I originally tried Wow about 2 years ago. I was a hardcore Eve player and wanted to do something different when nothing was going on in Eve. I was a corporate builder and really didn't have to do much to earn isk in Eve. I had avoided Wow since back when it was in beta and I was playing SWG, I just didn't care for the cartoony nature of the game. I finally decided to give it a try and found a great guild that I am still in today. I wasn't overly impressed with the game design, ie. Old English towns etc. I played up to level 41 and then got bored and left.
Then TBC was anounced and I kept my eye on it. I thought Outland looked really cool while hardcore Wow players seemed to be upset over so much creativity going into there game.
I rejoined the game after more than a years absence and my old guild let me back in. I grinded my way up to 58 so I could go to Outland. Once I got there I dumped all my quests and made Outland my permanent home. I personnaly Love Outland. If your going to do fantasy then give me high fantasy, and that's what Outland does. The bubble area of Zangamarsh is absoulutely weird. I like weird and I'd like some of whatever Blizzard was smoking when they created it
Yes TBC is more of the same, but with some key differences. The artwork is far more intrigueing, and quests now have a point. You actually get gear that you can use. Did you guys really like the quests in Azeroth that gave you nothing but crap in return?
I'm loving Outland at present, if I get bored when I hit level 70, then I'll just play something else. There are some great games on the horizon.
im waiting for the new patch to come out, they said they gonna fix alot of issues and add some new contents in the game, and the whole rep grinding sucked to find out that the epics you get at the end are sub-par to the blues you can get in the instances, they are also fixing that as well, i can't wait, until then i don't really see much point in the game, especially since it's fairly hard to get into a good raid guild and being wanted, also the pvp aspect of wow is the best pvp i have ever had a chance to play with, it actually requires some skills to win, ive seen alot of pvp where it's just standing and hitting eachother, it's kinda lame, and i can't wait for upgraded pvp gear, makes it finally worth getting, rather than spending a week just to get one epic item that's still sub-par to the items you can get in instances, how lame.
It was cool to see the new places, but it was too late for me. The raid grind had completely corrupted any enjoyment I had for the game. I absolutely cannot stand the mandatory farming weeds on a massive scale in order to play the content.
If Blizzard wants to get it right then they need to take out the requirement for flasks and most other potions/consumables in order to raid or enjoy the contnet. I should be able to log in with my 24 other friends and with our skill and planning be able to complete the content.
another thing they might want to do is close NAXX. revemp it for a 10-15 person dungeon with tier 4-5 equivelent loot. Make it something people want to go see. not a waste of development time.
I do agree with another poster that after 2 years of playing a person who only played 8 days on a character had equivalent gear is total crap. There needs to be a mechanism designed into characters that gives them an edge over time.
Consumable grindnig and faction grinding are the two factors that ruined the game for me. Otherwise I liked much of the humor in the quests and the new places. Bottom line is WoW is still the raid game it was pre BC. everything is designed to lead up to raiding. The new solo/small group content in 2.1 is only a thin mask for the latest 25 person raid dungeon coming out.
instead of revamping all of those azeroth raid instances, maybe they should make them into "heroic raid dungeons" just like they did with outlands instances, that would make it alot more interesting and make people want to go there, and even if they aren't level 70's yet they can still go there at 60's just normal raid instance, for raid practice and stuff.
Originally posted by coffee To answer the "why no flying mounts in azeroth" its simple, lots of instances, BWL, ZG, SFK, Scholomance, SM and others have areas open to the outside world, how would blizz work it if players could fly to the top of Blackrock mountain and land on Nerfarians fight area or, take a ride above ZG and drop in on Hakar? To incorperate flying mounts into azeroth those instances would need to be redesigned, can you imagine ZG not being outside?
As to the expansion being bad, its not bad, its more of what 8 million people subscribe too, blizzard are just giving more of what sells, yes they could of done better or can atleast give us information on what will be added 6 months from now so players can see if something will arrive soon that will keep em happy.
But TBC did sow the seeds for future PvP changes.
Halaa - the city that can be taken control of by either hord or allaince.. kinda like a mini RvR, its fun but its in a lvl 65 areas and offers no reason for lvl 70's to fight.
PvP - World Pvp objectives that give bonus effects to the controling faction.
Flying mounts/bombing - in the next patch blizzard will allow players to drop bombs from THEIR personal mount.
These 3 changes to me smell like we'll be getting some RvR content soon, perhaps in response to WAR.
But 2 years on.. WHERE THE HELL ARE GUILD HALLS?
Those raid dungeons are instanced. That means they are not part of continent they reside on but are on separate servers along with other raid instances. You'd could never fly over ZG ever or onto the ledge in BWL where Nef resides because it's not part of the outside game world. The only areas that are open near a raid dungeons are the entrance areas.
