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Large Content Patch To Precede Upcoming WoW Expansion
Blizzard has announced they will be releasing a sizable patch to prepare for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft. The patch, similar to one they released prior to the first expansion, will include the new profession (Inscription), new talents for each class, and two new arenas. The patch will be up on the Public Test Realm "soon," according to a Blizzard rep, but it will require significant testing before reaching the live servers. Blizzard developers Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack gave a related interview recently to Videogamer in which they mentioned that a graphical reboot for World of Warcraft "may never be necessary." We've been following the development of Wrath of the Lich King for a while now.
I stopped playing WOW about a year ago. It was the same thing over and over. Push number, wait for bar to fill, push another number, wait for bar, then loot. Rebuff, and start again. To me, this expansion means nothing. I would be curious to hear if this expansion will cause any players that have left to actually rejoin.
So instead, for entertainment, you read news about WoW and discuss it online. I might have to try that when the server's down or I'm at work...oh wait.
>> I would be curious to hear if this expansion will cause any players that have left to actually rejoin.
Yeah. Because, hopefully, all the old friends I use to hang out with, or at least some of them, will re sign up as well. The fun in the game for me was tackling new challenges with friends.
Now, granted, the game is really geared towards leveling up and acquired virtual items so that you are better than someone else. Eventually, people get bored when they approach a certain level. I imagine though, that the expansion will draw in some of those people as well. There will be new points to gain, new digital icons to acquire.
"Now, granted, the game is really geared towards leveling up and acquired virtual items so that you are better than someone else."
I never really cared about being better than someone else. I just wanted levels and gear so I could survive in new zones or instances and enjoy more of the game.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
game receives update! alert the media!
Beautiful woman and yet she has a boyfriend who lives in that game. (6hrs a day or more of playing, especially weekdays = living in the game.) MMO's, they're a helluva drug.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
That's not really true in a client-server environment. They can update almost all aspects of the game, and either change regardless of the client, or require the client update for the game to continue to work.
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I stopped playing WOW about a year ago.
I see, so your opinion about this game that you don't enjoy and don't play is incredibly relevant.
It was the same thing over and over. Push number, wait for bar to fill, push another number, wait for bar, then loot. Rebuff, and start again.
I feel sorry that you remember such a beautifully artistic game with a great storyline and other fun people to play with was so grey and empty. Perhaps the game is interesting and you are the boring one.
I played GAME for years - Then I realized that GAME was just a massive waste and only losers/basement-dwellers/twits/sexless-wonders play GAME anymore.
Thank goodness I quit GAME! I can't believe anyone still plays GAME anymore! Everyone should quit!
Besides, NEXT-GAME is the best thing ever! I don't even know why GAME makes news anymore!
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
Treadmill Treadmill Treadmill Treadmill Treadmill Treadmill Treadmill Treadmill ...Oh god I fell asleep and that was all just remnant motor reflexes from playing.
which makes you the exception, not the rule.
VideoGamer.com: Do you guys expect a drop off when Warhammer Online comes out?
TC: It's hard to say. We haven't really experienced any meaningful drop-offs in the past.
After how successful the WAR Preview Weekend was and how exciting it was playing a new game with new classes and new areas, I think it's hubris for them to think that they aren't going to lose a lot of their player base. I know my household will have two accounts cancelled, and I know of about 10+ friends who are going to play as well. I don't know if they will cancel their WOW accounts but they won't be logged in.
I think the hardcore and casual PvP'ers will be playing WAR soon after launch if not at launch. The RvR in the preview was fantastic and just like what everyone has always wanted in WOW. It exists in every zone in WAR or you can do scenarios (battlegrounds). There aren't just 4 battlegrounds to play in and you can queue any where at any time and return to where you were when done. It's also possible to get gear without having to rely on a raid. And when you PvP you get XP.
Blizzard is going to try to implement some world PvP in with the expansion but it will probably be too little too late for the fans of PvP. Don't get me wrong, it won't kill WOW by any means, WOW will continue positive growth for a while until there is a contender in Asia, where the bulk of their user accounts exist. But WAR will make them stop and think about their direction. They might finally relent and merge many of their low-population servers. Maybe they'll drop their insane e-sport fetish that they've had for the last couple years and put more RPG into their MMO Arena Game.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Mixed feelings about WoW.
While I agree with you regarding the artistic merit of WoW ("stunning" was the word I found myself using a lot)and the storyline(very immersive), I have to agree with the parent poster. I found the repetitiveness of faction grinding, material acquisition, etc., very annoying. I found myself doing the same thing over and over just to do something different. Also, as a regular highend raider, I found that I had to obligate myself, in order to keep raiding, to times that were not really available for gaming. It was, in effect, effecting other non-gaming aspects of my life. I felt locked into the game. This realization was what made me decide to cancel my account. I do miss it, but I am glad to have no more obligation to the game.
