it seems like very few of MMORPG.com's "specific game" writers (the eve writer being an exception) actually have really dove into the depths of their respective game.
in other words, though i think the above article was very well written, doesnt it make sense for the website's wow writer to be at the very least a FORMER raider?
I've noticed that, too. If i remember it right, there were even articles in which the author stated that he/she doesn't have time to play games. I agree that this article here was a good one, but overall the quality of articles and reviews have decreased over time.
It would be a start if the authors would have some first hand experience in what they write about or are at least somewhat connected to gaming at all.
I can't stand WoW guilds and their bitching and whining. This is probably why I never got any decent raid loot. Its nice that there are options besides sucking a mile of dick to get the epic gear you need.
So.... the article can best be summed up by watching the movie Idiocracy?
Have MMORPG's "Jumped the Shark"?
Before, it took 'a certain type of person' to even play MMORPG's. As computers, internet, and games have become more and more accessible to players of all walks of life... there has been a quality shift.
Gaming companies want 'everyone' to play, because of the $$$$$$$$$$$.
Gamers don't want everyone to play, because it really does water down the quality of player.
WoW is the prime example.
Most people say the game has gotten worse with each expansion.
And with each expansion, the game has been redesigned to attract more and more players... it has succeeded in that regard.
It's been the most recent expansion that finally 'crossed the line' or 'jumped the shark.
Thus, the decline in WoW population/sub's.
Ever think that some of these games fail because of the types of players that are attracted to them? A game could be amazing... but if you jump in and find that it has a terrible community and/or that the quality of player is well below 'par'... that's terminal.
I'm perfectly fine with playing an MMO that has hardmode raiding only a few top guilds will ever access. I'm fine with them getting titles for it, and nifty looking gear, and board rankings.
In fact, the only thing I object to is giving them gear with better stats than every other player in the game can get, because when they pvp in it or pve in groups doing other content, it puts everyone else at an completely unnecessary disadvantage.
These guys are already the best in the game, right? They don't need better gear than everyone else has access to, and it's not a required carrot to entice them to raid, either. Not for people who love doing the nigh-impossible and getting recognition for that with titles and unique looking gear.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
edit because I'm fumble fingered with the double posting today
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
J: How did raiding change from vanilla to Lich King?
R: For one it used to be forty man raids which, obviously, required forty competent, coordinated people. It was so much harder than nowadays. Strategy, gear, resists, and teamwork had to be at peak levels at all times to complete even the easiest raid. There were no Joe Schmoes raiding and winning. You had to show up every night and wipe over and over perfecting your guild’s strats, which weren’t instantly shared on the internet to help everyone through. It was the epitome of hardcore gaming, even outside of actual raids doing all the prep work.
I can't disagree with the blue text strongly enough. Many Blizzard devs have said that players have simply become much better at the game over the years, and although many players have written those statements off as excuses for how easy WoW had gotten at certain points, it's still the truth. My memories of 40 man raids are certainly not of competence and coordination, and I was part of a group who killed C'thun prior to Naxx's release. In any given 40 man raid, we had at least 5 chronic AFKers and 8 terrible players (with some overlap between the 2.) The rest simply had to compensate. And guess what? We and many other guild were able to. That was how forgiving the content was.
Add in the fact that we were all much worse players than we are today. Case in point: the healing leader and officer of our guild went on a several year haitus shortly after the release of BC. At the time, I looked up to him as a player. When he returned in WotlK while Ulduar was current content, I got to play with him again. After more than a few weeks to shake off the rust, he was still failing miserably at healing in our 10 man hard modes. In attempt to figure out what the problem was, I learned he was a "clicker." He had never used a skill by pressing his keyboard in his life. Not even 1-3. That simply wouldn't fly in WotlK, which is largely considered the "easiest" expansion. His healing output (since meters had become prevalent, which wasn't necessarily a good thing) was less than 33% of that of any other healer's. He had a lot of practice to do before he could properly heal normal mode Yogg, let alone hard mode encounters like Firefighter.
I agree that there's something to be said about simply constructing and organizing a 40 man raid, but that was one of the hardest parts. The smaller the raids get, the higher the responsibility for each individual. There's less room to carry the dead weight, and even less still in 10 mans, assuming of course the difficulty is toggled to be relatively the same, which wasn't always the case. Some of my most intense and difficult WoW raiding experiences definitely came from 10 man content: Karazhan within the first few months, 2 healing ZA bear mount runs within the first few months, Ulduar hard modes and Algalon.
The only thing that i will always be bitter towards and never forigve the modern playerbase of WoW is the fact that they killed off the world. Warcraft doesn't have a world anymore its just a dungeon crawler with all this instan queues and crap. Raid finder is just beating the dead horse even more, with that in place one will NEVER have to leave a city ever again after reaching max level.
I could put aside the whole casual/hardcore arguement aside but the fact is that this instant gratification crap is killing the idea of a persistant world... at least it has with WoW. If blizz doesn't have any plans to fix this anytime soon then I'm just going to delete my characters and never look back anymore... it is just infuriating!
"Literate forum goers..." Although what this guy had to say was in one ear and out the other, I /really/ stopped caring as soon as he summarized the people whose voices are heard the most on forums as "literate".
Okay, so when you were 10 and Everquest first came out, you had plenty of time to sit there and gnaw on your desk over hour long corpse retrievals. I get it, you're "hardcore".
Okay, so when you were a teenager, WoW was HARD and took a long time just to organize a raid together (40 man) and then the act of successfully completing it was no small feat. ...I get it, you're "hardcore".
