Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor).
Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want.
I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man.
I just realized something funny. Peons 4 Hire is still operating, and they have slashed thier prices in half (probably dumping inventory). I guess Blizz's campaign is just gonna result in people buying more gold at this lower price.
Heh i really like the generall feel of the responces here it seems to indicate that most if not all fantasy based games are....
Poorly designed for those with time limits.
Depend too much on Grind that is by nature Repetative and therefore boring.
The end game is made too important and the lower levels are unimportant.
HeH makes e glad that EvE exists and that i found it some time ago. Or id probably have stopped playing MMO's out of disalusionment and bordom some years ago.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me.
Would you be willing to wear a tag on your character's name that showed other players that you bought gold/traded characters? I would be willing to accept players purchasing their chars if I could find out. It seems unfair that players who played every level and players who bought those levels are treated in exactly the same manner in game.
Would you be willing to play on a server that allowed character buying/trading and gold buying/trading? Even if other servers existed that did not allow it?
The thing that bothers me the most about people buying level 70 characters is you cant find a good end game group anymore.People just dont know how to play the characters.At end game for people that realy leveled their characters, this is what they have worked for.Only to have people who buy their characters let the group down , because they don't know what they are doing. I do think tags would be a good idea , even though after one run you can tell if they bought their characters.I also dont mine the bots as long as they are not grinding quest areas.Yes they do raise up prices , but so do all players by buying low and selling stuff at 10X what the stuff is worth. I am not defending them at all, its just as long as their are games their will be cheaters.Us non cheaters just have to suck it up and deal with it, but alittle help would be nice .
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed.
Would you be willing to wear a tag on your character's name that showed other players that you bought gold/traded characters? I would be willing to accept players purchasing their chars if I could find out. It seems unfair that players who played every level and players who bought those levels are treated in exactly the same manner in game. Would you be willing to play on a server that allowed character buying/trading and gold buying/trading? Even if other servers existed that did not allow it?
Yes, people already do it and nobody cares. People in Nihilum by gold for repairs and mats. It doesn't diminish anyones respect for them. 95% of the old HWL had friends grind honor on their toon. Nobody cared. As long as your a great raider or a great PvPer, nobody gives a damn if you skip the boring shit.
We had one guy on my server that didn't get any help grinding his Rank 14. It took him 14 weeks to go from 13 to 14 alone. He got kicked out of school, lost his job, started doing drugs. When he finally hit 14 he quit wow two weeks later. Nobody had any respect for him.
Thats not entirely true. People enjoy differnt things. I don't believe you should be playing the game if you need to cheat, but some people seem to enjoy raiding, PvP, or just having the equipment to show off. I enjoy the leveling, exploration, and quests. I stop at the end of the game. If all you like is the endgame I believe you should be playing a differnt type of game then a MMO IMO. WoW has a lot more people then other games so obviously there are going to be lot of people who cheat. MMOs that have less people also have cheating. What it comes down to is people are playing games they don't really enjoy IMO so they pay someone else to play the parts they don't like "boggle". Go and find a game you like.
Would you be willing to wear a tag on your character's name that showed other players that you bought gold/traded characters? I would be willing to accept players purchasing their chars if I could find out. It seems unfair that players who played every level and players who bought those levels are treated in exactly the same manner in game. Would you be willing to play on a server that allowed character buying/trading and gold buying/trading? Even if other servers existed that did not allow it?
Yes, people already do it and nobody cares. People in Nihilum by gold for repairs and mats. It doesn't diminish anyones respect for them. 95% of the old HWL had friends grind honor on their toon. Nobody cared. As long as your a great raider or a great PvPer, nobody gives a damn if you skip the boring shit.
We had one guy on my server that didn't get any help grinding his Rank 14. It took him 14 weeks to go from 13 to 14 alone. He got kicked out of school, lost his job, started doing drugs. When he finally hit 14 he quit wow two weeks later. Nobody had any respect for him.
I personally care if people buy gold. It shows that they aren't willing to play the game the way it was intended. Until WoW opens a gold buying service I see no reason for big guilds to cheat in order to stay ahead. That's like putting in the money cheat on the Sims. Sure you have the cool swimming pool and your toon is happy, but you cheated to get there. No glory.
Also, the guy who lost his job is an extreme example of someone who is playing the game far too much. The whole system of HWL was taken out of WoW because it promoted behavior just like that. Now players can easily gain honor without playing every day for 18 hours. Buying honor is...you guessed it, dishonorable. It is bad gaming practice. It doesn't matter how many people look the other way.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
You must not be familiar with how easy it is to grind quests while playing WoW. The five day formula is very simple and is not mob grind. Quests are taken and completed in large numbers. The amount of exp that flows in is huge. There is a simple way that I've never found boring.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. I am not exactly sure what part time job you had in college, but mine usually runs from when I'm out of class until about 7 or 8. I then study and spend time with my girlfriend. On the weekends I usually work 9 - 12 hour shifts. On Sunday I study for tests and do the internet portions of my classes. I am not bombarded with free time. To compare you college career to mine is unfair. I get about 2 - 3 hours of free time a day if I'm lucky. And those hours aren't linked. The fact of the matter is that I still managed to level my characters up without paying some more chinese kid to push the buttons for me. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. I've heard many stories of idiots neglecting their real life duties for WoW. A lot of these people are rather horrible people in real life as well. There is no excuse. That said I still don't think that playing the game's grind is going to turn you into a bad father. Also, I'm pretty sure the most expensive PvP gear is obtainable by group of 2 - 5 people. Raid gear is not designed for PvP anymore. If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. It is hard for me to comment on this because it sounds crazy. You are basically saying that all non-hardcore players are "shit" and that you have to cheat to be good... That's sad. Aren't there other ways to enjoy yourself while playing WoW? How about the friends you make while leveling...whoops you dont level. How about the people you trust who have been there from the beginning...wait no. How about helping your friends grind for their epic tradeskill stuff...oh wait they all buy it. Sounds like you are missing the point and you are going to have to continue buying things that others earn in order to "have fun". Sounds like a bad habit to me. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I disagree with how someone fundamentally builds their classes abilities. Although much can be learned from knowing what fireball version to use against a boss I don't think that is learning your class. Raiding and hardcore PvP are basically two routes which you find appealing. In those situations it is easy to learn what spells and combos work well. I don't mind that. I agree, actually. It is not hard to learn when to click shoot fire and when to stop. I think the whole problem is that we disagree on what makes the game fun. I like exploring the game as a whole. I like knowing where to go and what to kill so I can earn new spells and abilities. Sure I wouldn't mind test driving a character, but I wouldn't feel connected to it. I'd get bored, just like you did. I'd stop having fun because it would be just another grind. I'd spend money to skip killing rats because it is SO BORING AND I JUST WANT TO PVP AND RAIDDDD. Fortunately I find the grind to 70 fun and I paced myself enough so that I could experience the game and enjoy myself. The kids spending their income on gold and rep/honor meanwhile were racing faster and faster towards realizing that buying anything in game is worthless because eventually you come to a point where you get bored of a grind you can't pay for. In short, you are basically bought yourself boredom.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
There's your problem, right there.
Not everyone defines "fun" in exactly the same way. This makes the target very hard for designers to hit for every last potential player of the game.
What the bare majority of the players might find to be fun might not suit a minority. Similarly, people have different thresholds for when what was fun yesterday becomes boring today.
Some people will seek to shortcut immediately, others will later on, and still others never will.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
You must not be familiar with how easy it is to grind quests while playing WoW. The five day formula is very simple and is not mob grind. Quests are taken and completed in large numbers. The amount of exp that flows in is huge. There is a simple way that I've never found boring.
