World of Warcraft - Wrath Of the Lich King Is In Alpha

simrook writes to tell us that World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has entered closed alpha testing, as reported by WoWInsider. Wrath of the Lich King, which we've discussed previously, will raise the level cap to 80 and introduce a new class: Death Knights. World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMORPG on the market with over 10 million subscribers. WoWInsider notes, "Various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict NDA."

Comments

No permadeath

[QuantumG]

means you've gotta keep moving those goal posts, cause anyone who grinds enough can get to them, and so the carrot keeps being moved further away from the donkey.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's a subscription game, and if a player dies, there's a good chance they'll say to hell with it and quit. They're not worried about making a game that doesn't go stale, they're worried about keeping money coming in.

Re:No permadeath

[snuf23]

How would it make the game not get stale? Rerunning the same quests in lvl 1-20 zones over again because you accidentally ran into a couple bears you couldn't handle?
Not too mention that many of WoW's encounters almost guarantee you will die the first try or second try until you get your strategy down (especially in instances and raiding).

Re:No permadeath

[LordKaT]

Oh boy.

OK, first off "it works in Counter-Strike" isn't a fair assessment. It's not a permadeath for a character that you've poured days/weeks/months of your life into.

it would prevent the game from getting stale - guess what? when your character dies you have to (*gasp*) PLAY THE SAME GAME OVER AGAIN! How is that NOT stale? In a permadeath situation you get to relevel in the same leveling spots, with the same quests, and grind the same bullshit you were grinding before.

solve the grind problem - do you even know what the "grind problem" is? Removing the grind is the only way to solve the grind problem. Permadeath is only going to cause characters to (*gasp*) grind to their original level AGAIN! That's just grind-tastic.

it works for Nethack - because Nethack is built around a game mechanic that makes it unique from World of Warcraft: the entire game is a random dungeon. World of Warcraft is a static world (aside from the expansion packs). If Nethack was the same dungeon, with the same monsters, the same story, the same items, the same skills, it would become very tedious to play.

it works for a variety of MUDs - people who play these MUDs are fucking psychotic.

it worked in almost all pencil-and-paper RPGs - because you didn't play the same campaign over and over and over again. If you did play the same campaign with different characters until you beat it, you a) missed the point of having multiple campaigns and b) have a serious OCD problem. Oh, and c) never experienced having your level 19 warlock die at the hands of a bastard GM.

Unless you change the core mechanics and introduce a random story generation algorithm, Permadeath would be the single most mind-numbingly annoying thing you could introduce into a modern game.

1984 called, they wanted to let you know that the gaming industry left you behind.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, based on your analysis you have just convinced me that the game can be nothing but boring through repetition with or without permadeath. It isn't even a game based on your description, just a chat room with visual aspects. Thank god I never bothered getting past level one and the collection of f*cking pelts.

Re:No permadeath

[Todd Fisher]

Not too mention that many of WoW's encounters almost guarantee you will die the first try or second try until you get your strategy down Kinda like in real-life, except for the whole second try part.

Re:No permadeath

[Spokehedz]

I wish there was a server with permadeath and you were on there. And while you were complaining on why this wasn't a Permadeath PVP server--I would gank you in the back.

Re:No permadeath

[Kenoli]

So you admit you've never actually played the game. Or in other words you don't know what you're talking about, and you're just full of bullshit.

Re:No permadeath

[Starrk]

Leveling in WoW is easy; getting the best equipment from raid dungeons or pvp can be very, very hard. If there were no more expansions, the vast majority of players would never be able to finish the existing content, so that's not the real problem.

No, even if you had permadeath (like that's a fun idea in an RPG that takes hundreds of hours to get through), you'd still get bored of the same old content, and want something new.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, sure. And by that logic, charging money for multiplayer play works for WoW, so why not have that for Nethack, any random MUD you can think of, or pencil and paper RPGs?

They're different games that work in different ways. What's a good idea for one isn't necessarily a good idea for the others. In my case, if there was permadeath in WoW I'd have gotten bored of it years ago. I'm pretty sure the same applies to many other players.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the right (or wrong, depending on perspective) vague description, you can make any game sound boring.

Sure, the game can sound boring when people describe it, but it can actually be quite enjoyable, and it's a far cry from the 70 levels of boring repetition you think it is.

Re:No permadeath

[Kurrel]

Diablo 2 implemented it and it got more people to play it longer. Though I agree it generally makes people grind more and take very little risks, you can't really say it's not an option for games anymore.

Re:No permadeath

[grahamd0]

But, like NetHack, Diablo 2 has randomly generated dungeons, so you're really just supporting the GP's point.

Re:No permadeath

[Planesdragon]

Unless you change the core mechanics and introduce a random story generation algorithm, Permadeath would be the single most mind-numbingly annoying thing you could introduce into a modern game. You say that like it's impossible.

Nothing aside from lowest-common-sucker planning keeps a real PvE MMO from doing just this. A very smart system would respond to player action -- a heavily hero-populated land would attract more and stronger villians, who spawn minion-quests and whatnot. You could even have stateful shared quests, where a quest remains active until completed by any character, which then triggers a different quest.

The real problem with MMOs like WoW is that the meat of the game isn't all that fun. Some, like City of Heroes, try and avoid it by purposefully making low-level re-play the focus of the game. Others, like Eve Online, say to heck with PvE and focus on the PvP side.

World of Warcraft is "warcrack" by design. They could make it fun and interesting and genuinely massive, but that'd require real work and wouldn't have the same profit margin.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who read this as "Wrath of the Lion King?"

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

i think i made it clear i did play it, but to be honest, barely, partly due to how inane it seemed. I have seen plenty of videos and watched my brother play to see that it is exactly as described, a game that doesn't require skill, just persistence. On that note, typically WOW players don't play other pc or console games because the multiplayer typically (but not always) requires a skill that is honed over time. Please tell me how I am wrong, I have always been fascinated by the attraction of MMO's in light of the mindlessness.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW is an extremely social game. If you're playing it and focusing on the leveling and the grind, you're not going to have fun.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too mention that many of WoW's encounters almost guarantee you will die the first try or second try until you get your strategy down (especially in instances and raiding).

Tactics, not strategy.

Strategy is in the long term. In WoW, the typical strategy is to build up the strength of your character by repeated battles, purchasing better weapons, and improving your tactics.

Tactics are what you use in individual battles and skirmishes.

Re:No permadeath

[P51mus]

Diablo 2's permadeath was optional, and was called "hardcore" mode. A lot less people played "hardcore" than normal mode.

Re:No permadeath

[everphilski]

it would prevent the game from getting stale - guess what? when your character dies you have to (*gasp*) PLAY THE SAME GAME OVER AGAIN! How is that NOT stale? In a permadeath situation you get to relevel in the same leveling spots, with the same quests, and grind the same bullshit you were grinding before.

One problem it would solve is the skew of "player age", that is, a bunch of capped level characters with the best gear they can possibly attain for their play style. In the "real world" the population distribution is not even, but is more distributed than in a MMO. This creates a very skewed world that is designed for the higher levels and essentially it's a runaway train. You need the next expansion to get the next 10 levels and the next round of gear and pacify the sheeple for a year while you build the next expansion.

There are ways to solve this that don't involve permadeath from combat, or a single combat scenario. Game designers just need to have balls and not design to the lowest common denominator.

Re:No permadeath

[Fishchip]

You've never met a MUD/MUX player, have you. Your call of bullshit is bullshit.

I'm sorry, I just made the same sweeping generalisation you did. I apologise.

Re:No permadeath

[FooAtWFU]

Well, Angband and Nethack and its Rogue-like friends manage pretty well. (Not quite WoW-level, but they don't have quite the same resources behind them.) They have different dynamics, though. The WOW dynamics, indeed, won't work for permadeath.

When death is a big deal, you take a lot more precautions to avoid death. In rogue-like games, you will typically try to maintain a stockpile of 'escapes' and 'healing', the two primary ways Not To Die in a tight spot. You also pay attention to various sorts of Detection - ways of avoiding tight spots altogether. And, of course, armor and resistances of various sorts. WoW does feature some moderate amounts of healing, but fewer escapes, and much less detection. There is also a disparity with the tactic of simply Running Away. In a game like Angband, the dungeon is infinite, and randomly generated each time, so if there's a room stuffed full of Big Evil Nasties in front of you, well, you just turn around and head another direction; there will surely be treasure later to make up for the loss. Nethack has random-but-finite dungeons, but it's still usually feasible to avoid tough spots until you're better prepared. And in either, there are often a variety of ways around a spot that could avoid that trouble altogether. (WoW, in the meantime, generally litters important areas with baddies, and doesn't provide sneaky back routes.) Here notice another facet of a randomly-generated world: in Angband and Nethack there are very few Important Areas. Most are throwaways.

I guess that the key thing, though, to avoid repeating Tedium, you simply need to avoid Repetition and Tedium in the beginning altogether, as much as you can. To make a good game, rather than just a decent one that's good and long.

Re:No permadeath

[daddyrief]

d) never had sex.

not so grind-tastic.

Re:No permadeath

[DrgnDancer]

Diablo II also had... saved games. I mean, seriously. Permadeath is OK when you can save the game and try again. Imagine every time your character died you had to start over again from level 1. Most people would never even see the stage 4 area Diablo lived in, let alone fight him if they had to restart the WHOLE thing every time they died. If you're talking about the multiplayer hardcore ladders, well a) I always thought those people were nuckin' futs, and b) the whole point of the ladders was to get as far as possible before dying. Hardly anyone ever beat the game that way. You played single player and/or non-permadeath multiplayer to see the content and get good at the fights before you ever tried the ladders.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

It does actually require skill. Not to the same extent that many other kinds of games do, and persistence is at least as significant a factor, but there is a level of skill required. And sure any idiot can get to level 70 given enough time, but once there only people with actual skill are able to do anything much in raids.

As for the kinds of quests you do while levelling, it's really only as mindless as you want to make it. If you only look at them as "okay, I just kill X number of Y and collect Z number of A, and do variations of that over and over again", of course you're going to see it as a mindless repetitive grind. But if you immerse yourself a little more and think of the reasons why this NPC is telling you to go on this particular quest and what you're achieving by it, and the places it takes you, it's more interesting. And of course, once you're at the level cap it's largely a different game.

Of course, it could be that this kind of game just isn't your cup of tea at all. My point still remains that it's not as mindless as it seems.

Re:No permadeath

[Architect_sasyr]

As a fellow nethack player I have to say the idea of permadeath is the one thing that has scared the people I idle in IRC with away from the game. Sure you can savescum if you want but in general the idea that you work so hard for things is ridiculous. Me, I'll never forget the day I was killed by my own kitten as I was 4 steps away from my chaotic alter ready to offer the amulet to my god. This sort of challenge/result, whilst hilarious, destroys the game play for people who don't get it.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Its interesting you use counterstrike as an example of a game that can use permadeath.

Counterstrike, unlike the pen and paper games of the 1980s, retains a freshness.
The freshness comes from two things, I'd venture to say. First off, the randomness of the other players makes every game different.
Secondly, the players of the game find it fun and satisfying.

There are many other reasons I am sure, but these are the ones that I think matter. Where WoW may have a world that is made fresh by the real living breathing people inhabiting it, it lacks the simple "fun factor" that makes a game a game.
I'd say that's why people feel addicted. I know when I pissed my time into WoW, it was sort of fun, but not genuinely so. People don't often say they are addicted to "baseball," or "reading." Could is because baseball and reading are genuinely satisfying.

Re:No permadeath

[edwardpickman]

You just explained a great mystery in life. Apparently Bush has been playing WOW this whole time and can't tell the difference between gaming and real life. Who would have guessed Bush was a gamer?

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

Diablo II did not have saved games for hardcore (i.e., perma-death mode) games. You have your character saved so you can stop playing and resume at a later point, but once you die, the game won't allow you to use that character again. Normal mode characters can die all they want, they'll only lose some experience (at most to their present level's floor) and gold.

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

What makes Nethack is not the randomly generated maps.

It's, on one hand, the fact that the whole world is random. Spell scrolls have different names for each spell in every game. Wands look different. Potions are of different colours.

On the other hand, and more importantly, the game is probably the most convoluted mass of hard-coded behaviour ever. Most items interact with a large portion of all other items in a meaningful manner. In fact, this sort of interaction is key in discovering what items actually do. Want to find out if an item's cursed? drop it on the floor and try to get your dog to voluntarily step on it (it's not cursed if he does). If it's not cursed, feel free to wear it and find out if it does anything unusual. Or zap a wand at the floor to see what it does. If the bugs on the floor stop moving, you're looking at a wand of death -- or perhaps just of sleep. If the bugs go away, it might be teleportation -- or invisibility! You also have to eat, or you'll starve. You'll mostly be eating stuff you kill, but you need to make sure it's both proper food (the gods don't like cannibalism, highly acidic monsters will give you a bad case of heartburn, and tripe rations are really meant for your pet. You might be able to stomach them, but odds are you'll puke, and be even hungrier) and fresh (food decays over time, and one of the first lessons I learnt is that zombies are, by definition, not fresh meat)

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

Despite your arguments of freshness, the perma-death model of CS isn't in any way, shape, or form, applicable to WoW. You accept the death model because there was close to zero time investment in creating your character, and because death is not, in fact, permanent. It's only a 10 minute, or what have you, respawn timer until the next match begins. Elsewhere Diablo II's perma-death was discussed, and that is indeed much closer to WoW's scope, but even then I doubt it would really make sense.

In fact, part of what makes it genuinely fun for me is the learning experience of raiding, and that, almost by definition, involves wipe after wipe after wipe to figure out how to get a specific boss down. Other than giving everybody some sort of safe escape mechanic to abort failed attempts, and made bosses much more lenient, in such a way that "failed attempts" doesn't mean "people are dead", I can't see how you'd achieve that. If you *do* give such a safe escape mechanism, then for all intents and purposes you have achieved something that is almost mechanically equivalent to WoW's death except you don't see your character as a ghost.

Re:No permadeath

[Kral_Blbec]

Or you could find the save files on your computer and back them up. Singleplayer at least.

Re:No permadeath

[zerocool^]

It's not the dying.

It's the lack of consequence.

In EVE, the mmo I play, taking a ship out is a risk. Take out a cheap ship, and you're likely to get wtfpwned by someone in a better ship. Take out an expensive ship, and lose it, and you may seriously be out an entire month's money making - but what a rush. Not to mention, if you die a bunch, someone else may move in and take your space.

