things do not compensate for having to wait 10 seconds before you can shoot your icebolt (or whatever its called) off at a monster for a lousy 1400 max damage(and ONLY if you've not been given the order to 'sheep'). I want a 5800-6200 damage whirlwind attack through a line of 30+ halberd-wielding Goats!! so where then, lies the real attraction of WoW, you ask? i think that the answer must lie in the (now much researched) pseudo-real social interaction that people engage in while playing. Not only in a normative way (i.e. 18.000 people play on this server over 5 horus a day, and i'm only at 4 so whats the big deal, an example of such reinforcing mechanisms), I feel that the gratification to ones social desires that comes with playing such a game are very much underestimated. but that's just my humble opinion

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Feefers]

It's better then SWG? I enjoy it just now but I don't quite know where i'm going to be going or if i'm going to be staying with it. I think i'll have to use the excuse, i'm new, i've been playing less then a month...

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Kierthos]

Okay, here goes.

There are these things called Battlegrounds. Currently, there are three of them: Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, and Alterac Valley. Each battleground has different objectives that need to be accomplished in order to win.

Now, before the 1.12 patch, the way Battlegrounds worked was as follows. If you entered a battleground, you were only working with people from your own faction from that server, and you were only facing people from the opposite faction from that server. If you were on the Argent Dawn server, for example, your side was other characters from Argent Dawn, and the other side was entirely comprised of characters from Argent Dawn.

Now, Blizzard has implemented something called cross-server Battlegrounds. What this means is that there are a number of battlegroups. Each battlegroup is comprised of a number of different servers, and each server (like Argent Dawn, or Ticondrius) only appears in one battlegroup.

Now, if you enter a battleground, your side can be characters from your faction on your server and/or any of the other servers in your battlegroup. The other side is similarly comprised, but it's not a 1-1 thing. Just because (for example), your side has two characters from Argent Dawn does not mean the other side has to have two characters from Argent Dawn.

Now what this means is that the wait times for battlegrounds can and has been reduced significantly. It used to be that you could wait for over an hour or more to get into a battleground because of the way they're set up. (Character limits and the queues.) Now, it can just be a couple of minutes.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[me at werk]

I joined November 2004 and still have an active account, although since I'm using gamecards there has been time where I have not been 'active'. The nice thing is since I buy them on amazon, I actually pay less than I would to have a recurring credit card subscripion, and I only pay when i want to play.

I like running around the world, and I have almost all the gryph points in the Eastern Kingdoms (I am level 43 on that character). It's an adventure getting there, and with so many ways you can get to level 60 it has quite a bit of replayability. The warcraft lore, reading little books on the shelves, is nice too. You get to learn about why you are doing this for the alliance/horde, what their roots were, what the history is. It's good for motivation.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[skeptictank]

I have no interesting in raiding. I like playing the 5 man instances with a group of friends. I have played a toon to 60 on alliance and horde. I enjoy the PvP when playing a warrior - the server I play horde on is PvE, but very PvP oriented so I never had much difficulty getting a bg, even before the crossworlds bg.

Playing threat management or a healer is more difficult and interesting than playing a dps class; that has kept me interesting in the game.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[teflaime]

raiding garbage and Gear-vs-Gear "action"

Every MMORPG that I have played comes down to one or both of these issues in the end. I will admit that I haven't played them all (skipped Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy, and Lineage). But the Gear-vs-gear equation is one that no MMoRPG hs completely escaped. And the games that aren't specifically targetted to small groups (DDO, Guild Wars) always seem to have to include raiding of some sort.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[EulerX07]

This is mostly due to the faction population imbalance present on most of the realms. This will be improved in the expansion by the addition of the blood elves to the horde faction. It turns out that people like to play good looking races and that the horde did not appeal to them.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[edremy]

Another warning. I'm a noob player on a new server (Anvilmar) and there's been a lot of complaining from the PvP folks about the expansion. Since Anvilmar is a new server, there are very few 60s, which means there is very little twinking going on- there simply aren't enough high levels to give the killer loot to the 20s-40s. We go up against a more established realm in WSG30 for example and watch similar level characters on the other side doing vastly more damage.

<grumpyoldman>Also, to all you folks desperate for a WoW fix when your server goes down, get the hell off my server. I'm tired of all your alts trampling on my lawn!</grumpyoldman>

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[stinkbomb]

Of course it's a slam and not a serious question; that's why you posted as AC.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[SilentChris]

Yes I know what you mean, after the fifth dialog that ended same way with "..so I need you to go and kill 10 whatevers." , one tends to not read any dialogs from then on and just press "Accept" right away.

Try playing the game more than a day before you make a judgement. Most of the story is in instances, not the levelling up quests.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[MaWeiTao]

I've noticed that the people who generally have a better experience in MMOs are those in guilds, especially those who have real life friends playing with them. Contrary to what people claim it is extremely difficult to find a good guild, especially if you only play casually. Inevitably, if you're not playing enough for their tastes you're marginalized.

And that leads me to another problem. MMO players seem to have a skewed sense of what casual gaming is. Compared to the ones who play all night I suppose 4 hours every day seems casual. But 4 hours a day means you're playing from 7pm to 11pm. That's pretty much the entire evening and if you're doing that every evening it really adds up. Casual gamers dont play 20 hours a week and they sure aren't devoting 4 hours a day to a game; they might but in an hour at best.

When I was playing another MMO, City of Heroes, I did 4 hours an evening fairly consistently and I thought that was excessive, and my wife just thought I was nuts. I can't fathom how there are people who can sustain even this level of gameplay for a year, and still call it casual gameplay on top of that.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[iamblades]

You obviously haven't played many MMORPGS.

WoW has possibly the easiest levelling of any MMORPG there is. The only challenge to levelling in WoW is avoiding all the bored level 60 gankers. Roll on a PVE server, and there is absolutely no challenge at all.

The XP curve in Wow is very linear, as opposed to other games, where the XP to level is on an exponential curve.

You should play anarchy online if you think WoW levelling is 'epic'. AO has 250 levels basically, on a very steep exponential curve. Basically you go from needing 1500 xp to get the first level to 75 million xp to get the 200th. The shadowlands expansion made the first 200 levels much easier, but if you do those first 200 levels on RK (like I and everyone who got there before SL came out) it takes forever. Don't even make me mention AXP, which you can only get from one type of monster, which are on timers so you can only fight them once ever few hours. Getting to alien level 30 is about the biggest grind I've ever seen in any game.

WoW and AO are like total opposite games. WoW is a casual, story based, almost single player type of game until 60 when it turns into raid grind from hell, while AO makes no bones about being a grindfest from the beginning.

It's wierd how I spent years grinding my way through AO just fine, but when I got to 60 in WoW the grinding turned me off immediately. I think it's cause the grinding in wow seems so pointless, you don't get anything from it really, just better gear. It's boring to the max. In AO you get all kind of new skills and fun stuff with every level, and you can buy gear that is competitive with any raid based gear there is fot the most part.

