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What Does World of Warcraft REALLY offer?
Ironfungus
Member Posts: 519
This thread is basically response to a lot of people regarding Rift, but I thought it better suited for the General Discussion forums. People have been complaining about recent MMORPGs like Rift, stating that the game is boring and lackluster compared to say...World of Warcraft.
Really, though? What does World of Warcraft offer that makes it so unique that we should have to play it for the rest of our lives? Let's take a look at some arguments I've come across recently against recent titles.
Questing
"I hate questing. It's bland and redundant!"
Remember back in the old days, in typical MMORPGs such as FFXI, when you were required to grind mobs for years on end to max out? Questing is basically this, but a boost of EXP at the end with a side of story and loot. But really, if you hate questing, don't quest. Grind mobs like the old days, or PVP to gain your levels. Questing is the new standard for grinding in MMOs. What makes World of Warcraft's quests different from any other game? Almost nothing. Cataclysm brought on some nice quests, like in Twilight Highlands when you ride a dragon to fight Deathwing's minions while him and Alextrasza fight atop a mountain peak. Pretty awesome, and has some nice dialog, but you are doing the quest on a vehicle, which is widely hated by the WoW community for its sheer stupidity and annoyance.
As far as story progression goes, Guild Wars has always done this brilliantly, whereas it's taken World of Warcraft six years to even come close with their much-butchered lore.
Grind
"But there's so much grind in <insert game!>"
Really? There is no grind in World of Warcraft? Let me see: Grinding quests to max level. Grinding dungeons for reputation and gear. Grinding mobs for crafting materials. Grinding PvP for better gear so you can stand a remote chance against other imbalanced classes. Oh, you stopped playing for several months? Your gear is now worthless, have fun grinding.
Developers & Staff
"The developers are silent and the staff don't communicate with their base of players."
I would really love to hear anyone give one example of a time where Blizzard didn't fall under this criteria. Fortunately for Rift, they have been extremely fast to fix anything we've reported, have a great sense of humor, and are quite involved with us. But my point is that no game could ever possibly have staff as useless as Blizzard/Activision.
End-Game Content
"This game has no end-game content."
When you look at it from another angle, World of Warcraft doesn't either. You can max out your level in...six hours, let's say? End-game in Warcraft is comprised of grinding for gear. When you're done grinding for gear (which takes up entirely ALL of your time), you have babysitting to look forward to. You looked up the fights, you're in adequate gear. Your'e ready to start raiding! Guess what? World of Warcraft gamers are as stupid as they come. You will have to babysit them for months. Possibly years, if you want to get anything done. End-game content in World of Warcraft only goes as far as your group/Guild member's intelligence allows. Believe me, as someone who has been with the game since before release, I know just how high that capability is.
But let's assume for a second that you are actually successful in raiding. Didn't get that piece of armor you were looking for? Perhaps a Guildie still needs something? I hope you enjoy the grind. This game doesn't offer anything in its end-game we can't find in another game.
PvP
"If you hate PvE so much, then start PvPing, guy! Yeah!"
First of all, let me say that I've checked out Blizzard's headquarters, and it turns out, they have absolutely no idea what the words "class balance" even means. Plate armor, high burst (one/two-shot) DPS? Okay! Let's just finish up and give them some CC, shields, a pet, and spammable heals. Sure, these classes are killable, but in the hands of a player with half a brain, they're pretty much unstoppable.
Open world PvP does not exist in World of Warcraft. I'd know, because back before Warsong Gulch, that's all anybody ever did. But now, Battlegrounds and Arenas have invaded. Inside, you are greeted by the most ignorant, Xbox Live style kids you will ever see in video gaming. These people are incredibly retarded, and have no idea how to work together as a team nor will they ever be willing to. But why are you PvPing in the first place? For gear, so you can start having fun in world PvP. But you see, this is a never-ending process due to the rate at which new sets of gear enter the fray.
Crafting
"Crafting is not fun in <insert game> and serves no purpose."
Warcraft has useful crafting, does it? Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Cooking and Enchanting are the most useful because there's always a constant need for it. But what about Blacksmithing, Engineering, First Aid, Inscription, Leatherworking and Tailoring? Totally pointless to have. Almost everything you craft is vendor trash to raise your profession level. The items that aren't, are replaced automatically when you max out and start running dungeons. Completely pointless to invest your time into.
The point? No profession in any game can get any more useless than in World of Warcraft.
Difficulty
"Cataclysm made the game so hard. Only hardcore people like me can play it now!"
It's true Cataclysm changed the way WoW plays, but in no way is it actually difficult as far as a video game is concerned. If you have the gear, and you know the strategies, you win, unless you're with stupid people which is 95% of the time. Healing is regarded as the hardest job in Cataclysm, but I healed the game since 2004, and I can confidently say that it's now the easiest job in the world. When people take damage, it's now distributed at a slower and steadier pace, compared to the break-neck, split-second speed we encountered before in Classic, BC, and Wrath. If you hesitated for a second, you wiped the raid. You had a lot less time to react to situations if you weren't anticipating what was about to happen.
But World of Warcraft has always been an easy-mode casual MMORPG. It's fun, but MIND-NUMBINGLY EASY to play. Anyone who thinks otherwise...well, let me bring up some points.
In Warcraft:
You can't starve to death if you didn't eat enough.
Raid bosses cannot be seen patrolling starter areas, killing anyone and everyone they see.
Your corpse does not decay along with all of your gear if you can't get to it.
You cannot loot a player's gear if you kill them in PvP combat.
The bosses are inside instances, instead of outside. Under no circumstance do you need to call your Guildies at 3 A.M. to log on before another Guild pulled it.
You have the comfort of a flying mount. Once you are on this thing, all your troubles are far beneath you. Just forget about all the risks the world had to offer.
Credit for the kill goes to the person who tapped the mob, rather than whoever did the most damage. World first 85? Nice try, Athene.
Roles are practically non-existent. There is no difference between one DPS and another. Crowd control? Hahaha, no, I'm sorry, we don't have classes specifically designed to pull mobs. We don't have specified buffers, debuffers, CC, healers, tanks, and DPS. Blizzard thought that everybody should just be able to do it! Yay!
MY POINT BEING: World of Warcraft does not have anything in terms of difficulty, especially compared to recent MMOs on the market.
Feel free to add to my list of points/arguments if you have any.
It's a fun game, and I enjoyed it for many years (though it's never been as good as Classic), but this game offers nothing fun we can't have in other games, ESPECIALLY Rift: Planes of Telara, which is the most recent game people have been complaining about (this of course referring only to the trolls. Most feedback has been excellent). I'm not entirely satisfied with the way MMORPGs are headed. I could use a little more option in my games, and a little less restriction. But Rift has done such a great job of their class (soul) system, allowing for your creativity and personal play style to take over, allowing for a truly unique class you can be proud of. Rift takes what WoW has done, and shapes it into something new (sound familiar given WoW's case with EverQuest?).
The people complaining are either those who don't know what they want, or are in a state of frustration that developers aren't meeting their standards for games. I am sympathetic towards these types of players, but the fact is, that Rift is a wonderfully polished game that should be given a chance. It's not a clone ... it's Rift.
Comments
hm, Have you wondered why WoW is popular? because you have just stated all the reasons for what i think makes it a good game( in my opinion, i don not say that this is a good game for every one, but for the majority of people)
"It's a fun game, and I enjoyed it for many years"
It's funny how you ALWAYS see that in every WoW flame post. Maybe you just got burned out man? Take a break from WoW or MMO's altogether.
I did, and now I'm having tons of fun in Eve because it's entirely different and I welcome being overwhelmed and feeling like a nub again. It's a nice change from the same shit with a different suit that you also seem to be unhappy with.
Try out League of Legends too. Entirely different gameplay and it can be fun for a bit.
PS. Ppl think WoW or MMO communities are horrible. Check out a MOBA community and you will second guess that.
