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Review: Wrath of the Lich King
- Title: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
- Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
- Publisher: Activision Blizzard
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Soulskill
- Score: 9/10
The first thing you'll notice as you set foot on the expansion's new continent, Northrend, is that the art is extremely well done and the vistas are visually impressive. During the first expansion, the primary mode of travel shifted from land-based mounts to much faster flying mounts, and it's clear that the designers of Northrend kept this well in mind. The size and scope of everything has been ratcheted up, from soaring spires and mountains to massive icebergs to spacious valleys and canyons. One of the early zones, Howling Fjord, starts you off looking up at incredibly high cliffs with nothing but a rickety wood-and-chain elevator to help you reach the top. While doing quests at the base of the cliffs, you can't help but wonder, "What's up there?" Later in the zone, you'll find grassy fields and misty forests gradually giving way to snow, ice formations, and new buildings that are a big step up, artistically, from what was seen in the original game, or even the first expansion. The various creatures you encounter are new and more detailed as well. Sleek, aggressive-looking Proto-drakes circle lazily above a burning forest and enormous Storm Giants stomp through the plains, catching unsuspecting adventurers by surprise and leading to more than a few untimely deaths. Fan-favorite Murlocs have undergone a transformation, appearing all the more ready to make a meal of you. Even the seas have gotten more detailed; icebergs look like nothing that could have come out of the original game, and the waters are now teeming with Warcraft-ized orca, hammerheads, and walruses.
Each zone brings a unique art style. Soon after finishing the starting zones, you'll enter Dragonblight, where the skeletons of giant dragons litter the frozen tundra and battles between dragonflights rage overheard. Again, the kinds of things you'll see in Wrath of the Lich King just didn't happen in the original game, and rarely in The Burning Crusade. There are plenty of spots where the design team clearly said, "Ok, let's set this up so the players will just get here and stare at it for five minutes before remembering what they're doing." If you enjoyed exploring earlier parts of the game, Wrath of the Lich King will blow you away. One of the later zones, Storm Peaks, is exactly what it sounds like; a dark, snowy mountain range in which you'll find yourself traveling up and down as much as side to side. The absurdly high mountaintops give the area an epic feel, but Blizzard didn't stop there. Rising up from many peaks are ancient structures, or ruins in some cases. They do wonders for arousing curiosity, and you clearly get the impression that Something Big was here. The northern part of the zone where the dungeons are located is a stronghold for giants, originally built for the Titans, according to Warcraft lore, and it definitely looks the part.
One of the major headlines of Wrath of the Lich King was the introduction of the game's first new class — the Death Knight. Dubbed a "Hero Class," it is only available to players who already have another character at level 55 or higher, but the Death Knight itself starts at level 55, rather than level 1. This is partly due to the class' level of complexity, which is slightly higher than most others, and also to encourage players to try them out by not requiring the time involved to go level up from the very beginning. The Death Knight's resource management system is based on runes and runic power. You start out with six runes available, and using your abilities will consume one or more of them. The runes will then refresh themselves after 10 seconds, giving you the opportunity to use them again. Abilities also generate runic power, which can be used to fuel other spells. Death Knights can wear plate armor, and are intended for use as a "tank" class as well as dealing damage. They use big, two-handed weapons while tanking, rather than a one-hander and a shield, and they're stronger than most against magic. The class was balanced quite well by the extensive beta testing, though minor tuning is still underway to bring each of the three talent trees in line with Blizzard's goals. If you do nothing else in this expansion, it's worth starting a Death Knight and going through the introductory quest line; the story and visual effects are amazing.
Wrath raises the level cap from 70 to 80, so you'll spend most of your time questing and (should you choose) running dungeons for your first few weeks (depending on how much you play, and to what lengths you're willing go for efficiency; the first player to reach level 80 did so only 27 hours after the expansion launched). Gear has effectively been reset again, but not as severely as it was in The Burning Crusade. Powerful level 70 items will last in some cases all the way to level 80, but they should be replaced quickly once you start doing "endgame" activities. Actually getting to 80 isn't a problem; you should make it there with hundreds of quests to spare. Much like the first expansion, Wrath packs quests quite densely throughout most of the zones, so you needn't feel compelled to finish quests that don't interest you or do group quests when you'd rather fly solo (although the rewards for such are often good). The quests themselves are as much a step up from The Burning Crusade as it was over the original game. Many still follow the standard MMO format of "Go slay 10 demonbears," or "Go collect 10 cow eggs," but the quests tell stories, ranging from small and self-contained to grand and overarching. They paint a very clear picture of what's happening in Northrend, and what its inhabitants are doing to fight the Lich King.
In addition to those basic quests, Blizzard did quite a bit to spice things up. One of the most popular quest lines of the first expansion was an arena event in which you and your comrades fought off an increasingly difficult series of enemies. Wrath has three such events, each with its own story and flavor. Bombing runs are back, but they now usually make use of a new vehicle system which lets you hop on a creature or contraption and control its unique selection of abilities. One quest gives you a tank you use to rampage through a field of thickly packed undead, using the buzz-saw on the front to cut down any in your path. Another has you riding on an airborne troop transport, dropping smoke flares by the harpoon launchers of an enemy encampment to protect your allies as they are deployed to fight. One of the more epic quests lets you take control of a massive Storm Giant and use it to take out an even more colossal boss while crushing swarms of skeletons underfoot. Another way Blizzard found to keep things interesting is what they call "phasing" technology. One of the long-standing complaints about the MMO genre is that there is very little permanence to a player's actions. When Player A rescues a princess from an evil wizard's tower, he's very shortly going to turn around and see her back in the tower, waiting for the next player to do the same quest. Either that, or when Player B comes along, the princess is already saved, and he missed out on that content. Blizzard's solution was to implement different "phases" of an otherwise static zone. You'll start out in the beginning phase, during which, for example, a town is under attack. Completing a quest to fight off the attack bumps you into the next phase, where the town is safe and its fighting force is going on the offensive. Now, a player who hadn't done that quest could come from the same place as you, and stand where you're standing, but you and he would see two different things. His town still needs saving, yours doesn't. This is used to great effect in Icecrown, one of the later zones. You get the feeling as you do quests that you're really taking over parts of the zone; towns spring up, one-time battles are fought, and the appearance of the zone at the end is quite different from at the beginning. Another great use of this technology is for an invasion of one of the old capitol cities. You ride to its defense alongside faction leaders, participating in a good balance of plot and action.
The instanced dungeons in Northrend are also a step up over their predecessors. As with the outside world, they've gotten bigger and more impressive, often setting the group's path against an expansive backdrop to make it seem like you have a ton of room, even when you don't. Blizzard whittled down the length of most instances, aiming for a start-to-finish time of roughly an hour. The "trash" mobs between bosses are typically few and varied; the progress made since the original game in that regard is quite evident. You no longer have to worry that hopping into a group with random strangers could turn into a three-hour affair. Blizzard has gone out of their way to create new and interesting boss scenarios as well. An instance called "The Oculus" is a disjointed series of platforms which can only be accessed by flying. After finishing off the first boss, you free a group of NPCs which offer you a choice in Drakes to ride — Red, Yellow or Green — each of which has its own abilities. It behaves like a vehicle; you direct its flight path and choose when to fire off spells, and it carries you from platform to platform where you'll find later bosses. For the last boss in the instance, you actually use the drakes to fight, battling with spells far too powerful for a normal character to control. In another instance, one of the bosses hops on his flying mount and heads outside while you fight your way through a gauntlet of smaller NPCs to reach the end of a hallway. Periodically, he'll drop down and blast one side of the hallway with ice, making an already hectic fight even more dangerous. When you reach the end of the hallway, you'll find harpoon launchers which you use to shoot down his mount and force him to land and fight. One of the instances in The Burning Crusade had a boss which would use mind-control to make your group fight each other for a brief time before resuming the battle as normal. Wrath of the Lich King takes this one step further; the last boss in one of the new instances casts a spell which will dump each player into his own phase and spawn copies of that player's groupmates. The copies then try to kill him. Each player is tasked with killing their own group to survive. As they succeed, they're shunted into other players' phases until they're all back in the original, at which point they re-engage the boss.
Heroic Dungeons return in Wrath, giving players the option of a harder version of an instance that results in better loot. They're tuned better this time around; Blizzard wanted to make the transition from normal dungeons to heroics to raids a smooth one, and they've done a much better job than at the beginning of the first expansion. They've also expanded the "heroic" philosophy to raids as well. Now each raid dungeon has two settings; a "normal" 10-man version, and a "heroic" 25-man version, each tuned appropriately for the size of the group. Wrath launched with four introductory-level raids, and more difficult ones are planned for the next few content patches in the coming months. As we discussed previously, the current raids have been conquered already, but unless you're willing to devote many, many hours to playing the game, reaching the end of the content before more is released won't be an issue for you. Blizzard revisited Naxxramas, a raid instance hailed as the best in the original game, but one that only a few percent of the World of Warcraft population ever got to see. It's now the primary starter raid, tuned to be much more forgiving than it was in 2006, but still able to make unprepared groups struggle. The other raids are quick, involving one boss each, compared to the 15 in Naxxramas. The fight against Malygos is an encounter where Blizzard shows off just how cool they can make a boss fight; if you don't mind spoilers, you can take a look at a video and explanation of the fight from the folks at TankSpot. One of the other raid bosses, Sartharion, lets the players decide how difficult they want the fight to be. Sartharion is a dragon, and in his lair, there are three drake mini-bosses which can be quickly and easily killed beforehand if the raid so chooses. If they aren't killed, they join in the fight when the raid takes on Sartharion himself. You can choose to leave one, two, or all three drakes alive, effectively giving the fight four difficulty settings. The more difficult the encounter, the better loot you'll receive. Very few raids can manage the fight with all drakes alive at this point. Blizzard has stated that we can expect to see more of this type of selective challenge. It allows them to tune the raids such that more people can see and complete them, but still give the more hardcore players something tough to work on.
Blizzard has done a number of other things to make the game more player-friendly. Professions have been revamped in several ways. First, all professions will, in some way, make your character more powerful, either through crafted gear or through passive bonuses. Second, those bonuses are available sooner, so you don't necessarily need to drop thousands of gold grinding out the last few points in order to get that upgrade. Third, recipes are mostly easier to obtain now. The developers have instituted an interesting system for Jewelcrafting in particular: Each day you can do a quest once which will give you a currency token. You can then spend those tokens to purchase many different recipes. This does two things; it guarantees that all of those recipes will be attainable eventually for minimal work, and it lets you choose which ones you want to get first. They've also made other, PvP-related recipes available by simply engaging in PvP. A few still drop in various spots around the world, but they're much less rare than the ones in The Burning Crusade . Others drop at the end of instances, and yet more are made available by increasing reputation with some of the factions scattered around Northrend. Virtually everything you do will make progress toward filling out the profession. Other professions have similar mechanics, but aren't as fleshed-out. Alchemy and the new profession, Inscription, have "discovery" abilities which will allow you to learn new things, but have a lengthy cooldown. As with Jewelcrafting, it's nice that you'll get everything eventually, but in this case you have little control over which "discovered" recipes you learn. Inscription itself is interesting; you essentially enchant your spells and abilities to behave in a slightly different manner. Often you can sacrifice an unimportant aspect of a spell to make it better in another way; for example, one of the Mage glyphs increases the damage on their Frostbolt spell, but removes the slowing effect placed on the target.
Tanking has received a huge make-over in Wrath. No longer is the focus on building threat; it's more about mitigating damage. This removes a lot of the headaches involved in grouping with strangers. Tanks also do quite a bit more damage than they did in the past, making it more fun for people who like to see big numbers. The success of instance groups used to rely almost exclusively on the tank and healer, and while they're still very important, the focus has shifted more to include the damage-dealers. Many fights are significantly easier with better damage output (and some are almost impossible without). It's a welcome change; all members of the group should contribute to its success. Reputation grinds have been made easier as well. Instead of using the method of the first expansion where running dungeons in a particular place increased your reputation with a particular faction, they now use a "championing" system. Wearing the tabard of whichever faction you choose will allow you to gain reputation with that faction regardless of which dungeon you enter. So, you can always run your favorite instance, or do a different one every night while still working toward whatever reward you'd like. That seems to be one of the major themes of Wrath; putting choice back into the players' hands.
PvP has been a bit slow to get started, since many players are still on their way to the level cap. The next arena season is due to start in a couple weeks, after which I'm sure we'll see a round of minor nerfs and buffs to smooth out any issues that arise. Wintergrasp is alive and thriving, however, as the first dedicated world-PvP zone. The concept is simple; one faction controls the central keep while the other tries to break through the walls and capture it. Fighting and scoring kills will increase your rank during a battle, which will allow you to drive increasingly powerful siege vehicles. You can use them to knock down walls, chuck barrels of poison vast distances, or to try to run over enemy players swarming around your wheels. Defenders can man turrets as well. Blizzard has tried to address faction imbalances with a buff called "Tenacity." It essentially makes you more powerful the more your faction is out-manned. In extreme cases, it can turn players into the equivalent of raid bosses — ones that know to take out your healers first. The faction that controls Wintergrasp also has access to a raid dungeon, and the boss inside drops PvP gear. It's a fun, quick way to cap off a victory. One of the things I like best about Wintergrasp is the spacing between the battles. A battle lasts for a maximum of 40 minutes, and when it's over, it's over. A new one won't start for another couple hours, so there's little reason to stick around. The new battleground, Strand of the Ancients, also makes use of vehicles and an attacker/defender relationship. It's definitely a break from the old battlegrounds, but a welcome one. Honor point rewards for both are pretty good — unfortunately, if the costs for PvP gear from the beta are to be believed, the effort involved to build a PvP set will be the last serious grind left in the game.
When Blizzard first announced Wrath of the Lich King, there was speculation about whether it would continue the success of The Burning Crusade or if the World of Warcraft juggernaut would finally begin to run out of steam, as MMOs often do several years into their life. With the early previews and later throughout the beta, we got hints that such was not the case. Now that we've had time to explore the finished version of Wrath (or at least as "finished" as any MMO project ever is) it's clear that the legendary "Blizzard polish" is there, in addition to a great deal of innovation within a single game. They're not just releasing the equivalent of new maps and models and skins — the whole game is evolving into something much more consistent and coherent than the original game. If any company in the MMO game industry could afford to rest on their laurels, it's Blizzard — but they're not. And I already wonder what they'll have in store for the next expansion.
As I camped in the cheese shop waiting for some wine to spawn so I could complete a daily runner quest for the cook in the Dalaran inn, I thought about all the battles I've fought and the thousands who have died from my powerful spells. Wow, can life get any better that this?!
Here's my mini review: Wrath of the Lich King is superb. It isn't perfect (but nothing is) but it does many things exceptionally well. First and foremost among them is that the player's character actually does change the world. From minor things like helping an outpost get a flightmaster to dealing with major political intrigue with the Forsaken, the player's character has a notable impact on the structure of the world. While the game has it's fair share of "Kill 20 grapplegromets", the addition of the world-changing quest chains is wonderful. Also, each zone has at least one notable story arc of quests that really pulls the character into the lore of the world. Wrath of the Lich King's biggest success, among many things that it does well, is it's character immersion. I give Wrath a 9.5/10.
Fan-favorite Murlocs have undergone a transformation
Anyone who has played this game more than a few hours knows that Murlocs are not fan favorites. In fact, they are nearly universally detested; Murlocs are one of the most irritating mobs in the game.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
they spent all the time making the game look very very pretty (which, I must admit, it is), and none of it creating anything for any of the professions. There are glaring holes in most of the professions, not to mention the things that have been broken since the launch of the expansion (and let's be fair, in one case, for the last four years), and don't seem to be on the "Fix anytime soon" list.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
"Anyone who has played this game more than a few hours knows that Murlocs are not fan favorites. In fact, they are nearly universally detested; Murlocs are one of the most irritating mobs in the game."
A quick poll of the six friends I generally play WoW with reveals that the most irritating mob in the game is the hyena. Four (including me) are indifferent to murlocs, and two would play them as a character race if they could.
Icecrown. Which is Mordor under ice. Even has an eye, though with the new phase system you do remove it from existence in your copy. Still I got the distinct impression of Mordor from the archietecture. Throw in the cinematic from Wrath Gate quest line and this area just screams Lord of the Rings, but with dragons. The cinematic even does a good Sauron like view from over shoulder view for when the Lich King first appears. Instead of a ring its a sword this time. Still impressive.
The areas are much larger feeling than before, if anything it encourages you to spend time flying through the zones when you can just so you don't miss out on any of it.
The only real problem, no one developer can keep up with players anymore. It simply isn't possible. Players are too organized and will make sacrifices the developers cannot cope with. Instead the game has to be aimed at the casual. However with this expansion and the race to 80 it seems they either expect to have one expansion per year or have a lot of raid content waiting in the wings.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I prefer to grind my knight in a club with lots of hot sweaty girls and booze.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Anyone who plays for more than a month is insane. Grind, grind, grind, don't tell me it's not. Even my friends with level 70 accounts just grind all night. And pay for the privilege.
... I'm not going for a second month. It's nice and all, but there's not enough change for me to feel less burnt out. Maybe in another few months. By then I'm going to have to deal with being very far behind everybody in terms of levels and progress. Bah.
