I've thought for a long time Blizzard would be very wise to impliment servers with normal and advanced difficulty because they are in real danger of losing a huge chunk of thier playerbase now . I do know a few players that have been playing since Vanilla and TBC but none of them are happy with the increasingly casual game play . Its not about hardcore gamers being angry that casual gamers play there content ( a very childish way of looking at it IMO ) its about the increasing lack of challenging content . But its not that its the hardcore gamer thats become disallusioned with WoW its the normal medium core gamer too . The one that doesn't want a cakewalk through the majority of instances .
Blizzard lost 1/12 of its playerbase this year . Not a huge amount but that was in no small part due to a small game no one had even thought would be decent (RIFT) imagine what will happen next year when a game based on the most popular franchise ever (StarWarsTOR) comes along .If its any good this game will decimate the WoW player base that once looked untouchable by millions .
This game has remained popular for three reasons .Firstly up untill now its offered people what they want and Blizzard untill now have been very good at understanding what the majority wanted but they have started to faulter in this .Secondly WoW plays on pretty much any computer and still looks reasonably good and last but not least thirdly theres been a real lack of competition .Now competition is starting to come along and TOR has already broken records for pre-orders .These are probably the last months where WoW will have no opposition . Then again that may be a good thing for the game Blizzard may sit up and take notice when they are losing huge amounts of subs and have a rethink about the direction they have taken it .
Seriously, has the OP ever raided in Wow? Pickup groups just do not work period. If you want to raid you join a raid guild. Trying to hint that these raids would be available to the masses is humorous. Available yes, doable no.
You're wrong. They've made the raids PuGgable and EASIER to make up for the fact that people will be PuGing them. If you find a raid through the raid finder, therefore, it will be easy enough that a PuG can do it. So yes.....these raids will now be available to everyone, essentially. I'm fine with that, but I know a lot of my ex-guildie elitist raiders.....are NOT. Personally, I'm so sick of the raid grind that I don't care if I never raid again as long as I live. Six years was plenty enough. I think it's great that everyone who PAYS THE SAME 15 bucks a month is now going to have the opportunity to see those raid parts of the story.
Let me disagree here. Sure some of the easier stuff is pugable, but once you get into heroics and beyond I have to disagree with that entirely. Anyways it is all about dumb gear now, you have to have a certain gear level to enter all the upper level stuff.
I did that with 40 mans and just won't do it again. Why I don't play Wow anymore and thought that Cataclysm was by far the worst expansion yet.
I played WoW for almost 4 years, with a game time of an average of 6-7 hours per day. Up untill WoTLK got out, where that average went down drastically....then Cataclysm came out and it was it for me.
I have played many big name MMOs, and some where the name was not "there", and i still think WoW is hands down the best game experience i ever had and one of the, if not "the", most polished MMO out there. So whats the problem for me...
...the problem is that there is no real upside by paying for a game that doesnt reward veteran players for their "loyalty" if you can call it that way. I have seen some games where players would be rewarded by time spent playing it, others for what they do while playing and even played a game where actually building your avatar was a combined effort of the mentioned previously.
To make it clear, every expansion in WoW its a sudden reset to all of your past efforts playing the game, with zero or almost none recognition for what you have achieved but some crappy achievements tittles. I really dont care if some guild was already doing end game raid, because WoW is not only about raids. It has a massive lore and world to explore (it had, now you only click a button to join Queues....talk about messing things badly eh?) and it has good to great PvP. I was even lucky to be in a guild where raid progress was made fairly quickly, not the best guild in EU region, but was the best of the server i was in.
So reply to this if you can: whats the difference between an avatar of a player playing WoW since Vanilla, and the avatar of a player playing it since Cataclysm, when the next expansion comes out? Wheres the reward? Wheres the real organic feel to the MMO world? It has none.
Even games like WAR offered something to the veteran player. It doesnt have to be something of big impact in the game...but something has to be there....
...and thats why i now play EVE online.
My 2 cents on it ofc. Thank you.
I totally agree with this. This is why I switched from WoW to Eve Online (and Perpetuum) as well.
Hardcore/Casual warfare was more entertaining on WoW General.
(It's always fun to take a peek at the armories of the people "talking the talk" about hardcore...and note that they never got completely through even the first tier of the content. Or his "top guild" (ranked somewhere around 24th on the server).)
But honestly, it's been fifteen years of this H/C war on game forums everywhere--how much more pointless can a thread be, than recycling the same discussion everyone's read thousands of times before?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I played WoW since Beta, and EQ for five years before that. So I think I count as old school - and I deplore the direction the game is taking. Personally, I liked the effort in WotLK to make the end game more accessible - large parts of the content should not be off-limit to all but a few, and there should always be SOME available path to advance your character. But they have gone through and systematically dumbed down, and made incredibly easy, stupid, and face-palmingly linear, every part of the game. Every zone, every class - it is a completely different, and much less challenging, interesting, and SOCIAL game. You can easily solo the whole damn thing, have no contact with another human being, all the way to the level cap. If you need to run an instance, the Dungeon Finder removes any need to know anyone, have any friends, or know how to play your class. Just keep queuing up until you win. This game at launch was so awesome. It was really the best ever. Always catering to the lowest common denominnator is not the way to go IMO. What kind of a game is it if you never lose? What kind of MMORPG is it if you never need help from another player?
Blizzard is good with timing, I'll give them that.
Deathwing raid coming out soonish, then Blizzcon in November and new expansion announcement. Month before TOR release. Smart.
New expansion is either going to continue my WoW career or completely end it, finally, for good.
Kind of looking forward to seeing what direction they go - hopefully back towards the "center" they started at and not any further towards their current direction.
I agree with the interviewee. I quit sometime back in 2009 as well and my playtime at that point was even at its lowest point compared to 2004-2008. Blizzard should have never merged the two communities, but rather built content for them both.
WoW Made the Dangerous step in WOTLK, and while the effects of that step didnt come into fruition untill Cata it still was taken in WOTLK. That step being Hard mode, now the concept itself isnt a bad one at all however the execution of it was what sealed the deal.
Blizzard decided to make hard mode a 2nd run through of the raid but on a harder difficulty that rerquired you to run the normal first, this was the major flaw.
What should of been done rather then this raid finder route should of been making 3 modes from the get go.
Easy
Medium
Hard
Each drops the same ilevel gear however obviously achievements are different with titles,mounts,and such and perhaps legendaries being only available in hard mode. The Difference between the gear of each mode is in its looks,aka how ornate it is. Much like how arena gear is handled.
This gives the more traditional sense of difficulty in video games, and still promotes people making groups.
The Raid finder is just another tool that promotes solitude rather then promoting community and teamwork
Today's raiders aren't raiders, many of them aren't even dedicated gamers.
Casuals with 30-45min time every 2nd day took over mmorpgs, mainly logging in not to really play but to "socialize and relax" after work. They can't dedicate more time to gaming because their lifes are too busy -which is also the main reason they don't want to be challenged ingame, but "relax". "I already have a job".
Then the housewifes. If you finally manage to get them to join vent, there are two kids fighting in the background and a tv running cartoon network at max volume. They play their healers because "sparkling spells looked nice" and "other classes looked somewhat mean". They got into the raid with a mix of green/blue quest rewards because the guild leader thought that "Mary's char could use some gear". No addons and no idea what to do, constant noises on vent because of hollering kids plus voice-activation setting instead of push to talk (although they barely ever say anything at all, "can't talk when i got to heal") , missing ready checks and leaving the whole raid waiting because "brb, kid wants something" -what they type into the game's chat instead of saying a word on vent.
I could go on with way more stereotypes, but you get the idea of how the average mmorpg player looks like today. Devs had to make the choice to exclude them or make money on them. Their choice was to get them in.
Today's raiders aren't raiders, many of them aren't even dedicated gamers.
Casuals with 30-45min time every 2nd day took over mmorpgs, mainly logging in not to really play but to "socialize and relax" after work. They can't dedicate more time to gaming because their lifes are too busy -which is also the main reason they don't want to be challenged ingame, but "relax". "I already have a job".
Then the housewifes. If you finally manage to get them to join vent, there are two kids fighting in the background and a tv running cartoon network at max volume. They play their healers because "sparkling spells looked nice" and "other classes looked somewhat mean". They got into the raid with a mix of green/blue quest rewards because the guild leader thought that "Mary's char could use some gear". No addons and no idea what to do, constant noises on vent because of hollering kids plus voice-activation setting instead of push to talk (although they barely ever say anything at all, "can't talk when i got to heal") , missing ready checks and leaving the whole raid waiting because "brb, kid wants something" -what they type into the game's chat instead of saying a word on vent.