The thing I liked about it the most was large-scale cooperation of many players, many good friends. But eventually, the repetition outweighed the benefits.
I reactivated my Ultima Online accounts (I have two) and now I can play wherever and whenever I want(I can take a brand new character into the hardest dungeon in the game, if I choose, but would probably not last long). I have zero obligation to do something in the game I do not want to, in order to be allowed access to other content. It is a very NON-linear game, as opposed to WoW being very linear, in that you have to do certain things, many times, in order to experience certain content. Sure, Ultima Online has repetition. But it not required.
To this day, and after trying most of the MMOs that have come out since UO, I have YET to find a game that gives me the freedom Ultima Online does.
It seems Illidan is going to be revealing himself based on some sound files that have been extracted from the beta files. Probably put up some quests and maybe some bosses to fight, hopefully for a variety of levels. Shouldn't just be the 70s getting in on the fun. As for Wrath, a lot of the changes and improvements will be quite good, but there will likely still be some growing pains. But flying carpets man! We'll be getting flying carpets!
I have been playing off and on for over 3 years. But I'm pretty sure this craptastic next expansion will seal the deal for me. Looks like I'll be giving Warhammer a try.
It's not surprising though that the expansions are sucking compared to the original game, given how much of the original team has left.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Sorry, I have to agree with the parent of this thread... many people who have experienced this game get bored because of the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Check out sluggy.com for a nice series of commentary jokes about it.
http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080820
Your comments about him being irrelevent are trollish - he does have experience with the product, and decided for himself. I'm sorry you've chosen to take a complex argument and make it "you haven't been there TODAY, have you".
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
For me, its a race. Will our guild be able to progress into the next tier of content before this patch comes out and basically brutalizes the guild structure. What happened last time was that a guild I had been raiding with for 6 months all of a sudden lost about a third of its membership. and the rest of them had incredible amounts of trouble ajusting to their new talents. raid attendence became spotty, then non-existent. Once the actual expansion came out, some levelled their characters as fast as humanly possible to the next level cap and started pushing others to do so as well so that they would have friends in the dungeons with them. In the end, though, that guild did not survive the transition.
Its two expansions later, and endgame one to one (not arenas) pvp in BGs, you have two classes that rock, and the rest of everything is HKs for those two classes, unless there is a wide gear disparity.
Doesn't take play skill either... just a macro to repeat a certain sequence of crap until you see HK:Private on your screen.
I'm hoping WAR's PvP isn't as obviously broken.
Go ahead and jot down an exception next to my name too. For me the gear has always been tools to a greater goal. The closest this has become to a desire to be "better" is the realization that said gear (especially when "resilience" came in to the picture) was pretty important in a PvP encounter.
Granted - that still makes folks like me and the parent part of a small minority (or a very quiet majority).
Diablo 3 looks to be a more immediate and better playing game than wow. Not sure if I will take up wow again with expansion but I know 3 months of my life are already put aside for D3, coloured shadows or not. Mebe if they fix Ret paladins I'll come back...
.
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
Are you really getting to freely experience content if you're so under-prepared (read: must be Grand Master in several skills plus equipment) that the mobs take you out shortly after walking through the door? Or if some player goon squad does the same?
Don't get me wrong - UO was great. Still is in many ways. But I'm thinking your field over there isn't as green as you think it is. :)
If you can find one MMO that isn't repetitive, or hell even one game that isn't repetitive I will declare you the winner of this conversation. Even better, find an action irl that isn't also incredibly repetitive and you win. Now that I think of it, I've made this post several times too!!! As a side note, I generally stop playing a game once all I notice is the repetitiveness of playing, which usually only happens when I run out of new things/story to try/experience or on the rare chance that a game is so shallow and lackluster that I don't even play through it. WoW is the type of game I play in spurts, quit till something new comes along then go back until I run out of stuff to do again. It's the type of game that keeps on giving. Then again I love the ongoing story so I'm probably a rare exception of MMO players now a days .
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
It's not her who has the character, it's the boyfriend.
I would never go out with someone just cause they had a level 70 though, pah.
You know, if there's one category of people I find mildly amusing, it's the "meh, I played Game X for two years, and thus I have enough experience to say exactly how utterly boring and pointless it is." In fact, only slightly less amusing than the "I played Game X for two years, and then decided it sucks, it's horrible, and only idiots like it." (Admittedly, the OP isn't in the latter category, but you can find plenty of those around.)
Including, yes, such "commentary" as that on Sluggy Freelance.
Here's a thought: If a game held your attention past the, say, 10 to 50 hours an offline game would (with PC ones tending to be the former, and console RPGs... well, at least _used_ to me more toward the latter), then maybe there's _some_ merit in it. If it even kept you there for the "free" month, even playing it at a casual pace, you already saw more content than in 2-3 full price CRPGs nowadays.
There must be _something_ that you must have found interesting or enjoyable there, unless you're trying to tell me that you (and him) are self-hating idiots who punished yourselves for months by doing stuff that was repetitive and boring all along. Obviously not because you were enjoying it, but just, you know, to feel miserable one more month and pay for the privilege.
You're not retarded, are you? I'm guessing you aren't.
Or maybe it's that you'd eventually get bored of anything else, and any other game. Nobody has infinite content, at least until someone invents an AI GM who can pass the Turing test. And nobody has an infinite team of developers, with an infinite total imagination, so each quest and each monster is truly unique. Even then, debatably it's not possible, since there's a finite number of actions and story types that make any sense.
It applies to any other game too. Eventually if you play enough Starcraft or CounterStrike or Oblivion or whatever, guess what? It's starting to repeat itself. Eventually you've seen all maps (or map pieces for games with randomly generated maps), used all weapons, tried all spells, done all quests (if applicable), and that's it. End of the line. It gets repetitive from there. Even before that, exactly in how many ways can you headshot someone in CS or swing a sword at a monster in Oblivion, before it's doing the same things again? Even with a different skin and model on that monster, you're still swinging the same damned sword in the exact same arc, and doing the same block-then-counterattack sequence again. How many times you can zerg rush someone in Starcraft before it's essentially like being an automaton executing the same script over and over again?
At some point it's just time to give up and move on. For some people it's sooner, for others later. But when it stops being entertaining, just move on.
But realize that it's not the game that suddenly qualifies as being sucky, it's just "you". And I'm not saying that in a bad way. It's "you", in as much as you've seen it all, got bored, are no longer interested in it. Fine. Move on.
You didn't suddenly get a revelation about how bad the game is, you just got a revelation about where _your_ limits are. Congrats.
And please lose the preaching. It may look like you just discovered how boring and pointless the game is, and maybe that it's your duty to enlighten others about it. But you only discovered that it just became boring to _you_. I.e., that you're got a human after all. It's not much of an enlightenment to bestow upon anyone else. We were already suspecting that you were human.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Color me exceptional as well. I play these MMOs until I've reached the top level and seen all of the content, then move to the next one. If I'm going to waste any energy trying to be more successful than my neighbor, it's going to be in real life.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
My wife got us into the 3 day Warhammer beta last weekend and since then I've found that playing wow just annoys the heck out of me. Here are the reasons why:
1. Quests that require that you run for long periods of time. Who thought this was a good idea?! I've never liked this, but now I've lost all tolerance for it
2. There's an overall lack of theme or purpose. My first quest is to kill sprites, then boars, then harpies, then turtles, then orcs.... wait, I'm playing an orc. It seems like your people are fighting everyone and nobody. I want a common theme for why I'm doing what I'm doing.
3. I was ganked this morning by a 70 mage. Really honorable killing a level 30 who was fighting at the time. I don't know why I was never ganked in warhammer, but I wasn't. But every time I died I felt like I was killed honorably.
4. Noone cares about the world pvp in wow (I know I don't) and the BGs are about who has the highest tier gear. Not at all fun anymore.
I'm not claiming that warhammer is going to kill wow- I don't think it will. Nor am I claiming that warhammer is even better (it could use additional features). But, I can say that I just can't play wow any more- just like I can't stand to play pacman anymore.
Well, it depends on your definition of repetitive. Any RPG will be repetitive in the sense of "overcome challange, see more of the world, become more powerful, repeat" but that's not what people complain about. People get bored by "grind" - doing *exactly* the same thing with the same abilities for the same reward over and over again.
Modern MMOs are very grindy. WoW's success is that it doesn't get grindy until the endgame. In the early days of MUDs and MUDs-with-pictures and UO, there were lots of games and activities that weren't grindy. There were pure puzzle games. UO had dozens of different rewarded activities in the game, from treasure hunts to cracking the spell system.
The eventual "WoW killer" will succeed because they recapture that, and eliminate grind from even the endgame by adding a host of things to do. In WoW's endgame you have four choices: solo grind faction/cash, run instances, PvP, and crafting. Crafting tops out pretty quickly, but that's fine, it's still something different. A game which had dozens of activities (integrated into the world, you donb't want them to feel like minigames) would keep people busy for much, much longer without the sense of grind.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Likewise, that way everyone who gets a stiffy from PVP will leave WoW and it'll be left to more intelligent, civilized players.
You are technically talking about different goals, not about games being repetitive actions, and in that regard I can agree with you. Grinds are a goal, a very bad goal in my opinion and many others'. Using them as an excuse for progress is well, dumb. Luckily, WoW has started to move away from these actions more and more, it's not perfect yet but they are trying to remove the grinds. This does not change my basic comment, everything is repetitve, what matters is what you experience in the process. If you experience nothing but the repetitive actions, then the game has lost it's value to you.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
The game's art was interesting, but you get the same style in, for instance, Warcraft 3. And although WoW may have a great storyline, I never got to see it...there were too many tedious "Kill this many x and bring the skins to y" quests in the way. Saying someone is boring because they dislike the grind? Not that cool, dude. When I play a game (especially with friends), I want something interesting to do, not something repetitive and so directly rules-based. Each to their own, of course...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
You are not Prepared.... ...but I am, thanks to Sunwell runs...
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
just wait, they're be a few people sayin' "No, I'm an exception too". Funny thing, of the hundreds of people that read this comment, only a few are 'exceptions'.
That's the same thing. You're running Sunwell REPEATEDLY to get the loot you want. Same content, over and over. I can go to 50 different locations in UO and have exactly the same chances of getting exactly the same loot.
How "not repetitive" do you mean?
Obviously, there are some common elements (collect the 'fragments'), but the various levels in Psychonauts are very very different.
There is a difference between choosing to go somewhere unprepared (Ultima Online)and not being able to go there until you ARE prepared (WoW).
Ultima Online left that decision up to the players, not the developers. Example? Try taking your Level 13 WoW Toon into Sunwell for that fat loot. Not possible because the developers choose to make it so.
In Ultima Online, you CAN take an underdeveloped character into such a place, but only if you had numerous friends there to protect you. Far more logical and REALISTIC. But more importantly, from my perspective, to be able to make that decision myself.
Another aspect is that a player with really good actual SKILL at playing UO can get into places with very little preparation or ingame skills. In other words, that "unprepared" character CAN go into such dangerous places IN THE HANDS OF A HIGHLY SKILLED PLAYER. As such, very skilled players are rewarded with even more freedom. I remember getting my ass handed to me by butt-naked Mages simply because they out-classed me skill-wise. They didn't need the gear. Skill was enough. Granted, that has changed somewhat, but not entirely.
Try taking a butt-naked lvl 70 into Alterac Valley. I assure you that you will not last long regardless of skill.
Saying someone is boring because they dislike the grind? Not that cool, dude.
Oh cmon, his description of the game was push button, wait, push button, repeat. If he wants to view the game in such lifeless and mechanical terms, then there is definitely something wrong with this guy's ability to enjoy ANYTHING. Seriously, what video game isn't just pushing buttons and waiting if you break it down to it's most basic mechanical functions? His lack of enjoyment of the game is not a problem with the game. His lack of the enjoyment of the game comes from him.
Your comments about him being irrelevent are trollish - he does have experience with the product, and decided for himself.
The problem here is that TFA is about an upcoming content expansion to WoW. The people who play WoW are getting some more neat things to experience. He doesn't play the game anymore, he clearly doesn't like it, so this announcement of new content doesn't affect him at all. Yet, he wants announce that he's "meh" about the release of new content in a game that he doesn't play. So who the hell cares if he's not excited about the release of new content. He's not going to experience it because he doesn't play the game... and therefore, his feelings on the expansion are completely irrelevant.
No, you're both wrong. The best game ever is and always will be STARCRAFT
True story: For awhile I roomed with a guy who plays WoW. Since the apartment's rather small, we both had our computers in the living room. He would come home, start playing, then go to sleep. Every day. But that's not the worst of it; no, what he had to do to keep up with his friends is the bad part. See, they played some when he wasn't on; in order to keep up, therefore, he had to play when they weren't on.
This apparently was too much for him; occasionally, I'd hear him say "This is getting kind of old." Not old enough for him to stop playing, of course. No, that would be madness. So then a couple hours later he literally cries out in agony "Oh god, this is SO BOOORING!" -- and then he keeps playing.
After the second time he did this, I couldn't contain myself anymore. "Good GOD, man!" Totally oblivious, he turns to me, and he says "Huh?"
"Listen to yourself talk, man!" And he kind of did a double take for a second, then he says "Wow. Uh. That was bad." So I asked him why he didn't just -- stop. And he explains about having to stay at his friends' level, and how he needed to level X skill but had to grind Y in order to grind Z so he could grind X.
It wasn't a game anymore. World of Warcraft had become his second job. One that he was paying $15 a month for the privilege of being allowed to do.
Push number, wait for bar to fill, push another number, wait for bar, then loot. Rebuff, and start again.
You clearly played a rogue..the most catered to class in the game (well arguably). Please stop crying about how hard and ennui it is to play a rogue...You can 100%-0% more classes, try playing something new and challenging. Just my two cents :D
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Well sure "everthing is repetititave" in some trivial sense. I turn on my PC, I move the ouse, I bang some keys, I turn off my PC. That's not very insightful, however. Using the same (player) skills to solve the same sort of problem is what most people find repetitive.
Changing the scenery or providing a storyline can help for a while, but that's about all WoW manages right now. Providing a large set of different activities, different to the extent that soloing, instances, PvP, and crafting are different, even though *each activity* is repetitive will be a difference in kind.
Some games have added challenging and tactically intersting raid content as an apporach to this - new zones that require very different approaches to "beat", but that only helps the guys who organize and plan the raids. To the rank and file of the raid it's just the scenery that changes, and in any case if you don't like large raids you have nothing.
There are several MMOs where getting to max level takes just a few weeks, and then it's all about PvP. IMO, one way to make a WoW killer is to add 20 other things that you can do once you get to max level where each activity feels quite different from the next. Each of those activities can itself be repetitive, but it's oging to take a whiel to get boring, and then you hop to the next one until it gets boring, and so on.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Thank you, sir, for making sense.
I just pooped your party.
I think that for the most part you hit the nail on the head. There's a new trend developing in games, however, where people will *hate* the game and stick it out to the bitter end to "earn" achievements -- especially if said achievements are publicly displayable. In fact in brings a whole new meaning to MMORPG's and "the grind".
That goes for me too.
(I feel like this is becoming one of those "I am Spartacus!" scenes.)
The younger generation of nerds needs to know what women look like, we need to set an example. So!
... enjoy.
Youtube to the rescue.
And of Course
Scissor: Paper is fine, nerf rock.
OK. Point taken on being free to walk in to danger at your own pace. Although I still maintain that it isn't really THAT much freedom when you're just as likely to be slaughtered (even more so when groups sell their services to lock down a dungeon - the aforementioned goon squads).
As for your naked mage... geared or otherwise, I'm willing to bet the guy still had several Grand Master skills under his belt. That took grinding / training to achieve even if it took a skilled player to put to good use.
Granted - WoW is MUCH more gear-oriented. But I've run in to players that have pulled off really impressive combinations of actions that weren't entirely based on their gear (although trinkets, engineering gadgets, etc. really expand on that). Unfortunately I've also run in to mobile brick walls of gear - so I understand where the comparison comes from.
Now that's another funny category: the people who feel that their own tastes are the gold standard, and are qualified to tell everyone else what they should like.
Some people like Pepsi, some people like Coke, and some people don't like either. Would you presume to tell them what their taste should be like? Some people like chinese food, some don't. Some people like things very spicy (a couple of coleague are real big fans of extra-hot chili sauce), some of us like it milder. Most people around here seem to be into dry wines, me, I like my wine sweet. Would you presume to tell me that there's something wrong with my tongue? And then there's stuff like favourite colours or clothes. Now there's some variability. Etc.
Then, pray tell, what kind of confusion of mind would drive someone to a conclusion like, basically, "if 10 million people love WoW, and I don't, then I'm right and they're all idiots and need to be enlightened about how boring their favourite game is"?
Again, maybe it isn't WoW, it's "you". It doesn't match _your_ subjective taste. Maybe you're not much into MMOs. Maybe there's something else about it you don't like. But realize that it doesn't say much about anyone else. It's ok. It's not some personal failure or anything. You don't have to fit in with some group or anything. But the same applies viceversa too.
But again, it might be... _polite_ to lose the preaching. You're not the golden standard in game tastes, nor the yardstick by which humanity is measured. It's entirely possible that someone else loves what you hated, and don't need your enlightenment at all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Err... what? I'm pretty sure I began playing WoW (and EQ, LOTRO, COH, etc) right at level 1.
In fact, that's the bulk of the game: the levels 1 to 69. (Or 1 to 49 in COH, 1 to 79 in EQ2, etc.) Some 99% of the actual game content is in those levels. And you're perfectly equipped to play that game at any level along the way.
Yes, that seems to be a popular mis-conception, that it's somehow a competition to the top. So people try to skip the actual content, just so they can willy-wave about having a level 70 and get stuck in the endgame grind. Some even use a bot or pay for power-leveling so they don't even have to see the actual game they're skipping.
Unfortunately that's every bit like paying someone to watch the LOTR trilogy for you, just so you can come back and see the ending scene. Over and over again. And imagine that it was some kind of achievement to be there.
Levels and loot are actually the props there. With the level also serving the additional roles of (A) gently guiding you about in which order you're supposed to go through the story, and (B) giving your spells and abilities one by one, and giving you some time to experiment with them and let it sink in. You know, as opposed to just giving you 60 icons and dumping you at the end boss from day 1.
So, basically, you played a game only because you thought it's a completely different kind of game, quit when it turned out that it wasn't what you _imagined_ after all.
It's not even a WoW thing. All MMOs are about the same things: getting XP and gear. And it's not some competition with a finishing line and a gold medal for whoever finishes it first. Everyone can get there eventually. The game in any MMO is the road, not the finish line. The guy who finished it first, well, is simply the first guy who has no more actual game to play.
Well, that's fine too. Not everyone likes the same things, so it stands to reason that some people would be into entirely different genres.
