^ all MMORPG's are like that NOW BECAUSE OF WoW's success...
For example look at EQ2 on release vs now..NOW it's as easy as WoW (except it has MULTITUDES of more depth and things to do)..but at release you HAD to group..a lot of the "generic" world mobs were in Heroic groups...etc...it was dumbed down becuase of WoW to try and get those players...
And WoW is easy. Everything is so dumbed down (or "streamlined" for the fanboys") it's ridiculously easy.
The DIFFICULTY is NOT in the gameplay. It's with getting 5-25 players LISTENING AND WORKING TOGETHER...the content, raids, bosses THEMSELVES are easy. The difficulty lies in others PAYING ATTENTION to others and actually LISTENING to what they're told.
HUUUUUUUUUUGE difference. WoW is easy. Any difficulty in the game is the result of the arrogant and ignorant player-base that don't want to have to think or listen to anything or anyone. They are why raids fail. Not because the raid itself is hard. But because the wow-tards don't pay attention or listen and stand in the boss farts.
OP i agree. I played wow at launch and didn't play after the first month. Not that i didn't like it, it was more at the time i was really into SWG (till nge)and EQ2 (till 2008).
About a year ago one of my kids wanted to play WOW, he played for a about 2 weeks and that was it, so i decided since there was 2 weeks left I'd only check it out, a year later still playing it and still loving it.
Cataclysm turned an awesome mmo into a spectacular mmo.
Over the years though i never wanted to go try it again after always reading about how only kids play it, full of a-holes, dumbed down, ez mode.
Since about 2008 I've been trying all these new mmo's to fill my mmo gap in gaming. All these new mmo's have tried to compete with wow so hard that i find WoW is more mmo than any new mmo out there. It's far more EQ2 than EQ2 itself in the feel (ya i know EQ was inspiration for wow) and maybe that's why i love it.
I don't even bother trying new mmo's anymore, i do sit back and enjoy the show though, watch how they all get hyped out their minds, and realize it's just another bad wow clone.
I found the mmo I've been looking for since 2008, when i had SWG and EQ2, i never tried other mmo's too much, I'd only ask "How's that working out for ya" as friends went from game to game to game to game spending far more than i ever did, but once eq2 went to crap i ended up on the tread mill of trying all the new mmo's as they came out too. I have to admit due to to all the negative wow comments over the years i did blame wow for the lack of entertaining mmo's. Now i know it was the greed and or lack of talent of these new mmo's, not Blizz baby.
Overall it's so nice to be back to asking "How's that working out for ya".
It's considered EZ Mode because any 12 year old can have a max level character within a couple of weeks of playing.
There is no thought needed. There is no grouping needed. There is no strategy needed. There is no BRAIN needed.
Quest markers, maps to get you where you need to be, exclmation points, question marks...just rush into a quest area and start killing stuff without thinking. If you die, don't worry...there's no penalty...just run your ghost back to where you died and continue smacking stuff until you get all the "wolf teeth" that you need.
You (OP) might think that losing a level or losing an item after death was frustrating. Many of us feel it's just part of the game and it's actually an incentive of sorts to use one's brain and think...strategize...before doing something or traveling somewhere.
That's why I feel that WoW is an "EZ Mode" game.
PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE BS peeps spew. My kid who happened to be 12 (at the time) played the chit out of this game for 2 weeks as in all day and all night (no school in the summer) and the only time away was for tackle football and lacrosse, he was 60 when he walked away, he even did tons of dungeons i know as he asked me to show him the mechanics and proper group etiquette. Why wasn't he max level??? I was surprised he asked to play it all actually, all my kids are heavy into sports, i think some of his team mates play wow so he was just curious more than anything. I asked him what he thought and he said he loved it, and said he'll probably play it again someday.
As said before it is considered EZ mode for everything up till arena and Hardmode's. Which to me and most is pretty much most of the game. Is that to say I didnt have fun playing it? No, I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it so much I played for most of 6 years up until a little after Cataclysm. Did it get easier and easier with every xpac and patch? For the most part it did. Are MMO's in general very hard to play? For the most part , no. But you can find them a bit more challenging with a little more thinking involved than WoW's current state.
For those of you who love arena and banging your head against a wall doing hard modes ... which yes I did, this game will continue to satisfy. It's just sad to me that that's what this game has become. There is supposed to be so much more but instead it is wrapped into a tiny little Epeen games.
I'm about half way through this thread and I'm getting the impression that hardcore means inordinate amounts of time to get something done, and or accomplish something. This includes loosing XP, and or items because that really does stretch out your time. However, if it doesn't take long then its EZ mode, which really means to others like myself FUN mode, I'm having a blast playing WoW, and after a year I'm whopping 68.
Back when i played SWG, and EQ, EQ2 i went from single life to married and then kids, and for the first few years they were just younglings and slept allot. Now who do you think takes them to all the practice and drives to to other cities for games, my wife and i, i don't have nearly the time i used to have to waste on a game, i don't watch TV and still have a love for games, i guess wow is a good fit for me.
When i ran quest lines back in the day, where grouping is absolutely mandatory, then right into epic raids, all to get an item, and all this took months of pure dedication to achieve, yeah that was hardcore (i guess, or was just allot of free time). However at the time boy what an awesome feeling of accomplishment it was. I reflect back very fondly of that time, and at the same time I'm so glad those days are behind me as well. Take from that whatever you want.
1. PvP is a choice. Players are not forced to play in a game server where players can attack them anywhere at anytime. Even in PvP servers, there are faction neutral cities where PvP actions are not possible at all, and there are "newbie" zones where the local faction is safe from direct PvP action.