Maybe I should just start a toon in the Hello Kitty MMO.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
"Unfortunately they spent all the time making the game look very very pretty (which, I must admit, it is), and none of it creating anything for any of the professions. There are glaring holes in most of the professions, not to mention the things that have been broken since the launch of the expansion (and let's be fair, in one case, for the last four years), and don't seem to be on the "Fix anytime soon" list."
I may regret asking, but can you elaborate on this claim? I don't see the holes, and the people I know who craft seem to be happy. My main character is an alchemist, and it's been useful throughout.
As a non-fan, can I ask WoW fans: what is the attraction? Why do you spend all those hours playing it?
Genuine question BTW.
The game world outside of dungeons is awesome. There's all kinds of quests and activities to get lost in messing around with. I had a goal when this came out and that was to do every quest I could find for the expansion outside of dungeons in the new zones.
After reaching that goal I realize that the dungeons themselves are too simplistic for my taste. Honestly I loved the long quest lines involved with going in and out of old dungeons like BRD, UBRS, etc. Now they feel more like a 5 minute ride at the amusement park. Just not fun anymore.
So yeah, the game world itself in the new continent is really well put together. The dungeons feel not really as involving as the older ones were, almost unfinished because when I'm done with a run I'm like, "That's it???"
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
What, you haven't done D.E.H.T.A's little P.I.T.A quests yet?
Loads of fun. You get to kill Nessingwary's people (that you used to pal around with) who are killing rhinos, and then down the road you end up having to kill the rhinos for Fizzcrank's quests!
It's all about the gold!
>As we discussed previously, the current raids have been conquered already, but unless you're willing to devote many, many hours to playing the game, reaching the end of the content before more is released won't be an issue for you.
I beg to differ. My guild is made up of full time job workers, who took time to level up to 80 instead of just staying on 24x7. We set up an appropriate time to do our first raid based on when 25 people would have reached 80...and we're done with everything in the game at this point.
While I agree the expansion has some fantastic art (as always with Blizzard) and various interesting game mechanics much as you describe here, for my group of friends who consider themselves middle-of-the-road in terms of how "hardcore" we are, this expansion is far FAR too easy.
(By "done" I mean we have killed all 25 man and 10 man instances - we did not have time to get around to a second run on Sarth in the more difficult mode, because last week was the first week we raided). We've also killed all the city world bosses. So now there is nothing new for us to do in the game, already. It's very disappointing.
the fact that I can't play WoW from Europe on US servers
Wow, what internet is Blizzard using? I don't think it's the same one we have all learned to love.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Kill other players! Ain't no other way baby.!
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Murlocs are great!
Play the RPG!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
it IS fun.
they really removed the grind shit from the game. they made quests easy, but MANY. quests are so well devised and written in many story backgrounds that merge in a big backdrop. they just make you continue, follow the questline and see more and more. its like an interactive movie in which you can modify your own character and do things your way. but the difference is, there is nothing stopping you from watching this movie undisrupted -> no 'extreme tough' quests that you will need to set up a full fledged group, no annoying long grind quest that will take your attention from the story going on etc.
design ? visuals ? breathtaking.
they have apparently noticed that you dont need to lower yourself down to 'scratch, crappy, punk-cartoonish drawings' level because you dont want to put forth a humongous graphics card requirement -> they went the art route, and designed and made the environments so artful, so pictoresque that you foten stop by to look around. i even loitered around the river that is in between howling fjord and winterspring zones -> considering im half powergamer, it is a feat that a game environment made me do that. another pointer is, the fact that this time i care about the zone names, their geography and remember them -> previously i didnt give a crap, just another zone to go by, i would say.
it is clearly a labor of love. these people sat down and apparently wrote a complete novel for this expansion. wintergrasp is just one of the many zones, and wyrmrest dragon temple and its quests/story is just 1/4th of that zone, but even wyrmrest temple has as many story, action, quests as 2 burning crusade zones combined. vanilla wow ? dipshit, compared to WotLK. tbc now looks like a long torture in distant past.
i've been playing wow for its pvp system for a long time. it has unmatched 40 vs 40 battlegrounds that take only 3 seconds to get in and hop into action. i didnt care about rest of the game, because story was lacking for my taste. but now, im actually going to embark on the instancing/raiding thing, because apparently it HAS become fun this time. hell, azjul-nerub instance, which is an instance you merely pass while leveling from 70 to 80 at level 73, stupefied me. i cant even tell about how it is, it is that out of the ordinary. huge vertical caverns woven by spider webs, giant spiders of various types, stuff going on around you without your intervention or participation -> it feels not only alive but stupefying.
yes. this shit IS good this time. so that even trolls have shut their mouths up in wow forums, and the ones that are there are complaining about its and bits only, like 'vanilla wow content is abandoned now' -> which noone gives a damn about.
get it. play it. its good. even if wow had annoyed you with its shitty story (compared to my kotor taste) and in the huge grind torture in the past 3 years, this expansion will totally redeem all of that, and give lots of smooth flowing gaming fun.
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I've been playing for 3 years now, and it's still basically the same deal. Grind to 80 and then raid.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but it's still just a content patch. Sure, new spells, some of the stats and mechanics are different, but it's still the same game. Also, for those saying 'I played wow for a day and it's a big grind', you're missing the whole point of the game. It's meant to be a SOCIAL game. Get to 80 and join a guild, raid for a while, and you'll see what the game is intended to be. The teamwork aspect is pretty cool.
I give WoW 10/10, WotLK 7/10.
Darkfall Online will be released January 22nd :)
I couldn't keep up with WOW, too much treadmill stuff, too much time investment to raid, etc... it was fun, I just didn't have the time and besides -- being without a good guild meant I never got the good stuff in raids because it was hard to raid over and over. And getting in good guilds is hard as it is.
PvP for me, Darkfall hopefully will address that. I can pick it up, play, and turn it off. I know it can get more detailed but from what I've read, I don't *have* to be involved to enjoy it, since there's no uber magic lewt that I have to 'raid' for to get. :)
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I was kind of surprised that there was no mention of the soundtrack for the expansion. From what I have heard, it is absolutely amazing and really adds to the feel of the various zones.
Here are a couple examples:
Totems of the Grizzlemaw
Arthas, My Son
I believe in de-evolution. God made the world perfect, man fell, and its been going downhill ever since!
what are the 'glaring holes' in professions ? holes for what ?
the fact that there are now scrolls that enchanters can scribe their enchants into and just put them on ah, instead of peddling their service from trade channel like monkeys and going around trying to enchant people ?
or the fact that gems now actually make considerable difference ?
what ?
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if you are still SOMEHOW grinding instead of questing (for whatever godforsaken reason) in Northrend with a level 70 character,
...
you shouldnt be playing any games. really. you dont have the cognitive power to correctly interface with a game
but what you said, which is contrary to EVERY single wow player i have been about and talked with, tells me that you are probably a shill or a fanboi, and dont know zit regarding what you are talking about.
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LIVING in a book. which, you cant do with books without spending considerable amounts of imagination.
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Over the last year, I've played Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Age of Conan.
I really feel sorry for both of them.
The bar's a bit higher now. The sheer variety of quest types now in WoW is just ludicrous. They put in a medevac quest.
Just mull over that a second. A fantasy MMO with a medevac quest. Fly in, pick up people in a siege zone, and fly them out.
And yes, it was awesome.
Quest lines where they basically give you invincible superpowers just so you can see the lore happen. The implementation of phasing really made me feel like I was part of what was going on and I was changing things in the game.
This is such a huge turnaround for Blizzard, who put all of the big lore-presentation bosses at the back of huge hardcore instances for so long. If you quest up through the game, you'll see Arthas, the Lich King, at least 4 times, and each time he's doing *something* that directly impacts *you*.
The shortfalls, however.
Crafting, except for jewelcrafting, is completely borked. Jewelcrafting has a lot of great self-buffs and very powerful things that can only be used by jewelcrafters. Other professions have very little, and my blacksmith has no reason to level over 415 (out of 450) in that skill.
Wintergrasp (the world pvp zone) needs some help. In order to balance the force, if one side is vastly outnumbered they get a stacking buff to their hit points, damage, and healing to compensate. This really means that the alliance on my server are basically fighting 10-man raid boss-level horde in PvP. It's not fun. They really need to fix the factions so we can temporarily swap to the other side or something. The horde is not much of a horde when they're outnumbered 10-1.
Certain class balance issues are still present, but not extreme. Warlocks are still an extremely fussy class to play, as opposed to other classes that rotate abilities or chain chance-on-hit abilities into combos, Warlocks basically stare at a set of timers and recast spells on a non-fixed rotation. Not fun.
All in all, they far exceeded my high expectations, for everything from content quality to quality of service. The servers haven't been perfect, but they also weren't the utter crapfest they were when Burning Crusade launched.
its a former powergamer, who has played so many games that now looks to other aspects of a game.
but a question does spring to mind - why post anonymous ?
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This is my one gripe. The new chains that the NPC abominations get that can reach thousands of yards in any direction, and hurl you backward into a group of mobs you've just run though, who then proceed to stomp your face.
I haven't been torn off my flying mount yet, but I figure it's just a matter of time.
for i second the experience. please mod stuff that give out solid information than ambiguous opinion, up.
Read radical news here
Blizzard avoided many mistakes that they made in their first expansion, involved the player much more into the story and added an awesome class.
The death knight quest chain alone is better than any quest chain in the original WoW and TBC - awesome!
Gladly it's not the only cool quest chain and I'm not even Level 80 yet (takes a little longer to go from 55 to 80).
Additionally they upgraded the graphics quite some.
My rating: 9/10
It's not offtopic! It's a competitor! Personnaly I can't talk about Toyota without comparing to Dodge or Nissan... ;)
They ripped every thing from WAR... and I'm offtopic?
(Sry I feel flamebait today)
I can't call that English
An interesting thing to be noted in "Lich King" is the use of the "phasing technology". There are issues with the way it works as implemented now but I really see this as a jump in the technology of MMOs because it provides direct feedback to the player while doing quest progression.
With the way "phasing" works, players can now see results of their progress. For instance, a quest NPC can now say to players "I need help building a fortress here. I need you to..." and sort of mean it. As they work through the number of steps each time they come back they see a little more of the fort come together. What starts out as little more than some guys standing in an empty space can turn into a functioning town with vendors and new buildings and other facilities. There is a lot of "trickiery" used like sending you conveniently away to deliver or gather something so it can swap in stuff but in the end you really see the results of the work done. As horrible as grinding is, at least this is some big feed back to it which is better than the old fashion NPC who would say "thanks for the help" and never quite get around to building anything.
The problem is and forever will be concurrency. If you completed all of the quests to build up the fortress you will see the fortress. If your friend who hasn't been there before let alone completed any of these quests, at best will see nothing but the NPC asking him to help with building the fortress. At worst, you two maybe grouped and can't see each other. It sometimes gets hard to lend a helping hand to a friend if you aren't seeing what they see let alone particulate because they aren't even "there" with you.
Although it has issues, I really see this as having a lot of potential. I wonder if Blizzard could make an expansion with this stuff where an entire area/continent/world is overrun with bad guys but as you work through the content and quests you slowly but surely, and "heroically", fix the world. The end result with any MMO expansion is you fix whatever story/disaster/crisis that popped up. With this "phasing technology" they can start to approach that where people who "finish" the quests and content leave the area "evil free".
I quit WoW when it started making the following statements...
"I HAVE to login so Bigsilly can get his 5 matches in..."
"I HAVE to login, they're one short for Kara..."
"I HAVE to login, I have to keep up with my dailies to purchase an epic mount.."
blech!!! No fun anymore, From what I've seen WotLK isn't breaking the mold, just a new paintjob on the same car.
Awesome!
The direction Blizzard was going with Wrath is clearly an improvement on what was already a good game....
It's too bad they didn't finish it before they released it. It's missing that typical Blizzard polish. Spelling errors and other glaring issues with quest text and NPC speech (including directions that send you to the wrong place, or places that just plain don't exist instad of the correct location); items with no names so strings like (null) and "%u" and "doodad_whatever" pop up all over the place; professions with no additional recipes long before you reach the skill cap; a new vehicle system that has no fewer than four completely separate implementations and user interfaces (half of which break); add-on API functionality that doesn't work or isn't documented; zone phasing technology that needs some of the kinks worked out; achievements that you get without actually accomplishing them, or don't get when you actually do.... etc...
They needed to keep working on it for another month or two before releasing it.
The specific features you listed weren't even new in WoW. Both existed (though phasing only to a limited extent) in Burning Crusade.
I don't think they're being "touted" as new... The reviewer is simply lacking background info.
The class was balanced quite well by the extensive beta testing
This explains why Blizzard is making major tanking changes in next patch because DK tanks suck. Also, damage dealing wise, they deal out way too much damage. Light years away from being balanced. PS: I play a Death Knight and I think the class is a horrible tank and too good DPS.
Gear has effectively been reset again, but not as severely as it was in The Burning Crusade.
I wonder if the reviewer has played "The Burning Crusade"...
The best 2h weapon available in vanilla WoW was 93ish DPS from Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas. The best level 70 normal dungeon weapon has the same DPS and item level. Fast forward to WotLK and the best TBC 2h weapon available was around 150ish DPS (Apolyon from Kil'Jaeden). Some level 75ish dungeons already drop comparable weapons and level 80 normal dungeon weapons eclipse the best available TBC weapons, level 80 1h weapons have the same DPS as the best TBC 2h weapons. This is of course because the gear reset is way more severe than during the WoW->TBC transition. Item level gain is far more steeper in WolTK than TBC.
When someone refers to the "arena" in WoW, they're referring exclusively to PvP as that is the only arena in the game. Such has been requested for PvE based on the EQ system for older raid bosses, but it has yet to happen.
I wonder if this too is a confusion of terms. Currently, Blizzard's phasing allows multiple people to physically be in the same zone but have it appear wildly different for them, allowing lowbies to run into the Undercity and turn quests into the faction leader while someone who is 76-77 is barging through the hallways with Thrall killing Undead and taking down bosses.
Maybe you are thinking of instancing, which WoW does for all of its dungeons?
The Death Knight area is interesting and fun. Then it's over and you find yourself saying, "Thrallmar. I can't believe I'm back in Thrallmar."
aka RwlRwlRwlRwl aka MRGLR GLMRGLMR RRLGGG http://www.wowwiki.com/Murloc
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
It could be worse, it could be a cheese shop that doesn't have any cheese.
"Not much of a cheese shop really?"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
When WotLK came out, I followed a link to a PA strip featuring the Lich King talking to a sycophant. The King was bored, and the sycophant was discussing ways to cheer him up, without success. Each idea had its own punchline, and one of the was killing high level players; the King replied that anyone who had plateaued already had no life and death would be a mercy.
Since then, I've been unable to find the strip. I thought it referred to the WotLK expansion, but may have been talking about the previous one. I've singled-stepped through several weeks worth of strips around the date of both releases, but haven't found anything. If anyone can help, I'll mod you up the next time i have points.
Thanks!
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Murlocs are fan favorites, people love to hate them. It is not a kind love, but it is truly a love.
Besides, the little gurgle the Murloc babies make is just so cute and precious!
I think there is very little point in reviewing updates for MMOs. Considering the entire business model revolves around continuous content updates and subscription-based payments, it'd be ridiculous for someone planning to play that MMO for any real length of time not to buy the update for it.
I'm just glad Blizzard is the kind of company that focuses on quality and doesn't rush their shit, because at this point WoW is big enough that they really could take a dump in a box, slap on the WoW label, and watch the sales come in.
"There are currently 4 cooking recipes missing. They are unobtainable, yet they are required for the Northrend Gourment achievement in which you need to cook 45 of the 46 Northrend recipes. Additionally, you need at least 1 of those recipes to learn 160 recipes for an achievement."
Cooking is useful throughout, recipes are plentiful, and it's apparently enjoyable enough for you to get all the way to the end of the crafting. You're complaining about the "tick" that is the achievement. What you have here, sir, is a nitpick - not a "glaring hole".
Death knight tanks depend on parry rather than block.
There isn't enough parry gear in LK to sustain a DK tank. I play a healer, i know these things. They take way too much damage and it's not their fault when there just isn't itemization for them.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
After reading all these raving comments I am wondering if you guys are playing the same game I am playing... WOTLK imho is exactly the same old, same old with just few tweaks here and there. The new zones are boring and monotonous. The only thing I really enjoyed was the DK quest line.
tells you how simple it is, because it unfolds exactly the same goddamn way every time.
Once you've done it a few times to get the timing down (or are using an add-on that alerts you when things are about to happen), you can almost do these end game raids with your eyes closed.
That's very simple game play, regardless of how much lipstick you try to put on it.
Early this Saturday past, after taking my hourly cigarette break around midnight, I came back to a disconnected from server message. Trying to log back in I was told my account had been banned.
The e-mail I later received claimed I had been exploiting the World of Warcraft economy, which seems to be Blizzard's catch-all excuse for banning.