I guess I just don't like the wow bait and switch. I got used to the wow 1-59 gameplay, then hitting 60 was like hitting a brick wall.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Avatar8]

This is the most common reaction I see from people (not you) slamming WoW and Blizzard. "I did it all. What else is there?"

All I can say to them, to you and to the handful of people with this mindset that I've encountered in game: you're missing the point.

EQ players are the most common players of this kind because they were trained to grind. I've had to un-train a numer of players in WoW. "Don't grind. You don't have to grind. Just quest and just play." WoW is not about leveling, it is not about getting uber loot or having all the gold. It's about the experience.

Take your four basic player types: achievers, explorers, socializers and PvPers.

Achievers (this is where you fit) want to do everything first and to the highest level. You reached 60 and you were done. Other achievers want to complete instances, collect all the pets, have a complete set of uber gear or have an immense amount of money. They're still playing because it takes months of steady play to do all this.

Explorers want to visit every possible location. This requires reaching level 60 due to the risk involved in visiting these places. My daughters (8 & 5) do this in the safety of a town when my wife or I cannot escort them to actually play. There are still places that people cannot reach due to the design of the world. The concept of one day reaching those places is keeping them in WoW.

Socializers. Just open a space and provide a channel and these people are happy. With about 60k people per realm, it's easy to strike up a conversation or a debate. Add to this the fantasy background and this group of people find themselves doing quests and exploring dungeons just to accompany with their friends.

PvPers. In my opinion WoW has the best PvP system of any game available. I have never liked PvP at all (UO, Camelot, AC, AO, SWG) because whoever loses always pays some penalty or at least suffers emotionally to some degree. Yet here I sit with a new character on a PvP server. That has to say something about how good the system is. Duelling, battlegrounds and PvP servers. All levels for all tastes. As to your wait time comment, that was recently remedied with cross-realm battlegrounds. I've heard numerous people saying they haven't had to wait more than one minute to enter a bg.

Of course many, many players will exhibit some or all of these attributes. I'm a socializing achiever with occasional explorer tendancies. :-) Add to this that amongst all these types you'll find two kinds of players: casual (less than 30 hrs/wk) or hardcore (greater than 30 hrs/wk).

I cannot speak for raiding or instancing since it differs for everyone nor can I compare it to EQ since that's the one MMO that never interested me at all. From what I've experienced of instances and raiding (up to UBRS, DM, Strat and ZG), it is truly a challenge. It takes a great deal of coordination to gather a group of the right skills and get that group working together as a team, performing specific tasks to accomplish major events. I think companies could learn a great deal about teamwork from watching a raid team. Why are people still playing WoW? Because Blizzard has found the magic formula of being able to provide a huge variety of game catering to all manner of gameplay styles in a single world. Casual socializers stand next to hardcore PvPers and trade crafts or stories. Everyone satisfies some aspect of achievement simply by playing.

To anyone who states "I did it all in WoW and quit," I can only laugh. By "did it all" they mean they leveled one character to 60 and visited every instance. In my mind "did it all" means I've played every class to 60, completed most of the quests, accumulated some uber loot and a good chunk of money and played from both sides of the fence (both factions). If I had played 16 hours every day since I started the day of retail release, maybe, just maybe I might have done all this, but I seriously doubt it. I'm fairly certain Blizzard designed WoW so that no one can do it

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Avatar8]

If you do decide to try again, come to Lightbringer (PvE) and e-mail Barrelboy. I enjoy helping others learn how to get the most out of WoW. Good luck to you.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Kardall]

The only game that really isn't an MMORPG, more of an MMOPVP game, is Guildwars. Yes gear is important, but it's not the be-all-end-all of gameplay. A lot of it comes down to spells, who does the best combo's and works as a team. Teamwork still plays a big role in WoW, but the purpose of working as a team is to get your guild/party awesome gear to help you further the cause of getting better gear in the next instance. It's a grind, a raiding gear, and the PvP aspects as it stands in WoW is pretty defunct and broken. The only thing that attracts me to playing WoW in the new expansion, is the fact they're working harder on world pvp, and making the pvp system better (trying to). It still remains whether or not it will actually improve, or if it's an attempt to regain lost customers for another 60 days or so. We shall see when it is released.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Das Modell]

I fail to understand how anyone can play a game like AO when getting to lvl 40 in WoW is impossible due to the extreme boredom that eventually creeps in.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Das Modell]

You're probably assuming that I'm American. I'm not. I play on European servers.

I've played WoW for over 1,5 years, I already know all about it. It simply becomes mind-numbingly boring around lvl 30-40 and I stop playing. There isn't much of an incentive to keep leveling up, especially when you know that at lvl 60 the game stops (I don't like guilds so of course I won't be raiding). I'm having the same problem with Guild Wars, there's just no point to any of it.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Avatar8]

No, I wasn't assuming anything since WoW is a global game. I play with Australians and Asians all the time and Europeans on occasion.

The push to reach certain levels does get tedious at times because there are not soloable quests every few levels so grouping or grinding is required for short stints.

I think you were not involved enough. The phrase "The game begins at 60" is very prevalent on every server and is very, very true. RL friends that joined me in WoW a few months ago were tired of hearing me say that, but once they had there first 60's they discovered the truth. Now they're playing more than ever and most of the time they're playing those 60s.

You do not have to belong to a guild ever. There are often pickup groups (PuG) for any and every instance, raid, battleground, PvP raid, etc.. The phrase "I don't like guilds" to me always means "I've never been in a good guild." :-)

Guild Wars is tedious. I beta tested it and could immediately see what a slow grind it would be.

There's really no point to any game at all, now or in the past. Oh, wait. There has been, is and always will be one point: entertainment. If it's not entertaining to you, then, of course, there's no reason to play.

Good luck wherever you go.

Re:Why Are People Still Playing WoW?

[Das Modell]

No, I wasn't assuming anything since WoW is a global game. I play with Australians and Asians all the time and Europeans on occasion.

Er, but American and European games are separate. I can't play on anything except EU servers.

I think you were not involved enough. The phrase "The game begins at 60" is very prevalent on every server and is very, very true.

Maybe it's true, but getting to lvl 60 is borderline impossible due to the sheer boredom. Leveling up becomes very slow before lvl 40, and I can't imagine how terribly slow it must be between 40 and 60.

Guild Wars is tedious. I beta tested it and could immediately see what a slow grind it would be.

It's not a slow grind. There's no grinding involved. The problem is that GW's PvE content is extremely shallow, and I'm not really into PvP (someone might ask why I bought GW, and that's a pretty good question). In PvE, there's no grinding required, there's no crafting, equipment is almost meaningless, and the game doesn't take very long to finish. The PvE is just there to prepare you for PvP. In Factions, PvE progression is insanely fast: I was level 17/20 by the time I had finished my second mission.

Horde Paladin?