2. There is no death penalty. A player dies without losing experience, faction, items, or currency. Furthermore, the player is placed in an invisible and unattackable state at a different location than the corpse, in an area mobs do not wander into, where the player can resurrect with all their items and equipment for a mere durability hit, then recouperate in safety. if the player chooses, then he/she can return to the corpse without being seen or risking further injury/death, and revive in proximity of the corpse at his/her leisure.
3. Queues. Players are not required to make the journey more than once to a dungeon in order to visit it again. A player may do any number of things (fish, quest, stare at a wall, or troll the Trade channel) while waiting in a queue, and be teleported to the dungeon when the time is ready. Seeing the game world and venturing out into it in order to reach the dungeon is a thing of the past.
Sure, you may think these are wonderful aspects of the game. They are just 3 of the reasons why the game is EZ Mode.
WoW isn't as easy as people make it out to be. WoW simply does not have a harsh death penalty and ridiculous time sinks like some other MMOs.
That plus people on these boards hate WoW so they will say anything to make WoW look bad.
Originally posted by rt33
I'm about half way through this thread and I'm getting the impression that hardcore means inordinate amounts of time to get something done, and or accomplish something. This includes loosing XP, and or items because that really does stretch out your time.
That's it. People see these things as fun lol.....EQ, for example, was never a hard MMO. It was EZ mode with the above things.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Regarding harsh death penalties: A lot of people died in EQ at high levels with years into their character only to not be able to recover their body and lose everything. I saw it happen all the time. I don't see how that is fun.
Likewise, people could lose month's worth of experience gain in a single night with a couple of deaths. People don't like the idea that month's worth of work (and given the massive grind to level, it was a lot like work) can be completely negated in an hour, in a video game where you're supposed to be having fun.
As well, too many people seem to equate "difficult" with "long." A boss fight that takes 25 hours is not necessarily difficult. But that aside, where the hell is the fun in playing for 18 hours strait to kill a single boss like in FFXI? I love video games as much as the next person, but good lord, not only is that unhealthy, but it would get boring as hell after only an hour or two.
If you compare WoW to what it used to be, it is "EZ mode". That's a relative term.
I have friends who have only started playing WoW last year. They go online, find cookie cutter PVP builds and boom, they are PVP ready. No experimentation is needed. You go online, find presets, and pick which on you are comfortable with. PVP is no different then an average fighting game. You say "Oh yea, that lock is destro, I know EXACTLY what to expect"
Want to do an instance? Hop in a queue and you are there. They took away the difficulty of traveling to instances now.
Before gearscore, it was math on notebooks. You actually added subtracted, multiplied, blah blah blah to figure out DPS and all that shit.
Raids used to be trial and error, and you had to "find out" if your gear was sufficient. GS is only meant to make it easier for those who have already run an instance. "I want to run it again, but I need people with decent score to make it easier for me." Thus, new folks dont have a chance to progress.
Oh, and btw, most WoW players think WoW was the first MMO because they were born after its release. (Had to pound that one out)
I always found the raids to be a bit easy actually. They were better when with the 40man ones at least. I've played as dps, healer, mt, and I remember when I was doing the main healing, really just had to spam flash heal. It really too little to no thought to heal a raid.
It wasn't like we had to coordinate a dozen people staggering complete heals that were 10 second casts to keep the MT alive and if someone messed up, the raid was wiped.
Hmm, a couple people spamming a heal button, or a bunch synchronizing long heals, ya both about the same, lol. Or having a group of enchanters lock down several mobs to keep them at the same health so they all die within seconds. If they don't or the mobs break free, the raid is toast.
I've always found WoW easy compared to previous MMOs, and I'm talking end game, not the leveling process. Even though vanilla wow was easier than my previous games, I still found it fun, but that got dumbed down even more, throughout the whole game, which is why I can't stand it any longer.
I've gone back a couple times because of friends, and went through all the new content with ease. It just wasn't fun anymore. A game doesn't have to be insanely tough to be fun, but if the only challenge is finding people who actually know how to play, then I want no part in it.
It's considered EZ Mode because any 12 year old can have a max level character within a couple of weeks of playing.
There is no thought needed. There is no grouping needed. There is no strategy needed. There is no BRAIN needed.
Quest markers, maps to get you where you need to be, exclmation points, question marks...just rush into a quest area and start killing stuff without thinking. If you die, don't worry...there's no penalty...just run your ghost back to where you died and continue smacking stuff until you get all the "wolf teeth" that you need.
You (OP) might think that losing a level or losing an item after death was frustrating. Many of us feel it's just part of the game and it's actually an incentive of sorts to use one's brain and think...strategize...before doing something or traveling somewhere.
That's why I feel that WoW is an "EZ Mode" game.
PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE BS peeps spew. My kid who happened to be 12 (at the time) played the chit out of this game for 2 weeks as in all day and all night (no school in the summer) and the only time away was for tackle football and lacrosse, he was 60 when he walked away, he even did tons of dungeons i know as he asked me to show him the mechanics and proper group etiquette. Why wasn't he max level??? I was surprised he asked to play it all actually, all my kids are heavy into sports, i think some of his team mates play wow so he was just curious more than anything. I asked him what he thought and he said he loved it, and said he'll probably play it again someday.
Your son played for 2 weeks... 2 WEEKS... and got to level 60. At age 12. If you don't think that's fast, then you need to reevaluate what you expect out of a game in terms of challenge.
When I was 13 I played EQ for a whole summer, day in day out, grouping non stop, and I made it just shy of level 45. Now to be fair, EQ is like the extreme opposite compared to WoW for leveling grind. I'm not saying games should be like that today, but I had a lot of fun doing it, and every level felt like an accomplishment. Ask your son how he felt when he hit level 30. He probably doesn't even remember because an hour or two later he was 35.
It's considered EZ Mode because any 12 year old can have a max level character within a couple of weeks of playing.
There is no thought needed. There is no grouping needed. There is no strategy needed. There is no BRAIN needed.