Okay, so now that you're an adult (20s - 30s), you're playing these games, sitting back thinking to yourself: "I liked it better when things were more time consuming - because the amount of TIME you dedicate to accomplishing ONE thing makes you HARDCORE."
But you know what? If you still have that kind of time on your hands, you're either A) Living in your parent's basement. Or Too ugly to have a social life. Or C) A combination of those traits (because social aptitude is important for developing any sort of relationship with REAL people).
Hardcore was great. But guess what? We're not 10 anymore. We're big peoplez now. We have wives (some of us with social skills, anyway). We have kids. We have JOBs. We don't live in our parent's basement. We pay bills, we attend social gatherings with neighbors and/or our kids school functions, etc etc.
And guess what? We're the MAJORITY. And if we want to be able to juggle our LIFE and still enjoy an MMO, it seems as though developers have heard our calls and have catered more to us then the basement dwelling, socially inept 30 year olds who haven't seen what their dong looks like in over 10 years due to the buildup of greesy fat rolls.
So, yeah, good luck on your "I'm Hardcore, I wish everyone was Hardcore" rant. It's falling on deaf ears and has been for almost half a decade now.
I used to be a "hardcore" player and then found it wasn't worth it.. it never has been worth it. So mark me as casual but I have no wish to ever let a game have the majority of my free time again. I'm not saying I don't still enjoy my mmos but when a game(or guild) dictates what times you "must" be on you've stepped past "fun" and into a black hole for your time. I like difficult but difficult shouldn't mean time consuming.(unless you chose to make it so). That's why I like the idea of the Raid finder.. raid on demand. It puts the ball in your court without making you commit to certain times. Good thing I'd say.
"Hardcore"<-- play until you've sucked the lifeblood out of a game or even genre. I see all this talk about dedication and raid or die elitism, yet it's the casuals ruining the genre?
For me personally I've been there and done that long, long ago (pre-wow). By the time i tried WOW i was so burned out by kill this kill that, watch numbers tick away game-play. I didn't last a couple weeks in that game, or the others I tried at the time (05). I didn't play another MMO until AOC, even then I basically just played for the story content.
It would be interesting to see how many of these so called "hardcore" are also going around complaining there's nothing good out there, MMO's need to innovate rabble,rabble....!
One word... Moderation.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I think its a good idea. There are a lot of people that could care less about gear or challenge and just want to see the content with their own eyes. Finish the story, so to speak.
FWIW, I always felt that Burning Crusade was WoW's best era.
When something is very difficult to accomplish and is only achieveable through a lot of blood sweat and tears, virtual or not, it's a hell of a lot more satisfying once you do finally overcome the challenge.
When things are made easier so that everyone and their mother can pug it to "experience" and muddle their way through content, it gets mind numbingly boring for those who actually want a challenge.
Difficulty is what creates and epic and heroic feeling to gameplay. No matter how hard devs try, all the scripted events with important lore figures will never, ever, feel as epic or heroic as actually overcoming an extremely difficult encounter that takes a great deal of coordination and skill to beat.
Good old days...wow?? Well I go back a bit (alot) before wow was concieved and I cringed in horror the first time I saw the 'hardcore' definition changing from skilled players to those that raided for everything by the correct jumping through the right hoops. And having skills was replaced by collecting 'skills' and by the very fact of having the uber gear and uber skills and the abilitiy to listen to directions as you abcdefg'd your way through all that tough content made you the so-called 'elite' player. All you needed was large blocks of free time and you were on your way to stardom. So while I am not a wow lover or anything that follows that tried and true march to the endgame I do support the idea of helping those with less free time become 'uber' players. (I mean owner of the right skill sets and uber gear).
let me just say as a casual player who has done his share of raiding. The only plus to raiding is showing off. If there isn't anyone there to care about what you are wearing there is no point. This is why casuals get along so much better, have better attitudes, and generally don't spam chat channels with stupid nonsensical non-words like "newb" or "stfu" every minute while waiting for their raid party to form. Out of the two types of players it's definitely the Raiders that have the disadvantage. Oh, and casuals created the F2P market, since there are so many more of us around to support it i guess we will be seeing a new thread sometime soon about how we are somehow responsible for the death of the sub-only model.
I can't stand WoW guilds and their bitching and whining. This is probably why I never got any decent raid loot. Its nice that there are options besides sucking a mile of dick to get the epic gear you need.
Now that's the funniest thing I've heard all night :P
U are looking past something that even Blizzard hinted or even stated in some interviews.
WoW is a dieing game...it's on the last few meters of it's life. What they did with the patches is something very intelligent. "Ok players are leaving our game that means less money, how do we solve this?"
They made the game extremely easy to the point of "even special ppl could finish the game". Why? People won't quit because of lack of contect and new players would have something to do.
Practically consider the last patches Blizzard's last resort of Money-Milking. Again they know pritty well the game is practically dead..they just want to profit from it as much as they can till Titan comes out or is very close to be done. WoW will continue to lose player base to more modern MMO's
Even more, they made the game so easy to play..that the overall IQ of their playerbase indangers Blizzard's reputation....and we all know how we think of WoW players even if it's not 100% true..the mass majority of the community give it it's reputation..like in any game or activity.
"Hardcore"<-- play until you've sucked the lifeblood out of a game or even genre. I see all this talk about dedication and raid or die elitism, yet it's the casuals ruining the genre?