But surely you realize that all that happened there is that you shafted yourself. You took an assumption that just wasn't true, and it was just your own assumption. The game didn't tell you to do that. And then inflicted some grind upon yourself based on just that assumption. It's not very different from, say, being the guy who thinks aids is already curable and fucks around without a condom, then has an unpleasant surprise eventually. It wasn't the game that failed you, it was your own wrong assumptions that did.
Mind you, you do have some sympathy for that ordeal, but nevertheless you shafted your own self with that basing a multi-month action on nothing more than a wild incorrect assumption.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As sson as anohter online PvP games gets out the PvPers will leave this.
All the balance is in
1) Rock/Paper/Scissors
2) Luck (RNG random number generator)
The problem is that the R/P/S approach works with high number of opponents (read: bg or better), but when you're playing a 2on2 R/P/S is too much imbalanced.
The Luck factor is what pisses me off. The random part of damage (and the crit) is another thing that doesn't work against fast games. The so called average damage is true but after log time, not in a 30 seconds game (2on2).
Again, the next balanced online FPS/strategy will make all WoW PvPers flee.
I recently started playing EVE, I absolutely enjoy how brutal the game can be but also how rewarding. It's also interesting how much power player corps. (guilds) can attain, and how much of the market is player driven. Killing a NPC pirate doesn't give you a random chance of getting a battleship, you have to find someone who is selling it.
I second that, at some point your gear is just 'good enough' and all upgrades are minor.
Still, I got my T6 gloves (only a tiny upgrade over badge ones) because hey, T6 is just shiny.
I remember some of the first MUDs I was on. Gear was important, but what was even more important was making sure skills, from the basic heal spells of a cleric, to a thief's pick lock skill were up to par. If they weren't, soloing and grouping were difficult, even with the best gear available.
What I'd like to see in newer MMOs would be something like EQ1's AA system, where even if your gear is absolute crap, if you have the AA points from grinding, you can hold your own on raids and such. The closest to this in WoW are faction grinds.
With WoW, pretty much any PvP encounter is a gear check. Skill plays virtually zero part in the game. You level to 70, get flattened in the BGs repeatedly until you get enough gear with res on it so you get flattened less and less. Then, you head to the arenas, where you try to at least a few wins for your weekly point income, and hope your personal arena rating doesn't sink too low.
I too fall under the exception category. I played WoW and farmed/raided for items to gear up to experience more content.
e-penis enlargement as far as I was concerned was just a by product of the exercise.
You know, it might sound crazy, but why doesn't she try joining him? Best case scenario, they discover a common topic and interest, and they live happily ever after. Worst case, well, he discovers that he can't escape her even in WoW, gives up WoW.
As a personal anecdote, I present my parents: they're both complete nerds, but otherwise they're as close to polar opposite personalities as you can get together without causing a paradox. They weren't happy together. In fact, as far as I can tell, they only stayed together so they can make each other miserable and repay old perceived injustices.
Then in their old-ish age, I managed to get them both addicted to WoW. It was an uphill battle to convince them to even try it, but from there they both went addicted scarily quickly.
Well, what do you know? They have a common topic for the first time since they debated naming my brother. They talk about quests, raids, the best zone to farm for some enchanting reagent, best tactics against some boss, whether dad's hunter's new cat is better than a ravager (well, it looks better), or whether mom's new mage should spec for ice or for arcane to level up. It's heartwarming, lemme tell you.
They _do_ stuff together. E.g., boost each other's alts and whatnot, or help each other farm for some recipe drop that's only found on some elite.
Oh, they still bicker all the time, because their personalities and play styles are still almost polar opposites in-game too. But funnily enough, this time they don't take it seriously, because it's just a game. Whereas IRL silly things like "that time your father did X" or "that time your mom didn't let me do Y" would sometimes strain their relationship some more for a year or two, here "your mom aggroed the whole bloody room" or "your dad always sits and drinks after each fight, while my fury bar goes down" is mentioned once and then promptly forgotten.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, I hope you realize that we've heard the same "doom-and-gloom as soon as NEXT-GAME launches" predictions half a dozen times before, and nothing spectacular happened.
"As soon as LOTRO launches, I'm cancelling my WoW account for good! And so does everyone I know! That'll make Blizzard think twice!" Sounds familiar? There was about a month or two of that talk non-stop in my guild on WoW before LOTRO launched. Turns out that it didn't do jack squat for WoW subscriptions.
And before that it was various other games. Dungeons and Dragons Online, for example. Now that was supposed to finally bring all the tabletop goodness to the online folks, and finally nail WoW's coffin. Heh. Now that's a game which failed to deliver.
Or Vanguard. "OMG, it's going to be the opposite of everything that sucked about WoW!" Actually, it was the opposite of everything that kept people playing WoW. I guess that's what happens when you listen to people who've played WoW for 2-3 years and finally didn't conclude "ok, I'm getting bored of it, no hard feelings, I just wasn't built to play the same thing for ever", but rather, "OMG, everything about WoW sucks and only idiots like it." So they presented everything that they previously liked and had previously kept them there, as some abominable crime against humanity, and something that sucks more ass than the vacuum toilets on the Soyuz. And the devs of Vanguard listened. Heh. Boy, I'm sure they're proud of their choice of people to listen to.
And afterwards it was AOC. We've had people bleating for a year about how AOC is going to be TEH GRATEST THING EVAR, and eat Blizzard's lunch. I don't think Blizzard even noticed a dip in their subscriptions there. Most of those who had cancelled their account to play AOC, went back and reactivated it before it was even really deactivated.
Or Tabula Rasa. "OMG, it's Lord British, and he's like sooo smart and creative, and he's making this totally different game, without grind, and which will please both MMORPG-ers and FPS-ers and strategists, and will hand Blizzard their arse to them!" Heh. Nope, didn't come anywhere near Blizzard's collective arse.
So I'd take all these predictions with a grain of salt. _Maybe_ WAR will be all that. _Probably_ it won't. We'll just have to wait and see.
As for bulk of subscriptions, last I've seen some numbers, almost half the WoW subscriptions are from the western world. Sure, technically more than half are from Asia, but it's not like it's exactly a niche in the west either. And I don't think that that western part of their subscriptions has taken a dip because of some other game launch yet either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This is funny, cause a whole battlegroup lies in ruins, right now. About two dozen servers.
I have to disagree. I haven't played WoW since just after BC came out, however I was always very good at my class (Hunter). My first hunter was tricked out to hell and back (Best everything in the game). I leveled up another hunter after I sold my first hunter, and while leveling up I would go to the BGs a lot. I would get constant whines from people because I would go to the level 30-39 BG at level 32, but I would still kick everyone's ass. I figured it was just from knowing my class so well, but when I got to 60 with crap gear, I still spanked people like crazy. Yeah, it was harder having half the DPS, but I still was able to beat the vast majority of players. Maybe skill means less post BC, but before BC it was still important.
These games (not just W.O.W.) are meant to be addictive. The sole purpose of these games is to get as many people paying $15 a month as possible. People talk about "friends" keeping them in these games but what really keeps them in the game is the Skinner Box effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box A great many people get seriously angry when the comparison to Skinner Boxes is made but the truth is there are MMRPGs that do not use the Skinner Box System (Guild Wars is one) because they are not monthly fee based and they are not nearly as successful as games that do use the Skinner Box effect (W.O.W. does use the Skinner Box system). It isn't about friends or story lines or anything at all, except an addictive rewards system.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Rogues have been nerfed to hell, Every time they get something useful, other classes cry like babies until it is "balanced" to near uselessness. If your looking for catered to classes, try mage and druid. The whiniest 2 classes in WoW.
Go ahead and jot down an exception next to my name too. For me the gear has always been tools to a greater goal.
This is the attitude of most "good" raiders as well. A number of folks get into it to feel superior to other people people standing on Awesome Hill in Orgrimmar (back at 60), but those folks often don't last that long in the raiding environment. When you treat epics as tools to progression rather than personal trophies you end up avoiding a good chunk of the loot drama out there as well..
Pvp has a larger range of attitudes.
I stopped playing WOW about a year ago.
I see, so your opinion about this game that you don't enjoy and don't play is incredibly relevant.
Trust me, it's pretty relevant to Blizzard. You can see the GP's points addressed with every casual-friendly content patch to give the non-hardcore people something new to do as well.
Now, the GP's point pretty much only applies to the solo-content part of the game and the early 70 experience.. Once you get into the raiding/pvp aspect of the game, the "all you do is push one button, get loot" argument (mostly) goes out the window.
That's the same thing.
You're running Sunwell REPEATEDLY to get the loot you want. Same content, over and over.
I can go to 50 different locations in UO and have exactly the same chances of getting exactly the same loot.
I would have agreed with you on this for the level 60 game, with Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas pretty much a straight progression line. You didn't skip any of those steps, at least not
WoW at level 70 seems quite a bit different. You have multiple high-end instances that drop the same level loot (Serpentshrine, Tempest Keep, Zul'Aman all drop Tier 5-level gear, and Mount Hyjal and Black Temple all drop Tier 6-level gear), and the Badge of Justice system allows you to turn in tokens gained in any heroic five-man dungeon, karazhan... any heroic or better instance for loot that's Tier 5 or 6 level, depending on how many of those badges you want to spend. No, you're not going to fill every item slot through badge rewards, but you can still outfit your character with extremely good gear by doing any of the many endgame instances available for you. For heroics, the instance daily quests encourage players to visit different instances instead of the same/"best" one over and over again as well.
Granted, none of that is Sunwell loot, but only a very very small fraction of the players in the game are far enough along to be taking down those bosses anyway. To me, Sunwell is like Diablo II's cow level. It's a cute extra.
Mage and druid catered to? Druids in pvp, maybe. Mages in pvp or pve, catered to? Are you high? Sure, mages might be crying a lot now, but they have valid reason to.
I'll admit though, as of about a year ago, the druid class was the most unreasonably-whiny class in the game. Even the generally reasonable druids that were in my guild admitted as much.
This isn't a mean-spirited troll, but I thought your logic was rather amusing: yeah, people will want to rejoin, because it'll make people want to rejoin.
I take a slightly different approach. I just play them until I start spending a significant amount of time not-having-fun. In WoW that was maybe a year after hitting 60, and maybe 2 months after hitting 70, when the gameplay (PvP mainly here) just got old and uninteresting. I'm hoping for one to come along where the gameplay itself is compelling enough to keep me going, simply because it's just fun to play.
With WoW, pretty much any PvP encounter is a gear check. Skill plays virtually zero part in the game. You level to 70, get flattened in the BGs repeatedly until you get enough gear with res on it so you get flattened less and less. Then, you head to the arenas, where you try to at least a few wins for your weekly point income, and hope your personal arena rating doesn't sink too low.
Player skill still matters. But I do find it to be a pretty subtle thing. Many folks barrel in to the fray without any mind to what's going on... apparently depending on brute force and gear. But I've also seen folks intelligently pick their fight, use their class skills, and pull off things that made me go "wow" and review my combat log to see exactly what they did.
But again - gear is important. Even more so with resilience gear. I can really tell when I've run in to someone w/out res. They go down real quick. So I completely agree with the need to run through BGs to stock up on points and tokens to purchase the PvP gear. Without it, you're at a real severe disadvantage.
Problem for me was that the 3 people I play most games with tend to be in my house most of the time. Telling them to spend $60 and then another $16 a month and get in their car and drive 6 miles back to their house so we can "play together" is fucking bullshit.
If 3 systems can play UT3 on my home network (1 only have 1 at the moment) and 4 people can play halo on 1 x-box on 1 screen (I can also make UT3 play split-screen on my pc) then I don't see why we can't have 2 people playing WoW on 1 machine on 1 account.
I'm sure there are a lot of kids out there whose parents didn't get them the game because it would cost too much fighting between their siblings and even if every child had their on PC it would be too expensive to buy a separate copy and pay a separate subscription for each kid!
Way back when, I played the hell out of Warcraft. The original one, Orcs & Humans, where you had to left-click twice to do anything and could only select four units at a time. Still a great time, as are War2, War2x, War3, and War3x. I fell in love with the universe at some point, probably the point where I realized that sheep exploded when you clicked on them too much. There was a bizarre personality that other games seemed to lack, and it was all entwined with wonderfully polished gameplay.
I've dabbled a bit in WoW, but am not sure I'm keen enough on it to play it all the way to see the end. With that in mind, what I'd like to know from somebody who's played lots of WoW is where the hell the story goes after this.
War3x set up a few major antagonists for the series' future. Arthas and Illidan were the major baddies, along with some minor baddies like Kael'thas' Blood Elves and Vashj's Naga. The latter two, to my limited knowledge, can already be killed in WoW. The Burning Crusade allows you to kill Illidan and now Wrath of the Lich King will go up to freakin' Arthas himself as a boss.
I'm admittedly a bit bitter that I feel like huge chunks of story are being told in a game that I don't really enjoy that much, but I can get over that. What I'm more curious about is who, if anyone, they're setting up for a theoretical War4 (and gods help them if there isn't a War4!). The WoW people are about to kill off the last major antagonist that I'm familiar with, so who's going to step up next? Or is it just going to go back to Alliance v. Horde (which is apparently now the Forsaken too)? Another demonic invasion, assuming you guys haven't already worked your way up the Burning Legion's chain of command? Inquiring minds want to know!
I figured that with this article being about WoW, humor in the form of typical WoW complaints would be appreciated. Oh well, lots of more karma where that came from :P
Every class is OP! :)
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Every class is OP! :)
Except Paladins.
Bubble... dispellable.
Blessing of Protection... doesn't protect from magic.
Buffs... dispellable by just about every class it seems. Hunters can dispel?!?
Two stuns that seem to be resisted an *awful* lot.
No specific interrupts (the stuns help, but once you've blown them, that's it, you're toast).
Warlocks and Warriors cause fear in the zealous Paladins, and we run away like scared little girls.
In PvP, my Paladin is a great target, soaking up damage and keeping the enemy busy while other players step in to kill them. If a good healer can keep me going, I can keep the attention of the enemy players focused on the big guy in shiny plate with the massive hammer. They forget about the guys in leather who vanished just before I ran forward.
Without a good healer, I've got maybe three seconds to live.
WotLK Paladins look to be different. I hope so.
Sorry, pet peeve there. I don't want to be OP, I just want better balance against classes like Warlocks and Rogues (who I just cannot touch 1:1).