Which they will in Ulduar, so I guess my main point here is that Blizzard should update more than once every 6 god damn months*
Sorry to harp on old posts, but the game has been out less than 5 months (meaning they WILL update more than once every 6 months, unless 3.1 takes a giant nose dive next week with some game breaking, "we gotta delay the PTR another 4 weeks" bug ). I imagine 3.2 will be out before 6 months from 3.1 as well. It feels like a long time, I know, but it isn't that bad overall.
...Mainly this is in PVP where before it could be a way to have a bit of fun outside the standard pve environment. You could spend as much or as little time there as you wanted. Now you need pvp gear to be competitive, you have to pvp to get pvp gear. That's adding a grind that wasn't there before, and in my opinion, unnecessary.
I hate to keep bringing the focus back to WoW rather than speculate on whatever Blizzard's new MMO is, but this is just so blatantly untrue. You didn't need gear to compete in vanilla BGs? Are you serious? I've played with my same 10 or so buddies since before there was a PvP rewards system. We had neither the time nor inclination to raid. I still remember the horror of trying to take down a raid geared player with UBRS blues - you didn't need to PvP to PvP back then, you needed to PvE to PvP. But eventually a PvP system was implemented and IT WAS A GRIND A THOUSAND TIMES MORE TERRIBLE THAN WHAT WE HAVE NOW.
To say that you need to grind BGs in order to get PvP gear is an utter fallacy. You can get best in slot PvP gloves, chest and pants from PvE, buy starter PvP items with 25 man PvE tokens, or even craft an entire set of starter PvP gear with easily available materials. Wintersgrasp tokens can get you an epic PvP helm, boots, and trinket - and after the patch, an entire suit of armor pretty much. Stonekeepers shards, gained primarily from PvE, can get you helm and shoulder enchants with resilience and a 5 minute PvP trinket. You don't even need PvP gear to help out in Wintersgrasp because if your gear sucks you can drive tanks or man cannons. Since the arena system is no longer a gear dispensing system for people who suck, seeing gladiator gear beyond what you can get from PvE is pretty rare so even the starting blue PvP sets make you pretty competitive. On my PvP server, when I hit 80, my buddies made made me a Savage Saronite plate set and a Titansteel Destroyer and I started BGing and felt like I was contributing. On my PvE server, I got the best in slot PvP pants and chest from lucky Vault runs without having to kill anyone and crafted up the rest of my PvP armor.
The more I think about it, the more I think I'm onto something with Blizzard making a hardcore MMO game world with actual consequences. It's the one portion of the player base they've always had trouble courting and wouldn't cut too deeply into WoW's playerbase. I'm thinking their new MMO will be something that appeals to people who want a game like EVE Online but without the spaceships: territory you can take and hold, player driven economy and factions, looting other players... that sort of thing.
Eh, I'm done arguing about it. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
I gotta agree about lvl 60 wow though, sorry to steer this back to WoW and not the space MMO with pyros.
Level 60 was horrible if you didn't PvE. You ding 60 and you got some lvl 40-50 blues/greens, boe shit off the AH. Now go try contributing to PvP. Fat chance, the tier 2 rogues and mages are 2 shotting you with AP/POM/Pyro and ambush backstab. You have 2k-3k HP TOTAL. Only way to get gear is to PvE, there is no craftable gear that's good (bar 2 GOOD pieces for certain classes like the Devilsaur, etc.)
Meanwhile tier gear has loads of stats, spellpower(which is unheard of in any lesser blue gear from non raids, warlock/mage sets didn't even have +spell dmg, rarely +crit), resists, etc. etc.
Not to mention the insanity of some PvE geared warrior ripping up everything with his 60 DPS weapons. Meanwhile, if you want any kind of decent weapon for melee, you need to grind your ass for 5 months+ playing 14 hours atleast every day. More probably, the only rank that gave you any kind of weapons was 14.
If you missed one day of the grinding, you can kiss goodbye to 2-3 weeks of rank grinding.
Honestly, if you don't see that TBC and esp. WOTLK are far less grindy than that POS that was classic you aren't wearing rose tinted glasses but a brick wall of flowers in front of your face.
How would a Starcraft MMO fare if released after the upcoming 40k MMO and Star Wars Old Republic MMO? Assuming, of course, both are comprable in quality to the current crop of post-WoW MMOs.
Sure, built-in fanbase and all, but I'd be skeptical a third to market epic space-opera MMO wouldn't run into the same challenges as LotR:0 or WAR trailing WoW.
Good question. Depends on whether or not it follows the standard MMO formula. Releasing after The Old Republic could suck as I think that will probably shape up to be a major contender in the market. The 40k MMO... time will tell if that's any good. The studio has no track record to speak of, but it was formed by a bunch of former NCSoft guys.
But I'm with the guy who said take Ghost and turn it into an MMO. Third Person Action Shooter in a persistent world. Sounds good to me with the right amount of polish (the one thing that no one can deny Blizzard does well).
How would a Starcraft MMO fare if released after the upcoming 40k MMO and Star Wars Old Republic MMO? Assuming, of course, both are comprable in quality to the current crop of post-WoW MMOs.
Sure, built-in fanbase and all, but I'd be skeptical a third to market epic space-opera MMO wouldn't run into the same challenges as LotR:0 or WAR trailing WoW.
Good question. Depends on whether or not it follows the standard MMO formula. Releasing after The Old Republic could suck as I think that will probably shape up to be a major contender in the market. The 40k MMO... time will tell if that's any good. The studio has no track record to speak of, but it was formed by a bunch of former NCSoft guys.