The real reason why they didn't add flying mounts to Azeroth was because of all the missing textures and clipping issues on the tops of mountains and other structures like Stormwind city.
As for why TBC sucking. For me it sucked because of the rep grind and the long crappy quest lines and dungeons you had to run in order to get keyed to raids. Before TBC the hardest keying quest line was Onxyia. Yet even that quest could be easily managed and done. When TBC came out if you fell behind in levels or quest lines or rep you essentially were also left behind by your fellow raiders in your guild. No one wants to spend time help another person rep grind. Basically if you aren't attuned to all these raid dungeons and have not done the rep grinds attached to them your spot in a raiding guild roster was eliminated if someone else passed you up.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
I wont start by trying to refute someones post here, everything here is valid wether agreeing or disagreeing TBC was a good expansion.
I'll just say my view on what happening to my australian server Dath'Remar.
2mths prior to the expansion, the servers were dead... i mean DEAD, AH Raiding everything. Then after much hype TBC was released. I had been playing WOW since release and loved it. I ran my own raiding guild and really loved it.
2 Weeks ago I unsubscribed never to go back. There were a few reasons for this:
1) Karazhan is a bottle neck. Leading a guild is one thing, but leading a group of people in an instance is no small feat. You need to be talented to bring the group together to work at its full potential. This instance was said to be "ok for casuals to just jump into". Thats rubbish, without coordination you arent getting past the trash in there.
2) Didnt mind too much about the gear, because all expansions do that what bothered me was EVERY single boss fight is the same in TBC. You have a boss.. you have adds.. manage the adds to kill the boss. That gets exceedingly boring very quickly.
3) The developers of TBC were mostly from EQ2. Very few from the original developers were there from "vanilla wow". Lots of rules and lengthy key chains and rep grinding etc were introduced to the game that was not there before. Sure, you had some rep grinding and who didnt hate the Ony key, but that was it. Now to access a key you needed min revered rep, and to attain that you needed to run the instance over and over again? and WHO thought up the key chain for the kara key? I dont know anyone without the support of a raiding guild thats getting that chain done. So much for the casuals.
4) It busted up all the major raiding guilds bar 1 on my server, horde and alliance alike. Why? The bottle neck that is Karazhan. The only way to complete the instance is to have a hardcore progression group of 10 people guilds realised this and put this in place. Meanwhile the rest of the guild rots and feels left out. Then the same issue arrises when they wanna do 25mans becuase most of the guild isnt geared for it and the other people dont wanna go back and do an instance they ran to death. *Insert drama starter here* *BOOM* goes the guild.
5) Constant PVE skill nerfs due to issues in PVP. This reduced raiding effectiveness and placed even more stress on raiding players.
6) When you arent grinding instance for rep you are grinding motes for cash.. grinding grinding grinding... and yes there was grinding before but you never needed to do as much as you now do to raid.
7) Instances that were required for key chains were buggy and didnt work. This didnt bother the casuals too much but infuriated the raiders. Of which i was one. TBC has been out since february and still these instances dont work properly.
8) Promises of less reliance on certain classes for group make up for instances we got the exact opposite. Mage or Rogue required for every isntance, so those without CC shamans etc were mostly left to fend for themselves finding it hard to find groups.
Now i'm a serious gamer, that dosent mind putting in the time for my guild and myself to progress, but the amount of time now required to JUST maintain a raider status in a guild is extreme compared to what it used to be. The expansion seems to work for 2 types of gamers that still play wow, the ultra casual people that wont see Karazhan and will only do non heroic and maybe some heroic 5 mans OR Those lucky enough to be in a progression group in a guild, with enough time 30+hrs a week to do what is needed to maintain that position.
I'm sure people will disagree but as the gm of a guild that was raiding successfully for over a year these are the observations i made. I even lvld a shaman to 70 in 2 weeks for my guild, which was great untill the new patch when they reduced the raiding capabilites to healer only.
This is just my opinion and only from someone who used to have great fun in the game and loved raiding. It was so much FUN, I stopped playing because the expansion sucked the fun out of wow - for me.
The biggest problem with BC is the reputation grinding and keying for raids.
There is no reason that you should have to run the same instances over and over again for reputation to earn the rights to BUY a key to the same instance in heroic mode. At most a player should not have to go to a single instance more than twice unless they are interested in helping guild mates or are farming for a particular piece of gear. There should be quests that result in "keying" to heroics or the raid instances, not mindless rep grinds over and over again. A game is meant to be fun. It shouldn't feel like busting rocks on a chain gang all day long. Giving more rep per run is not an answer either. It's a sign the rep grind is bad when you can purchase tokens to increase your rep for 30 minutes while in an instance.
So with that I canceled my WoW subscription after playing since WoW went live in 2004. I can't stand the thought of going into any of the BC instances again (5 man). Karazhan was painful - no pacing, just the same thing over and over again like all the others. At least Gruul's lair was a bit of a departure (Our guild has downed him and Kara), albeit similar to Onyxia's lair.