[Gropo]

Can someone please explain the logic in that? I'm trying to remedy the thought of a Paladin and an undead questing side-by-side.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[Kesch]

It's ver simple really. The Blood Elves are a kickass race. When a kickass race wants divine power, they don't ask for it; they just take it. In the Blood Elves' case, they made a Naru(being of light) into their bitch and their paladins tap into divine energy siphoned from it.

So blood elf paladins' holy power does not come with any EULA saying they have to have a +5 stick of morality up their ass.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[thesandtiger]

Aside from the "lore" explanations given by the other poster, putting paladin-like (they're "Blood Knights" dontcha know!) characters on the Horde side and shaman characters on the Alliance side is supposedly allowing the designers to make MUCH more interesting instance encounters. Since they no longer have to worry about factional differences, they can implement ideas they had that would require certain classes etc.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[codeonezero]

Simple lorelol ;-)

lorellol.ytmd.com

Re:Horde Paladin?

[brkello]

The Horde is not evil, it is just different. Paladins are merely holy warriors with the ability to heal. Both sides have faith, they just view things differently. In WoW, there is good and evil. There are evil humans, undead, orcs, night elves, etc. etc. So apparantly there are some good undead...or more accurately, some undead that you will put up with so that you can achieve a similar goal.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[alexgieg]

I beg to differ. While the Horde isn't clearly Evil, it's nonetheless slightly "more evil" than the Alliance.

Take the Orcs, for example: they allowed themselves to be near completely corrupted by demonic powers. They are now free from this corruption, sure, but in the end they lose in comparison to the Alliance, for the member races of the Alliance did not become corrupt, they fought against the Burning Legion's corruption so fiercely that they managed to avoid the corruption.

Now, look at the Undead (Forsaken): they, like the Orcs, managed to become free from the corruption. But a lot of the evil influence from the Burning Legion remains, just look at the biological experiments they do.

The new Blood Elves are addicted to magic, and their culture revolves around the idea that totaliarianism is A Good ThingTM. For instance, see how did they manage to get Paladins: they captured and enslaved a holy entity that would have given holy powers to them had they simply asked! But no, Blood Elves don't ask, Blood Elves take!

And the Trolls were cannibals that only gave up on cannibalism because the Orcs told them that they wouldn't be allowed to join the Horde if they kept doing that.

From the entire Horde, the only race that is clearly and plainly good are the Tauren. They're with the Horde due to their sense of duty, because the Orcs for having saved them, but that's it.

Now, let's look at the Alliance:

The villest thing the Night Elves did was to go around in a killing spree against Furbolgs, thinking all of them were corrupted and thus killing the minority that wasn't. They also built a new giant tree when their gods told them "no" (the shock! the horror!).

The Gnomes messed up badly and ended poisoning their own capital after being invaded by trolls. Now they have to live with the Dwarves.

The Dwarves dig big holes, what the Night Elves think violates "Mother Azeroth" (or something like that).

The Draenei had bad luck and ended in a forced landing in Azeroth while fighting the Burning Legion.

And the Humans, ah, the Humans! The most horrendous thing they did was not to pay the masons that rebuilt their capital, these masons now being pretty revolted with the nobles...

So, all things considered, I don't think both are equal in the moral level. The Horde is clearly, at least, a "bad neighbour". Were not for the existence of the much more evil Burning Legion, in comparison to which the Horde is made of saints, and the moral difference between the Alliance and the Horde would be really undisputable.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[ameoba]

You're just saying that because you're Human.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[obeythefist]

You should bear in mind the morality of Warcraft - the Horde aren't bad guys, the blood elves joined the Horde simply because Alliance paladins deemed them to be "tainted" and attempted to wipe them out in the good old ethnic cleansing genocide style. They only narrowly escaped to the Outlands. The Night Elves themselves just flipped a coin to decide whether to go with the Orcs or the Humans, but really they just wanted to kill everyone invading their territory.

The "forsaken" are the victims of the scourge, undead who managed to at least recover their own souls and destinies, and while they can't just make themselves alive again, they are certainly trying to make the best of a bad situation.

So really, I'll stick with the Horde side so I can play the good guys.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[RandoMBU]

The logic is actually based entirely outside of the lore. They manipulated the lore in order to force the classes into each faction and correct the massive play imbalance between alliance and horde. The fact is that paladins and dwarf priests make many encounters significantly easier, and their abilities are not available to the Horde in any way. So in order to And that doesn't even begin to cover the PvP imbalance with paladins. 10 seconds of complete damage invulnerability while retaining casting ability and the ability to outheal priests is a combination that is nigh unbeatable in PvP on defense. Killing a paladin takes so much time relative to other classes even pvp is skewed. So now with the expansion both sides will have access to the most overpowered class in the game.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[sadr]

Except the masons are humans and conspiring to destroy humanity.

The Scarlet Crusade is human, and they're evil.

Most of the pirates (nice folks there) are humans.

Oh yeah, the Barov family are great examples of human kind.

Stratholm is a human city, right?

Let's see, what else have I missed...

Re:Horde Paladin?

[EulerX07]

Well, the leader of the scourge is a human ex-paladin, that would be prince Arthen, who killed his own father. The necromancers that propped up the scourge were humans. The scarlet crusade willfully work for the burning legion just because they hate the undead.

I also don't understand the knock against the orcs. They were dominated by a far superior enemy and used as pawns in the outlands. Finally thanks to Thrall they broke free and the PCs that you make in WoW are part of those "good" orcs. Yeah so the Darskpear Trolls used to be cannibals, I guess you don't have to trade fine cuisine tips with them.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[Hoi Polloi]

Until he gets modded as a troll

Re:Horde Paladin?

[Dan Slotman]

I've played WarCraft 3 and you've got your facts mixed up unless they've done significant revisionist history in WoW. Arthos is the leader of the Scourge. He was never the leader of the Forsaken, which is the branch of undead that players of WoW create characters of. The Scourge is regarded as the enemy of both the undead Forsaken and the Alliance.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[Gropo]

Killing a paladin takes so much time relative to other classes even pvp is skewed. So now with the expansion both sides will have access to the most overpowered class in the game.

I'll give you that it takes a bit to kill a paladin, but having an elemental shaman at 49 I'm finding equal-level paladins absolutely no trouble whatsoever. "purge-purge-ZZZAP... purge-purge-ZZZAP. Oh OK you bubble there and blow the rest of your mana futilely healing yourself, I'll be right back after melting your 42 mage friend's face off"

I say if any class is overpowered it's shaman, and I'm in the majority on that sentiment I think. Your 2nd quoted statement still holds true ;D

Re:Horde Paladin?

[Napalm Boy]

The villest thing the Night Elves did was to go around in a killing spree against Furbolgs, thinking all of them were corrupted and thus killing the minority that wasn't. They also built a new giant tree when their gods told them "no" (the shock! the horror!).

Weren't they also addicted to magic? And didn't they almost, you know, destroy the entire world once?

And the Humans, ah, the Humans! The most horrendous thing they did was not to pay the masons that rebuilt their capital, these masons now being pretty revolted with the nobles...

