ah..join a guild maybe and make friends? make a pick up group in trade chat and then run a dungeon together maybe? just because the dungeon finder tool is available doesnt mean you need to use it everytime you want to run a dungeon, trade chat is always full of people making pick up groups.
Here's the catch 101 though. In order to join a group/guild you need to meet other people. That is usually when you need them for something, either a hard quest part, some world PvP or a dungeon run. In a game like WoW where all quests are single player affairs, the quest part is eliminated. World PvP is dead and will remain so in all zones that allow flying mounts. What's left are the dungeon runs. If you use the tool like you use it in CoD, you're guaranteed never to meet anyone, thus not to form friendship or make guilds with friends.
Not all quests are single player orientated. The group quests are now in the end game of the single server realm, where the most people play.
People play world PvP more than before even in >TolBarad. Have you even been there on a PvP server and do those dialy (group quests)?
What about you man, you come up here and make noise and the more you post the more I hear about that typical old WOW warrior mentality.
I wanted to have a decent argue why single server realms are a thing from the past and the only remedy is to offer concentrated game play within certain crucial zones and/or cross server mechanics.
And these last few posts we see the same shit we always witness: the same unique WOW warrior words which don't contribute anything to a meaningful discussion.
Honestly WoW is so large that if it lost over 90% of its player base it would still be bigger then any game on the market. Even then if a game did get bigger then WoW it would only push Blizzard to make a new game which would end up 100x better then WoW and just take over the market again. So don't worry Blizzard nor WoW is going anywhere.
Cant say I'm raiding any content except for BH. (Waiting on friends to catch up on gear)
We had a lot of fun gearing for raids this expansion. It only took about a week and a half but we had vent with 3-4 channels with 5 people in them, we had our 'super team' fighting the new heroics, the others swapping around for every tank to get to play with every healer doing the heroics the super-group already cleared...
It was fun. Going into raid, though, even then we realised how far we were from 'easy kills'. it got better almost instantly but first weeks were rough. if we didn't have those heroics it would've been much rougher.
Today on heroic chimaeron for example we used a lay-on-hands rotation. There's never been such thing. For this boss we needed it. Holy...prot...ret...all contributed. And it got us a kill for it. And where did we learn to use such obscure tactics nobody ever uses? oh yeah. heroic deadmines...heroic SFK...those little 5mans that people want to walk all over without learning a thing.
Yeah my guilds problem is we are small as hell (We all moved over from another MMO with each other) and our play times are erratic which is why I have a DPS a Healer and a Tank that way I can jump on one or the other when they are on, so we can do stuff together. I was partially glad they made the ilvl stuff the same in 10 man as they did in 25 man cause in 10 man there's a lot less margin for error from people.
We were going to do that soon even if everyone wasn't super geared was go into one of the raids (Which is cool all of the intial encounters are about on the same level at least I think so) and see what we can do. I welcome the challenge as does my friends and it'll be fun to get back to it.
Not all quests are single player orientated. The group quests are now in the end game of the single server realm, where the most people play.
People play world PvP more than before even in >TolBarad. Have you even been there on a PvP server and do those dialy (group quests)?
What about you man, you come up here and make noise and the more you post the more I hear about that typical old WOW warrior mentality.
I wanted to have a decent argue why single server realms are a thing from the past and the only remedy is to offer concentrated game play within certain crucial zones and/or cross server mechanics.
And these last few posts we see the same shit we always witness: the same unique WOW warrior words which don't contribute anything to a meaningful discussion.
I can't recall one group quest in Cataclysm (80-85). Litch king had some, but they were soloable for a verteran.
The only zones that have world PvP currently are the ones that don't allow flying mounts (ie, Tol Barad and was WIntergrasp in previous expansion). Flying mounts and world PvP don't mix, unless you can actually do combat on top of them (sort of like Aion).
I wouldn't bother with this thread reall, but you seem to be carbon copying your point of views in the similarly themed Rift one.
Single shards are here to stay if you want a community environment and community related activities. If you want a quick fix, CoD style, then lobby games are ok as well.
The question is, if WoW was not the first to present cross realm lobbying, would you be so adamant at defending it? I can see both the positives and the negatives (and in my case the negatives outweight the positives). Can you be objective enough to see the negatives?
Exactly but some will bring up the fact that Blizzard has yet to release in China which is true but their model is way different than ours and because Blizzard's definition of subscribers it allows them (well atleastt hey think it does) to include them as subscribers. WoW is not falling apart yet but between TOR, GW2 and Blizzard's new mmo it is all but done. It had it's days in the sun and I'm sure it will have a few more good moments but it just is time for something new.
Actually it had been released before iirc and then turned off. Wrath of the Lich King was released at the end of August last year and they are still waiting for China to approve Cataclysm and they hope for that to be out by years end there, and seeing as they are 2 years behind schedule with the game it might inject some more people in at later stages of the games life thus keeping it afloat a little longer. Blizzards new MMO there is no telling when it will come out if the CEO of Activision-Blizzard actually likes Monaheim and them work their craft again there is NO telling, however if he wants it rushed out to pad sales I'd say within the next couple of years. As far as TOR and GW2 I said it before it will dent their subscriber base but not damage it completely. The product flow chart that someone leaked about 6 months ago from Blizzard while not 100% on the times (it was a few months old at its release and was/is still not confirmed nor denied) shows they have 2 more expansions in store for Warcraft. And honestly if the CEO of Activision-Blizzard has his way they'll be milking Warcraft for years to come.
Not all quests are single player orientated. The group quests are now in the end game of the single server realm, where the most people play.
People play world PvP more than before even in >TolBarad. Have you even been there on a PvP server and do those dialy (group quests)?
What about you man, you come up here and make noise and the more you post the more I hear about that typical old WOW warrior mentality.
I wanted to have a decent argue why single server realms are a thing from the past and the only remedy is to offer concentrated game play within certain crucial zones and/or cross server mechanics.
And these last few posts we see the same shit we always witness: the same unique WOW warrior words which don't contribute anything to a meaningful discussion.
I can't recall one group quest in Cataclysm (80-85). Litch king had some, but they were soloable for a verteran.
The only zones that have world PvP currently are the ones that don't allow flying mounts (ie, Tol Barad and was WIntergrasp in previous expansion). Flying mounts and world PvP don't mix, unless you can actually do combat on top of them (sort of like Aion).
I wouldn't bother with this thread reall, but you seem to be carbon copying your point of views in the similarly themed Rift one.
Single shards are here to stay if you want a community environment and community related activities. If you want a quick fix, CoD style, then lobby games are ok as well.
The question is, if WoW was not the first to present cross realm lobbying, would you be so adamant at defending it? I can see both the positives and the negatives (and in my case the negatives outweight the positives). Can you be objective enough to see the negatives?
But heres the thing if a true soloist wanted to they would wait till they were a couple levels ahead of the quest or a little better geared they would just put off the quest. As for World PVP I'm not from a PVP server I'm from a PVE server but there is still people trying to take Halaa, and people still do WG (Even if it is for the bonus honor) And they actually facilitate more world PVP (flying mounts that is) if people would just learn to have fun again in the game instead of worrying so much about hitting cap and getting gear.
Even if a game I hated present cross realm lobbying I would be adamant about defending it, because it is just a tool. No one is forcing anyone to use it, you can still be social with the others even if you think you might never see them again. You'd be amazed at the friends you can find in the LFD tool. The only negative I do see about it is the loot rules are not stringent enough to combat the greedy people. I was rolled out of my healing trinket to a tank. But there is positives and negatives with every MMO, people just like to harp on Blizzard, at least that is how a lot of peoples posts come off. But its like any game where you have to have human contact with other people you find your assholes and you find your friends, and sometimes weeding the 2 apart is fun. I had someone I met in the LFD tool more than once either xfer to my server because we actually got social in the group and had FUN.
people are slowly trickling out of wow!not because its not a good expension thos but because they dont have the time required to do what player demand(1 full raid?no can do too long,one full heroic?neither can they do it)so people are moving to simpler game a la farmville.yes you can defeat a boss and continue with another raid ,but the real fact is lfraid tool was vroken last i check
and as we all know it was plainly ignored becasue it isnt as easy and as intuitive as the lfg (regular or heroic )
i was with a good guild in there and the sad truth people didnt have the time to grind ,grin for the first armor then grind for the heroic armor,then grind some more for the raid armor .you didnt get a chance to get a token for an armor no no no !you could go there 20 time before getting anything and often its not what you need.the difficulty isnt in question here most i spoke to love the fact that blizzard came to their sense and reverted somewhat to vanilla style of doing things .but liike i say most dont have time
and those that do have a bit of time ,feel cheated because by the time they achieve the unthinkable and do reach end game raid ,a patch is released with new content and that amor is obsolete
so ya wow is asianising,(more and more player from the bigger asia are playing and less and less from english speaking are staying in wow)does it mean it is a bad expension hell no ,its just the lack of time and often money that prevent player from playing wow.does it mean they go to f2p game?i highly doubt it they mostly go to casual game some are moving more and more to smartphone game!
I don't think the games falling apart, just the playerbase is...if anything I've enjoyed myself far more over the last few months then I ever did in wrath. The raiding is more challenging, the guild leveling system is great and has givin my guild more reasons to visit old content, leveling alts with a new quest system I couldnt have asked for more. I guess if you were guildless, not ready to change your playstyle in order to adapt to a more time consuming, harder endgame, or you just couldn't stand rolling another alt then I guess this game would really suck lol.
The question is, if WoW was not the first to present cross realm lobbying, would you be so adamant at defending it? I can see both the positives and the negatives (and in my case the negatives outweight the positives). Can you be objective enough to see the negatives?
I defended the cross realm LFG tool even in Rift and I don't like the terrible copycat of that game at all. I would apply it to every future game if it would mean content is being "played" instead of wasted and laying by the side.
As for me personally yes : it is refreshing to use.
I am playing a hunter and the grouping tools are excellent these days. I can join more balanced BG's whenever I like, I can do all dungeon achievements in the leveling department and I like to play with my alchemy and gathering herbs. Sometimes I like the quests I see (eastern plague lands now), sometimes I don't care and skip them.
If I compare that to the two year old WOW where I didn't find a group for 1 month to help me out in Scholomance and Stratholme, that was fucking frustrating. I even made a ticket or 2 for the GM's and said the content was obsolete. And that was even just before TBC came out. Everyone else just had moved along. Bye opportunity to play certain dungeons.
The advantages of the LFG far outweigh the negatives. Now you take a new character and simply play without begging on your knees to guildies to help you out or sit behind a monitor for hours to find a little fun in a dungeon.
The old dungeon finder system: 5, the added LFG tool : 10.
To end on topic: If WOW was the same as Vanilla it would have started to "fall" already 3.5 years ago.
It is thanks to their changing policy of putting players back together that the game was a 7 year hit.
But like Morhaime said: some issues we can't address because of the basic design of WOW (clearly too limited number of players per server for the ever growing content).
I doubt though that those "new" copies will be addressing these issues. Certainly not the Rift one.
I don't think the games falling apart, just the playerbase is...if anything I've enjoyed myself far more over the last few months then I ever did in wrath. The raiding is more challenging, the guild leveling system is great and has givin my guild more reasons to visit old content, leveling alts with a new quest system I couldnt have asked for more. I guess if you were guildless, not ready to change your playstyle in order to adapt to a more time consuming, harder endgame, or you just couldn't stand rolling another alt then I guess this game would really suck lol.
I happen to agree while there is things I believe they could polish with it I haven't had this much fun in a while. As you said with the guild leveling and achievement system we alternate Sundays to do stuff if we're all on. 1 weekend will be to visit old content the next will be do level some alts together and what not. I love how at least on the horde side you can see the conflicting figure heads of the various races start butting heads.
I don't think WoW is falling apart (Pun in that? Cataclsym and all..) as much as the interest in it. I know when I entered Cataclsym it didn't feel "New" to me. It felt the Same old stuff with pretty skins. The approach to raiding is the same in Cata as it was to WotLK, and argue all you want, the "improved difficulty" only lasted until everyone was geared. Now Heroics are more or less like WotLK Heroics (I.E "Can we just skip everything and go to the last boss? I want my Valor Points"). The new Dungeon Finder buffs has made CC obsolete. I routinely do dungeons without even doing any CC at all since damage is so high now.
My biggest complaint so far is how uninteresting the raids are. While I've only killed 3 bosses in BWD so far and none in BoT, I can say that they aren't nearly as fun as some of the WotLK raids (Ulduar was the best!). Already I'm starting to get bored with the game. I log on just to do certain dailies that I need for achievements or guild rep or cooking recipes, do my daily heroic, and then pretty much log off until raid. I have so much gold right now there's no incentive to farm for more, and I already have the Sandstone Drake, Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, And Chopper Mounts. Not to mention all the BoE epics a Warrior would want.
Hoping something comes along to spark my interest. 4.1 is bringing more raids, which is pretty much a bore. The Hyjal changes sound promising, though.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
I don't think WoW is falling apart (Pun in that? Cataclsym and all..) as much as the interest in it. I know when I entered Cataclsym it didn't feel "New" to me. It felt the Same old stuff with pretty skins. The approach to raiding is the same in Cata as it was to WotLK, and argue all you want, the "improved difficulty" only lasted until everyone was geared. Now Heroics are more or less like WotLK Heroics (I.E "Can we just skip everything and go to the last boss? I want my Valor Points"). The new Dungeon Finder buffs has made CC obsolete. I routinely do dungeons without even doing any CC at all since damage is so high now.
My biggest complaint so far is how uninteresting the raids are. While I've only killed 3 bosses in BWD so far and none in BoT, I can say that they aren't nearly as fun as some of the WotLK raids (Ulduar was the best!). Already I'm starting to get bored with the game. I log on just to do certain dailies that I need for achievements or guild rep or cooking recipes, do my daily heroic, and then pretty much log off until raid. I have so much gold right now there's no incentive to farm for more, and I already have the Sandstone Drake, Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, And Chopper Mounts. Not to mention all the BoE epics a Warrior would want.
Hoping something comes along to spark my interest. 4.1 is bringing more raids, which is pretty much a bore. The Hyjal changes sound promising, though.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
I agree Ulduar was great and the raids in cata are somewhat "uninteresting" but the boss fights are far more challenging and varied then anything in wrath except for maybe Heroic Lich King or Yogg-Saron minus keepers. I think being in a more hardcore guild since the beginning of Burning Crusade has made my overall game experience vastly different from say a person who plays casually and doesn't raid nearly as much (good job on farming that sandstone drake by the way, I want one! lol). The competitive nature between the top guilds on my server pretty much keeps me always interested and focused on the next weeks raid and on guild progression.
WoW suddenly got old for many people who have been there since Vanilla.
The game is much better, but follows the formula set by TBC in 2007.
The community is larger, but also unfriendly, immature and repulsive.
Unless Bioware manages to make ToR the next big thing, players will be reluctant to give up on their wow characters.