But I'm with the guy who said take Ghost and turn it into an MMO. Third Person Action Shooter in a persistent world. Sounds good to me with the right amount of polish (the one thing that no one can deny Blizzard does well).
I could also see where these "next gen" space MMOs mirror the current fantasy environment (western, at least) in opposite; you get niche MMOs first (40k as goal-driven PvP, TOR as story-driven) then Blizzard could come in with a more wide-reaching, mass-market MMO.
I gotta agree about lvl 60 wow though, sorry to steer this back to WoW and not the space MMO with pyros.
Level 60 was horrible if you didn't PvE. You ding 60 and you got some lvl 40-50 blues/greens, boe shit off the AH. Now go try contributing to PvP. Fat chance, the tier 2 rogues and mages are 2 shotting you with AP/POM/Pyro and ambush backstab. You have 2k-3k HP TOTAL. Only way to get gear is to PvE, there is no craftable gear that's good (bar 2 GOOD pieces for certain classes like the Devilsaur, etc.)
Meanwhile tier gear has loads of stats, spellpower(which is unheard of in any lesser blue gear from non raids, warlock/mage sets didn't even have +spell dmg, rarely +crit), resists, etc. etc.
Not to mention the insanity of some PvE geared warrior ripping up everything with his 60 DPS weapons. Meanwhile, if you want any kind of decent weapon for melee, you need to grind your ass for 5 months+ playing 14 hours atleast every day. More probably, the only rank that gave you any kind of weapons was 14.
If you missed one day of the grinding, you can kiss goodbye to 2-3 weeks of rank grinding.
Honestly, if you don't see that TBC and esp. WOTLK are far less grindy than that POS that was classic you aren't wearing rose tinted glasses but a brick wall of flowers in front of your face.
The whole pvp ranking grind is another beast altogether. It was flawed but it was a system they turned around and changed with honor points and tokens. I'm speaking more to the fact that when the game first came out, and people were pvping eachother in blues and greens, it was pure and a lot of fun.
The high level tier gear skewed things pretty badly, sure, but they didn't do away with that at all.
Go freshly level a toon now to level 80 and go into a PVP battleground, or worse, an arena match in blues/greens/boe shit off the AH. You'll get ripped a new one as fast, or faster than before, but more than that, you won't have done a speck of damage to the guy with 500 resilience. If you think that a fresh 80 has a better chance in pvp against high season arena or pvp gear these days than they did in vanilla, you're the one with rose coloured glasses.
That problem has never been addressed, I can easily admit that, the problem I'm speaking of is back then you could either grind pvp or grind pve and get gear that allowed you to compete in either spectrum of the game. Now you can gring pvp and get gear that's good for pvp, or you can grind pve and get gear for pve. They basically doubled the grind if you wanted to be able to do both. If you wanted to just do one or the other, I can see how this wouldn't affect you.
How would a Starcraft MMO fare if released after the upcoming 40k MMO and Star Wars Old Republic MMO? Assuming, of course, both are comprable in quality to the current crop of post-WoW MMOs.
Sure, built-in fanbase and all, but I'd be skeptical a third to market epic space-opera MMO wouldn't run into the same challenges as LotR:0 or WAR trailing WoW.
Good question. Depends on whether or not it follows the standard MMO formula. Releasing after The Old Republic could suck as I think that will probably shape up to be a major contender in the market. The 40k MMO... time will tell if that's any good. The studio has no track record to speak of, but it was formed by a bunch of former NCSoft guys.
But I'm with the guy who said take Ghost and turn it into an MMO. Third Person Action Shooter in a persistent world. Sounds good to me with the right amount of polish (the one thing that no one can deny Blizzard does well).
I could also see where these "next gen" space MMOs mirror the current fantasy environment (western, at least) in opposite; you get niche MMOs first (40k as goal-driven PvP, TOR as story-driven) then Blizzard could come in with a more wide-reaching, mass-market MMO.
The tough question to answer really is quality though. From a lore standpoint, I much preferred the WAR ip than the warcraft ip. But I went back to WoW because, imo, WAR just didn't play very well. I think the lesson a lot of companies need to and are trying to learn from WoW is that your ip shouldn't really count for as much as the quality of the game. It beat out SWG and Everquest and FFonline pretty badly and those are all well established ips.
Meanwhile, sure Warcraft has a well established IP, but log onto a random WoW server and ask how many people played Warcraft 1, 2 or even 3. There's a surprisingly large number of people who have no experience with the Warcraft ip before WoW and were just drawn in by the popularity of the game. I think the ip serves to attract the core fanbase. The game quality needs to keep them interested and get them to tell their friends. If it becomes popular enough it's almost like the building blocks of a planet, it starts to get its own Gravity .
A starcraft MMO I think would do very well even if released after a 40k mmo or STO or the old republic mmo. Simply by virtue of the fact that it's by the creators of WoW, but if the game's no good, I don't see it keeping people on board.
The high level tier gear skewed things pretty badly, sure, but they didn't do away with that at all.
Go freshly level a toon now to level 80 and go into a PVP battleground, or worse, an arena match in blues/greens/boe shit off the AH. You'll get ripped a new one as fast, or faster than before, but more than that, you won't have done a speck of damage to the guy with 500 resilience. If you think that a fresh 80 has a better chance in pvp against high season arena or pvp gear these days than they did in vanilla, you're the one with rose coloured glasses.
So your argument is that anyone should be able to dominate PvP once they ding 80? As opposed to people who have invested more time into it? You honestly think that's feasible in a gaming model where time invested almost always (save for arena and hard-more heroic encounters, perhaps) provides commeasurate rewards
That problem has never been addressed, I can easily admit that, the problem I'm speaking of is back then you could either grind pvp or grind pve and get gear that allowed you to compete in either spectrum of the game. Now you can gring pvp and get gear that's good for pvp, or you can grind pve and get gear for pve. They basically doubled the grind if you wanted to be able to do both. If you wanted to just do one or the other, I can see how this wouldn't affect you.