In WoW, you die. Then nothing happens, you resurrect, and you pay 2 gold to repair your equipment that would be worth 45,000 gold if you could sell it (or more to the point, lost it and had to re-buy it), and then you go about your life.

Death needs consequence. I do agree with your qualm about not wanting to run 1-20 over again - but that's easily solved. You "save" your game in some magical fashion (i dunno, you talked to the tree faerie, and she knows of your deeds, and if you die, can revive a piece of your soul, with a loss of 10% of the exp you've gained since the last level up - whatever). In EVE, this is settled with cloning, but it could just as easily be called "magic".

If you want this in a fantasy game, wait for darkfall.

~X

Re:No permadeath

[kitsunewarlock]

I've tried to immerse myself. It ends up pissing me off when I get people saying like "oh, I did that quest. XY and Z happened." Plus the inevitable "LAWL NEWB JUST READ THE QUEST LOG FROM THOTTBOT!" when your in a group and want to skim the quest instead of just finding coordinates for the entity you need to talk with.

Re:No permadeath

[AuMatar]

No, it doesn't. Consequences aren't fun. I've played multiple MMOs with consequences, and I've played WoW. I would *NEVER* play one with again- its fucking annoying. Its one of the reason I quit them.

Re:No permadeath

[SL Baur]

Ditto. I tried out two MMOs when I first decided to try it. D&D Storm Reach was the first. In Storm Reach, you are penalized experience on death and after my trial period (and I had gone down to a store to buy a permanent copy to keep playing) I found out my character was permanently dead, well, that was that.

I then tried out World of Warcraft and I still have a running subscription. Two if you count the one for my wife.

I love Nethack, I've played it for over 2 decades, but it's a different sort of thing.

Re:No permadeath

[Skuldo]

http://www.avantnews.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=313 :D

Re:No permadeath

[mindwanderer]

I agree that it's not grinding if there is challenge present. I lost count of the number of hardcore characters I took through Diablo 2, and they were always fun right from the Den of Evil all the way up to Bhaal. Thing is, permadeath wouldn't be much of a challenge because world PvE in WoW is a complete joke and you could even bypass the difficult quests. And no, permadeath on a PvP server would never be implemented for reasons which I believe are quite obvious.

Re:No permadeath

[ukyoCE]

FYI, World of Warcraft HAS "stateful shared quests" which remain active until completed by any character, which then triggers a different quest. They've had several world events such as this (not sure if Sithilius was first?), and in BC they now have several other world quest events and world quest cycles that depend on the world-wide progress, as opposed to single-character progress.

Funny how you seem to know all the secrets to making a MMORPG "fun and interesting and genuinely massive", yet none of the companies that make these games can figure it out. When are you releasing your amazing new MMO so I can experience your great work?

Re:No permadeath

[Molt]

If a player dies they're not likely to come back, but I think it it's just their character dying there may be more of a chance the player'll stay with it.

Re:No permadeath

[DrXym]

Unless you change the core mechanics and introduce a random story generation algorithm, Permadeath would be the single most mind-numbingly annoying thing you could introduce into a modern game.

I think the clue to make it work is your "unless". Of course it would be boring in WOW, because WOW is a static game world where change is restricted to day & night, some quests and other extremely minor variations. Its no wonder it would be boring because the world never changes. If anything perma death would highlight how utterly dull the WOW gameworld actually is - there are no consequences of slaughtering all the creatures in the forest because they respawn, there are no lasting consequences of anything that a player or race can do.

I think it would be a dumb idea for WOW to introduce it because it would show how flawed the game is. I don't think the idea in general is bad but it requires a world that is either dynamic or random - the two do not necessarily mean the same thing.

Re:No permadeath

[pokerdad]

Death needs consequence.

Death needs consequence if you want people to avoid dying.

I agree that the result of a world having no consequences to dying is absolute absurdity, however, most players seem to think that consequences to dying kills fun, and as long as the masses think that, no game will be as popular as wow without having carefree deaths.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

XP loss due to death is the worst idea ever implemented in MMORPGs. Period.

Re:No permadeath

[Pecisk]

It is not lack of consequences that binds people to games like World of Warcraft. It is short term entertainment, or shortly, fun.

I _love_ reality and space sims. This would make EVE Online a ideal match for me, no? But I am very slow to try it, and it is exact of these consequences. Problem is that I don't that much time for games, and even when I do several hours of WoW, my spouse gives me body signs that she would like to get me off that game and computer. And I have lot of other interests too.

So, it is not that EVE online would be bad and Wow would be perfect - it is all matters of point of view. But WoW is king of online games for just that - you can keep your gaming sessions short, it has huge investments in community stuff, usually friends are those people who introduce new players to the game. Almost 60% of the game is only playable when you are have good communications. It feels like fantasy chat with nice story with rich background (altought it feels sometimes plastered together, I like world design and style).

Anyway, even saying all this, I still would like to try EVE, but I still have to find someone giving me 10 days trial to check it out.

Re:No permadeath

[kv9]

Funny how you seem to know all the secrets to making a MMORPG "fun and interesting and genuinely massive", yet none of the companies that make these games can figure it out. CCP figured it out.

Re:No permadeath

[Turnpike Lad]

Permanent death will never work in a static, quest-based MMO like World of Warcraft. But it could definitely work in a game that actually tries to simulate a virtual world. There was a game called Trials of Ascension that I followed for years. The developers lost funding and it was never released, but I think it had an amazingly well-thought-out design. It was a full PvP, skill-based permadeath game. Characters had 100 lives each, but they were planning on adding a single life server as well. The first central idea of the game was that real power must come via real risk. To become a powerful mage, you would have had to discover a unique set of formulae for your character's spells, all the while risking death from backfire from critical failures. The goal was that about one in a hundred players who tried to become real, full-blown sorcerors would actually make it. Those who succeeded would be rewarded with great power. I feel that that power has more _meaning_ than that of a level 70 in WoW who simply had to grind for 40 hours to get there. This significance is impossible without the risk of permadeath. Another main tenet of ToA was that the world would be run by players. Instead of having a central currency, each town would be encouraged to mint their own currency and value it how they like. The lack of an easy way to bring goods from one place to another, and the selective availability of resources, would contribute to a real scarcity-based economy. Almost all items would be player-made, including player-written books, music and pictures. Towns would be built and territory claimed by player organizations. Players would become the leaders of the eleven religions. There were to be no NPC quests and the sole role of NPCs was as guards and hired workers. This meant that a character could make a positive contribution to their organization from the very beginning. Not just as fighters, but as crafters, artisans, builders, farmers. And it would be that participation that would increase your character's abilities, not running a static dungeon. And if your character died, you would have left a tangible mark on the game. Starting over would not be going through the same old content another time, because each character you make would contribute to the community in a different way. In a virtual world, you're playing both your character and your community. Your effort both improves your avatar and enriches the gameworld. When your character dies, your contributions to the community remain. What it comes down to is this: Permanent death can be implemented in modern games, to great utility. But the game must be designed for permadeath from the ground up. Sticking it in WoW will cause a disaster.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Blizzard figured it out, but that's a secret only known to 10 million+ people. Fortunately we have Slashdot superiority-complex nerds to reinvent the wheel here on a daily basis.

Re:No permadeath

[Angvaw]

Can't speak for the others, but in Nethack your death usually comes within the hour, or if you do really well, within several hours. You groan, check out your high score, and start again. Plus the game is mostly about handling random situations, so a replay of levels 1-n isn't going to feel too repetitive (others may disagree).

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft is "warcrack" by design. They could make it fun and interesting and genuinely massive, but that'd require real work and wouldn't have the same profit margin.

It's fairly obvious from the tone of your post that you hate WoW/Blizzard, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering to argue this point, but...

WoW is fairly massive. I've been playing now for over three years and there's content I still haven't gotten to. Granted, this is because I also have a life and do things like sleep and eat and work, but I suspect that some of the things that I find interesting don't interest you at all. That's fine, but making statements about something not being "fun and interesting and genuinely massive" simply come off as, well, kind of silly when something has as much flexibility as WoW does in how you play your character(s). You can be a hardcore raider all the time, you can focus on crafting, you can explore, you can pvp like a madman/woman, you can focus more on the social... Just because you didn't like the parts you played or soured on it doesn't mean it sucks for everyone.

And as other people have pointed out, they already use your brilliant idea.

Re:No permadeath

[Anne_Nonymous]

On the permadeath server, I'm a Level 1 Couch Potato with a +1 remote of channel changing.

Re:No permadeath

[elrous0]

I think you meant "gunk" not "gank." As in "Spokehedz gunks on guy's backs in real life too."

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to be able to loot the dead party members as a consequence of death. Of course being a cloth wearing mage, I'm likely to be running the instance naked, unarmed, and without any other gear before long.

Jim

Re:No permadeath

[IndustrialComplex]

That's why I quit. Unless you can get a group of friends together to do an instance for the first time without looking at Thottbot at all, then it really just boils down to 'travel to position, interact with entity for x seconds, travel to position, interact....'

That, and how Blizzard started testing new encounters in beta. I loved Dire Maul when it was release because very few people had any clue what was going to be in there. Flash forward to Outlands where spoilers abound before it was even released.

Re:No permadeath

[Fozzyuw]

Not too mention that many of WoW's encounters almost guarantee you will die the first try or second try until you get your strategy down

Kinda like in real-life, except for the whole second try part.

Except we get to bring more than 40 people max, allowing us to effectively zerg an encounter to victory.

Re:No permadeath

[Quill]

It's the lack of consequence.

No one who dies in WoW is unfazed by it. Dying sucks. Even if you take away the repair bill, it sucks.

You have to run your spirit back to your body and even though this only takes 5 minutes in the worst of circumstances...it still sucks. If you're raiding and you wipe, then you have to wait for 25 people to run back to their bodies and rebuff and reorganize themselves for another boss attempt.

The time penalty is significant...you're playing a game, even a single minute of "unfun" is punishment. But even more significant than the time cost is the ego-cost. Dying means that you failed and it stings.

Blizzard correctly determined that they didn't need harsh death penalties in WoW. Dying is its own penalty.

(I also play Nethack, and permadeath is an important part of the game. In the first Aliens vs. Predator FPS for the PC, the limited saves per level were also an important part of the game, and I'm disappointed that they eliminated that for the sequel. But WoW does NOT need a more severe death penalty.)

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

A very smart system would respond to player action -- a heavily hero-populated land would attract more and stronger villians, who spawn minion-quests and whatnot. You could even have stateful shared quests, where a quest remains active until completed by any character, which then triggers a different quest.

Very good suggestions. In fact, Blizzard has been doing this. With WoW.

The most recent update added new content, the Isle of Quel'thalas ("Sunwell Isle"). The ability to do certain tasks depend on everyone on the server doing other tasks. As people fight to drive out the forces of "evil" from parts of the island, it allows "resistance fighters" to reclaim those areas. New missions become available, new rewards become available, and the story progresses.

Other times that WoW has done this include the opening of new areas. The opening of Ahn'Qiraj was a one-time quest event that preceeded the opening of the new (at the time, way before my time) instanced dungeon. Then it was no longer available. It's not likely that Blizzard will suddenly abandon this method of introducing content.

It sounds like Blizzard is meeting your expectations.

The real problem with MMOs like WoW is that the meat of the game isn't all that fun. Some, like City of Heroes, try and avoid it by purposefully making low-level re-play the focus of the game. Others, like Eve Online, say to heck with PvE and focus on the PvP side.

Just to address Eve up front, I almost subscribed. But in the end of the trial, I realized that "the grind" was replaced with "training over time". The length of your subcription directly corresponded to your character skill improvement, regardless of how much (or how little) effort you put into the game. To me, that's worse than the traditional method of "the grind". I couldn't notice that I was "close" and put in that extra 30 minutes of effort it would take to push myself over the next hump; it would happen when it happens, whether I was awake or asleep. And if I was asleep when my training finished, I would lose any time not spent training. I also didn't see a whole lot of variety, though I was restricted (due to my noobness) to lower-level content.

In WoW, while I'll admit that grinding alt characters to high levels can be tedious at times, you can at least start in a different lower-level area and explore a new story. It would be nice if Blizzard found a way to help ease the grind for alt characters without spoiling the storyline opportunities for brand new characters.

One thing Blizzard -is- doing is adding "hero classes" that start from some high level (I've heard level 60). Wrath will include a Death Knight class that you can unlock with your other high-level character(s). You start the levelling process at that high level, not at 1.

For those interested in PvP only, Blizzard is also running PvP Arena Tournament servers. For $20, you can create characters on these special servers that are automatically level 70, have access to any gear you could want, all enchants, enhancements, etc. And you can battle it out in 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 competitions. The 3v3 competition is ranked and is offering $200,000 in total prize money to the top teams (thus the reason for the registration fee).

One would hope that if Blizzard sees that this is popular, then they (like Guild Wars) will offer this as an option, perhaps on special Arena Servers. Then it will just be Arena matches, no grinding, no levelling, no questing, no registration fees, etc. Perhaps they might also experiment with pairings larger than 5v5. Oh, and you can make up to 9 characters on a particular server, and more characters on another server, and another server, etc. So if you want a break from Arena matching and want to quest or whatever, create a character on another server.

World of Warcraft is "warcrack" by design. They could make it fun and interesting and genuinely massive, b

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like in real-life, except for the whole second try part.

You just explained a great mystery in life. Apparently Bush...

Except, Bush got a second try.

Re:No permadeath

[Daravon]

https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=102321&bid=&nogreet=1

From a google search of "eve online trial".

Mostly unrestricted access to the game. They only limit some of your skills (and therefore ships) that you can learn, but it is mostly late game ships.

I always felt the tutorial was a fun into to the game. They show you how to move around, do mining and missions and the like.

Re:No permadeath

[Quill]

The real problem with MMOs like WoW is that the meat of the game isn't all that fun.

You say this, and yet WoW is possibly the most successful game of all time. Only The Sims can definitely top WoW in sheer sales numbers on the PC, but WoW has over 10 million *active subscriber* (and an unknown number of sales) -- and subscribers are more meaningful (and valuable) than plain sales.

It is by *far* the most successful MMO ever:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html

Clearly, a lot of people find it to be quite fun.

Recognize that you, your interests, and your arguments simply represent a minor fringe group and that, while your opinion is valid on a personal level, your comments hold no value in the wider world of gamers.