The biggest problem with BC is the reputation grinding and keying for raids.
There is no reason that you should have to run the same instances over and over again for reputation to earn the rights to BUY a key to the same instance in heroic mode. At most a player should not have to go to a single instance more than twice unless they are interested in helping guild mates or are farming for a particular piece of gear. There should be quests that result in "keying" to heroics or the raid instances, not mindless rep grinds over and over again. A game is meant to be fun. It shouldn't feel like busting rocks on a chain gang all day long. Giving more rep per run is not an answer either. It's a sign the rep grind is bad when you can purchase tokens to increase your rep for 30 minutes while in an instance.
So with that I canceled my WoW subscription after playing since WoW went live in 2004. I can't stand the thought of going into any of the BC instances again (5 man). Karazhan was painful - no pacing, just the same thing over and over again like all the others. At least Gruul's lair was a bit of a departure (Our guild has downed him and Kara), albeit similar to Onyxia's lair.
This was my biggest complaint with WoW even pre-BC. There were hints of things to come with that lame AQ rep grind. Grinding on some capacity in an MMORPG is inevitable, but the MANDATORY revisiting of the same old content to gain access to new content always struck me as a really lazy way to keep people subscribing month after month without having to put much effort into developing anything new. It quickly made the game zero fun for me and I cancelled my subscription. I began to feel slighted that Blizzard was not willing to be a little more creative; especially since they are the most profitable MMORPG of all time and have a subscriber base that dwarfs (no pun intended) any other company. If I wanted to engage in repetitious play and revisit the same content over and over again, I could play Pac-Man or Donkey Kong on an Atari 2600. I found WoW to be great fun for a good year and a half, but became turned off when their status seemed to make them MORE stagnant and complacent rather than trying to push the genre further with their resources.
Comments
I originally tried Wow about 2 years ago. I was a hardcore Eve player and wanted to do something different when nothing was going on in Eve. I was a corporate builder and really didn't have to do much to earn isk in Eve. I had avoided Wow since back when it was in beta and I was playing SWG, I just didn't care for the cartoony nature of the game. I finally decided to give it a try and found a great guild that I am still in today. I wasn't overly impressed with the game design, ie. Old English towns etc. I played up to level 41 and then got bored and left.
Then TBC was anounced and I kept my eye on it. I thought Outland looked really cool while hardcore Wow players seemed to be upset over so much creativity going into there game.
I rejoined the game after more than a years absence and my old guild let me back in. I grinded my way up to 58 so I could go to Outland. Once I got there I dumped all my quests and made Outland my permanent home. I personnaly Love Outland. If your going to do fantasy then give me high fantasy, and that's what Outland does. The bubble area of Zangamarsh is absoulutely weird. I like weird and I'd like some of whatever Blizzard was smoking when they created it
Yes TBC is more of the same, but with some key differences. The artwork is far more intrigueing, and quests now have a point. You actually get gear that you can use. Did you guys really like the quests in Azeroth that gave you nothing but crap in return?
I'm loving Outland at present, if I get bored when I hit level 70, then I'll just play something else. There are some great games on the horizon.
It was cool to see the new places, but it was too late for me. The raid grind had completely corrupted any enjoyment I had for the game. I absolutely cannot stand the mandatory farming weeds on a massive scale in order to play the content.
If Blizzard wants to get it right then they need to take out the requirement for flasks and most other potions/consumables in order to raid or enjoy the contnet. I should be able to log in with my 24 other friends and with our skill and planning be able to complete the content.
another thing they might want to do is close NAXX. revemp it for a 10-15 person dungeon with tier 4-5 equivelent loot. Make it something people want to go see. not a waste of development time.
I do agree with another poster that after 2 years of playing a person who only played 8 days on a character had equivalent gear is total crap. There needs to be a mechanism designed into characters that gives them an edge over time.
Consumable grindnig and faction grinding are the two factors that ruined the game for me. Otherwise I liked much of the humor in the quests and the new places. Bottom line is WoW is still the raid game it was pre BC. everything is designed to lead up to raiding. The new solo/small group content in 2.1 is only a thin mask for the latest 25 person raid dungeon coming out.
Triston Master Carbine/Master Swords (SWG Eclipse)
Triston 29 Warden (EQ2 Permafrost)
Weland 70 Hunter (WoW Hellscream)
Suidan 36 Cleric (Vanguard Flamehammer)
Suidan 50 Champion (LOTR Gladden)
Those raid dungeons are instanced. That means they are not part of continent they reside on but are on separate servers along with other raid instances. You'd could never fly over ZG ever or onto the ledge in BWL where Nef resides because it's not part of the outside game world. The only areas that are open near a raid dungeons are the entrance areas.
