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New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances
ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."
Actually what they did in WoW is rather awful.
See, people aren't really sharing a single universe. They just do instanced content together. instanced content means that your party gets its own private copy of a level and do some dungeon crawling in there.
To implement that, they made it so that people teleport directly into the instance instead of having to travel in the open game world to the instance's entrance, because you can't see people from other servers in the open world.
Since there is also generally a very unhealthy focus on instanced content rather than open-world content, what it means in practice is that wow is not really a MMO anymore. People hang out in capital cities, which function as glorified lobbies like you find in non-MMO multiplayer games, they form a party and then teleport inside of a private dungeon.
You have almost no opportunity to meet random people on your adventures anymore because people of maximum levle have seldom any reason to bother ever going out in the open world. And leveling from 1 to 80 has also been made trivial and is therefore a minor part of the game.
It means that some interesting gameplay aspects that can normally be found in MMORPGs (such as open world pvp) have been pretty much set aside in WoW to make room for more soulless dungeon crawling and loot whoring. This game has turned from a MMORPG into a glorified dungeon crawling game.
You have a point, but I think there's a little more to it than this. I suspect that they're speeding up the levelling process because they're going to add another five levels onto the top come the next expansion. My impression has always been that Blizzard have a definitive idea how long it should take a player to go from level 1 to the maximum level, and that they try to keep this constant through expansions. So, not long after the release of Burning Crusade, we had a nerf to the 1-60 levelling process (with 60-70 still being a substantial gap). Then 60-70 was nerfed shortly before Lich King hit. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the 70-80 xp grind had a nerf shortly before or after 4.0.
I'm sorry but after getting 3 characters to 80, leveling just is not fun anymore... I feel most of the fun is at max level now.
Whereas for me the leveling is incredibly fun. But I just started playing 3 months ago and have one level 43 character, one in the mid-20s and half a dozen others in the teens. I imagine they are /trying/ to strike a balance between people like you and people like me.
I've actually got 4 characters at 80, another at 73, and the next runner up at about 66. Leveling is what I enjoy.
The end game gear grind, however, is not fun. Don't get me wrong -- I love to experience new content, I don't, however, like to keep re-experiencing it at the mercy of the RNG hoping I get the item(s) I need. Yes, badges mitigate this, slightly, but in the end you're still grinding the same one or two instances until a new one gets released.
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
No, I have friends on multiple servers, which means WoW doesn't allow me to interact with them all. Even with two friends this is a problem.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
The fact is that most people don't actually want to play a "massively" multiplayer online role-playing game. They (and I) want to play a multi-player online game. I loved playing Unreal and BF1942, but if they somehow made servers that could handle 100,000 people I wouldn't want to play on them. It's just too many people. Blizz and other companies try to find a balance between too many players in one place, and not enough. I think they have succeeded in that I can usually find a group to go wherever, and don't lag out when I zone into the capital cities.
As far as world PVP goes, please, they tried that. It always just devolves into zerging, whoever has the most people always wins. If your server is 75% alliance, world PVP is going to be pretty meaningless/frustrating if you're horde. The only way to make it fun is to try and make sure the same number of people fight each other at the same time, which is what battlegrounds and arenas are for.
Finally your assertion that WoW is a glorified dungeon crawling game strikes me as baseless, given that I spend ~20% of my time going to dungeons and 80% having fun killing people in battgrounds/arenas. WoW to me is like TFT2, but with swords and magic instead of guns.
Patch 3.3 is Blizzard's big squeeze for subscription cash before the next expansion. Each wing past the first wing of the raid dungeon is locked out on a real-time timer such that the dungeon incrementally opens. What's worse, is the final boss of each wing has an attempt count which also increases linearly as more wings open. All this is to forcefully stop well-coordinated teams of players from beating the dungeon quickly, and I don't just mean in one week. There are guilds out there who are capable of beating this thing in a couple months in about the 50th percentile of raiding guilds, but with the harsh attempt count on the bosses of each wing it will most likely lock these guilds out for more than that, keeping the subscription cash flowing longer than it needs to. To top it all off, hard modes won't be accessible until the whole dungeon is cleared, and when that happens, they're granting all players a buff to their statistics to make it easier to beat the dungeon. That last one is to deliver the psychological feeling of accomplishment to players who would have otherwise ended their subscriptions, in order to make it seem like the game is still fun for them to keep their subscription dollars coming in.
Blizzard has gotten so addicted to the high revenues that they're willing to implement game mechanics based around keeping people subscribing with minimal content updates. As a result, I've cancelled my subscription and I can safely say I won't be returning to Azeroth again -- ever.
It means that some interesting gameplay aspects that can normally be found in MMORPGs (such as open world pvp) have been pretty much set aside in WoW to make room for more soulless dungeon crawling and loot whoring.
No, it has not been set aside. They have simply made it easy for those people who are already instance grinding to do so easily. Instance grinding has always been "soulless dungeon crawling and loot whoring".
Personally I'm on the last stages of equipping a character for raiding and the ability to go from instance to instance worked great for me yesterday, as it did for everybody I grouped with. I did not hear a single negative comment from anyone yesterday. (And we all know how much players bitch when they don't like a new patch.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Making it too easy? It was too easy from day one and they haven't made any strides to really up the difficulty. To WoW developers, adding grind is upping the difficulty...you know, instead of doing something like add strategy to a game that's designed around a bunch of people in a group all hitting their attack button at the same time. That kinda worked with Diablo (and was part of what made it great to some extent), but this is a different beast entirely. In fact, I'd blame the watering down of the entire genre on WoW. The last time I decided to take SoE up on a free month of EverQuest to check up on my old characters, I was kinda disgusted at how much they've tried to dumb down the game to try and draw over people who've gotten bored with WoW.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Could someone hand that guy an "insightful" mod? He hit the nail so directly that the head is now no longer visible anymore.
WoW basically "ruined" the MMO world for those of us who wanted an MMO where a success actually meant something. At least more than "you managed to sit down for 5 hours and hit the same buttons over and over, good job!". There is rarely a challinging moment in WoW. Put time in, get reward out. If you're not good at it, all that means is that more time is required and maybe a different approach (e.g. instead of doing the raid you can't get a group for, farm some tokens and buy the gear with them instead).
And since it's the most successful of all MMOs (at least counting subscriber numbers), it's the role model for MMOs now. Everyone creates basically a copycat version of WoW. Invariably you have easy leveling with a very limited amount of player decision influencing it (try comparing it to the skill decision and implant/outfit system of Anarchy Online to see what I mean), solo playing 'til the end and no penalties for fucking up. And while this surely makes playing a lot more accessable and easier, it makes me wonder... why should I play if I know I already won?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I first started playing WoW there wasn't any of this fancy "meeting stones" or "looking for group". If you wanted to get people together to play you shouted into random channels in Ironforge. No cross realm ques for battlegrounds and there were no PVP rewards, and we liked it! If you wanted a horse, you saved your money from level one and didn't even THINK of buying anything until you had it, and if you wanted something other than a horse TOO BAD. Everything was better then. Loot meant something and everyone in your group looked out for you and made sure the right people got the right gear. Back in my day Paladins were ineffective but unkillable, shamans were GODS and if you wanted to leave Tarren Mill you WALKED because the flightmaster was DEAD. You think it's hard now? Imagine running MC and hoofing it back to your body in Blackrock, uphill both ways!
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They're trying to cater more and more towards the ADHD kids
Or perhaps adults who have day jobs and can't invest entire days playing the game.