Re:No permadeath

[morcego]

I agree with you. The real challenge begins after you reach (currently) level 70.
Getting to level 70 ? A walk in the park.

A hardcore player can reach level 70 in 4 to 6 weeks. Getting all equipped will take you another 8 to 12 weeks, at least.

Re:No permadeath

[Fozzyuw]

I agree that it's not grinding if there is challenge present. I lost count of the number of hardcore characters I took through Diablo 2

It's interesting that you define "grind" as something that's simply "not challenging". I've always assumed "grind", in the context of MMO's, meant having to do something repeatedly, independent of difficulty settings.

However, since I see so many people passionately talking about MMO's and the designs behind them, I would like to encourage everyone to pick up the massively big book Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle, one of the "fathers" of virtual wolrds (aka MMO's).

In that book, Richard will talk at great length about the history of MMO's and how they started out as MUD's and where the term MUD came from. He'll go into his famous "Explorer, Achiever, Killer, Socializer" paradigm, and he'll explain why games like WoW are as popular as they are and why there isn't as many games as so many people on these boards "think" should be made. He even covers "perma-death", why it's not popular with the majority, and why companies don't make these types of games en masse.

Long story short, current MMO's like WoW, EQ, EQ2, AC, AO, DAoC, etc. all fall into the same quadrant of a MMO design box, that based on DikuMUD, which is more action based than anything else. However, back in the day of MUD's there existed all kinds of games that went from the fairly static world like WoW, to worlds where people could control every aspect of it. A new city/house/building could pop up anywhere. Trees could be planted and cut down and the landscape entirely changed.

If you're really interested in MMO design, I'd recommend this book and I have many times on /. Warcraft threads. I own it. I've never gotten through it, but it's really fascinating.

Re:No permadeath

[Quill]

As for the kinds of quests you do while levelling, it's really only as mindless as you want to make it. If you only look at them as "okay, I just kill X number of Y and collect Z number of A, and do variations of that over and over again", of course you're going to see it as a mindless repetitive grind.

One other point to add to this would be: Show me a game that CAN'T be broken down into a series of stupid, pointless, dull steps. Computer games, at their core, involve clicking a button over and over. Heck, some of the best and most enjoyable games are the *simplest* ones.

Describe Tetris in a way that could POSSIBLY make it sound fun or addictive. Or The Sims (which isn't just pushing buttons...it's pushing buttons to duplicate mundane, normal, boring, real life.) Or Super Mario Bros (move....and jump. Sometimes onto something, sometimes into something. Whee....)

What games actually are, are puzzle-solving exercises. It's about finding the right way to stack blocks, or calculating the perfect time to jump onto a koopa, or the most efficient way to get your sim ready for work. In WoW, it's working out the best attack pattern to kill enemies with, and the best route to take to finish a quest quickly, and the best outfit you should be wearing to maximize your skill.

Re:No permadeath

[Ubergrendle]

FYI Blizzard invented a game like this. Its called 'hardcore Diablo 2'. Basically a rogue-like dungeon crawl with better graphics, random maps and mobs with random abilities,etc.

Works great until you spend 50 hours playing and die due to lag, or an idiot flags pvp and kills you.

Non-permadeath is a way to make a game safer and more player friendly. There's always hardcore gamers that scream "CAREBEARS SUXORS", but they're a relative few and invariably immature. Its a game of digitized pixels, if your self-worth comes from how well you play then you're a pretty shallow person. Play and let play...people play MMORPGs for a variety of reasons, and usually its not the exact same as yours.

WoW has 10,000,000+ players because its easy to play, have various tiers of rewards for however much (or little) time you want to put into it, and has a casual multiplayer aspect. People like to say 'WoW isn't that good', then provide examples of niche products that have limited appeal to a mass audience. WoW is the McDonalds of MMORPGs, and that's ok.

Re:No permadeath

[Spellvexit]

I completely agree. When you're questing, the hit in time is annoying. And even then it feels like an overkill, because on PvP servers, watching some Night Elf dance gleefully atop my corpse is deterrent enough from dying.

Re:No permadeath

[Ubergrendle]

The consequence is TIME. Time to corpse run; time to grind gold for repairs; time clear all the respawned mobs to get to the boss fight you were attempting to complete.

I don't know about you, but time is my most valuable asset. WoW isn't the most popular MMORPG because it appeals to teenagers that can play 40+ hours a week...its got 10,000,000+ users because it appeals to people (like me) who can play 5-10 hours a week.

Re:No permadeath

[Ubergrendle]

WHile I agree the lack of static-dungeons is a huge plus for roguelikes, it also eliminates any meaningful plot driven action. I realise that WoW's quest structure is fairly simple, but this is to maintain the casual nature of the game with an incremental reward structure. As well, there IS lore driving alot of ingame activity, it's just not integral... if you want to understand more, there's quest chains you can pursue, NPCs you can talk to, online resources to read...or you can ignore them and just kill orcs.

I like both types of games. But comparing one with another isn't very fair; they have different focus. In some cases a Prius is a great car (reliable, efficient, eco-friendly) and in other cases a Ford Explorer is essential (strong engine for towing, storage capacity, durability).

Re:No permadeath

[thefreeaccount]

>In EVE, the mmo I play, taking a ship out is a risk.

The problem is that increasing the death penalty doesn't necessarily make a game more exciting. Since no one wants to loose months of effort, players simply compensate for the increased penalty by becomming much more risk-adverse. In a games like guild wars and WOW, most combat revolves around fair matches between relatively equal opponents. You might loose, but it's no big deal - you can just queue up for another match.

In Eve, fair combat is almost unheard-of - very few players are willing to risk losses when the odds are only 50/50. Aside from a few wow-esque exceptions (gangs of so-called nano-ships that move so quickly, they can easily escape when the tide of battle turns against them), combat in Eve revolves around two main mechanisms:
1) Gangs of PvP-fitted ships hunting down PvE-fitted ships, which have little chance of fighting back
2) Massive 'blobs' of dozens or even hundreds of ships whose overwhelming numbers reduce the likelihood of combat losses.

When you're sitting on a stargate with 50 friends, waiting to gank the unsuspecting player who jumps through, the penalty for failure is just as high as ever, but the risk of failure is quite low - so low, in fact, that it could be argued this form of combat is actually LESS exciting. Most of the fun comes from your ability to inflict serious losses on your target - wiping out weeks, months, or in the case of exhorbiant 'faction' ships, even years' worth of his playtime.

This is why, in general, low-penalty games tend to attract competition-oriented players who enjoy the process of competition itself, while high-penalty games attract grief-oriented players who enjoy the process of inflicting loss on other players. It should be no surprise that the largest alliance in Eve - Goonswarm - is an alliance of somethingawful members - the same 'goons' infamous for their large-scale griefing campaigns in Second Life and other games.

Re:No permadeath

[geekoid]

I think he means 'gank' as in 'killing a character that wasn't expecting it.'

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Getting to level 70 ? A walk in the park.

Yeah, if your park is 600 miles of dirt trail in a Nebraska cornfield.

Re:No permadeath

[Cornflake917]

CCP figured it out. Bullshit. The fact that Eve isn't sharded doesn't magically it make a fun and interesting game. I played it for 5 months, and I tried really hard to have fun with it, but it still is by far the most boring MMO I've ever played. The only thing that could have been fun in the game was the large scale battles, but those usually ended up being lag fests. Karma be damned, you Eve fanboys make me sick.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Also guns don't suck.

Lightning would kill you.

Fireballs would send you screaming in flames and pain.

9 foot tall bull men swinging a 200 lb. giant axe would slice you in two no matter how good your armor and dodging was.

And people with 200 int wouldn't be turtling on the Field of Strife.

Re:No permadeath

[Vicarius]

This would make EVE Online a ideal match for me, no? But I am very slow to try it, and it is exact of these consequences. Problem is that I don't that much time for games...

1. * Eve Online has 14 day trial, which you can get from number of place including the official website
2. * Initiallym in Eve you will spend your time "training" skills, which requires you only to click "train" after which you can log out and come back when training is done

Re:No permadeath

[The Slashdot Guy]

Can you explain another mystery of life for me? Why the hell you, and assholes like you, have to bring politics into every discussion on this site?

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I can guarantee you if I were a rich trust fund kid, I would play online Hardcore for Diablo II. A few days of work to ramp up, then off to try ganking.

You could tell which balance issues were related to hardcore by the fix list.

At one point, Barbarian jump, which does 2x damage, would let a barbarian with a 200 damage spear do 400+ damage instantly, which was enough to 1-shot pretty much everybody but a topped-out barb specializing in defense.

Later, they fix the "problem" with assassins leaving traps just outside the town portal. They'd portal to town, and another guy would go thru, thinking they're safe from the assassin, and whomp! Dead. So now the traps fritz when you portal back to town.

Then there was driving a troop truck and crashing into a weed, which was invulnerable, which would flip your truck over, and game physics (well done) would catapault your troops over the German compound fence into the back, where they shouldn't be, it being designed that you fight your way in thru the front gates.

Oh wait, that last one was WWII Online.

Or you could cast Numb Mind (a sort of non-aggroing stun) on your skeleton pet over and over again, and eventually it would freak and start hitting you. You zone out, and foomp, your pet stays at the zone point as an angry red NPC. Great fun to do with your high level skelly in low level zones. But they hadda go and "fix" it. >:(

Or you could enchant or charm a player of the opposite faction and have them sit as your pet next your city's guards, then when the charm wears off, they become kos to the guards, what fun! But they hadda fix it! >:(

Oh wait, those two were EQ I.

Re:No permadeath

[The Great Pretender]

As an ex-player of the text based MUDs in the late 80's and early 90's this is probably one of the most insightful and honest comments I've recently read based around this type of gaming. The whole PvP aspect of arduous gaming grind is to completely trash the achievements of the player who has spent countless hours building up their 'character'. It is an excellent example of schadenfreude.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Gee, you just figured out the main problem on the original EQ PvP servers.

A magician, largely naked, would start casting at a tank. The tank wouldn't fight back, but would instead start putting their equipment into their bags as quickly as possible. The ganker would get the money, and the ability to loot one thing on your body (or top level in your pack?)

In any case, PvP became completely stupid because of that. Of course, EQ I wasn't designed with PvP in mind, it was just an afterthought to satisfy a small percent of their subscribers.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I had that trial, and pretty much the only people who could out-level the trial cap would be an experienced pro at Eve, or somebody with such a person at their side giving pointers.

But in a new game, most people want to take it easy at first, exploring and getting comfortable with the system. After a few such games under your belt, you know your first char or chars will probably be throw-aways since you don't know what you're doing.

I actually liked Eve, I did the trial account in November and signed up in December. Before mid-January I had quit after my first heavy cruiser bit the dust on a solo mission because of 1/4 frame per second graphics lag after some NPCs swarmed me. I can handle the risk of 14 million ISK worth of ship, but not because of game engine flaws. The game has been out for over 3 years, or is it 4!

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> In Eve, fair combat is almost unheard-of - very few players are willing to risk
> losses when the odds are only 50/50.

Ironically, this is highly realistic. One poster on their boards even has the .sig of "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't done your homework."

A fair fight you barely win = disastrous losses for your side. And half the time you'll lose completely. It is not the situation to be in in a fight, only barely more acceptable than going into overwhelming odds.

In the Battle of Britain, I think they considered 30% loss rate in an air battle to be unacceptably high, yet they were in such dire straits they exceeded even that, going nuts on zergling production.

Re:No permadeath

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

...or finding a way to 1-shot the undead guy in the second battle at the end of KoToR II.

Never could quite do it, even though in theory I could if I critted all 5 flurry+haste swings. Came close though.

Ahh, the first encounter with him in the ruins of the Sith training building, made him my b1a4ch before the storyline made me "flee". =D

Re:No permadeath

[demachina]

"Take out a cheap ship, and you're likely to get wtfpwned by someone in a better ship."

EvE is good for adrenaline rush. But you also just summarized its fatal flaw. PvP in EvE is almost always so unbalanced that one side or the other is going to win before the confrontation even starts. The normal scenario is six people are gate camping with a stunning amount of fire power and one or two suckers gate in and get owned. There are a few skills involved that might get you out of it if you are an underdog but the deck is stacked against you, if you gate in and your propulsion is jammed then you sit there and die, and have to grind for hours to days to replace all the gear you just lost because of the "Law of the Jungle". So the end result is you have to join a good PvP corp and always travel in packs with scouts so that you are always going to dominate the unfortunates you run in to.

For PvP to be good both sides have to be evenly matched and evenly equipped, so its skill and tactics that determine the winner. BF2 is a pretty good model for this since everyone has the same weapons. The fatal flaw of BF2 is it lets people switch teams at their whim so the teams end up constantly stacked with all the experienced plays on one team and all the noobs on the other. This creates the EvE scenario where one side has always won before the battle starts. BF2 would be and awesome PvP game if EA would force parity between the teams. It also suffers from complete absence of persistence, horrendous numbers of hackers and you have to suffer with servers run by the people you are playing with or against and they administration is often arbitrary and poor.

Is there a game with the pure PvP fun of BF2 but with more persistence... and I would be glad to pay a subscription for properly administered servers with low tolerance for hacks.

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

Yes, and you can do the same with nethack too. Or probably any game that implements both perma-death and some sort of session persistence and doesn't go out of its way to record some sort of hash for every game you lost thus far so you can't recover it from backups. It's called save scumming, and frowned upon in the nethack community. Diablo II even offers a standard non-permadeath mode, so arguing that you can save scum on Hardcore Mode so it's not "true" perma-death is pretty asinine.

Re:No permadeath

[j0nb0y]

Here's the thing... the hardcore crowd doesn't need Blizzard to drop the non hardcore servers.

Hardcore people would be very happy if there was a hardcore server to play on. I doubt the demand for it would justify more than a few servers.

The debate seems to imply that WoW either has to be hardcore or not. This completely ignores that there could be hardcore servers, and most people could just avoid them, just as they avoid PVP servers today.

Re:No permadeath

[BarneyL]

It's pretty clear why a game where "only one in a hundred" players get to be the kind of powerful character they want to be lost its funding. Alienating 99% of your player base is never a particularly good business move.

Re:No permadeath

[QuantumPion]

I think this pretty accurately describes Ultima Online (in its early days). There was no permadeath, but dying meant losing a significant amount of skill points, as well as all of your armor and possessions on your character. There were no character classes, and "leveling up" a new character only took a couple days. Becoming a powerful mage was more difficult, and risky, beacuse the reagents required for casting spells were expensive and had to be carried on you. The questing in UO was as you described -- there were no NPC quests, just dungeons to explore and such. Also, the economy was 98% player based, with player crafted goods, player-run vendors, and even entire new player-made towns. While WoW is pretty fun as far as raiding and boss encounters are concerned, UO (in its early days) was really the pinnacle of MMORPG's.

Re:No permadeath

[thetagger]

If you check WowJutsu you can see how many zillion trillion guilds haven't reached the endgame raid of Sunwell Plateau. It's not like you can just die yourself to victory either. And yes, repairs are expensive at 70 with decent gear. That's why nobody ever ever raids with unknown people.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, dude. Go back to Counterstrike, dude. You're totally out of your element here, dude.

Re:No permadeath

[danzona]

Maybe only alienating 98%. I would drop WOW in a second for a game like this, and I have no reason to believe (based on previous gaming experience) that I would be the "one in a hundred".

Re:No permadeath

[Jaeph]

" To become a powerful mage, you would have had to discover a unique set of formulae for your character's spells, all the while risking death from backfire from critical failures. The goal was that about one in a hundred players who tried to become real, full-blown sorcerors would actually make it. Those who succeeded would be rewarded with great power. I feel that that power has more _meaning_ than that of a level 70 in WoW who simply had to grind for 40 hours to get there."

--------------

Yes, roll roll craps and die is infinetly more meaningfull to me as well. Boy, that sounds like hoot!

Seriously, you're just changing grinding levels with grinding characters until one of them is lucky enough to achieve ultimate power. Then you put that character on a pedastel somewhere and he never comes out for fear of death anyways.

-Jeff

Re:No permadeath

[zerocool^]

The thing is - it's the rush I'm after. All this stuff about pirates and camping stargates and whatnot is all true - for low security space. It makes people risk adverse - don't go there unless you have to; use scouts; use less traveled routes; don't go to Rancer, etc.

But the thing that gets me going in eve isn't low sec or piracy. It's 0.0 security, lawless space. You can't *be* risk adverse and live in 0.0 (and I have, almost consistently, for two years now). Yes, it is sometimes blob or be blobbed, but really, you have to fight to hold space, and you will take losses. In part, it's a war of attrition every day - make other people so "risk adverse" that they don't want to come bother you in your space. But, really for me, what gets my blood hot is going out in roaming gangs - and the further you get away from your space, the further you get behind enemy lines, the better.

In situations like that, when you're taking a 10 man gang out, and your fleet commander jumps everyone into a 20 man gate camp - that's a fucking rush. Yeah, you might lose your ship, and in fact some of you probably will. But if you're better skilled, better geared, and most importantly, have a better fleet commander, how fucking epic would it be to jump into 20 people with only 10 ships, and completely own them.

Yeah, it doesn't happen that often. But, let me tell you - when it does, it's like heroin. Once it's happened once, you spend the entire game trying to recapture that feeling. Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's a bit boring, but... when you hit it again... what an adrenaline rush.

That's what I play for. I don't do non-consensual combat unless I am forced to, and only then as a military objective (securing a transportation route for POS fuel being the most common one). By going into 0.0 space, you are consenting to combat.

Live on the edge, man.

~W

Re:No permadeath

[nuzak]

> FYI Blizzard invented a game like this. Its called 'hardcore Diablo 2'.

I'd love to see a hardcore realm then. I don't even play PVP, but I think it'd be an interesting game. Unfortunately I also think it'd be full of nothing but Holy Paladins with a bubblehearth macro on a hotkey.

Re:No permadeath

[nuzak]

Also, the economy was 98% player based, with player crafted goods, player-run vendors, and even entire new player-made towns Most of WoW's economy is player-based too. Most people stop shopping at vendors after level 10 or so, if they ever used them at all. It's just that it's all virtual.

I kind of wish for player-owned real estate, but in UO it turned much of Brittania into a giant suburb (and that's with like 1/40th of the player base of WoW). I just don't think there's a good solution to that problem.

Re:No permadeath

[Shadowruni]

You sir, have made me want to play this game.....

Re:No permadeath

[gad_zuki!]

The real problem with that setup is that the "i have all day to game" demographic is usually just bored teenagers. So once they control the towns, the currency, and the quests you'll end up logging in and told by "GnarrlyDude" to "fetch me a burrito of knowledge for an advnaced twinkie." Thats the best case scenario. Most likely it would degenerate into a Second Life fetish fest.

WoW works for the exact opposite reasons. Its centrally controlled, quests and mobs are in-game, etc.

Dont get me wrong. ToA sounds like heaven to me, but you need some serious role-players and people dedicated to running this thing well. I doubt your average WoW player could fill those shoes. I would imagine this would only work with lots of "players" who were actually employees and some pretty strict filtering, censorship, and lots of bans and kicks.

Re:No permadeath

[martin_henry]

Watch out for the cow patties...

Re:No permadeath

[zerocool^]

send yer email to waffles@dunnclan.net.

I'll send you a 14 day trial, and if you sign up, supposedly you get another 14 days free. So... free for a month.

Send me an in-game mail, and I'll spot you a few million isk to get you started.

Re:No permadeath

[Smauler]

Despite your arguments of freshness, the perma-death model of CS isn't in any way, shape, or form, applicable to WoW. You accept the death model because there was close to zero time investment in creating your character, and because death is not, in fact, permanent. It's only a 10 minute, or what have you, respawn timer until the next match begins.

I don't know about you, but I spend at least three days before every CS game creating my character with a plethora of 20-sided dice. I usually end up being SAS though, and getting killed by one of my traitorous teammates at the start. However, the adrenaline rush is fantastic. I have created a few of these teamkilling characters too (with appropriate backgrounds, obviously), but now I tend not too, since I find the lack of acclaim for good roleplay in these circumstances bewildering and frustrating.

Wait, isn't this how everyone else plays?

Re:No permadeath

[Smauler]

I think he means 'gunk' as in 'you didn't get the really shit attempt at a joke'.

Re:No permadeath

[billcopc]

If I wanted a game that mimics real life, I'd get a gun and move to Detroit.

Re:No permadeath

[Anxarcule]

You managed to get your kitten all the way to the final altar? And then you got killed by it? Was this something you were deliberately trying to do?

Re:No permadeath

[billcopc]

How about Quake with permadeath ? Kinda kills the fun, don't it ? Note I didn't say TF, just plain old deathmatch.

A permadeath MMO would be interesting, but WoW isn't it. They would have to:

1. seriously nerf the mobs
2. speed up the leveling and gathering twentyfold
3. restrict ganking to the extreme!

Then it's not really WoW anymore, innit ?

Re:No permadeath

[kv9]

I played it for 5 months, and I tried really hard to have fun with it, but it still is by far the most boring MMO I've ever played. I believe the fact that it is a game for grownups (that possibly enjoyed Elite while growing up) is a big hurdle for your average "gamer".

Re:No permadeath

[kv9]

(apologies for failing at quoting your insightful remarks in my previous post)

I played it for 5 months, and I tried really hard to have fun with it, but it still is by far the most boring MMO I've ever played. I believe the fact that it is a game for grownups (that possibly enjoyed Elite while growing up) is a big hurdle for your average "gamer".

Re:No permadeath

[Turnpike Lad]

This would be a severely limiting factor if that were all the game had to offer. There were many avenues to power in ToA, and only the ones with the most potential power (mage, dragon) were the high risk ones. Different vectors had different limiting factors.

For example, being a priest of a god gave you a number of magical powers, different for each god, that increased as your congregation grew. Those powers were often focused on group effects: The priesthood of the honorable god of defense and battle (as opposed to the aggressive god of destruction and battle) were going to be able to share the life between all the followers in a given area so that none of them would die until they all did. Some were individual: the priesthood of the animal god were supposed to be able to change shape. Followers of a given god got passive powers on a much smaller scale. The strength of these powers varied based on how closely the priest's actions matched the philosophy of his god, so the restricting factors were size of congregation and code of conduct.

Training up to be a powerful warrior was also filled with risks. But in combat, the divide between high skill and low skill wasn't too wide. While a high skill player could generally whip the ass of a newbie, with the right strategy and a bit of luck the low skill player could land a killing blow. And a high skill character cornered by three or four lowbies would have to fight for their lives. This means that anybody could make a contribution to the battle side of affairs. The true risk/reward equation was that to field an army, a settlement would have to make a lot of sacrifices that would be for nothing if the army was defeated: food, supplies and gear that simply would be lost if everybody in the army died.

ToA's slogan was "You can do it, but it'll cost you." The developers were focusing mainly on making a game that was fun to play as a "normal" character - one that doesn't take too many risks, skills up to moderate levels in the crafting and combat skills of their choice, participates in their settlement, and lives a day-to-day life. A bid for greater power would generally be rejected. This means that true power would be rare - not many would even try for it, and most of those who did would die before attaining it. And even if you see a super-powerful character, chances are they're running out of lives, so if you want to organize a posse of torch-waving villagers and siege them, you have a good chance of actually taking them out. These mechanisms underlie the main thrust of an idea that power isn't meant to be the point of the game

And even as a "normal" character, the game was really diverse. Each race represented a different playstyle. There were fourteen different mutually incomprehensible languages, one for each race, that you could learn with effort. Options ranged from the pixie, who was 1 foot tall and could fly like a hummingbird; to the dragon, who was 25 feet tall and could breathe fire and fly like a 747, but only after a long, grueling period of maturing during which they were less powerful than everybody else (it didn't help that their body parts were important reagents for all sorts of different things); to the raknar, who were beast-like spider people who were incapable of learning any other language but could walk on walls and ceilings and spit web at people, and had to drink living blood every so often; to the goblins, who were venomous, aquatic creatures; to the arrwics, who were basically Liontaurs and had a speed and stamina advantage on everyone else; to the gargoyles, who were animated lumps of rock, juggernauts, could glide like a hangglider (but not gain altitude), and could basically ignore food, drink, poison, disease, the harshest weather, air to breathe, but could only move at a snail's pace; to the doppelgangers, who could change shape to mimic almost any race with enough skill; to the gryphons and minotaurs, and also the dwarves, elves, humans, orcs. Enforced by grueling, dangerous

Re:No permadeath

[UniCeta]

I think the most challenging aspect of MMORPGS is balancing it enough so that hard core players are challenged, while casual players are not so discouraged that they stop paying. I played MUDs in the 80s, and the ones I played (MUME, for example) had much more challenging gameplay, including permadeath. Trolls would permadie if they got caught out in sunlight, turning into a statue. This was a great concept. Trolls could smash with almost no equipment and I would often spend a night running to Bree to whack on unsuspecting "whities" for shi-s and gi-s. Great stuff!

Also, if you died, your corpse contained all of your eq and could be looted by anyone. Imagine that in WoW! epicced-out toon dies, has to re-equip all over again! This aspect is really what's missing in my opinion. It was easier to do with MUDs because they were free, and everyone that played was pretty much "hardcore".

I haven't seen anything before or since with the depth and challenge of MUME! I would love to see a MMORPG made of it. The coders who wrote the zones often mudlled custom events related to areas too, like Tom Bombadil's forest, the Rivendell Ford, etc..

Re:No permadeath

[QuantumPion]

WoW's economy is entirely artificial, with set money inflows (grinding, vendor trash) and outflows (repair bills, reagents). There is no monetary supply limit or inflation in those regards. WoW does have an auction house, which acts pretty much like a stock-market, but commodity items are infinite in supply with fixed prices.

In UO, NPC merchants had limited supplies of commodity items AND money. You couldn't just bot-farm for 48 hours and then dump the load on an NPC to get cash. The vendors were pretty much just set up to get the economy started, to supply feed-money to the system. Once the economy got going and stabilized, pretty much ALL items were created, bought, and sold by players. I think it's a big difference worth pointing out. Players could set up their own shops and vendors, sell the goods that were in demand, and even advertise their store in cities by handing out free teleport runes if their store was far away. WoW's auction house may be robust, but it is only one aspect of a simulated economy.

I agree that housing would not work in WoW obviously. The best they could accomplish would be to have instanced-housing, which would seem kind of pointless. Having a real house in UO that everyone passed by had a certain neat feeling to it. Unfortunately, as UO became more popular, the world ran out of room for the housing. But early on and on smaller servers, the housing system worked great and was tons of fun.

Re:No permadeath

[SoulMan007]

Final Fantasy Online had a fairly good approach to a more painful death. A small variation on the loose xp when you die, they allowed you to level down when you die, even at level cap... so if you have a bad day, you might hit the same level 4 or 5 times, or loose a level or two. It was annoying as hell, but was enough of consequence to keep a certain edge to the game.

Re:No permadeath

[geekoid]

"...really shit attempt..."

Well, that explains it then!

The real question is, why would anyone waste any mod points modding either of us in this conversation?

Re:No permadeath

[geekoid]

um, also house wives.

Re:No permadeath

[DrStoooopid]

Let me guess. ..you played SWG, and never unlocked a Jedi.

Re:No permadeath

[DrStoooopid]

But everyone already does this. How many alts do you have?...I myself have 5 70's...but I know people who have all 10 slots filled. Hell, just the 10 slots we're given is already painful enough to lvl. I concur.....permadeath is stupid.

Re:No permadeath

[PhetusPolice]

Come now, every EverQuest player has broken at least 2 chairs from experiencing these 'consequences'. Having nothing to sit on while you retrieve your corpse is NOT fun.

Re:No permadeath

[crashfrog]

to worlds where people could control every aspect of it.

That sounds like a potentially shitty game.

Second Life seems to fall prey to the same problem. In a world where you can basically make or do anything, people wind up doing only two things - come up with ways to scam other people out of the Linden bucks, or come up with weird new ways to pretend to have sex with each other.

It's like an amusement park where patrons are asked to design and build the rides. What you wind up with is a parking lot full of hookers.

Re:No permadeath

[crashfrog]

If you'd like to gamble 50 dollars on essentially no hope of having a good time, you can simply paypal it to my email address.

If your capacity to have fun in a game is inversely related to how many other people are having fun, too, then you're a disturbed person. And if you're willingly volunteering to be the guy who doesn't have fun so that others might, then you're even more fucked up.

What a delightful thread. I've never seen so many totally bullshit, idiotic game ideas in one place.