Quest markers, maps to get you where you need to be, exclmation points, question marks...just rush into a quest area and start killing stuff without thinking. If you die, don't worry...there's no penalty...just run your ghost back to where you died and continue smacking stuff until you get all the "wolf teeth" that you need.
You (OP) might think that losing a level or losing an item after death was frustrating. Many of us feel it's just part of the game and it's actually an incentive of sorts to use one's brain and think...strategize...before doing something or traveling somewhere.
That's why I feel that WoW is an "EZ Mode" game.
PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE BS peeps spew. My kid who happened to be 12 (at the time) played the chit out of this game for 2 weeks as in all day and all night (no school in the summer) and the only time away was for tackle football and lacrosse, he was 60 when he walked away, he even did tons of dungeons i know as he asked me to show him the mechanics and proper group etiquette. Why wasn't he max level??? I was surprised he asked to play it all actually, all my kids are heavy into sports, i think some of his team mates play wow so he was just curious more than anything. I asked him what he thought and he said he loved it, and said he'll probably play it again someday.
Your son played for 2 weeks... 2 WEEKS... and got to level 60. At age 12. If you don't think that's fast, then you need to reevaluate what you expect out of a game in terms of challenge.
When I was 13 I played EQ for a whole summer, day in day out, grouping non stop, and I made it just shy of level 45. Now to be fair, EQ is like the extreme opposite compared to WoW for leveling grind. I'm not saying games should be like that today, but I had a lot of fun doing it, and every level felt like an accomplishment. Ask your son how he felt when he hit level 30. He probably doesn't even remember because an hour or two later he was 35.
OK asked him how he got to 60 in two weeks, he replied "Dad, i played all summer." lol
Well i was wrong, i know there was 2 weeks left on the sub is what i remember so looks like he played most of last summer, I'll assume 6 weeks. As far as what he remembers most he said "grouping and having allot of fun" He said after i showed him how to do dungeon's that's pretty much all he did. And honestly i don't know what i was thinking, reflecting back with the amount of time he's playing football and lacrosse it would have been impossible to do in two weeks, well maybe.
Fact is even 6 weeks for 60 is fast compared to the old days. But this weeks, months, days, all comes down to how many hours a day you're playing too. One person's 3 months could be 3 weeks for another person.
PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE BS peeps spew. My kid who happened to be 12 (at the time) played the chit out of this game for 2 weeks as in all day and all night (no school in the summer) and the only time away was for tackle football and lacrosse, he was 60 when he walked away, he even did tons of dungeons i know as he asked me to show him the mechanics and proper group etiquette. Why wasn't he max level??? I was surprised he asked to play it all actually, all my kids are heavy into sports, i think some of his team mates play wow so he was just curious more than anything. I asked him what he thought and he said he loved it, and said he'll probably play it again someday.
Your son played for 2 weeks... 2 WEEKS... and got to level 60. At age 12. If you don't think that's fast, then you need to reevaluate what you expect out of a game in terms of challenge.
When I was 13 I played EQ for a whole summer, day in day out, grouping non stop, and I made it just shy of level 45. Now to be fair, EQ is like the extreme opposite compared to WoW for leveling grind. I'm not saying games should be like that today, but I had a lot of fun doing it, and every level felt like an accomplishment. Ask your son how he felt when he hit level 30. He probably doesn't even remember because an hour or two later he was 35.
OK asked him how he got to 60 in two weeks, he replied "Dad, i played all summer." lol
Well i was wrong, i know there was 2 weeks left on the sub is what i remember so looks like he played most of last summer, I'll assume 6 weeks. As far as what he remembers most he said "grouping and having allot of fun" He said after i showed him how to do dungeon's that's pretty much all he did. And honestly i don't know what i was thinking, reflecting back with the amount of time he's playing football and lacrosse it would have been impossible to do in two weeks, well maybe.
Fact is even 6 weeks for 60 is fast compared to the old days. But this weeks, months, days, all comes down to how many hours a day you're playing too. One person's 3 months could be 3 weeks for another person.
For sure. And the game didn't start out simple. My first play through took me about 3 months of semi-hardcore play to reach level cap. Then as the years went on I grew up, got a steady job and a wife, and the last character I leveled to cap took a month and a half of casual play. I had less time to play, and I got to level cap faster. I'll admit that I knew the game very well at that point making my leveling more efficient with the time I had, but they reduced the XP per level, made abilites more powerful at early levels, and they made dungeons and monsters easier to kill.
Now here's the thing, having a low barrier of entry is the best thing a game can do to encourage new subs. People get interested in the game in the first 20 levels, and if you make those levels easy to get it increases the amount of people who can pick up and play your game. But, after that you need to present a challenge to the player to keep him/her interested... most of the time. And I say 'most of the time' because there are some people who don't enjoy challenge at all, and just want to win the game with as little effort as possible. These are not quality players, but they help pay the bills.
But you can't have that ease of leveling last all the way to cap, it just kind of kills the accomplishment. Yeah raids can be challenging, and the gear up phase before you get into raids is a lot of fun (for me at least). But the most fun I usually have in gaming is the level up process. Unlocking new skills and powers, putting on that new piece of equipment you've had in your bank for awhile but couldn't use until now, and watching those numbers are you character sheet go up are all really fun.
When they made it too easy to level it really diminished the sense of accomplishment, and I think that's why I think most people complain about it.
characters some more so than others can easily mow down mobs 4 or 5 levels above their own, my personal best record is 3 days from, 1 to 85 , almost ZERO mobs present a threat to anyone who has played the game more than 5 minutes.
Is the upper end game hard, yeah it is, does 90% of the 10+ million wow players actually see that content, NO!
you cant call a game hard when 99% of it is a walk in the park, no pun intended.
EDIT - just read the above post..
1-60 took me about 3 months solid hardcore play, the same play hours now gets me 1 to 85 in 3 days..
I attribute this to the lack of stuff like thottbot in the generel domain of the game, people had to read quests, actually interpret them and then look where they thought it was pointing, now its alt+tab thotbot search >asnwer tab back in job done, hell now there is no need because the game tells you where to go.
Gone are the days of having to read quest logs, just pick it up, pop your map open see where to go kill stuff till it says complete.
I went out way back and proved a point to a friend of mine that I could max level a mage at that time in literally a week of play. Not hours played but literally a week when the level cap was 70. Wow was the easiest mmo to level up in at the time without a doubt but now we have other ez mode mmos like RIFT.
i would say, that rather than it being a case of an overly simplistic.. its not actually all that difficult to pick up after all, so i can see why most think its what defines easy mode in the game as theres rarely anything that actually challenges you, but i think the one thing that makes this game so easy, is that your always being told what to do next, where to go next, and how... you don't need to think to play.... so no real challenge to it.. its fun in small doses, but.. its definitely a game thats EZ Mode.. ..
if i need a break from Eve, i play WoW.. im not even a hardcore WoW player.. and yet.. i still have 4 level 85 toons.. its just not that hard to do...
I've raided in several games and the original WoW was definitely not a cakewalk, nor were the regular dungeons easy compared to the other games. I skipped raiding in TBC, but in WotLK, it definitely got a lot easier, to the point where we cleared a boss after 3-4 tries (it tooks nights in vanilla). Not that that has to be a bad thing, the original raids were very tedious.
I also hear that they made these things much harder again in Cata, so yeah, EZ mode is probably not a good word for it. Convenient is probably a better term.
What I did not like in the WoW of TBC / WotLK though, was how they took out most elite mobs and group quests in the open world... I could pretty much solo anything that used to be tough. Not that I'm against a lot of solo content, but I definitely think grouping should be encouraged while you're out questing. And when you can kill a mega epic imposing monster without breaking a sweat, you can call that "too easy" for my part.
But again, this might have changed in the current incarnation of WoW.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I think a lot of the wow ez mode crap could be fixed if blizz opened up or tried a few different types of servers. They have 3000000000 pvp pve rppvp rppve ,. Why not open 1 seerver where there are no bop, or boe, crap can be traded..sold. or a loot a few items in world pvp. Slow lvling servers, fast lvling....o0 ones. I server with no mods, Cant see levels of enemies(players). hell be creative and give us something new in that sense. Im sure others can come with a few other interesting types of servers.. no fricking end game( should never be an end game in mmos). Doing one or a few servers like this to see what happens. Players might love or hate them but we will never know cause blizz is stupid on the server types.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
Having played WoW throughout the years on and off, Its actually not that hard.I can't comment on the recent content patch having quit for good this time. While I do feel that the older content was harder, Its still pretty much EZ MODE. What might be hard for you was a cake walk for others, not trying to be a douche and say you suck , but Heroics weren't that hard. Normal mode End game raiding wasn't too difficult once you get the pattern. You might have just needed a better coordinated group. Admittedly hard mode was indeed a hell of a lot harder only got to 7/13 before I quit.
Back in the day when WoW first came out it took me 6 months to level from 1 to 60. I was playing a paladin too, and boy were they a gimped class. From what I understand, it now takes a few days at most to reach level 60...
That sounds like easy mode to me.
(By the way, as a Canadian, I read the post title as "EZed mode.")
ofc lvling shouldnt be that hard that you loose a lvl whenever you die.
but like it is in wow it shouldnt be so easy i could get to max lvl and do all raids and dungeons whitout even dieing once or even drop lower then 35 percent of my health. the game is to easy no achievement while doing it. pacman is more difficult and it is alot less of a time waste. i would feel better about my self to finish 5 games of pacman then reaching wows end game content
I beilive that they complain because of the fact that it was "dumbed down" so to speak. From what I understand, WoW was not always like this.
Also, in regards to leveling: I believe that leveling is part of the MMO, and should in fact be challenging. I think that early leveling should be larning your class, and late leveling being utilizing your class, mastering it I should say. But that's just me.
Not necessarily.. LEVELING can be a root of all evil in MMORPG's, character progession is fine but leveling and classes in a MMORPG from level 0-90 or w/e, has been shown to take away much player driven content in a MMORPG.. EVE is an example of what to do in terms of character progression..
I completely disagree with that. EVE's style of logging in picking a skill to learn and then waiting days to months or longer....really? sounds like it's a side note and no true character progression is happening except passage of time. If that type of system is in conjuction with a "skill up" system then it wouldn't be so bad, but...in EVE, it's not. For example, in EVE, say you put a skill in the queue to learn how to fly the next type of ship. Ok that makes sense. However, while waiting on that, you should be rewarded for whatever you are doing in the meantime. Say mining. You should get skillups in mining while you mine. Or skillups in space combat if you are fighting pve/pvp enemies. But that's about EVE and a whole other discussion.
EVE doesn't limit how you play, but just what marginal increases you should get. If you had never mined in your life, yeah it's going to take a month or so to get a nice ship and nice yield. However, the skills that take forever are V skills. Getting a givens kill I-IV doesn't take long at all, and it's really a gross exaggeration to say all skills take "days or months".
An example I can give you, as an industrial hauler you can get Minamatar Mammoth in less than a week which can effectively haul over 25km3 or just nearly a jetcan. However, the next best hauler is the Iteron Mark V which takes a whole other set of skills, but that takes a month or more to get to. Depending on how serious of the endeaver determines which skills you go after.