I could go on with way more stereotypes, but you get the idea of how the average mmorpg player looks like today. Devs had to make the choice to exclude them or make money on them. Their choice was to get them in.
Have you even considered that your post may not be describing two groups of people, but one group who actually grew up? WoW is almost 8 years old. Games...even businesses don't last that long.
When WoW first came out, I was a single college student who had all the time in the world; most definately hardcore as ever. 6-7 years later, I'm married with kids and don't have the time dedicate even a quarter of what I did when WoW first started.
Took over? No...it's the same people. Thing's change within a decade, you know...
The only thing that i will always be bitter towards and never forigve the modern playerbase of WoW is the fact that they killed off the world. Warcraft doesn't have a world anymore its just a dungeon crawler with all this instan queues and crap. Raid finder is just beating the dead horse even more, with that in place one will NEVER have to leave a city ever again after reaching max level.
I could put aside the whole casual/hardcore arguement aside but the fact is that this instant gratification crap is killing the idea of a persistant world... at least it has with WoW. If blizz doesn't have any plans to fix this anytime soon then I'm just going to delete my characters and never look back anymore... it is just infuriating!
Well... Usually when I hear someone going on about that, its because open world ganking and griefing has taken a serious hit because of flying mounts, Dungeon Finder and other such. ^^ At level cap, there is rather little to do but raid and PvP any way. Unless one counts dailies. Those are useful for gold, but beyond that they are just more grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for rep and all of the rest is just par for the course in these types of games.
I wont claim to have read all the preceeding posts,but I will add this thought : Perhaps games such as WoW should make it possible to have the best of both worlds by setting up an old-school server for the real die-hards ? Hurts no one and satisfy's all ?
I wont claim to have read all the preceeding posts,but I will add this thought : Perhaps games such as WoW should make it possible to have the best of both worlds by setting up an old-school server for the real die-hards ? Hurts no one and satisfy's all ?
Agreed. I would return and play, for at least awhile, on a vanilla server. Ive seen others post that as well. Like anything else, I doubt if it would be as good as I remember it being but I had a lot of fun and made some friends leveling 1-60.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
I remember back in BC, a lot of guilds took over a week to just down Moroes when they first started raiding, my guild came along and we killed him on the first night, we became instant server celebrities and it really encouraged us to progress through the raids. Nowadays that mentality is gone, all the bosses die on pretty much first contact and everybody is at the same level. It's gotten to a rediculous level of ease, something so impressive as actually killing Arthas in wrath was attained by every single player I saw. I know scores of players who have left the game, many of us moved to EVE Online to play in a world where you earned what you worked for to try and achieve that sense of accomplishment we once felt while raiding BC but seems all nigh unattainable in the World of Warcraft as it exists today.
"Not meaning to anger anyone with this thread, though I know in these forums its quite impossible. You can say "I enjoy vanilla ice cream" and still have 50 posts of angry, hot-tempered people who have nothing better to do than argue with you." - Dirkzen
Blizzard is good with timing, I'll give them that.
Deathwing raid coming out soonish, then Blizzcon in November and new expansion announcement. Month before TOR release. Smart.
New expansion is either going to continue my WoW career or completely end it, finally, for good.
Kind of looking forward to seeing what direction they go - hopefully back towards the "center" they started at and not any further towards their current direction.
I wouldn't call that smart its just basic marketing . The promice really is of bread tomorrow when something new and exciting and by the sounds of it extremly good in TOR offers it today . The next expansion is at least a year away and that give TOR a real strong chane to steal huge numbers of subs away from WoW a raid will not stop the almost inevitable exodus of people . WoWs probable successor is nearly here . I think had the game been in decent shape the numbers about to leave wouldn't have been quite so many but Blizzard have made huge mistakes in recent years and although people are still hanging in there I think the majority of them are starting to realise things will not improve . They just are waiting for a decent competitor to come along and catch the zietgeist .
When the decline comes Blizzard will have only itself to blame they chased a quick profit over a longterm gain . I think there will a time when WoW is used as a cautionary tale as an example to the games that succeed it as to how quickly a massivly popular game can lose popularity and subs if not handled right .
I think Blizzard could still turn things around but that would proberbly mean someone new in charge with a bit of vision and integrity .
Blizzard is good with timing, I'll give them that. Deathwing raid coming out soonish, then Blizzcon in November and new expansion announcement. Month before TOR release. Smart. New expansion is either going to continue my WoW career or completely end it, finally, for good. Kind of looking forward to seeing what direction they go - hopefully back towards the "center" they started at and not any further towards their current direction.
I wouldn't call that smart its just basic marketing . The promice really is of bread tomorrow when something new and exciting and by the sounds of it extremly good in TOR offers it today . The next expansion is at least a year away and that give TOR a real strong chane to steal huge numbers of subs away from WoW a raid will not stop the almost inevitable exodus of people . WoWs probable successor is nearly here . I think had the game been in decent shape the numbers about to leave wouldn't have been quite so many but Blizzard have made huge mistakes in recent years and although people are still hanging in there I think the majority of them are starting to realise things will not improve . They just are waiting for a decent competitor to come along and catch the zietgeist .
When the decline comes Blizzard will have only itself to blame they chased a quick profit over a longterm gain . I think there will a time when WoW is used as a cautionary tale as an example to the games that succeed it as to how quickly a massivly popular game can lose popularity and subs if not handled right .
I think Blizzard could still turn things around but that would proberbly mean someone new in charge with a bit of vision and integrity .
Sorry but TOR will be exactly like WoW just with Lightsabres and Voiceovers. The Bioware devs stated that they think everyone who is stayinga way from the "wow formula" is dumb so not only is that arrogant and stupid beyond god, its also wrong. People are growing sick and tired of the same old same old. It will sell well for sure, but the longterm success will heavily depend on what TOR has to offer despite combat.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I find it ironic that the players that made WOW popular, the players of the game that defined casual gameplay and led to the destruction of hardcore mmorpgs, are actually complaining about what their WOW has devolved into.
Seriously, those old "hardcore" WOW players know now how we old mmorpg players felt about the changes their game forced on the market.
Originally posted by BadSpock The absolute 100% truth is that the hardcore and former hardcore are just upset other people are doing "their" stuff now too. I used to be one of those elites who thought I was better then your "average" player because I raided in Vanilla and BC. That mentality kept up into Wrath as my guild and I "easily" bested hard-mode content like Sarth 3D. Only achievements/hard mode content I wasn't able to complete in that first tier of Wrath raiding were Immortal (someone would always die during KT) and Malygos under 6 min or whatever. 10-man 3D? Done, 10-man everything? Done. Two 25-man achieves missing... I actually "cared" enough to check the rankings etc. on the server to know I was in top 3 Warrior tanks on the server, top 25 geared players over-all. Ulduar hit and my 10-person group I led (Main Tank=me) rocked it hard, but our full guild 25 group just kept having issues with certain bosses and got "stuck" in progression. This fact coupled with how much better my 10-person group was doing then the other 10 group and the combined full guild 25 group, there started to be a LOT of drama... eventually, guild broke up. I still say Ulduar was the last "great" raid, though Icecrown was very fun and cool it was just too easy on normal. Trial of the Crusader was a joke, I came back after months off, months after TOC was released and easily pugged it. Farming pre-current Tier raid gear was jokingly easy from heroics, etc. Now? I am actually quite pleased they are introducing the Raid Finder. The game should have ALWAYS had 3 difficulty modes instead of two. Having content for the 1% at the top (hard modes) and then content for the other 99% just doesn't work. Easy mode (PUG mode) for peopel who just want to see it/experience it and don't really care abotu being cutting edge (what I've turned into) Normal mode for guilds/groups and maybe really good PUGs to progress and still have that challenge/progression/reward system etc. Hard Mode for the elite. Would make it much, much easier to tune the content to the oppropriate level, give the hardcore their elite content and gear etc. Fully 100% support this, recently re-subbed and am working on getting myself pre-geared enough to PUG Deathwing easy-mode when it releases. Just to see the content, then I'll be done with WoW again until next expansion (maybe, depends on what it is)
No, we are upset because everything is boring now and there is no reason to be a part of a community anymore. These "I deserve everything, and I deserve it now" players have changed a challenging, socially interactive experience into an arcade game.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I find it ironic that the players that made WOW popular, the players of the game that defined casual gameplay and led to the destruction of hardcore mmorpgs, are actually complaining about what their WOW has devolved into.