Then you enjoy doing the same shit over and over. Get a kill quest, go turn in a bunch of bear paws. Maybe your efficient at it, but we are still talking about hundreds of hours of wasted time. Hundreds of hours is a lot.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. I am not exactly sure what part time job you had in college, but mine usually runs from when I'm out of class until about 7 or 8. I then study and spend time with my girlfriend. On the weekends I usually work 9 - 12 hour shifts. On Sunday I study for tests and do the internet portions of my classes. I am not bombarded with free time. To compare you college career to mine is unfair. I get about 2 - 3 hours of free time a day if I'm lucky. And those hours aren't linked. The fact of the matter is that I still managed to level my characters up without paying some more chinese kid to push the buttons for me. Playing the game two hours a day unlinked might be enough to level over the course of six months, but it sure as hell isn't enough to play endgame. PvP doesn't allow you to proceed at your own pace, you have to keep pace with everyone else, or lose. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. I've heard many stories of idiots neglecting their real life duties for WoW. A lot of these people are rather horrible people in real life as well. There is no excuse. That said I still don't think that playing the game's grind is going to turn you into a bad father. Also, I'm pretty sure the most expensive PvP gear is obtainable by group of 2 - 5 people. Raid gear is not designed for PvP anymore. The PvP gear still isn't as good as the raid gear. Season two is a woefully small upgrade, and PvE gear just gets better the better. The stuff out of hyjal and BT is clearly TIERS above season 2. Moreover, raiding lets you fill every slot, not a 5/5 set. In addition, most raid items are comming with tons of stamina these days, and a ton more +DMG. They are better. On top of this, arena is drastically imbalanced. For one thing, only certain classes are really allowed to play. If your a druid or a hunter or something, you might as well go home. You aren't getting you're full set and weapon. 5v5 can even be quite onerous to schedule, because you need five top notched pvpers of the exact right classes with the exact right specs. I have a 2000 3v3 team, and even that doesn't get me all the items arena has to offer. And of course once you get your new shiny epic you need to get it enchanted. That costs G. And on top of that you have to get fucking gems for it now, another farming timesink. If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. It is hard for me to comment on this because it sounds crazy. You are basically saying that all non-hardcore players are "shit" and that you have to cheat to be good... That's sad. Aren't there other ways to enjoy yourself while playing WoW? How about the friends you make while leveling...whoops you dont level. How about the people you trust who have been there from the beginning...wait no. How about helping your friends grind for their epic tradeskill stuff...oh wait they all buy it. Sounds like you are missing the point and you are going to have to continue buying things that others earn in order to "have fun". Sounds like a bad habit to me. Leveling and exploring is only fun the first time around. After that, there is nothing left to explore. You are doing the samn shit you did the first time. It isn't fun. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I disagree with how someone fundamentally builds their classes abilities. Although much can be learned from knowing what fireball version to use against a boss I don't think that is learning your class. Raiding and hardcore PvP are basically two routes which you find appealing. In those situations it is easy to learn what spells and combos work well. I don't mind that. I agree, actually. It is not hard to learn when to click shoot fire and when to stop. I think the whole problem is that we disagree on what makes the game fun. I like exploring the game as a whole. I like knowing where to go and what to kill so I can earn new spells and abilities. Sure I wouldn't mind test driving a character, but I wouldn't feel connected to it. I'd get bored, just like you did. I'd stop having fun because it would be just another grind. I'd spend money to skip killing rats because it is SO BORING AND I JUST WANT TO PVP AND RAIDDDD. Fortunately I find the grind to 70 fun and I paced myself enough so that I could experience the game and enjoy myself. The kids spending their income on gold and rep/honor meanwhile were racing faster and faster towards realizing that buying anything in game is worthless because eventually you come to a point where you get bored of a grind you can't pay for. In short, you are basically bought yourself boredom. Because you find mindless grinding over and over fun, you can't possibly understand why someone would want to skip it. It is unfortunate that in order to experience aspects of the game you enjoy, developers force you to wade through a bunch of shit you don't want. It doesn't have to be this way. They've made a choice (mainly because they have to spend less money on new content developement if they force you to grind). Until they make the right choice (games full of dunamic content every enjoys and has fun all the time) people will decide for themselves if the cost of skipping boring content and getting to the good stuff is worth it too them.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
You must not be familiar with how easy it is to grind quests while playing WoW. The five day formula is very simple and is not mob grind. Quests are taken and completed in large numbers. The amount of exp that flows in is huge. There is a simple way that I've never found boring.
Then you enjoy doing the same shit over and over. Get a kill quest, go turn in a bunch of bear paws. Maybe your efficient at it, but we are still talking about hundreds of hours of wasted time. Hundreds of hours is a lot.
I would really like it if you would stop calling the parts of the game you don't like "shit". It bothers me that you can't see that others enjoy what you find mindless. Raiding is "shit" to me, but I don't call it that. It is just as many hours and if I had to play WoW for 4 - 6 hours straight for a chance for one item I would probably think that was a waste of time. Regardless I don't call that style curse words to make my point seem cooler.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. I am not exactly sure what part time job you had in college, but mine usually runs from when I'm out of class until about 7 or 8. I then study and spend time with my girlfriend. On the weekends I usually work 9 - 12 hour shifts. On Sunday I study for tests and do the internet portions of my classes. I am not bombarded with free time. To compare you college career to mine is unfair. I get about 2 - 3 hours of free time a day if I'm lucky. And those hours aren't linked. The fact of the matter is that I still managed to level my characters up without paying some more chinese kid to push the buttons for me. Playing the game two hours a day unlinked might be enough to level over the course of six months, but it sure as hell isn't enough to play endgame. PvP doesn't allow you to proceed at your own pace, you have to keep pace with everyone else, or lose. You would be surprised what I can do with 14 hours a week. PvP does now allow you to pace yourself. Although the arena is a ladder the BGs now work with the pace of the player. Also, you can still get arena items if you lose all 10 games you play. The points don't disappear if you stop playing for a week. The PvP you are speaking about was phased out because it was causing too much trouble. People would report others for cheating which would get their account suspended for a few days. Long enough for them to drop a spot. That's just one example. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. I've heard many stories of idiots neglecting their real life duties for WoW. A lot of these people are rather horrible people in real life as well. There is no excuse. That said I still don't think that playing the game's grind is going to turn you into a bad father. Also, I'm pretty sure the most expensive PvP gear is obtainable by group of 2 - 5 people. Raid gear is not designed for PvP anymore. The PvP gear still isn't as good as the raid gear. Season two is a woefully small upgrade, and PvE gear just gets better the better. The stuff out of hyjal and BT is clearly TIERS above season 2. Moreover, raiding lets you fill every slot, not a 5/5 set. In addition, most raid items are comming with tons of stamina these days, and a ton more +DMG. They are better. +Dmg in PvP? Do you play a Warlock? I'm pretty sure it depends on your class. I know for a fact that +dmg gear doesn't do anything for a Shadow Priest. That's a very biased view. I'm pretty sure most good PvP teams are using PvP gear. Although I don't really check on those items because I don't like PvP. I find that playing the same three maps over and over is pretty pointless and doesn't really fit my vision of an RPG. On top of this, arena is drastically imbalanced. For one thing, only certain classes are really allowed to play. If your a druid or a hunter or something, you might as well go home. You aren't getting you're full set and weapon. 5v5 can even be quite onerous to schedule, because you need five top notched pvpers of the exact right classes with the exact right specs. I have a 2000 3v3 team, and even that doesn't get me all the items arena has to offer. Are you serious? See above. I stated how easy it is to farm those epics. And of course once you get your new shiny epic you need to get it enchanted. That costs G. And on top of that you have to get fucking gems for it now, another farming timesink. So your solution is to buy the gold for those? You are just skipping one grind to get into the midst of another. You said a 2000 point team isn't enough? Why not just buy a character with the PvP gear already farmed? Then you could grind without any goal...oh wait you quit because that was boring? Sounds like you failed to grasp the core function of the game. You grind to play and play to grind. It is simple and cheating is silly. If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. It is hard for me to comment on this because it sounds crazy. You are basically saying that all non-hardcore players are "shit" and that you have to cheat to be good... That's sad. Aren't there other ways to enjoy yourself while playing WoW? How about the friends you make while leveling...whoops you dont level. How about the people you trust who have been there from the beginning...wait no. How about helping your friends grind for their epic tradeskill stuff...oh wait they all buy it. Sounds like you are missing the point and you are going to have to continue buying things that others earn in order to "have fun". Sounds like a bad habit to me. Leveling and exploring is only fun the first time around. After that, there is nothing left to explore. You are doing the samn shit you did the first time. It isn't fun. I'm pretty sure that's a very biased opinion. I've had fun leveling two characters. The experience the second and even the third time around was interesting. Why? Well, the first time I was learning the ropes and needed a lot of help to figure out the best way to head to 60. The second time I knew the ropes and had a blast seeing how quickly I could ding. The third time I AoE'd (which takes practice and skill imo) with a Paladin and barely quested at all. In other words, I changed the grind to suit me instead of cheating and losing all credibility. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I disagree with how someone fundamentally builds their classes abilities. Although much can be learned from knowing what fireball version to use against a boss I don't think that is learning your class. Raiding and hardcore PvP are basically two routes which you find appealing. In those situations it is easy to learn what spells and combos work well. I don't mind that. I agree, actually. It is not hard to learn when to click shoot fire and when to stop. I think the whole problem is that we disagree on what makes the game fun. I like exploring the game as a whole. I like knowing where to go and what to kill so I can earn new spells and abilities. Sure I wouldn't mind test driving a character, but I wouldn't feel connected to it. I'd get bored, just like you did. I'd stop having fun because it would be just another grind. I'd spend money to skip killing rats because it is SO BORING AND I JUST WANT TO PVP AND RAIDDDD. Fortunately I find the grind to 70 fun and I paced myself enough so that I could experience the game and enjoy myself. The kids spending their income on gold and rep/honor meanwhile were racing faster and faster towards realizing that buying anything in game is worthless because eventually you come to a point where you get bored of a grind you can't pay for. In short, you are basically bought yourself boredom. Because you find mindless grinding over and over fun, you can't possibly understand why someone would want to skip it. The grind is what you make it. I think that PvP arenas are mindless. Every top team has almost the same class spread and they use the same PvP tactics which made those classes overpowered in Battlegrounds. The only difference is that games last a few minutes instead of 10 - 60 minutes. Also, I can understand exactly why people skip it. Their mentality towards MMORPGs is vastly different from my own. Instead of finding a different genre like an FPS or an RTS they infest my genre with exploitation and illegal item/gold/character trade. You don't see me logging into Counterstrike and asking everyone to pretend they are elves and search the map for rabbit paws. So don't skip my game's content just so you can pew pew on the 70 PvP maps. It is unfortunate that in order to experience aspects of the game you enjoy, developers force you to wade through a bunch of shit you don't want. It doesn't have to be this way. They've made a choice (mainly because they have to spend less money on new content developement if they force you to grind). Until they make the right choice (games full of dunamic content every enjoys and has fun all the time) people will decide for themselves if the cost of skipping boring content and getting to the good stuff is worth it too them. One man's trash is another man's treasure. A game you might find enjoyable would be utterly boring or horribly imbalanced to another. I enjoy the grind. I don't think of it as killing for paws. It is a risk vs reward system and I spend a lot of doing more than just grinding. I alt-tab to other websites. I chat and vent with friends. I cook dinner while I ride the FPs. I train fishing. I do what the game intends. I agree with one thing. People WILL decide for themselves if the cost of skipping content and gettting to the "good" stuff is worth it. Also, the game developers will decide which practices they allow and which they will ban for. It is only a matter of time (see: recent bannings and lawsuits by Blizzard) before the practice you agree with is wiped out.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
You must not be familiar with how easy it is to grind quests while playing WoW. The five day formula is very simple and is not mob grind. Quests are taken and completed in large numbers. The amount of exp that flows in is huge. There is a simple way that I've never found boring.
Then you enjoy doing the same shit over and over. Get a kill quest, go turn in a bunch of bear paws. Maybe your efficient at it, but we are still talking about hundreds of hours of wasted time. Hundreds of hours is a lot.
I would really like it if you would stop calling the parts of the game you don't like "shit". It bothers me that you can't see that others enjoy what you find mindless. Raiding is "shit" to me, but I don't call it that. It is just as many hours and if I had to play WoW for 4 - 6 hours straight for a chance for one item I would probably think that was a waste of time. Regardless I don't call that style curse words to make my point seem cooler.
I think the Godzilla hollywood made in the 1990s was shit. Maybe you disagree with me, but my opinion on the matter holds true. So does my opinion of grinding out mob after mob for hours on end.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. I am not exactly sure what part time job you had in college, but mine usually runs from when I'm out of class until about 7 or 8. I then study and spend time with my girlfriend. On the weekends I usually work 9 - 12 hour shifts. On Sunday I study for tests and do the internet portions of my classes. I am not bombarded with free time. To compare you college career to mine is unfair. I get about 2 - 3 hours of free time a day if I'm lucky. And those hours aren't linked. The fact of the matter is that I still managed to level my characters up without paying some more chinese kid to push the buttons for me. Playing the game two hours a day unlinked might be enough to level over the course of six months, but it sure as hell isn't enough to play endgame. PvP doesn't allow you to proceed at your own pace, you have to keep pace with everyone else, or lose. You would be surprised what I can do with 14 hours a week. PvP does now allow you to pace yourself. Although the arena is a ladder the BGs now work with the pace of the player. Also, you can still get arena items if you lose all 10 games you play. The points don't disappear if you stop playing for a week. The PvP you are speaking about was phased out because it was causing too much trouble. People would report others for cheating which would get their account suspended for a few days. Long enough for them to drop a spot. That's just one example. No, you can't get arena items losing ten games a week. You can get your shoulders and your gloves. You can't get your set, you can't get your weapon. That isn't enough to compete at a high level. Just cause you see everyone running around with thier arena shoulders doesn't mean they are getting top of the line gear PvPing. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. I've heard many stories of idiots neglecting their real life duties for WoW. A lot of these people are rather horrible people in real life as well. There is no excuse. That said I still don't think that playing the game's grind is going to turn you into a bad father. Also, I'm pretty sure the most expensive PvP gear is obtainable by group of 2 - 5 people. Raid gear is not designed for PvP anymore. The PvP gear still isn't as good as the raid gear. Season two is a woefully small upgrade, and PvE gear just gets better the better. The stuff out of hyjal and BT is clearly TIERS above season 2. Moreover, raiding lets you fill every slot, not a 5/5 set. In addition, most raid items are comming with tons of stamina these days, and a ton more +DMG. They are better. +Dmg in PvP? Do you play a Warlock? I'm pretty sure it depends on your class. I know for a fact that +dmg gear doesn't do anything for a Shadow Priest. That's a very biased view. I'm pretty sure most good PvP teams are using PvP gear. Although I don't really check on those items because I don't like PvP. I find that playing the same three maps over and over is pretty pointless and doesn't really fit my vision of an RPG. +dmg is one of the most fundamental PvP stats. If you hit twice as hard as someone else, that is a huge advantage. PvP arena gear was good because it had a lot of stam, but now the new raid items have stam too. Moreover, except for weapons season two wasn't nearly a big enough upgrade (in fact, your better of buying season one for less points it was so bad). Despite promises, PvP gear is not keeping pace with PvE gear. On top of this, arena is drastically imbalanced. For one thing, only certain classes are really allowed to play. If your a druid or a hunter or something, you might as well go home. You aren't getting you're full set and weapon. 5v5 can even be quite onerous to schedule, because you need five top notched pvpers of the exact right classes with the exact right specs. I have a 2000 3v3 team, and even that doesn't get me all the items arena has to offer. Are you serious? See above. I stated how easy it is to farm those epics. No, you didn't. You can't lose ten games a week and get your new set every season. And of course once you get your new shiny epic you need to get it enchanted. That costs G. And on top of that you have to get fucking gems for it now, another farming timesink. So your solution is to buy the gold for those? You are just skipping one grind to get into the midst of another. You said a 2000 point team isn't enough? Why not just buy a character with the PvP gear already farmed? Then you could grind without any goal...oh wait you quit because that was boring? Sounds like you failed to grasp the core function of the game. You grind to play and play to grind. It is simple and cheating is silly. I did fail to grasp the point of WoW. The first time through leveling I played it for the exploration factor. Then at endgame I played it for competitive PvP and challenging raiding. Raiding became a grind because once I learned the encounter, I had to farm it twenty times. Learnign the encounters was fun, GRINDING was not. PvP was fun, and having human opponents made it less repetitive. It got old because they never released new BGs and the arena system was really really imbalanced. These are design flaws in WoW. Not being given the option to switch classes at the cap is a design flaw. Having to clear the same instance twenty times is a design flaw. I quit WoW because the developers FORCED me to grind the same content over and over, instead of releasing new content. They FORCED me to play too much or give up on playing in high level PvP. I came to WoW through warcraft and starcraft. I was expecting a skill based game that was fun. Instead it is a gear and time based repetitive grind. Had I played another MMO before, or at least knew all thier promises about the xpac were lies, then I would have quit awhile ago. Developers should NEVER ask players to do things they don't find fun for hundreds of hours. Games are made to have fun. If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. It is hard for me to comment on this because it sounds crazy. You are basically saying that all non-hardcore players are "shit" and that you have to cheat to be good... That's sad. Aren't there other ways to enjoy yourself while playing WoW? How about the friends you make while leveling...whoops you dont level. How about the people you trust who have been there from the beginning...wait no. How about helping your friends grind for their epic tradeskill stuff...oh wait they all buy it. Sounds like you are missing the point and you are going to have to continue buying things that others earn in order to "have fun". Sounds like a bad habit to me. Leveling and exploring is only fun the first time around. After that, there is nothing left to explore. You are doing the samn shit you did the first time. It isn't fun. I'm pretty sure that's a very biased opinion. I've had fun leveling two characters. The experience the second and even the third time around was interesting. Why? Well, the first time I was learning the ropes and needed a lot of help to figure out the best way to head to 60. The second time I knew the ropes and had a blast seeing how quickly I could ding. The third time I AoE'd (which takes practice and skill imo) with a Paladin and barely quested at all. In other words, I changed the grind to suit me instead of cheating and losing all credibility. I'm going to disagree. I've done it, it isn't that hard to learn a new class, leveling doesn't help. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I disagree with how someone fundamentally builds their classes abilities. Although much can be learned from knowing what fireball version to use against a boss I don't think that is learning your class. Raiding and hardcore PvP are basically two routes which you find appealing. In those situations it is easy to learn what spells and combos work well. I don't mind that. I agree, actually. It is not hard to learn when to click shoot fire and when to stop. I think the whole problem is that we disagree on what makes the game fun. I like exploring the game as a whole. I like knowing where to go and what to kill so I can earn new spells and abilities. Sure I wouldn't mind test driving a character, but I wouldn't feel connected to it. I'd get bored, just like you did. I'd stop having fun because it would be just another grind. I'd spend money to skip killing rats because it is SO BORING AND I JUST WANT TO PVP AND RAIDDDD. Fortunately I find the grind to 70 fun and I paced myself enough so that I could experience the game and enjoy myself. The kids spending their income on gold and rep/honor meanwhile were racing faster and faster towards realizing that buying anything in game is worthless because eventually you come to a point where you get bored of a grind you can't pay for. In short, you are basically bought yourself boredom. Because you find mindless grinding over and over fun, you can't possibly understand why someone would want to skip it. The grind is what you make it. I think that PvP arenas are mindless. Every top team has almost the same class spread and they use the same PvP tactics which made those classes overpowered in Battlegrounds. The only difference is that games last a few minutes instead of 10 - 60 minutes. Also, I can understand exactly why people skip it. Their mentality towards MMORPGs is vastly different from my own. Instead of finding a different genre like an FPS or an RTS they infest my genre with exploitation and illegal item/gold/character trade. You don't see me logging into Counterstrike and asking everyone to pretend they are elves and search the map for rabbit paws. So don't skip my game's content just so you can pew pew on the 70 PvP maps. Well, it's our game too. We pay $15 a month like you. If Blizzard won't take peoples desires into account, maybe one of the new games comming out will. At least Warhammer gives XP for PvP. I wouldn't mind grinding new toons to 70 if that were the case. It is unfortunate that in order to experience aspects of the game you enjoy, developers force you to wade through a bunch of shit you don't want. It doesn't have to be this way. They've made a choice (mainly because they have to spend less money on new content developement if they force you to grind). Until they make the right choice (games full of dunamic content every enjoys and has fun all the time) people will decide for themselves if the cost of skipping boring content and getting to the good stuff is worth it too them. One man's trash is another man's treasure. A game you might find enjoyable would be utterly boring or horribly imbalanced to another. I enjoy the grind. I don't think of it as killing for paws. It is a risk vs reward system and I spend a lot of doing more than just grinding. I alt-tab to other websites. I chat and vent with friends. I cook dinner while I ride the FPs. I train fishing. I do what the game intends. I agree with one thing. People WILL decide for themselves if the cost of skipping content and gettting to the "good" stuff is worth it. Also, the game developers will decide which practices they allow and which they will ban for. It is only a matter of time (see: recent bannings and lawsuits by Blizzard) before the practice you agree with is wiped out. Prohibition didn't get rid of booze, and the war on drugs didn't get rid of E or pot. The government had much greater resources then Blizzard. Supply and demand will always get togethor. And demand will always be there as long as developers insist on forcing people to grind through unfun content in a game.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
You must not be familiar with how easy it is to grind quests while playing WoW. The five day formula is very simple and is not mob grind. Quests are taken and completed in large numbers. The amount of exp that flows in is huge. There is a simple way that I've never found boring.
Then you enjoy doing the same shit over and over. Get a kill quest, go turn in a bunch of bear paws. Maybe your efficient at it, but we are still talking about hundreds of hours of wasted time. Hundreds of hours is a lot.
I would really like it if you would stop calling the parts of the game you don't like "shit". It bothers me that you can't see that others enjoy what you find mindless. Raiding is "shit" to me, but I don't call it that. It is just as many hours and if I had to play WoW for 4 - 6 hours straight for a chance for one item I would probably think that was a waste of time. Regardless I don't call that style curse words to make my point seem cooler.
I think the Godzilla hollywood made in the 1990s was shit. Maybe you disagree with me, but my opinion on the matter holds true. So does my opinion of grinding out mob after mob for hours on end.
It doesn't matter what your opinion is if you choose to insult someone else's opinion by cursing at them. I would understand that if we were on Nancy Grace's Fox News show, but we aren't. We are talking about cheating. I would rather not have to talk about my "shit" version of the game. Instead I'd rather have a debate.
Also, thanks for joining the huge wall of multiple colors. I'm glad you decided to make this into a three way conversation as if you are the person I'm talking to.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. I am not exactly sure what part time job you had in college, but mine usually runs from when I'm out of class until about 7 or 8. I then study and spend time with my girlfriend. On the weekends I usually work 9 - 12 hour shifts. On Sunday I study for tests and do the internet portions of my classes. I am not bombarded with free time. To compare you college career to mine is unfair. I get about 2 - 3 hours of free time a day if I'm lucky. And those hours aren't linked. The fact of the matter is that I still managed to level my characters up without paying some more chinese kid to push the buttons for me. Playing the game two hours a day unlinked might be enough to level over the course of six months, but it sure as hell isn't enough to play endgame. PvP doesn't allow you to proceed at your own pace, you have to keep pace with everyone else, or lose. You would be surprised what I can do with 14 hours a week. PvP does now allow you to pace yourself. Although the arena is a ladder the BGs now work with the pace of the player. Also, you can still get arena items if you lose all 10 games you play. The points don't disappear if you stop playing for a week. The PvP you are speaking about was phased out because it was causing too much trouble. People would report others for cheating which would get their account suspended for a few days. Long enough for them to drop a spot. That's just one example. No, you can't get arena items losing ten games a week. You can get your shoulders and your gloves. You can't get your set, you can't get your weapon. That isn't enough to compete at a high level. Just cause you see everyone running around with thier arena shoulders doesn't mean they are getting top of the line gear PvPing. Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the way arena points work. From what others have told me you still get points every week for playing regardless of your score. The points reset? This is news to me. I don't PvP. This thread wasn't even originally about arena grinding. It is about cheating and how people view it. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. I've heard many stories of idiots neglecting their real life duties for WoW. A lot of these people are rather horrible people in real life as well. There is no excuse. That said I still don't think that playing the game's grind is going to turn you into a bad father. Also, I'm pretty sure the most expensive PvP gear is obtainable by group of 2 - 5 people. Raid gear is not designed for PvP anymore. The PvP gear still isn't as good as the raid gear. Season two is a woefully small upgrade, and PvE gear just gets better the better. The stuff out of hyjal and BT is clearly TIERS above season 2. Moreover, raiding lets you fill every slot, not a 5/5 set. In addition, most raid items are comming with tons of stamina these days, and a ton more +DMG. They are better. +Dmg in PvP? Do you play a Warlock? I'm pretty sure it depends on your class. I know for a fact that +dmg gear doesn't do anything for a Shadow Priest. That's a very biased view. I'm pretty sure most good PvP teams are using PvP gear. Although I don't really check on those items because I don't like PvP. I find that playing the same three maps over and over is pretty pointless and doesn't really fit my vision of an RPG. +dmg is one of the most fundamental PvP stats. If you hit twice as hard as someone else, that is a huge advantage. PvP arena gear was good because it had a lot of stam, but now the new raid items have stam too. Moreover, except for weapons season two wasn't nearly a big enough upgrade (in fact, your better of buying season one for less points it was so bad). Despite promises, PvP gear is not keeping pace with PvE gear. New raid items? Is this black temple stuff? I quit about a week before 2.1 launched. I'm sorry if I am a bit behind the raid gear. I never raid and looking at raid gear usually disappoints me since it trumps most everything else. On top of this, arena is drastically imbalanced. For one thing, only certain classes are really allowed to play. If your a druid or a hunter or something, you might as well go home. You aren't getting you're full set and weapon. 5v5 can even be quite onerous to schedule, because you need five top notched pvpers of the exact right classes with the exact right specs. I have a 2000 3v3 team, and even that doesn't get me all the items arena has to offer. Are you serious? See above. I stated how easy it is to farm those epics. No, you didn't. You can't lose ten games a week and get your new set every season. How often do seasons restart? And of course once you get your new shiny epic you need to get it enchanted. That costs G. And on top of that you have to get fucking gems for it now, another farming timesink. So your solution is to buy the gold for those? You are just skipping one grind to get into the midst of another. You said a 2000 point team isn't enough? Why not just buy a character with the PvP gear already farmed? Then you could grind without any goal...oh wait you quit because that was boring? Sounds like you failed to grasp the core function of the game. You grind to play and play to grind. It is simple and cheating is silly. I did fail to grasp the point of WoW. The first time through leveling I played it for the exploration factor. Then at endgame I played it for competitive PvP and challenging raiding. Raiding became a grind because once I learned the encounter, I had to farm it twenty times. Learnign the encounters was fun, GRINDING was not. PvP was fun, and having human opponents made it less repetitive. It got old because they never released new BGs and the arena system was really really imbalanced. Your first paragraph in this clump of text makes sense. You had a vision in mind. You wanted to play the high level content. I understand that. Blizzard puts out content periodically for you. I also agree that the BG and Arena system are flawed. A game with many different environments sure skimps on the BGs and Arenas. The problem here is a flaw that happened because WoW is a PvE game with PvP additions which came much later. These are design flaws in WoW. Not being given the option to switch classes at the cap is a design flaw. Having to clear the same instance twenty times is a design flaw. I quit WoW because the developers FORCED me to grind the same content over and over, instead of releasing new content. They FORCED me to play too much or give up on playing in high level PvP. I disagree here. Although you make wish to change your character from a Warrior to a Mage you should not be given the ability to change classes at the top. The grind Blizzard put in forces you to play characters from 1 - 70. This is a feature of their game. If you dislike it than you quit, which you did. I would not call this a design flaw. No MMORPG allows you to create top level characters just because you did the grind once. They all force you to create characters. I came to WoW through warcraft and starcraft. I was expecting a skill based game that was fun. Instead it is a gear and time based repetitive grind. Had I played another MMO before, or at least knew all thier promises about the xpac were lies, then I would have quit awhile ago. And yet you still played the game from 1 - 70? And what promises were lies? I was pretty impressed by the difference after the expansion. Although it was the same game they added a bunch of stuff that was interesting. Developers should NEVER ask players to do things they don't find fun for hundreds of hours. Games are made to have fun. They don't. You pay for the product. If you don't like the product you stop playing it. If you want to experience a Player vs. Player fantasy game that doesn't require grinding I believe GuildWars allows you to create characters at the max level for PvP.
If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. It is hard for me to comment on this because it sounds crazy. You are basically saying that all non-hardcore players are "shit" and that you have to cheat to be good... That's sad. Aren't there other ways to enjoy yourself while playing WoW? How about the friends you make while leveling...whoops you dont level. How about the people you trust who have been there from the beginning...wait no. How about helping your friends grind for their epic tradeskill stuff...oh wait they all buy it. Sounds like you are missing the point and you are going to have to continue buying things that others earn in order to "have fun". Sounds like a bad habit to me. Leveling and exploring is only fun the first time around. After that, there is nothing left to explore. You are doing the samn shit you did the first time. It isn't fun. I'm pretty sure that's a very biased opinion. I've had fun leveling two characters. The experience the second and even the third time around was interesting. Why? Well, the first time I was learning the ropes and needed a lot of help to figure out the best way to head to 60. The second time I knew the ropes and had a blast seeing how quickly I could ding. The third time I AoE'd (which takes practice and skill imo) with a Paladin and barely quested at all. In other words, I changed the grind to suit me instead of cheating and losing all credibility. I'm going to disagree. I've done it, it isn't that hard to learn a new class, leveling doesn't help. Leveling doesn't help you learn a class? I can understand players who can learn classes at 70, but i've never heard anyone who thinks leveling a character doesn't teach you the ropes. Crazy. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I disagree with how someone fundamentally builds their classes abilities. Although much can be learned from knowing what fireball version to use against a boss I don't think that is learning your class. Raiding and hardcore PvP are basically two routes which you find appealing. In those situations it is easy to learn what spells and combos work well. I don't mind that. I agree, actually. It is not hard to learn when to click shoot fire and when to stop. I think the whole problem is that we disagree on what makes the game fun. I like exploring the game as a whole. I like knowing where to go and what to kill so I can earn new spells and abilities. Sure I wouldn't mind test driving a character, but I wouldn't feel connected to it. I'd get bored, just like you did. I'd stop having fun because it would be just another grind. I'd spend money to skip killing rats because it is SO BORING AND I JUST WANT TO PVP AND RAIDDDD. Fortunately I find the grind to 70 fun and I paced myself enough so that I could experience the game and enjoy myself. The kids spending their income on gold and rep/honor meanwhile were racing faster and faster towards realizing that buying anything in game is worthless because eventually you come to a point where you get bored of a grind you can't pay for. In short, you are basically bought yourself boredom. Because you find mindless grinding over and over fun, you can't possibly understand why someone would want to skip it. The grind is what you make it. I think that PvP arenas are mindless. Every top team has almost the same class spread and they use the same PvP tactics which made those classes overpowered in Battlegrounds. The only difference is that games last a few minutes instead of 10 - 60 minutes. Also, I can understand exactly why people skip it. Their mentality towards MMORPGs is vastly different from my own. Instead of finding a different genre like an FPS or an RTS they infest my genre with exploitation and illegal item/gold/character trade. You don't see me logging into Counterstrike and asking everyone to pretend they are elves and search the map for rabbit paws. So don't skip my game's content just so you can pew pew on the 70 PvP maps. Well, it's our game too. We pay $15 a month like you. If Blizzard won't take peoples desires into account, maybe one of the new games comming out will. At least Warhammer gives XP for PvP. I wouldn't mind grinding new toons to 70 if that were the case. Actually, if you are like the other poster than you pay more than 15 for the game. You also illegally pay for things others don't. If you only paid legally the sub price I could understand, but you choose to cheat and that doesn't fly with me. If you want to play without the grind I think MMORPGs might not be your genre. It is unfortunate that in order to experience aspects of the game you enjoy, developers force you to wade through a bunch of shit you don't want. It doesn't have to be this way. They've made a choice (mainly because they have to spend less money on new content developement if they force you to grind). Until they make the right choice (games full of dunamic content every enjoys and has fun all the time) people will decide for themselves if the cost of skipping boring content and getting to the good stuff is worth it too them. One man's trash is another man's treasure. A game you might find enjoyable would be utterly boring or horribly imbalanced to another. I enjoy the grind. I don't think of it as killing for paws. It is a risk vs reward system and I spend a lot of doing more than just grinding. I alt-tab to other websites. I chat and vent with friends. I cook dinner while I ride the FPs. I train fishing. I do what the game intends. I agree with one thing. People WILL decide for themselves if the cost of skipping content and gettting to the "good" stuff is worth it. Also, the game developers will decide which practices they allow and which they will ban for. It is only a matter of time (see: recent bannings and lawsuits by Blizzard) before the practice you agree with is wiped out. Prohibition didn't get rid of booze, and the war on drugs didn't get rid of E or pot. The government had much greater resources then Blizzard. Supply and demand will always get togethor. And demand will always be there as long as developers insist on forcing people to grind through unfun content in a game. You're probably right. Gold sellers will always have a presence within the community. Every community has those who desire to break the rules in order to meet their own needs. The problem only appears to those who enjoy the game without the cheats on. When a game you love to experience as a whole is exploited by those who don't find that "fun" you will see how I feel about it. Until then good luck.
The wall of text is getting out of hand, I'll make this my last post.
Losing every week doesn't get you enough points for your set and all the arena gear. Most of the bitching you hear relates to peopel complaining that other people having thier shoulders (the most visible piece, also one of the cheapest) makes them look just like people with high ratings that have thier whole set. It is a vanity thing, the people with low ratings can't get thier whole set. Moreover, if you don't participate in 5v5 it is hard even with a decent rating.
Yes, raid items are a lot better then arena. One of the promises of TBC was that new arena gear would get released every season and it would keep up with raid gear. After seeing season two gear this is not the case.
