I haven't played all of them, but VI is definitely my favorite. Some of the others come close behind... The original was good in its time. IV was great and probably my second favorite. VII was fun but I think got more praise than it deserved. VIII, IX, and X were fun, but they just failed to keep my interest when I reached the later stages... You know, the "wander around the world and uncover all the 'secret' stuff" stage of things. I've never played X-2 and I'm unsure of what to think of XII--I have the demo sitting at home but have yet to pop it in the ps2.
I've always looked at it as a sort of reverse-psychology thing. "Oh look how brave I am! Though I realize this is an unpopular opinion I shall nevertheless voice it. My karma may potentially suffer!" Perhaps not all the time, or maybe I'm just a little too cynical.:)
Another issue is that rested state only helps you pre-60. Once you're at max level, all the rested state in the world won't benefit that character. This is where people who grind really have an advantage.
The rest system is also very friendly towards casual players--if you can only play once or twice a week, you'll find the rested state pretty handy. I guess that it also helps wow keep subscribers. If you can play once a week and it takes forever to level (despite how easy the game is, time could limit someone like that), you may become discouraged and cancel. But with rested state... "Hey this is cool, I level more quickly because I haven't been playing! Thank you blizzard!!!" Of course, a grind is a grind is a grind.
Not to kiss ass, but I just wanted to remark first that I enjoyed your comments in the discussion about females in the CS field the other day... It's nice to see someone with his head on straight who is unafraid of being politically incorrect. That aside...
I enjoyed Serenity and I love the Firefly series. I thought it was a shame Wash died, but I also appreciated the way it affected my perception of the movie, and I actually didn't like River the Super Warrior (as portrayed).
Like someone else commented, when you watch the series it's generally safe to assume that all will end well. In the movie, I really expected the same thing. They had just turned the tables on the Alliance and navigated their way to safety... all that was left was to go broadcast the recording and save the day, right? At that point, I thought we had seen the climax and it was just a smooth ride to the end when *bam*, Wash is dead. All of a sudden, our happy ending isn't such a sure thing. That enhanced the movie for me, because I didn't know who was going to make it out alive. Of course, I don't think non-fans would have that sort of attachment to Wash so it wouldn't affect them that way as much, but fans would also know that there was a deal for three movies and that someone had to make it out of there.
As for realism and other people dying... well, not to be seem thoughtless but they were all really just sort of in the background. Even when Book died I was just of like, "meh".
River the Super Warrior, on the other hand, was something of a let-down for me. It was kind of cool to see her fighting, but I'd rather have gone without the intricate fight scenes. Her as a living weapon is not so bad; her in a cliched kung-fu fight scene was:( When it came to fighting the reavers, I saw her as a deus ex machina and, to me, that was kind of lame.
So overall, I thought it was an excellent movie. As a fan, killing Wash was a nice touch to keep us on the edge of our seats but was spoiled by the fact that I knew the contract was for three movies. I could have done without all the kung-fu as well (which is saying a lot because I love kung fu and martial arts movies). Oh, and comment earlier next time! I had already mod'd comments in this topic, QQ.
I used to use AVG and it's still what I say to use when I'm asked. That aside, I put 64-bit Windows on my new box and the current free version of AVG doesn't seem to support the 64-bit OS--at some point during the installation it has some weird string in the install dialog and the only available button is "exit". Not a big deal since Avast! 4 has 64-bit support. To me, anti-virus software is anti-virus software, but I just thought I'd comment that, god, is Avast!'s UI ugly! Reminds me of some "modern" crappy skin that comes as the default for a media player or something.
This got modded up funny, but crap like that happens all the time in WoW. It's not uncommon for someone's name to be reported just because someone else is mad at them or felt like being an asshole. On my server we had a guy whose name violated the policy (it was considered gibberish, i.e., unpronounceable) but he was fine for months and months... until he killed our server's forum troll and douchebag in-game and then all of a sudden his name was reported.
Anyone who's played the game and had a real issue that required GM contact knows that they are completely impotent. I've had at least a half-dozen issues where the GM ticket menu specifically says they'll help with something and then the GM gives you a blow-off answer and tells you to write to the GM feedback email address. I don't know why taco treats this like big news.