Actually, you can grind PvE to get PvP gear via badges, either 5 mans or 25 mans. Meanwhile resilience is useless in PvE, right? It's pretty clear that Blizzard just bolted on Arenas as a practice e-sport that I feel will be the core of their next expansion, regardless of setting. You either arena from launch day or you grind PvE to compete in PvP (and honestly, given that PvP rewards pale in comparison to PvE save for resilience, all you're really doing is looking to faceroll some people for fun).
Pre BC WoW did *not* give equal reward in gear for equal time grinding PvP and PvE, and vastly fewer options. The honor grind was a slower, alternative system for a bit of gear, but PvP was clearly second-class for as long as I played the game.
More to the point, my thoughts exactly Dissociater; Blizzard games sell based on quality, accessibilty, and word of mouth from those; not IP.
The high level tier gear skewed things pretty badly, sure, but they didn't do away with that at all.
Go freshly level a toon now to level 80 and go into a PVP battleground, or worse, an arena match in blues/greens/boe shit off the AH. You'll get ripped a new one as fast, or faster than before, but more than that, you won't have done a speck of damage to the guy with 500 resilience. If you think that a fresh 80 has a better chance in pvp against high season arena or pvp gear these days than they did in vanilla, you're the one with rose coloured glasses.
So your argument is that anyone should be able to dominate PvP once they ding 80? As opposed to people who have invested more time into it? You honestly think that's feasible in a gaming model where time invested almost always (save for arena and hard-more heroic encounters, perhaps) provides commeasurate rewards
Where did I say that? That was a counter argument for Jutranjo's argument that vanilla wow's pvp was flawed because a fresh 60 would get torn apart by a tier 2 rogue. That hasn't changed.
Pre BC WoW did *not* give equal reward in gear for equal time grinding PvP and PvE, and vastly fewer options. The honor grind was a slower, alternative system for a bit of gear, but PvP was clearly second-class for as long as I played the game.
I don't disagree that they presented fewer options, time was hit or miss though. It might take you like 2 months to grind high warlord, for example, but you are guaranteed to get all your gear that way, and if you wanted to make the jump to pve with that gear, you could. But there was no guarantee that you'd get all your gear in that same amount of time doing pve stuff. Although man-hours were probably more for the high-warlord grind.
Two months of 12, 18+ hour a day grind for High Warlod. A buddy of mine who doesn't work was able to do it with help.
And the HW gear was on par with what people were pulling from... that dragon instance after MC. Weapons (goddamn Sulfuras) were vastly better, and I'd hit Alliance teams with three or four of the damn things.
I'm not sure what I'm arguing here anymore. I'm just reminded in stark detail why I quit WoW.
Two months of 12, 18+ hour a day grind for High Warlod. A buddy of mine who doesn't work was able to do it with help.
And the HW gear was on par with what people were pulling from... that dragon instance after MC. Weapons (goddamn Sulfuras) were vastly better, and I'd hit Alliance teams with three or four of the damn things.
I'm not sure what I'm arguing here anymore. I'm just reminded in stark detail why I quit WoW.
Yeah, that's why I'm glad they changed it to a system where you didn't lose gained honor. So if you ended up having to take a break, whether through choice, or whether through explosive diarrhea you didn't lose everything you'd done..
All I remember was at the end of TBC being in some sweet high tier raid gear and wanting to go casually pvp for fun, not for gear, and getting torn a new asshole by people in arena gear and high end pvp gear. I didn't have time, nor the inclination to grind out a new set of gear over the next few months just so that I wasn't at a horrible disadvantage in pvp. This wasn't as big of a problem in WotLK yet because everyone was fresh 80. I quit for entirely different reasons.
That seems just as frustrating as the earlier issues. WoW's issue with PvP has always been that it was built for PvE in the Everquest model. PvP is just a side-game (which seems to be a valid choice from the financial perspective; PvP is niche).
LotR:O's method of segregating PvP and PvE seems like a much better route, if you've gotta keep them apart.
Yeah, that's the thing, I think you've either got to make pvp a core part of the game, intertwined with the pve aspect. Or you have to make sure it stays a side game. But that would just please me. WoW pvp is a little more than glorified unreal tournament in an MMO, but it was fun as a side-game diversion. The fact that they put in a system where you had to grind away at it in order to be competitive really rankled with me, especially since it still played like a side-game diversion.
How would a Starcraft MMO fare if released after the upcoming 40k MMO and Star Wars Old Republic MMO? Assuming, of course, both are comprable in quality to the current crop of post-WoW MMOs.
Sure, built-in fanbase and all, but I'd be skeptical a third to market epic space-opera MMO wouldn't run into the same challenges as LotR:0 or WAR trailing WoW.
Except it's Blizzard, so they would rip off all the top-shelf stuff from the other sci-fi MMO's and come up with new innovative stuff to fill the gaps.
Honestly, though, I don't really feel Starcraft would make a good MMO, but it could certainly be Blizzard's first major foray into an FPS game with persistent campaign aspects and weapon/gear unlocks.
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Yeah, that's why I'm glad they changed it to a system where you didn't lose gained honor. So if you ended up having to take a break, whether through choice, or whether through explosive diarrhea you didn't lose everything you'd done..
