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WOW has become Guild Wars
Musket-Squid
Member UncommonPosts: 386
Seems like when they first came out everyone complained that GW wasn't and MMO because of the instancing/PVP instancing. The Towns were just hubs to get a grp togethere. Hasn't WOW taken this now to the same degree? GW was set n town and get grp go to dungeon or pvp area. WOW has become set in town and wait for grp to be teleported to the instance/BG. So does this mean that WOW can now be not considered and MMO because of the all the instancing?
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
Comments
Fast and easy is how the new generation of MMO players like their games and the developers are listening. Next thing you know you'll start getting raid gear for just logging in.
Not really. The problem with Guild Wars, at least for me, was the the world felt empty. You'd quest and never see another player. That was because the world was instanced. WoW has instances, yes, but most of the game is played in the world where you can bump into other people (whether you want to or not).
Really, run outside ot he towns in WOW and see how many people you see. Other than Org (duels going on)' Play for a day and tell me how many people you bump into in the BC zones or almost all the vanilla areas. You might not run into anyone in the WoTLK areas. Might see someone fly by but thats it. The game is a more dumbed down version of GW now.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
Truth is in the Title... didn't read past that.
But the funny thing is, from what I know about GW2 is that it's going to be like what WoW was supposed to have been. lol
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Well, players age... and the older the game is the more vets it has.... GW had those vets a lot sooner than any MMO that required a lot more "grind" So technically any MMO is goin the way GW is.... only end-game content.
This
Which is sad to me since I am more of an adventurer and explorer than a leveler or endgame raider. I enjoy the journey as much if not more than the destination.
That said I'm not complaining about how things are going, I just hope that this trend doesn't go so far as to eliminate the things I enjoy from MMOs.
Yeah, name one zone in the "World" that has NPCs who drop loot you'd actually wear.
That's what I thought
The World in "WoW" is only useful for navigating to instances.
An MMORPG where there is only one of a given zone, that would be really amazing to me.
Every single zone actually. There are world drop items - items that can drop off any mob. And some of them are damn fine. Chance is low but still, question andwered
+1 for GW thou... I did not own elite gear and did decent in pvp/pve sometimes even better than those with top of the tops. While playing WoW I had always a feeling that unless I got the ultra best quipment no one would even look at me...
People don't farm loot in the World because it's random. Only time people do World content is if a quest tells them to do it. Then they will go into an instance.
the high end raiding/dungeons have become elitist imo, it does seem as though if you dont have the right gear, then your not good enough, if you want to join in you have to have the latest emblem gear etc, i think its at this stage of the game that things actually get boring, imo, you have more fun before you get to level 80 - i've already retired 2 char's for just that reason, i can't be bothered to do instances all day just to grind 50 frost emblems or whatever, high end gaming in WoW does seem to be mostly geared towards running instances, until then though, its a mix of 'world content' and 'instanced dungeons' and imo its the level 15-70 range thats the most fun in WoW....
Ironically...
Isn't Cataclysm similar to what happened Post-Searing in GW?
Hmm
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
From a bigger perspective on things, the mysterious popularity enjoyed by non-fun-focused games is the abberation. It's normal for people to like fun-focused games. You just have to step back and get a bigger perspective on things.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Arguably, WOW, with its LFG Spam Tool and welfare epics, isn't fun anymore. You have to have "some" challenge to appreciate a game. WOW has lost its sense of challenge.
Look, you wouldn't enjoy football if you walked onto the field and the ref announced that both teams would score a win with 100 points awarded, regardless of how the plays panned out or how many touchdowns were scored.
WOW was a great game, but just sucks, SUCKS, in its current state.
I do have hopes for FF XIV, however, and have my fingers crossed that something will come of Everquest Next.
Ah now you are adding extra criteria into your question.