Haha, I do play LoL, just not too often. Pretty fun game.
I'm regarding the other reply, I've never wondered why WoW was a popular or successful game. The point of this thread is to ask MMORPG.com what the REAL difference is between WoW and other MMOs? Because I see little or none.
wow just has better carrots than everyone else
A bigger budget, but it doesn't have anything "better."
I think you just misunderstand what I mean by carrots. They keep you playing. Kind of like Pokemon, gotta catch them all.
Right now, I'm sick of carrots.
Right, but the things offered by WoW that keep people playing are NO DIFFERENT from other MMOs on the market. The only difference may be that people have invested too much time into the game to consider playing something else.
Yep, we get it. Please join the others who came along these last 6 years to recruit WOW players on a forum.
I hope you do know though that mmorpg.com has 9 Wow fans total.
The other 11.999.991 are not registred. Try the official WOW forums: I wish you the best of luck.
LOL I realy loved EQ!
I rember the wood elf city (the race most like the night elfs)...... all the bodys under it becouse it was a tree city that had no rails and you could and would walk right off the edge lol I miss that
It's a wonder why I even bother posting a discussion, due to the idiots who don't bother reading and miss my point(s) altogether (not directed at Arkain).
verry nice thread. I do have to say that you are about spot on with your points.
Unfortuneately thoe.. most people will dismiss this as you just hateing on wow.. Cant make eveyone have a brain
anyway i wish some wow players would realize this.. cuz honestly i have a few friends irl that are wow addicts.. and just like alot of people from that game they just dismiss everything else because 'wow is cool'.. and they are in their 20's..
I think a lot of what you say makes total sense. There are a few finer details that I don't agree with, but largely I share your opinion and have echoed these sentiments on various posts and even on the official boards.
What I'd like to point out is how amusing Cataclysm was for anyone who knows about MMO development, even if they only know a little. The idea of "resetting" the game is not a new concept at Blizzard. It is in fact assumed that each expansion will reset the whole affair prior to development of content, and everything that is developed for these "expansions" are developed on the basis that things are starting again, rather than being extended. However with Cataclysm Blizzard seem to have gone to the extreme, not just resetting the various grinds, but also going so far as to reset the game from 1-60 and reset the talent system, in order to compensate for how contrived and bloated the game has become.
Now I'm not saying that is a bad approach to take. In the real world - a place haters and fanboys tend to avoid for fear of having to face facts, rather than living in cloud cookoo land - MMOs must inspire players to play for prolonged periods of time, and resetting the game is a very neat and efficient way of going about this. I think however that it gets to a point where you have to give a little when this happens. Blizzard have hit the reset button 3 times now, and if you browse through the official boards and various community sites, you can see that what was a vocal minority crying out for NEW content, rather than rehashed and reinterpreted content, is quickly becming a larger and larger portion of users. I think this is a very potent way of looking at Blizzard and their current development philosophy regarding World of Warcraft.
What saddens me is the fact that Blizzard don't just seem to be waiting for such a time when "new" content will be most potent, but are in fact violently against the idea of adding anything new to the mix, possibly due to the fear that they'll break the game and loss thier market leadership, as well as the $2 billion + a year they are making out of the playerbase.
However, and lets be realistic here, World of Warcraft might not do much, but what it does do it does far better than any other MMO of its type. Problem is that it doesn't do much at all. And another reality check: Blizzard are still one of the best and most critically accliaimed developers in the world, and from what I've seen of Diablo 3, not to mention StarCraft 2, that's not going to change any time soon. The culture at the company has changed for the worse, but the heart for gaming is still there, somewhere, buried amongst the growing greed and buerocracy.
In short, someone needs to slap Blizzard (specifically Samms, Morhaime and Metzen) around a bit. Maybe then they'll see new content for WoW as a chance to make more money, and not a chance to lose the money they are already making.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
I agree that other games offers also a lot of fun, mostly more than WoW, but ppl just dont see it that way, let them play WoW and lets enjoy our games. I enjoyed more almost every other MMO I've played so far, WoW is fun, but not much and not so less so you wouldnt play it. Ragnarok online is more fun, Age of Conan is more fun, Lineage 2 is more fun, Lord of the Rings is more fun, EvE online is more fun, Guild Wars is more fun and other MMOs could be more fun too.
But ppl dont want fun, they want so many possibilities so they dont know what to do first and they want to be rewarded for everything, even if they just fart they wanna reward - also dungeon finder - ppl want easy access to everything. Blizz just took consumerism and did game based on that. But it works for most ppl, y its shame but its true so let them enjoy it.
I was mostly trying to say WoW suck cause I'm realy pissed when I see great MMOs and after launch some freak just write - this game sucks WoW is waaaay better. Yea guess what, WoW is here for more years so it has more features cause of that dummy. Wait till this game will be as old as WoW what it will provide.. But no its not like that. Other game has bugs, yea. Cause Blizz is doing same thing again and again so they can focus mostly on bugs and fuck all the changes and new stuff - I'm sorry for me is not new "recreating" old world. I realy dont want to play an alt again. They always add some crafting.. crafting is almost meaningles in WoW - ofc some proffesion are cool but rest..
I've noticed they tried to do something new, new class - they failed, DK was a lot OP and its realy weird class - I mean fun to play but it has so freakin skills, come oon. Or paladin? Prot pala cant die, retri pala can kill cloth easily - he is dps so yea its ok (but he almost cant die also), but healing with plate armor? Realy? Lineage 2 has it covered, if you have better armor your casting time is lower. They just add other proffesions to other races - ppl just love play WoW again and again because its mostly solo game. Thats why so many ppl play alts - reason for more races, reason for Cata.
Just let them play WoW so they dont come to other MMOs and dont turn it to WoW!
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
While I agree with a lot of what was in the original post, here's what World of Warcraft offers that other MMO's don't:
A game with an extremely easy learning curve, easy leveling, easy 2-3 button rotations and it can be played on an 800 mhz clunker.
When you add all that up, meaning you cater to the broke players that think pressing 2-3 buttons requires skill, then you have a winner on your hands. The real world is filled with these types of people.
Oh ironfungus,
You are so typical. Another burnt out from playing a game too long.
Uber easy mode?
Im not gonna go into what games is better than others, , If rift can be successfull fine by me options is always good for us players.
Btw wow hasnt set any standards , they have polished those that existed before and polished them .
What we have in hardcore games or regular games is old stuff even those that will be released this year or next year , it may be polished cloned or reshuffled but in the end its the same.
Diffrent game for diffrent gamers and has been since 95.
-Semper ubi sub ubi!
always wear underwear
As a pretty much permanent player in LotRO that has played many MMO's and trialed many more, I can tell you that my return to WoW for the first time in 5 years has been a blast. The new questlines through 1-60 are the most diverse and entertaining I have seen. Even the "Kill X" quests have diversity, in that there if often some exploitable weakness or environmental means of easily taking out mobs that could be a serious challenge. Or you use something on them that has some other effect.
You have quests like "the Day that Deathwing Came", where you play as 1 of 3 characters in their stories where they see Darkwing, and they spin yarns about how they killed him. Starting with, "the dwarf that punched Darkwing in the face"...
You have quests where you don an absurd orc disguise and infiltrate an orc camp, where you're ordered by the Orc Chieftain to beat on various orcs to keep them all in line. Ooops... musta hit that one a bit too hard... meanwhile, there's a chance they'll see through your disguise, and unless you take them out right away, you'll be leading a "train to zone" of 50+ mobs.
Various arial and mount based quests. Seige weapon quests. Rescue quests.
Quests where the environment changes for your character forever. Most notably the Worgen starter area, where the entire island is breaking away and sinking into the sea as you travel.
When I read this stuff you guys keep saying over and over, "same ol' kill X quests, etc.", I know it's because you played several years ago. And yep, that's pretty much what it was. I thought the same thing for years. But once again, WoW's Cat takes what others have done to a whole new level, along with some ideas of their own.
LotRO is, and probably will be my main MMO for some time to come. But having played Cat, I now know full well why WoW is on top. The gfx may be "meh" and cartoony, but their quest building tools, and imagination are still top notch. If ya don't like it... sure, I get that. But this nonsense about it being "just another quest grinder" is naive at best and deceptive at worst.
Finally, anybody saying Cat is hard(if they are), I don't get, unless things change drasticly from 80-85.
I know this means I can no longer sit at the table with the cool kids that understand that it's NOT cool to like and appreciate something that's popular, but, well, so be it.
TLDR version
Blah blah blah. I played wow for years, but I'm burned out and want to complain about the years of time I spent playing a game that I think it bad. There are tons of other games, that I will not name, that offer as much as wow and do it better, but no one (including me) plays them. I think Rifts is going to be the most awesomest game and anyone who complains about it is a troll.
Enjoy rifts, it looks to be shaping up into a decent game. Please come back here in a few years and let us all know if it kept you entertained as long as wow did. If it doesn't, then you can always go play one of those other awesome games you didn't mention.
i have to say!the new lore in wow is fantastic,i hate undead,always did for some reason and yet, i rerolled a undead because ,why?silly reason i was testing dk and i came into a phaze zone in the scond map of undead,i was wow,so this is actually going on while the restof the world is fighting the elemental?i was so astonished.i was like ,god dam and i thot lk was a monster but he was still alive,silvanas?so far what the lore i got seems to say that silvanas was madened by the wargen so she is getting frisky wich she has never been since wow was released!we ll see how it pans up but it begin to looks like the world will have issue with the forsaken before long!there are countless story going on all over azeroth and if my experience with the undead is any indication could become a bomb at any moment!so my answer to what does wow ofter if you look just at the graphic and dont read?not mutch but if you do read between the line it is very a very nice era that is coming to azeroth and a lot of player want to be in to know what is gona happen.nope i didnt even mention deathwing lol,yet enother futur unkown.true wow isnt just lore but if you have the time i suggest you seek it a bit cause what blizzard yelled at the top of their lung is only the tip of the story of azeroth!
Another epic WoW QQ from a player that played for multiple years. One giant cliche of bottled up burnout has reared it's typical head.
He'll be back.
lol amen man.
It's funny how people always try to break down WoW by saying X game does Y better than WoW. And this other game does this better than WoW. All the while they fail to realize what has made WoW the juggernaught that it is, and that's the simple fact that is has so much of EVERYTHING.
Ppl think it's all about the gear grind, and for a lot of people I'm sure it is, but I can tell you that for a lot of the casuals what keeps them going is the amount of fluff in the game.
I can't even begin to tell you the countless hours my gf has spent doing different quests and such for achievements and titles. She has spent an unreal amount of time collecting those little vanity pets. She loves doing all the seasonal/event quests and activities. If I'm not mistaken she's due to get the badass violet proto-drake sometime this spring or summer (which is a mount that requires you to achieve all the seasonal quests which obviously takes at the minimum a year to complete).
Oh and one more thing about the graphics thing. I have to disagree completely. Maybe Rift looks good on your rig, but not everyone is spending 2-3k on a computer. Consequently how it looks on normal rigs might be even more important (ala what WoW does well). The graphics are entirely partial to the observer.
I for one liked the art style of Rift, but running on a mediocore machine I can tell you the game doesn't look that hot, at all. WoW has much more vibrant colors and just has a better overall presentation on both of the computers here, especially on an average or even below average rig. I won't even get started on the animations or combat. That alone is what eventually kept me from logging back into the beta.
I guess I can bite and post in one of these threads for once. Your topic title asks what WoW really offers? It offers all of those things you specifically pointed out it didn't. World of Warcraft offered, and still offers, something that hadn't been seen in MMORPGs before then: ease of use. All of those things you listed at the end of your post, from not having to eat to not worrying about dying, even being able to fly around to make things easier... that's what WoW offers.