They also enslaved an entire race (orcs), and gave birth to the scourge due to their own corruptability.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[alexgieg]

Neither of these are the political entity "the humans" which is a member of "the Alliance". Its actual name is Kingdom of Stormwind, comprising the capital city, the surrounding forest territory and nearby vassal powers and territories. Calling them "the Humans" is just an alias, as much as talking about "the Night Elves" is more directly understood than saying "Darnassus", etc.

In reality, according to the lore nothing prevents a character from being a Darnassian Human or a Stormwindian Night Elf. The game mechanic is what requires all Human characters to be Stormwindian, all Night Elves to be Darnassian, all Dwarves to be Ironforgian, all Gnomes to be Gnomeragan Exiles etc.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[alexgieg]

Weren't they also addicted to magic? And didn't they almost, you know, destroy the entire world once?

No, those were the Highborne, a magic-practicing disliked faction inside the anti-magic Night Elven society of the Azshara kingdom. They moved away from the Azshara kingdom after the disaster, becoming the High Elves with a magic-addicted kingdom entirely for themselves. After having been almost wiped out by the Burning Legion they renamed themselves Blood Elves. Their way of fighting the Burning Legion was distrusted by the Alliance, and thus they became members of the Horde.

They also enslaved an entire race (orcs), and gave birth to the scourge due to their own corruptability.

Regarding the enslavement, it happened only after the Orcs failed in exterminating the entirety of the Human race. So, notice this: instead of killing the Orcs as the Orcs tried killing them, the Humans held them prisioners. And, curiously enough, it was this enslavement, cruel as it might have been, that allowed these Orcs to free themselves from the Burning Legion, and only then from the Humans.

And regarding the Scourge, no, who created it was the Lich King (an undead Orc) under the direct orders of the Burning Legion. He had some human agents, but this isn't the same as having the human kingdoms en masse helping him. The humans who became the Scourge were victims of a magical plague launched by the Lich King, and this is far from being the same as an entire race (the Orcs) accepting demonic powers in a (perceived) advantageous deal.

Re:Horde Paladin?

[Gropo]

So blood elf paladins' holy power does not come with any EULA saying they have to have a +5 stick of morality up their ass.

Sorry, I don't think that's what Blizzard has in mind for "socketable items" ;D

Leaks

[rackhamh]

leaks broke out over the internet

Well, that explains it. I *thought* the Internet was running a bit slow today...

Re:Leaks

[gsn]

Well you know the internet is not a dump truck. Its a series of tubes. And if you put an enormous amount of material... an enormous of material those tubes will be blocked up and if my staff send me an internet yesterday it'll get stuck in the tubes. But its much worse if the tubes are leaky. Your internet may never get to you if you have leaky tubes. If your tubes leak get them tied up.

(ducks)

Re:Leaks

[EEJD]

Well, it IS just a series of pipes. Hang on, I think my staff just sent me an internet...

Re:Leaks

[Hippynz]

If you tie the tubes on the Internet, then the Internet will not be able to breed. This will reduce the number of viruses spreading (This is all based on the assumption that the Internet is female).

Re:Leaks

[XTbushwakko]

Yes, I sent some internets here friday, and I didn't get it untill sunday!

Re:Leaks

[NaugaHunter]

If your tubes leak get them tied up.

But what if you're a Catholic? Is there a rhythm method for leaking internet tubes?

News

[steveo777]

Hasn't WoW been posting the new talent trees since a month or two ago? Well, I can't get to the page at work, so I don't know if they changed them. But I know I'd been looking forward to redoing my rogues talents because they were nerfing one of them. Points more valuable elsewhere.

Re:News

[lewp]

They've been systematically reviewing each class almost since the game came out. Most of the changes have been in the talent trees. Rogues had their review in the 1.12 patch, and their talents were changed.

This is different. This is the addition of new, higher tier (up to 41 point required) talents to coincide with the release of the expansion and the increasing of the level cap to 70.

Talent Icons

[Atlantis-Rising]

Is it just me (I have never played WoW), but are all those Icons for Mage talents stolen from WC3? I can recognize dozens of them from previous games.

Re:Talent Icons

[moo083]

They are probably the same skills. I am a hunter in the game, and have a skill called True Shot Aura. I believe that skill does roughly the same thing and has the same icon. Its not like it was stolen anyways. Its the same company and the same universe and it came out about a year afterwards. Not a huge surprise and I don't see anything wrong with it.

Re:Talent Icons

[idontgno]

Technically, not "stolen", since Blizz owns both.

But yes, lots of the iconography is WC3 recycled. Unsurpisingly, since WoW is the sequel (in storyline, if not spirit) to WC3.

Look close enough, and you'll find WC2 and even original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans graphics (or at least icons inspired by those from that game).

Reuse at its finest. (Whether I am being ironic or sincere is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Re:Talent Icons

[racas]

"ZOMG Blizzard made another game with Orcs in it!" World. Of. WARCRAFT. WTB [Clue] PST.

Re:Talent Icons

[GNUguy]

"but are all those Icons for Mage talents stolen from WC3?"

Uh, it is (W)orld (O) (W)arcraft, since it's part of the same game series, I don't think it is considered stealing.

-G

Re:Talent Icons

[The Dalex]

Diablo 2 was first person? Did we play the same game?

Re:Talent Icons

[merreborn]

are all those Icons for Mage talents stolen from WC3?

I know for a fact WoW has been using WC3 icons since early beta.

I'm sure it's been the same since day 1.

Re:Talent Icons

[Kesch]

I'm going to take a stab at figuring out what the parent meant. I think he was trying to convey that Diablo was focused around a single avatar you chose instead of Warcraft where you were busy ordering around an entire army.

Re:Talent Icons

[Atlantis-Rising]

Recycled in different roles, was what I meant by 'stolen'. Obviously it was not stolen in a copyright sense. It just somewhat surprises me that they didn't bother to design new 96x96 icons for their flagship game! (or whatever size they are.)

WOW server can't take the load...how strange

[ianchaos]

Why Slashdot...why? Blizzards servers can barely handle a normal days worth of traffic. But to post an article covering expansion information here of all places...that's just cruel.

Re:WOW server can't take the load...how strange

[fyndor]

OMG Slashdot, do u get sick enjoyment from crashing servers every other time you post something. I went to the page ealier in the day, then Slashdot posted this post, read a few comments, then decided to go back and have another look and it had been Slashdotted :( Doh

Re:WOW server can't take the load...how strange

[fyndor]

Lol not only that page but the wow website in general is down, man this sight is powerful. The load slashdot creates on a webserver should be the basis for load testing of websites, I don't think it can get much worse than this. Man who needs elaborate DOS attacks when you can just add a link in a Slashdot post and *poof* no more website

Summons

[Yomic]

Shamans have two different elementals to choose from while mage has to go DEEP into frost to get theirs. Sucks for fire mages, but Invis is a nice addition :). Warriors get a move to block the next attack of another party member... Genious! And yes, pallies spells are kinda lacking :/. Overall, it's pretty mediocer, but I'm sure Blizz will get the unbalancedness out before the final product (hopefully).