For me personally I've been there and done that long, long ago (pre-wow). By the time i tried WOW i was so burned out by kill this kill that, watch numbers tick away game-play. I didn't last a couple weeks in that game, or the others I tried at the time (05). I didn't play another MMO until AOC, even then I basically just played for the story content.
It would be interesting to see how many of these so called "hardcore" are also going around complaining there's nothing good out there, MMO's need to innovate rabble,rabble....!
Firstly, this would be better coming from someone who actually played from start to now really.
Secondly, the raids were a nightmare to arrange for most the player base. 40 people, all ready at the same time (usually too early or late for some players), all geared up, all with expensive flasks taking at least 3 hours only to wipe for a multitude of reasons. Some people have jobs, family etc. Whilst I played most nights and some days off, I just could not do this as a full time worker. So what if Blizz pandered to the majority over the "Elite" (a term which has a whole new meaning these days sadly)>
As for the game changing with each expansion, you gotta admit it was quite funny for people running normal BC quests and getting better green stat gear than those purple raid epics! And this happened with every expansion, so a lot of people thought, why bother with the endgame hassle? The only advantage going into a new expansion was romping through the first few levels with your uber, epic gear, only to finally start equipping those greens and starting the whole cycle all over again.
I am sure those that did manage to do all this end of game raiding must have felt enormous pride actually taking down that final raid boss, and well done all, really. But one point that seems to have been forgotten here, and that is ADD ONS. People moaning about how it gets easier and easier, how about turning all those add ons off eh? Then we will see who is "hardcore" heh. How many raiders did vanilla endgame with just the "basic" UI etc? And how many raiders these days have a UI that is almost alien to what the game actually looks like. A lot of the other MMO's mentioned here simply do not have all these addons. And for me at least, that is how I like to play, no addons to help me (or cheat) my way through the game, but play it as pure as it is, the way it was meant to. Try it, if you want a hardcore experience. And for those that moan you simply can't do endgame raids (or indeed PvP and many other aspects of the game), without, why not start a new post and whine about the pros and cons of wether you need them or not.
"Literate forum goers..." Although what this guy had to say was in one ear and out the other, I /really/ stopped caring as soon as he summarized the people whose voices are heard the most on forums as "literate".
Okay, so when you were 10 and Everquest first came out, you had plenty of time to sit there and gnaw on your desk over hour long corpse retrievals. I get it, you're "hardcore".
Okay, so when you were a teenager, WoW was HARD and took a long time just to organize a raid together (40 man) and then the act of successfully completing it was no small feat. ...I get it, you're "hardcore".
Okay, so now that you're an adult (20s - 30s), you're playing these games, sitting back thinking to yourself: "I liked it better when things were more time consuming - because the amount of TIME you dedicate to accomplishing ONE thing makes you HARDCORE."
But you know what? If you still have that kind of time on your hands, you're either A) Living in your parent's basement. Or Too ugly to have a social life. Or C) A combination of those traits (because social aptitude is important for developing any sort of relationship with REAL people).
Hardcore was great. But guess what? We're not 10 anymore. We're big peoplez now. We have wives (some of us with social skills, anyway). We have kids. We have JOBs. We don't live in our parent's basement. We pay bills, we attend social gatherings with neighbors and/or our kids school functions, etc etc.
And guess what? We're the MAJORITY. And if we want to be able to juggle our LIFE and still enjoy an MMO, it seems as though developers have heard our calls and have catered more to us then the basement dwelling, socially inept 30 year olds who haven't seen what their dong looks like in over 10 years due to the buildup of greesy fat rolls.
So, yeah, good luck on your "I'm Hardcore, I wish everyone was Hardcore" rant. It's falling on deaf ears and has been for almost half a decade now.
That is the most fantastic post I have read all year!
Firstly, this would be better coming from someone who actually played from start to now really.
Secondly, the raids were a nightmare to arrange for most the player base. 40 people, all ready at the same time (usually too early or late for some players), all geared up, all with expensive flasks taking at least 3 hours only to wipe for a multitude of reasons. S
But I also remember back in the days when MC was endgame, we've had little trouble to get 40 people together and we still had like 10-15 players waiting and ready to jump in if another player had to leave.
Raid-attendance was 10 times higher back in 2007+, servers were packed, epics were epic, guilds had 100s of players and it was a privilege to have a permanent slot on the MC roster.
Raiding went on way more disciplined than today. There were no housewifes with 50% afk time in the raid and 7fps in bossfights being dragged along. It wasn't a big thing to get 40 people fire-res buffed in UBRS by those mind controlled troll priests -today you can't even get 10 mann to click on the fish already provided!
In my later raiding time it was way more trouble to get 25 and later even 10 man raids going.
Storys of achievments in pve games have never impressed me, wow you can follow a set pattern. your a monkey who can press buttons in order as to get a treat. Now tell me you were an integral part of a pre toa relic raid in daoc or you were an officer in a full island conquer campaign in old planetside and then ill be impressed. The mmo community is pure crap nowadays aswell as the games.
Once again, we have a case of someone completely missing the point.
The issue with us "elitists" or "old schoolers" is not the assumption that any one who played post whatever expansion in WOW is a "Casual", but the resultant brainwashing by blizzard that this style of play is the only worthwhile style of play, and any "old" style of play is just outdated and stupid.
The problem is these people lap it up like its the nectar of the gods. They then spend countless hours on the forums mocking and arguing with old schoolers who are trying to tell them that there are OTHER WAYS TO PLAY MMOS.
The secondary issue at hand is one of what i feel is a growing sense of entitlment which extends outside of MMO's (i.e. i believe it is a societal issue manifesting itself in MMO's). These people are the true problem. They're the ones that don't understand that nothing worth having in life is gained easily. So then a cycle happens. These people complain that they pay $15/mo just like everyone else and shouldnt be penalized because they can only play 1 hour a day, 3 days a week or something along those lines. So, developers fold because they think that this is the core of the playerbase, and they make content extremely easy and quickly done. Now, said gamers hoot in pleasure, obtain their "phat lewtz" and less than a week later they're posting on the forums that the game is boring and "doesn't have enough content" and blah blah blah blah.
Even Blizzard identified the problem and realized they screwed the pooch by catering to the ultra casuals and tried to remedy the issue with cataclysm. All of a sudden running a dungeon required thought. It wasnt a guaranteed win. You couldnt just queue up half asleep and faceroll the content and collect your rewards. Bosses required thought, reactionary ability, spacial reasoning. Groups pulls occasionally required CC, etc.
What ended up happening? Blizzard had a massive divide and backlash in the community from people who supported it, and people who were used to their welfare epics who were pissed that they had to actually work for something.
And on a complete side note, i'm sorry, but vanilla wow the "epitome" of raiding difficulty? As an old EQ vet i just find that entire statement laughable. Perhaps within the realm of WOW i would agree with that statement. But even vanilla WOW raids were nothing to write home about. Truly the most difficult part was not the fights, but getting 40 people together to pull their collective heads out of their asses and do what they're supposed to. Unfortunately with the quality of the average player in WOW, this was a lot more difficult than in a game like EQ, which by nature of its difficult leveling process, and difficult content, weeded out mediocre players by max level. Sucky players simply couldnt make it to the end of the level curve, and as a result you could have a reasonable expectation that a max level character wasnt an imbecile and could perform at a basic level.
Best post in this thread by far, kudos!
Not only did you hit the nail on the head you've also mentioned the brainwashing Blizzard does, since Activision took over and Tigole left.
Truth of the matter the so called "forum casuals" aren't casuals they are just a bunch of whiny crybabies, complaining the whole day or trolling forums. This wouldn't be such a big problem if companies would just hear on the people actually playing the game and giving ingame feedback!
For me was ruined that way, their official forums are crap and filled with kids, former FPS players and other trolls (exactly like WoW). I also find the term hardcore regarding WoW raids laughable, gather 40 people and let your GUI or TS do the trick. Though I admit classic has been fun and didn't raid there much, cause I didn't like the people I had to deal with so I've worked on T-0.5 but at least the game felt like a world in Vanilla, now its a lobbygame for people who like to talk offtopic, troll, flame and couldn't bother less if they know how to play or not.
Back in BC I've felt happy, that I didn't raid seriously in Vanilla cause green gear topped epic ones. Found a former Everquest 1 guild joined them and we had fun, played for about 20 hs a week so thats pretty average at best , we've had 3 raiddays a week and did some amazing guild event stuff. Such as running instances with new fulltime members and getting them geared, or introducing them into the deeper mechanics. When the first nerfs including badge gear hit, everything wen't downhill fast. We for sure weren't a top 3 guild on the server but we've been a solid top 10 and our big big plus was, voicetools weren't requirement - loved that guild but 3.0 and especially the Wotlk-nightmare killed it.
Personally I think not only has Blizzard lost its mojo they've also lost any credibility by becoming the arrogant shareholders driven activisioned version they're now. Not only in terms of WoW overall in the shifting of the philosophy and especially quality.
I bet Titan will be targeted at the Farmville crowd.
This is also not a hardcore versus casuals discussion cause in the end it doesn't matter, you're either a dedicated, knowledgable and willing to learn player or not, if not, well then MMORPS aren't for you, period. No matter how much pseudocasuals are trying to turn this into a discussion of casuals versus hardcore or old schooolers.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
'Hardcore was great. But guess what? We're not 10 anymore. We're big peoplez now. We have wives (some of us with social skills, anyway). We have kids. We have JOBs. We don't live in our parent's basement. We pay bills, we attend social gatherings with neighbors and/or our kids school functions, etc etc.'
Some people such as myself had wives, children, a house, jobs, social skills, paid bills and all the rest of the jive back then as well, so suggesting that we were kids when 'hardcore was great' is a little short sighted as a generalisation.
I never considered doing MC or BWL to be particularly hardcore or challenging, but then perhaps that's from a viewpoint of an adult who used to dealing with real things in everyday life that are significantly more challenging than running 40 man raids in WOW. People seem to make a big thing of the requirement to get 40 people singing off the same song sheet and working together in a coordinated way to achieve success. Isn't that just good old teamwork which is a life skill that you just gain from experience?
I was in one of the top raiding guilds on my server at the time. It was a no bull organised outfit where everyone did their bit for the benefit of all, did what was asked and helped make it happen, yet it was in a friendly sociable environment and was genuinely good fun. Slackers, nerd rage merchants and the like were shown the door and rightly so. When raid leaders spoke, people listened. When people were asked to do something , they did it. If you were given a particular raid task you did it , and others would help out where necessary.
I didn't have a problem farming mats for FR gear , or turning up at MC as a reserve to make portals , food , do buffs etc for the 40 guys that were going in that night. I did it because I wanted to and I enjoyed being part of the whole thing with like minded people.