All I remember was at the end of TBC being in some sweet high tier raid gear and wanting to go casually pvp for fun, not for gear, and getting torn a new asshole by people in arena gear and high end pvp gear. I didn't have time, nor the inclination to grind out a new set of gear over the next few months just so that I wasn't at a horrible disadvantage in pvp. This wasn't as big of a problem in WotLK yet because everyone was fresh 80. I quit for entirely different reasons.
It sounds like you wanted to take your high-end tier gear and go two shot some casuals like back in the good ol' days of BWL gear vs. UBRS gear.
Let's say hypothetically they took out all the PvP gear, and the only good gear came from PvE. What recourse do guys like me have who cannot raid?
What you see as a detriment to the game from your high-end PvE perspective, me and my buddies saw as a light at the end of the tunnel. You couldn't be bothered to go get a PvP set, but on the other side of the coin, PvP stuff was the only stuff I ever had access too. So while you were saying, "This sucks! Another gear grind!" I was saying, "At last! A gear grind I can actually do!"
I'd also like to note that you could trade in tiered raiding tokens for Gladiator gear even back in TBC, and I believe you could get at least a couple +resilience jewelry drops from 25 mans.
If blizzard made a pvp centered space game it would be EVE online in a cockpit. Jumpgate is going purely for the WoW model of quest grinds which I think is a shame and Blizzard going the opposite would really be a wakeup call to the industri.
I really hope that if Bliz makes any space game, it'll be one persistant world.
Yeah, that's why I'm glad they changed it to a system where you didn't lose gained honor. So if you ended up having to take a break, whether through choice, or whether through explosive diarrhea you didn't lose everything you'd done..
All I remember was at the end of TBC being in some sweet high tier raid gear and wanting to go casually pvp for fun, not for gear, and getting torn a new asshole by people in arena gear and high end pvp gear. I didn't have time, nor the inclination to grind out a new set of gear over the next few months just so that I wasn't at a horrible disadvantage in pvp. This wasn't as big of a problem in WotLK yet because everyone was fresh 80. I quit for entirely different reasons.
It sounds like you wanted to take your high-end tier gear and go two shot some casuals like back in the good ol' days of BWL gear vs. UBRS gear.
Let's say hypothetically they took out all the PvP gear, and the only good gear came from PvE. What recourse do guys like me have who cannot raid?
What you see as a detriment to the game from your high-end PvE perspective, me and my buddies saw as a light at the end of the tunnel. You couldn't be bothered to go get a PvP set, but on the other side of the coin, PvP stuff was the only stuff I ever had access too. So while you were saying, "This sucks! Another gear grind!" I was saying, "At last! A gear grind I can actually do!"
I'd also like to note that you could trade in tiered raiding tokens for Gladiator gear even back in TBC, and I believe you could get at least a couple +resilience jewelry drops from 25 mans.
Actually, I don't suggest the gear from pvp be removed I never said that anywhere, so I don't know how you came to that conclusion, just that it uses the same stats set as the pve gear. Sure I could see there being a bias in pve gear towards dps and pvp towards stamina. That way those who wanted to focus on both would have a reason to get that gear if they wanted to spend that much time, but those who focused on one or the other wouldn't be so far behind the curve in whatever section of the game they didn't grind on. Basically, at end game TBC and WotLK, 1/2 of the game (the pvp half) effectively disappeared for me unless I wanted to grind gear in order to be competitive, the opposite is also true, but the discrepancy isn't as large imo.
Yeah, that's why I'm glad they changed it to a system where you didn't lose gained honor. So if you ended up having to take a break, whether through choice, or whether through explosive diarrhea you didn't lose everything you'd done..
All I remember was at the end of TBC being in some sweet high tier raid gear and wanting to go casually pvp for fun, not for gear, and getting torn a new asshole by people in arena gear and high end pvp gear. I didn't have time, nor the inclination to grind out a new set of gear over the next few months just so that I wasn't at a horrible disadvantage in pvp. This wasn't as big of a problem in WotLK yet because everyone was fresh 80. I quit for entirely different reasons.
It sounds like you wanted to take your high-end tier gear and go two shot some casuals like back in the good ol' days of BWL gear vs. UBRS gear.
Let's say hypothetically they took out all the PvP gear, and the only good gear came from PvE. What recourse do guys like me have who cannot raid?
What you see as a detriment to the game from your high-end PvE perspective, me and my buddies saw as a light at the end of the tunnel. You couldn't be bothered to go get a PvP set, but on the other side of the coin, PvP stuff was the only stuff I ever had access too. So while you were saying, "This sucks! Another gear grind!" I was saying, "At last! A gear grind I can actually do!"
I'd also like to note that you could trade in tiered raiding tokens for Gladiator gear even back in TBC, and I believe you could get at least a couple +resilience jewelry drops from 25 mans.
Actually, I don't suggest the gear from pvp be removed I never said that anywhere, so I don't know how you came to that conclusion, just that it uses the same stats set as the pve gear. Sure I could see there being a bias in pve gear towards dps and pvp towards stamina. That way those who wanted to focus on both would have a reason to get that gear if they wanted to spend that much time, but those who focused on one or the other wouldn't be so far behind the curve in whatever section of the game they didn't grind on. Basically, at end game TBC and WotLK, 1/2 of the game (the pvp half) effectively disappeared for me unless I wanted to grind gear in order to be competitive, the opposite is also true, but the discrepancy isn't as large imo.
Resilience was added because there was only one pvp-applicable defensive stat: stamina. This fucks up the stat distribution algorithm (an item of ilevel X has a certain number of 'points' to spend, and the more you put into one stat, the more each additional point costs... just ask warriors about this one), and would results in horribly itemized gear where they sacrifice a ton of offensive stats for a pittance of stamina, at which point people with PvE gear are far superior because the survivability gained is not equal to the damage output lost. The alternative is having PvP gear being SUPERIOR to PvE gear to make up for this, which is just... stupid. I mean, shit, this was the case for druid tanks before WotLK, and it was dumb.