Re:No permadeath

[brkello]

The game isn't for grown ups. It is a game for griefers. There are plenty of those in any age group. The problem with Eve is that it is complex. Not in a good way...mostly in a poorly designed interface way. People would complain if CCP made any changes to the UI to make things simpler or more logical. They would cry that it was WoWifcation of their game and make a big deal since the advantage they had of being willing to click through 80 menus to get to something was now gone. The most common expression in that game is "can I have your stuff". That sort of attitude permeates through the game. Like they captured the whole asshole on the internet demographic. The only things interesting about the game is its skill system (nice idea) and PvP. Unfortunately, PvE is terribly boring and you have to do a lot of it to afford to get blown up. The single shard idea is nice but the servers can't handle the load of large battles and certain popular trade areas are always overly congested. I understand why some people like it...but it will always be a niche game compared to WoW. I find it funny that the Eve players like to put down WoW and the WoW players don't even know the Eve players exist.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck to you then, he who has many hours per day to play.

I played EVE once and after 2 months finally got the skills for a cruiser. It took 2 weeks worth of playing to get the money to buy a cruiser. Then I lost it the same day.

Maybe taking losses is exciting for you, but it is horrible for people who don't have the time to play and recoup their losses quickly. Two weeks down the drain like that made me quit the game forever.

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: Upon looking up the ships of eve on wikipedia, I should have said battlecruiser, not cruiser. Oops

Re:No permadeath

[Anonymous Coward]

Single player never had permadeath anyway. You could always just run back to your corpse for next to zero penalty, so there was no need for a backup file. Hardcore mode was online only.

Re:No permadeath

[drsquare]

I played MUDs in the 80s, and the ones I played (MUME, for example)

How did you do that, considering that MUME wasn't around until the early 90s? And while you lost equipment on death, it only took at most an afternoon to get it back, rather than months like in WoW.

Re:No permadeath

[Planesdragon]

FYI, World of Warcraft HAS "stateful shared quests" which remain active until completed by any character, which then triggers a different quest. They've had several world events... If it's a major event, then it's an event, not a quest. City of Heroes has the same halfway attempt with invasions -- and they simply aren't up to snuff.

Funny how you seem to know all the secrets ... 1: "Design a fun game" and "Program a fun game" are two very different skill-sets, but the industry doesn't let you do the former until you've done the latter -- because they don't value the former as highly.

2: Who said it was a secret? City of Heroes was designed to be an amusement park. World of Warcraft was designed to be "warcrack." These were choices made by those companies, for justifiable fiscal reasons. The only possible thing that could keep either Blizzard or NCSoft or CCP from doing an immersive, player-driven PvE game is the likelihood of failure in trying something new.

Re:No permadeath

[Planesdragon]

You say this, and yet WoW is possibly the most successful game of all time I don't know. I think that little things like, oh, football or chess kind of beat WoW for "success."

I'm not even convinced that WoW has a larger share of the market than Doom or Wolfenstein did back in the day. More sales, certainly, but you can't play WoW if you pirate it.

Recognize that you, your interests, and your arguments simply represent a minor fringe group and that, while your opinion is valid on a personal level, your comments hold no value in the wider world of gamers. This is slashdot. Does anybody's comments hold value here?

Re:No permadeath

[vertinox]

Because it's a subscription game, and if a player dies, there's a good chance they'll say to hell with it and quit.

But the problem is that these games aren't realistic in a sense that the player just follows one character through the game and thats that.

Which a better model for an RPG might be a dynasty or heir system. A strategy game called Crusader Kings basic premise is managing a dynasty and having heirs.

Its not an MMO and is mostly single player but I have to admit I have gotten sad when a character dies after so many (game) years of playing. But unlike the permadeath most people in MMO's envision, your character's death is not the end and based off your inheritance laws you'll have a suitable heir.

Usually based on how well you raised them they are just about as good but sometimes randomness makes the game a bit fun (So my son turned out to be a heretic and got himself excommunicated and so on)

Something like this might work for permadeath if that if you did die that you'd have some sort of heir to fall back on so you didn't have to start from square one and make it possible better so that sometimes you're child might be smarter and quicker learning that his parents.

Re:No permadeath

[Architect_sasyr]

Well notice that the kitten attacked me. I got it all the way to the final altar but had to keep going down to get the Amulet (stupidly leaving the kitten behind at this point). So of course when I get back the little mongrel had gone feral on me :( And by this point I was shit out of luck, healing potions, and energy for spells so I was pretty well boned. Was fun though.

As for trying to do it part of my personal nethack challenges have always been to keep my familiar as long as possible. Come to think of it that's still part of my nethack challenges.

Re:No permadeath

[ajs]

Care explaining how it's a stupid idea? It works for Nethack, it works for a variety of MUDs, it worked in almost all pencil-and-paper RPGs. (Well, maybe not permanent-permanent but at least with actual effort required beyond respawning.)

It works in Counter-Strike and to a degree in other FPSes.

So why not in WoW? It would prevent the game from getting stale and solve the grind problem. No, dying permanently would not solve the grind problem. It would make it much, much worse, as you would be constantly re-grinding to reach a "reasonable level."

I've played EQ (for quite a few years) where dying meant you lost XP, and WoW does a much better job of making players feel like their effort is rewarded and not just temporarily.

Permanent death is fun for short, one-off events (like EQ did for a bit on a contest server), but for a long-term sustainable game your players need to feel invested in their characters.

Re:No permadeath

[Reapy]

I think the idea is that if the REST of the game is fun, and being a big powerful sorcerer is not something you need to do to have fun, it adds an element to the game world that makes it more believable. I mean part of the mmo problem is everybody wants to be different, but you really cant be, impossible to design it. This at least creates an element of mystery when you SEE a sorcerer in the game. Maybe the sorcerer won't live longer then 3 sec cause half the battlefield would swarm over him and kill him.

I guess what the grandparent is trying to say is, he would like to be in a world where there is some mystery and uniqueness. where there is something he CAN'T achieve, but it sure is cool to see it.

If you think this is lunatic behavior, then please take a long hard look at the billions of sports fans in the world, at music fans, any kind of fan. I doubt very many of them will be on the field making the plays, but it sure is fun to be a part of that team by watching. And hell, in the game, I probably always know that there is an EASY way for me to be a rock star, as opposed to rl where the path to superstardom is often closed due to bad genetics, before you even get a chance to have the skill to compensate.

But again, wow succeeds because the path to all the content in the game is open to most people, but I still think there is room for games that play out like the original poster suggested.

Re:No permadeath

[xouumalperxe]

Tell that to the several dead characters I have saved in my HDD.

level 80

[gangien]

ugh level to 80?

i mean i hear all the time how easy 60-70 is, supposedly, but man it's a pain if you're a casual player like myself. 62 and i need 600k to level or whatever. i have lost my motivation to play much.

Re:level 80

[Anonymous Coward]

I've managed to level 4 here on a trial account... but playing it as a gm using a mangos \ ascent server is kinda fun tho..

Re:level 80

[snuf23]

I hear that. Basically if you getting experience from questing and especially soloing you will level very slowly. You get about 10,000xp per quest turn in.
If you can afford a 1-3 hour session the better route is to run the instances. I mostly do pickup groups which of course can be painful but still generally worth it. With rested XP you should get over 1000xp per standard kill.
I did 60-62 mostly through questing and it took me about the same time to lvl 62-66 mostly through instance runs.
Some of the Outlands instances are pretty short too. Hellfire Ramparts only takes about an hour. You will generally get better items than from questing as well.

Re:level 80

[InlawBiker]

I can beat that. I lost interest at level "Diablo II."

Re:level 80

[grahamd0]

You made it all the way to 14?! When it came out all of my friends were telling me it was the greatest thing in the universe and I just HAD to try it, after all, all the cool kids were doing it. So I made a character on my friend's account and played 3 nights in a row. I made it to level 11, and I think I was bored to tears every minute of it.

Re:level 80

[Trespass]

I've managed to level 4 here on a trial account... but playing it as a gm using a mangos \ ascent server is kinda fun tho.. Now that sounds like fun.

Re:level 80

[__aaqvdr516]

A freaking men. I didn't play 3 nights in a row, more like 7 days or so. There was nobody around. It was still boring when there were people to play with.

Re:level 80

[Admiral Ag]

Then you didn't really get very far into the game. Levels 1-20 are about teaching you the basics of the game, ending with a foray into an instance at about level 18-20. The rest of the time up until the level cap is learning about equipment and exploring the world. The first iteration of the game was pretty good, although it got boring from levels 30-40, but the expansion fixed a lot of those problems with better zone and quest design.

But it is, as someone said, a social game. You really won't have much to do unless you make friends in the game (or you're a healer, which means everyone is your friend). It sounds hackneyed, but in WoW the journey is the reward, especially in co-operative play. You will meet a lot of assholes in WoW (especially on PvP servers), but you will meet a lot of really good people as well.

If you ask people what their best memory of WoW is, they won't usually say something like "When I finally got my ghosthacker helmet", but rather "Remember that time when Wilbert aggroed 3 rooms of monsters and we still didn't die".

You are playing the right way when you log on and immediately get loads of tells asking how you are and if you want to do something. I stopped because I didn't have time, but I still keep in contact with many of the friends I made in the game.

Re:level 80

[mrwolf007]

Then you should know that Diablo is the lesser evil!
How dare you let evil cow king respawn and not kill him!
Just cause he respawned 100000 times doesnt mean hes invincible, you have to continue!

Re:level 80

[DKlineburg]

I have to agree, I realized how social I had become in a MMO when part of a large guild, and I didn't log in for a week due to RL problems. When I logged in on the next Saturday (when everyone is on) I go inundated with "DYAS!!!! Where you been?" and such. I enjoy the social part, from grouping with that level 10 new member in the guild to kill level 8 bears I one shot for pelts, to running the high end instance with a group of 12 or 24 hard core gamers that still wipe because they made it insane. I have a hard time explaining to people what I do playing games like this. They want to know what I do, and I find it tough to show them. Well I log onto Ventrilo, and use my mic to talk to these guys from around so we can take down this really big boss at the end of a 6 hour instance so I can get the last piece of my set armor which took us a month to learn how to get to the guy, much less about 3 months to get the entire group the entire set. I think the best thing to relate it to would be football. I will watch it sometimes, but to me it is entirely social. Yes there are hardcore fans just like in MMO's, but most are there for the social thing. I think the social aspect can be said about anything, bowling league, pool league, and darts come to mind. MMO's have just taken an age old thing, a social gathering, and put a fantasy backdrop online to it. Now that a lot of larger guilds use things like Ventrilo, being able to log onto that and talk to people before you even get into the game adds to the social aspect. I need to now go back to this PVP war, and push the enemy out. I'm in a large 24 man raid and we are wiping the floor.

Re:level 80

[neuromancer2701]

My wife and I are pretty casual player and we averaged about a level a week when the BC came out. I think leveling is so much more fun than the end game. The quests are interesting and give you goals that you can easily accomplish and the 5-man instances are pretty fun unless you have 2 hunters like me and my wife, haha.

It is amazing how much they have expanded the game at 70 now. Right before the BC came out I had only 1 or 2 epic, this time around I have almost all epics. Getting into a good guild is the key. Having a bunch of people that have similar goals allows you to accomplish even more in the short amount of time.

Re:level 80

[CrazyTalk]

Heck, I lost my motivation to play after reaching level 6. Running around killing wolves and thieves, collecting swag and bringing it back to the castle? Probably just me (10 million subscribers can't be wrong) but I got bored fast.

Re:level 80

[Anonymous Coward]

Level 6 is like 2 hours worth of playing. Considering the size of the game, I can't help but compare that to reading the first 10 pages of a 400 page book and tossing it away. It's just not a large enough sampling to have gotten an impression of the whole.

On the other hand, if you're not enjoying it, why do it. Unless you feel there's a chance being bored for a few hours will open the game up for you and let you have fun for countless hours. In that case the few hours of boredom would be a worthy investment.

If somebody asked me I'd say pick up a trial and play it until it runs out or level 20. If you haven't reached level 20 in that time and are too bored to want to play further, forget about it. If you get to level 20 but still find it mind numbingly boring, forget about it.

Re:level 80

[CrazyTalk]

Well, it took me about 8 hours to get that far - then again, I suck at video games. Actually one of the things that stopped me from getting further was getting "Stuck" on my quests (either getting killed immediately, or not being able to find what i needed to look for)

Re:level 80

[ajs]

ugh level to 80?

i mean i hear all the time how easy 60-70 is, supposedly, but man it's a pain if you're a casual player like myself. It's easy, but it's very time consuming. It's supposed to be, and that's OK. There's no destination in WoW, just many signposts along the way.

Or, to look at it another way, if you don't enjoy leveling, you're not going to enjoy reaching 70. It's just more of the same, really.

Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[The MAZZTer]

But how is this news? So it's getting closer to release... it was closer to release yesterday than it was the day before, too.

If it was an open alpha, that would be different. But nothing really changes, apart from increase hype from stories like this.

If you're in the closed alpha, I think there's a good chance you already know and hence this news article is old news. Hell, they're probably never going to see it, since they're probably playing it even now.

To those who AREN'T in the closed alpha this can only serve as a tool to help those who are flaunt their exclusivity.

In short: I don't see the point? Well, other than it's WoW and has made Blizzard billions of dollars.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[khallow]

How is it not news? Entering alpha, even if it is "closed" gives new information on Blizzard's progress to this upgrade. And some people care about that. So it has relevance too.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[DAldredge]

How do you think the /. editors received access to the closed beta? They traded access for stories like this.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different then any other Alpha that is out there, be it a game or software? Every day on /. you would hear about some software going into beta or alpha or even being released as v1.0. How is World of Warcraft any different?

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[bar-agent]

But how is this news? So it's getting closer to release... it was closer to release yesterday than it was the day before, too.

Well, if it weren't for that pesky NDA, we could learn about the Death Knight rev. 1 or new lands or whether WotLK is teh roxxorz or teh suxxorz. But, alas, as we are all law-abiding citizens here on Slashdot (ahem), we must wait with 'bated breath.

(And yes, it is 'bated breath, not baited breath. I have abated my breathing, not eaten nightcrawlers.)

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's confusing for /. readers - they know that if they're talking about a Microsoft product, they need to trash it, if it's an Adobe or other commercial product they need to complain about DRM or something like that, and if it's Ubuntu they need to complain about how it's not quite as good as Gentoo/BSD/whatever. There's no herd response already ingrained into the readership about WoW.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

> (And yes, it is 'bated breath, not baited breath. I have abated my breathing, not eaten nightcrawlers.)