And there were a lot of times I did "world content" when I was not questing. I love large worlds to adventure in. Some people actually do spend their time in MMOs doing things other than grinding mobs or grinding instances. I know we are a bunch of weirdos but we usually play along the lines of "if I find something fun, I'll do it". You really shouldn't let any game dictate the way you play - as long as you are having fun.
Fast and easy is how the new generation of MMO players like their games and the developers are listening. Next thing you know you'll start getting raid gear for just logging in.
From a bigger perspective on things, the mysterious popularity enjoyed by non-fun-focused games is the abberation. It's normal for people to like fun-focused games. You just have to step back and get a bigger perspective on things.
I have no problem with fun-focused games, and I'm more than happy that people are having fun playing the games they enjoy. But you see what you call 'non-fun' is one of the things I've always enjoyed the most about MMOs.
You might feel that having to brave the dangers of the wilderness to find the path to the hidden dungeon of the Lost Dwarf Clan, or whatever, is boring, and a lot of people agree with you. Which is why they started making 3rd party add ons to games like Asheron's Call that would show you the best routes to get there and what enemies you might face along the way, but to me the dangers of the journey and the fact that I may die on my way and never find my way back was the thrill.
They had websites that told you all of the locations of; quests, cities, lifestones, dungeons, what you'd find inside, what kind of damage the creatures inside were weak to... etc, but I never used them. I liked the adventure, and I didn't particularly care if somebody else could level 5 or even 10x faster than I did, I felt like I was a part of a living world. I was an Adventurer.
Then WoW comes along, and due to the popularity of these third party programs they go ahead and build all of these 'perks' into the game itself. Now I don't have the option of being an adventurer in the unknown wilderness because everywhere I look there are big ol' arrows to point me in the right direction.
When I played the beta of WoW I laughed, because not only were the graphics big bright and cartoonish, the entire spirit of adventure and danger had been sucked out and replaced with a treadmill of quests that moved from one area to the next. Now you weren't in danger of running across some vicious critter while you were traveling because all the monsters were segregated nice and neat into little sections according to difficulty.
WoW would have worked well as a starter MMO for those who'd never played RPGs before, but it brought new people into the genre who weren't interested in adventure and the thrill of the unknown but rather looked at the game as a great big social playground.
I'm sorry because I really try not to be 'this guy' but WoW really did kill the fun of MMORPGs for me. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with those who enjoy it, I just hope that one day the focus of MMOs will shift back to that spirit of adventure that I miss.
Eh?
Leveling with dungeons instead of quests is about 100% more fun. I thought I would never level another alt until the dungeon finder made leveling "enjoyable grouping" rather than "tedious quests I've seen 5 times before". Grouping is more dynamic than questing.
Do you really place value in the color of an item? Really? The potency of the item is the true measure of it, and you won't get the best gear from quests, dungeons, or even heroics. The fact that they're all colored purple (epics) is irrelevant.
WOW has challenge, but it's at the end of the line. I agree with any criticism that there should be better challenge prior to that, but a lot of people miss the fact that by making leveling and gearing up to raid easier/faster, they avoid having the degenerative problem where you have to spend years getting a character raid-worthy from scratch. They have to keep stepping up the "free gear" to keep up with the new content.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No.
In fact I was SICK in traveling in overall Azeroth in the past weeks with those seasonal quest content.
For hours you would go all over the place to search for the Elders. Finished 1/3 of all those searches and then stopped for next year.
I did one /who count in the Eastern Plaguelands one of those nights and I had 4 leveling characters ... and 17 level 80 in the Eastern Plaguelands running around.
Azeroth is still a massive world and you still need to travel a lot in it, be it for gathering professions, season content.
Besides ...
CATA introduces a needed secondary profession for everyone: archeology.
Needed because you have to level that profession to get to the mandatory end game leveling of Path of Titans.
... so I bet 100 to 1 Blizzard will sweep your avatar all over the place.
Azeroth redone - with a needed in world archeology profession - makes sure the massive world is there.