PvP gear wasn't added as some sinister means to force you to grind your ass off, it was put in to solve a problem resulting from WoW being as gear-centric as it is. If you summarized all your complaints as just, "I don't like how gear-centric WoW is," then it would be a matter of opinion and this argument would be over.
If WoW is proof, a gear-centric PvE focus is the most financially rewarding model for an MMO.
A Starcraft MMO will likely not be a gear-centric PvE focused game because it will never exist. Sci-fi MMOs will be a saturated market in the next two or three years and not worth cannibalizing WoW or competing against established products *unless* it is a niche game or 2010-2013 releases suck.
If you drop proper nouns you can talk about Zerg and Tyranids at the same time.
If the gear had the same stats, people would just do the easier of the two (pvp vs pve).
I don't think so at all, which is why I quit WoW. I didn't *want* to do lots of PvE, only endless PvP, but I couldn't compete against raiders. Raiding, at that point, would have been easier than the Honor grind.
If the gear had the same stats, people would just do the easier of the two (pvp vs pve).
I don't think so at all, which is why I quit WoW. I didn't *want* to do lots of PvE, only endless PvP, but I couldn't compete against raiders. Raiding, at that point, would have been easier than the Honor grind.
Only reason there's even a debate about using pve gear in arena and such is because everyone's still at the 0-600 resi area, in a season everyone'll be at 900+ where any burst is non existant.
WoW is not really conclusive proof of anything. It was and is the first MMO the majority of gamers ever played. In discussions like these, you need to keep in mind that the average joe gamer probably never even heard PvP MMO's such as EVE or ultima online. They were never on the map of mainstream gaming. I forgot what I was trying to say with this, because it is late here and I'm tired so I'm just going to trail off into another sentence now;
What I am hoping is that Blizzard will take the concept of the elusive "PvP MMO" and perfect it. Just like they did with the PvE MMO in WoW. I also don't think they have even a slight chance of failing if they use the starcraft franchise. I think people underestimate the power of starcraft. They could probably release shit on a platter and call it their next starcraft release, and millions would pay for it.
Thinking that the upcoming Star Wars mmo or the obscure 40K MMO is competition to a hypothetical starcraft MMO is ridiculous.
:zzz:
I think WoW pretty conclusively settles that a fantasy, gear-driven, PvE MMO has mass market viability well beyond that of any previous MMO.
That doesn't mean it's the *only* way to hit absurd levels of success. I do suspect that core PvP would make achieving the same very difficult. How many people play Halo 3 against each other? The game has sold 3 million less than WoW has active players and I would guess that 50% or less of that actually actively PvP online.
Any previous MMO to WoW was an obscure oddity to the average gamer. A niché market, hidden in the shadows. Most had not played MMO's before WoW.
I think the MMO market is in its infantile stages and that it is going to grow outside of the standardized fantasy diku MMO frame. With each new MMO released we see hundreds of thousands of eager gamers trying to find a decent game to play other than WoW. Unfortunately, most (I'd say all of them) have failed to deliver a pleasant gaming experience so far.
If Blizzard delivers a pleasant gaming experience with their next MMO, I don't think it would matter much if it is fantasy or sci fi or the god damn wild wild west.
Yeah, I'm not sure where this love of Vanilla WoW is coming from. But then again, it's probably the difference between "casual" and "hardcore" once again. Some people just can't enjoy an MMO unless it's constantly kicking them in the balls or allows them to kick others in the balls.
WotLK is so much better executed than vanilla WoW because everything is a choice. I don't know where you're getting this "rep grinds are mandatory" stuff. I play on both PvE and PvP servers. On my PvE server, I'm at the second highest rep level with 2 factions and exalted with the others. I only ever did dailies for one faction, and got exalted/revered with the other just by running dungeons and doing regular quests - stuff that I liked doing anyway.
Then on my PvP server where most of my friends play, it was like:
Me: Ding! 80!
Guildies: Here's your Titansteel Destroyer. Time for Naxx!
Most of the factions are still neutral to me on that server and fuck 'em. There's nothing they have that I need for entry level raiding that can't be crafted/won through PvP/found in heroics. There's like 4 ways to do anything in Wrath and I, for one, think it's fantastic.
Maybe Blizzard's new MMO will have those "hardcore" mechanics like death penalties, forced grouping, sanctioned griefing, etc. that the more hardcore players seem to enjoy. Like Blizzard saying, "If you want an easy, relaxing game that you can dick around in with your friends and still progress, play WoW. If you want the exhilaration of winning in a game world with consequences, then play this new game!"
Also, why does the fact that you get a bear in the mail make city raids in Wrath less significant or meaningful than city raids in vanilla?
I am the only one that wants that type of mmo? I liked to fear death,it felt less like grinding and more like...fighting for your survival.
I absolutely want an MMO with relatively harsh death penalties and allowed griefing.
The latter is a MUD, though, with perma death (age death and loosing 1/3rd CON point a death) and full looting and open PK +/1 5-10 levels once you hit level 11
I think WoW pretty conclusively settles that a fantasy, gear-driven, PvE MMO has mass market viability well beyond that of any previous MMO.
That doesn't mean it's the *only* way to hit absurd levels of success. I do suspect that core PvP would make achieving the same very difficult. How many people play Halo 3 against each other? The game has sold 3 million less than WoW has active players and I would guess that 50% or less of that actually actively PvP online.