Yes, WoW is a PvE game with a bad PvP add-on. I realized this right before expo, but expo was supposed to change it all. The reality is PvP is still screwed up. If they had at least been honest and said they didn't give a rats ass about PvP, at least I could have saved my time.
A lot of MMORPG developers are realizing that forcing people to grind to max level again makes them want to quit. They are addressing this. Guild Wars already has the PvP chars, and if the interface and movement mechanics were any good I'd be playing that game. Tabula Rasa will allow you to save your character at different level intervals, right before making big decisions to specialize your char. So if you want to go down one path at lvl 30 instead of the other you don't have to grind to 30 again, you just start with your saved char and go down the new tree. Warhammer allows for XP from PvP kills, which makes leveling so much more fun for PvPers. The wave of the future is away from forcing people to grind things they don't want to.
Originally posted by tenthring Yes, people already do it and nobody cares. People in Nihilum by gold for repairs and mats. It doesn't diminish anyones respect for them.
It diminishes my respect for them, and a lot of people I've talked to have said "Yeah, I might not get world firsts but at least I don't buy gold". Same thing with the Arena tournament where it turned out that over half the teams had people disqualified for cheating, you can insist that "nobody cares" but you're wrong.
Because most MMOs have massive design flaws, and people like to shortcut around them. If you design an MMO that is fun all the time, nobody will want to skip out on the fun.
I happen to think that WoW's level grind is one of the most enjoyable MMORPG grinds I've played. I believe more people bot in WoW to either make real money or because they have played the level experience once and don't want to put in the time to learn another class.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
I refuse to take this as an estimate. Most people who level characters more than once can grind out a character in about 5 days played. If you played the game for 26 days straight for 18 hours a day I am pretty sure you'd have some organs fail.
Ok so your estimate is five days played. Thats 5 * 24 = 120 hours. And thats power grinding, the most painful and repetitive of all the leveling options. Throw on some tradeskills, downtime, and instance runs and you could easily be at 200. Either way, that is still a massive number of hours, more then enough to pass my exam, more then enough for anyone to do anything more important. Put another way, your paying about a $1.50 per hour for the service. I would certainly pay someone $1.50 to mow my lawn or do my dishes so I could get on with other things in life.
You must not be familiar with how easy it is to grind quests while playing WoW. The five day formula is very simple and is not mob grind. Quests are taken and completed in large numbers. The amount of exp that flows in is huge. There is a simple way that I've never found boring.
Then you enjoy doing the same shit over and over. Get a kill quest, go turn in a bunch of bear paws. Maybe your efficient at it, but we are still talking about hundreds of hours of wasted time. Hundreds of hours is a lot.
I would really like it if you would stop calling the parts of the game you don't like "shit". It bothers me that you can't see that others enjoy what you find mindless. Raiding is "shit" to me, but I don't call it that. It is just as many hours and if I had to play WoW for 4 - 6 hours straight for a chance for one item I would probably think that was a waste of time. Regardless I don't call that style curse words to make my point seem cooler.
I think the Godzilla hollywood made in the 1990s was shit. Maybe you disagree with me, but my opinion on the matter holds true. So does my opinion of grinding out mob after mob for hours on end.
It doesn't matter what your opinion is if you choose to insult someone else's opinion by cursing at them. I would understand that if we were on Nancy Grace's Fox News show, but we aren't. We are talking about cheating. I would rather not have to talk about my "shit" version of the game. Instead I'd rather have a debate.
Also, thanks for joining the huge wall of multiple colors. I'm glad you decided to make this into a three way conversation as if you are the person I'm talking to.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor) I had a 70, 60, and 53. I also have a part-time job, I am a full time student, and I live in my own place with my girlfriend. During that schedule I maintained all of these characters without getting fired, failing any classes, getting evicted, or breaking up. The figures you are giving me on time to reach 70 are skewed. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it stems from how much of the level grind you've actually played. It is very easy to level a character if you know the hotspots. A LOT less than 468 hours. When I was in college I had an assload of freetime too. That's when I leveled my first toon myself. Trust me, when you graduate and get a real job with real responsibilities you'll look back and realize just how much time you had in college. I am not exactly sure what part time job you had in college, but mine usually runs from when I'm out of class until about 7 or 8. I then study and spend time with my girlfriend. On the weekends I usually work 9 - 12 hour shifts. On Sunday I study for tests and do the internet portions of my classes. I am not bombarded with free time. To compare you college career to mine is unfair. I get about 2 - 3 hours of free time a day if I'm lucky. And those hours aren't linked. The fact of the matter is that I still managed to level my characters up without paying some more chinese kid to push the buttons for me. Playing the game two hours a day unlinked might be enough to level over the course of six months, but it sure as hell isn't enough to play endgame. PvP doesn't allow you to proceed at your own pace, you have to keep pace with everyone else, or lose. You would be surprised what I can do with 14 hours a week. PvP does now allow you to pace yourself. Although the arena is a ladder the BGs now work with the pace of the player. Also, you can still get arena items if you lose all 10 games you play. The points don't disappear if you stop playing for a week. The PvP you are speaking about was phased out because it was causing too much trouble. People would report others for cheating which would get their account suspended for a few days. Long enough for them to drop a spot. That's just one example. No, you can't get arena items losing ten games a week. You can get your shoulders and your gloves. You can't get your set, you can't get your weapon. That isn't enough to compete at a high level. Just cause you see everyone running around with thier arena shoulders doesn't mean they are getting top of the line gear PvPing. Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the way arena points work. From what others have told me you still get points every week for playing regardless of your score. The points reset? This is news to me. I don't PvP. This thread wasn't even originally about arena grinding. It is about cheating and how people view it. Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want. I stated above my current gaming/living situation. The situation you've explained is not a high percentage of WoW players. Many players I've played with have never purchased gold and have multiple high level characters. My guild leader has five kids, two are in school, one is a motorcycle rider and he also works for a software development company. None of these people buy gold/characters and none of them favor it. I'm not exactly sure how your life choices stack up when the other people are just as busy with real life and still prosper in the game without cheating. It is a high percentage of WoW players who try to stay on the cutting edge. Join a big hardcore raiding guild (the only way to get the loots you need for PvP). They are all disfunctional bastards. My guilds leader had a kid too, which he constantly neglected for WoW. Hopefully he doesn't end up like those Korean kids that starve to death while thier folks play WoW. I've heard many stories of idiots neglecting their real life duties for WoW. A lot of these people are rather horrible people in real life as well. There is no excuse. That said I still don't think that playing the game's grind is going to turn you into a bad father. Also, I'm pretty sure the most expensive PvP gear is obtainable by group of 2 - 5 people. Raid gear is not designed for PvP anymore. The PvP gear still isn't as good as the raid gear. Season two is a woefully small upgrade, and PvE gear just gets better the better. The stuff out of hyjal and BT is clearly TIERS above season 2. Moreover, raiding lets you fill every slot, not a 5/5 set. In addition, most raid items are comming with tons of stamina these days, and a ton more +DMG. They are better. +Dmg in PvP? Do you play a Warlock? I'm pretty sure it depends on your class. I know for a fact that +dmg gear doesn't do anything for a Shadow Priest. That's a very biased view. I'm pretty sure most good PvP teams are using PvP gear. Although I don't really check on those items because I don't like PvP. I find that playing the same three maps over and over is pretty pointless and doesn't really fit my vision of an RPG. +dmg is one of the most fundamental PvP stats. If you hit twice as hard as someone else, that is a huge advantage. PvP arena gear was good because it had a lot of stam, but now the new raid items have stam too. Moreover, except for weapons season two wasn't nearly a big enough upgrade (in fact, your better of buying season one for less points it was so bad). Despite promises, PvP gear is not keeping pace with PvE gear. New raid items? Is this black temple stuff? I quit about a week before 2.1 launched. I'm sorry if I am a bit behind the raid gear. I never raid and looking at raid gear usually disappoints me since it trumps most everything else. On top of this, arena is drastically imbalanced. For one thing, only certain classes are really allowed to play. If your a druid or a hunter or something, you might as well go home. You aren't getting you're full set and weapon. 5v5 can even be quite onerous to schedule, because you need five top notched pvpers of the exact right classes with the exact right specs. I have a 2000 3v3 team, and even that doesn't get me all the items arena has to offer. Are you serious? See above. I stated how easy it is to farm those epics. No, you didn't. You can't lose ten games a week and get your new set every season. How often do seasons restart? And of course once you get your new shiny epic you need to get it enchanted. That costs G. And on top of that you have to get fucking gems for it now, another farming timesink. So your solution is to buy the gold for those? You are just skipping one grind to get into the midst of another. You said a 2000 point team isn't enough? Why not just buy a character with the PvP gear already farmed? Then you could grind without any goal...oh wait you quit because that was boring? Sounds like you failed to grasp the core function of the game. You grind to play and play to grind. It is simple and cheating is silly. I did fail to grasp the point of WoW. The first time through leveling I played it for the exploration factor. Then at endgame I played it for competitive PvP and challenging raiding. Raiding became a grind because once I learned the encounter, I had to farm it twenty times. Learnign the encounters was fun, GRINDING was not. PvP was fun, and having human opponents made it less repetitive. It got old because they never released new BGs and the arena system was really really imbalanced. Your first paragraph in this clump of text makes sense. You had a vision in mind. You wanted to play the high level content. I understand that. Blizzard puts out content periodically for you. I also agree that the BG and Arena system are flawed. A game with many different environments sure skimps on the BGs and Arenas. The problem here is a flaw that happened because WoW is a PvE game with PvP additions which came much later. These are design flaws in WoW. Not being given the option to switch classes at the cap is a design flaw. Having to clear the same instance twenty times is a design flaw. I quit WoW because the developers FORCED me to grind the same content over and over, instead of releasing new content. They FORCED me to play too much or give up on playing in high level PvP. I disagree here. Although you make wish to change your character from a Warrior to a Mage you should not be given the ability to change classes at the top. The grind Blizzard put in forces you to play characters from 1 - 70. This is a feature of their game. If you dislike it than you quit, which you did. I would not call this a design flaw. No MMORPG allows you to create top level characters just because you did the grind once. They all force you to create characters. I came to WoW through warcraft and starcraft. I was expecting a skill based game that was fun. Instead it is a gear and time based repetitive grind. Had I played another MMO before, or at least knew all thier promises about the xpac were lies, then I would have quit awhile ago. And yet you still played the game from 1 - 70? And what promises were lies? I was pretty impressed by the difference after the expansion. Although it was the same game they added a bunch of stuff that was interesting. Developers should NEVER ask players to do things they don't find fun for hundreds of hours. Games are made to have fun. They don't. You pay for the product. If you don't like the product you stop playing it. If you want to experience a Player vs. Player fantasy game that doesn't require grinding I believe GuildWars allows you to create characters at the max level for PvP.