Well, that answers a question that nobody asked.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Planesdragon]

(And yes, it is 'bated breath, not baited breath. I have abated my breathing, not eaten nightcrawlers.) ARRRGH!

1: No apostrophe is necessary if you use the old spelling. "Bated" is a perfectly cromulent word.

2: English does not now nor ever truly had one singular guide to spelling. As with word definition, spelling is fluid and will change with time.

3: Go ahead and use thine old spelling, for verily it must make ye quite gay, else thee wouldn't use such. But, prithee, take no insult when another uses such new spelling in textual intercourse with you.

4: Go ahead and say cromulent isn't a word. I dare you.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Evangelion]

(And yes, it is 'bated breath, not baited breath. I have abated my breathing, not eaten nightcrawlers.)

I defer to your mastery in this subject.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[dctoastman]

1. True, 'bated' is a word in and of itself

2. I take it you never heard of this company? http://www.merriam-webster.com/

3. It's not the old spelling, it is the correct spelling.

4. Just because the writers for the Simpsons decides to make up a word doesn't make it so.

5. Stop being a festizio

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[maglor_83]

cromulent isn't a word.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[xouumalperxe]

Just to be picky, "use thine old spelling" is wrong. The correct form is "use thy old spelling". Thee/Thine/Thy parallels Me/Mine/My perfectly (I guess you wouldn't get any of those wrong if you spoke a romance language).

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[decalod85]

To those who AREN'T in the closed alpha this can only serve as a tool to help those who are flaunt their exclusivity.

Exclusivity is the name of the game. You have something that someone else doesn't. This is the only explanation why players will pay a ton of gold for silly items like the "Blood Elf Bandit Mask" or the "17 lbs Catfish", because they are rare and they can show them off.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

It's news, because it allows devoted WoW watchers to make a very good guess on the release date.

Burning Crusade entered this Alpha phase July-August 2006, with open beta in October and launch in January 2007.

With WotLK hitting Friends and Family alpha in April, that would put closed beta at June or July, and assuming no major problems, launch in October or November 2008. This is the first time anyone can give anything than a wild guess on the WotLK release date. I'm not saying it's definitely Oct/Nov 2008, but I say based on today's information, a very good educated guess puts it there, based on the previous expansion and it's testing schedule.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[SL Baur]

(I'm a master baiter in WoW, 375 fishing skill in several different characters).

The 17 pound Catfish is a joke item. It's a gift given by fishermen to people they don't like very much because it's the smallest of the XX pound fish. Anyone showing it off is automatically branded as an idiot by anyone who knows better.

And yes, I've given away some of those to people I didn't like very much.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it tells us absolutely nothing about when the expansion will be released. This is BLIZZARD we are talking about. Every game they've ever released has had massive set backs. Having 10 million subscribers hasn't changed anything, it was supposed to be a year until Burning Crusade, and it was supposed to be a year after BC came out until Wrath of the Lich King. I'd put $100 saying WotLK isn't released until at least 2009. I mean, they're starting alpha now, and it is supposed to be out Christmas of '08. Yeah right Blizzard, I'd sooner believe you were making Tauren Marines.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[bri2000]

Cromulent is actually from to the Dr Johnson episode of Blackadder III. If the Simpsons have used it, it was in homage (or they stole it, if you prefer).

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[khallow]

You're willing to bet $100 on when the game comes out based on the fact that it's entering alpha now and you claim this story tells you nothing? Think about it.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[geekoid]

Can you post a link, I just looked through Black Adder three and couldn't find it.
I found 'compunctious' as well as a few others.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Spellvexit]

But it's through words like cromulent that we embiggen our vocabulary!

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

For a joke item, you seem to display little comprehension of the humor in giving it away or showing it off.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[WillAffleckUW]

cromulent isn't a word. Exactly.

It's a new Death Knight spell.

Oops ... hope the NDA police aren't online here.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[WillAffleckUW]

Thou art wrong, brother.

If thee wouldst spend time amongst the brethren, thou wouldst understand more and speak more truly.

(exceptions exist for all the rules you mentioned in English, French, and German ...)

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Tpl2000]

Sorry, you lost me at "textual intercourse"

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[geekoid]

All the major dictionaries say otherwise.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[CodyRazor]

"GO AWAY! BATIN!"

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[maglor_83]

Yes I know but I couldn't help myself. Nice to know I got an informative mod though.

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[xouumalperxe]

At most, it was a blanket statement where there are some exceptions. There might be some exceptions, but following the Thou/Thee/Thy/Thine to I/me/my/mine equivalence will get the vast majority of cases right.

In more detail, "Thou" is the nominative case of the second person singular. The nominative for the first person is "I". "Thee" is the oblique (or objective) case of "thou", same as "me" is the objective of "I". Though it can apparently take over most other cases, per the wikipedia article the oblique/objective case cannot be used as the nominative, so "If thee wouldst spend time" is wrong. "Thy" is, like "my", the genitive case, and "thine", like "mine" is the possessive.

I'm by no means an expert in old english grammar, but I fully expect that exceptions where one case is acceptable in place of another are valid for both first and second persons except where it might not make sense (such as singular inflection where imperative case is concerned).

Re:Disclaimer: I'm not an MMORPG fan

[Anonymous Coward]

^shrug^

cromulent isn't a word.

The Games section actually exists?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I know, offtopic. But it just seems like for the past couple of months the Games section has been primarily ignored - even through things like the release of Smash Bros. Brawl, a game that was worthy of a story when it was delayed but apparently not when it was released.

I'm glad to see Games stories like this making something of a comeback, but after checking the front page, a front page story on an alpha release of an MMORPG? Seriously?

I'd love to see stories like this limited to the Games section, but a front page story seems a bit much.

On an ontopic note, I wonder if this new expansion will get me interested in playing again. Probably not - I kind of ground myself out of MMORPGs. I've found that, if I'm forced to grind, I like portable games much better. I can grab the DS or PSP and grind for 10 minutes during lunch break or some downtime at home, but I can't manage the several hour commitment that an MMORPG requires.

I kind of wish some other company would do something interesting in the MMORPG space, but then I remember the Sony's "NGE" and the ever-so-innovative Square Enix "you can't pick your server" system and realize it's probably just as well Blizzard remains on top.

But even so, I'm still basically WoWed out, expansion or not.

Re:The Games section actually exists?!

[TheLinuxSRC]

...but then I remember the Sony's "NGE"...

Cringe.. twitch...

Now I feel _dirty_.

Re:The Games section actually exists?!

[Koby77]

On an ontopic note, I wonder if this new expansion will get me interested in playing again. Probably not - I kind of ground myself out of MMORPGs. I've found that, if I'm forced to grind, I like portable games much better. I can grab the DS or PSP and grind for 10 minutes during lunch break or some downtime at home, but I can't manage the several hour commitment that an MMORPG requires.
Did you play WoW? One of the big parts to its success is that there's minimal grinding as you level. Especially now after some recent changes, it's very possible to obtain max level by simply doing quests alone. Grinding is unnecessary. I think that WoW is unquestionably one of the fastest MMORPGs to get to max level. And you can go solo and you aren't forced to group outside of dungeons. WoW has succeeded because it's a lot more playable than the alternatives.

Are you talking about a leveling grind, or a max level grind for rep/gear/money/badges/honor/arena points?

Re:The Games section actually exists?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Max level grind. Made it to the end game, and got ground-out repeating the same raids over and over again.

Yes, hitting the level cap isn't quite as bad as some other MMORPGs. (But don't kid yourself - it's still grind-city.) But once you're there, there's nothing to do but grind rep or grind DKP or grind honor... Sounds like they added some new ones since I gave up playing.

Re:The Games section actually exists?!

[nuzak]

Okay, you can quest your way to 70, but let's take a look at the starting human quests:

* Collect Wolf Pelts
* Kill Kobold Vermin
* Kill Kobold Workers
* Kill Kobold Laborers
* Collect Burlap Bandanas
* ... other quests ...
* Collect Linen Bandanas
* Collect Leather Bandanas
* Collect Woolen Bandanas
* Collect Silk Bandanas

Around that point, I'm starting to wonder whether I'll have to collect Mageweave and Netherweave bandanas eventually

Re:The Games section actually exists?!

[geekoid]

No, but when you finally achieve that level of awesomeness, portal to a distant place to help them from this epic evil, you do get to ..kill... boars...again.

They really dropped the ball is some areas in respect to outland.
I can sit down half drunk with two guy and give you a list of 25 different unique and fun quests in a couple of hours.

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten more levels of tedious gameplay and new gear to grind for!

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Addicts rejoice!

What I want to know is ...

[ScrewMaster]

will the King's henchmen be known as "lichens"?

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Mastadex]

Good thing the King does not employ druids, else there would be a bunch of lichen-covered trees running around. Imagine that!

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pulled from Wikipedia:
"A major ecophysiological advantage of lichens is that they are poikilohydric (poikilo- variable, hydric- relating to water), meaning that though they have little control over the status of their hydration, they can tolerate irregular and extended periods of severe desiccation."

Sounds a lot like your average WoW player.

Re:What I want to know is ...

[dbIII]

will the King's henchmen be known as "lichens"?

Only Algy - and he's halfway to being a fun guy.

Cryptic raving to some - utterly horrible pun to others.

Re:What I want to know is ...

[ShinySteelRobot]

They'll be called "lychees".

Re:What I want to know is ...

[fractoid]

Dessication? You imply that I play WoW without a drink in hand? Nevar!

Re:What I want to know is ...

[mysidia]

Nope, the Githyanki Gish, Warlocks of Gith, and the other similar creatures that wander the astral plane!

Nah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely. Everyone knows that slime molds are superior to lichen...

Re:Let me tell you about the Wrath of the Lich Kin

[Anonymous Coward]

You're full of sh- oh, wait, no you're not any more.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Rick James, Lich!

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Rick James, Lich!

Traffic James is a Rick?

Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[SYSS Mouse]

Can someone check whether the Bard is in it?

Re:Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[dctoastman]

You must not understand the concept of April 1st.

Re:Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[fractoid]

You must not understand the concept of 'humerous reference'.

Re:Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[kv9]

you must not understand the concept of spelling.

Re:Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[Cornflake917]

You must not understand the concept of capitalization.

Re:Now that WotLK is in Alpha..

[hexadecimate]

We're almost half way to the Ten Commandments of Slashdot.

Next up: You must not have RTFA.

Time to sign up ... again

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

And JUST when I thought I was done with WoW. Honestly, a crack addiction would probably cost less - I might spend more money on it, but I'd also have more friends and more free time.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[ScrewMaster]

And JUST when I thought I was done with WoW. Honestly, a crack addiction would probably cost less - I might spend more money on it, but I'd also have more friends and more free time.

Yes, and if nothing else there will be a few crack whores around to help you through those cold winter nights.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[geekboy642]

Warcraft: $15 / month, 6 hours a day. It's a social event with friends...ever tried to raid with people you hate? No. You can hold down a job and even eat well. If you're careful, you can even keep a family.

Crack: $25 / hit lasting 10-15 minutes, and then you want another. Try holding a job when the urinalysis shows you a drug addict. Try caring about buying food when your entire body is twanging for the next hit. Try keeping a family when you steal and pawn your wife's wedding ring just for another dose. Do you have any friends? Do you know the expression "crack whore"?

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. World of Warcraft is not just like Crack, and anybody who seriously claims it is should go and volunteer in a real rehab center for a full day. You don't have an addiction, you have a hobby. Learn some god-damned perspective, you molly-coddled children.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone here's a WoW player.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[GaryPatterson]

Stop being so sensible and reasonable! No conversation about WoW should be this sensible. Where's the ranting?

Now let's all talk about why Retribution-spec'd Paladins are the best type of character! That should get things back to an uneven keel.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

My x-wife played Wow over 4,335 HOURS in one year.. Tell me that isn't an addiction.. And it is the primary reason she is the x.. and it ruined our family..

I agree, my father has been on the wagon for 25 years and I've seen all sorts of addictions destroy people's lives. But seriously, computer game addiction is real and it is as dangerous as any other addiction, just it won't kill you over night (no sleep, bad diet maybe help kill you sooner).

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Myrcutio]

hey...no fair, you brought reality into this!

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Kildjean]

more friends and more free time. I think at that moment i prefer the 'tards in barren's chat that a crack junkie...

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Kildjean]

My x-wife played Wow over 4,335 HOURS in one year.. Tell me that isn't an addiction. So she played half a year of wow... do the math, maybe it is because you sucked in bed? That could only explain why she played half the time wow... now if you had said she played, 8760 hrs, then yeah i think that would be an addiction. Still letting go of a chick that plays the game is kind of lame. Did she beat you at pvp too?

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally disagree - your drug addicted scenario plays out like most addictive behaviors - sacrificing tangible positives for myopic benefits.

MMORPG addiction just happens to use 'time' as it's currency vice cash for crack, just as smoking trades in health. MMORPG addicts regularly trade time with families, friends, jobs, etc to play just a little longer, or log in just that one more time to see what's happening; long after it's become enjoyable, the addicts are killing the dragon for the 100th time to get set some bit in a database.

I am in the healthcare field as a 911 paramedic in a large metropolitan run area, I do see the worst sorts of addictions - while the MMORPG addict may or may not have an easier road to recovery due to little actual physical damage, the neurological addictive impulses are the same, and with all due respect to the emotion your post displays, I believe your perspective is the one which needs to be adjusted.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Stalyn]

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. World of Warcraft is not just like Crack, and anybody who seriously claims it is should go and volunteer in a real rehab center for a full day. You don't have an addiction, you have a hobby. Learn some god-damned perspective, you molly-coddled children.

You know being addicted to something doesn't mean you have to be a ragged homeless person wandering the streets looking for a a fix. There are millions of people who are addicted to alcohol/cigarettes/prescription drugs/gambling/etc who are highly functional. They have a job, an active social life, wife/husband, kids etc. But they can still be addicted to something. If anyone has a "childish" view of addiction it's you.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[eugene_roux]

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. I'm rather glad to hear you say so... You see, I have MET people who have skipped work to play WoW; I have KNOWN women who have left their husbands because they would rather play WoW than have a marriage...

YOU tell me there is no such thing as being ADDICTED to WoW...

