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The state of WoW (Where are we now?)
Gnomeland Security
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So here i sit on AV weekend... watching 20 people sit afk in the tunnel behind me (atleast i afk after galv) and im starting to wonder what lies ahead for World of Warcraft.
This is the first serious MMO that ive played or shall i say put serious time into. I did the SWG thing, played some AC, and ran screaming from EQ, but WoW has really held my interest for over 2 years now and that seems to be amazing in itself.
But, now... as time rolls on, ive come to a realization of a pre-existing cycle with in the WoW community or maybe the MMO world in and of itself. Will try to make the post short, but am looking for some serious feedback outside of the WoW L2PLAY!!! kiddies.
There are 2 trends that ive noticed and im wondering if this is a standard progression of things or something unique and native to Warcraft.
1. Expansion = Its all about the alts
I am in a raid guild who was working on Kael at the time of Blizzcon. With the announcement of WotLK, the desire/drive to raid for many has faded as they flee to go level up alts to 70 and prepare for the next grind. This surprised me because the expansion is over a year away, but people already seem to display the whole *whats the point of raiding?* attitude. I wonder if blizzard shoots themself in the food by taking such huge jumps or does a playerbase naturally shift to this. I remember pre-BC pretty much the last 3 months before the expansion was all about PVP, grinding honor, and gearing alts. Now, i really hope that trend doesnt repeat itself.
2. WoW = all about PvP now.
The community and development in general seems to be centered around the PvP or Arena scene now. Issues of balance, player grouping and builds seem to focus on the arena content and PvP aspect of the game FAR more than it ever did. PvE has almost been thrown at the side of the road as developers and players alike both constantly make their worlds revolve around PVP. Im not sure this is for me. Yes, i grinding my honor points for gear and yes i have a 1900 point arena team, but i dont find the hours of enjoyment in it that i do from raiding. I was under the impression that Warcraft was a PVE game with pvp on the side. Now, its very player combat centric with the *oh ya, we have raiding too* attitude.
I understand that a vast amount of players are involved in the arena and pvp system so this denotes the focus of the developers, but i also understand pure PVP games are a dime a dozen. Whats the difference now between guildwars and warhammer which largely focus on pvp? Well, i guess to correct myself i should note that some people have cited the emergence of Warhammer is the reason for WOW's change in focus. But, and this is what i think escapes everyone, if a game is just all about pvp, dont people get bored and move on? I know this has been a past trend in games like UO and other skill based set games where after a year everyone starts to look the same and it will all come down to player skill/tactics.
Seriously, what happens when everyone is wearing the same tier arena gear and wielding arena weapons? People's desire to play dries up and they go find something else to do.
I, personally, have already noticed myself playing my xbox again and spending less time on WoW. Is WoW just not for me anymore in the direction it is going? Or is this the natural progression of MMOs? I guess that is the heart of the question... does anyone else feel this way?
This is the first serious MMO that ive played or shall i say put serious time into. I did the SWG thing, played some AC, and ran screaming from EQ, but WoW has really held my interest for over 2 years now and that seems to be amazing in itself.
But, now... as time rolls on, ive come to a realization of a pre-existing cycle with in the WoW community or maybe the MMO world in and of itself. Will try to make the post short, but am looking for some serious feedback outside of the WoW L2PLAY!!! kiddies.
There are 2 trends that ive noticed and im wondering if this is a standard progression of things or something unique and native to Warcraft.
1. Expansion = Its all about the alts
I am in a raid guild who was working on Kael at the time of Blizzcon. With the announcement of WotLK, the desire/drive to raid for many has faded as they flee to go level up alts to 70 and prepare for the next grind. This surprised me because the expansion is over a year away, but people already seem to display the whole *whats the point of raiding?* attitude. I wonder if blizzard shoots themself in the food by taking such huge jumps or does a playerbase naturally shift to this. I remember pre-BC pretty much the last 3 months before the expansion was all about PVP, grinding honor, and gearing alts. Now, i really hope that trend doesnt repeat itself.
2. WoW = all about PvP now.
The community and development in general seems to be centered around the PvP or Arena scene now. Issues of balance, player grouping and builds seem to focus on the arena content and PvP aspect of the game FAR more than it ever did. PvE has almost been thrown at the side of the road as developers and players alike both constantly make their worlds revolve around PVP. Im not sure this is for me. Yes, i grinding my honor points for gear and yes i have a 1900 point arena team, but i dont find the hours of enjoyment in it that i do from raiding. I was under the impression that Warcraft was a PVE game with pvp on the side. Now, its very player combat centric with the *oh ya, we have raiding too* attitude.
I understand that a vast amount of players are involved in the arena and pvp system so this denotes the focus of the developers, but i also understand pure PVP games are a dime a dozen. Whats the difference now between guildwars and warhammer which largely focus on pvp? Well, i guess to correct myself i should note that some people have cited the emergence of Warhammer is the reason for WOW's change in focus. But, and this is what i think escapes everyone, if a game is just all about pvp, dont people get bored and move on? I know this has been a past trend in games like UO and other skill based set games where after a year everyone starts to look the same and it will all come down to player skill/tactics.
Seriously, what happens when everyone is wearing the same tier arena gear and wielding arena weapons? People's desire to play dries up and they go find something else to do.
I, personally, have already noticed myself playing my xbox again and spending less time on WoW. Is WoW just not for me anymore in the direction it is going? Or is this the natural progression of MMOs? I guess that is the heart of the question... does anyone else feel this way?
Gnomeland Security on
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Of course, this begs the question of why you should spend hours upon hours grinding a raid, when it's not any fun to do. The game makes you chase a MacGuffin--doing something that isn't actually fun--over and over again, so that... what? You can do something else that isn't actually fun over and over again in order to get the next MacGuffin.
It's a really terrible game, and one where you spend upwards of 3/4ths of your time not playing, but waiting. What the hell kind of game makes you sit on your ass and wait for most of the game? That's not fun. I could be doing that at the goddamn DMV, for fuck's sake, and they wouldn't even charge me a monthly fee for it (or $50 entry, either).
PvP at least offers some rare and original encounters every now and then
But I stopped playing a year ago, so I don't know
there are SO many cookie cutter teams with standard smash and grab tactics...
i mean wash rinse repeat kind of bad
oh look... another cookie cutter 23/38 Lock + shadow priest... Fear, dot, drain mana drain mana, drain life drain life, LOS LOS
Thats kind of why i hate the PVP portion of the game... everyone is wearing the same gear, using the same builds, and relying on the same tactics
Thats not a game... thats some type of Line-production assembly opperation
Its like tetris... just stuff never moves faster
:^:
WoW is terrible these days.
Then of course, Warhammer will come and it'll be great.
The WoW experience is kind of ruined because of the hardcore players. It's very difficult to casually play it.
I hate to abuse a thread my moving a moved thread, but we have a MMO subforum...
猿も木から落ちる
You're right about that. Even if the people are honor grinding it doesn't do much for you either... Only allows access to even more loot.
But it keeps people occupied I suppose. It's better than cocaine. I think.
We also have a lot of threads about this sort of thing...
Raids are generally focused on forced specs (generally specs that people don't enjoy playing, although some people love going prot / resto / holy / PvE daggers / whatever), forced attendance (you must make X% of raids to be in this guild!) and playing with people you don't know particularly well in order to get loot. Now, that isn't every guild, but the "I don't really like or know most of you, but I like a few of you and we all want gear" guild is far more common than the "we're a group of 30 very close friends who all love each other and raid together."
Arenas top out at 10 people, I can easily be on a first-name basis with 9 other people in an arena team. The primary measure of importance for an arena player is adaptability, reaction time, and general skill. Sure, arena teams have attendance issues and spec issues and gear issues, but I find those are primary factors in PvE guilds and secondary factors in PvP groups.
I'd be happier with raids in WoW if they focused more on 10 man content similar to Karazhan. I love doing weird encounters (Big Bad Wolf, Shade of Aran, Netherspite) with friends, I'm not really keen on doing similar 25-man encounters with 9 friends and 15 people I don't know or can't stand. It's really about the time requirement and the forced group size, and it seems that 5 and 10 man content (in the form of PvP and Karazhan) is more popular than 25 man content, which I believe is why you're seeing raiding guilds stutter.
Perhaps it's a sign that WoW is moving in the right direction, not the wrong direction. If all it takes for a raiding guild to break up is "the gear you're getting from this raid won't be useful in a year," then the only long-term incentive to continue with that raid progression is entertainment and friendship. I don't really see it as a game flaw that people switch from doing content they tolerate to content they enjoy.
Yes, i like(ed) raiding because of the encounters and storylines. It was different. I think story line, progression, achievement, accomplihsment, and yes GEAR drove raiding.
But you're right (whoever said it) they took the carrot away when they made Epic gear Easy to get through any means. You grind raid gear to raid more... Arena gear is easier to get and if you dont like arenaing, why play?
I like my characters, i liked some of the fights, and i like my guild... but no, i do not like what wow has become
Fair enough, I thought. I can make it to level 70 and just do Karazhan. But then WoTLK was announced, and with no hesitation I cancelled payment.
I'm a casual player, and I don't think I'd be doing any instances, just grindin' all day. So yeah, I think Blizzard have screwed up, not only for the casual players, but for themselves too. I'm sure they'll earn massive profit from the new expansion, but I'm also sure that if there's an employee with a good soul in that company, he's crying himself to sleep.
I do miss fiddling with my UI though
Bail the fuck out.
Games, even MMO's have to have endings. There has to be a point where a player can say to themselves "I am satisfied with my characters progress, now I can devote time to other aspects of the game, or I can take a break and move to another game".
World of Warcraft has no other aspects, it is just combat. The crafting system is a complete joke, as are the gathering systems.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
It sort of was like that for a bit, even on PVE servers, I played on both. Then gradually it became more and more constrained. Don't get me wrong, I liked the BGs/Arenas, or at least the idea, but their addition seemed to negatively influence the incidence of world PVP. This change over the 26 months or so I played really started to suck the fun out of things. It was like Blizzard was saying - we like PVP, but only in tightly constrained, instanced situations, and if you must pvp outside of that, we won't really try and develop it.
"This shit's going to be meaningless next expansion, so why bother?" That shit's meaningless from the get-go, son. It's just shit online that you don't even actually own. If you didn't enjoy getting it, then you wasted your time.
"Games have to have endings." No, they don't. The game doesn't need an explicit "YOU WIN" screen for you to accept that you've finished the game, and in fact, many games have such a screen BEFORE you've actually "finished" the game. See: four out of five console RPGs where there's a ton of shit for you to do and collect, aside from the actual goal of the game. Some players want to be keep on raiding, and would rather continue onto new content, than just sit around in Black Temple with their thumbs up their asses one-shotting every boss. What difference does it make to you what they do? Just pretend there's nothing past Magtheridon's Lair. BAM! Game completed. I can't fucking believe that people would criticize a game for always having a new challenge past the horizon. Isn't that the sort of shit people WANT?
"Every guild's disbanding because of the expansion." No. YOUR guild is. Mine is full of mostly cool people who enjoy raiding for raiding's sake. Just because you hang out with people with some kind of fuckwitted sense of priority, doesn't mean it's the game's fault.
I really can't see any reason why World of Warcraft garners such intense, seething hatred, beyond the fact that it's just plain popular. It did things right in MMOs for once, and for that, it deserves the full brunt of your rage. It's might not be a huge innovator (it really is, though, if you are willing to look at it in the right way), but that doesn't make it a terrible game.
Battlegrounds at 70 are now pretty much nothing but semi-required waiting lines for you to get gear to fill out the gaps that Arena stuff leaves behind. Having fun in a casual pug for AB or WSG is pretty much impossible, because you're either usually totally outclassed in gear or facing a premade who will just stomp you into the mud. Then of course there's AV, which is basically a 40-man raid that has to be done with 10-15 people due to all the AFKers.
I mean, even if I lost every BG I fought in, it was worth it if the actual experience was fun. But if you can't actually do anything (keep anyone alive or kill anyone) due to gear discrepancies, then it just loses its luster.
I get the feeling that Blizzard's going to eventually grind more and more people out of the game entirely. I wonder how the Chinese will take it, since TBC came out only a few months ago there, and they make up the vast majority of the much-vaunted "9 million".
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Seems like the type of guy who respecs the most popular/common spec for his Warlock, Rogue, Paladin, and Shaman(who has been retired), Raids, PVPs, and does everything. And seeing an upgrade for his gear that's only slightly better is the highlight of his day.
In other words: Blizzard's target demographic.
Exactly. What's the fucking point? Before 60(and now 70), Battlegrounds were fun. Premades are rare unless they're twink parties(and past 39 you barely have to worry) and for the most part people just have fun and are generally nice people.
Max level Battlegrounds devolve into yelling at the flag carrier(who's a blithering idiot who thinks it's a good idea to run outside and fight THEIR flag carrier...) or yelling at everyone that it's their fault the Farm got taken.
I don't consider AV to be PVP. It's basically just 40 guys signing up, so 10-15 of them can stand at the bridge and MAYBE PVP until they get bored and sneak around to win.
My biggest problem is that the more casual you become, the less Blizzard has for you to do.
Hardcore? Raids! Raids raids raids raids raids! About 700 goddamn raids, heroics, or whatever.
Less Hardcore? PVP! Arena! Yay!
Casual? Instances. Maybe a Karazhan run once in a while I guess, maybe. Probably not though.
More casual? Fuck you. Go grind something so your grinding is easier. We don't fucking care.
Yeah.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Yeah.
Well.
With the exception of AV before people just started zerging it in 3 minutes. That was the only good PVP experience WoW had to offer.
Extinct.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
What really irks me is that low-level content is almost never introduced. We're not all level 70, we don't all plan to be level 70. Why not add some more instances, and some new areas? The new expansion coming out gives us a...level 70 area. Thanks, Blizzard.
Because generally WoW PvPers are horrible.
You know why premades stomp everyone else? Because in a pug, everybody runs towards the nearest enemy and attacks. They die, respawn, rinse repeat. Almost nobody plays defense, or escorts flag carriers, most ab games that start out well end up with 10 people in the enemy's graveyard while I defend one node and the other 4 get capped.
Well, also the fact that 3 out of 4 premades are raiding guilds decked out in high end gear.
That said, the majority of matches are still fun. When it stops being that way for me, there isnt much else keeping me there.
Oh hey, yeah, cool. Let's dismiss somebody's entire fucking post with two sentences claiming that they're the exact fucking opposite of what they wrote.
Why are you even in this thread? It's just become a circle-jerk of "OMG I DON'T LIKE WOW SO IT'S THE WORST GAME EVER UNF UNF UNF UNF UNF." Congratulations. You don't like a game. Get over it.
[edit]Actually, make that: why does this thread even still exist?
You have a very clear idea of what went wrong in a 10 man, when in a 25 man it sometimes "just doesn't work"
They added amazingly good 1-23 content, for horde anyway.
All the good gear comes from raiding (where classes and people constantly fight over loot) and battlegrounds (where you have to have hundreds of gold to make a twink, and have to play for hours and hours to reap any reward from)
PVP gear is easily on par with raiding stuff, and you dont have to roll against your friends for it. And since youre talking about raiding gear, you must also be talking about level 70 pvp gear. People dont spend hundreds of gold twinking for 70's. One could argue that at 70, theres no such thing as twinking.
I do arena once a week, havent been in an instance since getting level 70, I do battleground MAYBE 5 hours a week and I have season 1 gladiator shoulders and two pvp epics (sergeants cloak and veterans boots). Thats after a month of half-assing it. I did av the other day for a couple hours (its double av honor weekend) and got 5,000 honor. Thats halfway to another pvp epic. If I had felt like it, I could have played 10 hours a day all weekend and got 3-4 new pieces of gear. I know you cant do that raiding.
I'm the definition of a casual wow player. I am ok knowing that I will be consistently outgeared by people who spend a lot more time playing than I do. On rare occasions, I completely destroy these people 1v1 because they spend all their time raiding and I spend all my time in pvp, so I can outplay them. It would be nice to assume that they should expect that, but of course, since they spend all that time "working" for their gear, it should allow them to dominate every aspect of the game. People don't realize why this doesnt work.
I have 3 pieces of 70 pvp gear. I have 74 resilience. That isnt going to tip the scales heavily in my favor. Until last week I was still wearing two pieces of level 60 high warlord gear. I still have at least two pieces of green armor. Hell, people in full raiding gear who do arena and get a season 2 weapon get more of a bonus from it than I do from my stuff. The point is, I spend more time pvping than they do, and I learn from it. Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule.
I think most people do know their pve equip is bad for pvp, so the thought that they should be dominating pvp with pvp equip is mostly nonexistent in most pve players :P
And or course low-level content is not going to be updated much
WoW practically STARTS at the level cap. Of course leveling up your first char might take up quite long, but the second one will be going so fast you'll wonder how it could ever take you so long
My first high level char ever was 1-60 in 18 days
My second one was 1-70 in 8 or so
Yeah, a lot of people dont realize its a whole different game at 70. I think a lot of raiders are complaining because theyre starting to realize they need to get the pvp gear anyway once they start doing arena and such. Of course, having tier 5/6 is a huge help when you start pvping.
Its not that, to be considered a *wow player* you have to excel in all aspects of the game
Heroics, Raids, Pvp, Arena, etc... hell, even CRAFTING to get access to the correct equipment options for certain classes
The problem is: none of it matters. The kael fight is beyond annoying. If you have ever wiped 19 minutes into a 20+ minute fight, you will know what i mean. Words... do not do it justice.
And thats how Raid wow has become. Long drawn out tactical fights that burn people out. So the question is asked... Why?
I think thats what people are sitting there and wondering
the game needs to be FUN again, not progression... maybe WotLK looming over us has put a shadow on the motivation to waste 4 hours wiping on a boss everyone says its gonna take us weeks to learn
Maybe im just lost
I'm pretty sure I didn't say 10 hour AV's.
I said, in effect, "not 3 minute AV's"
Believe it or not there exists something between those two extremes.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Yeah, the 70 mage I play and the Warrior I'm having a fucking blast playing sure shows how much I hate this piece of shit game. God, I hate it so much I've been feeling terrible over neglecting my Druid and Paladin. Man what a prick I am to shit all over this game I never played.
Or have you not seen me posting all over this fucking forum, talking about WoW in a positive manner?
Defend provocative, opinion based arguments - Check
Call someone else out for making their own opinion based arguments - Check
Call for the thread to be locked as to reduce the odds of a reply - Check
OK Garthor. You have demonstrated that your fanboy-ism is the word of the heavens and that we must not only respect your opinions but inscribe them upon the fabric of our society and actively seek to purge all opposing points of view.
You can stop posting now. We get it.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other