Morsk, a large reason to WoWs success is that you can run it on a toaster these days. Heck, I could probably run it on the 5 year old reception computer at work, which was an incredibly shitty PC for its day.
The install base for the 360 isn't large enough to expect any game released on it to compete with WoW in terms of subscribers to sales. Even the Wii, which is a huge success for a console and selling like hotcakes, can't really compete in any way.
The way I see it, I doubt Blizzard will release a new MMO until WoW starts losing subs and not regaining them with every new expansion. It's just bad business. They already dominate the market, so the game they'd be stealing the most subs from would be their own.
Something like 7 million of WoW's subscribers are outside of the US and Europe. Releasing a new MMO two years from now in the US and European territories while holding off in Asia until WoW has died down a bit more will probably be the best course of action for the company. Will it be a Starcraft MMO? Maybe, but I don't think so. I don't think a "saturated market" would deter them, but if they say they're working on a new IP then I'll take their word for it.
and then they made WoW and suddenly fantasy MMORPG games were not niché anymore
It seems anything they touch, even niché things, turn to gold.
True. How did they affect RTSes during the WC/SC launch periods?
Cynic - that's true. If one considers games being played today WoW (and Starcraft, for that matter) the number of machines it can be run on is probably more than any other current, popular game. On par with Bejeweled or Tetris.
Fig-D - good point. That said, most MMO releases total about a tenth (at best) of WoW's western (EU and US) audiences. As MMOs rely on some critical mass, splitting that sub base seems like a bit of a risk, at least while the former release is relatively strong. No one really knows what the legs of a mass market MMO are, though, as there's been one, ever, and it's only three or four years old.
You are aware you can buy PVP gear for the basic 10man/heroic badges, right? They're some of the cheapest items on there; I'm pretty sure you can get a full set for less than what the tier 7 tokens cost, and there's only two of those.
And I mean once you get like 2 items from badges you run out of things to spend them on; I've gotten everything I need, like 5 heirloom items, and I still have more badges than I could possibly use. What else are you gonna spend them on?
You'te confusing "very niche" with "a brand-new genre".
Most succesfull MMOs were fantasy MMOs, before WoW came along. It took the MMO genre as a whole mainstream, but fantasy was pretty much the default setting for MMOs. Anything else was "niche."
Not only that but by the time WoW came out the MMO market wasn't exactly unknown. EQ got a lot of attention in the gaming press, Lineage was huge in Asia, SWG was sort of big, Shadowbane was one of the more spectacular failures in game development since Daikatana, and Asheron's Call already had a sequel.
WoW helped take MMOs out of the gaming world and into the pop culture world as a whole, but that has a lot more to do with gaming's emergence from a niche pasttime into an enormous business than it does to do with Blizzard being that much better than anyone else. Their timing was fantastic, and they did it without rushing their product untested and ahead of schedule.
Would you say that niche, then, is a subset of an established market rather than a possible description for an emerging or yet-to-emerge market?
M-W's closest definition is probably "a specialized market" which could go either way. Computers were a specialized market before becoming mainstream, which would be niche by this definition.
Posts
Eh, I'm done arguing about it. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
Level 60 was horrible if you didn't PvE. You ding 60 and you got some lvl 40-50 blues/greens, boe shit off the AH. Now go try contributing to PvP. Fat chance, the tier 2 rogues and mages are 2 shotting you with AP/POM/Pyro and ambush backstab. You have 2k-3k HP TOTAL. Only way to get gear is to PvE, there is no craftable gear that's good (bar 2 GOOD pieces for certain classes like the Devilsaur, etc.)
Meanwhile tier gear has loads of stats, spellpower(which is unheard of in any lesser blue gear from non raids, warlock/mage sets didn't even have +spell dmg, rarely +crit), resists, etc. etc.
Not to mention the insanity of some PvE geared warrior ripping up everything with his 60 DPS weapons. Meanwhile, if you want any kind of decent weapon for melee, you need to grind your ass for 5 months+ playing 14 hours atleast every day. More probably, the only rank that gave you any kind of weapons was 14.
If you missed one day of the grinding, you can kiss goodbye to 2-3 weeks of rank grinding.
Honestly, if you don't see that TBC and esp. WOTLK are far less grindy than that POS that was classic you aren't wearing rose tinted glasses but a brick wall of flowers in front of your face.
Good question. Depends on whether or not it follows the standard MMO formula. Releasing after The Old Republic could suck as I think that will probably shape up to be a major contender in the market. The 40k MMO... time will tell if that's any good. The studio has no track record to speak of, but it was formed by a bunch of former NCSoft guys.
But I'm with the guy who said take Ghost and turn it into an MMO. Third Person Action Shooter in a persistent world. Sounds good to me with the right amount of polish (the one thing that no one can deny Blizzard does well).
I could also see where these "next gen" space MMOs mirror the current fantasy environment (western, at least) in opposite; you get niche MMOs first (40k as goal-driven PvP, TOR as story-driven) then Blizzard could come in with a more wide-reaching, mass-market MMO.
The whole pvp ranking grind is another beast altogether. It was flawed but it was a system they turned around and changed with honor points and tokens. I'm speaking more to the fact that when the game first came out, and people were pvping eachother in blues and greens, it was pure and a lot of fun.
The high level tier gear skewed things pretty badly, sure, but they didn't do away with that at all.
Go freshly level a toon now to level 80 and go into a PVP battleground, or worse, an arena match in blues/greens/boe shit off the AH. You'll get ripped a new one as fast, or faster than before, but more than that, you won't have done a speck of damage to the guy with 500 resilience. If you think that a fresh 80 has a better chance in pvp against high season arena or pvp gear these days than they did in vanilla, you're the one with rose coloured glasses.