EVE has the best character progression in my opinion, because it relies on good management of your skills and knowledge of the game, instead of the game holding your hand and just giving you the skills by slaying goblins. On the part about "leveling mining by mining".. I mean, EVE is actually better in that regard. You don't have to sit around mining Veldspar to get to Scordite, and so on and so forth. If you get Mining II that's an additional 5% yield on ANY ore you mine. In WoW, if you get Artisan Mining, it just lets you mine Thorium and Truesilver...
I wouldn't call WoW and "easy" game, just super casuall friendly. Lets take the death penalty for isntance.. You die nothing really happens except for you have to run back to where you died. In other games, you lose xp, or even all your loot.
I could probably come up with more examples but you get the drift. While for most people WoW is a lot of fun,, but to me there was no sense of risk vs reward.. Maybe it got better at endgame but I never could stick around long enough to find out..... Game just put me to sleep by the time I got to 50.
yeah, i rly hate death penalty, especially losing xp.
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.bored with warcraft?buy wow gold paypal
Leveling is a snoozefest and before anyone says that shouldn't count, concidder how much of the game is leveling. No a game shouldn't be a cake walk untill you cap then it gets tough as you try to gear grind. I littereally removed all my heirloom and ran around in greys when Cata first released so that I could TRY to slow down the rate of EXP gained. Me and my wife did this so we could try and see how much "new" content was actually added while leveling through old zones. Add the fact that there is a min level required to quest in the zone above the recommended level for your character and this means you can't even go to a zone thats higher than you to make the game a little more challenging, unless you want to grind on mobs alone.
Instances require no attention whatsoever. I only found a couple of the instances evern remotely challenging and that was the ICC ones when they first released. Even when leveling a fresh alt with no BOA gears on the games group content ie instances were cake walks. I rolled a worgen war and tanked all the way back to endgame and it was mind numbing and required ZERO coordination. I thought the group content was supposed to be more challenging than the questing. Not to mention they give you blues in bags for completing a dungeon. After they streamlined the talent trees for Cata they never adjusted the mob difficulties it seemed so 2 shotting stuff became the normal.
Heroics started out moderately difficult and was how my friends sold me on coming back for Cata. Boy was I dissapointed when I found out they were already planning on toning them down >.<. After gearing out my War as far as I could on the heroic treadmill it was time to join the guild for some raiding. The only thing challenging about those was getting the necessary amount of people to show up when it was scheduled.
After my last purchase of a wow expansion I lost interest even quicker than the time before when I took an extended break. I am not here to bash the game but to say it isn't easy I guess is a matter of opinion. But when you can run around naked and kill groups of mobs without much concern of death it was time for me to wave goodbye. the game was fun when I played in vanilla and BC, but after that the game started to get stale and I found it harder to get back on the game and when I did it was to socialize more than to actually play.
Seriously, I want to know what makes people spew vitriol and call WoW an "EZ Mode" game. I've played it and loved it. Got burnt out on it, and have come back off and on because other MMOs just don't have the sheer amount of polish, quality and content that WoW does. So where is this EZ mode aspect? I've gotten to the endgame multiple times and have NEVER beaten high end raids without them being 2 years old and my level far above the intended level they were built for. Even Cata's heroics are a PITA and I rarely do them do to difficulty and the small fact it takes forever to queue for them.
PVP, I get my arse handed to me all the time, although I do enjoy PVP from time to time. I'm not the best PVPer, but I like the fast pace of it and the whole side game it offers next to the PVE game.
Again, where is the EZ mode? In the leveling? Really? I've played games where leveling was "hardcore", EQ, FFXI, VG and frankly, I'd rather do it WoW's way then any other. Leveling should be fun not work. It should let your learn you class not make you scream in frustration and log off because you lost a level after dying. So for leveling, if that's EZ mode, than please, give me more. But other than the leveling game....what is really considered EZ mode?
Now, I know WoW needs a heavy dose of DEPTH, especially with endgame and crafting, but this doesn't have anything to do with Hardcore or EZ mode. Depth to me is having so many options I can spend a night delving through character builds or professions or, like some games ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT mechanics. But again, this is game depth, not this wierd "EZ mode" griping I'm hearing.
So is it just an issue, once again, of horrible english? Not using words correctly to define an issue with the game? Sitting up there with nomeclature such as "Dumbed Down" or "WoW Clone" or the even more vague "hardcore/casual" branding?
Please, enlighten me. Let's try to use proper English though, alright?
People are just angry at blizzard just to be angry at something, So they will do anything to downgrade the game. I dont care what anyone says, the game is a classic in its own genre. It has done what no other MMO could.
Comments
^ all MMORPG's are like that NOW BECAUSE OF WoW's success...
For example look at EQ2 on release vs now..NOW it's as easy as WoW (except it has MULTITUDES of more depth and things to do)..but at release you HAD to group..a lot of the "generic" world mobs were in Heroic groups...etc...it was dumbed down becuase of WoW to try and get those players...
And WoW is easy. Everything is so dumbed down (or "streamlined" for the fanboys") it's ridiculously easy.
The DIFFICULTY is NOT in the gameplay. It's with getting 5-25 players LISTENING AND WORKING TOGETHER...the content, raids, bosses THEMSELVES are easy. The difficulty lies in others PAYING ATTENTION to others and actually LISTENING to what they're told.
HUUUUUUUUUUGE difference. WoW is easy. Any difficulty in the game is the result of the arrogant and ignorant player-base that don't want to have to think or listen to anything or anyone. They are why raids fail. Not because the raid itself is hard. But because the wow-tards don't pay attention or listen and stand in the boss farts.
OP i agree. I played wow at launch and didn't play after the first month. Not that i didn't like it, it was more at the time i was really into SWG (till nge)and EQ2 (till 2008).
About a year ago one of my kids wanted to play WOW, he played for a about 2 weeks and that was it, so i decided since there was 2 weeks left I'd only check it out, a year later still playing it and still loving it.
Cataclysm turned an awesome mmo into a spectacular mmo.
Over the years though i never wanted to go try it again after always reading about how only kids play it, full of a-holes, dumbed down, ez mode.
Since about 2008 I've been trying all these new mmo's to fill my mmo gap in gaming. All these new mmo's have tried to compete with wow so hard that i find WoW is more mmo than any new mmo out there. It's far more EQ2 than EQ2 itself in the feel (ya i know EQ was inspiration for wow) and maybe that's why i love it.
I don't even bother trying new mmo's anymore, i do sit back and enjoy the show though, watch how they all get hyped out their minds, and realize it's just another bad wow clone.
I found the mmo I've been looking for since 2008, when i had SWG and EQ2, i never tried other mmo's too much, I'd only ask "How's that working out for ya" as friends went from game to game to game to game spending far more than i ever did, but once eq2 went to crap i ended up on the tread mill of trying all the new mmo's as they came out too. I have to admit due to to all the negative wow comments over the years i did blame wow for the lack of entertaining mmo's. Now i know it was the greed and or lack of talent of these new mmo's, not Blizz baby.
Overall it's so nice to be back to asking "How's that working out for ya".
PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE BS peeps spew. My kid who happened to be 12 (at the time) played the chit out of this game for 2 weeks as in all day and all night (no school in the summer) and the only time away was for tackle football and lacrosse, he was 60 when he walked away, he even did tons of dungeons i know as he asked me to show him the mechanics and proper group etiquette. Why wasn't he max level??? I was surprised he asked to play it all actually, all my kids are heavy into sports, i think some of his team mates play wow so he was just curious more than anything. I asked him what he thought and he said he loved it, and said he'll probably play it again someday.
As said before it is considered EZ mode for everything up till arena and Hardmode's. Which to me and most is pretty much most of the game. Is that to say I didnt have fun playing it? No, I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it so much I played for most of 6 years up until a little after Cataclysm. Did it get easier and easier with every xpac and patch? For the most part it did. Are MMO's in general very hard to play? For the most part , no. But you can find them a bit more challenging with a little more thinking involved than WoW's current state.
For those of you who love arena and banging your head against a wall doing hard modes ... which yes I did, this game will continue to satisfy. It's just sad to me that that's what this game has become. There is supposed to be so much more but instead it is wrapped into a tiny little Epeen games.
I'm about half way through this thread and I'm getting the impression that hardcore means inordinate amounts of time to get something done, and or accomplish something. This includes loosing XP, and or items because that really does stretch out your time. However, if it doesn't take long then its EZ mode, which really means to others like myself FUN mode, I'm having a blast playing WoW, and after a year I'm whopping 68.
Back when i played SWG, and EQ, EQ2 i went from single life to married and then kids, and for the first few years they were just younglings and slept allot. Now who do you think takes them to all the practice and drives to to other cities for games, my wife and i, i don't have nearly the time i used to have to waste on a game, i don't watch TV and still have a love for games, i guess wow is a good fit for me.
When i ran quest lines back in the day, where grouping is absolutely mandatory, then right into epic raids, all to get an item, and all this took months of pure dedication to achieve, yeah that was hardcore (i guess, or was just allot of free time). However at the time boy what an awesome feeling of accomplishment it was. I reflect back very fondly of that time, and at the same time I'm so glad those days are behind me as well. Take from that whatever you want.
I'll just mention a few of the basics.
1. PvP is a choice. Players are not forced to play in a game server where players can attack them anywhere at anytime. Even in PvP servers, there are faction neutral cities where PvP actions are not possible at all, and there are "newbie" zones where the local faction is safe from direct PvP action.
2. There is no death penalty. A player dies without losing experience, faction, items, or currency. Furthermore, the player is placed in an invisible and unattackable state at a different location than the corpse, in an area mobs do not wander into, where the player can resurrect with all their items and equipment for a mere durability hit, then recouperate in safety. if the player chooses, then he/she can return to the corpse without being seen or risking further injury/death, and revive in proximity of the corpse at his/her leisure.
3. Queues. Players are not required to make the journey more than once to a dungeon in order to visit it again. A player may do any number of things (fish, quest, stare at a wall, or troll the Trade channel) while waiting in a queue, and be teleported to the dungeon when the time is ready. Seeing the game world and venturing out into it in order to reach the dungeon is a thing of the past.
Sure, you may think these are wonderful aspects of the game. They are just 3 of the reasons why the game is EZ Mode.
WoW isn't as easy as people make it out to be. WoW simply does not have a harsh death penalty and ridiculous time sinks like some other MMOs.
That plus people on these boards hate WoW so they will say anything to make WoW look bad.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Regarding harsh death penalties: A lot of people died in EQ at high levels with years into their character only to not be able to recover their body and lose everything. I saw it happen all the time. I don't see how that is fun.
Likewise, people could lose month's worth of experience gain in a single night with a couple of deaths. People don't like the idea that month's worth of work (and given the massive grind to level, it was a lot like work) can be completely negated in an hour, in a video game where you're supposed to be having fun.
As well, too many people seem to equate "difficult" with "long." A boss fight that takes 25 hours is not necessarily difficult. But that aside, where the hell is the fun in playing for 18 hours strait to kill a single boss like in FFXI? I love video games as much as the next person, but good lord, not only is that unhealthy, but it would get boring as hell after only an hour or two.
If you compare WoW to what it used to be, it is "EZ mode". That's a relative term.
I have friends who have only started playing WoW last year. They go online, find cookie cutter PVP builds and boom, they are PVP ready. No experimentation is needed. You go online, find presets, and pick which on you are comfortable with. PVP is no different then an average fighting game. You say "Oh yea, that lock is destro, I know EXACTLY what to expect"
Want to do an instance? Hop in a queue and you are there. They took away the difficulty of traveling to instances now.
Before gearscore, it was math on notebooks. You actually added subtracted, multiplied, blah blah blah to figure out DPS and all that shit.
Raids used to be trial and error, and you had to "find out" if your gear was sufficient. GS is only meant to make it easier for those who have already run an instance. "I want to run it again, but I need people with decent score to make it easier for me." Thus, new folks dont have a chance to progress.
Oh, and btw, most WoW players think WoW was the first MMO because they were born after its release. (Had to pound that one out)
`Cheers!
I always found the raids to be a bit easy actually. They were better when with the 40man ones at least. I've played as dps, healer, mt, and I remember when I was doing the main healing, really just had to spam flash heal. It really too little to no thought to heal a raid.
It wasn't like we had to coordinate a dozen people staggering complete heals that were 10 second casts to keep the MT alive and if someone messed up, the raid was wiped.
Hmm, a couple people spamming a heal button, or a bunch synchronizing long heals, ya both about the same, lol. Or having a group of enchanters lock down several mobs to keep them at the same health so they all die within seconds. If they don't or the mobs break free, the raid is toast.
I've always found WoW easy compared to previous MMOs, and I'm talking end game, not the leveling process. Even though vanilla wow was easier than my previous games, I still found it fun, but that got dumbed down even more, throughout the whole game, which is why I can't stand it any longer.
I've gone back a couple times because of friends, and went through all the new content with ease. It just wasn't fun anymore. A game doesn't have to be insanely tough to be fun, but if the only challenge is finding people who actually know how to play, then I want no part in it.
Your son played for 2 weeks... 2 WEEKS... and got to level 60. At age 12. If you don't think that's fast, then you need to reevaluate what you expect out of a game in terms of challenge.
When I was 13 I played EQ for a whole summer, day in day out, grouping non stop, and I made it just shy of level 45. Now to be fair, EQ is like the extreme opposite compared to WoW for leveling grind. I'm not saying games should be like that today, but I had a lot of fun doing it, and every level felt like an accomplishment. Ask your son how he felt when he hit level 30. He probably doesn't even remember because an hour or two later he was 35.
OK asked him how he got to 60 in two weeks, he replied "Dad, i played all summer." lol
Well i was wrong, i know there was 2 weeks left on the sub is what i remember so looks like he played most of last summer, I'll assume 6 weeks. As far as what he remembers most he said "grouping and having allot of fun" He said after i showed him how to do dungeon's that's pretty much all he did. And honestly i don't know what i was thinking, reflecting back with the amount of time he's playing football and lacrosse it would have been impossible to do in two weeks, well maybe.
Fact is even 6 weeks for 60 is fast compared to the old days. But this weeks, months, days, all comes down to how many hours a day you're playing too. One person's 3 months could be 3 weeks for another person.
For sure. And the game didn't start out simple. My first play through took me about 3 months of semi-hardcore play to reach level cap. Then as the years went on I grew up, got a steady job and a wife, and the last character I leveled to cap took a month and a half of casual play. I had less time to play, and I got to level cap faster. I'll admit that I knew the game very well at that point making my leveling more efficient with the time I had, but they reduced the XP per level, made abilites more powerful at early levels, and they made dungeons and monsters easier to kill.
Now here's the thing, having a low barrier of entry is the best thing a game can do to encourage new subs. People get interested in the game in the first 20 levels, and if you make those levels easy to get it increases the amount of people who can pick up and play your game. But, after that you need to present a challenge to the player to keep him/her interested... most of the time. And I say 'most of the time' because there are some people who don't enjoy challenge at all, and just want to win the game with as little effort as possible. These are not quality players, but they help pay the bills.
But you can't have that ease of leveling last all the way to cap, it just kind of kills the accomplishment. Yeah raids can be challenging, and the gear up phase before you get into raids is a lot of fun (for me at least). But the most fun I usually have in gaming is the level up process. Unlocking new skills and powers, putting on that new piece of equipment you've had in your bank for awhile but couldn't use until now, and watching those numbers are you character sheet go up are all really fun.
When they made it too easy to level it really diminished the sense of accomplishment, and I think that's why I think most people complain about it.
it's easy because 99.9% of it is well. EASY!!!.
characters some more so than others can easily mow down mobs 4 or 5 levels above their own, my personal best record is 3 days from, 1 to 85 , almost ZERO mobs present a threat to anyone who has played the game more than 5 minutes.
Is the upper end game hard, yeah it is, does 90% of the 10+ million wow players actually see that content, NO!
you cant call a game hard when 99% of it is a walk in the park, no pun intended.
EDIT - just read the above post..
1-60 took me about 3 months solid hardcore play, the same play hours now gets me 1 to 85 in 3 days..
I attribute this to the lack of stuff like thottbot in the generel domain of the game, people had to read quests, actually interpret them and then look where they thought it was pointing, now its alt+tab thotbot search >asnwer tab back in job done, hell now there is no need because the game tells you where to go.
Gone are the days of having to read quest logs, just pick it up, pop your map open see where to go kill stuff till it says complete.
I went out way back and proved a point to a friend of mine that I could max level a mage at that time in literally a week of play. Not hours played but literally a week when the level cap was 70. Wow was the easiest mmo to level up in at the time without a doubt but now we have other ez mode mmos like RIFT.
i would say, that rather than it being a case of an overly simplistic.. its not actually all that difficult to pick up after all, so i can see why most think its what defines easy mode in the game as theres rarely anything that actually challenges you, but i think the one thing that makes this game so easy, is that your always being told what to do next, where to go next, and how... you don't need to think to play.... so no real challenge to it.. its fun in small doses, but.. its definitely a game thats EZ Mode.. ..
if i need a break from Eve, i play WoW.. im not even a hardcore WoW player.. and yet.. i still have 4 level 85 toons.. its just not that hard to do...
I've raided in several games and the original WoW was definitely not a cakewalk, nor were the regular dungeons easy compared to the other games. I skipped raiding in TBC, but in WotLK, it definitely got a lot easier, to the point where we cleared a boss after 3-4 tries (it tooks nights in vanilla). Not that that has to be a bad thing, the original raids were very tedious.
I also hear that they made these things much harder again in Cata, so yeah, EZ mode is probably not a good word for it. Convenient is probably a better term.
What I did not like in the WoW of TBC / WotLK though, was how they took out most elite mobs and group quests in the open world... I could pretty much solo anything that used to be tough. Not that I'm against a lot of solo content, but I definitely think grouping should be encouraged while you're out questing. And when you can kill a mega epic imposing monster without breaking a sweat, you can call that "too easy" for my part.
But again, this might have changed in the current incarnation of WoW.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I think a lot of the wow ez mode crap could be fixed if blizz opened up or tried a few different types of servers. They have 3000000000 pvp pve rppvp rppve ,. Why not open 1 seerver where there are no bop, or boe, crap can be traded..sold. or a loot a few items in world pvp. Slow lvling servers, fast lvling....o0 ones. I server with no mods, Cant see levels of enemies(players). hell be creative and give us something new in that sense. Im sure others can come with a few other interesting types of servers.. no fricking end game( should never be an end game in mmos). Doing one or a few servers like this to see what happens. Players might love or hate them but we will never know cause blizz is stupid on the server types.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
Having played WoW throughout the years on and off, Its actually not that hard.I can't comment on the recent content patch having quit for good this time. While I do feel that the older content was harder, Its still pretty much EZ MODE. What might be hard for you was a cake walk for others, not trying to be a douche and say you suck , but Heroics weren't that hard. Normal mode End game raiding wasn't too difficult once you get the pattern. You might have just needed a better coordinated group. Admittedly hard mode was indeed a hell of a lot harder only got to 7/13 before I quit.
Back in the day when WoW first came out it took me 6 months to level from 1 to 60. I was playing a paladin too, and boy were they a gimped class. From what I understand, it now takes a few days at most to reach level 60...
That sounds like easy mode to me.
(By the way, as a Canadian, I read the post title as "EZed mode.")
ofc lvling shouldnt be that hard that you loose a lvl whenever you die.
but like it is in wow it shouldnt be so easy i could get to max lvl and do all raids and dungeons whitout even dieing once or even drop lower then 35 percent of my health. the game is to easy no achievement while doing it. pacman is more difficult and it is alot less of a time waste. i would feel better about my self to finish 5 games of pacman then reaching wows end game content
EVE doesn't limit how you play, but just what marginal increases you should get. If you had never mined in your life, yeah it's going to take a month or so to get a nice ship and nice yield. However, the skills that take forever are V skills. Getting a givens kill I-IV doesn't take long at all, and it's really a gross exaggeration to say all skills take "days or months".
An example I can give you, as an industrial hauler you can get Minamatar Mammoth in less than a week which can effectively haul over 25km3 or just nearly a jetcan. However, the next best hauler is the Iteron Mark V which takes a whole other set of skills, but that takes a month or more to get to. Depending on how serious of the endeaver determines which skills you go after.
EVE has the best character progression in my opinion, because it relies on good management of your skills and knowledge of the game, instead of the game holding your hand and just giving you the skills by slaying goblins. On the part about "leveling mining by mining".. I mean, EVE is actually better in that regard. You don't have to sit around mining Veldspar to get to Scordite, and so on and so forth. If you get Mining II that's an additional 5% yield on ANY ore you mine. In WoW, if you get Artisan Mining, it just lets you mine Thorium and Truesilver...
yeah, i rly hate death penalty, especially losing xp.
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.bored with warcraft?buy wow gold paypal
I call WoW EZ mode because the game is just that.
Leveling is a snoozefest and before anyone says that shouldn't count, concidder how much of the game is leveling. No a game shouldn't be a cake walk untill you cap then it gets tough as you try to gear grind. I littereally removed all my heirloom and ran around in greys when Cata first released so that I could TRY to slow down the rate of EXP gained. Me and my wife did this so we could try and see how much "new" content was actually added while leveling through old zones. Add the fact that there is a min level required to quest in the zone above the recommended level for your character and this means you can't even go to a zone thats higher than you to make the game a little more challenging, unless you want to grind on mobs alone.
Instances require no attention whatsoever. I only found a couple of the instances evern remotely challenging and that was the ICC ones when they first released. Even when leveling a fresh alt with no BOA gears on the games group content ie instances were cake walks. I rolled a worgen war and tanked all the way back to endgame and it was mind numbing and required ZERO coordination. I thought the group content was supposed to be more challenging than the questing. Not to mention they give you blues in bags for completing a dungeon. After they streamlined the talent trees for Cata they never adjusted the mob difficulties it seemed so 2 shotting stuff became the normal.
Heroics started out moderately difficult and was how my friends sold me on coming back for Cata. Boy was I dissapointed when I found out they were already planning on toning them down >.<. After gearing out my War as far as I could on the heroic treadmill it was time to join the guild for some raiding. The only thing challenging about those was getting the necessary amount of people to show up when it was scheduled.
After my last purchase of a wow expansion I lost interest even quicker than the time before when I took an extended break. I am not here to bash the game but to say it isn't easy I guess is a matter of opinion. But when you can run around naked and kill groups of mobs without much concern of death it was time for me to wave goodbye. the game was fun when I played in vanilla and BC, but after that the game started to get stale and I found it harder to get back on the game and when I did it was to socialize more than to actually play.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
People are just angry at blizzard just to be angry at something, So they will do anything to downgrade the game. I dont care what anyone says, the game is a classic in its own genre. It has done what no other MMO could.