I think it's save to say that if you don't like to fight mobs or players WoW probably isn't the game for you.
That is a false dilemma as I mentioned in one of my previous posts. And actually, I *like* killing mobs and especially players, but I *don't like* killing 15 million of mobs to get to level+1. Or to get a slightly upgraded gear.
what's the difference between leveling in WoW and doing the quest (some of them actually tell a good story!) and playing Max Payne or Quake or any other FPS game? You could say the exact same thing about them! "Oh, so you like to shoot X monsters.. how boring!".
Well, one could draw a parallel between say Max Payne and leveling say warlock in WoW. You start in MP with a pistol and end with a AK-47 and other good weapons. The end. In WoW, you start with Shadow Bolt (Rank 1) and end up with Shadow Bolt (Rank 11) and level 70. But at level 70 you don't get THE END screen, you actually have all doors unlocked to pvp, farm, grind, raid, gank etc. And that ridiculously overdone attunement at lvl 70 is really amusing=)
There is no leveling in fps-s. Well, you could say that there is a single player mode in fps in which you could have quests (aka missions). True enough, but when you finish all the missions you end the (single player) game. But with mmorpg, you actually have a fully "developed" character and then (at top-level) you actually start playing the game. Another thing is that, when you see for the first time a (even a good) story, every other time you exactly know what will happen and you actually find it boring. Add to that endless grind and things become exponentially boring. I can't actually remember when I went and replayed a single player fps. It is just a waste of time. In WoW, the situation isn't different at all aside from other classes. So if you decide to see how a mage is played (in full his potential) you have to spend "few" weeks just to get that mage to level 70 and after that actually see the difference. But to be clear about this. I absolutely hate replaying the same content (aside from pvp) be it mmorpg or a fps. And I'm just steering away from grind based games in the present and future. Why there is no option that you can create level 70 characters when you have one (or even a few) leveled? Or to be able to create pvp only characters with best gear? But I know the answer. It is called money. Well, I voted with my money, no more grind for me.
Side remark: I absolutely find it ridiculous that serious pvp in WoW has big gear component in it. It is just grind grind and grind some more and when you get some decent pvp gear, then pvp. Ohh, there is a new patch with new Tier 84, so back to grind, grind and grind more to be "competitive" in pvp. Pathetic.
Take some fps for example. 1. Create character 2. Log on to a server 3. PvP with the same starting conditions. I haven't heard anyone actually complain about gear in say multiplayer UT.
When you level your character to top level, there are many (I'm a bit over romantic here;) options you can have. You can farm 5-man instances, 10-man, 25-man etc. You can pvp in 4 battlegrounds and 3 arenas. Or even go outside the main city and grief other people. Most people will tell you that at top level the wow game begins. And I agree with that. Everything is based and balanced around top-level end-game. It is in my opinion a bit pointless to level a character to top level and then quickly reroll another one because at that top level you get the most powerful spells, gear etc.
Leveling is unfortunately just a race to the top level because while leveling you get killed by other higher level players, quests are utterly mindless, repetitive and boring and while leveling you will probably have very bad gear.
And at that level of granularity, you can describe the entire game that way.
The game *is* a big grind. I really would like to be shown otherwise. Reality distortions fields really are powerful these days...
Then this is probably not your game.
I did quit. No need to reiterate the point.
Well you simply haven't tried then.
I did. And tried really hard to find something new on my other characters but I couldn't. Maybe you were busy grinding your stv wildlife and didn't have time to explore the whole map? Or are you playing on a RP server? I'm sure it can be loads of fun if you have some sort of imagination, but thankfully I played at the time on 3rd biggest eu pvp server.
as opposed to a chance to do something different you've actually made it more repetitive than it needs to be.
What "something different" are you talking about? Please tell me how do you do the quest a la "Kill 3 million of Undead Ravagers." could be done differently than killing 3 million of them? There is no "something different" in the game except for pvp (which I utterly love).
saying "logical fallacy" doesn't make something so
Actually it is called false dilemma fallacy. Look it up. Hint: love it or leave it.
Did you even have a point other than "I find the majority of WoW boring"?
Well, for a start I absolutely love wow pvp mechanics. The classes, spells, abilities, the actual gameplay etc. That is the pretty much only thing I was interested in. Everything other, including leveling, farming, grinding, and every other boring and mindless thing, were just necessary evil to do pvp. My playtime was something like this: 10% of pvp and 90% of latter. When my reality distortion field failed I quit. Read my other posts concerning this subject if you want to know what I really want from wow.
