Slashdot Mirror
Second World of Warcraft Expansion Launched, Conquered
The much-anticipated second expansion to World of Warcraft, entitled Wrath of the Lich King, launched on Thursday, introducing a new continent, raising the level cap to 80, and bringing a wealth of new items, spells, dungeons, and monsters to the popular MMO. Crowds gathered and lines formed outside stores around the world leading up to the release. Massively has put together a series of articles for players wishing to familiarize themselves with the expansion, and CVG has a piece discussing the basics as well. It didn't take long for the first person to reach level 80; a French player called "Nymh" reached the level cap on his Warlock only 27 hours after the expansion went live. Not to be outdone, a guild named "TwentyFifthNovember" managed to get at least 25 raiders to 80 and then cleared all of the current expansion raid content less than three days after the launch. Fortunately for them, the next three content patches are each expected to contain new, more difficult raids.
whenever anyone else makes it to level 80, I really don't want to miss any of their important in game breakthroughs.
Stuff that matters, indeed.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
It's always comforting to be reminded that there are people out there with even less of a life than you.
I've never understood people who feel the need to rush to complete game content. After paying for a game, I like to take my time and enjoy it. I guess maybe people see it as another way of competing with each other? Or is it just obsession?
Maybe I have a slightly different perspective than most. I'm a game developer, so I guess I'm slightly more aware than most of how much work goes into every single game. It's slightly depressing sometimes, because you've put a year or more of work into a product, and you've still only produced enough content to last a long weekend.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
...and I really enjoyed BC when it launched, but not as much as I first enjoyed the launch. I thought about getting The Frozen Throne, but this kind of behavior on my server, which I'm expected to emulate in order to enjoy 80% of Blizzard's 'Content', has made me realize this generation of MMOs is not for me.
MMO developers cite limited budgets as their reason for not being able to make "better MMOs." Blizzard, however makes approx $15 a month from each of its 10 Million players. Effectively, their revenues are higher than most MMO's entire budget, every month. The truth is, MMO publishers *cough vivendi cough* have come to realize that MMOs make the most money when they emulate casinos. A pleasant, polished atmosphere with lots of slot machines where someone is "winning" every second, and there's constant reminders of that. Who'd ever want to leave?
So please, if you ever meet me, and I say that I don't think WoW is a "good game," please keep in mind that Jackpot machines are also "good games."
He went into instances with friends, left group, tagged all the mobs, then let them do all the damage. since those mobs were designed to be taken down by a group, they gave lots of experience. And he got all of it. Anyone who doesn't call it cheating has a pretty conservative definition of the term.
I know what he did, and what he did not do. He did not hack the game. He DID ask permission to play in that way, and was granted it.
That's why it's not cheating. Call it something else - gaming the system, powerlevelling, exploiting even. But since it's not against the rules of the game, as set out in software, and it's not against the rules of the game as set out by the GMs - remember, he asked! - it's frankly not cheating by any definition, other than possibly a stupid and jealous definition.
If you look at the speedrun subculture, people can "complete" most classic, deeply loved, games in ridiculously short amounts of time.
Does it devalue Doom to tens of millions of players, many of whom logged hundreds or thousands of hours in it, knowing that someone's managed a speedrun in an hour or two?
Besides, modern MMOs are about a huge number of things interacting:
Have they looted enough of the highest level drops that their players are now fully kitted out in the best gear available? Or did they just scrape by with enough to claim they could do it, only to get slapped down in PvP, next week, by a guild that didn't claim "completion" and is now better equipped?
Have they collected everything they need for their crafters to make the highest end items they also had opened up to them?
Have they gained the new mounts?
How about PvP specific loot? Have they gained the full sets of that stuff that were put there for the huge number of players that don't consider level 80 and a few raids to be the pinacle of the game?
And that's all before you get in to the broader culture of a game like that... mapping things out, raising interesting alts, side quests, etc.
A junior high bully gets to claim he's the most awesomest by having no one who can beat him in a fight. Yet the kids who're on dates, getting in to bands, on the sports teams, even nerdier stuff like winning science olympiads or actually understanding their classes so they'll get great grades in highschool, a great college place and be much better off in life... they're probably not all that impressed that, yes, he got to the top on a single axis. Did he really "complete" junior high as he likes to tell himself?
the sun will go nova and the earth will cease to be and all human endeavor will vanish forever. Nothing lasts. Nothing is worth doing except enjoying the small bit of time we get on this planet. If you get your joy playing WoW for 27 hours, being first to level 80, good for you.
...I just gotta say they missed most of the fun of the game.
Granted, I have one character, a level 36 Warlock, that's taken me something like 3 months to get up to. But you know what? I'm probably having a bit more fun and getting more for my money than the people who have to powerlevel to 80 as fast as possible.
It makes PvP harder for me (as I can't compete with people who twink their guys out with the best gear), and I generally don't go into the instances/raids (I solo most of the time, and my guild is more social than goal-driven), but I get to actually enjoy the art, the people, the economy, and the experience.
Getting to 80 as fast as possible is like trying to ride every single ride at Cedar Point as fast and as efficiently as possible, as opposed to a group of friends who go on what they want when they want.
Which group has more "fun"?
hookers and grits.
It may not be stuff that matters, but it does sound like news for nerds.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The most popular game of all time is going to get written about. I don't care either, but I'm not bitching that the news isn't exactly tailored to my interests.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
WoW has a bad rep from a very small minority of players who can't manage their lives. I'll treat the argument of whether or not this is WoW's fault, or whether any other fun activity would have done it, as out of scope... I'd like to set the record straight on a few things that may be found insightful by some.
Myth 1. WoW is a diabolical money sink
Untrue. At its most expensive, factoring in the initial cost and its expansions to date, WoW averages to about US$18 a month (conservative estimate). I'm not too familiar with costs in America but two trips to the movies and you're spending more. A gourmet pie a week and you're spending more. A few drinks with friends once a month and you're spending more. These activites are once-off entertainment and I highly doubt a pie a week is the extent of one's monthly entertainment bill.
In addition, there are hundreds of servers, each servicing tens of thousands of players and all of the maintainence, hardware and bandwidth costs that come with it. There's a huge development team fixing the most trivial of bugs and developing new content every couple of months. There's a huge support team consisting of the usual helpdesk drones as well as in-game game masters (who aren't just any old gamer off the street; they're veritable WoW gurus). All of this isn't cheap. All of this isn't possible with a standard once-off $40 game. On the side, a once-off $40 game that captures my attention for more than a month is a rare thing these days.
Myth 2. WoW is a giant grind
While this is subjective, I have to argue against it. It is true that the first 50-60 levels of WoW are definitely repetative and while I'm sure Blizzard are aware of this, I don't think their steps to fix it are the right ones (they're just making it faster). However, once past this hurdle you are in the clear. BC raised the bar with quests that capture your interest. Wrath has redefined the bar with some extremely fun quests; they appear to have redesigned their whole philosophy on questing for the latest expansion.
But that's quests. You can grind if you want, nothing is stopping you, but there are all sorts of things you can do -- especially with the new achievements. There are battlegrounds. There is exploration. There are dungeons. In the middle of doing anything, world PvP can erupt - my favourite kind. At end game you don't need to worry about quests if you don't want to. It's an MMO; there's more things to do than you can shake a stick at. But I do agree on the repetativeness of questing pre-50's before your character has a chance to gain most of its class-defining abilities and gear.
Myth 3. There is not enough content
This should probably get merged into #2 but whatever. I was standing outside a fort the other day wondering what I should do. It was Hallow's End, a halloween event that adds a swathe of seasonal content to the game, and I was struck by a thought: if I were to roll a brand new character, I would have more things to do than I could fathom. The achievements system ensures that there's an extra layer to everything you do. The dungeons and reputations and achievements and pvp and large number of unique class/talent combinations would keep you busy for years. The true scope of the game, pre-wrath, suddenly hit me like a stapler hitting the balding head of an IT consultant as he enshrined the virtues of domain-centric networking infrastructure to a technical executive in a large services corporation that delivers banking and financial services to leading institutions across the globe.
Myth 4. If you play WoW you have no life
A catch-all argument that can encapsulate any game or non-mainstream entertainment activity on the planet. If you watch anime you have no life. If you collect stamps you have no life. If you go tramping you have no life. It's fun. It's social. It's not getting tanked in a bar at 2am. Get over it. As an aside, I'm a
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
The most popular game of all time is going to get written about. I don't care either, but I'm not bitching that the news isn't exactly tailored to my interests.
By that logic we should see a lot more stories about The Sims, which contrary to your suggestion is actually more popular than WoW...
This story would be fairly pointless no matter which game it was about. "Game player beats expansion pack for game" is not exactly news no matter how you look at it.
Read Pynchon.