Now, I know everyone who's ever been banned claims innocence, and I'm no different. But I can honestly say that I've NEVER bought gold from an online reseller, nor have I ever paid for someone else to play my character. I pay my monthly fee so I can play the damned game, and to be accused of cheating and banned without even the opportunity to speak for myself is an huge insult.
I'll readily admit that I've done some things against their EULA in one case, which was firing up my friend's account so I could use his character to run my lowbie through two instances. Oh, and I bought my friend his epic mount while I was on his toon. But this was months ago, and I've not done anything unacceptable either before or since. Hell, I religiously report EVERY gold seller that spams their noise in chat.
I've been a fan of Blizzard games pretty much since the beginning, and I can reach back into the stack of olden disks and pull out my copy of the original Orcs and Humans. I've been a WoW subscriber since February of 05.
Needless to say, I'm really pissed at Blizzard treating a loyal fan of theirs, as well as a paying customer (my WoW account's paid until January, even) like this.
Still waiting for a reply from their account admin department to get this sorted out, although I'm not holding my breath they'll fix this and compensate me for their mistake somehow. I've got tons of screenshots (over a gig), documenting ME playing MY characters covering the last 3 years as proof that I play my own damned account. I'm a single father currently between jobs, I have nothing better to do with my time (aside from finding another job, of course). Needless to say, this is seriously going to impact any future purchases when it comes to Blizzard products. Not that any amount of money I spend on their work matters next to their other 10 million subscribers (or whatever they're up to now).
I guess this is just a buyer beware warning. You can be banned at the drop of a hat by Blizzard, and it takes forever to get things sorted out. The worst part is that I have to prove my innocence instead of Blizzard having to prove my guilt.
The quests didn't present much of a PvE challenge even to a resto druid two levels under the quest level. However, on a PvP server, I've had a friend get ganked while doing quests like these. I went to help him only to find I can't help since I'm in the restored town and he's still trying to restore it. Also, while most of us at Slashdot are adults, there are kids who play these games. Sometimes, it's just nice to lend a hand when someone needs it. Thought I still really enjoy the phasing aspect, it would have been nice if Blizzard made it possible to revert to an older phase in other to assist a party member.
I loved being around for the beta design process of this expansion. I spent hours in the forums and on mmo-champion.com every day discussing class balance and the like. It's a blast trying to design for such a complicated and complex game with such a huge audience. When BC came out there didn't seem to be quite as much openness in the design process, and I ended up quitting from BC's launch until a couple months ago.
Now that LK is out? The actual gameplay is still very tedious. It takes hours to go up levels and move on to new and interesting places. Double or triple that if you add in auctioning, professions, etc. I'm slowly leveling some of my toons, but every time I have to spend 20 minutes running from point A to point B a bit of me dies inside.
There's just too many timesinks in the game. Presumably intended to keep people paying rather than to keep them having fun while it lasts and then letting them move on.
It's a business issue, not a technical one. Sure, you will get more latency playing across the ocean, but you can do it. However, for them, the billing issues are far more complex than it's worth.
There are ways around it, I know people who for some reason were in the US, but started off playing on EU servers before switching back to a US one. Nothing strange about Blizzard not helping here, it's not a common issue, or one where they want to encourage such transactions. If you want to do it, you're on your own.
When someone refers to the "arena" in WoW, they're referring exclusively to PvP as that is the only arena in the game. Such has been requested for PvE based on the EQ system for older raid bosses, but it has yet to happen.
Technically correct, but I believe you're incorrect in this instance. It sounded as though the "arena challenges with increasingly more difficult opponents", both here and in the article, was referring to the Ring of Blood questline in Nagrand, and now the Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul'Drak.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
No. Phasing was already used in late Burning Crusade - there is one daily quest that uses it, and the whole isle of quel'danas used phasing as people were "opening it up". In that case the "phases" of the island happened to everyone, but the system was the same - you did stuff, at some point - poof - things changed in the world.
Blizzard is not stupid - before they bet their whole franchise on a complex piece of code, they tested it, then they tested it more, then they tested it in the live game. Once it was proven to be solid, quest developers went nuts with it in Wrath of the Lich King.
Same is true for a lot of stuff - like, say, vehicles. Some of the vehicle stuff is new, but you could already "turn into a dragon" while fighting Kil'jaeden in Sunwell Plateau... or actually turn into a ghost while fighting Teron Gorefiend in Black Temple way earlier. Again, small roles for a piece of code ("morph player into something else, give him new quickbar of abilities, disable old ones") which, when proven, is then "let loose" with the quest designers, who promptly went nuts with the idea.
Umm... Ya sure about that? My buddy in the UK isn't having any problems.
You're never going to be "far behind" everyone else. Whenever something new comes in, shortcuts are made in the old content to push you past it faster.
Do you remember the times of Molten Core? Everyone was there. People spent days, weeks, months grinding it. Anyone been there lately? I kinda doubt it.
Kara. Remember the key grinding? Go from here to there to that instance to whateveritwascalled, just for the master's key, so you can finally get in. Patch comes, new instance, no key required anymore.
When BC came out, a friend of mine was close to quitting. He finally got his whateverblade the week before that he was grinding for for over a month. He steps into the first BC dungeon, a green drop and presto, better than that whateverblade he spent months to grind instances for.
It's the same now with WotLK. You spent months to get your level 70 gear together and I'm sure, after 2 days of running instances you have already trashed it and replaced it with the green crap that dropped. It's going to continue that way. Some new dungeon gets opened and whatever is a tedious long grind now will be a cakewalk, so people can catch up.
It's a necessity if WoW wants to stay successful. Else people will actually react the way you do now. "I've been away too long and can't catch up." That simply isn't correct the way they do it. You can catch up. People who are ahead of you are running in treadmills while behind them you're in the fast lane to get close to them in no time. And when you're at the same step they are, i.e. doing the same dungeon they do, it's basically a matter of luck whether you or them gets their drop first.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Engineering is not an armor related profession. its a gimmick profession that produces usable tools. it has no business in creating armor SETS.
and im also appalled at your ignorance about those professions.
'level 80 required item' doesnt mean that it will require you to be level 80. the helmets engineering makes for example, all require level 72, however, in order to be able to go into heroic dungeons and acquire the specific materials they require, you HAVE to be level 80.
Read radical news here
It's a shame there's still no place to keep n show your stuff. No, bank doesn't count, I mean houses (or at least guild halls) - the one thing SWG got right that WOW has /facepalm'd is the lack of cool stuff that isn't clothing, or weapons.
in SWG i remember just abandoning quest lines when one of the things I picked up for a quest was so cool looking I had to have it in my house. Spending hours visiting friends, seeing what they were up to, and admiring their painfully detailed work the way I admire grand ASCII art (it took hours to move things just, exactly where they should be - design flaw but props to peeps who put up with it).
In SWG I had a hut, on an abandoned mountaintop, full of trophies and funny bits of my life in game, and I miss that.
Oh, and social crafting! how Blizzard missed making barbers a player craft (even if it was just secondary) is beyond me.
SWG sucked in major, buggy ways in terms of gameplay but in terms of a social space to interact and imagine in it was years ahead of WOW, years ago. Had better graphics too.
Otherwise I more or less agree with the post. Oh, and I'm not too happy about warlock nerfs, but that will just make my inevitable, crushing revenge on all the classes that instaglib me now all the more satisfying. Locks will rise again, be given something against melee (that lasts longer than 30 sec every 3 min), and that, my friends, will be a red day.
closed minded is as closed minded does
I quit Everquest when it became clear to me that many game design elements were not merely bad, but actually sadistic. Since then I have one unbendable rule:
If I have to walk/run/do nothing for ten minutes in a row, I uninstall the game and throw it away.
Does World of Warcraft now pass this test?
Disc is a good spec that balances healing with damage. You can't pump out the DPS like a shadow priest, but with a good disc build, plus 3 points into spirit tap, I never had to sit and drink. Disc is also pretty good at healing. You don't have the AOE panic heals you get from circle of healing, but you rarely need those in 5-mans, and Penance is an incredible single-target healing spell (less mana and more healing than Greater Heal, channeled but activates instantly).
The only problem I had were groups that thought I couldn't heal because I wasn't holy. I respecced holy when I hit 80 for raiding.
Interesting article, but way too many spoilers. Fortunately I've done the quest chains mentioned in the article, but I still think that the author's level of description for some areas is a little deep for a "review". The comments about The Oculus in particular were a little too damaging to someone who would otherwise walk up to the final boss and say "WOAH! That's awesome!" without any idea of what to expect.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
I was amazed the first time I stepped into Azeroth. Elywnn Forest was so peaceful. As I brought my character up, some things seemed to get so boring and annoying. "Go halfway around the world go get X and bring it back. Oh you did that...go back to where you were and get y. Oh..thanks...now go back and get z. Now that you have brought me all 3, go back and kill the mob that you killed twice already getting x,y and z"
I saw way too much of that, so when I got to lvl60, I quit, leaving my hunter standing in IronForge. A few months later I make a warlock. This was after the first expansion came out and Azeroth became a subsidiary of Nerf. It was a lot easier to bring my Warlock up, however I just couldn't see paying for the expansion to do more of the same in outland. So I quit again.
A couple months ago, I felt the call and brought a mage up to lvl60. I hit lvl50 around when WotLK came out, so it helped in that lots of Death Knights where running around doing the old end-game instances for the achievements. For my other two characters, it could take a day or two to find enough people to run Stratholme.
So, anyway, got up to lvl60, tried the Burning Crusade trial, which has all the BC content included in the current patches/installs. So now if I wanted to continue, I'd be paying $30 for a key that says "yeah...let him into other parts of the world." And then $40 for another key for WotLK.
So I guess I'll just let things lapse again, disappear from the guild I'm in and be forgotten, and probably in 6 months time level something else up to 60 and quit again.
I just can't see any reason to keep playing this game. My wife thinks it's funny, but doesn't mind as long as I know where my priorities are, but I feel stupid when running an instance and someone else is saying their parents are making them get off for bed. Or other people are talking about how they lost their job cause they overslept again after running something the night before.
Guess I'll go back to my other crack - Windows programming.
LF1M for run of VisualStudio.
I always loved Kill All Humans, the anal probe being my weapon of choice.
Computer games are great for letting you be the evil opposite of yourself.
- That flying mount you saved up for (worse, if you bought an epic) - can't use it until 77 or so. Bad call. Opportunity to up the ante here: add flight combat based on class! That would also keep people from short circuiting quests, and be awesome.
Hmmm. I'll have to tell my level 55 warrior to stop flying around on the magic broom from the Headless Horseman.
- Not a mage? Can't get to Dalaran until 74 (or so, I haven't done it yet). That's right, a major feature cut out for you while you grind. This really serves just to highlight the grind, not remove it.
Strange, my level 28 Kehrbehr druid has no problems hearthstoning to his home in Dalaran. Just shell out the 10 to 15 gold for a port and visit an Inn. Problem solved.
- Pretty much the minute logged in I was beat with the old problems that caused my entire guild to quit: "Heroic Nexus LF2M, need tank and 1dps (at least 1300DPS!)". Now I happen to have a tank, a healer and a mage, all were well enough geared for heroics in TBC... but I remember this all too well. Damage meters, people not understanding there are multiple ways to play the game, people unwilling to enter a dungeon that they don't outgear (because they don't understand subtlety)...this basically puts you in a place where you only want to play with friends, and you are at the mercy of trying to get 5 adults across 4 timezones, with wives and kids, to block out 1,2,3 hours to do a dungeon.
You don't have to do the dungeons. And at least trade chat no longer has repeated calls for people to enchant their weapon with icy chill or fiery enchants so it will have a cool glow - you can now buy the scrolls in item enhancement to do it for you (and any scribe can make the armor vellum or weapon vellum for an enchanter to cast it on the scroll). Man, that saves a LOT of time.
To try and grow a guild of like minded people is entirely more frustrating: dungeons come in 5, 10 and 25 and need to be approached with the maximum allowable team (assuming you don't outgear them), as a group with approximately equal gear within what someone defines as reason. The result is a lot of people are left off and get bored with the game. You can't grow a guild of responsible adults, because you can't play the game, have fun, and be responsible at the same time.
I frequently join in with 5-10 people who aren't even in my guild - that's what the /friend option is for. When they need to do a giant dungeon, they just shout out to friends who are eligible to join in, and they invite their guild members - saves a lot of time and it's fun to have a multi-guild group, since they can replace people who have to drop with other guildees.
Nothing in WoTLK addresses the elitist mentality the game has been designed for. The belief that only the hardcore deserve to be included in higher end dungeons and raids. The best you can do is join a large casual guild, put up with (and play) the politics, and go as far as a mob mentality will allow (usually only 1 or 2 tiers). Plus deal with people who aren't very smart and don't understand the game, but who are what you have to work with. This means damage meters, pvp specs in raids, weird and self-nerfing specs, people fighting over gear, etc.
I don't know about you, but I find dungeons especially boring. My son loves them, but I don't. You can pile on the add-ons and do it if you want, but it's still totally optional.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I've put a lot of hours into WotLK since it came out and feel reasonably well qualified to comment on it.
Basically, I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. A kind of 6 on 10, work in progress sort of thing, with some nice ideas, but a few things that still need to be resolved and a few other things that desperately needed to be resolved before launch.
I'll start with the 70-80 levelling grind. After recently levelling an alt from 1-70 (after they nerfed the entire xp grind from 20+) this came as a real shock to the system. This grind is long and it is slow. Moreover, you are basically forced to do an overwhelming majority of it through solo questing. This is a stark contrast to Burning Crusade, where even before they nerfed the xp gaps, you could quite plausibly level from 60-70 in the new 5 man instances, with a single run granting a sizeable fraction of a level. In WotLK, if you do a 5 man instance for xp, you will get maybe 15% of a level at best for the first run, and then 5-7% or so for subsequent runs. With each run taking, on average, 45 minutes, this is just not a productive way to level up, compared to solo questing. It's clear that Blizzard want to force everybody to play through the story they've written for the new areas solo, grouping up only for the occasional instance or group quest. I have two problems with this. First, to be honest, the plot isn't really that great. Sure, it's kinda cool to see some of the old plot strands from WC3 crop back up, but ultimately, it's still the same old sub-Tolkien crap. As a former FFXI player, I can't help but feel that plot isn't really Blizzard's strong point, compared to Square-Enix. That said, the cutscene you get at the end of the Dragonblight quests was a pleasant surprise.
My second problem is that if I wanted to run around on my own doing solo quests, I probably wouldn't be playing World of Warcraft. After all, the same experience can be had far better in any number of offline RPGs, which are specifically tailored for solo play. My abiding memory of levelling from 70-80 is of it being a profoundly lonely experience (despite me having an active guild that was farming Kil'Jaeden before WotLK hit). Of course, this isn't to say I wasn't seeing plenty of other players. Of course I was. I was having to compete with them for every fucking pull of every fucking quest mob. Sorry for the bad language, but I can't really think of any other way to convey just how furious I got at Blizzard's complete failure to mitigate the inevitable effects of hundreds of new players on every server swarming into the start zones at once. This isn't the first time Blizzard have done this; they should know better by now.
So yes, the overall levelling experience is somewhat let down by Blizzard's ego tripping with regards to the plot and some really questionable design decisions.
Fortunately, on hitting 80, things do get better. The instances are generally good. Heroics, in particular, are a lot of fun, although as a Paladin, I'm still frustrated by how many of them like to throw damage on every member of the party at once, meaning that we Paladins still end up as the least desired healers for this stuff (though we do now perform better in raids). Blizzard have further developed the neat "roughly an hour" instance layout that they introduced in Burning Crusade for 5 mans and it works very well. The only 5-man instance I don't think has been properly thought through is the Oculus, where Blizzard tried something very different, which just didn't quite work. Can't blame them for trying, though.
The main raiding content at the moment is Naxxramas, resurrected from the original, pre-expansion game, where only the very top end players saw it. I can see why they wanted to bring it back; for the most part, it is an excellent starter instance with some fun fights. That said, it is showing its age in a few respects. Some of the wings, particularly abombination/construct wing, have some really long and annoying runs back if you have a wipe. Burning Crusade instances la
So I don't have to hear the sounds of rotten fruit every time I visit Ogrimmar.
And you stop bugging me about Death Knight glyphs - no, I'm only level 199 in inscription, go whine about it in Dalaran or someplace where people care.
But I love the armored bears.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
im impressed with this expansion to such an extent that, i have decided to level a low level warrior i had to level 68 (optimal level to enter northrend) and do the northrend first with him. because a warrior is much more fit within the saga context of lich king.
this is despite i have a 73 rogue, 72 shaman that are well geared and had done the first 2 zones of northrend.
that is because good content games are SO rare nowadays that, if you find one, you have to make the most out of them like there's no tomorrow.
now, believe me when i say this - i HATE the guts of leveling and grinding. it was total pain to get those 2 70 chars to 70 over the course of 2 years for me.
but, as im leveling the warrior now through shitty vanilla and burning crusade wow content, i find that im even able to put up the shitty grind (despite it is 30% faster now due to an adjustment blizzard made), when i think that sometime soon i will be properly running this toon through the expansion in a total movieish context.
now, thats the kind of game i like to play. it was a long time coming since kotor series -> in the sense of being 'a labor of love', dont get me wrong.