Seriously, those old "hardcore" WOW players know now how we old mmorpg players felt about the changes their game forced on the market.
Oh the irony it serves them right, their game destroyed our genre.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I find it ironic that the players that made WOW popular, the players of the game that defined casual gameplay and led to the destruction of hardcore mmorpgs, are actually complaining about what their WOW has devolved into.
Seriously, those old "hardcore" WOW players know now how we old mmorpg players felt about the changes their game forced on the market.
Oh the irony it serves them right, their game destroyed our genre.
Their game evolved our genre more than any previous title.
Then, somehow, they managed to start taking three steps backwards for every one step forward. I attribute this to the changes made to the team over the years. Ever since GC entered the picture the game has been on a downward spiral with no hope of ever returning to those glory days.
The saddest part is that he doesn't even realize how much his direction has damaged the game, the IP and the reputation of Blizzard as a whole. He has taken the ignorance is bliss approach from day one and never looked back.
Well the combination of GC, TC and partnership with Activision killed everything Blizzard stood for in no time.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Comments
I've thought for a long time Blizzard would be very wise to impliment servers with normal and advanced difficulty because they are in real danger of losing a huge chunk of thier playerbase now . I do know a few players that have been playing since Vanilla and TBC but none of them are happy with the increasingly casual game play . Its not about hardcore gamers being angry that casual gamers play there content ( a very childish way of looking at it IMO ) its about the increasing lack of challenging content . But its not that its the hardcore gamer thats become disallusioned with WoW its the normal medium core gamer too . The one that doesn't want a cakewalk through the majority of instances .
Blizzard lost 1/12 of its playerbase this year . Not a huge amount but that was in no small part due to a small game no one had even thought would be decent (RIFT) imagine what will happen next year when a game based on the most popular franchise ever (StarWarsTOR) comes along .If its any good this game will decimate the WoW player base that once looked untouchable by millions .
This game has remained popular for three reasons .Firstly up untill now its offered people what they want and Blizzard untill now have been very good at understanding what the majority wanted but they have started to faulter in this .Secondly WoW plays on pretty much any computer and still looks reasonably good and last but not least thirdly theres been a real lack of competition .Now competition is starting to come along and TOR has already broken records for pre-orders .These are probably the last months where WoW will have no opposition . Then again that may be a good thing for the game Blizzard may sit up and take notice when they are losing huge amounts of subs and have a rethink about the direction they have taken it .
Let me disagree here. Sure some of the easier stuff is pugable, but once you get into heroics and beyond I have to disagree with that entirely. Anyways it is all about dumb gear now, you have to have a certain gear level to enter all the upper level stuff.
I did that with 40 mans and just won't do it again. Why I don't play Wow anymore and thought that Cataclysm was by far the worst expansion yet.
I totally agree with this. This is why I switched from WoW to Eve Online (and Perpetuum) as well.
Hardcore/Casual warfare was more entertaining on WoW General.
(It's always fun to take a peek at the armories of the people "talking the talk" about hardcore...and note that they never got completely through even the first tier of the content. Or his "top guild" (ranked somewhere around 24th on the server).)
But honestly, it's been fifteen years of this H/C war on game forums everywhere--how much more pointless can a thread be, than recycling the same discussion everyone's read thousands of times before?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
the only thing thats required to build a raid guild is chat skills and forum post skills.
theres no prestige to that anyway.
good for you, you can manipulate people with little social skills on the internet.
talk an fhm cover model into the sack via the internet and ill be impressed.
in the meantime, wasting millions of dollars for content for a tiny percentage of the games population makes zero business sense anyway.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
I played WoW since Beta, and EQ for five years before that. So I think I count as old school - and I deplore the direction the game is taking. Personally, I liked the effort in WotLK to make the end game more accessible - large parts of the content should not be off-limit to all but a few, and there should always be SOME available path to advance your character. But they have gone through and systematically dumbed down, and made incredibly easy, stupid, and face-palmingly linear, every part of the game. Every zone, every class - it is a completely different, and much less challenging, interesting, and SOCIAL game. You can easily solo the whole damn thing, have no contact with another human being, all the way to the level cap. If you need to run an instance, the Dungeon Finder removes any need to know anyone, have any friends, or know how to play your class. Just keep queuing up until you win. This game at launch was so awesome. It was really the best ever. Always catering to the lowest common denominnator is not the way to go IMO. What kind of a game is it if you never lose? What kind of MMORPG is it if you never need help from another player?
WoW is totally dead, it just feeds on its own myth.
Imagine the game with its recent mechanisms would be published just now by some unknown company. The response would be hilarious.
A zombified game, just like the casual/pro-discussion.
Blizzard is good with timing, I'll give them that.
Deathwing raid coming out soonish, then Blizzcon in November and new expansion announcement. Month before TOR release. Smart.
New expansion is either going to continue my WoW career or completely end it, finally, for good.
Kind of looking forward to seeing what direction they go - hopefully back towards the "center" they started at and not any further towards their current direction.
I agree with the interviewee. I quit sometime back in 2009 as well and my playtime at that point was even at its lowest point compared to 2004-2008. Blizzard should have never merged the two communities, but rather built content for them both.
WoW Made the Dangerous step in WOTLK, and while the effects of that step didnt come into fruition untill Cata it still was taken in WOTLK. That step being Hard mode, now the concept itself isnt a bad one at all however the execution of it was what sealed the deal.
Blizzard decided to make hard mode a 2nd run through of the raid but on a harder difficulty that rerquired you to run the normal first, this was the major flaw.
What should of been done rather then this raid finder route should of been making 3 modes from the get go.
Easy
Medium
Hard
Each drops the same ilevel gear however obviously achievements are different with titles,mounts,and such and perhaps legendaries being only available in hard mode. The Difference between the gear of each mode is in its looks,aka how ornate it is. Much like how arena gear is handled.
This gives the more traditional sense of difficulty in video games, and still promotes people making groups.
The Raid finder is just another tool that promotes solitude rather then promoting community and teamwork
Today's raiders aren't raiders, many of them aren't even dedicated gamers.
Casuals with 30-45min time every 2nd day took over mmorpgs, mainly logging in not to really play but to "socialize and relax" after work. They can't dedicate more time to gaming because their lifes are too busy -which is also the main reason they don't want to be challenged ingame, but "relax". "I already have a job".
Then the housewifes. If you finally manage to get them to join vent, there are two kids fighting in the background and a tv running cartoon network at max volume. They play their healers because "sparkling spells looked nice" and "other classes looked somewhat mean". They got into the raid with a mix of green/blue quest rewards because the guild leader thought that "Mary's char could use some gear". No addons and no idea what to do, constant noises on vent because of hollering kids plus voice-activation setting instead of push to talk (although they barely ever say anything at all, "can't talk when i got to heal") , missing ready checks and leaving the whole raid waiting because "brb, kid wants something" -what they type into the game's chat instead of saying a word on vent.
I could go on with way more stereotypes, but you get the idea of how the average mmorpg player looks like today. Devs had to make the choice to exclude them or make money on them. Their choice was to get them in.
Have you even considered that your post may not be describing two groups of people, but one group who actually grew up? WoW is almost 8 years old. Games...even businesses don't last that long.
When WoW first came out, I was a single college student who had all the time in the world; most definately hardcore as ever. 6-7 years later, I'm married with kids and don't have the time dedicate even a quarter of what I did when WoW first started.
Took over? No...it's the same people. Thing's change within a decade, you know...
Well... Usually when I hear someone going on about that, its because open world ganking and griefing has taken a serious hit because of flying mounts, Dungeon Finder and other such. ^^ At level cap, there is rather little to do but raid and PvP any way. Unless one counts dailies. Those are useful for gold, but beyond that they are just more grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for rep and all of the rest is just par for the course in these types of games.
I wont claim to have read all the preceeding posts,but I will add this thought : Perhaps games such as WoW should make it possible to have the best of both worlds by setting up an old-school server for the real die-hards ? Hurts no one and satisfy's all ?