Some mods prefer to mod +1 Informative or +1 Insightful rather than +1 Funny. A funny moderation doesn't have any karma attached to it, so it's a way of working around the system to reward someone. I, myself, do it occasionally. Just an FYI.
One of the things about that level range is that you have to go to areas that you otherwise might not explore. For example, when you're in the level range for STV, you can also do Badlands, Dustwallow Marsh (not a lot out there), the later parts of Desolace, Swamp of Sorrows, Hillsbrad Foothills / Alterac Mountains, and Arathi Highlands. The content is there, but you just have to jump around to access all of it. However, you also have to know it's there to begin with (or be one of those explorer types).
I don't grind too often besides when I'm trying to get drops, and the only time I've ever had to grind for xp was in the late 50s. Even then, the Plaguelands have enough Horde around to keep things interesting. And this was also due to the fact that I was leery of getting in a pick-up to run the high-end instances. I'll add, also, that since you're playing a paladin, grinding is going to go a bit more slowly for you. As tough as you guys are, when it comes to dropping mobs in quick succession you just can't compare to some of the other classes.
My feeling, actually, is that the game discourages grouping until you *really* need to do so. I've been in pick-up groups before where it seemed pretty obvious that the person didn't know how the group dynamics worked. But then, why group up when you can kill the mobs yourself and hog all the xp and loot? Why group up when you'll just have to split the quest-item drops with someone else? You have to *want* to group outside of instances. This is friendly to the casual player, but it punishes them somewhat when they need to run instances for quests and equipment.
I have a warrior that I mostly play with a friend who was levelling a holy/disc priest at the same time. The only time we ever *needed* to group with other people was for instances. It would actually be nice to see more content that required groups that wasn't instance-based. One other thing that bothers me about instances is that by the time I'm finished with one, I'm sort of burned out and need to take a break.
Oh, for reference, I play on Mannoroth. 60 mage, 50 warrior, 42 paladin are my highest chars there.
Items have level requirements. If you guy gold from a site, it doesn't matter if you go out and buy the best purple weapon you can find in the AH--you won't be able to use it without the prerequisite levels. Having plenty of money to buy yourself nice equipment for your level is, of course, an advantage but there's an even more important factor: skill.
It's like people who buy characters online without understanding how to play them (or how to play at all). If you excel throughout the low levels due to your advantage then you may be unprepared for when you hit 60 and come up against all the other badasses out there--the badasses with epic gear from MC or Onyxia, the badasses with the highest rank PvP gear, the badasses who may be wearing mediocre equipment but play a strong class and play it well.
I don't care if you buy 5 million gold from ebay, if you suck at pvp then I'm going to stomp you. The OP's gripe seems to be with low level characters having things they would normally be unable to access without some sort of aid. Well, shucks, I use my lvl 60 to twink my alts. I guess that puts me on the same moral level as people who exploit and buy gold?
The OP should not be so concerned about characters winning battles they aren't supposed to. Due to the way level differences affect your damage and chances of hitting / having your spells resisted, you won't find people fighting too much outside of their level range. My mage has about a 50% chance of killing something 3 levels higher than him because of the resist rate--I simply run out of mana and have to flee. My warrior struggles with mobs 3 levels above him because of the many misses and reduced damage. In addition, mobs significantly higher in level than you deal increased damage. Buy all the uber gear you want, I highly doubt you're going to solo a mob 5+ above you.
I'd like to close with a couple of anecdotes to back up the parent's stance on lower levels in PvP. During closed beta, I played a warrior for a while and had the misfortune of adventuring in Red Ridge while some max-level warrior from the Horde was slaughtering people. I would charge the guy (back then, charge stun could not be resisted), hamstring (slows his movement rate), and run. Since he was in town, guards would attack him and he wouldn't drop out of combat (so he couldn't charge me). After a while, I'd swing back around and do it again. I did this for maybe 10 minutes before leaving. I couldn't really come close to damaging him by myself, but I was able to neutralize him. A little later that day, that same guy found me--he charged, hamstrung... and ran away.
There was also the time my roommate and I came across a lvl 60 warrior--lvl 50 warrior (prot/arms) & a lvl 35 holy paladin vs a lvl 60 arms/fury warrior. I hid behind a tree and healed for half the fight before the tauren realized what was going on. Steath heal ftw. I've also been in a lot of situations where 3 or 4 people in their 30s have swarmed 1 or 2 lvl 60 players and walked away victorious.
I bitch about the game plenty, but Blizzard has done an excellent job of learning from the mistakes of past MMOs.
No one else will probably see this, but it reminds me of something my dad said this weekend... I had made a comment as to how our justice system was all sorts of fucked up, and he replied, "We don't have a justice system--we have a legal system."
The relevance of mentioning it was in showing that women are not something to be discounted. I quote:
"Lots of women play videogames but how many actually buy them ?. Most women who play videogames only do so because they have access to them through a male in their life (boyfriend, brother, father). How many of these would actually be willing to plonk down the money required for a console and buy games regularly ?."
Their influence is growing; it's a modern world, man. Coincidentally, my older sister had the atari 2600 and some games on our old TI--I played with both. My younger sister had the gameboy and sega genesis--I played with both. I had the NES and SNES, but only I bothered with them. Who played with whose toys here?
I never claimed it wasn't anecdotal, just like I never claimed you said the female market was non-existant. But either way, I think you underestimate the female market. Just because a large portion of games are geared towards guys doesn't mean there aren't women who enjoy gaming, or women who are willing to pay money for a quality, entertaining game. Look at what happened with The Sims. Look at how many women play MMORPGs. I could go on with stories of more women who game and pay for it on their own rather than piggy-backing on someone else's purchases, but it's time to go home:D I think you not seeing women as a big market might be partly due to your FPS-centric gaming. *shrug* In 8 years of online play I've met a total of 2 female FPS players.
Slashdot Mirror
*weeping weeping*
:)
I haven't played all of them, but VI is definitely my favorite. Some of the others come close behind... The original was good in its time. IV was great and probably my second favorite. VII was fun but I think got more praise than it deserved. VIII, IX, and X were fun, but they just failed to keep my interest when I reached the later stages... You know, the "wander around the world and uncover all the 'secret' stuff" stage of things. I've never played X-2 and I'm unsure of what to think of XII--I have the demo sitting at home but have yet to pop it in the ps2.
Friended as well
I've always looked at it as a sort of reverse-psychology thing. "Oh look how brave I am! Though I realize this is an unpopular opinion I shall nevertheless voice it. My karma may potentially suffer!" Perhaps not all the time, or maybe I'm just a little too cynical. :)
Marry me.
Another issue is that rested state only helps you pre-60. Once you're at max level, all the rested state in the world won't benefit that character. This is where people who grind really have an advantage.
The rest system is also very friendly towards casual players--if you can only play once or twice a week, you'll find the rested state pretty handy. I guess that it also helps wow keep subscribers. If you can play once a week and it takes forever to level (despite how easy the game is, time could limit someone like that), you may become discouraged and cancel. But with rested state... "Hey this is cool, I level more quickly because I haven't been playing! Thank you blizzard!!!" Of course, a grind is a grind is a grind.
Are youse serious?
Wow, I can see that English isn't your native language.
Obviously, the poster is Italian.
Not to kiss ass, but I just wanted to remark first that I enjoyed your comments in the discussion about females in the CS field the other day... It's nice to see someone with his head on straight who is unafraid of being politically incorrect. That aside...
:( When it came to fighting the reavers, I saw her as a deus ex machina and, to me, that was kind of lame.
I enjoyed Serenity and I love the Firefly series. I thought it was a shame Wash died, but I also appreciated the way it affected my perception of the movie, and I actually didn't like River the Super Warrior (as portrayed).
Like someone else commented, when you watch the series it's generally safe to assume that all will end well. In the movie, I really expected the same thing. They had just turned the tables on the Alliance and navigated their way to safety... all that was left was to go broadcast the recording and save the day, right? At that point, I thought we had seen the climax and it was just a smooth ride to the end when *bam*, Wash is dead. All of a sudden, our happy ending isn't such a sure thing. That enhanced the movie for me, because I didn't know who was going to make it out alive. Of course, I don't think non-fans would have that sort of attachment to Wash so it wouldn't affect them that way as much, but fans would also know that there was a deal for three movies and that someone had to make it out of there.
As for realism and other people dying... well, not to be seem thoughtless but they were all really just sort of in the background. Even when Book died I was just of like, "meh".
River the Super Warrior, on the other hand, was something of a let-down for me. It was kind of cool to see her fighting, but I'd rather have gone without the intricate fight scenes. Her as a living weapon is not so bad; her in a cliched kung-fu fight scene was
So overall, I thought it was an excellent movie. As a fan, killing Wash was a nice touch to keep us on the edge of our seats but was spoiled by the fact that I knew the contract was for three movies. I could have done without all the kung-fu as well (which is saying a lot because I love kung fu and martial arts movies). Oh, and comment earlier next time! I had already mod'd comments in this topic, QQ.
I used to use AVG and it's still what I say to use when I'm asked. That aside, I put 64-bit Windows on my new box and the current free version of AVG doesn't seem to support the 64-bit OS--at some point during the installation it has some weird string in the install dialog and the only available button is "exit". Not a big deal since Avast! 4 has 64-bit support. To me, anti-virus software is anti-virus software, but I just thought I'd comment that, god, is Avast!'s UI ugly! Reminds me of some "modern" crappy skin that comes as the default for a media player or something.
Modded funny but true in some cases :-/ I lived over in England for 3 years and the Red Cross won't take my blood because of it.
This got modded up funny, but crap like that happens all the time in WoW. It's not uncommon for someone's name to be reported just because someone else is mad at them or felt like being an asshole. On my server we had a guy whose name violated the policy (it was considered gibberish, i.e., unpronounceable) but he was fine for months and months... until he killed our server's forum troll and douchebag in-game and then all of a sudden his name was reported.
Anyone who's played the game and had a real issue that required GM contact knows that they are completely impotent. I've had at least a half-dozen issues where the GM ticket menu specifically says they'll help with something and then the GM gives you a blow-off answer and tells you to write to the GM feedback email address. I don't know why taco treats this like big news.
Here is where that comes from... 5th post down.
Good call, I think I'll switch to doing that in the future. :)
Some mods prefer to mod +1 Informative or +1 Insightful rather than +1 Funny. A funny moderation doesn't have any karma attached to it, so it's a way of working around the system to reward someone. I, myself, do it occasionally. Just an FYI.
One of the things about that level range is that you have to go to areas that you otherwise might not explore. For example, when you're in the level range for STV, you can also do Badlands, Dustwallow Marsh (not a lot out there), the later parts of Desolace, Swamp of Sorrows, Hillsbrad Foothills / Alterac Mountains, and Arathi Highlands. The content is there, but you just have to jump around to access all of it. However, you also have to know it's there to begin with (or be one of those explorer types).
I don't grind too often besides when I'm trying to get drops, and the only time I've ever had to grind for xp was in the late 50s. Even then, the Plaguelands have enough Horde around to keep things interesting. And this was also due to the fact that I was leery of getting in a pick-up to run the high-end instances. I'll add, also, that since you're playing a paladin, grinding is going to go a bit more slowly for you. As tough as you guys are, when it comes to dropping mobs in quick succession you just can't compare to some of the other classes.
My feeling, actually, is that the game discourages grouping until you *really* need to do so. I've been in pick-up groups before where it seemed pretty obvious that the person didn't know how the group dynamics worked. But then, why group up when you can kill the mobs yourself and hog all the xp and loot? Why group up when you'll just have to split the quest-item drops with someone else? You have to *want* to group outside of instances. This is friendly to the casual player, but it punishes them somewhat when they need to run instances for quests and equipment.
I have a warrior that I mostly play with a friend who was levelling a holy/disc priest at the same time. The only time we ever *needed* to group with other people was for instances. It would actually be nice to see more content that required groups that wasn't instance-based. One other thing that bothers me about instances is that by the time I'm finished with one, I'm sort of burned out and need to take a break. Oh, for reference, I play on Mannoroth. 60 mage, 50 warrior, 42 paladin are my highest chars there.
How do you plan to handle hero classes and what is the ETA for them?
Haha, wish I had mod points for you :) I was thinking of the same thing
If these words were people, I would embrace their genocide.
Finally, someone with their head on straight. Mod parent up!
In addition to being a year older (June 2-15, 2004 issue) than this one, SeanBaby's is shitloads more entertaining. Top 10 Internet Fads
To add to this:
Items have level requirements. If you guy gold from a site, it doesn't matter if you go out and buy the best purple weapon you can find in the AH--you won't be able to use it without the prerequisite levels. Having plenty of money to buy yourself nice equipment for your level is, of course, an advantage but there's an even more important factor: skill.
It's like people who buy characters online without understanding how to play them (or how to play at all). If you excel throughout the low levels due to your advantage then you may be unprepared for when you hit 60 and come up against all the other badasses out there--the badasses with epic gear from MC or Onyxia, the badasses with the highest rank PvP gear, the badasses who may be wearing mediocre equipment but play a strong class and play it well.
I don't care if you buy 5 million gold from ebay, if you suck at pvp then I'm going to stomp you. The OP's gripe seems to be with low level characters having things they would normally be unable to access without some sort of aid. Well, shucks, I use my lvl 60 to twink my alts. I guess that puts me on the same moral level as people who exploit and buy gold?
The OP should not be so concerned about characters winning battles they aren't supposed to. Due to the way level differences affect your damage and chances of hitting / having your spells resisted, you won't find people fighting too much outside of their level range. My mage has about a 50% chance of killing something 3 levels higher than him because of the resist rate--I simply run out of mana and have to flee. My warrior struggles with mobs 3 levels above him because of the many misses and reduced damage. In addition, mobs significantly higher in level than you deal increased damage. Buy all the uber gear you want, I highly doubt you're going to solo a mob 5+ above you.
I'd like to close with a couple of anecdotes to back up the parent's stance on lower levels in PvP. During closed beta, I played a warrior for a while and had the misfortune of adventuring in Red Ridge while some max-level warrior from the Horde was slaughtering people. I would charge the guy (back then, charge stun could not be resisted), hamstring (slows his movement rate), and run. Since he was in town, guards would attack him and he wouldn't drop out of combat (so he couldn't charge me). After a while, I'd swing back around and do it again. I did this for maybe 10 minutes before leaving. I couldn't really come close to damaging him by myself, but I was able to neutralize him. A little later that day, that same guy found me--he charged, hamstrung... and ran away.
There was also the time my roommate and I came across a lvl 60 warrior--lvl 50 warrior (prot/arms) & a lvl 35 holy paladin vs a lvl 60 arms/fury warrior. I hid behind a tree and healed for half the fight before the tauren realized what was going on. Steath heal ftw. I've also been in a lot of situations where 3 or 4 people in their 30s have swarmed 1 or 2 lvl 60 players and walked away victorious.
I bitch about the game plenty, but Blizzard has done an excellent job of learning from the mistakes of past MMOs.
*worship*
No one else will probably see this, but it reminds me of something my dad said this weekend... I had made a comment as to how our justice system was all sorts of fucked up, and he replied, "We don't have a justice system--we have a legal system."
Just thought I'd share...
N-gage not relevant? How is this news?
The relevance of mentioning it was in showing that women are not something to be discounted. I quote:
"Lots of women play videogames but how many actually buy them ?. Most women who play videogames only do so because they have access to them through a male in their life (boyfriend, brother, father). How many of these would actually be willing to plonk down the money required for a console and buy games regularly ?."
Their influence is growing; it's a modern world, man. Coincidentally, my older sister had the atari 2600 and some games on our old TI--I played with both. My younger sister had the gameboy and sega genesis--I played with both. I had the NES and SNES, but only I bothered with them. Who played with whose toys here?
I never claimed it wasn't anecdotal, just like I never claimed you said the female market was non-existant. But either way, I think you underestimate the female market. Just because a large portion of games are geared towards guys doesn't mean there aren't women who enjoy gaming, or women who are willing to pay money for a quality, entertaining game. Look at what happened with The Sims. Look at how many women play MMORPGs. I could go on with stories of more women who game and pay for it on their own rather than piggy-backing on someone else's purchases, but it's time to go home :D I think you not seeing women as a big market might be partly due to your FPS-centric gaming. *shrug* In 8 years of online play I've met a total of 2 female FPS players.
I think Miss_Saturnine says it pretty well.