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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.
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"
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.
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.
Those are some pretty glaring holes right there, considering they're prerequisites for other things.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
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.
Read radical news here
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!
No, those are not glaring, those are minor.
Glaring would be "there is only one recipe that gets you from 410 to 420 cooking and the mob that drops the ingredient needed for it only exists in one location in the world, one at a time".
Fretting over your achievement e-peen is minor.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
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 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."
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
The longevity of the game is almost purely social (or in some people's cases anti-social).
It's like hanging out in the same diner with your friends every night. If you just do the same quests over and over, you get bored and quit the game. The people who are "addicted", though, aren't usually sticking around for the grind. They're just there for the convenient forum for socialization without having to leave their house.
If it's not for you, it's not for you. But people have a wide variety of tastes. Personally, I do read books and get exercise. I also play WoW. They're not mutually exclusive. WoW simply consumes all the time that I used to spend watching TV, going to movies, and to some extent playing other videogames.
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.
That'd be because it's not Penny Arcade, it's Ctrl+Alt+Del.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
What I like is a lot of the game world is tied into that - If you want a renown trainer to train your pvp abilities or get gear, after the starter area, these are only available in keeps. and if the keep is owned by the other side... well you're out of luck. Go get the keep back first. And if your capital city is overrun... you can't go there for 24 hours! Serve you right for losing it in the first place!
Those are VERY PvP oriented things though. There's nothing wrong with that, but from my experience in playing the game for years, Warcraft is simply not targeted towards heavy PvP players. It's there, but only as an afterthought. And honestly, a lot of players like that. Just as an example, when praising aspects of Warhammer you instantly went to the PvP aspects. Look at what a whole heap of new WoW players are praising in Wrath though: expansion storylines, artwork, and actions that affect YOUR view of the world. Every time I heart players from one start degrading the other I'm instantly reminded that these two games, while similar on the surface, are targeting the desires of a different type of people.
For example, myself, I'm pretty anti-PvP. I hate it. I like the social interactions that WoW provides (hell my guild hosts an annual in person barbeque/party - I have a ton of friends online that I never would have met otherwise. I know of at least 2 couples amongst our ranks that first met in-game), but I don't want my gameplay to be at the mercy or whim of what another player chooses to do. If I logged in with 15 minutes to play the game, and discovered that Stormwind is inaccessible because the Horde had taken it for example, my subscription probably wouldn't last long. Neither way is wrong or right, but you can't cater to one group without upsetting the other, so just know that for a lot of things, it's not just a matter of WoW fixing an issue or adding content, but also a matter of how the existing players will handle that content. Optional stuff that you can ignore is quite often not an issue - afterall if you don't like it, then don't participate. World PvP taken to the extreme isn't ignorable quite as easily though, and so it'll have a more limited scope of people who will tolerate it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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?