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The Good and the Bad
Wepps
Member Posts: 1,322
After giving WoW 3 months, I have to say there are a great number of things to say about it.
Questing and Content
This game has a LOT of it. Enough to keep you occupied for a very long time. I've always held that one of the most important issues an MMO must address is massive content at release, and these guys did it.
Questing gets an A easily.
Combat
It was halfway decent at release, now it has been reduced to a cookie-cutter type button-mashing combat system, with more frustrations due to imposed restrictions and other issues such as latency than anything to do with fun game play.
I'm gonna hit this in the negatives portion. Combat can go either way really, but this system is DAoC transposed into cartoon land.
combat: D
Tactics
Nonexistent. Pressing the right keys in order is not tactics, and this is a failure of all MMOs since Everquest, whose basic combat system is still the best of all of them in my opinion. (And really, the only good thing about EQ :P )
Blizzard seems to be under this delusion that they built an RTS here. They are consistently herding the players into a box, and more telling them what they can't do instead of what their options are.
Options = fun, and this will always be the case. Given there are few options in this combat system, coupled with terrain that is unusable for tactical purposes but rather is designed to restrict you. Effects (such as Daze) where if you turn to run you are annoyed by the fact that anything attacking you constantly spams this effect on you effectively slowing you down to a snare-like crawl, spawn tables that unload 3 or 4 mobs on you at once which immediately attack you with no hope of escape, and a total aversion to the concept of Kiting, Blizzard has provided a true cookie-cutter combat experience.
Combat and tactics in this game...suck.
Tactics: F (non existent)
Rewards
At release, you were rewarded for your participation in the game content. Any good game designer will tell you that this is critical. A given player needs to be rewarded in some fashion on a constant basis to maintain their interest over extended periods of time.
Blizzard has been effectively removing their content and rewards as time has passed. The Fishing profession is now pointless. Each class in order seems to be earning nerfs every couple weeks. Selling items to the NPCs used to be a rewarding experience, they lowered the payout to levels which really get you thinking...is it even worth it to fill up my inventory with items and run to the merchant?
Not really.
There is no reward whatsoever for participating in PvP actions. You MIGHT argue that participating IS the reward, but this is not a worthy philosophy when discussing game design.
Rewards: C (started good, but going downhill on a toboggin)
PvP
See above. Combat lame, no rewards for participating.
In fact, Blizzard has started issuing statements to individual participants of Raids that ... they should not be conducting those raids at all until they fix the servers.
PvP: F (non existent)
The Servers
The worst I have ever had the displeasure to experience. I used to think AO at release was bad.
Blizzard started off okay, the servers had queues on them at release which WAS annoying, but once you got in the game play was smooth.
As of 2 nights ago, I was experiencing heavy lag spikes every 2 seconds, making the game virtually unplayable. Yesterday was the big server patch, which has had the effect of knocking all the servers offline randomly, and turning the forums off. LOL it really is kind of funny how inept these network engineers and technicians are, though not so humorous perhaps for the players themselves.
Servers - F (really really goes without saying)
Company Communication with the Players
They are trying, but failing.
Even as of last night, they announced the forums would be coming down for maintenance in 9 hours. Immediately, the forums were down.
On the servers, they announced mine was coming down in 15:00 minutes. 1 second later, I briefly caught the message 00:01 second...and got dropped.
Try as they might, they are VERY poor at communicating with the playerbase, and this can be a serious issue in an MMO service.
Communications - D (only reason this isn't an F, they are honestlytrying to improve them)
Customer Service
It's DAoC transposed.
I have never seen nor heard of a customer that had their issue resolved, however simple, by this CSR staff. See above, I have no idea why Mythic Entertainment, or now Blizzard, even have a CSR staff. It doesn't do anything.
CSR - F (for fuxX0r3d)
Post-Release Development of the Game
Traditional negative.
In fact, they have argued this publically to the players, that it is always better to implement the 'quick fix' for the good of the game, when in fact they are nerfing everything in sight while the servers and other game play issues are getting consistently worse, with the problem growing exponentially.
The creativity witnessed in beta...no longer exists. They are fighting a losing battle with details, and nothing short of a management miracle will save the game from the developers.
The end-result of ALL the above issues is that the game, since release day, has not taken ANY positive steps towards better play. Instead, it is a growing problem of enhanced negativity on the part of the developers, and the management priorities.
If this doesn't change, the game may be literally unplayable by June.
Development - F (nothing positive in 3 months)
Management
Initially, they were 'aware of the problems' and did what I have never seen done before at this level -
They kept offering free play time to the customers to compensate for the Blizzard failures.
I give then an A for trying, and since they recently started to come around in the area of those priorities, those the result is still rather poor, I give them a C for the priorities list.
Things are changing, hopefully for the better, but this game is a LONG ways from becoming established.
Conclusion: Blizzard is really having a tough time implementing the working MMO. It seems to me that they completely ignored the failures of other companies in their implementations, and as a result are suffering a tough learning experience trying to overcome issues that existed with UO and EQ at their release time some 7 years ago.
I'd say, for the love of Mike, don't buy it now if you can help it, to save yourself some great disappointents. Give it until summer, so that they can iron out some of the major failures on their part. it will likely increase your enjoyment and improve your experience by waiting until better times come for World of Warcraft. Currently, the servers and database couldn't hold half the subscriptions they currently have cleanly anyway, so no use compounding the problem!
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Comments
Thanks for your opinion.
Heh, I'm happy I don't experience the latency issues your having. I suggest trying more ram.
But I really think the game your looking for is Rome: Total War, great game.
Jatez -- Question Everything -- Jate
i respect your opinion on the different matters you touched on...but I do not agree with most of them. But, you could prolly say the same thing if I went down a list for the pros and cons of everquest (i only played for a couple mos. and wasnt impressed). It only goes to show that each MMORPG fits each personal taste of the player. Take it or leave it...
As for the lag...i only run into lag in Ironforge near the Auction House. I think you need to upgrade your computer. Like the prior post stated, try upgrading RAM.
Hope you find more things to like about the game.
I HATE EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! More or less what i got from that. I read it and found it to be pretty well thought out but a few flaws in it. Particularily with the Tactics part. I find that there is alot in it Be it smart PvE pulling or PvP strafeing, the latter makes for a very fun and uniqure PvP experience that keeps you on your toes and you have to time things right in order to get off the moves you want.
As for the Servers whens the last time that you had the downtime like what we had after release? comn now? honestly.
Other than that, it was well thought out although i dis agree with 99.9 precent of it (except the customer relations, it bites major ass)
i think your expectations are just a TAD too high, my friend.
Combat boring and without tactics? riiiiight considering WoW combat is quite advanced in respect to most other MMorpg out there, so what the heck are you comparing it to?
Servers are bad? yeah SOME servers are bad, not all. I have been playing for now almost 2 months on my nice European Argent Dawn server and i never, repeat NEVER, hit a queue or a lag spike or any problem at all.
What this tell me? The problem exists, yes, but it seemingly causated by overcrowding of some server. So is not a general problem, but a more specific one. i think such a thing should be considered when giving your opinion as what kind of vote you would give to early AO? Z?
Can't say about pvp, i had fun sheeping some guys and killing a very intelligent ork that , level 21, attacked a alliance npc while me and my wife, level 22 druids, were right there...... what he was thinking i wager? Beside this, clearly is not finished. I think battlegrounds sounds really cool, but we will need to see the implementation of them.
So far i cannot, honestly, say what other Fantasy MMorpg out there is better than WoW.
Have a nice day
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Hmm.. PvP rewards... ? The PvP system will be much better later on... My adwise.. Have alittle patience.. I had patience along time waiting for this game... So i could prolly wait some hours before getting into a server if were maintenance.. not that i have ever tried that and don't have any lagg either
So i agree try updating your pc
)
Ya I definitly disagree with your no tatics comment.
I havn't done major PvPing yet, but my best friend IRl tells me about his battles all the time. He is a god in PvP it seems.
He almost always beats players that are 3 lvls higher than him. And has even beaten players almost up to 10 lvls higher.
He can get on his Rogue and take down a Paladine that's 3 levels higher than him or more, and then turn around and get on his Paladine and kill any Rogue that comes his way.
He does this with almost every character he plays.
So from that, and from my experiences in PvP. There are lots of tactics you can use. You just have to figure them out.
_______________________________________________
"Getting it is easy. Filling it with illegal substances and sending accross the border is not."
-Ignignokt
---Playing---
Asheron's Call
Are you insane ? You cannot do PvP without tactics. If you make a mistake, or your oponent change his tactic (from what you were expecting) you have to react and change your tactics as well.
I think PvP is all about tactics.
NOW, on the PvE side I have to agree with you 100%. Everquest had it right, for some classes at least. Necro, Shaman, etc could kill a mob in many different ways and kite.
Simply put, new MMORPGs prevent kiting (EQ2 sure does), so in your opinion and mine this is a huge mistake because it makes PvE simpler which perhaps is what the MMOPRG companies wanted, beats me.
While I agree they are a little slow on the patching, the software seems to be quite stable, their network and login servers is what needs some tweeking.
The rest of your post is just a rand, not gonna waste my time reading it.
If you want to make a comparison to other MMOs, then easily WoW is the most fun of any of them.
When it's online that is.
And it's hard to tell when that is going to occur these days. My conclusion, that they are an inexperienced game company when dealing with massive online play, is hardly a rant. Neither are my other conclusions that the game COULD be cleaner and better organized.
But what I seeing is a tendency of the development team towards herding players into THEIR way of doing things, much like you will find in their other products...the offline ones.
What they have done is attempted to create an online RTS with an MMO look.
All this may change as they are learning, but right now things aren't at their best. In most cases, they aren't even online.
For example, yesterday morning, a SATURDAY morning, they decided to hot-fix the servers. There was a mechanical error that effected a few players on each server, and they wanted it corrcted.
Now, those who deal with networks know that if you have a small issue, you NEVER risk bigger ones by poking the machines during prime-time. LOL one player made the comment that, if you are going to work on the bank's computers, do you do it at 3pm on a Friday afternoon?
Once again, Blizzard made the error of playing with the machines on a weekend, and once again almost all the servers are offline, and still are offline, for that entire period. In fact, they don't even know why.
If you analyze the situation, you find that they didn't bother to notify the players when they were beginning that work. They did not give enough adequate warning, and they acted as if they expect every player to check the Realm Status page before doing anything. Hardly anybody does this.
After 9 hours of downtime, the updates start rolling in, and they are suspiciously devoid of information, except to say "We are clueless as to the problem, no ETA."
After enough time of straight complaints on their forums, they shut those down as well in a moderator tantrum. They are obviously unused to criticism of their activities.
To further the communications problem, most of the changes in the game have gone in...in stealth mode. No prior information to a change is given, at least not the accurate information, and following changes you find consolidated player posts detailing negative changes that have occurred in their individual classes.
Documentation is less than half-assed, and so far nothing has been done to properly improve these communications issues with the community.
This is just the way things are. Personally, I only care in that we need to point these things out to them, or the Industry will never improve themselves. But aside from all the problems, when it is actually a working service, it is the single most fun MMORPG that I have ever played.
I did forget some positives, such as very low downtime, but the negatives appear to be in the process of being ignored, and sometimes a kick in the pants is all it takes to get a company back on track towards a better future.
Sometimes, like in the case of SOE, it would take a complete company wipe and restart, with new personnel, and especially new management for that to occur. Blizzard only has a few very nasty issues they need to clear up.
Further, if you analyze the upcoming patch notes, you find...there are NO negatives. In the first 3 months, Blizzard implemented more than 60 negative changes to the game play. This is inadequate post-release development, but they appear to be coming around back to the positive.
There could be great things coming, it could bomb in the next 3 months. It all depends on what they do next. The direction development takes, and management concerning communications and server issues, is all that needs to be addressed for this to be one hard game to beat for the next guy.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
i was choosing between WoW and City of Heroes, but i ended up getting Coh which now doesnt work. Just my luck...
Question: If there are no tactics involved in WoW PvP, that is that only the number of players and their levels are what matters to score a win, then how is it that a small force of horde players defending Tarren Mill (one of the most popular PvP targets for alliance it seems) can hold off an alliance force with more than twice their numbers and at some moments more than three times as many lvl 50+ players?
Man, if there are no tactics involved with WoW then it must have been divine intervention for this to happen.
Please, if you think pvp doesn't take any skill when the matchups are even it's probably because your losing. It's not Street Fighter 2 but I think it's fairly apparent that the better players win in even matchups.
Enough people argued with the tactics statement so I wont go into that. I agree on the customer service, even though i needed it only once, and i waited for several hours before finaly loging off and the next day i had a message and a fix on my problem. Not sure if this is normal, but i kinda dont like waiting for several hours to get a responce.
I also partially agree on the rewards, they need to be a bit balanced out. as a rogue, i dont find many rewards fitting my class. But in general they are fine, you get enough green items which u sell not to NPCs but put up in AH, or mail it to your alt or your local enchanter for disenchant.
I find combat pretty satisfying, not perfect but good enough to keep me interested. Some classes have more combat then others, for example i noticed that subtiety rogue has more ways to fight then combat rogue. Add engineering to a rogue and u have even more things to do during a fight. I actualy get lost in my options and get my arse handed to me on a silver plate because i couldnt decide what to do quick enough.
PvP is not rewarding at the moment, and im not realy that much interested in PvP so im not greately concerned about it. What i dont like is high level gankers killing lowbies, that is annoying on PvP server. but not annoying enough to make me move to a PvE server.
Server lag - i had no server lag except 5-6 times that it was real bad for several minutes. The only problem was with AH, but as far as I know it has been fixed and i get no noticable lag there anymore. I guess you were unfortunate in choosing one of the "troubled" servers. On magtheridon, as far as I know i was forced to play elsewhere due to server being offline only once, so im not complaining on the server lag/maintainance issue.
I think the development is pretty great - I've seen several patches that pretty much fixed all the bugs/annoyances ive had (im surprised how few bugs this game had, heck even in beta it was very much playable and enjoyable) and even though they could of been a bit faster with it, im satisfied.
What I think WoW would benefit is:
- EQ2s ambience - the world around needs more ambience, animals making unique moves (WoW has a lot but not nearly as much ambience as EQ2)
- more realistic fighting moves - its pretty good but its not breath-taking or eye-catching. Ive seen a video from this new korean mmorpg and i realy liked its combat moves.
- remote AH!!! dammit this one is the most annoying issue. I hate camping AH for hours just to buy a new toy for my wife!!! And OMG, is it annoying or not when u take a gryph to hinterlands and in the middle of a flight u get a message.. "YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID ON..." @$#$#% I wanna hit this griffon on its head to turn back.. but i cant cause animal rights activists would skin me alive
bah i gotta go home so i cant write anymore of my opinion (not that anyone cares anyway)
Peace
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I find it funny how people take one small little thing in a post and turn it into the main point of the post.
I wouldn't say there's no tactics involved in WoW but the tactics are all simple and easy to figure out. If you're even moderately intelligent and have effective communication with your groupmates, you can easily trump lesser-prepared opponents.
However, WoW's tactics are still pretty simple compared to some other MMORPGs. One reason for this is due to the lack of number of spells and the effectiveness of other ones. People are using the same spells and tactics at level 10, 20, 40, etc... with little variation. What it really comes down to then is the talents that people select.
Tactics and Combat = Talents
Your character talents make or break your character in this game. There are tons of combinations out there.
one of the best parts about this game.
the tactics are alright, but the combat is just plain ugly. when i load a bullet into my gun, shoot at the enemy, have smoke pump out and have recoil. I EXPECT THE ENEMY TO AT LEAST WINCE. when a crit hits a monster or w/e im fighting. it continues to fight as if i never hit it execpt for the HP bar wich goes down.
When you hit someone with an axe they dont just stand there and act like it didnt hurt.
seriously blizzard needs to get the picture that combat is 95% of the game, and that they need to make in more fun.
there is nothing simple about tactics in WoW - they are as simple as you make them. If you are not bright, you wont see much in a fight, if you are resourcefull, you can have a LOT of ways to fight. Each duel or PvP encounter polishes my general tactics, but they do not always work. Sometimes i have to improvise, develop new tactics to take out specific race, class or just a specific person! Ive played almost all popular MMORPGs, and WoW so far has the most developed and deep combat I ever seen. Playing a orgue i find my options TOO many - too many tactics and strategies to choose from. If you claim there is no or little tactics or combat in WoW then you either have not developed your character far enough, or simply are not satisfied with the number of skills/tactics at your disposal. In the last case, tough luck, cuase no other MMORPG as far as I know can provide the number of skills/spells/tactics as WoW.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
Since I find WoW the best MMORPG to date by far I am entitled to some criticism. Amongst the little things that need fixing and the half implemented others that will prob be fixed in the next content patch there is one thing I really think is wrong...
The talent trees do not individualize (specialize enough) the classes.
As an example, a Shaman (very powerful class in game- not the point here) can put points in Elemental Enhancement or restoration. The talent tree is there to specialize the char but no matter how many points he puts in enhancement he will not be able to replace a warrior as a main tank (maybe in lower levels). Same thing with Element, he will not be a mage or replace one. Only restoration might make him aN occasional main healer and consistent backup healer. This happens with all classes.
Note that I never wanted a Shaman spec in enhance to tank as good as a warrior but he should be able to replace the warrior in groups occasionally. *This is actually a big issue for the horde side IMO cause horde doesn't have any other tank while alliance has the Paladin which is an excellent tank (plate).
Some classes even have mandatory talent skills that all need to have which make all chars be very similar (Mage for instance).
THis is my impression so far and I might be dead wrong here, if I am and you correct me, thank you.
I partialy agree on the talents, there could be more of them, perhaps 2 more talent trees to mix it up even further. however, becuase most mages follow the same talent route it means that either mage talent tree is inbalanced, or simply beause most mages like to be a power-punchers. Similar to rogue, there arent many subtiety rogues out there, mostly combat rogues. Ive been a subtiety rogue up to level 46ish, and i find it to be very fun to play. I rerolled my rogue to be a mix of subtiety/combat rogue to see how combat talents make me better or worse. I lost 3 skills from the subtiety line of talent and gained 1 from combat and so far im not very impressed with it. I will continue combat to higher levels but if it remains the same, i will switch back to subtiety completely. My point is, its realy up to personal preference to roll your char, most people try to make their char easy by making it more powerfull (example is the mage), some people who like the challenge roll out chars that are harder to play. subtiety rogue imo is a defencive type, they can tank for a limited amount of time lashing out good dmg, combat rogue is all about initial dmg, murdering their victim fast and furious, but they do not survive if the fight continues for a while.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I partialy agree on the talents, there could be more of them, perhaps 2 more talent trees to mix it up even further. however, becuase most mages follow the same talent route it means that either mage talent tree is inbalanced, or simply beause most mages like to be a power-punchers. Similar to rogue, there arent many subtiety rogues out there, mostly combat rogues. Ive been a subtiety rogue up to level 46ish, and i find it to be very fun to play. I rerolled my rogue to be a mix of subtiety/combat rogue to see how combat talents make me better or worse. I lost 3 skills from the subtiety line of talent and gained 1 from combat and so far im not very impressed with it. I will continue combat to higher levels but if it remains the same, i will switch back to subtiety completely. My point is, its realy up to personal preference to roll your char, most people try to make their char easy by making it more powerfull (example is the mage), some people who like the challenge roll out chars that are harder to play. subtiety rogue imo is a defencive type, they can tank for a limited amount of time lashing out good dmg, combat rogue is all about initial dmg, murdering their victim fast and furious, but they do not survive if the fight continues for a while.
Yeah that works for the rogue (maybe a hammer/axe/sword rogue doesnt want go sub) but how about discipline for a mage or priest ? Both classes need to put points in discipline there is no way around it. (thats where they will get insta casts, insta mana and other utilities) Which leads to actually much less variety for mages can either go disc/ice or disc/fire never a mix between fire/ice. Same with Druid and NS and such.
In the end most talent trees need some balance, some like the warlocks is really broken.
Aye. 2-3 more talent trees would be great, but I dont think its going to happen, at least not any time soon since Bliz is too busy fixing troubled servers and testing out new content like battlegrounds. Im gonna switch back to subtiety rogue soon, unless combat rogue turns out great fun. If I do switch i will become a pretty much unique rogue again, i hardly ever see any subtiety rogue, unless people read this post and start making subtiety rogues
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I suggest you try to stop ignoring whats obviously going on here...Here is a link to there own official forums of tons of people having Lag issues and Blizzard offering ANOTHER game extention to make up for it http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=1690708&p=1&tmp=1#post1690708....
I have been a fanboi of this game for a while now, but my skin is wearing thin on alot of things about this game.. From lag to annoying bugs like the Pet Slow spell bug that have been around from beta and yet to be address or even acknowledge.... All and all its a great game but the lack of updates, progress, fixes is starting to have people push the cancel button...I dont think ill be leaving just yet, but at the same time if things continue along this path I will have no option but to do what alot of others have done already and thats hit that cancel button...
P.S
For those of you that dont know better let me just let you know this Frame lag and Latency are two seperate things... People are not complaining about Frame lag (due to poor vid cards or low gigs of ram) there complaining about there pings.. This game has always had a server lag problem since Open beta, things have just gone downhill since then with Blizzards horrible patches that they have pushed on us.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith