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World of Warcraft Patch 2.3 Coming Next Week
Blizzard has officially announced that World of Warcraft Patch 2.3 will be dropped onto live servers next Tuesday. It's a huge update to the behemoth of Massively Mutiplayer games, including elements like a new raid zone called Zul'Aman, significant class changes, new questing content in the Dustwallow Marsh zone, and an increase in leveling speeds between 20-60. The full patch notes are available on the official site. "Elsewhere Guild Banks let you keep track of and organize your stocks much more efficiently, the Auction House has been revamped so it is easier to use, and you will be able to pick up daily quests so you have something to keep you from falling asleep as you go back to the same dungeons or battlegrounds again and again. The old 40-man Alterac Valley battleground has been fiddled with, too, so it should now have extra added fun, and those of you around the mid-level mark should head to Dustwallow Marsh for new quests and speedy leveling."
If you'd just do what we tell you and quit yer gripin' everything would be chocolate sprinkles and rainbows! -AC
"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted." - John Lennon
Living With a Nerd
Whiny players claim this after every buff or nerf, major or minor. Shouldn't the WoW user base be in negative numbers by now?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Those numbers are from someone who clearly stated he's only mined about half the available armory data. And the armory only includes characters from North America and Europe, not Asia.
So about 9 million active characters in 2 of 3 game markets, and Blizzard claims 9 million total accounts active right now (and they explicitly exclude closed, expired trial, etc., accounts from "active").
Pretty much lines up, really.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The more they take content and put it into instances, both pve and pvp; the more it becomes a pointless game to play. Why play a Mmorpg which has turned into an Orpg? Does it matter that there can be 2k people on your server when you only ever see a dozen or so every night because the game is all instanced?
Then there's the cottage cheese-y-ness they've done with pvp. It used to take some skill, quick thinking and some organization. Now with resilience , other damage mitigation and overpowered healing that can keep anyone alive things like arena matches turn into long grind fests. The outcome of pvp encounters used to be maybe 50% skill and preparation, 20% luck and 30% gear and class make-up. With all of the changes they've introduced this past year, your typical arena match is determined by 10% skill and preparation, 5% luck, 85% gear and class make-up. Doesn't that sound exhilarating kids?
This happens with a lot of mmorpgs. They are released in a form that is slightly buggy and end up with all of these unplanned and unforeseen novelties in terms of gameplay, strategy, interaction. Then after the corporation that develops it spends a few years tightening the cogs and getting RID of the unplanned and unforseen elements as well as anything that gets complained about by the userbase, voila! You end up with a bland, boring game no one plays anymore.
I was a member of a guild with over 100 people and kept in touch with a former guild of 200. They've both dried up and shrivelled out of existence because every patch slowly turned the game more and more bland. Both 'realms' I used to frequent have died horrible deaths and the main cities are ghost towns.
Bring back the wild west. Bring back the buggy, unforseen, wild, insulting, violent mess that was Ultima Online back in the early years. There were no cookie cutter classes. There was gambling, extortion, confidence tricksters, scammers, spammers, raiders, looters, exploiters, thieves, honorable and dishonorable fighters and gangs. There was somewhat of a safety zone in towns. There were no factions, everyone and everything was fair game. There was no one way to play the game, I'm sure people have so many interesting stories about how they or friends played. I had a friend who liked to spend his time stealing useless items. He was a weird looking fellow and a clepto. He also enjoyed running around town naked. He would yell at the NPCs and get angry at the guards when they caught him and killed him. That was his take of the game.
If I wanted to play around in a world where everything gets regulated and restrained and anything that causes people to whine gets the axe I would... Not go pay $50 bucks + $15 per month to do it on a computer, there's plenty of it in a non-virtual world.
The only reason WOW hasn't collapsed like a house of soggy cards is that there is still an influx of new players and the game does have a great unique feel with LOTS of art and content to discover as you level. But once you're done leveling, the game is over.
Liberty.
The churn numbers in WOW is probably greater than many games have total. Yet if every troll post I read about WOW losing players in huge numbers were true what does it say about other games who are obviously NOT getting those players? Blizzard doesn't always do the best job at class balance but they do a far better job than other companies, their numbers attest to this. While I am taking a break from WOW I do plan on getting back in, changes in this patch may be enough for me as I can bring up some other classes and see how the game plays out for them.
Part of the magic of WOW is that it really does have separate classes where the differences are enough to grant four to six different ways to play the game. The hybrids blend obviously, but melee, magic, and ranged melee (bow), all work well and in many cases require different play styles. Magic is the most diversified where playing a priest is very different from a mage just as its different from a warlock.
I have a warrior and to claim that only classes the lead design or high placed developers are being buffed is to ignore the fact that many people with these classes have been waiting for their day in the sun. If what you implied were true the largest number of players would have long focused on Warrior - which is not the case. Shaman get some tweaks now to enhance two of their trees. Yeah warriors get some bennies here but each class received buffs as well as some tuning which tones down overpowering areas.
My beef has been that PvP/Arena gets way too much focus but obviously I am not in a majority as it appeals to large number of players. The problem of course is that these are the most competitive players and as such will be the most vocal. If they didn't bitch then Blizzard would have a problem, that would be a more clear indicator that people were leaving.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why is that every time WoW is mentioned on Slashdot, it seems half the posts are from bitter, pathetic whiners who complain that the game no longer fulfills some need driven by personality defects?
Hey, guess what? We're glad you quit playing. And no one cares why!