GW is and was just "worldless" in this respect. GW was made as a very easy way out to avoid creating a huge world with preloading graphics screens. 1/100 cost in development. 1/100 less world options to play in.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
To be clear, "hard vs. easy" is the least of what I'm referring to by "non-fun-focused". In fact, I frequently call out how much of a mistake it is for Blizzard not to offer better difficulty settings throughout the stages of WOW characters. It's not a great system, and they should steal CoX's amazing difficulty settings and reward curve.
Everyone wants games to be in the sweet spot of difficulty for themselves. But while elites want things to be Difficulty Rating 9-10, veterans want 6-9, and casuals want 1-6. Since casuals make up like 90% of the playerbase, if your game doesn't have difficulty settings (which it should) then it's a no-brainer to make the game in the 1-6 difficulty rating range.
A game is better when it's fun to more people. If a game's default difficulty is too hard, it's less fun to a lot of people.
But back to "fun-focused vs. not", WOW clearly represents the distillation of game mechanics which started in UO, changed substantially in EQ, and then were distilled a ton in WOW. They actively work to eliminate non-fun game elements. They're not perfect at it (see above criticism) but they're pretty awesome at it. The important distinction is that during the distillation process they also cut away a lot of mechanics which some players found fun -- even mechanics which, given enough distillation themselves, could be entirely fun (such as constructing buildings/towns/cities, and having an interesting "wilderness"-seeming environment to explore.)
I suppose the core of what I'm saying is: If you dislike WOW and want change, brainstorm ways to make those other games fun and appealing to many people, rather than wasting effort criticizing a game which is obviously fun to millions. You're not going to convince people to stop enjoying what they like, but you might convince them there's a different way to have fun (the way you had fun in previous games) by improving those game mechanics.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
@ OP:
You have NO clue whatsoever.
Comparing GW to WoW is just wrong. GW is not even an MMO, and STILL you compare them 2 games. It would be more suitable to compare AoC to GW, since both games has taken the instancing thing to the extreme; I think even both of them games have capped the cities at 50 players? No matter the amount, the instancing in both Age of Conan and in Guild Wars is GAME breaking & ruining the immersive feeling. The instancing in World of Warcraft is made so you feel it is natural. I dont ever think ANY part of WoW as 'instanced', cause Blizzard have made that right.
Instancing in Guild Wars & Age of Conan is epic fail. Just like this thread.
1/10
Kthxbai.
Make us care MORE about our faction & world pvp!
I think a better way of putting it OP is since players play MMO's like they're GW, should they even bother with worlds anymore?
In large part you're right but not about WOW turning into GW. It's that players have turned these games into GW. Look at WAR or WOW, and you see this more and more. There are far more people sitting aroud towns waiting to queue up for their next BG/instance. Than there are out in the world exploring or PVPing. This mentality has even taken form in games like SWG as well. Yet we wonder why games get smaller and smaller, and designs are catering to this more and more.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's because nobody wants to waste their time.
Traveling to a dungeon to join a group there is a waste of time -- there's no gameplay to the travel, and the dungeon itself is what people want to participate in.
People also want to participate in "roaming a dangerous wilderness" and it's fair criticism to note that few games provide this activity.
The problem is if a designer thinks both activities are fun to all players, and forces the dungeon players to deal with the wilderness-roaming gameplay in order to get to the dungeon. At that point, the dungeon players feel it's a waste of their time to deal with the lackluster gameplay in order to get to the gameplay they really want.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Effectively so. Which is why I no longer play WOW.
I could understand disliking travel that takes a while (i remember the Fp from NE area to desolace was like 15+ mins). But to just hate on regular travel is strange to me.
I mean we do play in worlds ya know. WoW has a great game world and to just bitch adn moan about how it used to be is basically discrediting how cool it was.
I had no issue traveling 5 minutes to a dungeon.
Also in my experiences leveling on a pvp server trips to a instance portal were like mini battlegrounds we always got into cool fights with the other faction before we went in lol.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP