Hooray for the parent post. The following is an essay I wrote about WoW in April 2005. Some of the points are no longer valid, but many of them are. My WoW subscription has been cancelled and I won't be renewing until, at the VERY least, the class balance issues are improved, if not solved. Shamans are WAY overpowered, and the only people who don't seem to agree are Shamans and Rogues, with rogues being the second most overpowered class in the game, especially in PvP. The balance issues are so glaringly apparent that I can only assume that Blizzard intended them to be as they are.
Why
World of Warcraft's Endgame Is Not Fun
April
17, 2005
I
have been playing World of Warcraft since beta in August, 2004. At
the time, I had been playing EverQuest for about 2 years and was
growing weary of it: the raids in Planes of Power were long and
tedious with very few rewards, and the entire "backflag" system
caused a lot of strife within many guilds by forcing them to do long
events just to flag one or two people. As the raid leader for my
guild, I led everything from raids Vindi in Kael Drakkel to the
Emperor in Ssraeshza Temple, to Aten Ha Ra in Vex Thal, to Rallos Zek
and Fennin Ro.
Between the mess of flagging and the
tedium of the raids themselves (hours of clearing) it became clear to
me that Sony was incapable of designing "fun" encounters. Planes
of Power introduced events which required lots of "kiting" of
mobs, apparently as an attempt to introduce a new element to a game
whose events are so tedious that people would put their characters on
auto-attack and go AFK for 15-20 minutes at a time and be just as
effective as if they'd been playing them.
It had gotten so bad for me that I had
taken to reading rather than logging in to EQ. I felt bad since I
was the raid leader, but the game had stopped being enjoyable months
before. So when a friend let me play his WoW beta account I was
stunned. WoW seemed to have everything I had wanted in EQ and none
of what I hated.
Among the smaller things I appreciated
at the time were: showing exp gain per mob as a number, and amount
remaining in this level; showing "percent chance to crit;"
showing health/mana regen instead of forcing you to count up your
mana regeneration items as EQ did. Some of the major things I loved
about WoW as opposed to EQ were the ability for any class to solo
without serious downtime (2+ minutes) - downtime is one of EQ's
most aggravating aspects, forcing people to sit around and literally
do nothing. Experience loss on death in EQ was annoying, and as you
gained levels it became insulting, especially when facing monsters
that would death-touch. When learning a raid encounter in EQ it was
not uncommon for the entire raid to wipe multiple times, and at the
end of the night people could walk away having lost up to 10% of
their levels (even after EQ's coveted 96% rez). Experience loss
also basically prevented any sort of soloing in EQ that involved risk
of death, unless you wanted to eat 20% experience loss per death or
spend hours running around from zone to zone/shouting for a cleric
to rez you in whatever zone you died. You would often have to pay
for this "service."
Soloing
itself in EQ was horrible. Unless you were able to kite (e.g. Plane
of Fire "tables" camp), the only mobs you could kill were 10-20
levels below you and gave little to no experience, and even then many
people faced 10+ minutes of downtime between mobs.
In
WoW, monsters forget about you after you run a certain distance away
from them. In Everquest, monsters chased you until you died or
"zoned out." The whole concept of zoning was annoying and
immersion-breaking in Everquest. The seamless world in WoW was
another thing I loved.
In
WoW beta, I played a paladin, as I had in Everquest and in other
games. I was pretty pleased with most of the Paladin's abilities,
and found the healing power a surprise, having come from Everquest,
where the Paladin's heals were a jo
I'm not necessarily against uniform prices, but the cutoffs should be at the same point. Theaters price movies cheaper for kids to encourage parents to bring several of them in at once, so a lower price makes sense. But if the cutoff for kids' prices is 13 then that should also be the cutoff for seeing only kids' movies. Paying adult prices and not being able to see grown-up movies leaves them in a stupid limbo. It's like the bullshit age limits for drinking versus military service and smoking. At 18 you're legally old enough to vote, serve in the military and kill people, get married, be tried as an adult in court, but you can't legally drink until 21 - subject to adult laws but without adult privileges.
from the the-sky-is-falling-the-sky-is-falling dept.
I take this is a sarcastic jibe meaning that you don't think it's such a huge deal... so why bother publishing it? Debating tenths of a percent of market share seems pointless regardless of whether it's up or down. By publishing the story it would just seem you're just contributing to the hype.
That would account for a decline in the rate of downloads, but not a decline in use. Maybe millions of web developers testing IE7 is lowering Firefox's share, or maybe people tried Firefox, didn't like it, and went back to whatever they'd been using.
The screenshot in the background of that page is from WoW, the recording is not; the recording is from Dark Age of Camelot, and is probably fake, like the Leeroy Jenkins recording.
Slashdot used to be a great place to find obscure cool info, benefiting from millions of people browsing different sites and filtering it so the coolest stuff bubbled to the top. Now it seems to be THE place for new sites to send their articles, as a link from Slashdot = guaranteed ad views. So we get newbie sites trying anything and everything to get their site mentioned on Slashdot, which explains many of the current problems with Slashdot, and the tech news industry in general.
With Slashdot not having had major features added in a while I have to wonder what everybody over there is doing that's keeping them from reading their own site. I heard about a CSS implementation of the site in the works, but there have been sample rewrites in CSS for almost 2 years now, so I don't know what the deal is.
Maybe the site should be renamed Slashslashdotdot to reflect its duplicative nature.
...since the topic is Yet Another Bad Video Game Cliche List, it doesn't seem so bad.
What's with this new trend of converting random words within an article to paid ads that popup annoying little windows when moused over? That can't really be an effective ad delivery system, the vast majority of clicks are probably mistakes, and the little popups prevent the user from reading the actual content. Anyone who uses this little abomination care to comment?
What "application?" Recording due dates? Can't you just write them down? Maybe put them into a calendaring app on your computer in your dorm? High technology is not the solution to every problem.
Why is it considered such an anathema merely to suggest that people with similar genotypes would have similar phenotypes? This is the entire basis for the theories of evolution and natural selection. Groups within a species that are geographically separate develop their own strengths to deal with their environment, asserting some traits while repressing others. Why is it automatically "racist" to say that some groups of people have strengths in certain areas?
If two large people mate, one may reasonably expect that their offspring would be large. If two small people mate, one may reasonably expect that their offspring would be small. Why, if this is extended to a larger group of people, is it all of a sudden "racist"? If you have 50 large men and 50 large women, and say that some subset of that group mates, isn't it still reasonable to expect that many, or even a significant majority, of the offspring would be large? I don't see a difference, except that certain groups of people don't want to be assigned labels that might be considered derogatory, so we get politically correct wishy-washy bullshit like this story.
white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.)
note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)
~82% of the U.S. population is certainly not "white." I'm sure the illegal aliens are not going to chime in.
Please stop this stupid bullshit. Slashdot is constantly running stories about making games more appealing to women, and now the same drivel is being directed towards "minorities"? We don't need more minority heroes and we don't need more women heroes. We need better games. Games like Zelda don't appeal to white people because Link is white, it's because the game is fun. Mario and Luigi, same deal.
I wish there was a "politically correct" Slashdot section so I could filter it out.
Sitting or laying in the same spot for any length of time, regardless of whether you're playing a game or doing work or lying in a hospital bed, can cause deep vein thrombosis and kill you with a blood clot.
Thanks for clearing that up. I am now left wondering why this is the buzzword du jour, as it seems pretty boring. Do we have "Podcasts" of "blogs" now, so the angsty teens can discuss their angst in full 44kHz angst-filled audio? These types of trends make me fear for our future sometimes.:-(
Wasn't Apple's G4 Cube silent, or nearly silent? Pretty sure it had no CPU fan (many people complained about the heat). That was one of the strong points of the PPC chips IIRC, its relatively cool operating temperature.
Is the company planning significant growth for the budgeted period (year, quarter, whatever)? That would be a major factor in determining a budget.
As someone who's never done a budget (other than budgeting time) I feel safe in suggesting that whatever figure you finally come up with, tack on 10-20% extra.
One of the examples cited in the article was The Wind Waker, which used stealth very well and certainly not in a cliche way. If you ever want to sneak by an enemy, I'd think you'd want to use stealth. Maybe the way some games implement it is cliche, but the concept of stealth in a game is not. In RPGs there are classes (e.g. rogue) whose class-defining abilities include stealth.
Slashdot Mirror
David Kaefer, Microsoft's director of intellectual property licensing, said it was open to letting other firms patent its innovations.
Great news source. There's a world of difference between "let other firms patent its inventions" and "let other firms license its patents."
I'm not necessarily against uniform prices, but the cutoffs should be at the same point. Theaters price movies cheaper for kids to encourage parents to bring several of them in at once, so a lower price makes sense. But if the cutoff for kids' prices is 13 then that should also be the cutoff for seeing only kids' movies. Paying adult prices and not being able to see grown-up movies leaves them in a stupid limbo. It's like the bullshit age limits for drinking versus military service and smoking. At 18 you're legally old enough to vote, serve in the military and kill people, get married, be tried as an adult in court, but you can't legally drink until 21 - subject to adult laws but without adult privileges.
from the the-sky-is-falling-the-sky-is-falling dept.
I take this is a sarcastic jibe meaning that you don't think it's such a huge deal... so why bother publishing it? Debating tenths of a percent of market share seems pointless regardless of whether it's up or down. By publishing the story it would just seem you're just contributing to the hype.
That would account for a decline in the rate of downloads, but not a decline in use. Maybe millions of web developers testing IE7 is lowering Firefox's share, or maybe people tried Firefox, didn't like it, and went back to whatever they'd been using.
The screenshot in the background of that page is from WoW, the recording is not; the recording is from Dark Age of Camelot, and is probably fake, like the Leeroy Jenkins recording.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/08/ 1959214&from=rss
6 day dupespan, not too bad, for Slashdot.
Most movie theaters enforce R ratings by not selling tickets to 14 year olds.
This is true... yet they charge children the "adult" price if they're over 12 nowadays.
Slashdot used to be a great place to find obscure cool info, benefiting from millions of people browsing different sites and filtering it so the coolest stuff bubbled to the top. Now it seems to be THE place for new sites to send their articles, as a link from Slashdot = guaranteed ad views. So we get newbie sites trying anything and everything to get their site mentioned on Slashdot, which explains many of the current problems with Slashdot, and the tech news industry in general.
You don't even have to read Slashdot to check these dupes anymore. Just run the titles through Google.
site:slashdot.org xbox boot
With Slashdot not having had major features added in a while I have to wonder what everybody over there is doing that's keeping them from reading their own site. I heard about a CSS implementation of the site in the works, but there have been sample rewrites in CSS for almost 2 years now, so I don't know what the deal is.
Maybe the site should be renamed Slashslashdotdot to reflect its duplicative nature.
...since the topic is Yet Another Bad Video Game Cliche List, it doesn't seem so bad.
What's with this new trend of converting random words within an article to paid ads that popup annoying little windows when moused over? That can't really be an effective ad delivery system, the vast majority of clicks are probably mistakes, and the little popups prevent the user from reading the actual content. Anyone who uses this little abomination care to comment?
By sending jobs to other countries you end up ensuring that your potential customers can't afford your product, as they have no income.
an essentially unlimited marketing budget... ... and a willingness to sell your product at a significant loss to establish that brand.
What's the best PDA for this application?
What "application?" Recording due dates? Can't you just write them down? Maybe put them into a calendaring app on your computer in your dorm? High technology is not the solution to every problem.
Thanks for the "nws" story, Slashdot!
Why is it considered such an anathema merely to suggest that people with similar genotypes would have similar phenotypes? This is the entire basis for the theories of evolution and natural selection. Groups within a species that are geographically separate develop their own strengths to deal with their environment, asserting some traits while repressing others. Why is it automatically "racist" to say that some groups of people have strengths in certain areas?
If two large people mate, one may reasonably expect that their offspring would be large. If two small people mate, one may reasonably expect that their offspring would be small. Why, if this is extended to a larger group of people, is it all of a sudden "racist"? If you have 50 large men and 50 large women, and say that some subset of that group mates, isn't it still reasonable to expect that many, or even a significant majority, of the offspring would be large? I don't see a difference, except that certain groups of people don't want to be assigned labels that might be considered derogatory, so we get politically correct wishy-washy bullshit like this story.
We're getting away from the point, but I don't believe that 82% of the US population is "white."
~82% of the U.S. population is certainly not "white." I'm sure the illegal aliens are not going to chime in.
Please stop this stupid bullshit. Slashdot is constantly running stories about making games more appealing to women, and now the same drivel is being directed towards "minorities"? We don't need more minority heroes and we don't need more women heroes. We need better games. Games like Zelda don't appeal to white people because Link is white, it's because the game is fun. Mario and Luigi, same deal.
I wish there was a "politically correct" Slashdot section so I could filter it out.
Sitting or laying in the same spot for any length of time, regardless of whether you're playing a game or doing work or lying in a hospital bed, can cause deep vein thrombosis and kill you with a blood clot.
t ifier=30100410 0156.htm
Refs:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?iden
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/0
Thanks for clearing that up. I am now left wondering why this is the buzzword du jour, as it seems pretty boring. Do we have "Podcasts" of "blogs" now, so the angsty teens can discuss their angst in full 44kHz angst-filled audio? These types of trends make me fear for our future sometimes. :-(
Wasn't Apple's G4 Cube silent, or nearly silent? Pretty sure it had no CPU fan (many people complained about the heat). That was one of the strong points of the PPC chips IIRC, its relatively cool operating temperature.
Is the company planning significant growth for the budgeted period (year, quarter, whatever)? That would be a major factor in determining a budget.
As someone who's never done a budget (other than budgeting time) I feel safe in suggesting that whatever figure you finally come up with, tack on 10-20% extra.
But it's not overused, it's just frequently used!
One of the examples cited in the article was The Wind Waker, which used stealth very well and certainly not in a cliche way. If you ever want to sneak by an enemy, I'd think you'd want to use stealth. Maybe the way some games implement it is cliche, but the concept of stealth in a game is not. In RPGs there are classes (e.g. rogue) whose class-defining abilities include stealth.