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Akousmata
Member Posts: 72
Just tried out the trial version of WoW. I am an avid MMO RPG'er and have until now simply refused to play WoW simply because of what alot of my fellow MMO'ers have had to say about it.
I played a Human Priest (the most generic healer type possible as I love healer types) and was up to about lvl 15 within about 10 days.
I tried playing at various times of the day including a primetime weekend (Friday 8pm CST) and found it extremely difficult to get into any sort of group which is normally not the case for a healer in most MMO's. So I started asking people why? And they always said the same thing, "Cause you level WAY faster when you solo. Especially at early levels."
I know that this is the case for many MMO's cause I've personally played several of them, so I can't really count that as a strike against WoW, but I did figure there would at least be ONE group of people or persons that would be interested in grouping up for some fun tag teaming higher level monsters, but to no avail.
Anyway, the gameplay was suprisingly decent at least from what I experienced of it. The vastness of the world was also something that I found intriguing. Lots of lore and other things to explore and read through on the quests.
I felt in general there were far too many "Collect X # of items" quests, at least for my tastes and given that I didn't have anyone to group with, this seemed to be a lot of what I was doing.
As for the leveling it didn't really seem like I could customize my character much. I remember getting one patch that if I'm not mistaken introduced skill points so perhaps that was a way of customizing your character with a specialization, but the leveling process left a little to be desired in terms of what you can choose for your character. Perhaps this is for reasons of balance...
I have also heard from other people that after you reach the level cap, the only thing to do is essentially raid for loot. This isn't really that uncommon in other MMO's either, so that doesn't really surprise, I think this is a general problem through the MMO industry is how to deal with level caps and players that min/max.
One thing that did really irritate me was the shear number of blind invites from gold farmers I was getting. INSANE!!!! 
I spent a good portion of my time clicking on "Deny" for blind invites while at the same time almost dying from ignoring the animal attacking me.
Overall, pretty good, very accessible, good lore and gameplay, very exhaustive in terms of size, average graphics (at best), bad teaming in the early levels, lack of variety in quests at the early levels, and lack of policing the spam attacks/gold farmers (not sure they can do anything about this).
I can see why a lot of people are addicted to this game, I can also see why their subscription numbers are so high given the fact that many people play this game to make money at it. To put it in perspective, in 10 days, I joined a total of 2 actual groups, but got blind invite by at least 50 gold farmers. Not a great balance and enough to make me not wanna join the game permanently.
Flame on.....
Comments
How do you know they were gold farmers? I haven't gotten any mail or tells from gold farmers in months.
The grouping game is definitely a weak point for WoW though. Because there's no level cap in instances you can just have a level 70 run you through them. Outside of instances unless you're doing kill quests or elite quests it's always faster to solo, which is a shame.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
The gold farmers have resorted to spamming invites on anyone in the teens and below with group invites. They then spam a script about power leveling. Blizzard will put in some sort filter or something to combat this, but the spammers will find some other way to bother people, but it will be less bothersome with each round.
Grouping is pretty scarce in any game that is a few years old. Save when a new race is released though.
I'd also question the "blind invite from gold farmer" thing. It used to a much bigger problem but Blizz has cracked down on alot of that spam. I haven't been subject to it in months.
As for raiding at end-game, you are mostly correct. You either raid, or go PvP. Another big thing is what server you chose. Some servers are overpopulated (which has it's pros and cons) while some servers are underpopulated (different pros and cons). Best is a medium population server. PvE and PvP servers also host different style players usually.
Overall WoW is a great game. Of course it has it's problems, but which MMO doesn't?
I'll try to adress the main concerns.
1st: The spam invites (I felt this was the most important answer so I put it first)
The spam invites stop once you reach a certain level. (low 20s I believe someone correct me on that) And don't think the huge numbers of invites means a lot of these "advertisers" toons exist. They use an addon that scan who list and just chain invite. No work involved on their part. So just hang in there and level a bit more, the spam will end.
2nd: Lack of Grouping at low-level
Nowadays, grouping just for the sake of grouping rarely happens, people would not rather not deal with the hassle. People groups for dungeon or for safety in conflict heavy area on PVP servers. You should see more grouping options as you get in level range to do some dungeons. Don't forget to use the /lfg tool, it's handy for seeing the dungeon in your level range as well as finding groups for said dungeon. </p>
3rd: Quests.
In my experience, there are 2 types of MMOs with quests. The first offers a few meaningful quests and lots of collect/deliver/kill quests. The second has a few meaningful quests and no other quest at all. The one you prefer is up to you.
4th: Raids are EVIL!!!!!
Is the only way to collect gear at the level cap raiding? of course not. However, Raiding (as in all the big PVE games) remains the way to obtain the best gear(almost). However, something should be said about the separation of PVP and PVE gear and that Blizzard has made an effort to make raid rewards be the best at PVE and PVP rewards be the best at PVP.
As many will be quick to contradict me, I'll reemphasize the word effort. Obviously it's not perfect, but resilience has gone a long way to separate PVE and PVP gear.
5tth: Customization: As soon as you reached Level 10, you started accumulating talent points to spend where you see fit. You can place them where you want though there are some configuration more optimal than others obviously.
Addendum #1: The best gear is obtained by a lot of raiding and a little pvp.
Addendum #2: The Priest nowadays is more a sort of DPS hybrid than a straight up healer. If you wants to be a straight up healer, I'd recommend a Resto Shaman.
Grouping: There is a level 20ish instance in westfall called the deadmines. As a healer, you should have no problems finding groups for this instance when you reach level 18+. Most of the non-group quests in WoW can be easily soloed, so personally I often avoid random people who are looking for groups for these quests since there is a high chance you will end up with someone who is too poor a player to complete them alone (e.g. a young kid).
Customisation: Whilst the customisation through talent points may not seem like much at first, if you continue to invest points in one area, the effects are cumulative. At level 40+, characters of the same class who have spent their talent points in different areas will play very differently, and may occupy entirely different roles in a party e.g. for a druid:
Balance specced: Ranged dps with high armour. Can DPS in parties but may suffer from mana problems. This build is more often used for PvP
Feral specced: One of the best classes/builds for tanking 5 man instances. Can also occupy a melee DPS role.
Restoration specced: Master of heal over-time spells. Very high survivability, but poor dps. Can heal in instances, but most effective in PvP or raid healing
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
I think the people who hate WoW the most are the people who played it the most. End game tredmill faction grinding really burnt out a lot of people (including myself). They complain about WoW and harp on every flaw they detect, however, those same people probably said 'WoW is the BST GAME EVER" in the beginning...I know I did.
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Well first off, level 15 is very low level to be grouping up. Once you are familiar with the layout of the areas and the quests, you can get to 15 in under 10 hours. Plus the quests at that level are so easy, there simply is no good reason at level 15 to group up, so yeah I would expect groups to be pretty tough to find.
A couple things that would have helped would be to get to about level 20 and then use the "looking for group" tool to find a group for one of the dungeons. There are at least 2 or 3 for either faction that you should be about the right level for and if you just have it continually search for groups I'm fairly certain that you'll find them. Don't wait for it to find a group, just set it to searching then go about playing while it finds a group for you. You can have it search for multiple dungeons so have it setup to search for 3 dungeons if possible. Once you find a group and go to a dungeon, I think you'll see how good the game can be. Quest grouping is not WoW's strong suit, but running dungeons is a blast. Yeah, it's a bit tough to find anyone wanting to run the low level dungeons, but the higher you get the easier it gets to find a group for them.
Oh and you start to get talent points at level 10 to customize your character. Did you spent your talent points?
LOL!!
Anyways, yeah, LFG thing was a little confusing and I'm generally too lazy to look up documentation on it. But if I decide to give it another go, I'll check that out.
As for the talent points, I did notice that, but at early levels it seemed more like a character tweak than a fully out customization. Again, this is just a newcomer's perspective, if they aren't trying to market to new comers, but rather just make their current fanbase happy, then it isn't a big deal. They already have a lion's share of the market so my assumption is they don't really care if they get a whole lot of new comers, but I'll just keep my eyes open and save my $15 to try out WAR or AoC for a while and see if I like those before committing to WoW.
Yeah, the talent points are more of a tweak than a complete makeover. You can't really go and do really drastic things with the talent points, all you are really doing is choosing a specialty from among the 3 different talent trees you get to pick from for the most part. But by choosing from among 9 classes and then picking from 3 talent trees within those 9 classes, you have roughly 27-36 different "types" of characters if you consider that 1 type would be a class where you really don't specialize in one of the 3 talent trees but rather take a little of all of them, a jack of all trades sort of. But that's one of the reasons it appeals to a lot of folks that haven't grown up on D&D and don't have a clue what the difference is between putting a point into vitality as opposed to strength and so on and so forth. WoW basically guides you down the path toward character creation. That's good and bad. Good in that even your Grandma can figure it out, bad in that someone who HAS grown up on D&D doesn't get to play with those numbers to their heart's content. It's a middle of the road solution that offers a bit to both sides.
well evreyone is right. but i still think u should atleast tag team with another person you can still get alot of EXP and have fund
Yeah, the talent points are more of a tweak than a complete makeover. You can't really go and do really drastic things with the talent points, all you are really doing is choosing a specialty from among the 3 different talent trees you get to pick from for the most part. But by choosing from among 9 classes and then picking from 3 talent trees within those 9 classes, you have roughly 27-36 different "types" of characters if you consider that 1 type would be a class where you really don't specialize in one of the 3 talent trees but rather take a little of all of them, a jack of all trades sort of. But that's one of the reasons it appeals to a lot of folks that haven't grown up on D&D and don't have a clue what the difference is between putting a point into vitality as opposed to strength and so on and so forth. WoW basically guides you down the path toward character creation. That's good and bad. Good in that even your Grandma can figure it out, bad in that someone who HAS grown up on D&D doesn't get to play with those numbers to their heart's content. It's a middle of the road solution that offers a bit to both sides.
What about holy or shadow priest, thats a little more than a tweak.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
WoW is agreat game. One of the best MMO's ever made (for various reasons). Nothing imho is ever "the best". Not longer than a couple minutes at least.
TBC changed alot of the dynamics in WoW. We used to do the raid and rep grind and it was "ok". Now we just grind everything. Theoretically easier to form 20-man raids, but I just don't see the progression like there used to be. End game can get boring if you let it, or don't have a good guild or friends, etc. Just be wary, or make another toon.
Any game can become boring and repetative. Instead of finding evry single tiny flaw, people should look at where we have come from. We were happy with things like Eye of the Beholder and Baldur's Gate a few short years ago. A decade ago most of us were playing pen & paper D&D. I want to see what the next 5-10 years will unveil.
WoW is agreat game. One of the best MMO's ever made (for various reasons). Nothing imho is ever "the best". Not longer than a couple minutes at least.
TBC changed alot of the dynamics in WoW. We used to do the raid and rep grind and it was "ok". Now we just grind everything. Theoretically easier to form 20-man raids, but I just don't see the progression like there used to be. End game can get boring if you let it, or don't have a good guild or friends, etc. Just be wary, or make another toon.
Any game can become boring and repetative. Instead of finding evry single tiny flaw, people should look at where we have come from. We were happy with things like Eye of the Beholder and Baldur's Gate a few short years ago. A decade ago most of us were playing pen & paper D&D. I want to see what the next 5-10 years will unveil.
Waaaay off topic, but Eye of the Beholder...wow. I can remember when I thought that game was awesome. Mapped the whole damn thing on graph paper to find my way around. Looking back, it amazes me that I ever had that kind of spare time.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Yeah, the talent points are more of a tweak than a complete makeover. You can't really go and do really drastic things with the talent points, all you are really doing is choosing a specialty from among the 3 different talent trees you get to pick from for the most part. But by choosing from among 9 classes and then picking from 3 talent trees within those 9 classes, you have roughly 27-36 different "types" of characters if you consider that 1 type would be a class where you really don't specialize in one of the 3 talent trees but rather take a little of all of them, a jack of all trades sort of. But that's one of the reasons it appeals to a lot of folks that haven't grown up on D&D and don't have a clue what the difference is between putting a point into vitality as opposed to strength and so on and so forth. WoW basically guides you down the path toward character creation. That's good and bad. Good in that even your Grandma can figure it out, bad in that someone who HAS grown up on D&D doesn't get to play with those numbers to their heart's content. It's a middle of the road solution that offers a bit to both sides.
What about holy or shadow priest, thats a little more than a tweak.
The point being that you can be either a Shadow Priest or a Holy Priest. You can't become an Axe wielding melee Nature Priest for instance if you wanted to. WoW has setup the types of Priests you can be. They have setup the types of characters for all the classes. You can adjust them slightly to your own play style, but for the most part there are about 3 or 4 types of each class.
And I wasn't trying to imply this isn't a good system. It's a very good system because it appeals to a lot of folks. All I was trying to do is answer the OP's point that talent points seemed more like a tweak than a full customization of the class. I agree with him.
Grouping in WoW is actually very common but it's done differently to other MMOs I am used to. In WoW, instead of announcing LFG, you ask to join a Dungeon party instead. In Everquest you might /ooc "Level 18 paladin lfg", but in WoW you would ask "LFG Deadmines".
Grouping in WoW is quick and fast, the LFG tool does most of the work for you, and automatically groups people in your level range. The meeting stones for dungeons mean that only 2 out of the 5 people in the group actually have to visit the dungeon.
Talent points don't really make a significant difference to your character until higher levels, but they shouldn't be ignored, and you should look at the top of the talent trees to get an idea of which build you want to work towards.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...