? Huh "WoW is like the apotheosis of the old, rather then pointing a way to the new"
its a 3/4 year old game at time of release it was innovative
a few awards :
Best Game of the Year Award - GameSpot Best PC Game of the Year - GameSpot Best Massively Multiplayer Online Game - GameSpot Editor's Choice Award - GameSpot Best Role-Playing (RPG or MMORPG) - GameSpy PC RPG / MMORPG Gamers' Choice Awards - GameSpy Special Achievement in Art Direction - GameSpy Editor's Choice Award - GameSpy Best Persistent World Game - IGN Editor's Choice Award - IGN Best PC RPG - FileFront Best Massively Multiplayer Game - VoodooExtreme Best of Show (E3 2003) - The Wargamer Best Persistent Online Title (E3 2003) - IGN PC Runner up for Best Graphics (E3 2003) - IGN Vault Spike TV Video Game Awards 2005 - Spike TV Best PC Game Best RPG Best Multiplayer Game
I used to really enjoy WoW, but I fell out with my clan/gaming buddy. It has totally spoiled it fopr me. The magic is gone and resentment has set in.
The gamer who doesn't know when to move on.
I used to enjoy WoW but now I am sick of it. I invested hundreds of hours and by the end of it all I was doing is just raiding and grinding. Raid, raid, raid, grind, grind, grind. I raided and grinded every day for a year and now I hate every inch of it.
He who was nerfed.
I used to be the PvP king, now I am getting whupped. The powers that I had specialised in to great effect have been taken away from me simply because I was doing it so well. Something I really enjoyed doing has been taken away from me.
The Rebel.
Big business sucks. Anything mainstream is bad. Anything that lots of people say is really good, is really bad. WoW = the MacDonalds of gaming.
He who had issues.
Blizzard cancelled my account. Banned me for no reason. My computer is not compatable. All I do is lag.
The Elitist.
If it's not free for all PvP it is teh suxxor. If it isn't Meridian 69 or Ultima Online it is teh noobfest.
The Social Misfit.
I currently play City of Heroes. It is safe, all my friends are here. I have difficulty making new friends. It is easier to hate WoW than to move into a new social circle. WoW players are all children.
The Forum Reader.
My friends call me Mr. Thotbot. I read every post in the forums. Consequently I am aware of every nerf, fault and bug. I see them all every time I play.
WoW isn't innovative at all in the technological sense,
It bloody well is.
The (working) Auction house. -> Done before FF11 (and probably before that)
The show item panel in the trade menu. -> Also done before, I think even EQ1 showed you the items being traded.
The GUI options. -> Allow for mods that make the game easier for players who don't want to learn to play better, not to mention other MMOs get stuff like this inform of 3rd party addons.
The mod support. -> Yeah...as discussed, mods ruin the game.
The AI. -> Sucks, why would a tiger quit chasing you after 20 feet when you just put a few arrows in his hide?
The comedy names. -> This one almost makes me wonder if this whole post was sarcastic..is it?
The seamless worlds/on the fly loading. -> Also been done before.
The linking of items into the chat channel. -> Save you all of 3 seconds to type the items description.
The wardrobe function where you can see what an item will look like on you by simply clicking a hyper link. -> I seem to recall a webcomic making fun of this, because dev's worked on this INSTEAD OF GETTING THE EXPANSION OUT SOONER.
Bind on pick up. -> Why should anything adhere perm. to your body/soul? Sure they want to cut back ebayers but that hardly stopped people from doing that, when I get new equipment I want to be able to sell my old equipment for more than 5 damn copper.
The warriors rage. -> Woohoo Warriors now have a mana bar that limits them from using skills rather than cool down timers....
The rogues stealth. -> Done before.
The symbols for marking enemies. -> So basically if I drew a picture of a stickfigure being stabbed by knives, it isn't in other games so therefor its an improvement?
The scaleability of the GFX engine. -> Fantastic for Blizzard from a marketing prospective, the GFX engine in general stunk for high-end pc users though.
Bosses with drops only placed in instances. -> Done soooo many times before, not to mention the drop rate sucks, if a boss is wearing the cape you want on its model, it better drop 100% of the time.
The factional language filter. -> Pretty much so little kids were only limited to cursing out members of their own faction. Seriously you want to say something in private use the group chat or whispers.
I made my arguments. WoW is in no way a technological marvel. Not to mention it's way too easy to level up to max level.
I wouldn't say I hate it, I played it for ~3-4 month and had a lot of fun leveling my character to 60 during that time, but after the introduction of Battlegrounds (wth, I wanted open world PvP that's actually meaningful, like taking over towns or even zones, not some retarded CtF in some confined instance that belongs into a FPS. A total immersion breaker for me.) and the prospect of running the same instances over and over and over and over as the only activities (don't really care much about alts) I left it and I haven't looked back. I'm actually not even sure why I visited this forum hehe.
WAR seems to adress the above issues, so that's the game I'm looking forward to, even though the first gameplay videos didn't exactly blow me away.
It's very much a case of hating the successful and popular by self-proclaimed elite gamers for bringing the unwashed masses in large numbers into their previously unpolluted refuge of MMO eliteness.
Blizzard had a vision: let's take a niche market product (MMOs, which were, pre-WoW, and despite the success of EQ, nevertheless a niche compared to the gaming market overall), drill out much of the tedium, complexity and so forth that tend to make people stay away from the product, repackage it in an accessible forum that not only runs on many systems, but which allows the average gamer to progress and have fun. That was the vision for WoW and it was executed nearly perfectly. The flaw, of course, was the level 60 end-game which was not designed for most gamers, but many people stayed anyway, working on alts, playing another faction, etc., because they found the 1-60 content a lot of fun, despite that glaring end-game inconsistency. Design-wise, the strength of the 1-60 game is what has gotten the high level of subscriptions and maintained them, despite the more hardcore end-game design (at least the one that prevailed before TBC) - and it's the strength of that design and its closeness to the core vision for the game that has made WoW a tremendous success.
The "cost" of that success has been that of course WoW has created expectations among the new market of MMO gamers it's basically created itself, ranging from interface to accessibility to playability -- and the "core" gamers resent this influence, and so end up bashing Blizzard for essentially being too succesful at what they set out to do. So it's very much de rigeur to hate WoW if you're one of the more elite gaming types -- in fact, it is almost like a badge of eliteness, or evidence of a rite-of-passage to eliteness.
This thread is pointless. Everyone hates WoW? How did you come to the conclusion everyone hates WoW. 8 million players, the most successful mmorpg ever and you get the impression everyone hates WoW. I guess I missed something here.
People hate WoW because it is World of Warcraft, currently the most popular game and gaining more members and fans every single day. It is easy to hate. It steals players from other games as well as draws in it's own. NOT fair. But honestly, I can see why it does: I think it is a well-made game, and deserves how many players it has. Plus it has amazing customer service. There isn't much for the more casual player not to like.
It boils down to a few Stereotypes for me. The divorced gamer. I used to really enjoy WoW, but I fell out with my clan/gaming buddy. It has totally spoiled it fopr me. The magic is gone and resentment has set in. The gamer who doesn't know when to move on. I used to enjoy WoW but now I am sick of it. I invested hundreds of hours and by the end of it all I was doing is just raiding and grinding. Raid, raid, raid, grind, grind, grind. I raided and grinded every day for a year and now I hate every inch of it. He who was nerfed. I used to be the PvP king, now I am getting whupped. The powers that I had specialised in to great effect have been taken away from me simply because I was doing it so well. Something I really enjoyed doing has been taken away from me. The Rebel. Big business sucks. Anything mainstream is bad. Anything that lots of people say is really good, is really bad. WoW = the MacDonalds of gaming. He who had issues. Blizzard cancelled my account. Banned me for no reason. My computer is not compatable. All I do is lag. The Elitist. If it's not free for all PvP it is teh suxxor. If it isn't Meridian 69 or Ultima Online it is teh noobfest. The Social Misfit. I currently play City of Heroes. It is safe, all my friends are here. I have difficulty making new friends. It is easier to hate WoW than to move into a new social circle. WoW players are all children. The Forum Reader. My friends call me Mr. Thotbot. I read every post in the forums. Consequently I am aware of every nerf, fault and bug. I see them all every time I play. The Guild Wars player. Pay to play is a con.
Baff, you should be recognized for your post.
Your always usually good for some witt, but you've outdone yourself. Well done.
I think you are wrong in your assement here. Parents teach children, not WoW, not MMOs. If your kid is taking advantage of others, 'in game' or out, that's something you should address (and I don't mean you per se). I really get tired of people blaming media for the way their kids act up. Stop blaming others and start blaming yourselves. Work less, stay at home more, and be more active in your kid's life. Anyone remember the old PSA commercials: "It's 10:00pm. Do you know where your children are?" Well, do you?
Let us 8 million + customers carry on playing, while you elitist monkeys carry on jumping from one game to another every 10 mins looking for something new, Newsflash all the games you keep calling wow killers or better games, die at relsease or die at the hands of wow. Call me a wow fanboy, does not matter. Problem with most of you losers is that u claim to hate wow only to look cool, as this is the new fashion.
For like months now, people been wrtitng on vanguard forums, that its gona be pmg wtf imba best game ever, lol. You idiots sure got fooled there didnt you. When age of conan fails to deliver along with warhammer, you whining little elitist losers will cry even more,lol. Carry on crying.
The majority of the people claiming to hate wow, actually play wow and still do. Majority of people caliming to hate wow, do so to be cool on forums " look at me im cool i hate wow".
I wrote this in the 10 secs i was on the gryphon:) have a nice day babies, while u eltists cry babies carry on looking for a new game eevry 10 mins, only people you are fooling are yourselves.
ps. also when lotr fails as well hope you cry even more,lol
I don't hate it, I just don't understand why people like it. I've tried it, gone back to try it out now and again, I just don't get the "draw".
Seems rather boring to me ie, run around and chop up everything in sight for months on end to get to the "end game". Maybe it's good because so many play it? The draw of a big crowd kind of thing. I know lots of folks who play it.
Ah well to each their own. As for it being a great game because of 8 million subs.
In a world where millions of people hold the likes of Paris Hilton "a celebrity" for flashing her snatch now and again that's not much of an endorsement to me - if you know what I mean.
Get back to your dead games losers, ie:- 1)Archlord 2)Everquest 3)SWG 4)GW 5)Coh/V 6)VsoH 7)Eve Let us 8 million + customers carry on playing, while you elitist monkeys carry on jumping from one game to another every 10 mins looking for something new, Newsflash all the games you keep calling wow killers or better games, die at relsease or die at the hands of wow. Call me a wow fanboy, does not matter. Problem with most of you losers is that u claim to hate wow only to look cool, as this is the new fashion. For like months now, people been wrtitng on vanguard forums, that its gona be pmg wtf imba best game ever, lol. You idiots sure got fooled there didnt you. When age of conan fails to deliver along with warhammer, you whining little elitist losers will cry even more,lol. Carry on crying. The majority of the people claiming to hate wow, actually play wow and still do. Majority of people caliming to hate wow, do so to be cool on forums " look at me im cool i hate wow".
I wrote this in the 10 secs i was on the gryphon:) have a nice day babies, while u eltists cry babies carry on looking for a new game eevry 10 mins, only people you are fooling are yourselves.
ps. also when lotr fails as well hope you cry even more,lol
This drivvel is the worst reasoned piece of garbage I have ever had to endure.
Personally I dropped WoW because of the 'level sixty' problems.
My warrior had got to level sixty, and I got bored of doing the same instances over and over hoping that my favourite piece of armour /Sword dropped.
Also, unless you are a member of a significantly large guild; doing REAL END GAME INSTANCES, like AnQhiraj [however its spelt] is virtually impossible. AS you cannot get a decent team.
Finally, when Blizzard released the patch a while ago, that reduce the number of allowed players in an instance it made even slightly entertaining endgame places like Blackrock Spire or Straholme, virtually impossible to do in an evening. Especially when large numbers of player were kids who had to contend with homework / tea, stuff like that.
I LOVED WoW...it really entertained me for the time I was playing it...but in the end, I got bored of it. which is why I am really hoping to soon find a game that is as absorbing as WoW....LOTRO I HOPE will be that one.
Also, unless you are a member of a significantly large guild; doing REAL END GAME INSTANCES, like AnQhiraj [however its spelt] is virtually impossible. AS you cannot get a decent team.
Finally, when Blizzard released the patch a while ago, that reduce the number of allowed players in an instance it made even slightly entertaining endgame places like Blackrock Spire or Straholme, virtually impossible to do in an evening. Especially when large numbers of player were kids who had to contend with homework / tea, stuff like that.
LOL you actually think that if every guild could do AQ or naxx there would be any challenge left?
Calling BRS and strat ENDGAME?
You cant do UBRS or strat in an evening? man you either not been in an organised guild, you cant get pug or u havnt purchased TBC, or you on drugs. Either one of these options would probably define it. You think people are doing UBRS or start since expansion?
WoW does a lot of things right is why so many love it, but so many here on MMORPG.com hate it.... why?
people who will spend their time at work/home/school etc. trolling through forums on a website dedicated to a genre of video games (myself included no illusions to my nerdiness) are a lot more serious of gamers then most. all of us that would take the time to visit MMORPG.com daily (as I do) are at least somewhat "hardcore" in our love and dedication to MMORPG's....
Wow wasn't designed (originally) to appeal to the more hardcore, more serious gamer. When WoW got really huge and people started hitting level 60 in mass they looked over seas for inspiration, "what do hardcore gamers do?" and they decided that end game would be a grind, be it in PVP or in raids they needed something to keep people playing to keep making money, all companies want/need to make money, and yes WoW makes a ton but their operational costs have to be astronomical.
and why change what's worked for them? they made an expansion with 10 more levels of what the casual gamers love, and tons of new instances/raids and lots of grinding to do for the more hardcore gamer once you hit the new level cap.
problem is even the more hardcore get bored after a while, and WoW has been out for a long while now, BC will breathe life into WoW for another year or more, but eventually they'll have to expand the game further or create something new. Blizzard knows this.
I resent (hate is a bit to strong of a word) for what it has done to the MMORPG market. All the other developers, with the exception perhaps of Sigil and whoever makes, EVE, are chasing WoW's subscriptions numbers and dumbing down games to do it.
What happened to SWG is the classic example. The game probably had 250k to 350k subscribers. Very respectable for the pre-WoW era. Within 6 months of WoW launching, we get the Combat Upgrade (CU), which pasted a level based system over the previously soley skill based system and generally removed features and dumbed down the game. That didn't bring in the WoW numbers, so within a year of WoW launching, SOE/Lucas Arts releases the NGE which essentially destoryed SWG, in a further attempt to mimic WoW and lure its subscribers away. The only consolation for SWG gamers is the NGE utter failure and embarresment it has caused SOE. Future games, again with the exception of VSOH, appear to be chasing this dumbed down MMO market segment.
The thing is WoW isn't even a full MMORPG. Crafting is barely an after thought, there is not even player housing, there is way too much instancing. A player really can't make any lasting impact on the game world.
I am glad people are enjoying WoW and certainly don't begrudge them their enjoyment. But overall its been bad for MMORPGs in general.
I think WoW is a great game, I played for almost 2 years and only got one toon to level 60. I enjoy the story and I took ever quest I could, built up as much faction as I could and tried to see the entire world. I don’t think of myself as a hard core gamer, I play daily for about 2-5 hours.
WoW was a hit for me because of its back store, everything made sense and fit into its place well. PvP was a blast and well thought out. The game ended for me at level 60, there wasn’t anything to do but raid and I couldn’t raid unless my toon was like everyone elses toon. I played a human warrior, I found I couldn’t get a group unless I was protection spec, and if I was protection spec it was hard to play unless I was in a group.
The game started to get boring, as time went on no one wanted me in a group because I wasn’t the right kind of warrior and my gear sucked. I stopped playing for a bit then was talked into re-rolling a horde. I fell in love with the game again, the story was new and I found the Horde side to be nicer and more helpful.
I guilded up with friends from my work and we all started out and played nightly. Then I got to level 30 and all the stores seemed to be the same, I had trouble finding a group because I didn’t spec my toon the way everyone else thought it should be.
To try to sum it up; WoW did everything right, it has a history and is an easy game. It has a nice looking world and it kept character creation basic. The game does a great job of holding the players hand through the game but still making them feel free to do what they want. Each class ends at the same point with the same desired gear and spec. I loved WoW and will never say a bad thing about it, if your looking to et into an MMO try it. If your looking for a challenge, try something else.
It's very much a case of hating the successful and popular by self-proclaimed elite gamers for bringing the unwashed masses in large numbers into their previously unpolluted refuge of MMO eliteness.
Blizzard had a vision: let's take a niche market product (MMOs, which were, pre-WoW, and despite the success of EQ, nevertheless a niche compared to the gaming market overall), drill out much of the tedium, complexity and so forth that tend to make people stay away from the product, repackage it in an accessible forum that not only runs on many systems, but which allows the average gamer to progress and have fun. That was the vision for WoW and it was executed nearly perfectly. The flaw, of course, was the level 60 end-game which was not designed for most gamers, but many people stayed anyway, working on alts, playing another faction, etc., because they found the 1-60 content a lot of fun, despite that glaring end-game inconsistency. Design-wise, the strength of the 1-60 game is what has gotten the high level of subscriptions and maintained them, despite the more hardcore end-game design (at least the one that prevailed before TBC) - and it's the strength of that design and its closeness to the core vision for the game that has made WoW a tremendous success.
The "cost" of that success has been that of course WoW has created expectations among the new market of MMO gamers it's basically created itself, ranging from interface to accessibility to playability -- and the "core" gamers resent this influence, and so end up bashing Blizzard for essentially being too succesful at what they set out to do. So it's very much de rigeur to hate WoW if you're one of the more elite gaming types -- in fact, it is almost like a badge of eliteness, or evidence of a rite-of-passage to eliteness.
Actually Blizzards model is far simpler than most people think. The funny thing is the elitists dont get it at all. But then again they never have gotten much.
WoW's model is solely the following. Copy EQ1 but make it so that every ~5 levels you have roughly 2-3 instances that you only need repeat about 5 times each and about 20-50 quests and push all the grindy part to the level 60 raid game. And then they just cleaned up some design inconsistentcy such as the trying-to-be-two-contradictory-things-at-once travel design and made a much nicer interface with better art direction. Why does this work? Because the whole frigging game is just plain repetitive, so you need to change scenary often. Once you are in your 20s to 30s you really don't do anything substantively different for the rest of the game. So in order to make it appear less grindy they change scenary often and make obvious repition of exactly the same thing (ala camping) unnecessary
That is their pacing. Their success is a validation of that pacing. As with books pacing is a personal things one person's interesting book is another person's tedious slog. WoW paced it for what a fairly large portion of people like. The elitists do not understand such a thing, because well most of them are narrow minded fools. That is why they are elitists to begin with.
It is also very easy to tell just how important this pacing is, because when they deviated from it they got large amounts of disatisfaction and aversion (ie. the end game that so many dislike, going so far as to actually start all over just to avoid it). The end game is a left over from the EQ1 mentality of uberness. Rob Pardo says as much in his AGC talk, that is for the "hardcores". Of coruse that issue is a mixed bag, see Inequity Aversion, but part of the issue was the change in pacing and the lack of any change in scenary.
That link I just posted is one of the many reason you see knee-jerk irrational hatred of both WoW and EQ. The raid games cause the monkies to throw cucumbers at the scientists (ie. the devs and the game itself by proxy). Other reasons people hate it are strains of elitism etc. but the elitism does have at least some foundation. WoW is both extremely derivative of EQ and compared to many MMOs not really all that in depth. Just look at a game like CoX, just to pick one out of the air, compare Mages to Blasters. There are 10 or perhaps even 100 times as many ways to make and play Balsters as there are Mages in WoW. Nor does it generate a plethora of intersting choices via interesting limits such as games like Guild Wars or Eve. The best you have is Talents sine all its classes merely throw the kitchen sink at you and you mostly have everything but mid level anyway. But the talent choices rarely boil down to more than about 5 main builds and really offer very little in the way true customization, at least compared to games that truly offer cusomtization. Two different Guild Wars monk healing builds can literally heal in completely different ways. This simply cannot happen in WoW, a preist always has flash heal, the only question is whether or not its 15% better than the basic flash heal. I could make similar comparison with Eve and ship load outs/skill training. If we go back to CoX you see the tank and spank tactic being successful, but you also see many other tactics being successful too, you do not need tanks, you do not need healers, you can be perfectly successful with a team full of buffers/debuffers/nukers. Yet WoW is completely married to tank,spank, and heal; a completely moronic paradigm based around forcing things to act stupidly while shoveling nothing but the most rudmentary form of survivability at one person.
The point is that in many ways WoW really is more shallow than many games out there and simply copied a tired old paradigm to be that way.. Should this cause hatred? No. But there is something behind those claims at least. Its kind of stupid, because this is a game so if you are having fun then that is fine. Anyone who is trying to say all activities one does must be rocket science to be worhy is being silly.
However I can tell that I personally, have little respect for WoW. I repsect their insight into the pacing, that is a master stroke. I repsect their artists and art direction. They do an ok job of keeping classes reasonably balanced. The rest I must say I tend to lean into the realm of actual disrespect, its just derivative copying of failed BS mechanics like taunt without even an attempt at anything actually interesting. Flying mounts? Whoopy CoX has had fly for how long? In the end its just another Holy Trinity game with very little customization. You could say that is overly simplstic or that it glosses over all the good parts of WoW, but since that is what easily 80% of WoW boils down to it is certainly valid. A bunch of close-enough-for-government-work clones that nicely fit into their DPS or Healer or Tank roles gathered together to fight opponenets that have been made to purposely act stupid. A Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging to steal a title from Peter Gabriel. And so I have no respect for rest of the game.
Sadly for many people disrespect = hatred. I do not hate WoW, but I do consider it sub-par in its RPG elements and its world-usage. For me the excellent pacing and art direction do not make up for that. For others it does. And for still others they love games that have taunts and aggro and mobs with Artificial Stupidity programmed in and hate it when games like Guild Wars make mobs act less stupid.
If your looking for a challenge, try something else.
I wil be sure to remeber that while u play the ever so challenging game that is Vanguard,lol. Wow is not easy, that is the thing that most of you people without a single brain cell fail to realise. The game is very well designed, therefore it leads to very good gameplay which leads to ease of use and playablitly. This is the fact alot of people dont understand and fail to realise. Simple fact is why alot of other games fail, crap design poor layout poor game architecture, BUT EXCELLENT GRAPHICS etc etc etc, which leads to crap games.
Wow is not easy, it is extremely well designed, hence it leads user to able to pick the game up fast and is easy to play. This does not equate to the game is easy. If your 2 brain cell mind cannot grasp this fact, then you should stick with vanguard.
I think some of the WoW fans are missing the point that what WoW is sucessfully at came at a cost.
Just one example is customization.
Have you ever compared the customization in WoW, say compared to SWG. Its pathetic. All WoW characters are essentially clones of others in their race. Every female human has the same porportions for example. This creates techincal benefits. Easier to Blizzard to polish when there are less variables and the game is easier on other computeres, when there are less information to load in an render when another character walks by. I lament the loss of character customization in games. The lack of customization, makes the MMORPG, make it less like a virtual world, and more like a mere game.
As for "next gen" MMOs. If they just copy WoW's formula, I don't consider them next gen. They are a step backward.
Think of WoW's entrance into the MMO market, as similar to what happens when Walmart enters a small town. Sure there it has lower prices and a bunch of crap available, in one place, but it really sucks if you enjoyed shopping at the local market that has to close down. I am sure most of you have seen the megalomart episode of South Park. You get the idea.
Comments
However, WoW has used up it's "wow" factor and is becoming a tired game, even with the recent BC release.
If you haven't exhausted the game like I have, you will get much more than your money's worth for the game.
What good pc game came out after WoW? O, yeah Best PC Game of the Year - GameSpot isnt WoW, it was Halflife 2. http://goty.gamespy.com/2004/pc/index.html
It boils down to a few Stereotypes for me.
The divorced gamer.
I used to really enjoy WoW, but I fell out with my clan/gaming buddy. It has totally spoiled it fopr me. The magic is gone and resentment has set in.
The gamer who doesn't know when to move on.
I used to enjoy WoW but now I am sick of it. I invested hundreds of hours and by the end of it all I was doing is just raiding and grinding. Raid, raid, raid, grind, grind, grind. I raided and grinded every day for a year and now I hate every inch of it.
He who was nerfed.
I used to be the PvP king, now I am getting whupped. The powers that I had specialised in to great effect have been taken away from me simply because I was doing it so well. Something I really enjoyed doing has been taken away from me.
The Rebel.
Big business sucks. Anything mainstream is bad. Anything that lots of people say is really good, is really bad. WoW = the MacDonalds of gaming.
He who had issues.
Blizzard cancelled my account. Banned me for no reason. My computer is not compatable. All I do is lag.
The Elitist.
If it's not free for all PvP it is teh suxxor. If it isn't Meridian 69 or Ultima Online it is teh noobfest.
The Social Misfit.
I currently play City of Heroes. It is safe, all my friends are here. I have difficulty making new friends. It is easier to hate WoW than to move into a new social circle. WoW players are all children.
The Forum Reader.
My friends call me Mr. Thotbot. I read every post in the forums. Consequently I am aware of every nerf, fault and bug. I see them all every time I play.
The Guild Wars player.
Pay to play is a con.
It bloody well is.
The (working) Auction house.
The show item panel in the trade menu.
The GUI options.
The mod support.
The AI.
The comedy names.
The seamless worlds/on the fly loading.
The linking of items into the chat channel.
The wardrobe function where you can see what an item will look like on you by simply clicking a hyper link.
Bind on pick up.
The warriors rage.
The rogues stealth.
The symbols for marking enemies.
The scaleability of the GFX engine.
Bosses with drops only placed in instances.
The factional language filter.
Innovation after innovation.
And yes they have also successfully copied and amalgamated a lot of great features from it's predesscors also.
It's just another RPG to be sure, but it is also a technical marvel.
Yawnnnnnnnn.
too bad end game sucks too bad pvp sucks too bad its boring.
It bloody well is.
The (working) Auction house. -> Done before FF11 (and probably before that)
The show item panel in the trade menu. -> Also done before, I think even EQ1 showed you the items being traded.
The GUI options. -> Allow for mods that make the game easier for players who don't want to learn to play better, not to mention other MMOs get stuff like this inform of 3rd party addons.
The mod support. -> Yeah...as discussed, mods ruin the game.
The AI. -> Sucks, why would a tiger quit chasing you after 20 feet when you just put a few arrows in his hide?
The comedy names. -> This one almost makes me wonder if this whole post was sarcastic..is it?
The seamless worlds/on the fly loading. -> Also been done before.
The linking of items into the chat channel. -> Save you all of 3 seconds to type the items description.
The wardrobe function where you can see what an item will look like on you by simply clicking a hyper link. -> I seem to recall a webcomic making fun of this, because dev's worked on this INSTEAD OF GETTING THE EXPANSION OUT SOONER.
Bind on pick up. -> Why should anything adhere perm. to your body/soul? Sure they want to cut back ebayers but that hardly stopped people from doing that, when I get new equipment I want to be able to sell my old equipment for more than 5 damn copper.
The warriors rage. -> Woohoo Warriors now have a mana bar that limits them from using skills rather than cool down timers....
The rogues stealth. -> Done before.
The symbols for marking enemies. -> So basically if I drew a picture of a stickfigure being stabbed by knives, it isn't in other games so therefor its an improvement?
The scaleability of the GFX engine. -> Fantastic for Blizzard from a marketing prospective, the GFX engine in general stunk for high-end pc users though.
Bosses with drops only placed in instances. -> Done soooo many times before, not to mention the drop rate sucks, if a boss is wearing the cape you want on its model, it better drop 100% of the time.
The factional language filter. -> Pretty much so little kids were only limited to cursing out members of their own faction. Seriously you want to say something in private use the group chat or whispers.
I made my arguments. WoW is in no way a technological marvel. Not to mention it's way too easy to level up to max level.
WAR seems to adress the above issues, so that's the game I'm looking forward to, even though the first gameplay videos didn't exactly blow me away.
Blizzard had a vision: let's take a niche market product (MMOs, which were, pre-WoW, and despite the success of EQ, nevertheless a niche compared to the gaming market overall), drill out much of the tedium, complexity and so forth that tend to make people stay away from the product, repackage it in an accessible forum that not only runs on many systems, but which allows the average gamer to progress and have fun. That was the vision for WoW and it was executed nearly perfectly. The flaw, of course, was the level 60 end-game which was not designed for most gamers, but many people stayed anyway, working on alts, playing another faction, etc., because they found the 1-60 content a lot of fun, despite that glaring end-game inconsistency. Design-wise, the strength of the 1-60 game is what has gotten the high level of subscriptions and maintained them, despite the more hardcore end-game design (at least the one that prevailed before TBC) - and it's the strength of that design and its closeness to the core vision for the game that has made WoW a tremendous success.
The "cost" of that success has been that of course WoW has created expectations among the new market of MMO gamers it's basically created itself, ranging from interface to accessibility to playability -- and the "core" gamers resent this influence, and so end up bashing Blizzard for essentially being too succesful at what they set out to do. So it's very much de rigeur to hate WoW if you're one of the more elite gaming types -- in fact, it is almost like a badge of eliteness, or evidence of a rite-of-passage to eliteness.
Baff, you should be recognized for your post.
Your always usually good for some witt, but you've outdone yourself. Well done.
/applaud.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
Get back to your dead games losers, ie:-
1)Archlord
2)Everquest
3)SWG
4)GW
5)Coh/V
6)VsoH
7)Eve
Let us 8 million + customers carry on playing, while you elitist monkeys carry on jumping from one game to another every 10 mins looking for something new, Newsflash all the games you keep calling wow killers or better games, die at relsease or die at the hands of wow. Call me a wow fanboy, does not matter. Problem with most of you losers is that u claim to hate wow only to look cool, as this is the new fashion.
For like months now, people been wrtitng on vanguard forums, that its gona be pmg wtf imba best game ever, lol. You idiots sure got fooled there didnt you. When age of conan fails to deliver along with warhammer, you whining little elitist losers will cry even more,lol. Carry on crying.
The majority of the people claiming to hate wow, actually play wow and still do. Majority of people caliming to hate wow, do so to be cool on forums " look at me im cool i hate wow".
I wrote this in the 10 secs i was on the gryphon:) have a nice day babies, while u eltists cry babies carry on looking for a new game eevry 10 mins, only people you are fooling are yourselves.
ps. also when lotr fails as well hope you cry even more,lol
I don't hate it, I just don't understand why people like it. I've tried it, gone back to try it out now and again, I just don't get the "draw".
Seems rather boring to me ie, run around and chop up everything in sight for months on end to get to the "end game". Maybe it's good because so many play it? The draw of a big crowd kind of thing. I know lots of folks who play it.
Ah well to each their own. As for it being a great game because of 8 million subs.
In a world where millions of people hold the likes of Paris Hilton "a celebrity" for flashing her snatch now and again that's not much of an endorsement to me - if you know what I mean.
Personally I dropped WoW because of the 'level sixty' problems.
My warrior had got to level sixty, and I got bored of doing the same instances over and over hoping that my favourite piece of armour /Sword dropped.
Also, unless you are a member of a significantly large guild; doing REAL END GAME INSTANCES, like AnQhiraj [however its spelt] is virtually impossible. AS you cannot get a decent team.
Finally, when Blizzard released the patch a while ago, that reduce the number of allowed players in an instance it made even slightly entertaining endgame places like Blackrock Spire or Straholme, virtually impossible to do in an evening. Especially when large numbers of player were kids who had to contend with homework / tea, stuff like that.
I LOVED WoW...it really entertained me for the time I was playing it...but in the end, I got bored of it. which is why I am really hoping to soon find a game that is as absorbing as WoW....LOTRO I HOPE will be that one.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
LOL you actually think that if every guild could do AQ or naxx there would be any challenge left?
Calling BRS and strat ENDGAME?
You cant do UBRS or strat in an evening? man you either not been in an organised guild, you cant get pug or u havnt purchased TBC, or you on drugs. Either one of these options would probably define it. You think people are doing UBRS or start since expansion?
WoW does a lot of things right is why so many love it, but so many here on MMORPG.com hate it.... why?
people who will spend their time at work/home/school etc. trolling through forums on a website dedicated to a genre of video games (myself included no illusions to my nerdiness) are a lot more serious of gamers then most. all of us that would take the time to visit MMORPG.com daily (as I do) are at least somewhat "hardcore" in our love and dedication to MMORPG's....
Wow wasn't designed (originally) to appeal to the more hardcore, more serious gamer. When WoW got really huge and people started hitting level 60 in mass they looked over seas for inspiration, "what do hardcore gamers do?" and they decided that end game would be a grind, be it in PVP or in raids they needed something to keep people playing to keep making money, all companies want/need to make money, and yes WoW makes a ton but their operational costs have to be astronomical.
and why change what's worked for them? they made an expansion with 10 more levels of what the casual gamers love, and tons of new instances/raids and lots of grinding to do for the more hardcore gamer once you hit the new level cap.
problem is even the more hardcore get bored after a while, and WoW has been out for a long while now, BC will breathe life into WoW for another year or more, but eventually they'll have to expand the game further or create something new. Blizzard knows this.
I resent (hate is a bit to strong of a word) for what it has done to the MMORPG market. All the other developers, with the exception perhaps of Sigil and whoever makes, EVE, are chasing WoW's subscriptions numbers and dumbing down games to do it.
What happened to SWG is the classic example. The game probably had 250k to 350k subscribers. Very respectable for the pre-WoW era. Within 6 months of WoW launching, we get the Combat Upgrade (CU), which pasted a level based system over the previously soley skill based system and generally removed features and dumbed down the game. That didn't bring in the WoW numbers, so within a year of WoW launching, SOE/Lucas Arts releases the NGE which essentially destoryed SWG, in a further attempt to mimic WoW and lure its subscribers away. The only consolation for SWG gamers is the NGE utter failure and embarresment it has caused SOE. Future games, again with the exception of VSOH, appear to be chasing this dumbed down MMO market segment.
The thing is WoW isn't even a full MMORPG. Crafting is barely an after thought, there is not even player housing, there is way too much instancing. A player really can't make any lasting impact on the game world.
I am glad people are enjoying WoW and certainly don't begrudge them their enjoyment. But overall its been bad for MMORPGs in general.
I think WoW is a great game, I played for almost 2 years and only got one toon to level 60. I enjoy the story and I took ever quest I could, built up as much faction as I could and tried to see the entire world. I don’t think of myself as a hard core gamer, I play daily for about 2-5 hours.
WoW was a hit for me because of its back store, everything made sense and fit into its place well. PvP was a blast and well thought out. The game ended for me at level 60, there wasn’t anything to do but raid and I couldn’t raid unless my toon was like everyone elses toon. I played a human warrior, I found I couldn’t get a group unless I was protection spec, and if I was protection spec it was hard to play unless I was in a group.
The game started to get boring, as time went on no one wanted me in a group because I wasn’t the right kind of warrior and my gear sucked. I stopped playing for a bit then was talked into re-rolling a horde. I fell in love with the game again, the story was new and I found the Horde side to be nicer and more helpful.
I guilded up with friends from my work and we all started out and played nightly. Then I got to level 30 and all the stores seemed to be the same, I had trouble finding a group because I didn’t spec my toon the way everyone else thought it should be.
To try to sum it up; WoW did everything right, it has a history and is an easy game. It has a nice looking world and it kept character creation basic. The game does a great job of holding the players hand through the game but still making them feel free to do what they want. Each class ends at the same point with the same desired gear and spec. I loved WoW and will never say a bad thing about it, if your looking to et into an MMO try it. If your looking for a challenge, try something else.
WoW's model is solely the following. Copy EQ1 but make it so that every ~5 levels you have roughly 2-3 instances that you only need repeat about 5 times each and about 20-50 quests and push all the grindy part to the level 60 raid game. And then they just cleaned up some design inconsistentcy such as the trying-to-be-two-contradictory-things-at-once travel design and made a much nicer interface with better art direction. Why does this work? Because the whole frigging game is just plain repetitive, so you need to change scenary often. Once you are in your 20s to 30s you really don't do anything substantively different for the rest of the game. So in order to make it appear less grindy they change scenary often and make obvious repition of exactly the same thing (ala camping) unnecessary
That is their pacing. Their success is a validation of that pacing. As with books pacing is a personal things one person's interesting book is another person's tedious slog. WoW paced it for what a fairly large portion of people like. The elitists do not understand such a thing, because well most of them are narrow minded fools. That is why they are elitists to begin with.
It is also very easy to tell just how important this pacing is, because when they deviated from it they got large amounts of disatisfaction and aversion (ie. the end game that so many dislike, going so far as to actually start all over just to avoid it). The end game is a left over from the EQ1 mentality of uberness. Rob Pardo says as much in his AGC talk, that is for the "hardcores". Of coruse that issue is a mixed bag, see Inequity Aversion, but part of the issue was the change in pacing and the lack of any change in scenary.
That link I just posted is one of the many reason you see knee-jerk irrational hatred of both WoW and EQ. The raid games cause the monkies to throw cucumbers at the scientists (ie. the devs and the game itself by proxy). Other reasons people hate it are strains of elitism etc. but the elitism does have at least some foundation. WoW is both extremely derivative of EQ and compared to many MMOs not really all that in depth. Just look at a game like CoX, just to pick one out of the air, compare Mages to Blasters. There are 10 or perhaps even 100 times as many ways to make and play Balsters as there are Mages in WoW. Nor does it generate a plethora of intersting choices via interesting limits such as games like Guild Wars or Eve. The best you have is Talents sine all its classes merely throw the kitchen sink at you and you mostly have everything but mid level anyway. But the talent choices rarely boil down to more than about 5 main builds and really offer very little in the way true customization, at least compared to games that truly offer cusomtization. Two different Guild Wars monk healing builds can literally heal in completely different ways. This simply cannot happen in WoW, a preist always has flash heal, the only question is whether or not its 15% better than the basic flash heal. I could make similar comparison with Eve and ship load outs/skill training. If we go back to CoX you see the tank and spank tactic being successful, but you also see many other tactics being successful too, you do not need tanks, you do not need healers, you can be perfectly successful with a team full of buffers/debuffers/nukers. Yet WoW is completely married to tank,spank, and heal; a completely moronic paradigm based around forcing things to act stupidly while shoveling nothing but the most rudmentary form of survivability at one person.
The point is that in many ways WoW really is more shallow than many games out there and simply copied a tired old paradigm to be that way.. Should this cause hatred? No. But there is something behind those claims at least. Its kind of stupid, because this is a game so if you are having fun then that is fine. Anyone who is trying to say all activities one does must be rocket science to be worhy is being silly.
However I can tell that I personally, have little respect for WoW. I repsect their insight into the pacing, that is a master stroke. I repsect their artists and art direction. They do an ok job of keeping classes reasonably balanced. The rest I must say I tend to lean into the realm of actual disrespect, its just derivative copying of failed BS mechanics like taunt without even an attempt at anything actually interesting. Flying mounts? Whoopy CoX has had fly for how long? In the end its just another Holy Trinity game with very little customization. You could say that is overly simplstic or that it glosses over all the good parts of WoW, but since that is what easily 80% of WoW boils down to it is certainly valid. A bunch of close-enough-for-government-work clones that nicely fit into their DPS or Healer or Tank roles gathered together to fight opponenets that have been made to purposely act stupid. A Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging to steal a title from Peter Gabriel. And so I have no respect for rest of the game.
Sadly for many people disrespect = hatred. I do not hate WoW, but I do consider it sub-par in its RPG elements and its world-usage. For me the excellent pacing and art direction do not make up for that. For others it does. And for still others they love games that have taunts and aggro and mobs with Artificial Stupidity programmed in and hate it when games like Guild Wars make mobs act less stupid.
this site only recieves comments from people who are not subscribed to an mmo.
because if anyone was, they'd be playing.
and if they werent playing, then they must not like the game as much as they say,
which is why everyone on this site hates wow.
all the wow players are actually playing the game.
all the other mmo players are bored of their games, so they come here
--people who believe in abstinence are unsurprisingly also some of the ugliest most sexually undesired people in the world.--
I wil be sure to remeber that while u play the ever so challenging game that is Vanguard,lol. Wow is not easy, that is the thing that most of you people without a single brain cell fail to realise. The game is very well designed, therefore it leads to very good gameplay which leads to ease of use and playablitly. This is the fact alot of people dont understand and fail to realise. Simple fact is why alot of other games fail, crap design poor layout poor game architecture, BUT EXCELLENT GRAPHICS etc etc etc, which leads to crap games.
Wow is not easy, it is extremely well designed, hence it leads user to able to pick the game up fast and is easy to play. This does not equate to the game is easy. If your 2 brain cell mind cannot grasp this fact, then you should stick with vanguard.
I think some of the WoW fans are missing the point that what WoW is sucessfully at came at a cost.
Just one example is customization.
Have you ever compared the customization in WoW, say compared to SWG. Its pathetic. All WoW characters are essentially clones of others in their race. Every female human has the same porportions for example. This creates techincal benefits. Easier to Blizzard to polish when there are less variables and the game is easier on other computeres, when there are less information to load in an render when another character walks by. I lament the loss of character customization in games. The lack of customization, makes the MMORPG, make it less like a virtual world, and more like a mere game.
As for "next gen" MMOs. If they just copy WoW's formula, I don't consider them next gen. They are a step backward.
Think of WoW's entrance into the MMO market, as similar to what happens when Walmart enters a small town. Sure there it has lower prices and a bunch of crap available, in one place, but it really sucks if you enjoyed shopping at the local market that has to close down. I am sure most of you have seen the megalomart episode of South Park. You get the idea.