It removes those things, which for some may be a down side, but to many is the only reason they started playing. It's a fairly relaxed, stress-free MMORPG. It attempts to remove the more "annoying" parts of the game, leaving only what Blizzard considers to entertaining portions. I won't take a side on which is better, since that is my opinion.
As for other games like Rift that offer the same things, but potentially better... well, my opinion is that most newer MMORPGs are too much like WoW. Perhaps it's burnout with the genre as a whole, but when I log in and don't even have to think about what I need to do, simply following the same pattern I did in WoW... I just feel like playing WoW. It's why I'm a big fan of games like Battleground Europe, EVE, or even FFXI. The gameplay is significantly different.
Look at the first-person shooter genre. While every game can be boiled down to "point at the enemy, shoot them", there is a big difference in how each game feels. Compare Team Fortress 2 to Call of Duty, or ArmA. Each game feels like a different game, with enough new things to learn that you feel like you aren't just playing the same game with a different skin. When I log-in to a lot of MMORPGs, I pick a class, and am presented with the same screen layout, the same NPCs standing around with the same quests.
I'm rambling at this point, but I hope I've gotten what I'm trying to say across.
Wow offers a a varied, good amount of fun. I don't feel like I only have one thing to look forward to in wow compared to other MMO's, that is why I don't subscribe to other MMO's.
Many people point out what other games do better than WoW, but that is the point...its like this: lets pretend everything available to MMO's right now is graded in a 1-10 scale. Most games give one 10 with a bunch 1s and 2s...sadly most of the time the 10 is in graphics, which isn't equal to content. Its like wow has many more 5s and ups, they may have no 10s to some people (though I give a 10 in naturally responsive movement and related stuff, best game engine in any MMO by far). The next "WoW" is going to be a game that does something similar to that.
-I want a Platformer MMO
I never wondered why WoW was so popular. What you read in this thread is all true; but only in regard to the mechanics of the game. It's graphicly pleasing and has a wealth of content superior to any other MMO. These are fine points, buy really, you could say the same for nearly any other game in the history of gaming; from the earliest Commodore64 game to the latest console incarnation on DvD.
What sets an MMO appart isn't the graphics or the content. It's that you are invited to become part of an online community of gamers to conqure goals and content with. Therein lies the point as to why 'WoW sucks.' It isn't that WoW sucks at all. Quite the contrary, it's that Blizzard has done very little to nothing to police the game's community and implement changes that appeal to the general population. If Blizzard were a more ethical business, every $15 per month would be treated equal. But, they're not, and it hasn't. Consider StarCraft II billed to have the same 3 races as the original only to be released with a single race and the promise of having to spend more money to aquire the other 2 in expansions. Consider the WoW expansions billed to have content that was not released with the expansion but patched in a year or more later. This same unconcern for truth has plagued and degraded Blizzard, and by extension, WoW in that what they say and what they do are rarely the same.
The latest info I find states Blizzard has sold 4.7 million coppies of the Cataclysm expansion. This is only 39.2% of the reported 12 million players to have experiences WoW. From a business perspective, the ultimate goal of any business large or small is to retain your customer base. In terms of P2P MMO's, the measure is the continued recurring subscriptions. From a scholastic perspective, 39.2% is an "F".
It hardly matters to point fingers and state blame, but it was always Blizzard's responsibility to police the community. The loss of a few accounts to retain the many, or the lack thereof, has longlasting, long term ramifications. Trolling, epeen, posturing, immorality, hate speak, the list goes on. One thing is clear. What was once the helpful, teamplayer majority has become the minority getting smaller with each moment, and what players think is so very great about WoW measures as little more than weapons-of-mass-distraction from the truth.
A great MMO isn't measured in the quality of the product nearly as much as it is measuerd in the quality of it's community. WoW doesn't suck. The hiddious, immoral players never policed by Blizzard make the game suck. Don't believe me? Wait a few minutes. I think I hear the trolls comming now.