My addiction History: >> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore >> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual >> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Exactly but some will bring up the fact that Blizzard has yet to release in China which is true but their model is way different than ours and because Blizzard's definition of subscribers it allows them (well atleastt hey think it does) to include them as subscribers. WoW is not falling apart yet but between TOR, GW2 and Blizzard's new mmo it is all but done. It had it's days in the sun and I'm sure it will have a few more good moments but it just is time for something new.
I wish they had the same subscription models here. Having to pick which game you want to play this month is crazyness . (and it favors WoW big time in the West)
Interesting point you make there. Once upon a time, people found a "home" in a MMO they liked and stayed there for years. The concept of "which MMO will I play this month" is pretty crazy to me, given the types of games MMOs were conceived to be. They were intended to be long-term hobbies.
Interesting point YOU make there.
I don't know what happened to the MMO genre. It's almost as if MMO players (actual MMO players) were deemed to be a niche audience, but it was also recognized that there is a lot of money in "social hubs with attached mini-games which are vaguely connected to the game world." So now all MMOs stopped being MMOs, and started being bad single player RPGs with a co-op mode that players pay $15 a month for. It's a win-win for the industry!
This is the quickest I've worn myself out with an expansion thus far. I'm already back to the same pvp matches. With the same objectives and nothing to spend honor on. Pretty shallow and boring expansion for me.
Ops, posted this before in wrong article, copy & paste here:
For the first time I see wow expansion as very mixed bag that could eventually see for the first time sub number droping, maybe droping a lot.
However ... I'm pretty sure not whole guild will coordinately leave for another game unless we are speaking of guild of real fiends in real life that possibly are all in same class. :-) We are talking many times about people that knows very good one game and they play very coordinately. New game - completely new mechanics and rest. Learning curve of months. But who knows, could be again fun.
Of course .... one must also consider that what one love somebody hate, what I hate somebody else literaly love. Is always like that.
But as I see things from first perspective they did many things wrong. What I'm reasuming down is not enterly my view, have been going through forums a lot lately.
as expansion ... no objections: original and well done idea of transforming old world, compared to rest of expansions however too linear ... one must do exactly all quests to end chain. Except few random quests from drops ... there is virtually only 1 strait quest chain; very easy and fast to get to 85, no grouping necessary
some changes are cursed by rare but mainly welcomed, like foucs/mana conversion for hunters, changes to warlocks, ... Mainly very positive feedback
many really stupid nerfs to core abilities of some group ... like now druids shapeshifting no longer allowing escape from roots; in pvp mortal change and this virtually killed feral druids for pvp; many have still never swalloved down losing permanent tree form of druid (and we have another vocal group of players that they lost wish to heal anymore with druids; besides terrible mana problem now with druid)-conclusion: Blizzard really hate druids and saddly I agree
after all easyines to getting to 85 ... wall of incredibly hard dungeons; of course compared to wotlk and I started with TB where did not partecipate in any dungeon; tanks and healers were very frustrated, many left their role for time being; wipe after wipe, mainly heroics 5 man of course; but while cc-ing worked well once applyed to normal versions, were nearly useless in heroics for majority
forums were full of infuriated players (mainly of course those that does not have main job or vocation in life to play wow) that dungeons, normal, but mainly heroics are too hard; there were also in much lesser numbers those "do not touch my hard dungeons... noobs should not play wow ..."
Blizzard step back, note that 5% buff that should work since start for pugs(!) was not working at all.. but they even increase to 15% if at least 3 random pug players present
wave of infuriated "hardcore" players follows "what you did, you destroyed Cata, now is like wotlk, ..." etc etc; but big majority at first welcomed this change
what happend then ... I agree Cata normal and partially hc dungeons are again grind fest, just running through ... hunters, mages, shammans, .... feel again useless as no need for cc anymore - Luck of draw buff to blame? Nope, at least not as i see this but also many others, have been reading a lot forums lately: many complain that now normal dungeons are full of overgeared players that do not like to hard stepup instances; same happen in heroics, full of raid level tanks and healers
As I see it again everyone (majority) is unhappy.
We will see how many players will Blizzard lose in next months. Or maybe gain. I have left.
All of you are lying to yourself. World of Warcraft is fine in every aspect and is doing better then ever....
You guys are probably subscribed to it, if not then Blizzard got your $15 xthe months and the game itself. Have a nice day
PS: HATERS GON' HATE
I dunno if "better than ever" is right but Wow is still doing fine.
It is old but there still isn't a major competitor out there and until one is Wow will continue to be largest and earn loads of money.
It is possible that a competitor finally will show up this year, maybe TOR or GW2 but so far MMOs are still dominated by Wow for good and bad.
Blizzards profits from Wow have gone down since China have taken over from the US as Wows largest country, the Chinese pay less fees and Blizz have to share it but Wow still make more money than most MMOs put together so the game is far from "falling apart". That is of course the reason they added the RMT shop.
Until such time that Wow have a tough competitor Wow wont fall apart and even if it gets one it will takee years to turn Wow from the large one to a small niche game. Sure, it must happen sooner or later but it will take years.
So no falling apart, at least not yet. And Rift is not the "tough competitor" we are taliking about, it is a fine game but not enough.
All of you are lying to yourself. World of Warcraft is fine in every aspect and is doing better then ever....
You guys are probably subscribed to it, if not then Blizzard got your $15 xthe months and the game itself. Have a nice day
PS: HATERS GON' HATE
I dunno if "better than ever" is right but Wow is still doing fine.
It is old but there still isn't a major competitor out there and until one is Wow will continue to be largest and earn loads of money.
It is possible that a competitor finally will show up this year, maybe TOR or GW2 but so far MMOs are still dominated by Wow for good and bad.
Blizzards profits from Wow have gone down since China have taken over from the US as Wows largest country, the Chinese pay less fees and Blizz have to share it but Wow still make more money than most MMOs put together so the game is far from "falling apart". That is of course the reason they added the RMT shop.
Until such time that Wow have a tough competitor Wow wont fall apart and even if it gets one it will takee years to turn Wow from the large one to a small niche game. Sure, it must happen sooner or later but it will take years.
So no falling apart, at least not yet. And Rift is not the "tough competitor" we are taliking about, it is a fine game but not enough.
The revenu in 2010 went up with 18%: from around 1.115 billion dollars(2009) to 1.421 billion dollars (2010) for the MMO part.
Blizzard itself (SC2 and the older games and WOW combined) brought in over 1.656 billion dollars (2010) against a revenue of 1.196 billion in 2009.
That's 18% growth for the revenue of WOW and an increase of Blizzard within the Activision Blizzard group to 37 %
These figures can be found at the end of the financial report on the Activision Blizzard website.
In all honesty think about this. Blizzard claims to have 12 million active subs? Yet they talk about the record 4.4 million sold copies of cataclysm? What about the 7.6 million other "active" subs? Clearly by blizzards own admission in a round about way they have not bought cataclysm? Somethings not right there. Not trolling just looking at hard facts as far as numbers blizzard themselves put out.
It's funny really 12 million subs and almost everyone of them only stands around the auction houses in Stormwind/Ironforge, queued up for dungeon instances. That's all they do. Sell thier dungeon drops and right back on the queue.They could completly do away with the entire world and they would still have millions of subs. You wont see anyone hardly questing outside of any cities anyways. Except maybe in Azeroth when questing is so mind numbing easy mode but questing is faster XP. Outlands is totally dead. I would wager that prob 80% of all subs are only playing a dungeon game anyways. Is this depth? I think not. This kind of play shouldn't even be called a persistant world or even an MMO for that matter. This kind of behavior is not what an MMO should be about. Period. I don't understand it....Still I play for lack of anything better to do. If devs keep copying WoW in hopes of making money the industry is not gonna improve. Everyone I know is sick to death of WoW but simply have nothing better to do but continue to play the damn thing. The world is ripe for a new game. If only some new developer could see this and actually come out with something polished, different and fun the masses would play and said developer would get rich beyond there wildest dreams.
This is their own choice. One of my friends when he tried WoW several years ago ended up quiting because:
1. There were no arrows showing you where you need to complete the quest objective.
2. No fast travelling, aka no portals, no flying mounts and you had to run to the dungeon
3. He found soloing very boring. But at the time you couldn't level up by running dungeons or PvPing.
He never started playing WoW but he said he would've been much more interested if the features WoW has atm were there when he tried the game.
You might not like the whole dungeon running game but there are a lot of people who really enjoy it. And why are you still playing then? Just stop... you can play other games, no need for them to be an MMO? If it so boring, don't do it. I sure as hell don't like MMOs. Not anymore. But this has nothing to do with all the WoW clones. MMOs are boring. They are cool only the first time you experience them.
It shouldn't be called a persistant world? I dunno.... Can't be called an MMO? This is your own opinion. Your opinion means just as much as anyone else's. Depends on how you define Massive. I would call some of the MMOs which have a population of 10-20k people massive....
BUT the only thing that really defines an MMO is the sub. Period. Do you have a sub? Yes? Then it's an MMO. SImple as that.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Comments
Not all quests are single player orientated. The group quests are now in the end game of the single server realm, where the most people play.
People play world PvP more than before even in >TolBarad. Have you even been there on a PvP server and do those dialy (group quests)?
What about you man, you come up here and make noise and the more you post the more I hear about that typical old WOW warrior mentality.
I wanted to have a decent argue why single server realms are a thing from the past and the only remedy is to offer concentrated game play within certain crucial zones and/or cross server mechanics.
And these last few posts we see the same shit we always witness: the same unique WOW warrior words which don't contribute anything to a meaningful discussion.
Honestly WoW is so large that if it lost over 90% of its player base it would still be bigger then any game on the market. Even then if a game did get bigger then WoW it would only push Blizzard to make a new game which would end up 100x better then WoW and just take over the market again. So don't worry Blizzard nor WoW is going anywhere.
Yeah my guilds problem is we are small as hell (We all moved over from another MMO with each other) and our play times are erratic which is why I have a DPS a Healer and a Tank that way I can jump on one or the other when they are on, so we can do stuff together. I was partially glad they made the ilvl stuff the same in 10 man as they did in 25 man cause in 10 man there's a lot less margin for error from people.
We were going to do that soon even if everyone wasn't super geared was go into one of the raids (Which is cool all of the intial encounters are about on the same level at least I think so) and see what we can do. I welcome the challenge as does my friends and it'll be fun to get back to it.
I can't recall one group quest in Cataclysm (80-85). Litch king had some, but they were soloable for a verteran.
The only zones that have world PvP currently are the ones that don't allow flying mounts (ie, Tol Barad and was WIntergrasp in previous expansion). Flying mounts and world PvP don't mix, unless you can actually do combat on top of them (sort of like Aion).
I wouldn't bother with this thread reall, but you seem to be carbon copying your point of views in the similarly themed Rift one.
Single shards are here to stay if you want a community environment and community related activities. If you want a quick fix, CoD style, then lobby games are ok as well.
The question is, if WoW was not the first to present cross realm lobbying, would you be so adamant at defending it? I can see both the positives and the negatives (and in my case the negatives outweight the positives). Can you be objective enough to see the negatives?
Actually it had been released before iirc and then turned off. Wrath of the Lich King was released at the end of August last year and they are still waiting for China to approve Cataclysm and they hope for that to be out by years end there, and seeing as they are 2 years behind schedule with the game it might inject some more people in at later stages of the games life thus keeping it afloat a little longer. Blizzards new MMO there is no telling when it will come out if the CEO of Activision-Blizzard actually likes Monaheim and them work their craft again there is NO telling, however if he wants it rushed out to pad sales I'd say within the next couple of years. As far as TOR and GW2 I said it before it will dent their subscriber base but not damage it completely. The product flow chart that someone leaked about 6 months ago from Blizzard while not 100% on the times (it was a few months old at its release and was/is still not confirmed nor denied) shows they have 2 more expansions in store for Warcraft. And honestly if the CEO of Activision-Blizzard has his way they'll be milking Warcraft for years to come.
But heres the thing if a true soloist wanted to they would wait till they were a couple levels ahead of the quest or a little better geared they would just put off the quest. As for World PVP I'm not from a PVP server I'm from a PVE server but there is still people trying to take Halaa, and people still do WG (Even if it is for the bonus honor) And they actually facilitate more world PVP (flying mounts that is) if people would just learn to have fun again in the game instead of worrying so much about hitting cap and getting gear.
Even if a game I hated present cross realm lobbying I would be adamant about defending it, because it is just a tool. No one is forcing anyone to use it, you can still be social with the others even if you think you might never see them again. You'd be amazed at the friends you can find in the LFD tool. The only negative I do see about it is the loot rules are not stringent enough to combat the greedy people. I was rolled out of my healing trinket to a tank. But there is positives and negatives with every MMO, people just like to harp on Blizzard, at least that is how a lot of peoples posts come off. But its like any game where you have to have human contact with other people you find your assholes and you find your friends, and sometimes weeding the 2 apart is fun. I had someone I met in the LFD tool more than once either xfer to my server because we actually got social in the group and had FUN.
Yes it is.
But it will not die.
people are slowly trickling out of wow!not because its not a good expension thos but because they dont have the time required to do what player demand(1 full raid?no can do too long,one full heroic?neither can they do it)so people are moving to simpler game a la farmville.yes you can defeat a boss and continue with another raid ,but the real fact is lfraid tool was vroken last i check
and as we all know it was plainly ignored becasue it isnt as easy and as intuitive as the lfg (regular or heroic )
i was with a good guild in there and the sad truth people didnt have the time to grind ,grin for the first armor then grind for the heroic armor,then grind some more for the raid armor .you didnt get a chance to get a token for an armor no no no !you could go there 20 time before getting anything and often its not what you need.the difficulty isnt in question here most i spoke to love the fact that blizzard came to their sense and reverted somewhat to vanilla style of doing things .but liike i say most dont have time
and those that do have a bit of time ,feel cheated because by the time they achieve the unthinkable and do reach end game raid ,a patch is released with new content and that amor is obsolete
so ya wow is asianising,(more and more player from the bigger asia are playing and less and less from english speaking are staying in wow)does it mean it is a bad expension hell no ,its just the lack of time and often money that prevent player from playing wow.does it mean they go to f2p game?i highly doubt it they mostly go to casual game some are moving more and more to smartphone game!
I don't think the games falling apart, just the playerbase is...if anything I've enjoyed myself far more over the last few months then I ever did in wrath. The raiding is more challenging, the guild leveling system is great and has givin my guild more reasons to visit old content, leveling alts with a new quest system I couldnt have asked for more. I guess if you were guildless, not ready to change your playstyle in order to adapt to a more time consuming, harder endgame, or you just couldn't stand rolling another alt then I guess this game would really suck lol.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!
I defended the cross realm LFG tool even in Rift and I don't like the terrible copycat of that game at all. I would apply it to every future game if it would mean content is being "played" instead of wasted and laying by the side.
As for me personally yes : it is refreshing to use.
I am playing a hunter and the grouping tools are excellent these days. I can join more balanced BG's whenever I like, I can do all dungeon achievements in the leveling department and I like to play with my alchemy and gathering herbs. Sometimes I like the quests I see (eastern plague lands now), sometimes I don't care and skip them.
If I compare that to the two year old WOW where I didn't find a group for 1 month to help me out in Scholomance and Stratholme, that was fucking frustrating. I even made a ticket or 2 for the GM's and said the content was obsolete. And that was even just before TBC came out. Everyone else just had moved along. Bye opportunity to play certain dungeons.
The advantages of the LFG far outweigh the negatives. Now you take a new character and simply play without begging on your knees to guildies to help you out or sit behind a monitor for hours to find a little fun in a dungeon.
The old dungeon finder system: 5, the added LFG tool : 10.
To end on topic: If WOW was the same as Vanilla it would have started to "fall" already 3.5 years ago.
It is thanks to their changing policy of putting players back together that the game was a 7 year hit.
But like Morhaime said: some issues we can't address because of the basic design of WOW (clearly too limited number of players per server for the ever growing content).
I doubt though that those "new" copies will be addressing these issues. Certainly not the Rift one.
I happen to agree while there is things I believe they could polish with it I haven't had this much fun in a while. As you said with the guild leveling and achievement system we alternate Sundays to do stuff if we're all on. 1 weekend will be to visit old content the next will be do level some alts together and what not. I love how at least on the horde side you can see the conflicting figure heads of the various races start butting heads.
I don't think WoW is falling apart (Pun in that? Cataclsym and all..) as much as the interest in it. I know when I entered Cataclsym it didn't feel "New" to me. It felt the Same old stuff with pretty skins. The approach to raiding is the same in Cata as it was to WotLK, and argue all you want, the "improved difficulty" only lasted until everyone was geared. Now Heroics are more or less like WotLK Heroics (I.E "Can we just skip everything and go to the last boss? I want my Valor Points"). The new Dungeon Finder buffs has made CC obsolete. I routinely do dungeons without even doing any CC at all since damage is so high now.
My biggest complaint so far is how uninteresting the raids are. While I've only killed 3 bosses in BWD so far and none in BoT, I can say that they aren't nearly as fun as some of the WotLK raids (Ulduar was the best!). Already I'm starting to get bored with the game. I log on just to do certain dailies that I need for achievements or guild rep or cooking recipes, do my daily heroic, and then pretty much log off until raid. I have so much gold right now there's no incentive to farm for more, and I already have the Sandstone Drake, Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, And Chopper Mounts. Not to mention all the BoE epics a Warrior would want.
Hoping something comes along to spark my interest. 4.1 is bringing more raids, which is pretty much a bore. The Hyjal changes sound promising, though.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
I agree Ulduar was great and the raids in cata are somewhat "uninteresting" but the boss fights are far more challenging and varied then anything in wrath except for maybe Heroic Lich King or Yogg-Saron minus keepers. I think being in a more hardcore guild since the beginning of Burning Crusade has made my overall game experience vastly different from say a person who plays casually and doesn't raid nearly as much (good job on farming that sandstone drake by the way, I want one! lol). The competitive nature between the top guilds on my server pretty much keeps me always interested and focused on the next weeks raid and on guild progression.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!
WoW suddenly got old for many people who have been there since Vanilla.
The game is much better, but follows the formula set by TBC in 2007.
The community is larger, but also unfriendly, immature and repulsive.
Unless Bioware manages to make ToR the next big thing, players will be reluctant to give up on their wow characters.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Interesting point YOU make there.
I don't know what happened to the MMO genre. It's almost as if MMO players (actual MMO players) were deemed to be a niche audience, but it was also recognized that there is a lot of money in "social hubs with attached mini-games which are vaguely connected to the game world." So now all MMOs stopped being MMOs, and started being bad single player RPGs with a co-op mode that players pay $15 a month for. It's a win-win for the industry!
This is the quickest I've worn myself out with an expansion thus far. I'm already back to the same pvp matches. With the same objectives and nothing to spend honor on. Pretty shallow and boring expansion for me.
All of you are lying to yourself. World of Warcraft is fine in every aspect and is doing better then ever....
You guys are probably subscribed to it, if not then Blizzard got your $15 xthe months and the game itself. Have a nice day
PS: HATERS GON' HATE
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
Can't say it's falling apart but I'm pretty bored of the game and don't know if I'll ever go back.
Can't say it's falling apart but people are getting bored with the same game, same gear treadmill.
lol yeah Bliz got my money in december when I got Cata. 42 levels later I decided the game sucks. cancelled account.
Ops, posted this before in wrong article, copy & paste here:
For the first time I see wow expansion as very mixed bag that could eventually see for the first time sub number droping, maybe droping a lot.
However ... I'm pretty sure not whole guild will coordinately leave for another game unless we are speaking of guild of real fiends in real life that possibly are all in same class. :-) We are talking many times about people that knows very good one game and they play very coordinately. New game - completely new mechanics and rest. Learning curve of months. But who knows, could be again fun.
Of course .... one must also consider that what one love somebody hate, what I hate somebody else literaly love. Is always like that.
But as I see things from first perspective they did many things wrong. What I'm reasuming down is not enterly my view, have been going through forums a lot lately.
as expansion ... no objections: original and well done idea of transforming old world, compared to rest of expansions however too linear ... one must do exactly all quests to end chain. Except few random quests from drops ... there is virtually only 1 strait quest chain; very easy and fast to get to 85, no grouping necessary
some changes are cursed by rare but mainly welcomed, like foucs/mana conversion for hunters, changes to warlocks, ... Mainly very positive feedback
many really stupid nerfs to core abilities of some group ... like now druids shapeshifting no longer allowing escape from roots; in pvp mortal change and this virtually killed feral druids for pvp; many have still never swalloved down losing permanent tree form of druid (and we have another vocal group of players that they lost wish to heal anymore with druids; besides terrible mana problem now with druid)-conclusion: Blizzard really hate druids and saddly I agree
after all easyines to getting to 85 ... wall of incredibly hard dungeons; of course compared to wotlk and I started with TB where did not partecipate in any dungeon; tanks and healers were very frustrated, many left their role for time being; wipe after wipe, mainly heroics 5 man of course; but while cc-ing worked well once applyed to normal versions, were nearly useless in heroics for majority
forums were full of infuriated players (mainly of course those that does not have main job or vocation in life to play wow) that dungeons, normal, but mainly heroics are too hard; there were also in much lesser numbers those "do not touch my hard dungeons... noobs should not play wow ..."
Blizzard step back, note that 5% buff that should work since start for pugs(!) was not working at all.. but they even increase to 15% if at least 3 random pug players present
wave of infuriated "hardcore" players follows "what you did, you destroyed Cata, now is like wotlk, ..." etc etc; but big majority at first welcomed this change
what happend then ... I agree Cata normal and partially hc dungeons are again grind fest, just running through ... hunters, mages, shammans, .... feel again useless as no need for cc anymore - Luck of draw buff to blame? Nope, at least not as i see this but also many others, have been reading a lot forums lately: many complain that now normal dungeons are full of overgeared players that do not like to hard stepup instances; same happen in heroics, full of raid level tanks and healers
As I see it again everyone (majority) is unhappy.
We will see how many players will Blizzard lose in next months. Or maybe gain. I have left.
I agree 1000%.
WoW will slowly kill itself. The toxicity of the community causes more and more of a disconnect to the game for many individuals.
I dunno if "better than ever" is right but Wow is still doing fine.
It is old but there still isn't a major competitor out there and until one is Wow will continue to be largest and earn loads of money.
It is possible that a competitor finally will show up this year, maybe TOR or GW2 but so far MMOs are still dominated by Wow for good and bad.
Blizzards profits from Wow have gone down since China have taken over from the US as Wows largest country, the Chinese pay less fees and Blizz have to share it but Wow still make more money than most MMOs put together so the game is far from "falling apart". That is of course the reason they added the RMT shop.
Until such time that Wow have a tough competitor Wow wont fall apart and even if it gets one it will takee years to turn Wow from the large one to a small niche game. Sure, it must happen sooner or later but it will take years.
So no falling apart, at least not yet. And Rift is not the "tough competitor" we are taliking about, it is a fine game but not enough.
The revenu in 2010 went up with 18%: from around 1.115 billion dollars(2009) to 1.421 billion dollars (2010) for the MMO part.
Blizzard itself (SC2 and the older games and WOW combined) brought in over 1.656 billion dollars (2010) against a revenue of 1.196 billion in 2009.
That's 18% growth for the revenue of WOW and an increase of Blizzard within the Activision Blizzard group to 37 %
These figures can be found at the end of the financial report on the Activision Blizzard website.
http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=548900
Yes for sure, this game is falling apart / sarcasm off.
Publication date of the audited report for stockholders: Feb 9th 2011...
This is their own choice. One of my friends when he tried WoW several years ago ended up quiting because:
1. There were no arrows showing you where you need to complete the quest objective.
2. No fast travelling, aka no portals, no flying mounts and you had to run to the dungeon
3. He found soloing very boring. But at the time you couldn't level up by running dungeons or PvPing.
He never started playing WoW but he said he would've been much more interested if the features WoW has atm were there when he tried the game.
You might not like the whole dungeon running game but there are a lot of people who really enjoy it. And why are you still playing then? Just stop... you can play other games, no need for them to be an MMO? If it so boring, don't do it. I sure as hell don't like MMOs. Not anymore. But this has nothing to do with all the WoW clones. MMOs are boring. They are cool only the first time you experience them.
It shouldn't be called a persistant world? I dunno.... Can't be called an MMO? This is your own opinion. Your opinion means just as much as anyone else's. Depends on how you define Massive. I would call some of the MMOs which have a population of 10-20k people massive....
BUT the only thing that really defines an MMO is the sub. Period. Do you have a sub? Yes? Then it's an MMO. SImple as that.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.