Agreed. I would return and play, for at least awhile, on a vanilla server. Ive seen others post that as well. Like anything else, I doubt if it would be as good as I remember it being but I had a lot of fun and made some friends leveling 1-60.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
I remember back in BC, a lot of guilds took over a week to just down Moroes when they first started raiding, my guild came along and we killed him on the first night, we became instant server celebrities and it really encouraged us to progress through the raids. Nowadays that mentality is gone, all the bosses die on pretty much first contact and everybody is at the same level. It's gotten to a rediculous level of ease, something so impressive as actually killing Arthas in wrath was attained by every single player I saw. I know scores of players who have left the game, many of us moved to EVE Online to play in a world where you earned what you worked for to try and achieve that sense of accomplishment we once felt while raiding BC but seems all nigh unattainable in the World of Warcraft as it exists today.
"Not meaning to anger anyone with this thread, though I know in these forums its quite impossible. You can say "I enjoy vanilla ice cream" and still have 50 posts of angry, hot-tempered people who have nothing better to do than argue with you." - Dirkzen
I wouldn't call that smart its just basic marketing . The promice really is of bread tomorrow when something new and exciting and by the sounds of it extremly good in TOR offers it today . The next expansion is at least a year away and that give TOR a real strong chane to steal huge numbers of subs away from WoW a raid will not stop the almost inevitable exodus of people . WoWs probable successor is nearly here . I think had the game been in decent shape the numbers about to leave wouldn't have been quite so many but Blizzard have made huge mistakes in recent years and although people are still hanging in there I think the majority of them are starting to realise things will not improve . They just are waiting for a decent competitor to come along and catch the zietgeist .
When the decline comes Blizzard will have only itself to blame they chased a quick profit over a longterm gain . I think there will a time when WoW is used as a cautionary tale as an example to the games that succeed it as to how quickly a massivly popular game can lose popularity and subs if not handled right .
I think Blizzard could still turn things around but that would proberbly mean someone new in charge with a bit of vision and integrity .
Good lord! How many add-ons are active in that last screeny?
One to tell you if you're debuffed or cursed
One to tell you how long until boss's next ability
One to tell you when you are too close to another player
One to tell you how much longer on your pots/buffs
Frames on the bottom right probably enable one click cures / decursing / healing
Did I miss a dps meter or the one that just plays the game for you while you set back and watch it all unfold?
um hardcore player sounds so wrong..are they like the cool nerds of gaming?
I wouldn't call that smart its just basic marketing . The promice really is of bread tomorrow when something new and exciting and by the sounds of it extremly good in TOR offers it today . The next expansion is at least a year away and that give TOR a real strong chane to steal huge numbers of subs away from WoW a raid will not stop the almost inevitable exodus of people . WoWs probable successor is nearly here . I think had the game been in decent shape the numbers about to leave wouldn't have been quite so many but Blizzard have made huge mistakes in recent years and although people are still hanging in there I think the majority of them are starting to realise things will not improve . They just are waiting for a decent competitor to come along and catch the zietgeist .
When the decline comes Blizzard will have only itself to blame they chased a quick profit over a longterm gain . I think there will a time when WoW is used as a cautionary tale as an example to the games that succeed it as to how quickly a massivly popular game can lose popularity and subs if not handled right .
I think Blizzard could still turn things around but that would proberbly mean someone new in charge with a bit of vision and integrity .
Sorry but TOR will be exactly like WoW just with Lightsabres and Voiceovers. The Bioware devs stated that they think everyone who is stayinga way from the "wow formula" is dumb so not only is that arrogant and stupid beyond god, its also wrong. People are growing sick and tired of the same old same old. It will sell well for sure, but the longterm success will heavily depend on what TOR has to offer despite combat.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I find it ironic that the players that made WOW popular, the players of the game that defined casual gameplay and led to the destruction of hardcore mmorpgs, are actually complaining about what their WOW has devolved into.
Seriously, those old "hardcore" WOW players know now how we old mmorpg players felt about the changes their game forced on the market.
No, we are upset because everything is boring now and there is no reason to be a part of a community anymore. These "I deserve everything, and I deserve it now" players have changed a challenging, socially interactive experience into an arcade game.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Oh the irony it serves them right, their game destroyed our genre.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Their game evolved our genre more than any previous title.
Then, somehow, they managed to start taking three steps backwards for every one step forward. I attribute this to the changes made to the team over the years. Ever since GC entered the picture the game has been on a downward spiral with no hope of ever returning to those glory days.
The saddest part is that he doesn't even realize how much his direction has damaged the game, the IP and the reputation of Blizzard as a whole. He has taken the ignorance is bliss approach from day one and never looked back.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."