The real reason why they didn't add flying mounts to Azeroth was because of all the missing textures and clipping issues on the tops of mountains and other structures like Stormwind city.
As for why TBC sucking. For me it sucked because of the rep grind and the long crappy quest lines and dungeons you had to run in order to get keyed to raids. Before TBC the hardest keying quest line was Onxyia. Yet even that quest could be easily managed and done. When TBC came out if you fell behind in levels or quest lines or rep you essentially were also left behind by your fellow raiders in your guild. No one wants to spend time help another person rep grind. Basically if you aren't attuned to all these raid dungeons and have not done the rep grinds attached to them your spot in a raiding guild roster was eliminated if someone else passed you up.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
I'll just say my view on what happening to my australian server Dath'Remar.
2mths prior to the expansion, the servers were dead... i mean DEAD, AH Raiding everything. Then after much hype TBC was released. I had been playing WOW since release and loved it. I ran my own raiding guild and really loved it.
2 Weeks ago I unsubscribed never to go back. There were a few reasons for this:
1) Karazhan is a bottle neck. Leading a guild is one thing, but leading a group of people in an instance is no small feat. You need to be talented to bring the group together to work at its full potential. This instance was said to be "ok for casuals to just jump into". Thats rubbish, without coordination you arent getting past the trash in there.
2) Didnt mind too much about the gear, because all expansions do that what bothered me was EVERY single boss fight is the same in TBC. You have a boss.. you have adds.. manage the adds to kill the boss. That gets exceedingly boring very quickly.
3) The developers of TBC were mostly from EQ2. Very few from the original developers were there from "vanilla wow". Lots of rules and lengthy key chains and rep grinding etc were introduced to the game that was not there before. Sure, you had some rep grinding and who didnt hate the Ony key, but that was it. Now to access a key you needed min revered rep, and to attain that you needed to run the instance over and over again? and WHO thought up the key chain for the kara key? I dont know anyone without the support of a raiding guild thats getting that chain done. So much for the casuals.
4) It busted up all the major raiding guilds bar 1 on my server, horde and alliance alike. Why? The bottle neck that is Karazhan. The only way to complete the instance is to have a hardcore progression group of 10 people guilds realised this and put this in place. Meanwhile the rest of the guild rots and feels left out. Then the same issue arrises when they wanna do 25mans becuase most of the guild isnt geared for it and the other people dont wanna go back and do an instance they ran to death. *Insert drama starter here* *BOOM* goes the guild.
5) Constant PVE skill nerfs due to issues in PVP. This reduced raiding effectiveness and placed even more stress on raiding players.
6) When you arent grinding instance for rep you are grinding motes for cash.. grinding grinding grinding... and yes there was grinding before but you never needed to do as much as you now do to raid.
7) Instances that were required for key chains were buggy and didnt work. This didnt bother the casuals too much but infuriated the raiders. Of which i was one. TBC has been out since february and still these instances dont work properly.
8) Promises of less reliance on certain classes for group make up for instances we got the exact opposite. Mage or Rogue required for every isntance, so those without CC shamans etc were mostly left to fend for themselves finding it hard to find groups.
Now i'm a serious gamer, that dosent mind putting in the time for my guild and myself to progress, but the amount of time now required to JUST maintain a raider status in a guild is extreme compared to what it used to be. The expansion seems to work for 2 types of gamers that still play wow, the ultra casual people that wont see Karazhan and will only do non heroic and maybe some heroic 5 mans OR Those lucky enough to be in a progression group in a guild, with enough time 30+hrs a week to do what is needed to maintain that position.
I'm sure people will disagree but as the gm of a guild that was raiding successfully for over a year these are the observations i made. I even lvld a shaman to 70 in 2 weeks for my guild, which was great untill the new patch when they reduced the raiding capabilites to healer only.
This is just my opinion and only from someone who used to have great fun in the game and loved raiding. It was so much FUN, I stopped playing because the expansion sucked the fun out of wow - for me.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
There is no reason that you should have to run the same instances over and over again for reputation to earn the rights to BUY a key to the same instance in heroic mode. At most a player should not have to go to a single instance more than twice unless they are interested in helping guild mates or are farming for a particular piece of gear. There should be quests that result in "keying" to heroics or the raid instances, not mindless rep grinds over and over again. A game is meant to be fun. It shouldn't feel like busting rocks on a chain gang all day long. Giving more rep per run is not an answer either. It's a sign the rep grind is bad when you can purchase tokens to increase your rep for 30 minutes while in an instance.
So with that I canceled my WoW subscription after playing since WoW went live in 2004. I can't stand the thought of going into any of the BC instances again (5 man). Karazhan was painful - no pacing, just the same thing over and over again like all the others. At least Gruul's lair was a bit of a departure (Our guild has downed him and Kara), albeit similar to Onyxia's lair.