What has changed in my mind is the whole dynamic of gear. Gear/epics in WOW is little more than a mechanic for progression, so in essence is a tool required for progression and gaining it through the raid system can be considered as a time sink as well. Do other people remember being in a major city and seeing a player stood around half decked in epics and thinking 'wooooa , that guys got epics', be suitably impressed and done a quick inspect to have a look? Jeez, I was just happy to get parts of the dungeon set 1 and Tier 1 sets.
Now, you take a dump in the Stormwind crappers and an epic drops on your head. But nothing has changed though because it's still just fluff with stats on to make the next encounter up the chain that tiny wee bit more doable and achieveable. Has the dynamic of epics just changed from being items of arguable necessity for raid progression to just being items of aesthetic value and image? Or just a hook to get people playing that bit more so they can stand around in the local city with an 8 foot long sword and shoulder armor that has more lights on it than the main runway at an international airport?
Perhaps Blizzard has 'dumbed down' and made content easier and more accessable because they are catering to a greater demographic which to be fair pays their bills. Not everyone has the ability, time, inclination, motivation or otherwise to be part of a structured high end raid guild. Real life comes first and all that. I used to raid religiously but havn't since the days of Karazhan but life goes on. Just too much else going on in life and something's got to give.
Another thing to consider is , have Blizzard followed this course over time with WOW because as WOW has become more popular, the playerbase has changed and evolved with it?For better or worse is subjective but Blizz would be foolish to bite a main hand that feeds them. If a majority of people are in the 'casual' bracket, then they cannot afford to ignore them. If they didn't cater for that arguably major slice of the WOW population then that would have ended up biting them in the arse. In essence, WOW has changed becuase the people that play it have.
I have no probem with raiders doing their thing and receiving the just rewards for their efforts. Likewise I have no problem with 4.3 introducing 3 tiers of raid difficulty. I question the mindset of those that feel that the high end raid content is purely the realm of those that are able to enjoy it. I absolutely consider that the rewards are, but the actual encounters themselves are something that all players should be able to sample irrespective of playstyle, time available, skill, etc etc.
If people defeat a boss at 25 man level, then the feeling of self satisfaction and achievement should be focused on doing so at the highest level with likeminded people. Isn't it about enjoying the game with others of a similar ilk at the same level? Nobody is forced to grind mats, rep, gear etc etc to get to that highest of levels. If people have access to it at a lower level, with lower rewards then they still havn't achieved what the high end guys have, but they've paid the same amount to play the game so should be given the opportunity to experience that at a level that's on a par with the type of player they are. Spread the love and just enjoy what you do at whatever level it is. It's only a game and 6 months down the line it will all be 'old content' and 'on farm' for alts anyway.
Comments
I've noticed that, too. If i remember it right, there were even articles in which the author stated that he/she doesn't have time to play games. I agree that this article here was a good one, but overall the quality of articles and reviews have decreased over time.
It would be a start if the authors would have some first hand experience in what they write about or are at least somewhat connected to gaming at all.
At least one more than before this article was posted.
I can't stand WoW guilds and their bitching and whining. This is probably why I never got any decent raid loot. Its nice that there are options besides sucking a mile of dick to get the epic gear you need.
So agree with you.
Jymm Byuu
Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
So.... the article can best be summed up by watching the movie Idiocracy?
Have MMORPG's "Jumped the Shark"?
Before, it took 'a certain type of person' to even play MMORPG's. As computers, internet, and games have become more and more accessible to players of all walks of life... there has been a quality shift.
Gaming companies want 'everyone' to play, because of the $$$$$$$$$$$.
Gamers don't want everyone to play, because it really does water down the quality of player.
WoW is the prime example.
Most people say the game has gotten worse with each expansion.
And with each expansion, the game has been redesigned to attract more and more players... it has succeeded in that regard.
It's been the most recent expansion that finally 'crossed the line' or 'jumped the shark.
Thus, the decline in WoW population/sub's.
Ever think that some of these games fail because of the types of players that are attracted to them? A game could be amazing... but if you jump in and find that it has a terrible community and/or that the quality of player is well below 'par'... that's terminal.
I'm perfectly fine with playing an MMO that has hardmode raiding only a few top guilds will ever access. I'm fine with them getting titles for it, and nifty looking gear, and board rankings.
In fact, the only thing I object to is giving them gear with better stats than every other player in the game can get, because when they pvp in it or pve in groups doing other content, it puts everyone else at an completely unnecessary disadvantage.
These guys are already the best in the game, right? They don't need better gear than everyone else has access to, and it's not a required carrot to entice them to raid, either. Not for people who love doing the nigh-impossible and getting recognition for that with titles and unique looking gear.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
edit because I'm fumble fingered with the double posting today
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
J: How did raiding change from vanilla to Lich King?
R: For one it used to be forty man raids which, obviously, required forty competent, coordinated people. It was so much harder than nowadays. Strategy, gear, resists, and teamwork had to be at peak levels at all times to complete even the easiest raid. There were no Joe Schmoes raiding and winning. You had to show up every night and wipe over and over perfecting your guild’s strats, which weren’t instantly shared on the internet to help everyone through. It was the epitome of hardcore gaming, even outside of actual raids doing all the prep work.
I can't disagree with the blue text strongly enough. Many Blizzard devs have said that players have simply become much better at the game over the years, and although many players have written those statements off as excuses for how easy WoW had gotten at certain points, it's still the truth. My memories of 40 man raids are certainly not of competence and coordination, and I was part of a group who killed C'thun prior to Naxx's release. In any given 40 man raid, we had at least 5 chronic AFKers and 8 terrible players (with some overlap between the 2.) The rest simply had to compensate. And guess what? We and many other guild were able to. That was how forgiving the content was.
Add in the fact that we were all much worse players than we are today. Case in point: the healing leader and officer of our guild went on a several year haitus shortly after the release of BC. At the time, I looked up to him as a player. When he returned in WotlK while Ulduar was current content, I got to play with him again. After more than a few weeks to shake off the rust, he was still failing miserably at healing in our 10 man hard modes. In attempt to figure out what the problem was, I learned he was a "clicker." He had never used a skill by pressing his keyboard in his life. Not even 1-3. That simply wouldn't fly in WotlK, which is largely considered the "easiest" expansion. His healing output (since meters had become prevalent, which wasn't necessarily a good thing) was less than 33% of that of any other healer's. He had a lot of practice to do before he could properly heal normal mode Yogg, let alone hard mode encounters like Firefighter.
I agree that there's something to be said about simply constructing and organizing a 40 man raid, but that was one of the hardest parts. The smaller the raids get, the higher the responsibility for each individual. There's less room to carry the dead weight, and even less still in 10 mans, assuming of course the difficulty is toggled to be relatively the same, which wasn't always the case. Some of my most intense and difficult WoW raiding experiences definitely came from 10 man content: Karazhan within the first few months, 2 healing ZA bear mount runs within the first few months, Ulduar hard modes and Algalon.
The only thing that i will always be bitter towards and never forigve the modern playerbase of WoW is the fact that they killed off the world. Warcraft doesn't have a world anymore its just a dungeon crawler with all this instan queues and crap. Raid finder is just beating the dead horse even more, with that in place one will NEVER have to leave a city ever again after reaching max level.
I could put aside the whole casual/hardcore arguement aside but the fact is that this instant gratification crap is killing the idea of a persistant world... at least it has with WoW. If blizz doesn't have any plans to fix this anytime soon then I'm just going to delete my characters and never look back anymore... it is just infuriating!
"Literate forum goers..." Although what this guy had to say was in one ear and out the other, I /really/ stopped caring as soon as he summarized the people whose voices are heard the most on forums as "literate".
Okay, so when you were 10 and Everquest first came out, you had plenty of time to sit there and gnaw on your desk over hour long corpse retrievals. I get it, you're "hardcore".
Okay, so when you were a teenager, WoW was HARD and took a long time just to organize a raid together (40 man) and then the act of successfully completing it was no small feat. ...I get it, you're "hardcore".
Okay, so now that you're an adult (20s - 30s), you're playing these games, sitting back thinking to yourself: "I liked it better when things were more time consuming - because the amount of TIME you dedicate to accomplishing ONE thing makes you HARDCORE."
But you know what? If you still have that kind of time on your hands, you're either A) Living in your parent's basement. Or
Too ugly to have a social life. Or C) A combination of those traits (because social aptitude is important for developing any sort of relationship with REAL people).
Hardcore was great. But guess what? We're not 10 anymore. We're big peoplez now. We have wives (some of us with social skills, anyway). We have kids. We have JOBs. We don't live in our parent's basement. We pay bills, we attend social gatherings with neighbors and/or our kids school functions, etc etc.
And guess what? We're the MAJORITY. And if we want to be able to juggle our LIFE and still enjoy an MMO, it seems as though developers have heard our calls and have catered more to us then the basement dwelling, socially inept 30 year olds who haven't seen what their dong looks like in over 10 years due to the buildup of greesy fat rolls.
So, yeah, good luck on your "I'm Hardcore, I wish everyone was Hardcore" rant. It's falling on deaf ears and has been for almost half a decade now.
I used to be a "hardcore" player and then found it wasn't worth it.. it never has been worth it. So mark me as casual but I have no wish to ever let a game have the majority of my free time again. I'm not saying I don't still enjoy my mmos but when a game(or guild) dictates what times you "must" be on you've stepped past "fun" and into a black hole for your time. I like difficult but difficult shouldn't mean time consuming.(unless you chose to make it so). That's why I like the idea of the Raid finder.. raid on demand. It puts the ball in your court without making you commit to certain times. Good thing I'd say.
"Hardcore"<-- play until you've sucked the lifeblood out of a game or even genre. I see all this talk about dedication and raid or die elitism, yet it's the casuals ruining the genre?
For me personally I've been there and done that long, long ago (pre-wow). By the time i tried WOW i was so burned out by kill this kill that, watch numbers tick away game-play. I didn't last a couple weeks in that game, or the others I tried at the time (05). I didn't play another MMO until AOC, even then I basically just played for the story content.
It would be interesting to see how many of these so called "hardcore" are also going around complaining there's nothing good out there, MMO's need to innovate rabble,rabble....!
One word... Moderation.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I think its a good idea. There are a lot of people that could care less about gear or challenge and just want to see the content with their own eyes. Finish the story, so to speak.
FWIW, I always felt that Burning Crusade was WoW's best era.
It's really very simple.
When something is very difficult to accomplish and is only achieveable through a lot of blood sweat and tears, virtual or not, it's a hell of a lot more satisfying once you do finally overcome the challenge.
When things are made easier so that everyone and their mother can pug it to "experience" and muddle their way through content, it gets mind numbingly boring for those who actually want a challenge.
Difficulty is what creates and epic and heroic feeling to gameplay. No matter how hard devs try, all the scripted events with important lore figures will never, ever, feel as epic or heroic as actually overcoming an extremely difficult encounter that takes a great deal of coordination and skill to beat.
Good old days...wow?? Well I go back a bit (alot) before wow was concieved and I cringed in horror the first time I saw the 'hardcore' definition changing from skilled players to those that raided for everything by the correct jumping through the right hoops. And having skills was replaced by collecting 'skills' and by the very fact of having the uber gear and uber skills and the abilitiy to listen to directions as you abcdefg'd your way through all that tough content made you the so-called 'elite' player. All you needed was large blocks of free time and you were on your way to stardom. So while I am not a wow lover or anything that follows that tried and true march to the endgame I do support the idea of helping those with less free time become 'uber' players. (I mean owner of the right skill sets and uber gear).
dead horse move along
let me just say as a casual player who has done his share of raiding. The only plus to raiding is showing off. If there isn't anyone there to care about what you are wearing there is no point. This is why casuals get along so much better, have better attitudes, and generally don't spam chat channels with stupid nonsensical non-words like "newb" or "stfu" every minute while waiting for their raid party to form. Out of the two types of players it's definitely the Raiders that have the disadvantage. Oh, and casuals created the F2P market, since there are so many more of us around to support it i guess we will be seeing a new thread sometime soon about how we are somehow responsible for the death of the sub-only model.
Now that's the funniest thing I've heard all night :P
U are looking past something that even Blizzard hinted or even stated in some interviews.
WoW is a dieing game...it's on the last few meters of it's life. What they did with the patches is something very intelligent. "Ok players are leaving our game that means less money, how do we solve this?"
They made the game extremely easy to the point of "even special ppl could finish the game". Why? People won't quit because of lack of contect and new players would have something to do.
Practically consider the last patches Blizzard's last resort of Money-Milking. Again they know pritty well the game is practically dead..they just want to profit from it as much as they can till Titan comes out or is very close to be done. WoW will continue to lose player base to more modern MMO's
Even more, they made the game so easy to play..that the overall IQ of their playerbase indangers Blizzard's reputation....and we all know how we think of WoW players
even if it's not 100% true..the mass majority of the community give it it's reputation..like in any game or activity.
But you do agree, MMOs need to innovate.
{Wow}, So many points could be raised here....
Firstly, this would be better coming from someone who actually played from start to now really.
Secondly, the raids were a nightmare to arrange for most the player base. 40 people, all ready at the same time (usually too early or late for some players), all geared up, all with expensive flasks taking at least 3 hours only to wipe for a multitude of reasons. Some people have jobs, family etc. Whilst I played most nights and some days off, I just could not do this as a full time worker. So what if Blizz pandered to the majority over the "Elite" (a term which has a whole new meaning these days sadly)>
As for the game changing with each expansion, you gotta admit it was quite funny for people running normal BC quests and getting better green stat gear than those purple raid epics! And this happened with every expansion, so a lot of people thought, why bother with the endgame hassle? The only advantage going into a new expansion was romping through the first few levels with your uber, epic gear, only to finally start equipping those greens and starting the whole cycle all over again.
I am sure those that did manage to do all this end of game raiding must have felt enormous pride actually taking down that final raid boss, and well done all, really. But one point that seems to have been forgotten here, and that is ADD ONS. People moaning about how it gets easier and easier, how about turning all those add ons off eh? Then we will see who is "hardcore" heh. How many raiders did vanilla endgame with just the "basic" UI etc? And how many raiders these days have a UI that is almost alien to what the game actually looks like. A lot of the other MMO's mentioned here simply do not have all these addons. And for me at least, that is how I like to play, no addons to help me (or cheat) my way through the game, but play it as pure as it is, the way it was meant to. Try it, if you want a hardcore experience. And for those that moan you simply can't do endgame raids (or indeed PvP and many other aspects of the game), without, why not start a new post and whine about the pros and cons of wether you need them or not.
Too many alts!!
But I also remember back in the days when MC was endgame, we've had little trouble to get 40 people together and we still had like 10-15 players waiting and ready to jump in if another player had to leave.
Raid-attendance was 10 times higher back in 2007+, servers were packed, epics were epic, guilds had 100s of players and it was a privilege to have a permanent slot on the MC roster.
Raiding went on way more disciplined than today. There were no housewifes with 50% afk time in the raid and 7fps in bossfights being dragged along. It wasn't a big thing to get 40 people fire-res buffed in UBRS by those mind controlled troll priests -today you can't even get 10 mann to click on the fish already provided!
In my later raiding time it was way more trouble to get 25 and later even 10 man raids going.
Storys of achievments in pve games have never impressed me, wow you can follow a set pattern. your a monkey who can press buttons in order as to get a treat. Now tell me you were an integral part of a pre toa relic raid in daoc or you were an officer in a full island conquer campaign in old planetside and then ill be impressed. The mmo community is pure crap nowadays aswell as the games.
Best post in this thread by far, kudos!
Not only did you hit the nail on the head you've also mentioned the brainwashing Blizzard does, since Activision took over and Tigole left.
Truth of the matter the so called "forum casuals" aren't casuals they are just a bunch of whiny crybabies, complaining the whole day or trolling forums. This wouldn't be such a big problem if companies would just hear on the people actually playing the game and giving ingame feedback!
For me was ruined that way, their official forums are crap and filled with kids, former FPS players and other trolls (exactly like WoW). I also find the term hardcore regarding WoW raids laughable, gather 40 people and let your GUI or TS do the trick. Though I admit classic has been fun and didn't raid there much, cause I didn't like the people I had to deal with so I've worked on T-0.5 but at least the game felt like a world in Vanilla, now its a lobbygame for people who like to talk offtopic, troll, flame and couldn't bother less if they know how to play or not.
Back in BC I've felt happy, that I didn't raid seriously in Vanilla cause green gear topped epic ones. Found a former Everquest 1 guild joined them and we had fun, played for about 20 hs a week so thats pretty average at best , we've had 3 raiddays a week and did some amazing guild event stuff. Such as running instances with new fulltime members and getting them geared, or introducing them into the deeper mechanics. When the first nerfs including badge gear hit, everything wen't downhill fast. We for sure weren't a top 3 guild on the server but we've been a solid top 10 and our big big plus was, voicetools weren't requirement - loved that guild but 3.0 and especially the Wotlk-nightmare killed it.
Personally I think not only has Blizzard lost its mojo they've also lost any credibility by becoming the arrogant shareholders driven activisioned version they're now. Not only in terms of WoW overall in the shifting of the philosophy and especially quality.
I bet Titan will be targeted at the Farmville crowd.
This is also not a hardcore versus casuals discussion cause in the end it doesn't matter, you're either a dedicated, knowledgable and willing to learn player or not, if not, well then MMORPS aren't for you, period. No matter how much pseudocasuals are trying to turn this into a discussion of casuals versus hardcore or old schooolers.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
'Hardcore was great. But guess what? We're not 10 anymore. We're big peoplez now. We have wives (some of us with social skills, anyway). We have kids. We have JOBs. We don't live in our parent's basement. We pay bills, we attend social gatherings with neighbors and/or our kids school functions, etc etc.'
Some people such as myself had wives, children, a house, jobs, social skills, paid bills and all the rest of the jive back then as well, so suggesting that we were kids when 'hardcore was great' is a little short sighted as a generalisation.
I never considered doing MC or BWL to be particularly hardcore or challenging, but then perhaps that's from a viewpoint of an adult who used to dealing with real things in everyday life that are significantly more challenging than running 40 man raids in WOW. People seem to make a big thing of the requirement to get 40 people singing off the same song sheet and working together in a coordinated way to achieve success. Isn't that just good old teamwork which is a life skill that you just gain from experience?
I was in one of the top raiding guilds on my server at the time. It was a no bull organised outfit where everyone did their bit for the benefit of all, did what was asked and helped make it happen, yet it was in a friendly sociable environment and was genuinely good fun. Slackers, nerd rage merchants and the like were shown the door and rightly so. When raid leaders spoke, people listened. When people were asked to do something , they did it. If you were given a particular raid task you did it , and others would help out where necessary.
I didn't have a problem farming mats for FR gear , or turning up at MC as a reserve to make portals , food , do buffs etc for the 40 guys that were going in that night. I did it because I wanted to and I enjoyed being part of the whole thing with like minded people.
What has changed in my mind is the whole dynamic of gear. Gear/epics in WOW is little more than a mechanic for progression, so in essence is a tool required for progression and gaining it through the raid system can be considered as a time sink as well. Do other people remember being in a major city and seeing a player stood around half decked in epics and thinking 'wooooa , that guys got epics', be suitably impressed and done a quick inspect to have a look? Jeez, I was just happy to get parts of the dungeon set 1 and Tier 1 sets.
Now, you take a dump in the Stormwind crappers and an epic drops on your head. But nothing has changed though because it's still just fluff with stats on to make the next encounter up the chain that tiny wee bit more doable and achieveable. Has the dynamic of epics just changed from being items of arguable necessity for raid progression to just being items of aesthetic value and image? Or just a hook to get people playing that bit more so they can stand around in the local city with an 8 foot long sword and shoulder armor that has more lights on it than the main runway at an international airport?
Perhaps Blizzard has 'dumbed down' and made content easier and more accessable because they are catering to a greater demographic which to be fair pays their bills. Not everyone has the ability, time, inclination, motivation or otherwise to be part of a structured high end raid guild. Real life comes first and all that. I used to raid religiously but havn't since the days of Karazhan but life goes on. Just too much else going on in life and something's got to give.
Another thing to consider is , have Blizzard followed this course over time with WOW because as WOW has become more popular, the playerbase has changed and evolved with it?For better or worse is subjective but Blizz would be foolish to bite a main hand that feeds them. If a majority of people are in the 'casual' bracket, then they cannot afford to ignore them. If they didn't cater for that arguably major slice of the WOW population then that would have ended up biting them in the arse. In essence, WOW has changed becuase the people that play it have.
I have no probem with raiders doing their thing and receiving the just rewards for their efforts. Likewise I have no problem with 4.3 introducing 3 tiers of raid difficulty. I question the mindset of those that feel that the high end raid content is purely the realm of those that are able to enjoy it. I absolutely consider that the rewards are, but the actual encounters themselves are something that all players should be able to sample irrespective of playstyle, time available, skill, etc etc.
If people defeat a boss at 25 man level, then the feeling of self satisfaction and achievement should be focused on doing so at the highest level with likeminded people. Isn't it about enjoying the game with others of a similar ilk at the same level? Nobody is forced to grind mats, rep, gear etc etc to get to that highest of levels. If people have access to it at a lower level, with lower rewards then they still havn't achieved what the high end guys have, but they've paid the same amount to play the game so should be given the opportunity to experience that at a level that's on a par with the type of player they are. Spread the love and just enjoy what you do at whatever level it is. It's only a game and 6 months down the line it will all be 'old content' and 'on farm' for alts anyway.