WoW is might not be all it's crack(ed) up to be, but it's not excactly innocuous either. Especially for people with naturally addictive personalities...

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

She had a higher Arena rating and better gear both PvP and PvE.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[justinlee37]

I don't know if he has a childish view of addiction -- he's just aggro'd because the guy said that a crack addiction would cost less than World of Warcraft. Which is, obviously, complete hyperbole. But still.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Machine9]

they are! right up to the inevitable purge/dispel leaving you with essentially a gimped warrior!

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Perspective, yes... I think I knew a lot of people who played WoW that I thought had perspective. Then they turned into slobbering sloths who want to kill you when you suggest they spend two hours to go out on a Friday night and *not* play. Sorry, a lot of people can be addicted enough to lose their job, friends, and well being.

As bad as crack, of course not... not addictive enough to cause problems? Nope, afraid to tell you all people don't have a good level of self-control.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[DKlineburg]

YOU tell me there is no such thing as being ADDICTED to WoW...
I don't think he was saying there aren't people addicted. I feel he was just pointing out that there are a lot of people who play socially as someone would play on a pool, bowling, or dart league. As for money wise, I think WoW ends up less expensive than a bowling league. You can easily spend $50 a week on such a league if you drink, buy food at the ally, and pay for your own ball, gloves, or whatever else they buy. I think addiction is when you can't balance out your life so that you take care of all aspects of it. From what I read, he was saying if you don't over do playing, it ends up cheaper, and isn't an addiction. Now, if you play like This guy [news.bbc.co.uk] than yes, that is an addiction, and people with that problem shouldn't play the game. At the very least they need help with there addiction just as anyone with an addiction does.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[petermgreen]

umm there are 8760 hours in a year.

still averaging 12 hours a day of a mmorpg does not sound sane to me.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

To get technical, some people say it's an abuse of the term "addiction" to use it on random hobbies that people play obsessively to get away from their life.

I've known people "addicted" to playing the card game Hearts, enough to miss classes, get kicked out of school, and hence sent to Vietnam to die. But that doesn't mean cards are an addictive substance that needs to be banned.

People can form pschological addictions to anything. It's not the same thing as physical addiction, even though the end result can sometimes be similar in extreme cases.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Drinking beer: $5/pint. It's a social event with friends...ever tried to go to the pub with people you hate? No. You can hold down a job and even eat well. If you're careful, you can even keep a family.

Crack: $25 / hit lasting 10-15 minutes, and then you want another. Try holding a job when the urinalysis shows you a drug addict. Try caring about buying food when your entire body is twanging for the next hit. Try keeping a family when you steal and pawn your wife's wedding ring just for another dose. Do you have any friends? Do you know the expression "crack whore"?

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your alcohol "addiction", you're not addicted. Alcohol is not just like Crack, and anybody who seriously claims it is should go and volunteer in a real rehab center for a full day. You don't have an addiction, you have a hobby. Learn some god-damned perspective, you molly-coddled children.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you are projecting reasonable playing into this mix. What makes WoW "crack" are the multitudes of players who play 16 hours a day, don't get enough sleep, show up late for work and can't function, skip the family outings, and/or fight with the family over "limits". They don't have family either because they can't stop playing WoW long enough to meet someone, or because WoW is their family. The only money they need to come up with each month is $15 for that sub and they can keep right on smoking the same rock.

So WoW is really cheap crack with a month long high.

Pay attention to this... because this si not uncommon.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the reference is to its addictive nature, and not an actual literal comparison.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[kv9]

can I have her phone number?

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

And it is the primary reason she is the x..

The other Reasons:
Overweight from diet of cheetos and Mountain Dew
Sores on ass mad sex unappealing
She was cheating on me with a Paladin

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[JavaLord]

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction"

$15 dollars is like 1000 gold I can make that in a few hours. I might turn tricks for epics though. Do you have a purple in your pants?

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[JavaLord]

1 (800) 592 5499

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[DarthTeufel]

But... if they weren't playing WoW what would they do? Its all about having a limited amount of free time and knowing how to spend it. If people's marriages are ending because of WoW, then there are much bigger issues involved. I tell my fiancee, "would you rather me go out and drink with the guys at a bar?"

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called hyperbole. Chill.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[nuzak]

I'd like to introduce you to the concept of A Joke.

Actually, I'd like someone else to.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Spudds]

Crack: $25 / hit lasting 10-15 minutes Wow! 10 to 15 MINUTES?

Either you have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about or I need the number of your crack dealer!
Seriously guy, you can buy yourself a $10 rock (it's a rock man, there's no such thing as a "dose" of crack) and that is, you guessed it, ONE HIT which tends to last anywhere from 1 to 1 and 1/2 minutes.

How do I know this? Next topic...

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[geekoid]

Well done.

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[Anonymous Coward]

Er...if someone left their spouse to play WOW, then WOW is the least of their problems. WOW is a hobby, nothing more. Any enjoyable activity can be "addictive" in that manner. Take WOW away from them and they will just get "addicted" to something else. I've seen people who are addicted to reading websites, does this mean websites are evil?

Re:Time to sign up ... again

[brkello]

You say that if it is bad. It's not the guy's fault a video game is more enjoyable than their wives. Maybe wives need to work a little harder to be enjoyable. (I promise, I am kidding...mostly)

Death Knight?

[Gm4n]

I've long since quit WoW (after being foolish enough to level several characters to 60 and one to 70), but I'm curious about this new class nonetheless. Everybody seems to know there will be death knights, but I have no idea what they are.

What is a death knight?

Re:Death Knight?

[Zironic]

They're the opposite of a paladin.

Holy Light->Death coil
Devotion aura->Unholy aura
Divine shield->Death pact
Resurection->Animate dead
(WC3)

in WoW they'll be a dps/tank class like warriors only they only use 2-handed weapons and instead of stance changing they switch runes on their sword.

Re:Death Knight?

[Psychotria]

Apparently they are powerful necromancers.

From http://www.wowwiki.com/Death_Knight:

A new order of death knights emerged during the Third War, in service to the Lich King. They were created from living and undead humans (and occasionally other races) who had been granted unholy runeblades, and most were former paladins who had forsaken the Holy Light.

Re:Death Knight?

[nuzak]

What just kills me is that they plan to have Death Knights for both Horde and Alliance. Wonder how they're working out the story for that one.

Logically the Scourge is its own faction, but I think the Horde/Alliance dichotomy is so hardwired into the WoW codebase, it'd be impossible to add a third faction.

Re:Death Knight?

[dctoastman]

I think if they really wanted to they could add a third faction. There are lots of small groups that are neither Horde nor Alliance, and Horde and Alliance are basically groupings of several groups.

I think the biggest issue would be races. Create more? Reuse existing? Starting area/quests/etc. There would be a lot of work involved in creating an entire new faction. It's something you would want to do in an expansion or overhaul/sequel.

Re:Death Knight?

[xouumalperxe]

Apparently the idea is that your Death Knight was recruited by the Lich King from the ranks of either the Horde or the Alliance, but you reneged on his offer at some point in your training as a Death Knight, and decided to rejoin your former friends, and give Arthas a taste of his own medicine. A bit contrived, but it works.

Re:Death Knight?

[deke_kun]

They have explained this a number of times already, including in the very first speech in which they announced the class. The PC Death Knights will be former minions of the Lich King (aka the aforementioned scourge) who have exerted their own influence on their destiny and broken free of his control. No longer a mindless pawn they swore allegiance to a new faction (insert horde or alliance here). They can be of any race, as all races are susceptible to the temptation and corruption of the lich king.

Re:Death Knight?

[Anonymous Coward]

What just kills me is that they plan to have Death Knights for both Horde and Alliance. Wonder how they're working out the story for that one.

Logically the Scourge is its own faction, but I think the Horde/Alliance dichotomy is so hardwired into the WoW codebase, it'd be impossible to add a third faction. Don't think the code is the problem... But this is; If they made a third faction to which the Death Knight was exclusive it would cause multiple problems.
    Number 1 being that there would be nobody to group with except other Death Knights until people leveled new characters to end game.
    Number 2 being that nobody would abandon their characters to start new characters of the same type on a different faction, if they were going to switch at all, it would be to create a Death Knight.

Re:Death Knight?

[geekoid]

There just flattening the playing fields. The story can't be any worse the Blood elf paladin story.

Re:Death Knight?

[demachina]

I forget what they were called in Everquest but they are the evil twin of Paladin. The sad thing about WoW is its Dungeons and Dragons and there hasn't been ANYTHING actually new or innovative done in he genre in nearly 10 or is that 20 years so everyone should stop pretending like anything in WoW is really new.

The only thing that made WoW a raging success while EQ failed was Blizzard made dungeons in to instances to get rid of the constant camp fighting in EQ that made it massively annoying to play. That one thing along created a multimillion dollar franchise and buried EQ. They also dumbed down the game so anyone could play, while EQ was often cryptic, frustrating and hard, though that also made it kind of interesting.

In another EQ analogy they went down this exact same track of constantly bumping up the level cap so the addicts would always have more levels to grind. I might have kept playing WoW if they HADN'T bumped the level cap up in Burning Crusade and trashed all the level 60 gear it had taken everyone months to get. Level grinding isn't the good part of MMORPG. Its running new and difficult dungeons with friends, solving problems and collecting crack....err...gear.

I'm hoping both game developers and players will have an epiphany and realize that level grinding shouldn't be the whole point. Yes you do need to grind levels for a while to weed out the lazy people and make them learn how to play the game but level grinding isn't what the genre should be about. It should be about making ever more interesting PVE content to challenge players, and developing better PVP too. The best thing they could do on the PVE side is to develop content with more random or intelligently changing behavior in the dungeon so people can't memorize a routine to beat a dungeon. If there were dungeons that constantly changed, without being completely erratic, that would be a fascinating challenge and it wouldn't get really old like the current instances in WoW do.

Re:Death Knight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shadow Knight was the EQ version of "Death Knight"....

Re:Death Knight?

[petermgreen]

afaict it is a paladin that has been currupted by the litch/scorge. A character who started as a paladin and was later turned into a death night was one of the main characters in warcraft 3.

Re:Death Knight?

[An ominous Cow art]

I forget what they were called in Everquest but they are the evil twin of Paladin. Shadowknight. Very similar to the D&D Anti-paladin NPC class presented in a Dragon magazine from around 1980.

The sad thing about WoW is its Dungeons and Dragons The WoW implementation of the Shaman class is pretty innovative.

Re:Death Knight?

[geekoid]

You forgot Lame.

Lich?

[martin-boundary]

So Lich... Is that short for Lichard? ;-)

Re:losing interest

[mauthbaux]

From what I've seen, Warcraft merely provides context for a social scene. If leveling up your character really was all that the game had to it, most people would tire of it long before even hitting level 14.

However, it's the social aspect that makes it fun. It's the same idea as a family vacation; the importance is the shared experience. By insulating yourself from the social interactions in the game, you've essentially lost the real reason most people find the game to be fun.

In summary: the social aspect is what makes the game fun. The rest of the game is there merely to provide context for the social interactions.

in other blizzard news

[sentientbrendan]

Starcraft II has been delayed indefinitely again so that blizzard can concentrate on it's more profitable World of Warcraft franchise.

Re:in other blizzard news

[Cookie3]

WoW and SC2 have completely separate developers, art teams, etc. I wouldn't worry too much about WoW impacting SC2 (or, vice-versa SC2 impacting WoW).

Re:in other blizzard news

[Anonymous Coward]

Give a link or it isn't true.

Re:in other blizzard news

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Starcraft development team and the World of Warcraft development team have a lot of overlap, right?

Re:in other blizzard news

[xouumalperxe]

You're obviously not familiar with the Tauren Marine

(In case you're wondering, it was part of this year's April Fools)

Re:in other blizzard news

[cordsie]

As a matter of fact, you can thank the profitable World of Warcraft franchise for bankrolling the development of Starcraft II.

Re:in other blizzard news

[MooseMuffin]

On the contrary - Starcraft II is probably very high priority over there. WoW can only go on for so long, and they need to get people interested in the Starcraft universe again so they can release a Starcraft MMO.

Re:in other blizzard news

[martin_henry]

Starcraft: coming at you at the speed of light.*

*Source of game is the other side of the universe.

Random my ass

[everphilski]

As someone who played D2 for several years in between MMO's and school, their method of "random generation" was hardly random. Unique monster were still the same uniques with the same drops. There were a few rare monsters (who were unique, randomly generated) and the maps were randomly generated in the sense the geometry was different but the mobs were the same and the art was the same, and if you played for more than a month you figured out hey, I've seen this "random map" before.

YAWNFEST

[Anonymous Coward]

Level up, gear up, level up gear up and repeat forever. I myself have so given up on the whole grind to the best possible and then have all that effort be worthless... As fun as killing some uber boss from wc3 is raiding gets old fast...

Re:YAWNFEST

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a videogame, dildoface. It's supposed to be fun. If you're not having fun, stop playing, for fuck's sake. What, did you think you were going to get a cookie at the end?

Re:YAWNFEST

[lareader]

Indeed, and I agree, the real life cycle of sleep -> eat -> work -> eat -> semi-social activity -> sleep is a bore.

I mean, seriously, it's the same thing over and over again - right? ;)

Re:YAWNFEST

[petermgreen]

yeah, a lot of real life is a bore, we do it because we have to do so in order to get money which buys us food. Sure most first world contries have some form of benefits but they are usually set at such a level that those reciving them have only enough for the bare essentials.

games are supposed to be stuff you do for enjoyment during your free time, not a second job.

Nooooo!

[Starlet Monroe]

Yes, and if nothing else there will be a few crack whores around to help you through those cold winter nights.

Never winter nights!

Not to flamebait but . . .

[Lovat]

Disclaimer: I've played WoW. I've stopped playing it more times than I've played it. Yes I've done endgame. Yes I pre-ordered WAR Collector's Edition.

First off, WoW has exceptionally bad PvP. It's a well known tidbit that Blizzard just tacked it on really. That said, it has GREAT PvE and is a fun game. So long as you don't want to PvP. At least in my opinion.

Now, maybe things have changed. But when I first heard about this expansion it seemed to offer another 10 levels, and then Every Single Cool PvP Feature that WAR has promised from the get-go.

All I get from this expansion's release is that Blizzard is actually somewhat worried about Conan/WAR. But it's too little too late. I've played WoW when it first came out, and I even came back to play it when BC came out. Blizzard never fixed what I thought were major flaws (cough cough, World PvP in general) that they originally used as advertising points.

