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The state of WoW (Where are we now?)
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it doesn't help that arena isn't a lot of fun to me so I don't even do it much
grumble grumble
Not quite true. The S2 spell damage mace is about as perfect a Paladin tanking weapon as one could want.
So what you're saying is that I should still be wielding a Vindicator's Brand in my mainhand, because Blizzard's itemization sucks donkey balls, and their RNG hates me?
The weapons are clearly the biggest thing for a small number of classes, and very useful for most in some capacity or another, but if S3 really is on par with T6 but just has some of the stats 'wasted' (in PVE terms) on Resilience, it may rapidly become untrue that the PVP sets will be 'useless for PVE'.
I mean, if you're still walking around in partial T4, just how much worse off could you be in some rocking Vicious McMerciless Gladiator's Armour of Dark and Twisted Doom? No, the itemization isn't identical, but it's not so far off that if they keep giving the arenas an armour and weapon upgrade every season, while most of the raiders are at least 1-2 seasons behind (WoWJutsu, 98% of the raid crews out there are still struggling with T4 and early T5 content), they're not far from creating the exact opposite of the disparity that existed pre-TBC: raiders "forced" to pvp in order to raid (at their most effective/maximum potential).
All the raiding gear I'd accumulated was trumped by items that anyone can get by running a few 5 mans.
I think that the gear progression curve needed to be smaller. I wouldn't raid anymore. A new expansion looms and now people know that whatever they have been working on getting will be next to useless when the expansion comes out. There's no motivation to get gear when it'll be outclassed and outdated in a couple weeks.
just my 2cp
I think my friend's guild really showed me just how the wow community works
She played with them up through kara on her warlock/mage as she was needed then stopped when she got busy durring the summer. They were ok with this and all left on good terms with the intention of readding her when the fall started. This was a guild she was with for 2 years!
She comes back 2 weeks ago and re-apps with her old guild cause thats where her friends are. Ok fine. Guess what? They tell her they now require 1000 spell damage on all DPS apps AND BT key is required since they only do BT/Hyjal.
Well.... do you know how BT attunment works?
4 parts i can think of atm
1. Heroic Arc (ok easy)
2. Fathomlord (SSC 4th boss)
3. Al'ar kill in costume (TK 1st boss)
4. Mt Hyjal 1st boss (requires both vials to get into MH!)
Her guild has since quit clearing SSC and TK. What is there to do? Both vials require you to kill kael and Vashj. Raid attunment requiring raid content just SCREAMS elitism and sets the table for guild poaching. It divides the haves and have nots to the point of classism and sets up an artifical hegemony. (sp)
Furthermore, this 1k spell damage requirement seems to be another raid-based itemization.
Im not that knowledgeable on gear, but standard faction gear + heroic gear + Spellfire/frozen shadoweave + Spellstrike = 800 at best?
Correct me if im wrong on the last part
Specifically for mages, im thinking the Blade from HH faction + spellfire + spellstrike
Obviously WOW couldn't be converted directly to hardcore, even on a PVE server. But hardcore mode, even in D2 killed the "arms race" and even "gear inflation" because you couldnt keep accumulating gear without risk... sooner or later, you WOULD die and lose everything. Well in D2 you can have someone collect your corpse unless you died in a retarded spot, but you still lost the bank and backpack, etc. The basic idea I want here is that a game will eventually reach an equilibrium... truly hardcore players in WOW would actually be able to DO MC... but you never ever ever would take it for granted... I don't think that even Geddon would fly in hardcore though, let alone Vael, LOL! But point being, 40 people COULD do MC in hardcore mode (BWL? not sure about that...ZG? hmm Id say so, post nerf; at its release, no way, AQ... in hardcore, i wouldnt touch that place with a 500 foot pole!)... and they would be truly elite. Meanwhile, less skilled players would enjoy lower level instances which would have a completely new aspect of danger and mystery.
In short, instead of the entire game being solved, explored, exploited, and farmed, each new dungeon is a true adventure.
BTW, D/Led the trial of EVE, as suggested. Im not into it yet but I can see it has promise. The real-time leveling thing kinda irritates me, but it's certainly casual friendly in that aspect! It's like rested time on steroids >.>
I hated that about WOW too; and with the XP it got worse. You now collect gear so you can get better gear; its the logical conclusion to the cycle in almost every MMO, until people simply, finally, resort to PVP as the only goal worth achieving.
To beat a horse which is now rapidly approaching its demise, hardcore mode FTW, you collect gear, not for gear's sake, but you keep your candy behind alive.
Admittedly, the sheer spell damage would be nice in more threat-sensitive fights.
Which stats on that weapon are wasted for a Paladin tank?
Did you complain when BWL gear was made useless by Naxx gear?
No matter what happens, your gear will be replaced. And this "my epics were replaced by greens" crap is just that...crap. I had epic PvP gear lasting me until my mid-60s on my druids. Naxx loot basically allowed you to raid kara without doing five-mans (besides the stamina being low for tanks). Might of Menethil trumps a lot of blue two-handers found at 70. The whole "green is the new purple" deal is largely a myth. Unless you wanted stamina badly, old world epics were superior for leveling until later in Outland.
It will be even LESS true at Northrend simply because Outland gear will have the same itemization and won't suffer from the stamina gap we saw in Outland.
The issue is that you work so hard for that gear, raid so many times, learn dungeons so that you can raid them so that a few people can get gear so that you can raid them again, ad nauseum, so that you can raid the next dungeon. And then, after doing so much raiding, a new expansion comes out, with better gear, that anyone can get faster, and this upsets you, because you've worked so hard for this gear that now all these people who don't set aside 10-hour blocks of their time three times a week can get in a couple of hours.
And that sounds like a great argument, until you actually think about it. WoW is a game. It's not something you should "work" at! If you don't have fun raiding, then don't raid! If the only reason you're raiding is so that you can feel good about having better gear than everyone else, then the problem isn't with the game, the problem is with you.
This is exactly why I stopped playing.
My highest level character was a 38 Paladin. It took me months to get him that high, because I got frustrated with the game easily and could only play for short, 1-2 hour stretches (this should've been an early tip-off that perhaps the game wasn't for me)
I didn't like raids. I didn't look forward to raiding when I'd hit 60. The whole idea of raiding seemed entirely retarded to me.
I'd watch my brother, who had a 60 Hunter, raid. I'd listen to them on Vent, I'd watch their tactics. All I kept thinking was "jesus christ, this isn't a fun game. This is bothersome work."
Then BC was announced. I was actually excited with it. New races. New items. New crafting profession. A whole planet of new zones. Hooray! Content that is other than just raiding for better gear!
Then BC actually came out, and all of those new elements were really just window dressing for more raids. Oh, sure, they raised the level cap... so you do more raids for better tiers of sets.
Fuck that noise. Fuck it. I dropped the game entirely.
Months later, upon reflection, I realized the reason I dropped the game was not because it was becoming so heavily raid-focused and I didn't like raids, but because WoW increasingly became all about the endgame.
Getting there wasn't "half the fun", it was drudgery you endured so you could get to the top level and start raiding for awesome gear or creating an Arena team.
WoW is about getting the end as quickly as possible and then slowly, painfully, trying to peel a little more power out of gear you get from raids.
Gear which will, of course, be irrelevant when the newer expansion comes out and makes all your current gear obsolete if you want to stay competitive and up to speed with your guild.
WoW is far too centered around the endgame. They won't dare take their eye off endgame content, because that would ask people to make new characters and play through the game over again. They do that, and the playerbase might start to realize that the rest of the game really isn't that much fun.
I remember reading the blog of a guy who made a Blood Elf Paladin when BC came out. Like many hardcore Horde players, he wanted to try a Paladin and the new race out.
And by about level 30, he decided to quit WoW entirely. The reason why?
"I realized how much I really hated the entire game from levels 1-40 or so, and that all I was doing with my Paladin was trying to grind him past 40 as quickly as possible so I could start enjoying the game again. Suddenly, I realized that the game basically sucks and it never really "gets good", you just get so involved in it you don't realize how crappy it is. So I quit"
I don't think there's anything WoW could do to bring me back. The game just isn't for me. There are some people who like the very things about WoW that I hate. Good for them. They can have the game, if they enjoy it.
Me?
I'll be busy stomping thugs in City of Heroes, thanks.
I didn't get very far in CoH to notice (free trial ftw/l), but is it any different than WoW in terms of what you do? I know it's a MMO and you group up, kill shit, go home, whatever. But do you actually do anything genuinely different?
The only real problem with MMOs I see is you are perpetually playing catch up to other people. Whether it be with PvP or PvE, there are always people out there that are "better". If there weren't other people, the game would potentially be far more fun. Take Diablo 2 for example. It had it's main story, battle through the acts, kill the baddies, collect phat loots along the way. What happens after? You get to do it again, but this time its harder. Seriously, if WoW had a single player component, I wouldn't play with other people ever again.
In many of the defining features of MMORPGs, City of Heroes isn't really that much different from WoW. You make a dude, level him up, get quests from NPCs, beat up bad guys, try to "spec" your guy for some kind of intended capability, etc.
I used to be able to say "City of Heroes doesn't really have loot-grinding" but i9 changed that with the Invention system and the Consignment House. So now, City of Heroes does have loot, of a sort, I suppose.
On the surface, the two games aren't that much different.
However, dig a bit deeper and you'll see some profound differences between WoW and CoH. Primarily, CoH is not so "endgame-focused". When City of Heroes adds new Issues (content patches, basically) they add new Zones, new powers, whatever that are usually geared towards you making a new character or playing an alt. Rarely does the game add new "endgame content".
But that's okay, because of CoH's other profound difference from WoW: The gameplay is actually fun.
I actually enjoy City of Heroes. I like the combat system. I like the powers. I like the way characters level up. I like the whole "socketed enhancements" system. Hell, I even like the Invention system a whole bunch.
If City of Heroes was a singleplayer game, I'd play it. In fact, I really enjoy soloing in City of Heroes (with characters that are built for doing that, of course).
So, pretty much the biggest difference between WoW and CoH, for me, is that I actually enjoy playing CoH, whereas WoW feels like factory work.
Perhaps I never gave CoH enough of a chance, but thats my bad. I'll just stick to playing my single player games :P
I am noticing this, my level 66 Warrior is still wearing the boots he got from AQ40.
I think what this thread really does it demonstrate the wrong-ness of playing the game to get better gear. I like getting upgrades as much as the next guy, but I'm just as likely to pass things to other people in the raid if it's a bigger upgrade for them. I'm interested in seeing new content, not being the guy who can say he has the most +spelldamage in the raid.
I disagree that the grind in WoW is all that bad, either; there's a gap between level 40 and 50 where it's tough, but aside from that there's a lot to do, and you get to do it different ways in a variety of environments. Plus, if you're leveling an alt or you play casually, it's not too tough to have a lot of rested exp, which makes it even easier.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Why not just a little bit of quality control in who you recruit for your guilds? I was in and ran a Net Battletech guild a few years ago that had an 18+ age rule and required a short trial period. If you can't do that one small thing, you showed you were impatient and not worth our time.
Nothing long, just like "Hey, let's see how you are in one drop"? Why not run just *one* raid or B-ground with a recruit to see if he's worth the effort?
Or, better yet, just make an all-Draenie guild. For some reason, they attract better players and the "k3wl l33t d00dz" are pretty easy to spot because the morons look even more moronic when contrasted to a decent player.
Think I'm crazy? Check out world channel in the B-elf area then try the Draenei area.
Finally, isn't this why we have Penny Arcade guilds anyways? Back when I did play WoW and now when I play EVE Online, I've noticed that Penny Arcade guilds have always been filled with some of the best players I've run with.
Margaret Thatcher
Yeah, COX was a great game that I played for a long time, with a level grind that was actually pretty fun. There were 2 things that really killed it for me.
The first is that there's just not enough new content thrown at you. It's not just that missions are repetative, that wouldn't be so bad, its just that they only add major new factions and enemies every 10 levels or so. So it's great when you first hit 20, 30, 40 etc because everything is pretty much brand new, new enemies to fight with new tactics, etc, but then once you get to the x5 levels you've fought pretty much everyone a few times and there aren't many new changes. Then after a bit you get to the x9 levels, and you've been fighting the same crap for nine levels now, which is a good deal longer than 9 levels in wow, and it's just boring at that point.
The second is that rather than making an expansion they made COV, dividing the world in two and creating an artificial barrier in content. I really liked defenders and controllers but none of the villian classes were that fun to me. My characters always ended up grinding to a halt in the 20s or 30s as I got tired of fighting the same devouring earth, council, etc for 10 levels. The thing is, if COV had been an expansion, then I could have just gone to rogue isles, done missions with mostly completely different enemy groups, environments, etc. But they never let you move between the two games at all, so if I want a change of pace, I have to start another character, which similarly gets boring in the 20s and 30s after I've fought all the rogue isles villians for the umpteenth time.
I think the best thing that could happen for COH would be to allow characters to switch sides on some sort of frequent basis (maybe not at will, but something like a repeatable task force designed to take 2 or 3 hours with variations for every 10 levels). I really think it wouldn't hurt class balance as much as they'd think it would, and it would make it much more fun and interesting to level a character.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The game needs to be less static...more interactive. It needs more variety in terms of content. That's one of the lures of PvP. You face different opponents on different battlefields and every fight is something new. It changes constantly! All Blizzard needed to do was make some interesting places to fight over but they managed to screw that up and turn it into another grindfest. Imagine if players from the opposite side could take control of certain mobs in a dungeon. How about a PvP zone where both factions can fight over an objective. Capture it and it's yours for an hour or whatever. The faction in control gets access to an instance. The other side gets to take control of the mobs inside. Fat loot if you can beat the instance....good fun all around. Instead we get things like capture the flag(with only a single fairly uninspired map).
One way to add more content is simply add more quests and new zones but that takes a lot of effort and eventually players get bored with it after they've seen it a couple dozen times. You can add longevity to that content by making it less predictable and more interactive though. Imagine if mobs 'learned' from previous encounters and dungeon layouts changed based on recent encounters with players. What if some mobs leveled up over time and became more powerful...moved into an area, set up shop, and started pillaging the countryside. You could have random events like that and have the npcs in the nearby town respond by offering a bounty/quest to clear out the badguys. The game needs more random events like that. And looking back on the original content of the game, the developers could do a lot worse than to go back and revamp all the content in Azeroth. People level up alts all the time. That part of the game is still integral to the whole experience but a lot of the original content is atrocious. It pales in comparison to stuff in the expansion and there are a lot of gaps in terms of quests once you hit 30+.
The Blizz developers are falling into the same trap that most MMOs get into....namely that of more gear, more levels, bigger numbers. That's not necessarily the best way to go. Gear...levels...exp...those things should just come naturally as a result of playing. You should be having so much fun that you're not even paying attention to levels or exp and any loot you get is just the icing on a very sweet cake.
It's strange, because this is the polar opposite of my experiences with the two MMO's. CoH felt like a horrible, boring grind after only five or six levels. I never got a character past level 13; it just didn't feel entertaining at all, whereas while WoW is certainly running out of interest for me and I may move on soon, it's been 2 years of quite a lot of fun I never had with CoH. I barely managed the trial period for CoH the first time, and an extra month trying it again a year later.
Just shows how different tastes can be, I guess, and how very strikingly the notion of fun can vary from person to person, even in the same genre of the same hobby.
My guild in EQ back in the day started out as a small guild of friends, like 10 people total. Over the first year of the game though they slowly would add 1 person here or there that they grouped with and knew they were skilled at their class and dedicated to grouping/raiding.
In the end we started Fear plane like 4 months behind the first guilds, but ended up shooting past all of them due to building a foundation of skilled players who had fun together and got along well.
Moral of the story: You will actually progress farther and faster if you are picky about your additions, than inviting en masse.
Granted thats easier said than done nowadays where everyone seems to want it "now" and would rather jump ship for a new guild. But if you can assemble people that can see the bigger picture, you will go far.
Anyway, I pretty much loved leveling up to 60 in wow. I thought all the zones were beautiful, and the snippets of lore and humor from blizzard was always great to experience. The world felt like it was complete, and leveling up with your friends was a blast.
Once I got to 60 though, yeah, I don't know, the game kind of fell apart for me. I never got into one of the uber raiding guilds ( didn't kill onyxia until just before BC came out) so I had nothing to do but PvP, (tarren mill/soutshore nevar forget) which eventually just got dull as well.
While killing a raidboss like Onyxia or Ragnaros was fun the first time, I can't imagine it still being fun all the other times, as it would just be the same thing all over again.
Putting in hours of your time to experience the same thing all over again is not what I consider fun
Turbine generally did a good job of spreading content around across all level ranges, so there was almost always something new for you to do every month no matter what level you were.
Honestly, I've always felt that Turbine would do well to offer AC for free up to a cap of level 50 or so. I harbor no delusions that the game will ever be like it was "in the good old days", but I still think it's a solid offering and I constantly think about going back and starting over again.
For example after reskilling to destro, it feels like a completely different game to me. So much fun again
Chances of me going into Kara? Slim
It might happen, but I am not holding my breath over it. So I gotta keep my eyes open for decent PvE blues.
I have been playing WoW since then, about 2-3 months after release, and I still love it. I can imagine someday I will talk about how far I got in WoW PvP/endgame/levelling toons the same way that I'd talk about how much Contra sucked (don't hurt me), my best TMNT close call, and best pwnage of Counterstrike noob camper.
It's a fun journey for me at least. Working on my 4th and 5th 70s right now, since it's easy as crap to level with the rest xp system in the game. I can put on a movie or TV or standup on the stereo and grind mindlessly for a bit to relax my brain after a hard day's work, or hop on my shadow priest main and raid hardcore when I feel like a challenge.
Then again, my g/f plays a lot too, so we do a lot of things in-game for each other. My birthday present from her was a girdle of ruination. Probably helps to live with someone who enjoys it just as much as I do.
/endfanboirant
Well, I played originally on a Pvp server as an undead warrior, with about 4 people I know IRL. It was great, all logging on after school to run Scarlet Monastery and farm for our friends Illusionary rods and what not. When we hit 60, just before school was over, we got into Molten core raiding and what have you.
Early on we discovered the boringness of WoW. We hated the 40 mans, the grind, the making sure 40 fucking people could correctly press W when we tell them to. It was brutal. We didn't like getting yelled at by a stranger over ventrilo as the next guy, but we got frustrated just playing; couldn't imagine our guild leader, who didn't have a job, and was on ~13 hours a day felt. that guy sure had life figured out.
My old server was basically warrior city. I couldn't get into a better guild that was further progressed, not because of gear, but because they all had warriors full.
I spent the remainder of WoW playing around in BGs, doing 5 mans, and shit. Friends made me stay so long. Quit around November 2006.
TBC comes out, we all reroll alliance at about February of this year. I choose dwarf priest (based on the fact dwarves are awesome and that I wanted to try healing).
We got to 70 at around June. Had an absolute blast levelling up together again and playing on a server where alliance was out-numbered 4:1, we had a great time world pvping and stuff. STV levelling was probably the most fun with WoW i've had.
We get to 70, have about 8 people we know IRL playing together in our Kara group. We start that place with everyone in blues/greens, full clear it in two weeks.
We are all now in SSC in the same guild, and are seeing the raid or die theory come back, but in full force. we quit the raid, and just dick around and stuff. I'm trying to find stuff to keep my interest, and aside from doing nothing but WSG and AB, I don't see anything worth doing. I would level an alt again, but I wouldn't want to by myself. Pick up groups = no thank you.
Honestly WoW is a good game, but if I didn't have so many cool people playing with me, I probably would have never gotten past level 30.
This right here.
First the EU Obsidian Spur guys, and then the string of guilds I've been in since. All cool people.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think CoX is perfect by any means, and I think they could have done a lot more to make the gameplay less repetitive, but the two biggest things CoX has all over WoW are: travel powers and lack of downtime.
After a battle, you're healed up practically instantly (it takes you a little bit, but nowhere near as long as it does in WoW). And when you hit 14 and get your travel power, your speed is increased by an order of magnitude. None of this "ohhh, look, I'm moving 60% faster" shit that you have to grind God-knows-how-many-hours to earn; no, as soon as you get to 14 (which isn't very far into the game at all), you can instantly increase your travel speed by about 1000% (with significant variation, depending on which power you choose). Anyone else do the quests in The Barrens, and know what I'm talking about? Or Darkshire, for that matter?
And yeah, people are going to mention the griffins, which, really, suck ass, because you go from one point that's probably far from where you are to another point that's probably far from where you need to be, and you have to pay for it.
You don't.
I hit level 50 with my newest alt and it is a black pit of unimaginable horrors. No quests. Like NONE. ZERO. I've done any I could find that where close to my range and doable. I've hit 52. And now I'm out.
The more I've rerolled an alt the more I'm beginning to realize that the focus on the endgame is a bad thing in many ways. They need to revamp and revitalize the lower levels. Make them feel like part of the game instead of a huge grind you do to GET to the game.
In CoH, it's even better now than it was for travels.
At level 5, for both heroes and villains, you can do a mission that gives you a Jetpack with two hours of fuel. That's two hours of being turned on, so, if you use it intelligently, it will more than last you till you get a proper travel
Hell, if that's not enough, at level 10 you can do another mission that gives you a jump-pack that gives you superjump.
Travel in CoH is pretty much a non-issue.