Next World of Warcraft Expansion: Warlords of Draenor

JestersGrind writes with news that Blizzard has announced the next expansion to World of Warcraft, titled Warlords of Draenor. This expansion raises the level cap to 100 and introduces a new world/continent full of zones: Draenor. They're also introducing 'Garrisons,' player-built bases on Draenor that individual users will be able to customize and upgrade. Your garrison will have followers which you can send on missions, and you'll be able to invite other players over to visit and trade. The expansion will also revamp a number of aging character models. Blizzard is also making it so new and returning players can immediately boost one character to the current level cap (90), so they can immediately jump into the new content.

Comments

I guess I'll see

[xevioso]

Do you still have to grind to get anywhere? If so, I won't be back.

Re:I guess I'll see

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

Re:I guess I'll see

[Nos.]

I can't see how it won't. You'll grind for rep and some sort of currency (valor points or what have you) to get better gear to get into end game raids, to farm gear.

It's lost it's appeal for me and I really doubt I'll be back.

Re:I guess I'll see

[X0563511]

GW2 doesn't really do the whole "grind" thing - at least not with anything you actually have to do to advance.

Hell, just hop in WvW and murder people. You can level up that way.

Re:I guess I'll see

[twocows]

Experienced player here (since BC). It's WoW. Do you even really need to ask? The level grind is just one of many. Then you've got the grind to get LFR-ready equipment (right now that's not too bad, you just run around grabbing chests on the new 5.4 area and get free 496 gear). Then you grind LFR until your gear is good enough that people will let you in their flex raids, and then grind flex until etc. Also, there's a legendary questline that you need to grind. There was reputation grinding, and there still is a little, but that's mostly gone. Oh, and there are side grinds if you want to do stuff like max tradeskills or pet battles or whatever, same as always.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

The only MMO I've played that didn't take excessive grinding to get to a decent level is Shadowbane. Unfortunately it was released with massive bugs (thanks Ubisoft) so there is no telling if a MMO that focused less on grinding and more on pvp and... world-building? (you could make your own cities buying buildings walls etc) would be viable. I think it had promise but what manager would approve trying to emulate that disaster even if it failed for other reasons.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you will start at level 90.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Antipater]

In Planetside, you started out with enough Cert Points that you could get/use any gun in the game at level 1. Of course, grinding out more levels allowed you to have more guns at the ready without re-speccing, but that certainly wasn't a requirement to win or have fun. And given that it was a PvP game, I'm not sure if "killing more people" really qualified as grinding anyway.

Re:I guess I'll see

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Every new expansion it's "Hey look, some new evil power has taken over and it's time to replace all of your raid epics with shitty mob loot and run fetch three gold clovers and a deer antler for this quest NPC about 200 times until you reach the new level cap. After that run heroics over and over again for 60 hours for the next two weeks, which are just scaled up versions of the regular dungeons you went into while leveling. And then you can start raiding to see a new twist on the same shit you did when the last expansion came out."

I mainly played that game just for the PVP, but in wrath they really dumbed down the talent trees because they failed to balance arenas, and I heard that in MoP they REALLY dumbed them down, and meanwhile they've still yet to figure out that instant heals from 1% to 100% health with long ass CC chains where the objective is to make it so that the other healer can't do anything (either running out of mana or being put in a long CC chain) long enough for somebody to die isn't that fun, nor is grinding the same battleground 40 times to get an epic glove that fun either.

For me it was about world pvp, but they killed that during cataclysm when they made the town guards cc you and then hit like nuclear bombs as evidently they didn't want you doing that either, even in a PVP realm where that's the whole point, so I just quit.

Re: I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Eve. Just steal.

Re:I guess I'll see

[neorush]

Darkfall tried this, the mechanics were just abused (their are no "levels"). So instead of grinding, people would macro their guy into doing the basic task to up that skill. On paper Darkfall looked awesome, it may have been implemented poorly, but I'm not sure there is a way to do it otherwise. If you're not grinding...how else do you make it hard to level up?...that is the question....

Re:I guess I'll see

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Hell, just hop in WvW and murder people. You can level up that way.

Sure if you just want to level up, and do so really slowly. However once you hit level cap, there's still a lot of grinding to do. You have to grind faction reputations, you have to grind heroic dungeons, you have to grind professions, and if you want to pvp you have to grind battlegrounds.

WoW is a game full of chores, with you having an assload of chores to do each time there's a new expansion before you can start doing endgame content.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

In Aces High everyone starts out the same, practically access to the same gear, and stays so for decades of playing, typically until membership is ended by death. Access to late-war fighters is by no means required to get anywhere.

Re:I guess I'll see

[s.petry]

Do you still have to grind to get anywhere? If so, I won't be back.

That's kind of a silly question isn't it? Progressive MMOs are all about the grind for enough gear to grind tougher mobs to get better gear to grind tougher mobs, etc... I enjoyed WoW early on, but don't feel like devoting that much time to a "game". If they ever get rid of the Flintstones graphics look I may go back and peek around, but no interest in the crazy cartoon look of the game as a time waster.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

GW2 grind is souldcrushingly long and tedious, as the game not only has far more grind than WoW ever it, it does the grind in a massively boring way, just like GW1 did. You just repeat the same small subset of actions in the same place all over and over and over and over again. I absolutely love their art, which is by far the best in the industry, but gameplay was remarkably boring after a few hours with very little depth and grind was just soul crushing. And I say this as someone who played GW1 for years, where best form of farm was running two instances with a solo build that could be (and widely was) botted.

WoW felt like a game of LoL in terms of speed of character progression in comparison to GW2.

As for WvW, you either don't understand how it works and bought arenanet's lie about scaling, or are intentionally misrepresenting the facts. Sure, you get boosted to maximum level but without gear, you're a useless dead weight. It gives you levels but without all the stats that come from level-specific gear, meaning one properly geared lvl80 can easily drop 5-7 scaled up low level guys and not break a sweat in the process. Done that myself several times on a warrior and elementalist before quitting the game.

Imho if you want to get into GW2, stick to PvE, go through the storyline once and quit. Because once you have done so, you enjoyed all the enjoyable content that game has to offer. Rest is simply about monetizing the wealthy min-maxers who can't be bothered to grind for months of redoing same easy instances for gear tokens, AoE bot the events for karma or botting gold.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

He's talking about GW2 world vs world mode. He's also either ignorant or lying about its mechanics, as scaling in that game only scales your level and base health, and in that game vast majority of stats at maximum level come from gear that requires maximum level and is massively more powerful than even gear that requires one level less than max, much less the crappy starter gear.

A decent player in exotic lvl80 gear can easily take many low level scaled up people and never break a sweat.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

you are aware GW 2 gives you immediate access to the best gear in the game as soon as you jump in to the PvP area (PvP gear and PvE gear are completely separated) maps and your char is immediately up leveled to max. (than down leveled to your real level as soon as you leave)

no factions to grind Crafting professions are a Joke to level

as far as dungeons some of the best ones are for a level 30 and if you do that dungeon on your level 80 char. you are down-leveled for that instance to level 31 level is a fluid thing in GW2 to keep all of the areas somewhat challenging.

oh and geting max level 80 probably takes 40 hours of play time.

Re: I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah eve online- best mmo out there

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you still have to grind to get anywhere? If so, I won't be back.

Isn't that something you do with a vagina?

Also, what's a vagina?

Re:I guess I'll see

[X0563511]

What do you mean have to? You don't have to do any of that shit.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember that fake-ass Voltron that formed from like 50 cars or some shit? That shit was whack, they tried to copy the legit Voltron and utterly failed.

Re:I guess I'll see

[X0563511]

I dunno, I function perfectly fine in WvW with a level in the 10s or 20s. I don't expect to lead the pack or run around in a 3 person squad and succeed, but I can certainly function fine with the larger mass. I even get kills!

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

GW2 doesn't really do the whole "grind" thing - at least not with anything you actually have to do to advance.

Hell, just hop in WvW and murder people. You can level up that way.

murdering people is such a grind : (

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparantly not, since you can just start with a character at level 90.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Fjandr]

Depends on your definition of "grind." If you mean killing the same things over and over to get anywhere, there are a numbers of MMOs without a grinding requirement.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

Oh, you can grind it perfectly fine. All you need to do is find the zerg, pretend they're NPCs and sit next to them occasionally throwing in AoE to tag necessary stuff. Congratulations, you now know why botting is rampant in GW2 WvW. It makes no sense not to bot it. It's good income of gold and karma and actions of individual players and most squads are largely pointless in the large scheme of things. So just relax, turn on your favorite botting software and go do something fun while it grinds karma and gold for you for months.

In fact, that describes the entire game very well. The best way to get value out of GW2 is to simply treat everyone in the game as NPCs, including other players. The game is built on the assumption that you will do so by making communication all but pointless. The appropriate solution to most problems is to just zerg objectives with "N"PC zerg.

And of course, there's the whole pay to win aspect of the game, as you can effectively everything including the legendaries in the game by simply paying money to arenanet.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

Should be "effectively buy everything" in the end. I'm sleepy...

Re:I guess I'll see

[Greyfox]

I'm currently writing an MMORGY where grinding is the ONLY requirement! Level cap's 69, armor types are Latex, Leather and None, no questing (just grinding!) Only weapon you can equip is a whip! It's going to make ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

I played vanilla through end of Cata, then quit because pandas. I just re-upped a week ago and am running heroics for LFR-ready gear...what's this new area with 496 gear you speak of?

Re:I guess I'll see

[neiras]

Timeless Isle.

Re:I guess I'll see

[painandgreed]

I'm currently writing an MMORGY where grinding is the ONLY requirement! Level cap's 69, armor types are Latex, Leather and None, no questing (just grinding!) Only weapon you can equip is a whip! It's going to make ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Not buying it until it supports riding crop as a weapon.

Re: I guess I'll see

[Opportunist]

At least as long as you don't bother with mining or PvE, or any other activity that makes ISK.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Opportunist]

With blackjack and hookers?

Re:I guess I'll see

[painandgreed]

Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

Considering that people use "grinding" for whatever game play that prevents instant gratification, probably not.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Barlo_Mung_42]

You can probably pay cash to skip most of the grinding.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Opportunist]

Erh... how else could you possibly keep the game running?

They have to do that. It only works that way that the gear you so painstakingly raided for, weeks after weeks, that you accumulated over months of game time becomes utterly worthless with the next expansion because the first green random drop from some trash mob blows the snot off your "epic" gear. Yes, it sucks for the long time player, but it is the only way to keep the game going. Simply because it's the only way they could possibly attract new players. Consider this: The game is close to a decade old. Now imagine you'd have to climb your way ALL the way through ALL the content so far. Let's for a moment assume that it was even still possible. NOBODY would bother to start a new character or even start playing altogether, simply because they would see that not only are they at least 5-8 years behind the current content, the chance to get the necessary groups together for those level 60 raids are slim to zero. But mostly, who would like to start playing a game, knowing that they'd have to play with some dedication for YEARS to finally be "allowed" to play the current content?

So they have to fastpass new players where older ones had to use the winding road and do sub- and prequests for various raids, or allow them to bypass the raids altogether.

Something similar applies to them practically disallowing town raids. Most servers have a, let's say, lopsided balance. In other words, it becomes rather difficult for one side to even get their quests done sensibly if their quest NPCs are constantly being killed.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Greyfox]

If you've watched any of the MMOs, you know how to play that game! We'll release the riding crop a month after the initial release as a $10 DLC. Ha ha. Ha ha ha! Muahahahahah!

Re:I guess I'll see

[Cammi]

Never had to grind to get anywhere. You were only playing it wrong.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

You just described EVE Online.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

If it wasn't long and tedious then it wouldn't be grind. GW2 doesn't stop you from grinding. Personally I'm having a great time in GW2. But then I'm not farming or doing the same action in the same place over and over. I've not found the leveling in GW2 to be in anyway slow. In fact if you just play the game and have fun you'll hit level 80 quickly. IMHO people should try it when they do a free weekend and decide if they like playing it from that. If you don't like it, don't play it. Don't listen to some whiner who thinks the point of GW2 is to get as much money as possible, or farm for an e-peen (usually a legendary greatsword), and then quit, but not before complaining about the "grind".

Re:I guess I'll see

[Karzz1]

Do the timeless isle "Treasure, Treasure Everywhere" achievement.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

did you not notice the bit about the free lvl90 toon?

Re:I guess I'll see

[AK Marc]

Well, the blackjack is broken...

Re: I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf are you talking about. shadowbane was epicly grindy... once you are at cap you mostly just sit with your guild grinding the same handful of camps with the occasional siege to wipe out the stuff bought with some other guild's grinding.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been around since beta of WoW (plainsrunning on Tauren, anyone?) I've been on and off in WoW, sometimes playing intently, sometimes just ignoring an expansion. For me, MoP was a turn-off because it was about grinding a bunch of dailies, then you could hop into scenarios, then after tons of scenario runs, you might just make it into LFR raids and get some decent gear. At least the past two patches made that less of a problem, and Timeless Isle is decent because eventually you will get something there.

However, other MMOs have multiple paths to gear up for endgame raiding. On Rift, I can do hunt rifts [1] to get geared up, then mentored low-level dungeons which got me enough gear to do expert (heroic) dungeons. From there, open raids, and then real raid. In Everquest 2, just capping two named a day and crushing 25 mobs gets you a loyalty token. With those, you can get decent gear, and from there, start getting stuff needed for raiding.

EQ2 has a nice feature... you can hand in your previous expansion's raid gear and get group-quality gear for the current expansion. This allows you to bypass the "purples are now greens" common in most MMOs, so a top tier raider can actually have something to show for it other than an achievement.

Of course, WoW has one problem, and that is the FoTM class thing. A patch comes along, you find your main heal nerfed, when you log in, you won't have a guild tag in most raiding guilds. Same if your class got a DPS "adjustment". So, endgame players watch patch notes with a lot of apprehension because if there is a big nerf (sort of like what happened with priests), you know it will be time to change your "main" to that one alt that hasn't seen daylight since Bush was in office, level that character up, run through the gear grind, and then finally get back into a raid guild... and you pray all along that a nerf doesn't happen or else you will have another alt that will be getting spammed for guild invites when you log on.

[1]: Of course, the fact that you can buy endgame raid gear for $300 per item got me to hand in my Ascended tag for good. I could see about overtime at my job, buy all the pieces, and spend less time total than trying to raid for every BiS item.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

My one memory of Darkfall was reading the forums and seeing posts from the devs along the lines of:

Player 1: This bug is being exploited left and right.
Dev: You are not hardcore enough for this game.

Most communication I read from the devs were pretty much posts stating that players were not elite/hardcore/tough enough to play. Bugs? Not hardcore enough. Other player exploits? "L2P".

Of course, any interaction between players was at best vulgar, because this game seemed to be for the old pre-Trammel/Felucca UO griefing types who yearned to sic their tankmage's tamed balron on some newbie who just left the protection of city guards over and over again. WoW's chat was the interaction of genius compared to that game.

The good thing about Darkfall, and to a lesser extent, WoW is it keeps all the bad players well away from other MMOs.

Re:I guess I'll see

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

Mmm hmm:
http://www.eveonline.com/

Re:I guess I'll see

[Miseph]

So... Second Life? Why?

Re:I guess I'll see

[Zynder]

Forget it then!

Re:I guess I'll see

[TheLink]

I haven't played GW2, but regarding GW1, other than the silly unlock skills and gear for PvP bullshit, very little grinding is _required_ even in PvE.

You want the fancy armor - yes you grind. But the fancy armor has the SAME STATS as the armor you don't really need to grind for. It just looks nicer (or not depending on your tastes).

You can play and experience all the story content including the elite areas just as well without the fancy armor. Having the fancy armor doesn't help you do better at all.

If you want to play the grinding game and grind for consumables, fancier armor, weapons, titles, yes GW1 allows you to grind, but it's silly to then complain about the grind right? I haven't needed to grind for consumables so far.

The only exception I can see is if you want stuff like a 7 requirement 16 armor shield... Then yes you may need to grind to get that. That said I got one and kept it through sheer luck - I was a noob when I got it - and kept it without knowing the value of it :). You don't actually need it though. Player skill, teamwork and tactics matter far more in PvP than having rare gear like this.

For GW1 they don't need the grinding because they've already got the money upfront from the players! They don't need gameplay that "compels" them to come back every day. They do need enough people around so that players have other players to play with, but that's about it.

GW1 can be boring if you do the same thing over and over again. But the game doesn't actually force you to do that. You can use some rather weird builds for fun. I currently use a hero ele rit as a healer and a necro as a illusion mesmer :).

Re:I guess I'll see

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Erh... how else could you possibly keep the game running?

Do we really need endless faction reputation? Do we really have to recycle dungeons to give "something to do"? Do we really need "kill some bird things and get three of their feathers and put them in my hat" quests? Especially the ones where the feathers only drop from one out of every 20 mobs? Cata they said they would end that but there were still plenty of them. Also, you know something is wrong with battlegrounds when people would rather bot them than actually play.

Something similar applies to them practically disallowing town raids. Most servers have a, let's say, lopsided balance. In other words, it becomes rather difficult for one side to even get their quests done sensibly if their quest NPCs are constantly being killed.

That's really not supposed to matter according to their own rules ("if there's a pvp solution available") and I'm actually talking about the neutral areas. The servers are so dead that neutral areas are pretty much the only place to even find somebody. And I didn't do raids, I would gank solo - raids were still just as easy because you get a proper tank to hold them while everybody else nukes.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

I have bad news for you. All commercial games' main point is to get as much money as possible.

It's just that GW2 goes it in exceptionally user-hostile way of pure pay to win by selling you in game money for real money, and allowing in game money to buy the best, most rare gear in the game (legendaries).

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

Unfortunately they didn't see it that way in GW2. Hence the entire problem with massive grind and pay to win selling in game currency that can buy essentially everything including the legendaries for real money.

They chose to monetize all of the progression, which brought in game currency inflation to hilarious heights as everyone and their grandmother has to bot for gold if they're not grinding materials required for legendary.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Clsid]

I tried a lot to like GW2, with its fancy graphics and good pvp, open world progression, no level requirements for a lot of stuff, but to be honest, in my case it just wasn't as fun as WoW. To the point where I actually started playing WoW again, and one of the things that really shine are the professions, even if you play WoW solo the game delivers in a very simplistic manner one hell of an experience.

Re:I guess I'll see

[citizenr]

Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

Eve Online

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to do anything really. Grinding is always an optional activity. Maybe you won't be the best but nothing is forcing you to micro-optimize your character but yourself.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you are an idiot.

Re:I guess I'll see

[AK Marc]

World building is a grind. Every game is a grind. You are supposed to enjoy the grind. Or change games.

Re:I guess I'll see

[gl4ss]

it's not the grinding itself that sucks.. life's a grind.

it's grinding the same fucking content that sucks,which is why I quit wow.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

The Secret World. You get enough XP and stuff just by doing the normal (very well written!!!) quests. No grinding required at all, at least for normally playing it.

Unless you are a hardcore player you will also need weeks and months just to make a normal run through. For a Free to Play Title, that is a pretty awesome thing.

Re: I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically second life?

Re:I guess I'll see

[roscocoltran]

GW2 grind is souldcrushingly long and tedious, as the game not only has far more grind than WoW ever it, it does the grind in a massively boring way, just like GW1 did. You just repeat the same small subset of actions in the same place all over and over and over and over again. I absolutely love their art, which is by far the best in the industry, but gameplay was remarkably boring after a few hours with very little depth and grind was just soul crushing. And I say this as someone who played GW1 for years, where best form of farm was running two instances with a solo build that could be (and widely was) botted.

What are you talking about ? All my guild was unanimous when they said that the leveling in GW2 was the coolest one they've seen in a MMO for a long time. And that was the same for me. The levels came to me like nothing, I just traveled in a beautiful world and I even posted scrrenshots, a thing that I never do usualy. And one day I was 80.
But nothing stops you from camping a place and doing the same stuff if you want to, just like IRL.

GW2 was the most refreshing MMO I've played in a long time.

Re:I guess I'll see

[TheLink]

I don't play GW2 (sure seems more like WoW[1] than GW1, so not going to bother at least for now), but from what I see the GW2 players can't even agree whether there's inflation or deflation.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/76265-inflation-out-of-hand-or-alright-for-now/
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/archive/jubilee/Do-you-notice-inflation

As for massive grind, if you want to max level and get the best gear etc ASAP, I can see how you'd have to grind in GW2 (and I don't like games like that). But given your complaint about grinding in GW1, maybe your playing style also tends too much towards grinding? If you really do enjoy blowing your way through to the end game and getting all the "best stuff" then do so by all means (some really do- even compete to be the first to hit max etc), but you don't seem to find that fun. So in GW2 is it possible to relax and play through the content without grinding? In GW1 it was possible. OK GW Prophecies was more grindy, but Factions was almost "sneeze and gain a level" ;)...

[1] For example: gear makes a significant difference and so grinding for gear makes a significant difference in how well you do. Not merely how stylish you look while you are kicking ass or getting your ass kicked ;).

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

He's talking about GW2 world vs world mode. He's also either ignorant or lying about its mechanics, as scaling in that game only scales your level and base health, and in that game vast majority of stats at maximum level come from gear that requires maximum level and is massively more powerful than even gear that requires one level less than max, much less the crappy starter gear.

A decent player in exotic lvl80 gear can easily take many low level scaled up people and never break a sweat.

Personally, I think they really missed the boat by not making WvWvW a level playing field like they did structured PvP.

The leveling progress should have only unlocked abilities and weapon skills, with all stats being normalized.

Leave stat progression to the PvE world, it has no place in a _fair_ competitive environment.

Re:I guess I'll see

[seanvaandering]

Has there ever been an MMO where grinding wasn't a requirement?

Eve Online

You've got to be kidding. Unless your running around space in a pod, how do you gain the skills to get a decent ship? How you do get ISK to afford such a ship? Completing quests or mining ore or begging in newcomer channels is a grind in itself.

Re:I guess I'll see

[seanvaandering]

Don't forget that if your done the Legendary questline, you'd have your cape and be grinding Ordos for 559 Warforged gear every week, plus killing a celestial every week for your 553 normal PVE/PVP gear drop.

Right now that's all my toon is doing - daily grinds for the Shaohao reputation gain (for the mount that costs 100,000 timeless coins), a dungeon and scenario here and there for the 80+50 daily valor and the quest weeklies. I valor cap by Sunday normally, and spend about 2-4 hours a week in game. Anything more and i'd sound like all the haters in here and act all burnt out, but i still love the game and will be there on day one, ready to level my three 90's to 100's.

Re:I guess I'll see

[alexgieg]

Erh... how else could you possibly keep the game running?

They could have a level scale for every different content. Let's say you start a character at "snow region" and does all its content, thus becoming a specialist at surviving there. You'd be a "snow specialist level 10". But your knowledge doesn't transfer to deserts. Or forests. Or dungeons. Or alien worlds. Or dream dimensions. Etc. etc. etc. So whenever you want to experience a specific new content you start that kind of content at level 1 and have to progress to become proficient at that.

Then comes a new forest expansion. It could extent the "forest" range to 20 or whatever. So you create a new player and want to experiment the new content, you go to the original forest region, get to 10, then sidestep directly to the new expansion, continuing from 11.

Alternative options: do it based on creature types, or magic types, or whatever really.

In short, there are ways to make things works so that you can expect to experience old content and new content without having to advance through 80 levels of unrelated stuff or being jumped to level 90.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Opportunist]

Oh yeah, and then deal with the whining on the board "why did you create content for X and not for Y, nerf X" ... "So create a Y" ... "But I wanted to play X!" ... whine, bitch, troll...

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really need endless faction reputation?

Dude, do you know anything about the faction reputation system now? It's SO MUCH easier, they include numerous methods to gain rep, which can vary by faction, and they even have a system where you can boost other characters on your account once one gets to exalted.

Do we really have to recycle dungeons to give "something to do"?

People like going back to older dungeons, modified with newer experiences. Hard to imagine, but for some people, that's a plus, not a negative.

Do we really need "kill some bird things and get three of their feathers and put them in my hat" quests? Especially the ones where the feathers only drop from one out of every 20 mobs? Cata they said they would end that but there were still plenty of them.

Plenty yes, but plenty of variety too, as anybody who has played MOP knows, there's other choices like say the Paragons in Dread Wastes, or the Grummle escort in Kun-Lai, or the story quests in the Jade Forest.

Also, you know something is wrong with battlegrounds when people would rather bot them than actually play.

Well, yeah, they don't have a perfect way to detect bots. People choosing to let a bot do their work for them isn't proving something is itself bad, just that there are lazy people out there who will do anything for gain at minimal expense to their own time.

Re:I guess I'll see

[citizenr]

Eve Online

You've got to be kidding. Unless your running around space in a pod, how do you gain the skills to get a decent ship? How you do get ISK to afford such a ship? Completing quests or mining ore or begging in newcomer channels is a grind in itself.

There is no grinding, skills accumulate over time.
You can buy ISK straight from CCP = no need to run stupid missions.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

Interesting. I was playing since the start, and I remember seeing first half assed AoE event botters when I hit level 10 just a couple of days after release. And there was a LOT of them withing just days after that. Because leveling in PvE, once you got your basic "priority order" was incredibly boring. Hell I played an elementalist just to make it at least challenging. With warrior, it was literally charge in, activate hundred blades, run to the next mob, charge in, activate hundred blades...
So people just botted everything. I still remember coming back to the undead 80 zone on my second character, only to see that a good half of the zone was event AoE botters.

I did appreciate the art, and it kept me playing long enough to get two characters to lvl80 just because I loved the views. I leveled by going in opposite directions (first character to the south, second to the north). The rest of the game was incredibly grindy and mediocre, except for combat system which was just bad because everything was about AoE and spamming hundred blades.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

There is deflation of real money currency and inflation of in game currency, because there are less and less players willing to pay for the real money currency, and more and more botters grinding in game currency.

And really, no. Unless by relaxing you mean botting the game. Because a lot of people ended up doing just that. Put their character up with an AoE macro on a known event boss spawn spot with many others and just leave the game farming your exp, gold and karma. There was a lot of that within days of release, which says a lot about the monotony of the gameplay.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Luckyo]

WvW was never a competitive environment. It was a place to zerg for gold, karma and EXP. I was a part of a guild that had very active WvW group for a while, and we did manage to turn quite a few battles around with surgical strikes at certain sites in game, in the end, the mode was mostly about zerging and it was the zerg, not us determining the victory. If our zerg sucked or was too small, it didn't matter if we were awesome or sucked.

Re:I guess I'll see

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Dude, do you know anything about the faction reputation system now? It's SO MUCH easier, they include numerous methods to gain rep, which can vary by faction, and they even have a system where you can boost other characters on your account once one gets to exalted.

The problem isn't that it is too hard, the problem is that doing it necessitates repeating the same content time and time again to where you have already gotten tired of doing it, only to have to repeat it 500 more times after you've already realized how much you hate doing it.

People like going back to older dungeons, modified with newer experiences. Hard to imagine, but for some people, that's a plus, not a negative.

Which is fine I guess, only that you have to repeat that same experience multiple times every week for the next 18-24 months until a new expansion hits.

Plenty yes, but plenty of variety too, as anybody who has played MOP knows, there's other choices like say the Paragons in Dread Wastes, or the Grummle escort in Kun-Lai, or the story quests in the Jade Forest.

One of the things I remember the most about leveling alts was the fact that you pretty much had to go questing (even with the heirloom gear.) There was a point where BG's leveled faster than questing, but only at certain levels, and even then it was nerfed. That is aside the point though, the key word is "have to" as in it is a chore rather than something you "want to" do. A game shouldn't be "have to's" but rather "want to's". WoW has far too many "have to's".

Well, yeah, they don't have a perfect way to detect bots. People choosing to let a bot do their work for them isn't proving something is itself bad, just that there are lazy people out there who will do anything for gain at minimal expense to their own time.

The problem isn't that there are lazy people, the problem is that the game isn't fun enough to make the pursuit of the reward in itself a reward. It would be like creating the game Half-Life where you didn't want to play it, rather going through it was a chore you have to do just to get to the end just to see the g-man talk. The ending of half-life was actually kind of lame, but it was the play through itself that made the whole thing worthwhile. That is what a game should be, and that is what WoW currently is not.

Re:I guess I'll see

[gajop]

This.
Also PvE was extremely disappointing, because as they broke the "holy trinity" (healer/tank/dps), most of the content was trivial, and the stuff that wasn't eventually got nerfed so everyone could do it.
There weren't any real raids either.

Re:I guess I'll see

[antdude]

When are the public beta and official releases? :P

Re:I guess I'll see

[fractoid]

[Disclaimer - it's been months since I last played GW2 as anything but "log on, run around, look at the new pretty things, and log back off."]

The biggest problem with WvW is that players don't like being outnumbered and don't like being on the losing team. This results in players hopping between different PvP areas until they find one where their side has flooded the place, and sticking around there. This effectively adds a massive slippery slope mechanic to the PvP and guarantees that you will either be in a huge zerg with few-to-no opponents around, or you will be one of a scant handful being roflstomped by a flood of enemy players.

The small group PvP arenas are pretty good. My biggest criticism (which may well have been fixed by now) is that there didn't seem to be any concept of a global queue, and so you have to quit out of your game periodically as players dropped out, and try and get in a more populated game.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Everquest Next. By the makers of the best MMO made.

Re:I guess I'll see

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh just because people bot doesn't mean the game requires you to bot. You can play the game just like the OP did.

You can do the same thing over and over and over again if you want, but why complain when you don't have to (unless you're a gold farmer - but that's work and not fun).

In some games you HAVE to do the same thing over and over again. And that's what makes them grindy, not that you CAN do the same thing over and over again.

If you are bored of hundred blades, go try a build that's different and still effective. There are plenty of different warrior builds with different players advocating them for different reasons.

Perhaps GW2 should increase the mob difficulty/intelligence level so that doing the same mindless thing doesn't work, or reduce the rewards for repetitive stuff but I'm sure they'd get another bunch of complaints.

TL;DR: Time Travel

[OverlordQ]

TL;DR We ran out of ideas so here's some Time Travel to fuck up canon even more.

Re:TL;DR: Time Travel

[Moheeheeko]

As I understand it, the time travel was to unfuck all of Metzen's lorerape.

Re:TL;DR: Time Travel

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the time-swimming keeps the current hot Dranei, and the MMO players never have to even think about their Warcraft 3 model.

(Alternately, that would be the best anti-player trolling, if the historic Dranei NPCs were the ugly things with the big mouths full of needle-teeth)

Tell me when the Protoss show up...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that's when I might start playing again. Not a moment sooner.

Re:Tell me when the Protoss show up...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that's when I might start playing again. Not a moment sooner.

Wrong Blizzard franchise.

I wanna upgrade!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> The expansion will also revamp a number of aging character models.

I hope it has a butt slider so I can make my Draeni mini-cowgirl's booty more properly Kardashinesque.

Still stealin...

[Anonymous Coward]

from EQ2. And throwing KOTOR/SWTOR into the mix now with minions to send on missions?

Come on, do something original for once.

captcha: plunder

makes sense to me!

Re:Still stealin...

[Moheeheeko]

any 'new' feature added to WoW since BC has been a feature plucked from other mmo's, the transmog was taken from Aion

Re:Still stealin...

[Kidbro]

And I'm sure EQ stole nothing from MUDs....

Re:Still stealin...

[sandytaru]

At least the "Garrisons" are different from FFXI's Garrison, which was one of their very first group events and no one has done it since 2004. (18 people defending a fort from an attack... at an arbitrarily low level cap. Sure, let's force level 75s to drop to level 20 for this event!) It's a shame, too, since Garrison was the only source for the mannequin body parts required to have your own mannequin inside your Mog House.

Re:Still stealin...

[ArcadeMan]

First of all, bringing models "up-to-date" means more people will stop playing WoW because their computers can't upgrade their GPUs (laptops and Macs). I already try to avoid going to KungFuPandaLand because my frame rate drops too much, if their update means I only get 10-15FPS everywhere then I'll stop playing.

Secondly, Blizzard has put the following things (sort of) in World of Warcraft:
- Plants vs Zombies
- Farmville
- Pokémon

And you're asking for something original?

A lot of people are going to switch to FF XIV: ARR, it doesn't matter what Blizzard do at this point. They should work on Titan instead of adding insipid crap to their current game.

Re:Still stealin...

[Anonymous Coward]

WW2OL has forward-bases, which similar to garrisons in that they are player-operated. Not sure, but I think they've been doing that for quite some time now, not 2004 maybe, but they quite definitively already existed at that time.

Vendetta-online also has (and JG had) player-operated bases. But that's probably closer to player housing than garrisons.

Re:Still stealin...

[spire3661]

Actually the floor level of graphics is rising VERY fast. Pumping out upscaled 1080p will be trivial for pretty much any CPU once broadwell comes on the scene.

Re:Still stealin...

[ArcadeMan]

Does Broadwell mean Iris/Iris Pro?

Re:Still stealin...

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people are going to switch to FF XIV: ARR, it doesn't matter what Blizzard do at this point.

Wait, people are going to switch to the MMO that was so bad that they literally fired the guy who developed it and offered something like a free year to the player base?

Yeah, I could almost see that happening, except - oh, wait, never. Sure, they may have relaunched it, but it's still the same horrible world and reuses the same crap that no one liked. All they did was make the game play more like WoW and finally release the PS3 version just in time for the PS4 to be released.

They should work on Titan instead of adding insipid crap to their current game.

No, they should be doing both: keeping WoW alive until Titan is ready to replace it. Exactly like they are doing.

Re:Still stealin...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, WoW will have a whole new engine copy when EQN finally releases.

Re:Still stealin...

[angel'o'sphere]

What the heck is "FF XIV: ARR"?

Re:Still stealin...

[Tridus]

It's the re-release of the worst game from 2010, and possibly the worst MMO ever launched.

They basically built the game a second time, only with a lot less suck.

Re:Still stealin...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure EQ stole nothing from MUDs....

It's not that, just people sort of expected a new game from Blizzard by now instead of duct taping these features on.

Re:Still stealin...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are following in the path of EQ2:

1: Copy a couple zones, add different colors, call it new content. Obol Plains and Loping Plains, and Outlands/Draenor-somewhere-back-in-time. Check.

2: Add the ability to take a character to a high level. Check.

3: Same recycled villain from previous expansions (can't we at least get a new bad guy rather than "that was just a setback?") EQ2 has the prismatic dragon, WoW has Hellscream. So, next expansion, same fucking boss.

Now for housing... Anyone who played UO remembered the days of not being able to get a house, period... just because any good location was taken, and one hoped someone else's house would decay so they could get that spot. EQ2's housing is completely instances. No issues there. Same with Rift's dimensions. EQ2's housing is semi-instanced (choose the street which is instanced, but each plot is unique.) I'm hoping Blizz knows what they are doing, so one just has no real estate whatsoever to build on.

Want to do things right? WoW's best villain so far was Arthas. Period. He was the antagonist of every single character from an early level upwards (especially if Horde), and he actually took personal time to pay PCs a visit. Deathwing did a lot of destruction, but wasn't involved or interacted with PCs constantly. Hellscream, The Thunder King, and so on are just more Foozles to kill.

Then there are always twists. The bad guy who is always watching and gauging PC performance in battles and ravaging the country-side could be the guy who is trying to recruit against a nastier bad guy, or perhaps a force that needs to be sealed.

Oh, and stop using time loops and retcons. That is great for Dr. Who, but lame fail everywhere else.

Re:Still stealin...

[axl917]

EQ was built directly on DikuMUD code; to this day I still don't buy into the joint statement

http://www.dikumud.com/Everquest/Sworn.aspx

at all.

thanks for the links

[Anonymous Coward]

funny, i'm still playing the free Starter edition. I have a level 20 Troll hunter. I might make a Pandaren for fun. Thanks for posting the article.

Future expansions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Expansion after this will time travel to Northrend before Arthas went there, and after that is time travel to the panda turtle before it disappeared for a while.

Re:Future expansions...

[ArcadeMan]

I'm waiting for the Eorzea expansion with the new nekocat race.

I won't be back

[acehole]

I played from launch up until just after BC came out and returned shortly just before CATA was released and left shortly after never to return.

The game I loved is long dead, the soul was sucked out of it. You once knew all the people on your realm and could make 'friends' and contacts. Once they introduced the cross realm instancing it all stopped.

The 40 mans were great fun and it was a sad day when they announced they were being removed from game. There were just things here and there that they streamlined the game for but it just well... didn't feel right.

Purples used to mean 'epic' then part way through BC and most of WotLK it became the new green.

Sorry Blizzard, you won't get me back.

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

Purples used to mean 'epic' then part way through BC and most of WotLK it became the new green.

I know what you mean about epics. I'm was a somewhat casual raider but epics were fun upgrades and hard to get back in BC and even Wrath. You'd shit your panties if you played right now. They added an area in Pandaria called the Timeless Isle that is pretty much a re-gearing zone. It's like an Oprah special: "You get a purple, and you get a purple, and you can have ANOTHER purple!" Open a chest, get a purple. Kill a boss (there's like 50 on the island respawning all the time), get a purple. Complete quests to get currency, buy purples.

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

mod up Ace

Re:I won't be back

[Brian Feldman]

The magic's gone since they started seriously dumbing down the game at the end of TBC.... Have only done a trial period or two since then, totally unimpressed. Final Fantasy XIV is it now, unless that goes in a direction that is clearly upsetting to me. I am pretty damn nostalgic for old WoW memories, though. You can never go back.

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood the "dumbing down." The game mechanics are better now than they have ever been. There are more abilities to juggle, more decisions to make about when to use them, and more complicated situations than ever existed in Vanilla or BC.

I hear people say things like the game is dumbed down because purples are easier to get. That the color of the text of an item could possibly have any value to the mechanics of the game is completely absurd.

Clearly there's more content for casual players now. That does not mean the game is dumbed down. The only thing I can get out of all this is that some people felt a sense of elitism because much of the game's best content was reserved only for people who spent their entire life playing and they felt special for getting to see it.

Let me give you an example of how far the game has come: I have played a Rogue since beta. Originally, as a combat rogue you would stand behind the enemy, spam backstab, keep slice and dice up, and eviscerate in between.

Now, I have two main attacks with the way I have chosen to specialize, which actually makes a difference in play style instead of requiring a cookie cutter spec to maximize the numbers: I have sinister strike to push a 3-tier buff cycle forward and shuriken toss to deal more damage and combo points for energy. The first two tiers: 10% and 20%, can be extended by avoiding spamming sinister strike, while the final 30% buff is one time only before it resets. I have to balance moving the buff cycle forward with exploiting shuriken toss. I use adrenaline rush strategically to push the buff cycle forward faster and shadow blades to build combo points during the extensible mid-buff period in which I can use shuriken toss until the buff is about to expire and refresh it with sinister strike. I also have buffs like smoke bomb to shield my group from damage or tricks of the trade to boost damage or offload threat. Managing this wisely enables me to outdamage everyone I have played with, and a few missteps can push me far behind, so it's important to pay attention and play skillfully. That's just getting started with the rotation complexity and doesn't even factor in the complexity of boss battle mechanics.

WoW has come a long way from its origins. The mechanics have been expanded and perfected to a degree that no other RPG, online or offline, which I have ever played has achieved. It includes content for all types of player, from casual to hardcore, and that is not to its detriment.

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW is good for fine-tuning, but I would say the king of that would be Rift, with its custom talents and only four "classes". Sometimes you can come up with a pretty decent talent build... well, until the devs nerf it (like the old -icar days for the priests due to the free heals.) Plus, supposedly, all archetypes (warrior, rogue, cleric, mage) will have tank/heal/DPS capability, so it will be a matter of figuring out talents. In Rift, one even has builds just for certain fights, especially if it is a boss often killed on a raid.

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice that this is how Blizz ends each expansion chapter. WoTLK was stupidly easy to get purples just by sticking your finger in your bum and running five-man heroics at the end, but when it was first released, if you wanted to see any real gear, you had to hit Naxx and hit Naxx hard (although it was easi-fied from the Naxx in vanilla.) Ulduar was similar.

The next expansion will make purples stupid-hard to get, but with each patch, it will get easier and easier until a zone opens like Timeless Isle and it just starts to rain purples... until the next expansion, and the cycle repeats.

Re:I won't be back

[angel'o'sphere]

Wow, rogues got balanced and "weakened" so you now need a brain to play a rogue?

What about the other classes? Warlocks are unplayable right now ... you don't need any brain anymore. (Did not play since march) As far as I can tell that is for all classes now. Hit random DPS buttons and you win, in pvp hit a random crowed control button.

There is no "game mechanics" that got improved. The whole game degraded from expansion to expansion.

The only phase where it imho was a really good game was end phase vanilla (with the burning crusade extensions, new talent tree etc.) and burning crusade itself.

After that phase all (well most) classes got retarded talents, e.g. hunters that can jump backward 10 or more yards every second ...

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

I played since BC then quit for a while until Cata. Played for awhile then quit again because I moved to Linux. When canceling a Sub they ask you why, my reason was lack of Linux support. I know it's suppose to work well in Wine but that wasn't my experience. Would gladly sub again to play for many more years if they had some type of Linux support, even through Wine or something supplied by them but marked as unsupported.

I didn't play well with other people though. I mostly stuck to the quests and did those over and over until I got bored. People who play WoW get angry too much imo, it's suppose to be fun. I pretty much stay away from multi-player games, unless games have Single-player I don't buy them. Looking around, we use to have awesome Single-player games with optional Multi-player. Now it's all mostly Multi-Player games. It's like nobody wants to put in time to make a decent SP game.

That's bad for Indie games, because most of the MP in those games is dead in a month and you are left with a game that you cant play because the dev didn't put any SP/AI in the game. I would love to have more game modes like in Oil Rush and C&C Generals Skirmish SP vs AI modes. It makes for a good re-playable game. That's my personal preference of course, apparently the majority doesn't care about all the rage and hate in MP games. I prefer to relax when I play a game, not be harassed and threatened, in real life that sort of thing would land you in jail. I wish the same applied to video game abuse.

Re:I won't be back

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all of the "nostalgia" is for a time when it was difficult to maintain threat, you had to manage almost every pull with cc, and wipes were fairly common in regular dungeons except for the true elite.

I agree that WoW has come a hell of a long ways. Everquest is a great example, it has barely changed since WoW was released, and it was a major competitor with WoW at the time. Download and play that game free mode today. I dare you. (I also cringe.)

People are saying "Final Fantasy XIV is where it's at". Yeah, it looks good. Yeah, you can do about everything with one character. And you will. Omg fates. Sink hours into it, great story IMO, but you only run through it once per character even though you'll likely "level" your character several times. All for... two end game dungeons (now that they patched WP to drop mythology, used to just be one) and one raid. "Oh but it just started". SWTOR was the big failboat because it didn't have enough endgame content - and it had like EIGHT endgame dungeons and 3 raids and lots of world raid stuff kind of similar to fates, plus it had like 4-16 different main storylines depending on how you look at it that you could play through. But it was a huge failboat?

I've come to believe that the louder someone talks about a game the more they shouldn't be listened to.

Maybe we should pen a Blizzard's Law of Softwares: You'll always come back to WoW. There have been WoW-killers for years, but you just can't make a dent in it. It kills. It's going to take other games plenty of time to mature to the point where they can make it against WoW in terms of both content and mechanics.

The only actual current WoW-killer is non-MMO content. As people's lifestyles change (get a family, change professions, actually get a job, or lose funding to sit around in their mom's basement all day long), they can't keep up with a[ny] MMO's general time requirements (30m+ at one sitting to run just one dungeon), and switch to something that's a little more 2m-at-a-time.

Re:I won't be back

[seanvaandering]

So?

I'm a casual player...and i'm sure i'm Blizzards target demographic - sorry, but if all the elitists left tommorow, WOW and Blizzard would still be here and very viable based on our casual subscriptions.

To tell you the truth about Timeless isle, I honestly appreciate being able to mail 496 tokens to my other toons and get them up to speed instead of having to log in and grind them in dungeons or whatever else - I simply DON'T HAVE THE TIME to spend in game getting everything leveled up. Some of us have real jobs with families and just can't commit to the time requirements anymore. Who cares if they're purple and "epic" tokens.

Re:I won't be back

[slickepott]

Tried WoW under Linux earlier this year and "it works" but far from as it should. Full gfx-settings under Windows and no problems with current 25 man raids. Under Linux it tries to kill itself with lowest settings.

Re:I won't be back

[pyrr]

Well, that's sad. WoW under Wine used to be extremely stable and run at substantially higher FPS than it ran on Windows. This included high settings, far viewing distance, and raids. That was back during WotLK, though.

I haven't played much since then, much less participated in raids. Running poorly on Linux is a dealbreaker for me, if indeed things have declined substantially since I last logged-in. For a stale franchise that's well past its peak, it seems to me that improving Linux support might unlock some additional player base. If they did such a thing deliberately and well, I'd think about returning. But what do I know?

Fuck Metzen & Street

[Sable Drakon]

Seriously... They seem intent on not wanting money with the way they're treating this franchise.

5 man content

[yoshi_mon]

Obligatory WoW history: Started a few months into vanilla, ended that version as a Naxx 40 raider 9/15. Progression cleared everything in BC save the Sunwell and burned out of hardcore raiding. Took some time off during Wrath but came back for the end and did a fair amount of casual raiding as well as "fleet" building. (I had one of every class and had them all to the level cap.) Played Cata on and off but at most just leveled the fleet to cap. And then Mists hit and of all the versions of WoW it has been the one I have played the least. I leveled only 3 of my toons to the cap, no raiding other than LFR, and then left the game.

And a number of things really turned me off to WoW with the direction they took with Mists:

1. Lack of 5 man content. This is huge. When leveling up I really do like questing but without some 5 man content every now and then to break things up it can get a bit tedious. And the lack of 5 man content in Mists while leveling was unlike any previous version of WoW. Without a decent amount of 5 man content, while leveling, I will never go back to WoW.

2. Daily grinds. I am not at all interested in doing daily quests really at all. Sometimes I might feel up to them but the idea of doing daily quests is not fun to me at all. And then locking things behind those quests was just the last nail in the coffin.

3. Oversimplification. I get that the old talent trees were often just cut and pasted from EJ. But it is a lie to say that they did not make the game simpler by turning them into what they are now. The fact that you can no longer get them wrong shows that lie. And that goes for a lot of other things that they have done in the game as well such as spell downranking, stat simplification, and such. After playing Skyrim a lot lately I look back on my early play and think man I was doing that wrong but now I learned. I don't necessarily want Eve's learning curve but what they have now is not a curve at all.

Re:5 man content

[meta-monkey]

But the thing is, only bads ever got their talent builds wrong. They still won't know how to not stand in fire, but at least now you don't have to worry about them showing up in your LFR group with points evenly distributed in every tree.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 5-man content is the bane of all MMOs. It is the singular type of content that forces people to do things in a way that they don't want to do, which is any or all of the following: (a) group with strangers, (b) rely on less competent players for individual progress, (c) waste time waiting for a viable group to form. 5-man content is the reason why many players disregard MMOs completely as a viable genre, whether they realize that as the cause or not.

3. There should never be a way to build your character "wrong". If that's possible, then what it means is that your talent trees are full of cruft, or simply unbalanced in a way that there is only a handful of viable builds when the choices are supposed to be limited only by the available selections. Oversimplification would happen if they simply removed all the minor choices and left you with (for example) three buttons, one for each viable build. That's effectively how it used to work, you had to press 31 buttons in order to generate the 1 build in that tree that everyone else was using. That's just bad design that can only be loved by min-maxers. Same goes for spell downranking, which was one step short of being an exploit. There should be no reason to use an inferior version of a spell. Doing so just means that you screwed up the design somewhere, and again only a min-maxer would look at this and think that using lower-version spells to spam throwaway conditions on opponents was a wonderful way to optimize a build.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 5-man content is the bane of all MMOs.

3. There should never be a way to build your character "wrong".

2. ??????

Re:5 man content

[slickepott]

Well instead of five man dungeons we now got LFR with 25 people. So 24 strangers which are often crap and can get away with it too since it's LFR difficulty. So if they don't want to meet people in a game then I suppose an MMO is the wrong place to be to begin with.

And regarding talent trees I find that the MoP solution just makes the game far more boring. I don't feel enough of a different from the choices I make. They could just give me some fixed talents and I probably wouldn't notice. Was it with Cata they locked so you had to spend enough points in one tree to open another? That was the start of making it worse with talents. :)

Using lower ranks of a spell however was not that interesting.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not up to date on this at all then.
Blizzard acknowledged that their idea of grinding dailies in MoP was a mistake. They removed it. Way too late... but they did remove it.
I agree with you that the lack of 5 man content is a bit disappointing.

As for a one time copy-pasting of talent trees from the EJ website into the game being a meaningful measure of skill is absurd. There are less skills, sure, but you can actually CHOOSE which skill you want since they are all similarly powerful in each tier. Which you choose is a preference which you are not penalized for - and for heroics, it's often a good idea to swap them for various bosses as the optimal skills for each encounter vary.

As for this simpler nonsense - it really has to stop. The game used to be fairly easy. The trick was to find 40 players who did not stand in fire, understood their rotation, and occasionally did something like dispell or stack. That easy mode has long been gone. Current tier bosses are basically undefeatable if everyone in the raid doesn't know in advance know all the mechanics - the transitions, the various debuffs, the kill priority orders, and everything else involved in every phase of the fight. The days of patchwerk are long gone and a single mistake from any player in the raid will often wipe the raid.
The mechanics are so unforgiving that LFR is harder than normal these days because people like you know nothing of the fights and are forced to be carried by the people who do.
The heroic modes are so bloody hard that there are only 64 of some 25,000 guilds (i.e. about 1,100 people of the 7+ million subscribers or 0.015%) beating current content. Even the world first type guilds with all their gear and amazing players can and do wipe on current heroic content (e.g. Dark Animus). As you are someone who has not raided in the last 2 xpacs (for LFR is NOT raiding), I would be obliged if you quit spreading this unfounded BS about things being simpler.

Re:5 man content

[slickepott]

Seems like you got some of the problems at least.

I didn't like the idea of LFR to begin with but I guess there is a point to it. However what we get now from Blizzard is four levels of the same RAID, from LFR to Heroic and no new instances at all since release. They got a few scenarios though but I honestly hate them and they're not the old five mans in any way.

And daily grinds are indeed crap. I hate dailies and then they make them mandatory over time. At least they make them too important. I'd love to have normal quests I can run around and finish off instead. I can't pretend dailies are real content. It's all just Blizzard being lazy, just as with not creating five man dungeons.

And talents as I wrote in a reply to one of your replies. I can't really feel they make a difference at the moment. Also being lazy I suppose.

Blizzard got too lazy.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't feel enough of a different from the choices I make.

As opposed to WoW before Mists, where you noticed a difference from your special-snowflake talent build in the form of (sometimes-dramatically) lower DPS? The "muh unique build" argument never had any credibility in a game where the measurement of performance is objectively quantifiable.

Meanwhile, Team Fortress 2 fans complain about new weapons making the game's classes too customizable.

Back in my day, you played video games because you wanted to have fun, not because you wanted to complain.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

such as spell downranking

Spell-downranking wasn't planned, but proved to be efficient, so it didn't get removed, but turned into something more under control - at least healers got well-defined lesser-powered cheaper spells as replacement for the down-ranked ones. Not as fine granularity though.

What killed it for me was loss of the FSR. Being forced to spam low-power spells isn't exactly fun. Better to take a break and watch (carefully) instead.

I don't necessarily want Eve's learning curve but what they have now is not a curve at all.

You'll find the game with the steepest curve by far at hitechcreations.com.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

As for this simpler nonsense - it really has to stop. The game used to be fairly easy. The trick was to find 40 players who did not stand in fire, understood their rotation, and occasionally did something like dispell or stack. That easy mode has long been gone. Current tier bosses are basically undefeatable if everyone in the raid doesn't know in advance know all the mechanics - the transitions, the various debuffs, the kill priority orders, and everything else involved in every phase of the fight. The days of patchwerk are long gone and a single mistake from any player in the raid will often wipe the raid.
The mechanics are so unforgiving that LFR is harder than normal these days because people like you know nothing of the fights and are forced to be carried by the people who do.
The heroic modes are so bloody hard that there are only 64 of some 25,000 guilds (i.e. about 1,100 people of the 7+ million subscribers or 0.015%) beating current content. Even the world first type guilds with all their gear and amazing players can and do wipe on current heroic content (e.g. Dark Animus). As you are someone who has not raided in the last 2 xpacs (for LFR is NOT raiding), I would be obliged if you quit spreading this unfounded BS about things being simpler.

I think people who think this didn't actually play endgame content in vanilla WoW. There is no current mechanic in raids that is more complicated than the mechanics in Naxx 1.0. (And if you only saw Naxx in WotLK it's not the same instance.) The % of players completing Naxx before the nerfs started coming in was also 1%. Let's also not forget the mechanics that have been removed from the game. Resistances, both offensive and defensive. Damage type immunities. Dispel mechanics (all dispels / decurses now have cooldowns ) Per group buffs that required more coordination and raid setup. Crowd Control - a minor glimmer of it's former self in dungeons and raids. And 40 man vs 25 man.. getting 40 people to do exactly the right strategy is easier than getting 25 people to do exactly the right strategy? yeah.. right.

Re:5 man content

[yoshi_mon]

I am not nearly as fully informed about all the details of the game as I was when I was playing it but I have kept tabs on it. I did use the 10 days free offer IIRC about a month ago to just see what it was like. That new Isle of Catchup and all that. I was not looking for anything huge to do but the idea of getting my "fleet" to the cap was something that I thought might be worthy of resubbing for a bit.

And then I started working on leveling and hit the lack of 5-man content wall and said nope nope nope. That is not just disappointing it is a fundamental change in the way they made the game. Nevermind the fact that all instances are a series of linear hallways. But if you are actually informed about the game you should know all of this...right?

I say that because you not only posted as an AC but you did not even detail your own WoW history. I DID actually raid 40 mans as I said and DID fight Patchwerk in progression mode. Did you? Did you fight anything outside of the The Construct Quarter? How about doing any fights in AQ40 in progression mode? You talk about 40 mans being "easy mode" but I have a feeling your nub ass did MC at best.

Come back when you want to try and back up your words with a little more than just an AC post. I'd be obliged if you stfu until you do so.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

Come back when you want to try and back up your words with a little more than just an AC post

Translation: since he can't find any way to refute verifiable information in your post, he's going to resort to personal attacks and your lack of ID is frustrating his Geek Rage.

Re:5 man content

[Anonymous Coward]

But the thing is, only bads ever got their talent builds wrong. They still won't know how to not stand in fire, but at least now you don't have to worry about them showing up in your LFR group with points evenly distributed in every tree.

You have a right to your own opinion, but nobody deserves attention for being this elitist.
This attitude needs to be designed right out of games. Put them on their OWN realms/shards/servers and isolate them from everybody else.

That's how we fix your "bads" problem, we get a game of balanced choices, and you get the world of a million choices (and one right one) - only catch is YOU only get to play with other people who will call you out for having one skill point spent in the "wrong" spot.

In the real world, these are the people who show up to a pickup game and take it far too seriously to the point others stop going. A game that attracts these people is a deeply flawed one *coughDotAcoughcough*.

Re:5 man content

[yoshi_mon]

Translation: Can't back up your talk with anything other than AC posts. And your lack of running anything other than MC during vanilla leads to your lack of understanding of how WoW was not always ezmode.

(Big hint: Very few guilds got into Naxx40. It was not easy. AQ40 was not easy either. Getting Twins on farm was a big deal.)

Re:5 man content

[slickepott]

The measure is also having fun. Didn't say things were perfect before because they weren't. But I do think it got even worse removing choices.
You still notice difference if you gem incorrectly, should we remove that too?

And you can still complain and have fun. ;)

oh boy.

[Xicor]

i wonder how they are going to ruin this expansion like they did the last two. i also wonder how many million players they will lose this year.

Re:oh boy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry.... they got plenty to spare.... and besides, wow is in the milking phase, so they really don't care anymore :)

Draenei are from Draenor?

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the Draenei are from Draenor too. It'll be interesting to see if Draenor has Alliance or neutral towns with Draenei running them. maybe we'll learn a bit more about the Draenei's backstory and the Exador.

Hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Draenor, or rather the remains of it, were the setting of The Burning Crusade. Unless they retconned the lore again, of course.

They're getting lazy. First pandas, now this?

Re:Hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Draenor, or rather the remains of it, were the setting of The Burning Crusade. Unless they retconned the lore again, of course.

I'm also pretty sure it exploded at the end of the Warcraft II expansion pack's story.

Re:Hahaha

[Tridus]

And all the people you're fighting are already dead.

This is a time travel expansion. Because reasons.

Re:Hahaha

[b1scuit]

Which is why it's now just a chunk of a planet floating around in some weird space.

solution: Don't make it hard to level up.

[zippthorne]

Make every improvement in skill in one area balance with a loss of skill everywhere else. Then you basically end up with two kinds of players - those who focus on maintaining a few abilities to very high levels (a system like this doesn't really need a max if done right, as you can't do one thing only without doing anything else. Even traveling can have a cost - you level your walking skill while everything else deteriorates.), and those who try to balance out the things they do so that they can always do anything at an average level.

The balance of such a system would probably be pretty hard to get right. You want there to be advantages to going the specialist route, but not be so advantageous that no one wants to be a generalist. There should be drawbacks to either choice.

but is it still...

[Anonymous Coward]

the same lame tab-to-target system?

get with the program, 3rd person action rpg is where it's at. tab targeting sucks ass...

Neat, now ditch the crap you added on

[rebelwarlock]

I'll be back when they fix the fucking talent point system ("hur hur, users can't keep track of more than 4 points total") and murder every last panda.

Re:Neat, now ditch the crap you added on

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a filthy casual, we're glad you're gone.

Meta-monkey killed WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy right here is one of many that killed WoW. He is one of the Elitist Jerks. The massive drop in WoW subs is people like him quitting because the non-hardcore people got access to "his" gated content without having to play 57 hours a day like he does. It eats his ass, so all he can do is unsub, go play EVE, and bitch on the forums about all those shitty n00bs.

Third-party vanilla WoW servers (pre-TBC) are best

[Anonymous Coward]

I played back in 2005 and it was heaven. I played against in 2011 and it was hell. Everything was given away. Experience doubled for level 15, all flight paths given, random blues ust for playing in a battleground and worst of all, I found as a priest I simply never ran out of mana. I just sat there, spamming healing spells.

IT WAS SO BORING.

Blizzard have totally and utterly lost the plot. They are systematically eliminating everything which made WoW fun - as we can see here;

"Blizzard is also making it so new and returning players can immediately boost one character to the current level cap (90), so they can immediately jump into the new content."

If you give everything away for free, it has no value.

I play on Rebirth now, it's a vanilla WoW server, privately funded, publically available, runs on the last version of WoW prior to TBC (e.g. when level cap was still 60 and the game made sense).

Burning Crusade 2

[danigr]

Pass. I didn't try to kill Garrosh, I got really bored on that island.

Fucktarded USians are hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice how the fucktarded USians are so fucking stupid they can't get their grammar correct? They use the wrong fucking spelling variations of English words (Their, there, and they're), use double negatives, can't use capitalization, can't use proper punctuation, etc.

Ever notice how the fucktarded USians are so fucking stupid they fail geography? They think America is a country rather than a continent. Fuck, they don't even know where countries are located on the map. They are all fucking morons.

Ever notice how the fucktarded USians are so fucking stupid they have an obesity rate higher of any other country? Just look at them, just about every USian is a fat fucktarded piece of shit.

Ever notice how the fucktarded USians are so fucking delusional that they think they are superior to every other nation? Shit, this gives them the illusion that they are the fucking police of the fucking world. These fucktards prove that patriotism is akin to racism as every one of the fucktards are fucking patriots and fucking racists.

It wouldn't be so fucking bad if the fucktarded USians would just stay to their own fucking country. Instead they want to conquer the entire fucking world much like others have tried before them. At least they have learned from this whereas the fucktarded USians won't learn until every last one of them are dead. That is how fucking ignorant the USians are and they celebrate their fucktarded ignorance.

Sincerely,
Signed: The Rest of the World

What are you smoking?

[SmallFurryCreature]

GW2 doesn't require grinding?

Lets see, legendary items, how long would you say it takes to aquire one? Down to the nearest month.

New crafted ascended weapons bould down to one item, you can only get from endlessly grinding either puzzles or dungeons. You need lots and lots of them. Crafting at first is easy but the last levels explode with weapons going from requiring ONE item to FIVE.

Items you buy with Laurels cost 50 or so, you can get 1 laurel per day and another 10 per month. So 1 item requires at least a month. There are 5 sloths. Forget about it if you got multiple alts.

Oh sure, you can fight with lesser items, you just die a lot.

Levelling up in GW2 is easy, getting gear so you can compete with other players, that is the grind.

It ain't all that bad a game and if you just play it for fun without aiming to be really effective, well you can have a blast.

But pretending it isn't a grind heavy game is just plain silly.

World of Warcraft: Shark Resurrection

[Tridus]

We jumped the shark. We used the shark as a jump rope. We beat the shark to death with pandaland.

Now we need to go back in time when the shark was still alive so we can beat it to death some more.

Why? Because some people will buy anything.

Re:World of Warcraft: Shark Resurrection

[jcoleman]

HEY EVERYBODY! Look at this guy, he is cooler than World of Warcraft players and wants us to know that!

That didn't use to be true

[SmallFurryCreature]

Classic MMORPG's got ONE fixed fee max out of you and that was it. And you knew it and they knew it. You payed 14.95 max per month, no more, no less and they had to lure you to keep playing with more content.

The thing I find really most amazing about "F2P" is just how fucking expensive it is. 14.95 once a month will buy you NOTHING. A legendary item in GW2 could easily be half a thousand to a thousand euro's with no discount for buying more gold. Who is that desperate?

As for playing just the story... the story is a grind too. "Hello, we are baking cupcakesto day, oh wait all the eggs spawned monsters, kill 5 waves of mobs!" "Hai there an entire army has marched on the enemies strong hold for a gloryrious do or die battle... oh you go in all alone and kill 5 waves of mobs please".

To make matters worse, there is one mission where you accompany some sniper plant people who kill everything with one shot. WTF? Where were they before OR after?

GW2 is a Michael Bay summer block buster movie. Enjoyable but when the next movie comes alone you will have totally forgotten about it.

Re:That didn't use to be true

[Slider451]

The difference between the subscription and the F2P model, at least in LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online): Subscription = rental when you stop subscribing, any content (mostly zones) unlocked by the subscription becomes locked if you haven't purchased it. Pay = own You only pay once and will always have access to the content as long as the game is available. Note that both models require you to pay extra for expansions.

So a newbie gets a 100?

[Toad-san]

While my trusty well-worn characters, having struggled their way through Pandaria to a 90, must now somehow level even more?

Sigh ...

No thank you blizzard.

[Kodack]

They could have given people this as the last expansion and maybe the game wouldn't have started hemoraghing players in record numbers. Maybe it would have been fun to play a little longer, if only for nostalgias sake.

Instead they gave us kung fu pandas...........

Nothing at all about the gaming experience has changed. You will quickly level up to the new cap by questing. You will then hit a brick wall you need gear to get over and that gear will take you months of grinding to get it. You will feel a sense of accomplishment for a month or two and then a new dungeon will be released that lets everybody else get gear that's better for a trivial amount of effort. Everybody will get new abilities that look and act different, but still make every class the same and good luck finding a place on your spell bar to place them because every character has several dozen abilities all left over from vanilla and countless expansions.

You WILL
grind for gold
grind for rep
grind for points

Same game, slightly different graphics, exact same play style.