Re:Summons

[GodaiYuhsaku]

Invisible is only going to be worth it if it is an aggrodump/takes you out of combat. Its 20 seconds every 5 minutes....

Re:Talent?

[skoaldipper]

I have a real talent for sitting on my ass while snacking on a can of Pringles in front of a computer, fantasizing I'm King Theoden making sweet snoo snoo to Liv Tyler on my cold castle marble floor. I've never played WoW before, but what talent tree class do I belong to?

Because you never played the game.

[Shivetya]

You got it right, you did the grind.

As such you would be clueless as to why people continue to play the game. See, they are playing a game. You were in a race, with what no one knows, but obviously you did not come to play. First and foremost, you cannot win at a MMORPG, so where is the rush?

Apparently the MMORPG crowd you hang with is a minority. Then again people with your mindset normally are. Do you jump from game to game? If you only spent a month in WOW I can't see how you spend more in any other.

Yeah this borders on bashing but if I had a PENNY for everyone who claims WOW is dieing or that everyone they know doesn't play it I would be so rich it would be silly.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[aafiske]

Mighty high flame setting on your stove there, boss.

No, WoW isn't dying, but the grandparent had a point. You seriously run out of things to do in the game at a certain point. Maybe he races through things and reached it early.

I played for about a year, took my time, levelled up a warrior and a priest (one horde, one alliance). And you know what? It got real tedious, real grindy, and real pointless. I sat and thought 'Why am I logging in? To grind to get a better item/new skill. So I can get better items/new skills more effectively. Huh. Waitaminnit.'

WoW is not at all unique with regard to this problem, but it's not immune to it either.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[snuf23]

Same here. Played for about 10 months. One level 60 character, a 43 and assorted alts in the 20s and 30s. I wasn't into high end raiding and PVP was time consuming. I got bored and the little irritating things started to bug me more and more. Needing to tweak my interface and macros for every patch, having to wait in a queue to login, having to wait in a queue to get in battlegrounds, having to wait an hour or more to get a raid group together.
I really enjoyed the game but I didn't see any point in continuing to play as I couldn't find anything to do where the fun outweighed the annoyance.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[x-kaos]

I don't think the flame setting was to high, the post was accurate! Honestly have you met people that play/played EQ? They really didn't do it to have fun mostly, I lived with some for a while years back. It was all about gear and having some sort of superior feeling. They lived for people to inspect them and it blew my mind. They would get through whatever the new raid thing was there and moan and complain while they talked down on any EQer not obsessed.
    Yea WoW isn't perfect, but if you make a game your life, expect not to have much content left to play.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[Kabal`]

World of Raidcraft.

You're right, if you're not into Raiding then end game wow does only consist of pointlessly long grinds for minute item upgrades, or (IMHO) boring as hell PVP.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[lymond01]

I played EQ "for fun"...two years and I had a single paladin up to level 38 (never did get those new spells). At that level, I was meeting people who were out not to have fun, but not to die, and that got real boring, real quick.

"Let's go camp the bears," they'd say, because it was safe XP. But who wants safe? What kind of paladin doesn't want to fight to save the group, casting lay hands on the besieged wizard just in time to port the rest of the party out, while taking his death blow just as the blue lights starts flashing.

Pulling and killing wasn't a game. It was one method of watching your XP bar go up. Even with people you had a good time with in chat, it just didn't have the adrenaline needed to keep me interested.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[mdarksbane]

Yep. That's the theoretical beauty of the social game, though. I'm about as geared up as I care to be on both of my characters, but I still enjoy random instances with no loot for me left in them because I'm running it with guildmates.

I think most good games like that go in stages - there's the point where you are wowed by the newness of it, the part where you're racing to get all the best stuff and become really powerful, and then the part where it's mostly a place to hang out with all the friends you met while doing the other two.

Because of #3, you always end up playing a social game long after the play-worthiness of the actual video game wore off. It's happened to me in every online game I've played for more than a month.

If you never made those friends, then of course you're going to be saying "why the heck is anyone still playing that stupid old game" :) Because I don't expect any game to still hold my attention, for the game itself, for that long.

WoW was good enough to make me enjoy my first few months of play for just the game, and it's good enough now that it's still enjoyable while I hang out with my friends. At some point, it will become enough of a grind that it isn't worth even that any more, but I think personally I've at least got until the Burning Crusade is released until that happens.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[jaydonnell]

"I wasn't into high end raiding and PVP was time consuming."

i.e. you weren't into wow. That's fine, but wow is raiding and pvp. If you don't like those then you don't like wow. I'm a bit so so with raiding, but I love pvp especially world pvp.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[snuf23]

"wow is raiding and pvp"

Actually, no. If you had said "the end game in wow is raiding and pvp" you would be correct.
There are plenty of people that enjoy small party questing and 5 instances but don't care for 40 man raids. The best times I had in the game were 5 man groups in Dire Maul.
I also did raid extensively. My raid tracker logged somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 raids run. The prospect of having to do the runs over and over for the 40 man runs just didn't seem fun. My old guild has gone on to do BWL and start on AQ20. Whee. Nine months after I left and they've been running the same content over and over again constantly. Onyxia, MC, BWL over and over.
When I left world PVP was limited to pointless bashing at the crossroads or south shore. I hope the new world pvp option works well, because that was just pointless. And if you wanted to play Battlegrounds you had to wait upwards of 45 minutes. Not my idea of fun. Hopefully thats fixed now. There was no way I could ever hit top of the ladder in PVP so there was very little point in doing it. I wouldn't be able to get the nice gear. From a pure gameplay standpoint I think WoW PVP (at least battlegrounds) is pretty weak compared to a proper FPS like Battlefield 2.
There are also other things to do in WoW. For awhile I got into manipulating the AH. I needed money for my Epic mount. My character was an alchemist/herbalist. I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to corner the market on certain items and also what times large guilds were raiding so I could jack up prices on supplies they needed. It was really fun seeing how easily the AH could be manipulated once you had a thousand gold or so to play with.
Considering I played WoW for almost a year and tried all the aspects of it from soloing to pvp to 40 man raids, I'm not sure how you can say that I wasn't "in to" WoW. Although it's true to say I didn't get into the high end game of WoW.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[jaydonnell]

i agree with you about the raids vs the 5 mans. I love 5 mans, 10 mans, and even the 20 mans, but i hate the 40 man raids. I personally love PVP and it's much better now with the BG queues. I haven't tried the world pvp enough to say much about it, but I actually like attacking towns :)

"There was no way I could ever hit top of the ladder in PVP so there was very little point in doing it. I wouldn't be able to get the nice gear."

I'll never hit the top of the ladder either, but the point for me isn't to hit the top of the ladder, It's to have fun! I have fun doing pvp. It's weird actually. When i get into the mode where i'm thinking "i gotta get xxx gear" then wow stops being fun. When I just play without caring about gear or goals then it's fun again. I think that's why wow works so well for me. I personally love starting new characters and going thru all the leveling and 5 mans with completely different play styles. And I love pvp.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[snuf23]

"I'll never hit the top of the ladder either, but the point for me isn't to hit the top of the ladder, It's to have fun! I have fun doing pvp. It's weird actually. When i get into the mode where i'm thinking "i gotta get xxx gear" then wow stops being fun."

Fair enough. I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't obsess on gear or xp but I like to feel progression of some sort. I think the issue I had with PVP was partially my class. As a lvl 60 Druid specc'd restoration (this was also before the talent revamp that made feral a real option) I was best at supporting other players yet most of the time the PVP group was too disorganized for me to effectively run support. PVP with my lvl 40ish Paladin was actually a lot more fun.

Re:Because you never played the game.

[jaydonnell]

I've played a druid more than any class, but i seem to play my lock more these days. I've had a druid since the old days and it's much much better now. All druids get innervate as a spell and it was replaced in the talent tree with an instant heal type thing. feral is much more fun these days.

Re:Leeroy

[Thisfox]

Ah yes. But I don't see why he got so famous: every single Pally I've quested with occasionally becomes a "Pally-Kaze", to the disgust (and delight) of the rest of the party. He didn't do anything unusual.

So uhh

[Crilen007]

Is there a strategy guide out yet?

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Well, look who posted it. It's CmdrTaco, the same guy who wrote a long, whiney, seven-page essay about the fact he had to change his World of Warcraft name because "Cmdr" violates the rule of no titles in nicknames. Taco's defense was that he had the nick for years, and goshdarned it, he's CmdrTaco of Slashdot, so he should get to keep it. It might be one of the most meaningless articles ever posted to Slashdot.

Re:Question

[__aaclcg7560]

Probably a member of the Paladin class. Or maybe Taco's drunk beer buddies running around naked.

Marvel's gonna be *pissed*

[shigelojoe]

From the Paladin talent calculator:

"Avenger's Shield
Hurls a Holy Shield at the enemy, dealing 270 to 330 Holy damage, dazing them then jumping to nearby enemies. Affects three targets."

Why not just change the class name to Captain America while you're at it?

Re:Marvel's gonna be *pissed*

[Couchmanx]

Captain Americas Shield did at least 450-500 Damage, dazing and jumped to nearby enemies, and hits at least 6 targets .. So Marvel won't be too pissed about it.

Re:Marvel's gonna be *pissed*

[FacePlant]

Beacuse some people appreciate the sublety of the joke, and don't
need to have the joke hurled at them and two of their friends in
order to get it.

Wait. nevermind.

Nice Paladin Improvements

[andy9701]

As typical, every class thinks every other class got a better deal, but the Pallies get to mean it ;)

While that was said in jest, I would actually say that Paladin's didn't get a raw deal this time. Not only can we be viable tanks, but also a lot of the improvments focus on Paldins being in the thick of things, going melee on mobs, instead of standing in the back and healing. That's a definite improvement in my book.

Re:

[andy_fish]

As typical, every class thinks every other class got a better deal,

Warlock here, I don't think that at all! Heh heh heh.

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[brkello]

Lots of people care. WoW has transcended the games section. You ask who gives a.....but you post anonymous because you know a lot of people do. The real question is..."who gives a" about your posts, Mr. anonymous.

Re:Question

[Weremooseadillo]

They are, in fact, members of the paladin class. I thought that was pretty common slang, but I guess not.

Re:Everquest 2 / Vanguard

[deathy_epl ccs]

Is anyone playing Everquest 2 these days? I've been playing it the past couple of days and it seems way better than WoW.

Really? I installed EQ2 because I got myself a buff new box and wanted to push it, and I'm able to turn everything up all the way in EQ2 but I gotta say I was very underwhelmed. The textures were for the most part terrible, the terrain engine was ugly and generally speaking I failed to get what so many of my friends that are harcore EQ fans mean when they say "it looks so realistic!"

Vanguard, OTOH, looks like it's going to be good looking. Hope it plays well too.

Undead Paladin!

[Damvan]

I won't be happy until I have an Undead Paladin!

DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[crumshot]

Imagine that, DPS warrs get fucked again. Compared to the other revealed class trees, arms/fury warriors get the shaft once more. *sigh* I think the only thing I'm really excited about is the %hit skill in the fury tree. I've been wanting one of those forever. Props to Blizz for putting that in. Imp Pummel is pretty nice too, but the 41 pt talent is pretty lackluster IMO, especially because of the cooldown. Being very well-geared, I already generate enough rage to spam Bloodthirst and Whirlwind as it is. Rage isn't an issue for me.

At least the new prot skills are very very nice. Seems Blizz is slowly pushing us toward a tank-only class which is sad as the well-geared DPS warrs in my guild can put up just as much damage as a rogue. It makes full prot a lot more viable of a tank than a DPS/prot hybrid spec now.

Oh yeah, anyone notice how Blizz quietly nerfed Flurry? Now it only procs on a white hit instead of a special (BT, WW, etc). Awesome.

-- 7/33/11 NE warr

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[Anonymous Coward]

"which is sad as the well-geared DPS warrs in my guild can put up just as much damage as a rogue."

  Which is exactly why DPS Warriors were not improved much. They have no business outdamaging rogues with equivalent gear.

  Rogues wear leather. Rogues cannot tank. Rogues have no taunting abilities. The only thing they bring to a raid is enormous damage and the luxury of not having to worry about a mana pool. The only other primary ability they have unique to them is Stealth, which is currently almost completely worthless in raid level PVE.

  If a Warrior is matching damage with a rogue, and also gets to tank in a pinch by swapping in a shield, or taunt in an emergency to save a caster then why have rogues?

  Warriors have been ridiculously overpowered since they buffed itemization past Arcanite Reaper. Since Rage generation scales with damage, the advent of legendary weapons and epics with dps over 70 has given them far too much power in long drawn out fights (where rage management is never an issue) Finally they are able to do someting about it in the expansion and they are going through with it.

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, was there a single word of English in that post?

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[crumshot]

If a Warrior is matching damage with a rogue, and also gets to tank in a pinch by swapping in a shield, or taunt in an emergency to save a caster then why have rogues?

1. Rogues have aggro reducing abilities, which warrs do not. If they accidentally pull aggro on, say Vael, they can fade (or whatever its called) to get rid of aggro. If a warr pulls aggro on Vael, a wipe ensues because he can't get rid of aggro. There's still advantages to having rogues.

2. It takes a TON of gear to get a DPS warr to output as much damage as a tier1 rogue. I had to get completely purple in tier2 and AQ gear to match rogue damage. It takes far less time/gear for a rogue to do that much damage. Why shouldn't the very top DPS warrs do as much damage as a rogue? It's like 0.01% of the world population.