Honestly, I'm not trying to make a flamewar here. I just want to know if I'm alone in thinking that for PvP oriented players this is just too little too late? Arena was nice, and fairly fun. But other than that one morsal there has been NILCH good about WoW's PvP system.

Am I wrong? I honestly have stopped playing four or five times now just because of the PvP system. And before you say it, no not the ganking. Sometimes that's annoying but usually amusing.

Captcha: Lamented. Man. It's like its reading my mind.

Re:Not to flamebait but . . .

[SL Baur]

I just want to know if I'm alone in thinking that for PvP oriented players this is just too little too late? Maybe, but you don't count. The subscriber base keeps expanding.

I'll be waiting in line to get my 0 day copy when it comes out.

I'm hoping they move this Arena crap to another Universe and just do what they do best - give us great PvE.

Re:Not to flamebait but . . .

[JavaLord]

WoW PvP will never be 'good' or balanced. Hell it was more balanced at 60 than 70.

All I get from this expansion's release is that Blizzard is actually somewhat worried about Conan/WAR.

They don't care about other games, blizzards plan since before TBC was to do 1 expansion pack a year. With blizzards usual dev cycle, that means one will be out every 1.5 to 2 years.

Conan looks pretty sweet.

inside joke

[superwiz]

Nooo!!! I am not ready! I am not ready, yet!

Re:inside joke

[deke_kun]

So what you are saying is... (illidan voice)You are not prepared!

Re:The Price Of WoW

[Colage]

...because when I want advice on wooing the ladies I come to Slashdot.

HOBBY? WoW is NOT a hobby!

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW is not Crack; although, for some people it might become an addiction cycle.

You don't have a seriously damaging addiction if it has developed into one, but you DO NOT HAVE A HOBBY!

Maybe I'm getting old, but I never ever considered playing video games to be an actual hobby. It is an entertaining waste of time pure and simple. Perhaps its a virtual hobby-- or virtually a hobby but not quite a real hobby?

Its a game to pass the time; if you play it that much, you need to discover LIFE instead of squandering it.

Re:HOBBY? WoW is NOT a hobby!

[lareader]

Ehm... what is a hobby if not an "entertaining waste of time"?

I mean, are you seriously contending that building model railways is not a hobby or that it is something more than an "entertaining waste of time"?

If it is not a hobby, then your definition of a hobby is quite different from what most people use it as.

In the end, passing time (and wind) is what life is about. The universe does not pass value judgments on the way you spend your life.
Your perception of reality is what determines whether you are living life or squandering it.

That said, IMHO, playing WoW is worse than having a meaningful relationship with another person, and better than drinking yourself into a stupor every weekend in the hopes of finding a meaningful relationship with someone.

Re:HOBBY? WoW is NOT a hobby!

[shalla]

That said, IMHO, playing WoW is worse than having a meaningful relationship with another person, and better than drinking yourself into a stupor every weekend in the hopes of finding a meaningful relationship with someone.

You're assuming that I'm not actually playing WoW with my significant other as part of our meaningful relationship. We can't always just sit there, staring lovingly into each other's eyes, you know. Sometimes you have to get the gang together and go kick Gruul's ass (or Moroes's ass, or Gandling's. We're not so picky.).

Why, yes, we've already signed up for Origins too. How did you know?

Re:losing interest

[KnightMB]

Go back to old school games that run fantastic on new hardware like NWN. I've been running a game server for the NWN world for over 6 years and when it comes to social interaction and new quest and areas to keep players busy, WOW has nothing on us. Go here for more info if you like, but I figured I would post this comment rather than use my mod points ;-) http://ooapw.net/

Re:The Price Of WoW

[lareader]

I'd like to check up on your numbers, skeety*3.

Free to get laid? So, you go out on the street, bare-assed and without a deoderant, and ask people to get it on with you? Does this actually work?

Please describe your free get-laid strategy. Inquiring minds wants to know and are based on recent reports, quite willing to pony up some cash to get to know this free secret!

In seriousness, please STFU about it being free to get laid. It costs time and/or money as well as opportunity costs... the time I could have spent getting my level 14 paladin up to 60. ;)

Re:The Price Of WoW

[Spad]

Yeah, I hear the chicks go wild for Slashdot trolls.

Re:The Price Of WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your $15 newsletter.

World of Warcraft died when 2.0.1 went live

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that they want to cater to a large player base, but they dumbed the game down to a ridiculous level after the expansion.

The fact that a complete WOW addict like myself can no longer stand the game shows that they went too far trying to appeal to first-time MMO players.

Keep your sparkly quest objectives and easy epics to yourselves, i`m going back to MUDs.

you have no clue

[Shivetya]

The real problem with MMOs like WoW is that the meat of the game isn't all that fun. Some, like City of Heroes, try and avoid it by purposefully making low-level re-play the focus of the game. Others, like Eve Online, say to heck with PvE and focus on the PvP side.

If this were true WOW would never had been so popular. It is amazing popular because the parts of the game which usually are boring or a drag in others games are not so in WOW.

They could make it fun and interesting and genuinely massive, but that'd require real work and wouldn't have the same profit margin

If the above statement doesn't scream "I am an irrational WOW/Blizzard hater" I don't know what does. Sorry, but you don't arrive at B without A. How do you explain the massive profit they generate? Really? If not for the fun and interesting aspect of the game? I understand you don't like the game, your clueless attempts at dismissing their work makes it obvious, but honestly why do you have to prove your stupid at the same time. You do not make the big bucks like Blizzard is unless you do deliver fun and interesting game play across all aspects of the game.

Re:you have no clue

[geekoid]

There are other factors in Blizzards success outside of the game. The widening of the player demographic passing the tipping point around the time it was released being a big one.

Great

[jerryodom]

I guess my mother can write off my brother getting that job this year.

Re:Great

[geekoid]

Maybe your mother should rip out that internet connect?

Re:losing interest

[Anonymous Coward]

If leveling up your character really was all that the game had to it, most people would tire of it long before even hitting level 14. ty i'm 64, lol.

The social aspect is a joke. Congratulations if you somehow found people to talk to. I've met less than six people this year that could even type, let alone communicate above the level of chimp. I'm led to believe there's something wrong with me for being able to understand those abbreviations. And thank god I can, because it's humiliating to ask or look them up online.

Then I'd see a female night elf with a cool name like bloodsiren, think "whoa, she's hot" followed by "agh, it's probably a guy!...". Then she'd dance on the mailbox in skimpy clothing and crowds of male tauren would gather and cheer. Only then I realize how absolutely mad and evil Blizzard must be to make people guess real gender with abbreviated pigeon. I'm not the only person that's done this. I bet people would buy books written on the subject, if they existed. (I can see it now: "WoW Sex!", "RU GRL?", "Qwearty?")

Those are the main reasons I play solo, to keep what's left of my sanity and dignity. I also grew up playing games alone, and WoW is like the best of them - with all the added fun of lag and frequent disconnects. Except other people can see me and think, "Ooo, he's good at wasting time. Wonder if he'll join my guild?"

My prediction.

[geekoid]

This is the Shark WoW is going to jump.

Re:losing interest

[twosmokes]

Then I'd see a female night elf with a cool name like bloodsiren

I think we just found your problem.

Re:losing interest

[shalla]

The social aspect is a joke. Congratulations if you somehow found people to talk to. I've met less than six people this year that could even type, let alone communicate above the level of chimp.

That's strange. I have fairly in-depth conversations about books, politics, and the game with people all the time. And yes, they're all educated people who can spell and communicate well.

Then I'd see a female night elf with a cool name like bloodsiren, think "whoa, she's hot" followed by "agh, it's probably a guy!...". ...

Um, yeah. I'd probably pretend to be AFK to avoid talking to you. That quote made you sound like Creepy Guy Looking for a Date on WoW.

sarcasm....

[martin_henry]

You mean, like, a job outside the guild?

Instead of Gold Miners, will we have Rune Miners?

[WillAffleckUW]

I for one am wondering about the downstream materials requirements for the runecrafter class and all the new upper level addons for Death Knights, and how that will distort the WoW economy even more.

On the other hand, so long as it uses copper ore in vast quantities, my low level n00bs will be raking in the Gold ...

Re:Death Knight? or Third Faction?

[WillAffleckUW]

Well, does this mean the Level 90 expansion is Fire Gods? Or Elemental Warriors?

If both Horde and Alliance can be Death Knights, you have to wonder what the next expansion will be.

Re:Death Knight? or Third Faction?

[nuzak]

Elemental Warrior would be a Shaman, no? Or you're talking about actually transforming... Might be a nice "prestige class" edition if they do the Emerald Dream as an expansion (though they're hinting at doing it as a jumbo expansion to WotLK, much like the way they added the Sunwell isle)

How about a NCAA Tourney fan?

[EXTomar]

Unless you turn tricks for $15 to pay for your Warcraft "addiction", you're not addicted. I'm rather glad to hear you say so... You see, I have MET people who have skipped work to play WoW; I have KNOWN women who have left their husbands because they would rather play WoW than have a marriage...

YOU tell me there is no such thing as being ADDICTED to WoW...

WoW is might not be all it's crack(ed) up to be, but it's not excactly innocuous either. Especially for people with naturally addictive personalities... Interesting, so do you know someone who has skipped out of work a few days work for the NCAA tourney game? I do. Do you know women who are annoyed at their husband for paying so much attention to their bracket picks? I do. Here is a guy who surfs ESPN and other stat sites ever spare moment he can and has an Excel sheet open with columns, numbers, full of data to be the best "bracketologist" ever. Is this person addicted to college basketball?? I wouldn't say so and I don't think there are many professional or laymen who are willing to go out on a limb to suggest they are and need help. He just really likes the event.

The point is just defining addiction as some sort of selfish activity with undesirable side effects is too broad and sweeping. Many selfish acts and activities are in the grand scheme of things harmless and not addictive. On the flip side, there are people out there who have real issues here where World of Warcraft isn't so much the problem but the latest vehicle to enable their self destruction. If WoW didn't exist they would latch onto something else.

As a side note, I know a person who ignored their wife to play WoW and ended up getting divorced. Turned out the marriage was on the rocks for years before so when this game popped up they used it as an escape. It turned out that "playing a lot of WoW" and "divorce" were simply not cause and effect. And besides, I would rather have this person who was a little stressed and depressed getting some enjoyment in WoW instead of doing something really risky like drinking themselves into oblivion.

Rick? Is that you?

[beer_maker]

Thanks for making me shoot coffee out my nose and all over my monitor, lich. You deserve mod points or a beating - or both.

Parallel analogies

[CalicoPaisley]

Disagree on your judgemental assessment.

This person replied with a tangible scenario of crack addiction because WoW and other MMOs are most commonly compared to crack. Makes sense, doesn't it? Fight fire with fire.

As for the principle of the matter, physiological addiction acknowledged, it takes an addictive personality in the first place to become addicted to anything -- substance or media. I've been playing WoW for about two years now, on and off. I have one main, who got to 70 only about a month ago. I have no alts. At "best", I play about once every two weeks. At worst, I play for about an hour or two every other day. I've been a gamer since 1989 and yet WoW is my current favorite game. None of these details are exaggerated.

Allow me to introduce another scenario with a grain of salt, just to help with perspective. Human beings are omnivorous. Yet there are some who refuse to eat meat. It has been shown that a human can live a happy, relatively healthy life meat-free life, however a person must do some adjusting in order to make sure their protein and other nutritional needs are being met. Does this mean meat-eaters are addicted to meat? No. Does the fact that we do not "require" meat to survive mean we ought to give it up? No. Ought those lessen their intake who are eating too much? Because it leads to health problems, absolutely, yes.

Professional help may be required for WoW addicts whose lives have been ruined because of their addiction. But the addiction lies not in the medium. It is within the individual, regardless of how the addiction is expressed.

Not true

[geekoid]

Wow has consequence, there just not as large as other systems.

You have to get back to your body. They even made a race faster at this just to really make it annoying.
It also damages your equipment.
Which may not seem like much, until you are getting hit with 20+ gold repair bills.

Taking away experience is just stupid.

WoW does not have 10 million subscribers

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW has 3.5-4 million subscribers and the rest are non-subscribing players in Asia (who don't pay subscriptions, as they typically play at net cafes where the operator of the cafe pays a site license to install WoW).

Re:losing interest

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep mentioning this social aspect, however whenever I look at the social aspect beyond my three friends grouping together to BG, I see the most cancerous part of the game, the guildies that go raiding. Biggest waste of time, evar.

One in one hundred subscribers keeps playing

[patio11]

Shame about them losing funding. I wonder how it could possibly have happened.

Seriously, can you imagine Netflix, another business which has a license to make money off of you for forever, say "We're glad you have enjoyed watching 47 consecutive disks of Naruto. However, we've determined that you're not nearly hardcore about quality movies enough to be using our service. This was partially based on our black magic algorithms and partially based on a random number generator. Oh, don't worry, we're not canceling your service -- we're just making it impossible for you to rent any movie that has an N in it, and reducing your quota to one movie a month. Grind some romance comedies and, in time, you may be allowed to watch anime again. If we feel like it."

Meanwhile Blockbuster says:

"Uhh, you pay us your monies, we'll even let you watch Gigli... if you sign a waiver first. Heck, want to watch it every day for a year? Just make sure your credit card is updated. We aim to please."

Think of what is going through your head when you walk into the last room before becoming a Mage of Total Awesomeness and then, boom, you died because you forgot to pack your Staff of Anti-Dragon, which you were clearly informed that you needed 37 hours before. You're thinking "!"#$"# this game SUCKS I've wasted HOW many hours" Except you're not thinking that, because you've already heard it happens to people, and instead you're playing WoW.

misnomer?

[lusiphur69]

Uh...I refuse to call behaviours that have no physical component - such as game playing, excessive masturbation, gambling, risk taking, overeating etc. - addictions. They are not addictions, they are behaviours which, for whatever reason, a certain individual cannot seemingly refrain from engaging in, despite negative consequences. The vast majority of individuals can enjoy the above referenced behaviours without negative consequences. These instances should be called compulsive behaviours.

On the other hand, no one can have can smoke crack, shoot heroin or snort synthetic opiates for several days without becoming physcially addicted - ie. there are physical symptoms of illness. These are accurately called addictions. Everyone will be susceptible, except for those prescient enough to take the Chem Resistant trait.