If your in some casual shit guild with second best gear and are ok getting steamrolled by hardcores in PvP, maybe you can get by. If you want to be on the bleeding edge you've got to play wow 40 hours a week. It is hard for me to comment on this because it sounds crazy. You are basically saying that all non-hardcore players are "shit" and that you have to cheat to be good... That's sad. Aren't there other ways to enjoy yourself while playing WoW? How about the friends you make while leveling...whoops you dont level. How about the people you trust who have been there from the beginning...wait no. How about helping your friends grind for their epic tradeskill stuff...oh wait they all buy it. Sounds like you are missing the point and you are going to have to continue buying things that others earn in order to "have fun". Sounds like a bad habit to me. Leveling and exploring is only fun the first time around. After that, there is nothing left to explore. You are doing the samn shit you did the first time. It isn't fun. I'm pretty sure that's a very biased opinion. I've had fun leveling two characters. The experience the second and even the third time around was interesting. Why? Well, the first time I was learning the ropes and needed a lot of help to figure out the best way to head to 60. The second time I knew the ropes and had a blast seeing how quickly I could ding. The third time I AoE'd (which takes practice and skill imo) with a Paladin and barely quested at all. In other words, I changed the grind to suit me instead of cheating and losing all credibility. I'm going to disagree. I've done it, it isn't that hard to learn a new class, leveling doesn't help. Leveling doesn't help you learn a class? I can understand players who can learn classes at 70, but i've never heard anyone who thinks leveling a character doesn't teach you the ropes. Crazy. I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man. You said in the beginning that leveling to 70 takes a month. You now say that learning to be 70 takes a month. Do you spend 18 hour days fumbling around with your 70 learning the ropes? Do you go to instances with your newly acquired 70? I would rather level for a month than stumble around blindly clicking buttons trying to figure out what fireball does. Also, raiding, instancing, and pvp at 70 are still grinds. They are just more robust. Are you telling me that buying yourself a 70 to grind at 70 is smarter than leveling and learning a 70 to grind at 70? Seems like we are obtaining the same end. I am just putting a bit more effort into providing my groupmates/raidmates/pvpmates with a more competant player. Also, if MMOs aren't rocket science why are you paying someone else to put your legos together? It seems a lot less enjoyable and no where near as fulfilling to me. Learning how a fireball works doesn't take 70 levels. Do you already have a max cap player. Do you belong to a raiding guild. Do you have mages in your guild. If so, you've probably seen them play, talk about thier characters, PvPed against mages. Guess what, you were learning those classes the whole time, just by watching others. When you get a mage at 70 you don't magically forget how a fireball works. You through it on your hotbar and you start using it. After about a month you learn all the eccentricities and min-maxing you didn't already know. You're right, raiding and PvP in WoW are just another grind. Which is why I quit the game. But when I first started doing them, in my very first MMO, I thought they were challenging and cool. I wanted to skip the boring crap and play the parts I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure I disagree with how someone fundamentally builds their classes abilities. Although much can be learned from knowing what fireball version to use against a boss I don't think that is learning your class. Raiding and hardcore PvP are basically two routes which you find appealing. In those situations it is easy to learn what spells and combos work well. I don't mind that. I agree, actually. It is not hard to learn when to click shoot fire and when to stop. I think the whole problem is that we disagree on what makes the game fun. I like exploring the game as a whole. I like knowing where to go and what to kill so I can earn new spells and abilities. Sure I wouldn't mind test driving a character, but I wouldn't feel connected to it. I'd get bored, just like you did. I'd stop having fun because it would be just another grind. I'd spend money to skip killing rats because it is SO BORING AND I JUST WANT TO PVP AND RAIDDDD. Fortunately I find the grind to 70 fun and I paced myself enough so that I could experience the game and enjoy myself. The kids spending their income on gold and rep/honor meanwhile were racing faster and faster towards realizing that buying anything in game is worthless because eventually you come to a point where you get bored of a grind you can't pay for. In short, you are basically bought yourself boredom. Because you find mindless grinding over and over fun, you can't possibly understand why someone would want to skip it. The grind is what you make it. I think that PvP arenas are mindless. Every top team has almost the same class spread and they use the same PvP tactics which made those classes overpowered in Battlegrounds. The only difference is that games last a few minutes instead of 10 - 60 minutes. Also, I can understand exactly why people skip it. Their mentality towards MMORPGs is vastly different from my own. Instead of finding a different genre like an FPS or an RTS they infest my genre with exploitation and illegal item/gold/character trade. You don't see me logging into Counterstrike and asking everyone to pretend they are elves and search the map for rabbit paws. So don't skip my game's content just so you can pew pew on the 70 PvP maps. Well, it's our game too. We pay $15 a month like you. If Blizzard won't take peoples desires into account, maybe one of the new games comming out will. At least Warhammer gives XP for PvP. I wouldn't mind grinding new toons to 70 if that were the case. Actually, if you are like the other poster than you pay more than 15 for the game. You also illegally pay for things others don't. If you only paid legally the sub price I could understand, but you choose to cheat and that doesn't fly with me. If you want to play without the grind I think MMORPGs might not be your genre. It is unfortunate that in order to experience aspects of the game you enjoy, developers force you to wade through a bunch of shit you don't want. It doesn't have to be this way. They've made a choice (mainly because they have to spend less money on new content developement if they force you to grind). Until they make the right choice (games full of dunamic content every enjoys and has fun all the time) people will decide for themselves if the cost of skipping boring content and getting to the good stuff is worth it too them. One man's trash is another man's treasure. A game you might find enjoyable would be utterly boring or horribly imbalanced to another. I enjoy the grind. I don't think of it as killing for paws. It is a risk vs reward system and I spend a lot of doing more than just grinding. I alt-tab to other websites. I chat and vent with friends. I cook dinner while I ride the FPs. I train fishing. I do what the game intends. I agree with one thing. People WILL decide for themselves if the cost of skipping content and gettting to the "good" stuff is worth it. Also, the game developers will decide which practices they allow and which they will ban for. It is only a matter of time (see: recent bannings and lawsuits by Blizzard) before the practice you agree with is wiped out. Prohibition didn't get rid of booze, and the war on drugs didn't get rid of E or pot. The government had much greater resources then Blizzard. Supply and demand will always get togethor. And demand will always be there as long as developers insist on forcing people to grind through unfun content in a game. You're probably right. Gold sellers will always have a presence within the community. Every community has those who desire to break the rules in order to meet their own needs. The problem only appears to those who enjoy the game without the cheats on. When a game you love to experience as a whole is exploited by those who don't find that "fun" you will see how I feel about it. Until then good luck.
LETS ALL QUOTE THE MASSIVE WALL OF COLOR TEXT!
Because I didn't read any of it, but the prettiest thing on the forums... ever.
Comments
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
468 hours is a heck of a lot of time. Imagine what you could do with 468 hours. I know what I did, I studied for my acturial exam. I'd say I spent maybe 130 hours on it. When I passed the exam my work gave me a 5k raise. Powerleveling is $365, so I came out 338 hours and $4,635 ahead (I actually find grinding xp worse then studying math, so its even more in my favor).
Most of the people who argue again cheating are people who either 1) Enjoy grinding 2) Have nothing better to do with thier lives. One of my in game friends gives me a hard time about buying gold. Same crap about working for it and earning it and shit. I suppose if I was unemployed and lived with my parents and mouched off them I'd have time to sit around and play MMOs all day. I think, though, I'm making much better live choices then this guy, so lecture all you want.
I also reject the idea that leveling helps you learn a class and your helpless without it. I don't powerlevel, but I have traded account with people a lot so I can play the different classes. The leveling process is nothing but tedium. Kill X of Y, turn in, Kill A of B, turn in. You perform the same actions ad nauseum, you use maybe 5 abilities the whole time. Leveling is overrated for learning a class. Give someone with natural videogaming aptitude and some pervious experience with another level 70 and you can learn a new class in about a month of playing at the level cap. MMO isn't rocket science man.
I just realized something funny. Peons 4 Hire is still operating, and they have slashed thier prices in half (probably dumping inventory). I guess Blizz's campaign is just gonna result in people buying more gold at this lower price.
Heh i really like the generall feel of the responces here it seems to indicate that most if not all fantasy based games are....
Poorly designed for those with time limits.
Depend too much on Grind that is by nature Repetative and therefore boring.
The end game is made too important and the lower levels are unimportant.
HeH makes e glad that EvE exists and that i found it some time ago. Or id probably have stopped playing MMO's out of disalusionment and bordom some years ago.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
Also, tenthring
Would you be willing to wear a tag on your character's name that showed other players that you bought gold/traded characters? I would be willing to accept players purchasing their chars if I could find out. It seems unfair that players who played every level and players who bought those levels are treated in exactly the same manner in game.
Would you be willing to play on a server that allowed character buying/trading and gold buying/trading? Even if other servers existed that did not allow it?
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
The thing that bothers me the most about people buying level 70 characters is you cant find a good end game group anymore.People just dont know how to play the characters.At end game for people that realy leveled their characters, this is what they have worked for.Only to have people who buy their characters let the group down , because they don't know what they are doing. I do think tags would be a good idea , even though after one run you can tell if they bought their characters.I also dont mine the bots as long as they are not grinding quest areas.Yes they do raise up prices , but so do all players by buying low and selling stuff at 10X what the stuff is worth. I am not defending them at all, its just as long as their are games their will be cheaters.Us non cheaters just have to suck it up and deal with it, but alittle help would be nice .
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
We had one guy on my server that didn't get any help grinding his Rank 14. It took him 14 weeks to go from 13 to 14 alone. He got kicked out of school, lost his job, started doing drugs. When he finally hit 14 he quit wow two weeks later. Nobody had any respect for him.
Thats not entirely true. People enjoy differnt things. I don't believe you should be playing the game if you need to cheat, but some people seem to enjoy raiding, PvP, or just having the equipment to show off. I enjoy the leveling, exploration, and quests. I stop at the end of the game. If all you like is the endgame I believe you should be playing a differnt type of game then a MMO IMO. WoW has a lot more people then other games so obviously there are going to be lot of people who cheat. MMOs that have less people also have cheating. What it comes down to is people are playing games they don't really enjoy IMO so they pay someone else to play the parts they don't like "boggle". Go and find a game you like.
We had one guy on my server that didn't get any help grinding his Rank 14. It took him 14 weeks to go from 13 to 14 alone. He got kicked out of school, lost his job, started doing drugs. When he finally hit 14 he quit wow two weeks later. Nobody had any respect for him.
I personally care if people buy gold. It shows that they aren't willing to play the game the way it was intended. Until WoW opens a gold buying service I see no reason for big guilds to cheat in order to stay ahead. That's like putting in the money cheat on the Sims. Sure you have the cool swimming pool and your toon is happy, but you cheated to get there. No glory.
Also, the guy who lost his job is an extreme example of someone who is playing the game far too much. The whole system of HWL was taken out of WoW because it promoted behavior just like that. Now players can easily gain honor without playing every day for 18 hours. Buying honor is...you guessed it, dishonorable. It is bad gaming practice. It doesn't matter how many people look the other way.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
There's your problem, right there.
Not everyone defines "fun" in exactly the same way. This makes the target very hard for designers to hit for every last potential player of the game.
What the bare majority of the players might find to be fun might not suit a minority. Similarly, people have different thresholds for when what was fun yesterday becomes boring today.
Some people will seek to shortcut immediately, others will later on, and still others never will.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
Ooooh, I love the pretty font colors!
I don't think I've seen quoted replies stacked like this before.
LETS ALL QUOTE THE MASSIVE WALL OF COLOR TEXT!
Own, Mine, Defend, Attack, 24/7
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
LETS ALL QUOTE THE MASSIVE WALL OF COLOR TEXT!Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
I also didn't see that someone re-quoted your quotes. Disregard anything that implies you weren't yourself. Sorry about that.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
The wall of text is getting out of hand, I'll make this my last post.
Losing every week doesn't get you enough points for your set and all the arena gear. Most of the bitching you hear relates to peopel complaining that other people having thier shoulders (the most visible piece, also one of the cheapest) makes them look just like people with high ratings that have thier whole set. It is a vanity thing, the people with low ratings can't get thier whole set. Moreover, if you don't participate in 5v5 it is hard even with a decent rating.
Yes, raid items are a lot better then arena. One of the promises of TBC was that new arena gear would get released every season and it would keep up with raid gear. After seeing season two gear this is not the case.
Yes, WoW is a PvE game with a bad PvP add-on. I realized this right before expo, but expo was supposed to change it all. The reality is PvP is still screwed up. If they had at least been honest and said they didn't give a rats ass about PvP, at least I could have saved my time.
A lot of MMORPG developers are realizing that forcing people to grind to max level again makes them want to quit. They are addressing this. Guild Wars already has the PvP chars, and if the interface and movement mechanics were any good I'd be playing that game. Tabula Rasa will allow you to save your character at different level intervals, right before making big decisions to specialize your char. So if you want to go down one path at lvl 30 instead of the other you don't have to grind to 30 again, you just start with your saved char and go down the new tree. Warhammer allows for XP from PvP kills, which makes leveling so much more fun for PvPers. The wave of the future is away from forcing people to grind things they don't want to.
Except in games that allow it, like EVE or any of the 'item shop' games...
LOL Me too 8-)
It diminishes my respect for them, and a lot of people I've talked to have said "Yeah, I might not get world firsts but at least I don't buy gold". Same thing with the Arena tournament where it turned out that over half the teams had people disqualified for cheating, you can insist that "nobody cares" but you're wrong.
Except in games that allow it, like EVE or any of the 'item shop' games...
And what type of RMT does EVE allow now again?
Played so far: 9Dragons, AO, AC, AC2, CoX, DAoC, DF, DnL, DR, DDO, Ent, EvE, EQ, EQ2, FoMK, FFO, Fury, GW, HG:L, HZ, L1, L2, M59, MU, NC1, NC2, PS, PT, R:O, RF:O, RYL, Ryzom, SL, SB, SW:G, TR, TCoS, MX:O, UO, VG, WAR, WoW...
It all sucked.
So basically people bot because it is boring after one or two runs. That is still bad practice.
The first time I leveled to cap was OK, because it was fresh and new. Subsequent levelings are mind-numbingly boring. Despite your claim that they are easy, the grind takes an obsessive number of hours. I just went to peons4hire website and they are offering 1-70 in 26 days. Assuming they play 18 hours a day thats 468 hours playtime. We could argue over the exact number, but let's just take it as an estimate.
LETS ALL QUOTE THE MASSIVE WALL OF COLOR TEXT!Because I didn't read any of it, but the prettiest thing on the forums... ever.