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[extra the woos]

Wow you must whine a lot on the WoW forums too. DPS Warriors getting the shaft? Are you kidding me? LoL! You are complaining that you do rogue-like dps??? The 41 pt fury talent isn't that good? Are you nuts??? An extra 200 attack power. It's basically a melee talent version of a ToeP or ZHC. Use it every time that it's up and it'll make your BT's hit a lot harder for sure.

Tactical Mastery made into a tier0 talent??? That is a buff to DPS warriors in itself. Especially at lower levels.

I don't think you have really thought your complaint all the way through.

The precision talent, by itself, is an AMAZING talent for a dual weild warrior, especially against high level stuff. Unless you mean to tell me you have +20 to hit from your gear already. If you do, this will let you put on some better dps gear for some slots.

Same with improved berserker stance.

Well geared DPS warriors already can pump out the most DPS in the game in a lot of circumstances, PLUS they tank just fine in any non-raid instance, and on some raid stuff they can offtank just fine with a simple gear switch.

I also don't think you are taking to account the possibility of how high the damage increase on heroic strike could be to a dazed target, especially in PVP.

I do agree that the improved whirlwind talent is lackluster at best, no one will take it.

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[extra the woos]

Rigghttttttt. You don't need tier2 gear to match rogue damage. Though I DO agree that it takes a lot of time. You underestimate the kick-assness of some of the +crit/+hit smithing gear. It is hard and time consuming and takes a ton of cash to get, but it is very nice. You also aren't taking into account PVP. Lots (most that I know, but I won't make judgements on you or your guild) of DPS-oriented warriors PVP...a lot. PVP gear shouldn't be underestimated. ESPECIALLY since in the expansion it is switching to a system where you can spend your points to get gear instead of an endless treadmill of rank that decays. That should make the uber pvp weps obtainable for anyone, even though it will take them a while!

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[extra the woos]

Hate to reply to myself, but again, I just want to point out that DPS warriors can tank fine in non-raid instances as long as they have non-shitty gear. And the expansion is going to be less huge-raid oriented. Which means less worrying about aggro. PLUS...Bloodlust for both sides! That's gonna kick ass right there.

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[Avatar8]

"DPS warrior" That's an oxymoron.

Warriors are not meant to deal damage. Warriors are meant to stand there, take damage, provide a single target for the healer to focus upon and keep the mob from killing those that are dealing damage.

If you're talking PvP, you have a point, but not for serving as a main or off tank in an instance.

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[Nazmun]

So, what are offtanks that aren't full prot supposed to do for 85% of the raid that doesn't require them to tank?

Re:DPS warrs get nerfed... again

[Avatar8]

Three things:

- Be the second highest on the mob's aggro list, so if the MT gets booted, the OT will have aggro.
- Recapture aggro back from any that someone mis-targets (hunter, mage) or grabs aggro due to actions (priest, druid)
- Drop some damage (yes, I guess this is where you were going, but I think building aggro is higher priority than dealing damage)

I know there are DPS warriors and that they have their place in groups, raids, battlegrounds and general PvP. I just don't think anyone should be surprised that Blizzard makes changes that negatively affect warrior DPS since that's not their function.

Re:Talent?

[I Like Pudding]

Human Paladin

Re:

[Carnage Pants]

I'm planning on rerolling a Horde Warlock (likely Blood Elf for the AoE silence) and the new affliction talents make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. At this point, I'm thinking of 45/5/11. Having Corruption, Curse of Agony and Unstable Affliction will be great for PvE and just throwing multiple DoT's on every player I see in PvP. Sure, warlocks with Ruin/Conflag will probably do a little better in PvP, but being able to throw 3 DoTs on every enemy I see will be quite exceptional.

Re:Talent?

[Worthless_Comments]

Female human paladin on a RP server. Truth.

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[harves]

Um, try re-reading that article. If I recall correctly, it wasn't CmdrTaco whinging. It was CmdrTaco surprised at himself about how attached he was to his name. It was introspection. It probably sounds like he's whinging because he's describing how much it bothered him, but I don't recall him saying "I'm right and they're wrong". I do recall him saying "I'm surprised at how attached I am to that name".

Feel free to flame me if I'm wrong about that.

Tankadin Viable Now?

[SydShamino]

I played a paladin as a tank for the first year+ of release. I quit after Blizzard came out and said "paladins should only tank in some 5-man content when the group can't find a warrior or a druid."

Now it seems they've reneged on that promise and made some changes to boost tanking. Any paladins out there see improvements that would make it worth coming back? I'm looking for a role as a 5-10-man main tank and a raid off tank, with healing as a backup when off tanking isn't necessary.

Re:Tankadin Viable Now?

[andy9701]

Any paladins out there see improvements that would make it worth coming back?

The two improvements that help the most in this reguard are Righteous Defense (use it on a player, any mobs attacking them will attack you instead), and the base, passive ability where you get mana back when healed (can't recall the name offhand). Plus there are some very nice additions to the Protection talent tree.

I've been a Paladin tank for the last year or so, and was recently considering changing, due to the fact that when raiding I rarely get to tank (it does come in handy sometimes, though). Given these changes, I'm definitely going to stick it out as a Tankadin until the expansion hits.

Leaked Where?

[siegesama]

Where's this leak the post mentions? I want to find out about Hunters, which are left out of the linked page.

Re:Question

[Korin43]

Remember, not ALL of Slashdot plays WoW (just 90%..)

Slow much?

[cubicledrone]

This game must be real zippy. "Stun, slow, disorient, daze, snare, root, stun, freeze, cripple, root, slow, stun" Wonder what combat is like? Does everyone sort of like stumble around in a haze like post-game NFL tailgaters?

Re:Slow much?

[Rogerborg]

I refer you to the game of the South Park episode Cripple Fight.

Re:Slow much?

[CottonEyedJoe]

Crowd control is a big part of the game. In objective based PvP and in higher level PvE encounters taking enemies out of the fight, even for a few seconds can mean the difference between winning and losing. As a priest (healer), I spend alot of time looking at "You cant do that while incapacitated" or some such message during PvP games.

The "capture the flag" warsong gulch pvp game at high skill levels is won on crowd control, especially in the 3 lower brackets where chasers dont easily have the ability to outrun the carrier.

Re:Slow much?

[pete6677]

Cubie, where have you been all summer? I've missed your consistantly negative drumbeat of ideas. There have been tons of career related forums that were just begging for you to post about your love of middle management.

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[3263827]

For god's sake learn to spell. It's whining, not whinging wtf that is.

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[Graff]

From the American Heritage Dictionary:
whinge
intr.v. Chiefly British whinged, whinging, whinges
To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.

[Dialectal alteration of Middle English whinsen, from Old English hwinsian.]
whinger n.
whingingly adv.

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[geminidomino]

Actually, you are wrong.

Whinge

Lack of mention for...

[vix86]

I've noticed theres been a lack of mention for the sheer stupidity in Blizz's new talent points. Maybe some people don't realize it but if you play WoW enough you might realize that PvP is completely BROKE now. While I don't feel like explaining it in depth I will put it as simple as possible.

The inclusion of 10 new talent points allows for all classes to now go 30/31 into 2 trees of their choice. As a warlock I can now get Soul Link and also pick up Ruin (check mentioned references for info on these) and still have 9 points to spare to put somewhere. That means I will have a ton more damage from crits on top of longer surviability.

Warriors will be able to get Mortal Strike and Deathwish, which essentially makes them death carrying a huge weapon to anyone not in plate.

Rogues will be able to go Seal Fate and something of their choosing, my friend pointed out that he can do Seal Fate/Hemo which makes it so he can generate Combo points in a matter of seconds. Allowing for a constant stream of damage.

The new talents might seem appealing and cool to some but I hope everyone hasn't quickly dismissed the old talents we have right now. The game is nearly perfectly balanced as it stands. The difference between a balanced class and a broken class right now is anywhere from 1-3 extra talent points, and that is what Blizz is going to be giving everyone out there. And since weapons and armour are going to be scaling in the coming future it only means that the those chunk of talents that boost all around, are just going to become stronger.

The game is going to enter another long trudge where Blizz spends months upon months to fix the mistake of giving characters 10 extra talent points.

Just my 2 cents and some insight.

Re:Lack of mention for...

[JavaLord]

The game is nearly perfectly balanced as it stands.

Hi Tigole. I didn't know you read Slashdot.

Re:Lack of mention for...

[steveo777]

I've commented here already, or I'd have modded you up. A lot of very good points. Personally, I still haven't seen the new talent trees with the 41 point talents, but I wasn't sure if that was how they were going to do it. But I really enjoyed the assassination tree mingled with the combat tree. Using the combat for the crits/hits and the assassination for more and more combo points and a bit more poison damage. It's been very effective.

Also, I have a warlock alt that I absolutely hate. I guess just don't like the pet classes, but I had tried a hunter and figured a Lock would work out better. But if the talent tree makes it a little easier to handle, I might stick with him.

Re:Lack of mention for...

[vix86]

Incorrect, Mortal Strike is 31, but Deathwish is a 21 point talent. You'll be able to pick it up and still have most of your new talent points left over.

Re:Question

[Killjoy_NL]

I'm a Palli, www.palli.nl (me on the left) :D

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[brkello]

Boredom at work is a dangerous thing.

Re:Question

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

What are "Pallies?" Taco's summary makes no sense to me.

Why is that some slashdot readers, when something in the summary is outside their knowledgge, they can't just look it up on Google.

Tip for you - if you're using firefox, just select the word/acronym/phrase, context click & choose "search web for..." It's not that hard and you're then not bothering a group of peole who want to discuss the article, rather than answer questions from noobs.

Re:Question

[switchable]

And why would the other 10% even read this ? Pally and Shammy are common WoW-slang.

Rogues FTW!

[NetNinja]

NetNinja = WarNinja!

www.warninja.com

Because it is the only MMO I can play :(

[Builder]

WoW is the only MMO that I can play on my Apple and I'm not buying 2 PCs (one for me, one for the wife) just so that we can move to another MMO

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[asylumx]

"whinging"...

You keep saying that word.... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Sony wants to know...

[asylumx]

How much did Blizzard pay Slashdot for this kind of advertisement?

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

"whinging"...

You keep saying that word.... I do not think it means what you think it means.

From The free dictionary:

To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner.

How was the parent using it incorrectly?

Re:Talent?

[crawling_chaos]

I'd say troll for sure. A very noobish one at that.

Re:Talent?

[SilentChris]

I've never played WoW before, but what talent tree class do I belong to?

You'd probably belong to the "Stereotypical View of MMO Players" or "Stereotypical View of Nerds" classes. Their special ability is "+5 to Old Jokes That Should Have Been Retired in the 80s". Chance to crit(ically fail) is pretty high.

Re:As a warlock, I can officially say

[Sifer]

Hrmmm, with the release of the expansion, all players who DON'T have it can still access the new talents AND level to 70. You just can't create one of the new races, go to outlands and the new instances etc. We will also still be getting monthly patches and updates, expansion or not.

Re:WoW, who gives a bards ass?

[ConallB]

You have killed my parent thread! Prepare to die!

Lawful Evil

[otis wildflower]

The new Blood Elves are addicted to magic, and their culture revolves around the idea that totaliarianism is A Good ThingTM. For instance, see how did they manage to get Paladins: they captured and enslaved a holy entity that would have given holy powers to them had they simply asked! But no, Blood Elves don't ask, Blood Elves take!

I never understood why there weren't Lawful Evil paladins, given what the history of holy warriors has taught us... Blood Elves being Lawful Evil looks pretty cool to me, and totalitarianism is IMO the ultimate expression of Lawful Evil.

Re:Lawful Evil

[alexgieg]

WoW doesn't have static alignments. A priest, for example, can be of the Discipline persuasion (more or less what would be the Neutral alignment in D&D), pure Holy (Good), pure Shadow (Evil), or a mixture of two or of the three. Furthermore, you can change your distribution of talents anytime by spending some gold. So, at least in theory, you could be a Schizophrenic Priest too: good one day, evil the next, good AND evil in the 3rd, neither in the four...

Maintenance Day

[sohp]

It's Tuesday. What a day to pick to run a WoW story with a link to the website. It always gets slammed by players on Tuesday as it is, looking for the updated PvP rankings and generally satisfying their addiction on the forums during the weekly downtime. On top of that, a slashdotting. Better hope Nef doesn't pay you a visit.

Re:Graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

...since it's now double the time to get to endgame.

So, it'll take people longer to complete the game... Umm, why wouldn't a subscription based game not want to do this? Remember, Blizzard is there to walk the balance of making money and not pissing off too many people.

Re:Everquest 2 / Vanguard

[Avatar8]

I'm glad someone out there agrees with me about the way EQ looks. I thought I was somehow visually impaired when others would say "EQ's graphics are great; they're so realistic." All I saw were blocky polygon bodies, too small texture samples (you could see the patterns too easily) and extremely dull colors. That was the major reason I never tried EQ. Afterwards I heard about how much grinding was involved and I was grateful I didn't get sucked into that blackhole of gameplay. Camelot was bad enough for me, and it was rather quick leveling compared to EQ.

If EQ is realistic, give me cartoonish anytime.

I'd much rather play a game that simply looks good whether its in a comic-book, cartoonish, anime or surrealistically painted style. Every game that tries to look "real" fails miserably in my book. Likewise for the console games. I hear people rave about Madden football. It looks like watching a stop-motion game on an old TV using an antenna instead of cable or satellite.

Either...

[Trai]

Either you haven't read much of the storyline ingame/books or you think that a different set of beliefs or mores means evil.

Check these sections of Wikipedia:

Warcraft Universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_universe

Warcraft Characters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Warcraft_char acters

Deathwish

[Nazmun]

Uh, deathwish + berserker stance will also make it so the warriors will also take a shitload more damage. Most of the warriors fury related dps increases come with a sacrifice in survivability.