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Blizzard Launches Third WoW Expansion, Cataclysm
Last night marked the launch of Cataclysm, the third expansion for Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Cataclysm includes: two new races, both of which have their own starting zones; five new high-level zones that span the new 80-85 leveling content; seven new five-man dungeons (plus two heroic versions of classic dungeons); three end-game raids; a new profession; two new PvP battlegrounds; and one world PvP zone. In addition, Cataclysm features a revamp of Azeroth, the portion of the game world that went live when WoW originally launched in 2004, providing a much improved leveling experience for new players and alts. MMO-Champion posted a comprehensive collection of information about the new content. Of course, Cataclysm's launch has brought the video game addiction debate back to the fore.
Nevermind, my queue popped.
With all the player friendly changes finally incorporated into the old world the game is essentially new enough for people who have never touched WOW. It also is freshened enough for existing players to want to revisit the old world. Overall, its a much better expansion than BC and possibly better than Wrath. Is it perfect, no, but rarely will changes please everyone.
FWIW, someone made maximum level with the help of their guild within hours of the game starting up in Europe. Should be fun seeing all the people crush through the zones and race an un-winnable race
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
they are all busy playing
therefore, if my understanding of the Slashdot demographic is correct, there will be a total of 22 comments in this thread all day, and all of them will by non WoW players commenting how much WoW sucks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
According to the level 80 shaman that lives in my basement, Blizzard has basically slashdotted themselves - there are *so* many people trying to play that their servers are basically non-responsive. Players on the WOW forums are suggesting that people open 16 games simultaneously (in windowed mode), and then start to play whichever one responds first - which, of course, makes the entire scenario 16x worse.
I gave away all my gold (about 120k), sold all my gear, deleted all my characters, waved good bye to guild friends (which is one of the major pressures to play) and un-subscribed.
Boy have I been tempted to go back, but if the urge gets too great, I take a lump of wood, whittle a small penguin, stare at it for 5 minutes, look in the mirror and tell myself that I have achieved more in those 5 minutes than any achievement/raid boss kill would ever do.
Interestingly enough our fortnightly games night had become a WoW LAN party (5 of us). With me quitting WoW, we have rediscovered board games and those nights have been a lot more mentally stimulating than any WoW dungeon crawl I can remember.
WoW is an amazing life-sink that you justify because of the other 20-40 other people in your guild wasting their lives away playing a game that never ends. I can't fault them for playing, but some of them are failing school and divorcing over this game.
I "played" Fable III until about midnight last night. I mean, I was constantly interrupted but it's a great story line. I'll put in my 40-60 hours playing through the storyline and just enjoy it. Same thing with WoW. I don't understand why people treat WoW any differently. Given the monthly fee, I would think it'd make more sense to beat the regular content in that first month and let the end-game go. It's a case of diminishing returns.
Oh, one more note, if I have extra time at the end of the month, I'll sometimes go back to old content and enjoy old end-game material that is now mid-game material that I never got to experience. With the new races, you can sometimes find a pickup group to go with you.
and all of them will by non WoW players commenting how much WoW sucks
WoW doesn't suck but it's not the last game I want to play. I am a WoW player but I'm at work right now. I am the elusive sensible responsible WoW player that you seem to claim doesn't exist. If you actually looked at the numbers though, a lot of us players are in this category. We're just not omnipresent in the game so you won't see my characters in game non-stop and now it's only when the new content comes out.
My work here is dung.
Yeah, I know what you mean. After an EQ addiction and then a a bout of WoW addiction, I realized that as fun as MMOs are, they throw your life out of balance. It's one thing to have an escape every once in a while; but when you live your life in escape, those memories just aren't meaty enough to have been worth it. Memories of time spent with my family are more valuable. Learning something about science, technology, politics, economics, or history is more valuable than having my brain filled with the prices of virtual pieces of magical armor in a virtual world.
It's kind of like a guitar hero addiction. Sure, have fun with it for a few hours here and there. If you have enough time to spend hours on it a day, though, why not take up playing a REAL guitar?
That said, I think I started to drool a little when I looked at the new WoW expansion and thought about spending my Xmas holidays in Azeroth.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
There is no way to win the game. The only point is to get the best gear and achievements and then sit as 'King of the Hill' until someone else comes along and knocks you off, or you get bored and quit.
You're doing it wrong.
The point isn't to win (though some people seem to think that). The point is to have fun.
It's a diversion. It's escapism. No different from reading a book or watching TV or going to the movies or whatever else people do with their spare time. Sure, some diversions like board games and most video games have a clear winner... But plenty of diversions like reading books and watching movies have no winner. It's just a way to kill some time.
My wife and I both play WoW. We play with a guild we've been members of for about 10 years now. They're people we know. They're fun to hang out with. Half the fun of the game isn't actually mashing buttons and killing critters - it's the social aspect.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
It's certainly one thing to motivate some people, but not the only one by far. E.g., Bartle's famous paper dates from the days of MUDs and identifies 4 types of players:
1. Achievers (Diamonds): these are the kind you describe. They play to achieve something, be it a more epic sword, more money in the bank, a funky title, or a higher score.
2. Explorers (Spades): these are the kind of people who play to find out stuff. It can be some mountain pass that nobody else heard about, or how the game works, or try to find every single quest, etc. For example the kinds that put numbers in a spreadsheet to find out the exact numbers in COH's attack formulas were explorers. Essentially these guys play to reverse-engineer the game.
3. Socializers (Hearts): these guys basically treat the game as a chat room that incidentally has a video game attached. They're there to make friends, chat, organize some guild event, tutor newbies, etc. Even actually playing the game is only a tool towards interacting with people.
4. Killers (Clubs): these guys are not the PvP gang, but the people who live to harass, annoy, gank, and make life as miserable as possible for others. Their highest reward and achievement is getting someone to leave the game entirely, effectively perma-killing them in the game. Hence the "killers" name. The rest of us tend to call them "griefers" or simply "asshats".
Bearing in mind, though, that nobody is 100% in one category, but you can still classify people that way by their predominant interest and behaviour.
And that's actually just one of many classifications.
At any rate, the moral of the story is: please don't generalize. There's nothing wrong if you're an achiever, but do realize that other people play for very different reasons than you do.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What about the guy who follows every football game is doing nothing but hitting refresh on ESPN? The same guy who is in multiple fantasy football leagues? What about if they start doing it for money?? The same guy who goes to work thinks about how soon he can get out of work to go home and play Madden or setup more simulations for the season to better his predictions in the fantasy league. And while at work yammers at the water cooler about football constantly to the point no one cares.
I hate how games are being made out to be the "bad influence" when I look out at the office and see people just as obsessive with "harmless activities". Being obsessed with anything can throw your life out of balance where just saying "They should do something productive" or "Why not do the real thing?" while ignoring the guy trying to tweak their spreadsheets for the nth time planning out their fantasy football drafts for hours on end.
The problem is obsession not the game or activity. If your kids are begging for your attention and ignore them it doesn't seem to matter if the excuse is because they are watching a football game or running around a virtual world.