Read radical news here
What would that content look like? (the non -grind) how would that work?
How would non-raid endgame work? (it is an MMO... so I assume you don't mean "Solo" the endgame)
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
It's not the network, it's that they don't sell US versions to Europeans. Of course, Europeans can purchase the boxed game from a US source and play on US servers that way, though I'm not sure why you'd want to. You'd be shifted 8-12-hours off from all your friends, server maintenance periods would actually cut into your prime-time, etc..
Glaring is the graphical glitches in the casting animations in WAR. They are so bad that it kills your sense of immersion. These are minor oversights at best.
When someone refers to the "arena" in WoW, they're referring exclusively to PvP as that is the only arena in the game. Such has been requested for PvE based on the EQ system for older raid bosses, but it has yet to happen.
I believe the original reviewer was refering to the PvE arena questlines, like the Ring of Blood in Nagrand and Ampitheater of Anguish in Zul'Drak.
With respect, your mistaken belief that people wouldn't act the same in reality (and that money is a motivator) is completely at odds with observed behavior - see Stanford experiment. The one where someone thought, "Hey, I know! Let's have these college kids play cops and robbers and study their behavior based on arbitrary circumstance dictating roles," and the results were so horrifying that not only did the experiment get shut down in about a day or two, but basically every Western experiment has been crippled since in both scope, audacity, and informed consent waivers (Stanford had waivers too).
FYI, you can purchase an authentic replica of the sword of the Lich King @ http://www.epicweapons.com/
Gravity!... It's not just a good idea... It's the Law!
They won't because unfortunately as you said you are a casual player and only level 45. Blizzard doesn't care about you, they only cater to the higher levels. Case in point, all the seasonal and holiday quests that come out that are only for those close to or above level 70. The rest of us only get stupid ones like trick-or-treat at the inns. Whoopdee farking doooo!
Yes, you're alone.
Ding! Grats.
I'm sorry mate, but you can't say that the graphics are 2003. The polycount is massive, and the use of shaders is predominant too. Imho they did a great thing, because the style is always the same between vanilla/tbc/wotlk, but, as example, on my 8600 GT vanilla runs at average 60 FPS, tbc average 35, wotlk average 25. If you don't like the style I'm fine with that. But this graphic has been properly chosen to br 13+ rated. If you ever saw the first screenshots of WarCraft III RoC (the strategic game), they tried at first to use a realistic looking style, but then they choose to realy on the cartoon style. It's a matter of style, not a technologic limit. Cheers,
I quit basketball when I started making the following statements...
"I HAVE to play so Bigsilly can practice his layups"
"I HAVE to play, they're one short for the tournament"
"I HAVE to play, so my skills improve."
I had an ingame friend make the comment once that it's like a pickup basketball league for people that play video games.
It's a hobby, don't feel guilted by the rest of society that says the only acceptable hobbies are hiking, birdwatching, sports, or photography.
Sounds more like you just have a problem with commitment and/or teamwork.
Actually, Blizzard do what they can for the lower levels, to be honest. From the second half of the Burning Crusade era, they began a fairly comprehensive (and successful) programme of making the levelling grind faster and more enjoyable, particularly around the 38-45 range, which used to be absolute hell and was where lots of players, particularly the more casual ones, were giving up.
Not only has there been a reduction in the experience needed to level up, but a number of old quests have been rationalised and simplified. Some of the old group quests have been made accessible to solo players, as an acknowledgement that most of the player-base are at the level cap now. The experience and loot rewards for many of the old "levelling up" instances, such as Deadmines, Gnomeregan, Uldaman and so on, have been improved significantly, while a few tweaks have been made to reduce the difficulty of some of those instances.
Perhaps the biggest boon to low level players has been the complete makeover that Blizzard gave to Dustwallow Marsh. Previously a rather sparse, unwelcoming area with little function other than as the Alliance port in Eastern Kalimdor, the zone is now the most content-dense zone in the whole of the "old world". They've added a large number of fun (and occasionally novel) quests, based conveniently around a few hubs, which replicates the "Outlands level up experience" in Azeroth and massively accelerates the 38-42 level range. In the past, the only real way through those levels was to suffer your way through Stranglethorn Vale until you were finally able to escape to the relative delights of Tanaris and Hinterlands. Having Dustwallow as an alternative is infinitely preferable.
Ultimately, though, there's very little point in Blizzard adding much more "low level" content. The simple fact is that WoW has a very short level-up curve by the standards of most MMOs. Most casual players will make it to level 80 sooner or later, where they can go and do 5 and 10 man instances, or PvP.
Obsolete instances don't get played very much. When WotLK came out, all of the (generally well designed) level 70 instances vanished from the radar. I guess the occasional group of people levelling up might hit the level 70 5-mans a couple of times. Perhaps you'll even get the occasional crowd of people at 68-71 poking their heads into Karazhan. But everything from Gruul's Lair through to Sunwell Plateau will now get nothing more than the occasional nostalgia run. If Blizzard were, say to add a couple of new level 50 instances, most players would probably run them once, get a level and a couple of drops from them and then never go there again. By contrast, new top level content will claim far more time from players.
Oblig MP quotes:
"That's no ordinary bunny!"
"That rabbit's dynamite."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I've been playing WoW for a few years now, casually. I consider myself kind of a hard-core casual gamer. I take it easy, but I play lots.
I'm very confused about people claiming that there's no more grind. I beg to differ! There is an almost constant grind for profession items, especially since the expansion. Prices have gone sky-high. People who've spent the last few months doing dailies and raids with their level 70 characters are buying mats off the auction hall for their Death Knights, making it impossible for casual players to match the costs. So every time I log in with my 54 shaman, I run around looking for Thorium. Sometimes I do a quest on the side. This game is vastly different for the end-game players and the casual players, and it's painfully obvious here.
I find it telling that the two people I know who play the most watch TV while they play (unless they're in a raid). Obviously, I find some enjoyment in the game, having played for years and years, but I'm not going to pretend that it's more than it is. It's a way to play a game and spend time with friends near and far. If I get and I don't have someone to chat with, I'm not on more than 4 or 5 minutes. I'd rather play Harvest Moon and grind for turnips.
The problem, as presented, was a "Waaaaah" type of complaint. They complain, ad nauseum about a game that many many people enjoy. They want the game to give them everything up front. This is the same complaining I heard when KoToR came out: "WAAAAAAAH, I wants my light saber right now, why must I learn anything about the game, character, world, setting, and such. Just let me smash things" Sure, that works for some people, but the others who want a game with a sense of immersion will be disappointed. If you don't like it, don't play it and move on. The Warcraft franchise has done exceptionally well. WoW is still popular years after release with lots of paying customers. Sure, there are things worthy of complaining about, like queue times at launch, buggy quest lines or other issues as such. However, saying "I want the game to do this, and that, and not be WoW but something else is not helpful criticism. It is instead an approach of stale and nothingness towards a game that has an effect on people of somewhat immersing them in a pretend, fantasy world, and allowing them to view it, and interact with other players via typed and voice chat. If you don't like it, spend your money on something else. Don't complain, as many do, that they are not overpowered ubertoons that want to hack and slash through the game with ease, then complain it was too short and too easy. Yes, this expansion is Wrath of the Lich King. It is not "Kill the Lich king in 24hrs or less" or "Lich King Tycoon." If you think that a badass like the Lich King will die in the first month, don't play WoW. You know nothing about it.
Come on. put some puzzles in the game.
In spite of all the crap in the game, at least DDO had some decent Puzzles. They could have been harder*
They are a Fantasy game staple.
Also let me dictate the color of what I wear.
*Yes, some people will say that 'hard' puzzles will prevent some people from playing. This statement is completly ignorant of puzzle players.
There are two kinds. The person who live to figure it out, and the person who looks up answers online.
As some who like puzzles, I wouldn't look it up, but have no problem with people who do.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The weird thing about learning a WoW raid is that it's distrurbingly similar to learning a line-dance.
Every complaint is "Waaah!". The entire point is to highlight the flaws so that they can get fixed. Blizzard has demonstrated an ability to fix some flaws with MMOGs - prior to WoW EQ was (arguably) the dominant MMOG. It was viewed as inconceivable by forum trolls (which you run dangerously close to), to have a game where you didn't have to grind as a group to level up, and which took less than an eternity to do a dungeon. Blizzard took a look at that, copied the good parts and mostly fixed the bad. By comparison EQ doesn't exist now, a few still play it but it's mostly dead. That doesn't mean they've made it perfect, and since WoW launched they've taken a lot of bad turns some of which feels to me like a bait and switch - group caps and dungeon class requirements being MORE difficult and MORE unapproachable than EQ ever was.