I'm just glad you like your grind in wow. One time in your life you'll probably want your wasted time back. But go ahead, go grind, make my day.
You obviously don't catch my drift. I don't care about the difference in the cultists or wildlife in stv. You have to kill them by millions to get anything (gear or xp). A grind is a grind is a grind. And yes, *I hate both* of them. And sorry, even that pitiful tiger becomes old hat after you kill him for the first time.
I leveled multiple characters with almost completely orthogonal quests (...)Even when I leveled my third character I was going to zones and doing quests that I'd never done before.
I leveled all my characters doing the *same* bloody quests, doing the same damned zones. Why? Because you have to. If you don't, you have to grind even more mobs to get comparative xp. Don't pretend there is a variety or even a choice (aside from class quests, which really are a few) in doing quests/zones when leveling.
"If you don't like it, leave" is the right thing to do
And logical fallacies are generally considered valid arguments... You are playing WoW too much.
But what can I expect from someone arguing that playing through an entire game multiple times is more boring and repetitive than playing exactly one part of that game for the same amount of time.
Reread my post. But now you are just trolling. Go back to your cage.
it comes in the form of quests where you go after -different- monsters
So you can tell me where one can find some other "versions" of King Bangalash? You missed my point. With all your characters you killed King Bangalash exactly the same number of times (or even more). How that can be fun? Or killing 3x30 of his "lesser" clones? I get bored to the tears.
I mean you're really comparing the wide variety of environments and tasks you're asked to do to level from 1-70, to the non-stop months-after-months killing of the exact same Cultist Camps in Silithus? And you're even saying leveling is worse? I really can't fathom.
Wow, what variety? There is no variety after you reroll another character. You do the *same* quests all over again. It is the same, killing cultists in Silithus or killing wildlife in Stranglethorn Vale. You have to grind them to obscene numbers. In defense of Silithus, at least those mobs respawn fast and the zone is much smaller so it is less painful to grind them. But, in my own defense, I only did the quests (for XP) in Silithus, never went for CC rep. And yes, I hate *all* forms of (mindless) grind*.
Because at least when you're leveling you're seeing the scenery change and actually gaining things at an appreciable rate.
I have to repeat myself. What changes in scenery? When you reroll, you see all the same zones, houses, trees, npcs, mobs, quests etc. There is *nothing* new you see or do. Well, maybe some class quests, but that could be a statistical anomaly.
If you can't see any difference between grinding and any form of gameplay that involves killing monsters
I actually *like* to kill monsters (players even more, but I digress), but not ten billions of them just to get to top level and actually start playing the game.
The question is, what made you think you'd ever like the game in the first place? It's clearly not your playstyle in any way shape or form.
Heh, nice straw man. Classic: if you don't like it, leave. Yeah, really powerful argument, frequently used on troll infested WoW forums. But this is slashdot, where trolls get flagged..., gah, nevermind.
Well, is it so much to ask of Blizzard to just give some real casual content or just even a playing field for them?
To make myself clear, I liked playing my warlock, rogue, mage and druid. I always preferred pvp, but after hitting level 60 or 70 and doing battlegrounds after a while you just get bored or frustrated with another players who mow you down just because they have much much better gear than you. So how that could be solved? They should open special servers where everyone have basically the same gear. So that way you could log on, play a few matches, log off. No boring grind for better gear, consumables etc. And yes, it does sound like test realms. And I would pay for that, I just love WoW's pvp system so much.
I hear people on WoW complaining about "the grind" which to me is the best part. I like questing from 1 to 70. I like experiencing the story and still being able to play with friends if I want
The best part you say? So, and I'm not going to exaggerate here, you like to:
Go to place P and kill N number of mobs until you get M number of drops D? Take item I and take it to the place P.
And doing that same old scheme for hundreds of times, doing the same quests with all your characters, killing the same mobs, going to the same places, talking to the same NPCs is the most exciting thing in the world after the War and Peace.
I don't want to insult you, but you really have to have and "exciting" real life if you consider WoW grind (no quotes) the best part of the game.
If they're going to start only catering to the "end-game" users
Who do you consider by "end-game" users? Level 70 characters or hard-core players who raid end-game (aka the most difficult instances)? I have no doubt in my mind that everyone would like to see more diverse end-game (as in top-level) content. Suitable to casual* and hard-core alike. But I kinda agree, Blizzard did in the whole history of WoW very little for real casual players.
* by casual I mean really casual, not "WoW-casual" who plays "only few hours a day".
Uh, yeah, I guess some people complain about the leveling "grind", but really WoW has one of the nicest leveling phases, replete with quests and things to do to fit a variety of playstyles.
What are you talking about? Are we playing the same game*? Leveling is the most boring part of the game period. Sure, leveling your first character can be fun, but with every other character you end up doing the same boring quests, killing the same monsters etc. And what play styles? There is only one play style when leveling. Grinding by killing monsters. Endless fun. Not.
"The grind" that everyone complains about is the one you do after reaching the level cap.
Yes and no. The grind is omnipresent before and after level 70. No one can deny that.
Or remember when you got to go farm for cloth so that other people could get to run a raid instance? That's what people complain about.
They kinda complain about that but not as much 1-70 grind. It is horrible. But well, people complain about everything in WoW (many of those complaints do have merit though), but saying that leveling is great (as in fun) part of the game is like saying that working on the assembly line is the most interesting job in the world.
The leveling "grind" is great for casuals.
Yes it is a grind, and yes it the worst part of WoW.
You make an excellent point about being annoyed spending X money on a game but only seeing just a part of it. And to illustrate your point further consider World of Warcraft.
You need about 10 full days (240 hours, even that is quite speedy, considerable greater time for a fresh gamer) just to level a character to lvl70 (and actually start the game) and then you have to grind/farm for weeks to get some poor gear.
Lets take an extreme (but realistic nevertheless) position now:
To even see the PvE end-game (funny though, that kind of game doesn't have an ending) you have to be in the best guild on the server (or even pay real money to transfer to another server and another guild) have best available equipment (months of farming in top guilds) etc. All that, just to see the endgame dungeon, boss, quest/storyline, weapon/whatever, you actually can't have a proper real life job. Even if you are spending whole days playing wow in your parent's basement it is very probable you won't see the the newest dungeon for a long time (couple of months at least).
Blizzard (creator of the game, or Vivendi, I don't care) collects monthly subscription from every gamer without regard how much time (if at all) he plays the game. Those are truckloads of money. One problem is this: I think big majority of gamers take WoW world to be very similar to real world (which is completely absurd considering it is created after all) so any new creative or otherwise additions are generally disregarded.
So what is my point then?
I always asked myself why Blizzard couldn't add some specific casual player content. Ideas like:
Instant max level characters with best gear available. Some kind of extremely easy, 1-player "tourist mode" through every dungeon in the game etc. No travel time between cities. No, or very few in-game money requirement etc.
What is the motivation for more special casual content?
Multi player games like Unreal Tournament etc. Start game, log on to UT network, find suitable server, play where starting conditions are the same for *everyone*. When you have to go or get bored, exit game. Repeat.
How would that be implemented?
They pretty much only have to open some "special" servers/realms (there are hundreds of "normal" ones) and let people play there.
Of course, quite a few hardcore gamers would complain with: "wtfzomg,i farmed instance X for months to get tis ultimate $sword_of_whatever, its not fair!11". But these are different servers, different "worlds".
To make things even more simple, those "special" servers are called test realms when new patch is coming out. You used to get a max geared, top-leveled character, and off you went playing on equal terms.
Those kind of suggestions were suggested quite a few times on official forums, but nobody bothered to even reply. Likewise, I won't be playing any mmo which hasn't those casual, quick game (but full blown) modes.
I understand what are you saying, although I just wanted to use a simple compression method I occasionally use when writing sms messages. On my mobile phone it is just as easy to enter normal text as is "CompressedText". So when you know you are going to write an sms longer than 160 characters (including spaces) you can compress the text as you write it (in real time) and by eliminating the the space characters you can gain quite a few additional words and pay only for one (instead or two) message.
Don't think they are waves because they are too uniform and clustered. Moreover, if you scroll a bit to the SE from the linked position, you can see the buoys attached to the "lines".
That construction site really does look crazy though. If you follow the road from that location to the NE you can see some modern(?) central-planned building arrangement. (triangle, rhomboid, shaped city blocks)
Lets have a group of 10 people and the highest IQ of them all is 140.
so 140/10=14. Or we have a group of 3 people, with the highest IQ of 60 so the formula is: 60/3=20.
So by that logic, it would be preferable to be in the latter rather than former group. But I don't think it makes much sense, because I made a secret presumption that everyone in the first group (except the guy with IQ of 140) has IQ of 139.
To be fair, search in Vista is just reused Windows Desktop Search http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/def ault.mspx for Windows XP. I guess it was made at the height of the desktop (indexing) search tools "wars". I actually found it to be very well made.
And yes, you can run programs with it the same way. Different key shortcut though.
Take WoW forums for example. Fanboy's and troll's wet dream. Every constructive suggestion is promptly flamed by trolls and fanboys. Even Blizzard's own Community Managers cater to fanboys and propagate this phenomena. It is music to your ego when everybody tells nice things about you. This is just one of the reasons why those forums are completely devoid of any good information or argumentation.
I won't argue with your Volvo example but your other paragraph:
The Smart car has Mercedes engineering behind it, and crashworthiness is superior to anything put out from Toyota. is some serious bullshit.
bodywork easily for different designs Dunno about US but here in EU if you change the design of your car you have to get new documents. Btw, those bodywork parts are not cheap in any case, and I haven't seen anyone actually changing the color of their car by buying new bodyparts. Probably the most expensive color change ever.
Secondly it's a Mercedes Reliability-wise I would own a Toyota over a Mercedes any day of the year.
t can park in small spaces in cities which other cars can't. Valid point though. Even though, Yaris isn't that much bigger than a Smart.
So what are the benefits of Yaris over Smart?
Much better gear changing. More powerful engines. Better handling. Better safety. (5 star rating against 3, great difference) Better acceleration, deceleration, greater top speed.
The only time I watched McCain live (I'm from Europe) was when he was questioning in front of some committee some US general who reported torture in Abu Ghraib. His line of argument was typical bullshit: prisoners are not POWs so then don't have rights provided by Geneva convention. And to logically conclude the argument; torture (aka methods of interrogation) is not unaccepted. He attacked the guy like he was a damned enemy of the army or people. And all that coming from a guy who was presumably tortured in a war...
I don't think he is no more better than gwb for that matter.
There are thousands of good ideas how to get PvP going in WoW, but Blizzard is so reluctant to introduce any of them it is beyond comprehension. Unfortunately pvp in wow becomes boring fast and this is just because of no really diverse content. They have so rich gaming population, relatively huge virtual world, they could do there nothing short of miracles in gaming, but what gamers get: "Hey we created new Tier666 armor set, and we added a dungeon where 2% of server population can get, and oh btw, we added a new ultra rare mount for 'everyone'. And don't forget a 'new' arena." It is just pathetic.
The undead are a group that freed themselves from control by the scourge and merely attempt to survive against the "Alliance" that would do them harm.
Well, explain then what is going in Undercity? Undead torturing and experimenting on humans. That is not evil in any way?
And what is going on with those Undead lunatics who want to kill all humans? (hint: plaguelands) Undead want to kill everyone on Alliance side, not only Scarlet Crusade. Alliance wants to get rid of Scarlet Crusade because SC wants to kill them too (besides Undead).
I have a reasonable hi-end system, and had Vista installed by default. Everything was ok, until I had to move my pc from one flat to the other. I didn't have cable internet so I had to connect via wlan. Then I found some interesting "feature". When playing WoW, every now and then (around 60 seconds) game lags for about 1.5 - 2 seconds. First, I thought it was some server problem but then I looked on the internet and saw great number of recent posts/articles about that lag which is affecting not only WoW, but every application that uses internet. Problem is this; Vista has a service which is used for configuration and connection to the wlan. That same service searches for new wireless connections every minute and causes a huge lag spike. That "feature" cannot be disabled, and if you stop the service, you cannont connect to wlan. Thing is though, when casually surfing the web you don't even notice it, but when playing any online game you notice it right away and the problem is so big you can't play under that conditions.
The only solution was to deinstall Vista and put XP. XP actually does the same thing as Vista every 60seconds, but it has separate services which can be stopped/disabled. So when you connect to your AP, you can disable Wireles Zero Configuration service and you will get no lag spikes. And one more good thing came out of installing XP. Everything is significantly faster. Higher frame rates, general windows responsiveness, much more available RAM, much faster boot and shut down time.
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I think it's save to say that if you don't like to fight mobs or players WoW probably isn't the game for you.
.. how boring!".
That is a false dilemma as I mentioned in one of my previous posts. And actually, I *like* killing mobs and especially players, but I *don't like* killing 15 million of mobs to get to level+1. Or to get a slightly upgraded gear.
what's the difference between leveling in WoW and doing the quest (some of them actually tell a good story!) and playing Max Payne or Quake or any other FPS game? You could say the exact same thing about them! "Oh, so you like to shoot X monsters
Well, one could draw a parallel between say Max Payne and leveling say warlock in WoW. You start in MP with a pistol and end with a AK-47 and other good weapons. The end. In WoW, you start with Shadow Bolt (Rank 1) and end up with Shadow Bolt (Rank 11) and level 70. But at level 70 you don't get THE END screen, you actually have all doors unlocked to pvp, farm, grind, raid, gank etc. And that ridiculously overdone attunement at lvl 70 is really amusing=)
There is no leveling in fps-s. Well, you could say that there is a single player mode in fps in which you could have quests (aka missions). True enough, but when you finish all the missions you end the (single player) game. But with mmorpg, you actually have a fully "developed" character and then (at top-level) you actually start playing the game. Another thing is that, when you see for the first time a (even a good) story, every other time you exactly know what will happen and you actually find it boring. Add to that endless grind and things become exponentially boring. I can't actually remember when I went and replayed a single player fps. It is just a waste of time. In WoW, the situation isn't different at all aside from other classes. So if you decide to see how a mage is played (in full his potential) you have to spend "few" weeks just to get that mage to level 70 and after that actually see the difference. But to be clear about this. I absolutely hate replaying the same content (aside from pvp) be it mmorpg or a fps. And I'm just steering away from grind based games in the present and future. Why there is no option that you can create level 70 characters when you have one (or even a few) leveled? Or to be able to create pvp only characters with best gear? But I know the answer. It is called money. Well, I voted with my money, no more grind for me.
Side remark: I absolutely find it ridiculous that serious pvp in WoW has big gear component in it. It is just grind grind and grind some more and when you get some decent pvp gear, then pvp. Ohh, there is a new patch with new Tier 84, so back to grind, grind and grind more to be "competitive" in pvp. Pathetic.
Take some fps for example. 1. Create character 2. Log on to a server 3. PvP with the same starting conditions. I haven't heard anyone actually complain about gear in say multiplayer UT.
Not really unfortunately.
When you level your character to top level, there are many (I'm a bit over romantic here;) options you can have. You can farm 5-man instances, 10-man, 25-man etc. You can pvp in 4 battlegrounds and 3 arenas. Or even go outside the main city and grief other people. Most people will tell you that at top level the wow game begins. And I agree with that. Everything is based and balanced around top-level end-game. It is in my opinion a bit pointless to level a character to top level and then quickly reroll another one because at that top level you get the most powerful spells, gear etc.
Leveling is unfortunately just a race to the top level because while leveling you get killed by other higher level players, quests are utterly mindless, repetitive and boring and while leveling you will probably have very bad gear.
And at that level of granularity, you can describe the entire game that way.
The game *is* a big grind. I really would like to be shown otherwise. Reality distortions fields really are powerful these days...
Then this is probably not your game.
I did quit. No need to reiterate the point.
Well you simply haven't tried then.
I did. And tried really hard to find something new on my other characters but I couldn't. Maybe you were busy grinding your stv wildlife and didn't have time to explore the whole map? Or are you playing on a RP server? I'm sure it can be loads of fun if you have some sort of imagination, but thankfully I played at the time on 3rd biggest eu pvp server.
as opposed to a chance to do something different you've actually made it more repetitive than it needs to be.
What "something different" are you talking about? Please tell me how do you do the quest a la "Kill 3 million of Undead Ravagers." could be done differently than killing 3 million of them? There is no "something different" in the game except for pvp (which I utterly love).
saying "logical fallacy" doesn't make something so
Actually it is called false dilemma fallacy. Look it up. Hint: love it or leave it.
Did you even have a point other than "I find the majority of WoW boring"?
Well, for a start I absolutely love wow pvp mechanics. The classes, spells, abilities, the actual gameplay etc. That is the pretty much only thing I was interested in. Everything other, including leveling, farming, grinding, and every other boring and mindless thing, were just necessary evil to do pvp. My playtime was something like this: 10% of pvp and 90% of latter. When my reality distortion field failed I quit. Read my other posts concerning this subject if you want to know what I really want from wow.
I'm just glad you like your grind in wow. One time in your life you'll probably want your wasted time back.
But go ahead, go grind, make my day.
You obviously don't catch my drift. I don't care about the difference in the cultists or wildlife in stv. You have to kill them by millions to get anything (gear or xp). A grind is a grind is a grind. And yes, *I hate both* of them. And sorry, even that pitiful tiger becomes old hat after you kill him for the first time.
I leveled multiple characters with almost completely orthogonal quests (...)Even when I leveled my third character I was going to zones and doing quests that I'd never done before.
I leveled all my characters doing the *same* bloody quests, doing the same damned zones. Why? Because you have to. If you don't, you have to grind even more mobs to get comparative xp. Don't pretend there is a variety or even a choice (aside from class quests, which really are a few) in doing quests/zones when leveling.
"If you don't like it, leave" is the right thing to do
And logical fallacies are generally considered valid arguments... You are playing WoW too much.
But what can I expect from someone arguing that playing through an entire game multiple times is more boring and repetitive than playing exactly one part of that game for the same amount of time.
Reread my post. But now you are just trolling. Go back to your cage.
But I want to play the the original classes casually. Is that so much to ask of them?
;)
I would kinda suck as a bard, and you can't kill people with a guitar (or a flute)
it comes in the form of quests where you go after -different- monsters
So you can tell me where one can find some other "versions" of King Bangalash? You missed my point. With all your characters you killed King Bangalash exactly the same number of times (or even more). How that can be fun? Or killing 3x30 of his "lesser" clones? I get bored to the tears.
I mean you're really comparing the wide variety of environments and tasks you're asked to do to level from 1-70, to the non-stop months-after-months killing of the exact same Cultist Camps in Silithus? And you're even saying leveling is worse? I really can't fathom.
Wow, what variety? There is no variety after you reroll another character. You do the *same* quests all over again. It is the same, killing cultists in Silithus or killing wildlife in Stranglethorn Vale. You have to grind them to obscene numbers. In defense of Silithus, at least those mobs respawn fast and the zone is much smaller so it is less painful to grind them. But, in my own defense, I only did the quests (for XP) in Silithus, never went for CC rep. And yes, I hate *all* forms of (mindless) grind*.
Because at least when you're leveling you're seeing the scenery change and actually gaining things at an appreciable rate.
I have to repeat myself. What changes in scenery? When you reroll, you see all the same zones, houses, trees, npcs, mobs, quests etc. There is *nothing* new you see or do. Well, maybe some class quests, but that could be a statistical anomaly.
If you can't see any difference between grinding and any form of gameplay that involves killing monsters
I actually *like* to kill monsters (players even more, but I digress), but not ten billions of them just to get to top level and actually start playing the game.
The question is, what made you think you'd ever like the game in the first place? It's clearly not your playstyle in any way shape or form.
Heh, nice straw man. Classic: if you don't like it, leave. Yeah, really powerful argument, frequently used on troll infested WoW forums. But this is slashdot, where trolls get flagged..., gah, nevermind.
*Redundant I know.
Well, is it so much to ask of Blizzard to just give some real casual content or just even a playing field for them?
To make myself clear, I liked playing my warlock, rogue, mage and druid. I always preferred pvp, but after hitting level 60 or 70 and doing battlegrounds after a while you just get bored or frustrated with another players who mow you down just because they have much much better gear than you. So how that could be solved? They should open special servers where everyone have basically the same gear. So that way you could log on, play a few matches, log off. No boring grind for better gear, consumables etc. And yes, it does sound like test realms. And I would pay for that, I just love WoW's pvp system so much.
I hear people on WoW complaining about "the grind" which to me is the best part. I like questing from 1 to 70. I like experiencing the story and still being able to play with friends if I want
The best part you say? So, and I'm not going to exaggerate here, you like to:
Go to place P and kill N number of mobs until you get M number of drops D?
Take item I and take it to the place P.
And doing that same old scheme for hundreds of times, doing the same quests with all your characters, killing the same mobs, going to the same places, talking to the same NPCs is the most exciting thing in the world after the War and Peace.
I don't want to insult you, but you really have to have and "exciting" real life if you consider WoW grind (no quotes) the best part of the game.
If they're going to start only catering to the "end-game" users
Who do you consider by "end-game" users? Level 70 characters or hard-core players who raid end-game (aka the most difficult instances)? I have no doubt in my mind that everyone would like to see more diverse end-game (as in top-level) content. Suitable to casual* and hard-core alike. But I kinda agree, Blizzard did in the whole history of WoW very little for real casual players.
* by casual I mean really casual, not "WoW-casual" who plays "only few hours a day".
Uh, yeah, I guess some people complain about the leveling "grind", but really WoW has one of the nicest leveling phases, replete with quests and things to do to fit a variety of playstyles.
What are you talking about? Are we playing the same game*? Leveling is the most boring part of the game period. Sure, leveling your first character can be fun, but with every other character you end up doing the same boring quests, killing the same monsters etc. And what play styles? There is only one play style when leveling. Grinding by killing monsters. Endless fun.
Not.
"The grind" that everyone complains about is the one you do after reaching the level cap.
Yes and no. The grind is omnipresent before and after level 70. No one can deny that.
Or remember when you got to go farm for cloth so that other people could get to run a raid instance? That's what people complain about.
They kinda complain about that but not as much 1-70 grind. It is horrible. But well, people complain about everything in WoW (many of those complaints do have merit though), but saying that leveling is great (as in fun) part of the game is like saying that working on the assembly line is the most interesting job in the world.
The leveling "grind" is great for casuals.
Yes it is a grind, and yes it the worst part of WoW.
* I did quit, before I ruined my life.
You make an excellent point about being annoyed spending X money on a game but only seeing just a part of it. And to illustrate your point further consider World of Warcraft.
You need about 10 full days (240 hours, even that is quite speedy, considerable greater time for a fresh gamer) just to level a character to lvl70 (and actually start the game) and then you have to grind/farm for weeks to get some poor gear.
Lets take an extreme (but realistic nevertheless) position now:
To even see the PvE end-game (funny though, that kind of game doesn't have an ending) you have to be in the best guild on the server (or even pay real money to transfer to another server and another guild) have best available equipment (months of farming in top guilds) etc. All that, just to see the endgame dungeon, boss, quest/storyline, weapon/whatever, you actually can't have a proper real life job. Even if you are spending whole days playing wow in your parent's basement it is very probable you won't see the the newest dungeon for a long time (couple of months at least).
Blizzard (creator of the game, or Vivendi, I don't care) collects monthly subscription from every gamer without regard how much time (if at all) he plays the game. Those are truckloads of money. One problem is this: I think big majority of gamers take WoW world to be very similar to real world (which is completely absurd considering it is created after all) so any new creative or otherwise additions are generally disregarded.
So what is my point then?
I always asked myself why Blizzard couldn't add some specific casual player content. Ideas like:
Instant max level characters with best gear available.
Some kind of extremely easy, 1-player "tourist mode" through every dungeon in the game etc.
No travel time between cities. No, or very few in-game money requirement etc.
What is the motivation for more special casual content?
Multi player games like Unreal Tournament etc. Start game, log on to UT network, find suitable server, play where starting conditions are the same for *everyone*. When you have to go or get bored, exit game. Repeat.
How would that be implemented?
They pretty much only have to open some "special" servers/realms (there are hundreds of "normal" ones) and let people play there.
Of course, quite a few hardcore gamers would complain with: "wtfzomg,i farmed instance X for months to get tis ultimate $sword_of_whatever, its not fair!11". But these are different servers, different "worlds".
To make things even more simple, those "special" servers are called test realms when new patch is coming out. You used to get a max geared, top-leveled character, and off you went playing on equal terms.
Those kind of suggestions were suggested quite a few times on official forums, but nobody bothered to even reply. Likewise, I won't be playing any mmo which hasn't those casual, quick game (but full blown) modes.
I understand what are you saying, although I just wanted to use a simple compression method I occasionally use when writing sms messages. On my mobile phone it is just as easy to enter normal text as is "CompressedText". So when you know you are going to write an sms longer than 160 characters (including spaces) you can compress the text as you write it (in real time) and by eliminating the the space characters you can gain quite a few additional words and pay only for one (instead or two) message.
aTxtSpkVrsionOfWikiShdFit8gbIFink
itsOnlyBecozPplRSchGrmmrNoobsTatTeyNid2Wste$
dudShdFilta2TxtspkB4HeCmpres
Fixed even more.
Don't think they are waves because they are too uniform and clustered. Moreover, if you scroll a bit to the SE from the linked position, you can see the buoys attached to the "lines".
That construction site really does look crazy though. If you follow the road from that location to the NE you can see some modern(?) central-planned building arrangement. (triangle, rhomboid, shaped city blocks)
At http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=3 8%C2%B049'4.40%22N+121%C2%B029'39.82%22E&ie=UTF8&t =k&om=1&ll=38.810315,121.48959&spn=0.003143,0.0050 21&z=18&iwloc=addr
(this is just a bit to the SW of the bay)
You can clearly see the white lines in the sea, which covers not so small area.
Anyone have an explanation?
My guess is some kind of nets but I'm not certain why so many of them.
I don't see a logic in that system:
Lets have a group of 10 people and the highest IQ of them all is 140.
so 140/10=14. Or we have a group of 3 people, with the highest IQ of 60 so the formula is:
60/3=20.
So by that logic, it would be preferable to be in the latter rather than former group. But I don't think it makes much sense, because I made a secret presumption that everyone in the first group (except the guy with IQ of 140) has IQ of 139.
To be fair, search in Vista is just reused Windows Desktop Search http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/def ault.mspx for Windows XP. I guess it was made at the height of the desktop (indexing) search tools "wars". I actually found it to be very well made.
And yes, you can run programs with it the same way. Different key shortcut though.
Yes, I use Vista and XP.
I can only affirm your WoW example.
Take WoW forums for example. Fanboy's and troll's wet dream. Every constructive suggestion is promptly flamed by trolls and fanboys. Even Blizzard's own Community Managers cater to fanboys and propagate this phenomena. It is music to your ego when everybody tells nice things about you. This is just one of the reasons why those forums are completely devoid of any good information or argumentation.
On what roads? Romania?
Take a look here:
http://www.topgear.com/content/carsurvey/2006/
and
http://www.reliabilityindex.co.uk/
See how Mercedes fares versus Toyota.
Mercedes is a long way from what it used to be.
The previous model of Smart got barely three stars(http://www.crash-test.org/marques/resultat.
And the Smart's handling. Pathetic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfguxvWPRZE
So what are the benefits of Yaris over Smart?
Much better gear changing.
More powerful engines.
Better handling.
Better safety. (5 star rating against 3, great difference)
Better acceleration, deceleration, greater top speed.
Alcatraz was a leisure island compared to todays supermax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermax prisons. I would rather die than rot in one.
The only time I watched McCain live (I'm from Europe) was when he was questioning in front of some committee some US general who reported torture in Abu Ghraib. His line of argument was typical bullshit: prisoners are not POWs so then don't have rights provided by Geneva convention. And to logically conclude the argument; torture (aka methods of interrogation) is not unaccepted. He attacked the guy like he was a damned enemy of the army or people. And all that coming from a guy who was presumably tortured in a war...
I don't think he is no more better than gwb for that matter.
There are thousands of good ideas how to get PvP going in WoW, but Blizzard is so reluctant to introduce any of them it is beyond comprehension. Unfortunately pvp in wow becomes boring fast and this is just because of no really diverse content. They have so rich gaming population, relatively huge virtual world, they could do there nothing short of miracles in gaming, but what gamers get: "Hey we created new Tier666 armor set, and we added a dungeon where 2% of server population can get, and oh btw, we added a new ultra rare mount for 'everyone'. And don't forget a 'new' arena." It is just pathetic.
Well, explain then what is going in Undercity? Undead torturing and experimenting on humans. That is not evil in any way?
And what is going on with those Undead lunatics who want to kill all humans? (hint: plaguelands) Undead want to kill everyone on Alliance side, not only Scarlet Crusade. Alliance wants to get rid of Scarlet Crusade because SC wants to kill them too (besides Undead).
I have a reasonable hi-end system, and had Vista installed by default. Everything was ok, until I had to move my pc from one flat to the other. I didn't have cable internet so I had to connect via wlan. Then I found some interesting "feature". When playing WoW, every now and then (around 60 seconds) game lags for about 1.5 - 2 seconds. First, I thought it was some server problem but then I looked on the internet and saw great number of recent posts/articles about that lag which is affecting not only WoW, but every application that uses internet. Problem is this; Vista has a service which is used for configuration and connection to the wlan. That same service searches for new wireless connections every minute and causes a huge lag spike. That "feature" cannot be disabled, and if you stop the service, you cannont connect to wlan. Thing is though, when casually surfing the web you don't even notice it, but when playing any online game you notice it right away and the problem is so big you can't play under that conditions.
The only solution was to deinstall Vista and put XP. XP actually does the same thing as Vista every 60seconds, but it has separate services which can be stopped/disabled. So when you connect to your AP, you can disable Wireles Zero Configuration service and you will get no lag spikes. And one more good thing came out of installing XP. Everything is significantly faster. Higher frame rates, general windows responsiveness, much more available RAM, much faster boot and shut down time.