That problem has never been addressed, I can easily admit that, the problem I'm speaking of is back then you could either grind pvp or grind pve and get gear that allowed you to compete in either spectrum of the game. Now you can gring pvp and get gear that's good for pvp, or you can grind pve and get gear for pve. They basically doubled the grind if you wanted to be able to do both. If you wanted to just do one or the other, I can see how this wouldn't affect you.
The tough question to answer really is quality though. From a lore standpoint, I much preferred the WAR ip than the warcraft ip. But I went back to WoW because, imo, WAR just didn't play very well. I think the lesson a lot of companies need to and are trying to learn from WoW is that your ip shouldn't really count for as much as the quality of the game. It beat out SWG and Everquest and FFonline pretty badly and those are all well established ips.
Meanwhile, sure Warcraft has a well established IP, but log onto a random WoW server and ask how many people played Warcraft 1, 2 or even 3. There's a surprisingly large number of people who have no experience with the Warcraft ip before WoW and were just drawn in by the popularity of the game. I think the ip serves to attract the core fanbase. The game quality needs to keep them interested and get them to tell their friends. If it becomes popular enough it's almost like the building blocks of a planet, it starts to get its own Gravity
A starcraft MMO I think would do very well even if released after a 40k mmo or STO or the old republic mmo. Simply by virtue of the fact that it's by the creators of WoW, but if the game's no good, I don't see it keeping people on board.
So your argument is that anyone should be able to dominate PvP once they ding 80? As opposed to people who have invested more time into it? You honestly think that's feasible in a gaming model where time invested almost always (save for arena and hard-more heroic encounters, perhaps) provides commeasurate rewards
Actually, you can grind PvE to get PvP gear via badges, either 5 mans or 25 mans. Meanwhile resilience is useless in PvE, right? It's pretty clear that Blizzard just bolted on Arenas as a practice e-sport that I feel will be the core of their next expansion, regardless of setting. You either arena from launch day or you grind PvE to compete in PvP (and honestly, given that PvP rewards pale in comparison to PvE save for resilience, all you're really doing is looking to faceroll some people for fun).
More to the point, my thoughts exactly Dissociater; Blizzard games sell based on quality, accessibilty, and word of mouth from those; not IP.
Where did I say that? That was a counter argument for Jutranjo's argument that vanilla wow's pvp was flawed because a fresh 60 would get torn apart by a tier 2 rogue. That hasn't changed.
I don't disagree that they presented fewer options, time was hit or miss though. It might take you like 2 months to grind high warlord, for example, but you are guaranteed to get all your gear that way, and if you wanted to make the jump to pve with that gear, you could. But there was no guarantee that you'd get all your gear in that same amount of time doing pve stuff. Although man-hours were probably more for the high-warlord grind.
And the HW gear was on par with what people were pulling from... that dragon instance after MC. Weapons (goddamn Sulfuras) were vastly better, and I'd hit Alliance teams with three or four of the damn things.
I'm not sure what I'm arguing here anymore. I'm just reminded in stark detail why I quit WoW.
Yeah, that's why I'm glad they changed it to a system where you didn't lose gained honor. So if you ended up having to take a break, whether through choice, or whether through explosive diarrhea you didn't lose everything you'd done..
All I remember was at the end of TBC being in some sweet high tier raid gear and wanting to go casually pvp for fun, not for gear, and getting torn a new asshole by people in arena gear and high end pvp gear. I didn't have time, nor the inclination to grind out a new set of gear over the next few months just so that I wasn't at a horrible disadvantage in pvp. This wasn't as big of a problem in WotLK yet because everyone was fresh 80. I quit for entirely different reasons.
LotR:O's method of segregating PvP and PvE seems like a much better route, if you've gotta keep them apart.
Except it's Blizzard, so they would rip off all the top-shelf stuff from the other sci-fi MMO's and come up with new innovative stuff to fill the gaps.
Honestly, though, I don't really feel Starcraft would make a good MMO, but it could certainly be Blizzard's first major foray into an FPS game with persistent campaign aspects and weapon/gear unlocks.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
It sounds like you wanted to take your high-end tier gear and go two shot some casuals like back in the good ol' days of BWL gear vs. UBRS gear.
Let's say hypothetically they took out all the PvP gear, and the only good gear came from PvE. What recourse do guys like me have who cannot raid?
What you see as a detriment to the game from your high-end PvE perspective, me and my buddies saw as a light at the end of the tunnel. You couldn't be bothered to go get a PvP set, but on the other side of the coin, PvP stuff was the only stuff I ever had access too. So while you were saying, "This sucks! Another gear grind!" I was saying, "At last! A gear grind I can actually do!"
I'd also like to note that you could trade in tiered raiding tokens for Gladiator gear even back in TBC, and I believe you could get at least a couple +resilience jewelry drops from 25 mans.
I really hope that if Bliz makes any space game, it'll be one persistant world.
Actually, I don't suggest the gear from pvp be removed I never said that anywhere, so I don't know how you came to that conclusion, just that it uses the same stats set as the pve gear. Sure I could see there being a bias in pve gear towards dps and pvp towards stamina. That way those who wanted to focus on both would have a reason to get that gear if they wanted to spend that much time, but those who focused on one or the other wouldn't be so far behind the curve in whatever section of the game they didn't grind on. Basically, at end game TBC and WotLK, 1/2 of the game (the pvp half) effectively disappeared for me unless I wanted to grind gear in order to be competitive, the opposite is also true, but the discrepancy isn't as large imo.
Resilience was added because there was only one pvp-applicable defensive stat: stamina. This fucks up the stat distribution algorithm (an item of ilevel X has a certain number of 'points' to spend, and the more you put into one stat, the more each additional point costs... just ask warriors about this one), and would results in horribly itemized gear where they sacrifice a ton of offensive stats for a pittance of stamina, at which point people with PvE gear are far superior because the survivability gained is not equal to the damage output lost. The alternative is having PvP gear being SUPERIOR to PvE gear to make up for this, which is just... stupid. I mean, shit, this was the case for druid tanks before WotLK, and it was dumb.
PvP gear wasn't added as some sinister means to force you to grind your ass off, it was put in to solve a problem resulting from WoW being as gear-centric as it is. If you summarized all your complaints as just, "I don't like how gear-centric WoW is," then it would be a matter of opinion and this argument would be over.
A Starcraft MMO will likely not be a gear-centric PvE focused game because it will never exist. Sci-fi MMOs will be a saturated market in the next two or three years and not worth cannibalizing WoW or competing against established products *unless* it is a niche game or 2010-2013 releases suck.
If you drop proper nouns you can talk about Zerg and Tyranids at the same time.
A fair summary of the thread?
I don't think so at all, which is why I quit WoW. I didn't *want* to do lots of PvE, only endless PvP, but I couldn't compete against raiders. Raiding, at that point, would have been easier than the Honor grind.
Only reason there's even a debate about using pve gear in arena and such is because everyone's still at the 0-600 resi area, in a season everyone'll be at 900+ where any burst is non existant.
What I am hoping is that Blizzard will take the concept of the elusive "PvP MMO" and perfect it. Just like they did with the PvE MMO in WoW. I also don't think they have even a slight chance of failing if they use the starcraft franchise. I think people underestimate the power of starcraft. They could probably release shit on a platter and call it their next starcraft release, and millions would pay for it.
Thinking that the upcoming Star Wars mmo or the obscure 40K MMO is competition to a hypothetical starcraft MMO is ridiculous.
:zzz:
That doesn't mean it's the *only* way to hit absurd levels of success. I do suspect that core PvP would make achieving the same very difficult. How many people play Halo 3 against each other? The game has sold 3 million less than WoW has active players and I would guess that 50% or less of that actually actively PvP online.
I think the MMO market is in its infantile stages and that it is going to grow outside of the standardized fantasy diku MMO frame. With each new MMO released we see hundreds of thousands of eager gamers trying to find a decent game to play other than WoW. Unfortunately, most (I'd say all of them) have failed to deliver a pleasant gaming experience so far.
If Blizzard delivers a pleasant gaming experience with their next MMO, I don't think it would matter much if it is fantasy or sci fi or the god damn wild wild west.
It's gonna sell.
These two encourage it:
http://www.eveonline.com/
http://www.carrionfields.com/
The latter is a MUD, though, with perma death (age death and loosing 1/3rd CON point a death) and full looting and open PK +/1 5-10 levels once you hit level 11
Margaret Thatcher
:^:
Planetside has it's moments, but felt bland and unfinished.
Now imagine if the war is being carried out by NPCs all the time and you're just the "heroes" that "turn the tide" wherever you want.
Margaret Thatcher
and then they made WoW and suddenly fantasy MMORPG games were not niché anymore
It seems anything they touch, even niché things, turn to gold.
Morsk, a large reason to WoWs success is that you can run it on a toaster these days. Heck, I could probably run it on the 5 year old reception computer at work, which was an incredibly shitty PC for its day.
The install base for the 360 isn't large enough to expect any game released on it to compete with WoW in terms of subscribers to sales. Even the Wii, which is a huge success for a console and selling like hotcakes, can't really compete in any way.
The way I see it, I doubt Blizzard will release a new MMO until WoW starts losing subs and not regaining them with every new expansion. It's just bad business. They already dominate the market, so the game they'd be stealing the most subs from would be their own.
Anyway, if they are working on an MMO, it wouldn't be out in a few years anyway, and WoW should start to fizzle by then.
True. How did they affect RTSes during the WC/SC launch periods?
Cynic - that's true. If one considers games being played today WoW (and Starcraft, for that matter) the number of machines it can be run on is probably more than any other current, popular game. On par with Bejeweled or Tetris.
Fig-D - good point. That said, most MMO releases total about a tenth (at best) of WoW's western (EU and US) audiences. As MMOs rely on some critical mass, splitting that sub base seems like a bit of a risk, at least while the former release is relatively strong. No one really knows what the legs of a mass market MMO are, though, as there's been one, ever, and it's only three or four years old.
And I mean once you get like 2 items from badges you run out of things to spend them on; I've gotten everything I need, like 5 heirloom items, and I still have more badges than I could possibly use. What else are you gonna spend them on?
You'te confusing "very niche" with "a brand-new genre".
Most succesfull MMOs were fantasy MMOs, before WoW came along. It took the MMO genre as a whole mainstream, but fantasy was pretty much the default setting for MMOs. Anything else was "niche."
Not only that but by the time WoW came out the MMO market wasn't exactly unknown. EQ got a lot of attention in the gaming press, Lineage was huge in Asia, SWG was sort of big, Shadowbane was one of the more spectacular failures in game development since Daikatana, and Asheron's Call already had a sequel.
WoW helped take MMOs out of the gaming world and into the pop culture world as a whole, but that has a lot more to do with gaming's emergence from a niche pasttime into an enormous business than it does to do with Blizzard being that much better than anyone else. Their timing was fantastic, and they did it without rushing their product untested and ahead of schedule.
M-W's closest definition is probably "a specialized market" which could go either way. Computers were a specialized market before becoming mainstream, which would be niche by this definition.