I'm going to ignore their alleged 10M subscribers, since I'm not sure how much of that number includes all my RL friends whose accounts have expired and don't play anymore (in fact I'm the only one to have even BOUGHT wotlk). I'm sure it doesn't include a large body of mostly console gamers who may have tried WoW but won't play it because of the time investment. The fact is it's losing what it had, it's not reaching many new people, and I believe it is fixable not a "natural progression of a game aging". A mmog doesn't NEED to age. It does need to address problems which drive people away, and keep new people from joining.
Some of the complaints I have are just stupid and unoriginal design choices, the pinnacle of which is not being able to use the very expensive and very useful flying mounts form the last expansion. The only good argument is that it allows you to "skip content", but I'm not sure what that means. There's no scenario in which I can see using a flying mount to skip content that produces a good result for me, or in which I couldn't do so equally well by walking. There are two carrots for doing content: gear and xp. A third carrot for some (including me): to follow the plotline. This last one i have issue with (i.e. there never has been a compelling story line, so I wouldn't expect there to be one now), but it's a digression. The bottom line is, unless they made boneheaded design choices, there's no reason not to allow us to use the mount. I want to travel fast, I paid good money and levelled up to the point where I could buy the mount, I should be able to use it. I believe lack of creativity is what drove this choice, and we should be outraged.
The rest of my complaints hinge around WoW being designed around a target audience that isn't anyone I personally know. Maybe WoTLK is better for me, and I'm not giving it a fair chance. But having been burnt by WoW for so long, history clouds my sight and I don't see anything from my visitations to Northrend that changes my view. I'm not seeing any great promises from Blizzard to acknowledge the error of their ways, or in fact any hint that they're doing anything different.
I want to see something really big. I want to see them make a server, perhaps called "Ranked" which has all the really hard content, long grinds, and WoW as it is today. let those people get scored,rated, ranked...their achievements tracked. Give them beta access, etc. Then have the EZ mode servers for the rest of us. Something where in 6-8 months playing 10 hours a week we can see and do everything, one way or another. I want to see no group size caps on any instance (up to whatever limits there may be on client performance), I want faction and money to never be an issue gating progression to the lich king. I want fewer but more storyline related "kill 10 poobahs". In general I want the same game, but with fewer time sinks and more approachable content for people who want to play the class they want, with the people they want, without half as much politicking and frustration. For the crowd who likes that, and who wants to "work" on a game, there are the ranked servers.
I don't know why it's necessary to endure that crap if I'm never going to be able to see the end. I'm not sure why I want to pay for expansions to subsidize a small but vocal subset of people whose entire life revolves around synthetic frustration.
I kind of pictured Slashdot as above judging others for the pass times they enjoy. Guess we were both wrong.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I agree that complaints need to be addressed. If something is broken, by all means, complain until it is fixed. However, do not complain if the mere fact that you are in an expansion and not "UberTron, killer of all things elite" anymore. I have complaints about WoTLK. Aside from issues in some dungeons with bad players, I have been able to solo things, at lower level, than I probably should have. Maybe some of it was my understanding of the game mechanics, I don't know.
I LIKE the idea, in some regards, that you are not allowed to use the flying mounts from the last expansion. I have found that my ability to fly right over areas has gone way up since I got mine. I could not afford an epic flying mount at the last expansion. I was a tank and my repair costs, plus enchant/gem costs were too high.
I got mine in about 2 weeks in the expansion and when I got to 77, I was able to get my gold up over 1K and get to flying. It gives you something to look forward to. You cannot simply have everything handed to you or it becomes meaningless. Would you rather if they made you use a "Cold weather flying mount" like a "Giant Snow Puffin" or something? Going on the ground means you may get the attention of monsters down there. You see things differently and I think that it adds something, albeit with some frustration. The overall, for me, was positive.
As for the bringing as many friends as you want to an instance, that is a bad dynamic. Those who do not have the ability to bring more will feel cheated and those who bring 9 or 10 will slam through it like a hot knife through butter. Maybe we want to play for different reasons, but I like to feel like I overcame something and beat it. I don't want to just EZMODE my ass through a dungeon where it is tuned for 5 but I brought 9. It is too hard to dynamically tune a dungeon for the amount you bring. It was hard enough for Blizzard to tune 25 and 10 man versions of content.
If you want a collection-fest of things that are handed to you, this is not the game. You could always go AFK in a few PVP battlegrounds and grab some welfare epics, though.
I attacked only Soulskill's review because it is blatant marketing material, right up into the "what the next expansion brings", that was a truly terrible review. If you are going to review something, you need to point out blatant deficits. To get a 9/10 the product has to be really excellent and groundbreaking but have some small defects, that's not what WoTLK is (or what most games that get 9/10 reviews are).
You need to say at least "they don't let you use your flying mount until 77, however it works because...", if indeed you feel it works. I don't, I think it's a huge miss. I think the intent of a flying mount is to traverse a lot of land quickly, and if the designers don't wish you to do that, either do not add flight, or use some other mechanic to make you wish to stay grounded. As it stands, I feel its really just to ensure that you have to endure the time sink of getting from a-b by fighting a bazillion mobs, repeatedly.
Some people really like this game as it is, I can't imagine they'd be hurt if it were easier thus I don't know why they care, but I do know a few very competitive people who think they and they alone deserve the top rewards. It seems that the game is designed for that crowd, particularly manifested in the arena system but also the PvE achievement system (1st to do x), so why not give them their own server to play on? Let it be as hard or harder than the game is now... give them the visibility they crave for doing it.
I don't want to be held to that standard and to suffer with it. I do want EZ-mode after a fashion. The game does not have to hand me the item, if there is an enjoyable and reasonable set of obstacles to obtain it. I'm happy to work to 80, but not if quests all boil down to time sinks. Focus on the new and original quests and the storylines - if a quest is just there to soak up time, eliminate it. As it is, on my first WoTLK quests, I've already killed 10 raiders, then waded back through those same raiders to kill their boss, then waded through them again to get to some serpent, etc. That could have been reduced to "Kill raider boss", "Go to serpent (on your flying mount)". I didn't mind helping the walrus-men out, but I'd rather the quests be oriented towards their main goal rather than a bunch of redundant subtasks. I can kill 10 people just getting to the boss... why make me do all the running around? If the quests that comprise my entrance to Northrend are to save the Walrus-men, why not present that, at once as a battle plan?
In general a good part of my solo complaint is that if the item is blocked solely by arbitrary goals (kill 1000 weasels, farm 2M faction, collect 100000 items) you would lose nothing by changing that to (kill the weasel, farm a faction, collect an item) except cutting the time down. In this game, if you can do something N times, you can do it N+1 times, so why beat around the bush?
I do like a subset of the game as it exists and I want to see my complaints addressed so I can enjoy the game. If you like the game, and have time to play it, I have no quarrel with you. If you insist the game has to be this much of a sink because you need to separate the boys from the men, then yes I do. If you can kill 1 guy, you can kill 10 guys, without learning anything, it's just more work and you're not getting paid for it. I'd buy your argument if, in the process of learning to kill those 10 guys you were, in some way, learning to play your class more intelligently. That's never been the case. In fact you learn almost no group skills by soloing, almost no raid skills by grouping, and all the permutations therein.
There's a lot of good to the game that justifies it's popularity, I still think it's the best PvE mmog out there. It's definitely polished, the client is excellent. I personally love LUA and the scripting aspect (and hate how WAR nerfed it so badly - again, if a player can automate something essential, you have a gameplay bug, don't kill the messenger). But let's not pass WoTLK off as anything other than a mediocre expansion to a game that hasn't always aged well. There are lots of misses, they aren't being (obviously) addressed, and the door is still open for someone to go eat Blizzard's lunch. We should not let them have a free pass.
nah... in EQ the zone would change depending on the time of day, or if quests were in various states of completion. Killing certain mobs would cause the zone to progress to another state and eventually it would recycle. I stopped mmorpgs before the instanced dungeon became prevalent. I just don't see that much has changed from eq to WOW in more than half a decade other than better graphics. I guess that makes me a troll *roar*.
They are not missing. You should check online databases like thottbot and wowhead first before blaming blizzard for your missing collection. I know multiple guildies who have completed this achievement. Proof? It's easy, in this day of achievement-enabled armory.
I've already done that.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39644#comments
So you link me the armory of a user who has only completed Northrend Gourmet for cooking 15 of the recipes. Nice supporting evidence, besides which I looked at the northrend gourmet for 30 recipes and I see that none of the 4 recipes that have been classified as missing by so many WoW players have been cooked by the player.
If you're going to try to make a point, at least show someone who has actually completed the Northrend Gourmet achievement for 45 recipes, or has the tracked achievement showing one of the four recipes cooked.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork