Standing on the brink...of WoW!
polycounter lvl 17
It's been a hot topic for awhile now, WoW, it's notoriety and addictive-as-crack qualities. I recently saw that the price had gone down to $20, so I purchased it, after avoiding it since initial release. I'm going to install it and start playing in the next week, perhaps even tomorrow.
Who here has played it? what did you think compared to other MMOs? Were you addicted? Who here is still playing it?
Who here has played it? what did you think compared to other MMOs? Were you addicted? Who here is still playing it?
Replies
I recently saw that the price had gone down to $20
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Typical pusher tactic: hand out your stuff like candy on Halloween to get the kids hooked. Up with hope, DOWN with dope... er, I mean addictive MMORPGs. Just say "NO!"
However I was just bored by it, because the game mechanics weren't enough to keep me playing. It all got very monotonous eventually.
is much better with friends, especially RL ones.
now.. some advice from being on the RECIEVING end of things..
just dont let it get to the point that you are more committed to your raid party than you REAL life..
and escapism is all well and good but dont forget that communicating in real life is important too..
I've been playing off and on since the friends and family alpha, and its only gotten bad once. For a month or two I was at the point where I was working 10-12 hours a day then playing for 6-8 hours and sleeping 4-6 hours. That literally went on for a month and a half before I even realized what I was doing to myself.
But omfg my guild needed me for Blackwing Lair and AQ40!
I cancelled my account for 3 months or so and then recently started playing again, although much more casually, and with my roomate and some good friends. We started a guild and are working through the end game content, and it's soooo much more fun with friends. Plus, we often cancel a raid and go out to the bar, and that helps keep the game in perspective.
When I got a job I grabbed a copy of WoW to celebrate. Played it for a 3-4 hours a day for the first month or so, then just on the weekends, then not at all. Lost interest pretty quickly, now I might only play a few days a month.
But on the other hand I have mates who play it as hardcore as I did for the first month.
Just make sure you've got the time and cash to play it and it's cool. I'll generaly only play now if I realy don't feel like doing any art and I've got a lot of spare time on my hands.
Each class has like 3 valid skillpoint combos. And gear wise you cant make any decisions, its just like sword A is better than B, now shut up and use A or be handicapped.
Oh, and to be good in PvP you must grind raid dungeons for a year. Otherwise the cool kid with uber gear will just own you and you cant do anything about it.
go for it! all the hype about "addictiveness" is silly. just like with any hot game, make sure to balance it with real life and enjoy it as much as you want without feeling guilty.
I think there is great dose of inspiration, artist can take.
Gameplay- 1 percent is running, 99% is killing mobs.
that's boring.
My opinion now about the game: it's great when u start it. I never played a MMORPG before it so it was completly new experience to me, lots of space to explore, play quests with real people and a great visual style.
After a few time on it, i was getting the felling it wasn't that cool; the new spaces to explore weren't that many neither that new (i'd love to see it with alot more epic felling and differences between each area), quests were most of the time the same shit.... and the biggest critic is: the whole game is focoused on farming mode! farming mode is necessary to give the players an excuse to play so much time, but for me after reach lvl60, provided that you are in a good guild, you will just farm the same whole instance again and again and again...
I can't stand that you can easily see the whole world of WoW, there are no new places after a while, there are no new experiences. Not to mention that you don't have a single unique moment during the whole game, i'd love to see a few scripted actions to make it look more alive.
Other big critic is that the war between aliance vs horde is not even 5% used.
And the last critic i remember now is that i hate how is the players that have to wait for more updates to keep playing it, and not the new updates that come first. I mean, just after you farmed BWL for several months you got AQ... and then wait alot more for a single new instance... completly kills the epic felling...
I miss my subscription.
I've played and enjoyed a few mmorpgs before, but this one just didn't do it for me. Too many people jumping around trying to kill the same damn boar ten times, the graphics really didn't do it for me and I didn't see why people were calling it beautiful. Granted, I only played it the one day, but I played it for quite a bit, thinking it would get better once I left the beginning kiddie area. It didn't.
Bah to wow!
Ive been trying to get into some other MMOs but none have hooked me as much. I m currently playing ArchLord, FF XI, GuildWars, and have EQ2 but havent installed it yet.
- BoBo
/ffxirant
FFXI is pretty much doomed because SquareEnix has mismanaged the game for so long, refusing to fix, in a timely manner, the enormous amount of horrific design flaws present in the game, that pretty much the only people left playing the game are the cheating botters, sadistic/masochistic japanophiles, RMT (gilsellers) and the scattered clusters of friends unwilling to let go (I was in this category).
The reason why FFXI has such a strong community is people don't want to deal with the overwhelming amount of crap alone, so strong bonds of friendship are formed in the game because of the trials and tribulations endured with one another; that's the only reason the FFXI servers are still up. "Let's be miserable... together" would have been an accurate marketing slogan.
FFXI is the epitome of wasted potential; a beautiful game ruined by poor management and a lack of genre design/comprehension. A gold ring in the snout of a pig, if you will.
I used to be a stalwart SquareEnix and Final Fantasy fan, but after their consistant and arrogant refusal to invest the minimal effort to interact with their international FFXI community and address the problems with the game, I absolutely loathe the company and refuse to purchase any of their products ever again.
/endrant
I might jump into Burning Crusade with some of my FFXI friends, but I dunno... I really want to play a Blood Elf paladin!
and a nice little look at the enviromental procese for Silvermoon City.
The Short:
I like it, its fun, my wife and friends play. I've played long enough to have a fairly wide range of characters making me a swiss army knife. Whatca need? I can bring it, I love that.
The Long:
Cons:
- The immersion factor isn't as high as I would like it to be, mind you no MMO to date is as immers as I want one to be. If some NPC guy who wanders around town asks me for spare change I should be able to give him spare change. There is some crazy lady that complains about fetching water but where does this water come from and why does she in fact never "fetch any water".
- Why is it that some of the "high end content" is some of the most boaring? Look at Molten Core with the exception of Ragnaross its a big dull cave with some lava. Just like all the other caves only with the monster scales set to 400% instead of the standard 200%. There are bosses you fight you can easilly get them confused and think you need to do one thing when you should do something else because the boss looks the freakin same. Would it hurt to change up the cave textures and toss in a few new never before seen models? Would it hurt to make the lairs actual lairs instead of a corner the boss just stands in?
- Some of the faction grinding for peanuts isn't fun at all.
- The visuals are really starting to show thier age. Its nice that the cater to the lowest common system spec to garner to most players possible, but lets be real about the hardware that is out there and what it can do. It's ok to have crowds of people that scale with the hardware a user has so it doesn't feel like the entire population is hanging around the mailbox.
- Dyeable armor can be done with WoW just like the armor in Dawn of War however Bliz's set answer is "we would need a texture for each color which would make the game too big!" yes it would, if this where 1995. Not everyone is keen about a game being able to buy DYE from a vendor and be able to change the color of armor.
- Que times for Battle Grounds, on my server are 1-2hrs and most battles are over in 10-20min. It would be great to que one of your players and be able to play another while waiting.
Pros:
- I can't say enough about the guild I'm in. Its a great group of people who put family and fun before WoW. Its not uncommon for someone to ask to take a break so they can put thier kids to bed or check up on them. Most of us are couples who know each other in the real world and don't get a chance to see each other on a weekly basis. I also get to catch up with my brother who lives a state away. We have a raid as much as you want too policy and never have trouble filling raids. We do most of the 20man raid content and have alliances with other guilds if memebers want to run the 40 man stuff. There is something that becomes unfriendly about the numbers a guild needs to consistantly run the 40 man content and the pressure it puts on certain people to manage and maintain those runs. Thankfully Blizzard is taking care of that and limiting the new raids to 25 man. Which is the magic number for guilds to be friendly and not eat themselves alive with management and drama.
- It's warcraft and I love it, there is no end to the humor they put in the game and the tie-ins to old games and other things related to dorks such as myself.
- I like where they have taken the game somethings have worked others haven't but overall the direction they are moving is is good.
- Blizzard is very responsive to its player base but doesn't cater to the whims of the vocal few.
- The game can pretty much be solo'ed at your leasure. I have done it with 4 characters to 60 and almost all of that leveling was on my own just exploring and having fun.
- Getting a group together is more of a social event than a quest requirement.
- I like the special events in WoW, like right now is Hallows End and the Dark Moon Fair just left town last week and will be back.
Speaking of ... I agree, the faction grind is silly. The mitigating factor is, you don't need to do it. I don't know how some people can stand to focus on it. The higher-rep rewards tend to look good-ish, but a piece of gear needs to be blindingly purple to keep me killing the same mobs over and over for a week of /played.
At the same time ... I'm still happily running Strat and Scholo over and over to finish my warlock's Dreadmist set. This is only marginally more interesting than a flat-out faction grind but I'm doing it in order to continue onto the Tier 0.5 gear quests. I really dig the epic-length questlines and wish there were more of them! I've almost got my dreadsteed, too! Wewt!
The cross-server Battlegrounds should reduce wait time considerably. None of my three 60s are geared well enough to compete in their bracket so I haven't done BG for awhile, but I fought in the 50s brackets for a month and was getting into AB and WSG almost instantly. 'Course, I'm Horde Fo' Life and our queue times were pretty short even before cross-server Battlegrounds.
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4069&Itemid=2
I don't play, but releasing an expansion a full two years after launch is very bad in my book.
I don't think I'll be getting burning crusade though. It would depend on if I'm able to get a character to a high enough level to enjoy the content that they are selling in it. It really sucks when they put all the 'cool' content and items all at the end. Doesn't really encourage people to really try to get there when they have to spend 80% of the time with boring junk.
I was in the best physical condition of my life before I started playing WOW. Now...I'm back to the physical fitness grind. My WOW collector's addition is now a piece of art in my computer room rather than an addiction that keeps me up till the wee hours of the morning or away from my family. Grinding for a virtual loin cloth of chromaticly tempered wyrm egg scrambling (to give you an extra +5 defense) should never take priority over the rest of your life.