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[Column] World of Warcraft: A New Players Impressions of World of Warcraft
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
I’ve been playing MMORPGs for most of my gaming life. As someone in their mid-twenties, I can’t claim to have been around for years and years losing myself in these virtual worlds, but I feel like I have a pretty good pulse on the industry as a whole. My MMO experiences first started with the original EverQuest, a game I would watch one of my brothers play when I would go to visit him. Eventually, he let me make my own character on his account, and then even paid for an account of my own so that I could enjoy the game for myself.
Read more of David Jagneaux's Exploring Azeroth: A New Player's Impressions of World of Warcraft.
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Comments
The only *new* player to World of Warcraft is someone who hasn't ever played an MMO before. That was what was unique about WoW when it took off... a good chunk of it's players had never seen an MMO before in their life. Once you've played a dozen or so MMOs, you can never truly be *new* to any MMO ever again.
I submit this entire website as proof. Rarely has anyone entered into a new game without the baggage of other MMOs influencing them. It's always a comparative... just like this article is.
Although you are correct I have to agree with the writer that WoW is a very polished deep experience. There was more cohesion in that world than any other I have played in. That was especially true of Vanilla WoW. Game makers should start build worlds again, nut just satisfying MMO market analysis.
The one thing WoW does better than anyone else is pve raid progression, if I had the time to get involved in an endgame raiding guild I'd be right into it.
All the other features of the game appear to be done better elsewhere now, in particular in games such as GW2 or TSW.
WoW has the same issues that sadly Lotro has, there's only so much gilding you can put on the lily. I tried resubbing to WoW on hearing of aussie servers, but I wish they would make aussie servers for GW2 rather than WoW, I just cant go back to that WoW questing, combat and models. While I used to find WoW's quirky humour cute and engaging, now it just feels childish and over-acted.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Amen
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I'm leveling a new Tauren Paladin at the moment and having such a blast. I am truly jealous of the author's never having played WoW though. Getting to experience this game for the first time is truly a great thing.
WoW pretty much defined what a polished MMO could be. Especially with the contrast to EQ2 which released right before WoW and suffered from the "MMO clunkiness" oh so many games did and still do suffer from. The animations felt good, the responsiveness of controls and movement were tight. The overall feel was just much better than any MMO had been before that.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
new dances!!
GOT ME SO EXCITED!!
This x100000
My first two 3D MMOs were AO, followed by SWG (also dabled in EQ and CoH a bit, but never stuck around). The first time I ever saw a buddy of mine playing WoW, i couldn't believe it was an MMO. The animations were fluid, the framerate was a solid 60+, every action was super responsive, the image was vibrant, there was no pop up or stuttering what so ever....i swear I thought he was lieing to me when he told me it was WoW......i couldn't believe an MMO could perform that well and be so polished.
The sad thing is, thats still a check in WoW's column when compared to most MMOs released since 2005....
Heck, even Wildstar...a game that arguably looks worse than WoW since the WoD GFX upgrade, runs like shit with all settings on low unless you exceed the recommended system specs (forget playing with minimum specs unless you are happy with 15 fps).
Yeah, for sure! Many detractors will pick on WoW for having awful graphics but in my personal opinion it has held up to the test of time really well. It's not a perfect MMO by a long shot, but I've gone back to it more than any other MMO I play which says a lot since I have played and still casually play a ton of MMOs. Heck, I have a lifetime sub to TSW and barely login to it, not to hate on that game or anything.
WoW is still a gorgeous game and one of my favorite things to do in any MMO ever is still flying around in Epic Flight Form just soaking up the scenery.
New player to WoW too here (2 weeks old) and i am having very good fun.
I am taking it slow and "smelling the roses along the way" approach.
Yes, the mechanics, classes, combat, quest don't feel as something new and exciting to me, but i am impressed how much content and exploration i have in front of me. The atmosphere of the zones is immersive , something that bypasses the "outdated" graphics in old zones
I rolled a toon of each race and did all the starting areas and my plan is to exprerience and explore all the conent as i level up.
i have a map with zones by level and decided wich toons will take each route, and above 60 i will probably go on to max level with one horde and one alliance.
i am pretty excited with this project.
All-time fave : City of Heroes/Villains
Played and returning from time to time : GW2, Tera, CO
Played: Aion, Archeage, DCUO, FXIV:ARR, Rift, SWTOR, TSW, Vindictus, Wildstar
Playing atm : WoW, Hearthstone, Tera, GW2
as someone who played WOW before but only got up to level 20 i just went back and my impressions are ... god damn this game is so dumbed down even more than the last time i played it.
look i understand making a game accessible but basically dumbing down combat to spamming one key over and over is not making the game accessible its making the game stupid and dull to play.
as a shaman who is level 25 now I literally can play WoW with one hand
1 = lightning bolt
combat for me is this ...
1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1
dungeon running is this
1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1...1
or maybe if im healer spec
5 = my heal
5......5......5......5......5......5......5......5......5......5......5......5......5......
That was the case in low level vanilla as well....not sure why you think WoW has been "dumbed down even more than the last time u played at lvl 20".
My ret pally's rotation was judgement, crusader strike, hammer of wrath at 10%, till lvl 70 in BC....
As much as I wish that were the case I think its likely someone starting today can still look forward to at least another ten years of WoW .
It's so bad now you can go bare handed and auto attack and feel like a super hero :P
sadly people still think WoW is relevant in this day and age. Its a has been its declining population shows this. Look at the statistics, if it were a businesses profit margins they'd be declaring bankruptcy.
I played WOW until recently and found I hated this new expansions prelaunch. The changes made to the characters abilities made it feel like they were no longer the characters I leveled over the last ten years. Forget it, I went and started in FFXIVARR. Its more fun, better players and far better looking and the patches are as large as WoW expansions, but free... go figure.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
I clicked on this article because I'm somewhat of a neophyte when it comes to WoW as well. I never jumped on early, being enraptured with EQ still, along with SWG, EVE, Earth and Beyond, and World War II Online (yep, had FIVE MMOs subbed at the same time).
After a few years, I became one of those WoW-haters. I guess because it was cool? I still hadn't played it...in fact avoided it.
But then, about a year ago, being bored I decided to check it out finally. With free account game loaded, I raised a few characters to the limits. I think it's about 25?
Anyway. I really enjoyed the graphics, the feeling of fantasy about it, the whimsy. But the gameplay was really boring to me, and I set the game aside. It's not for me.
I may not like the game, but I'm no longer a hater. I see why people like it, and kudos to Blizzard for making a game that people enjoy. More power to any developer that can garner a sustainable audience who finds enjoyment in their virtual worlds.
You might of had a shred of credibility but you had to bring up FFXIV..... Sure if all you care about is graphics and music ARR is amazing but the gameplay is terrible.
If you like to pvp at all you mine as well throw ARR in a blender because it has no sustenance at all in that department. But hey SE finally added the amazing feature called "jumping" to one of their MMO's, too bad the invisible walls everywhere complete cancel that out. I guess adding a Z axis is too advanced in 2014, maybe they need some help from the EQ devs back in 1999.
No matter how much I love Guild Wars 2 and ArcheAge, WoW is still my first MMO and the game most of my friends still play.
One of my friends recently gave me game time, and we've been hanging out together on our 90s, just getting the new quest line done and doing transmog runs. I've also been making sure I get the occasional dungeon or battleground in so I can get a feel of what's to come for WoD.
After hearing "Kill.Loot.Equip" in the presentation yesterday, I am one happy camper.
The removal of hit and expertise, adding raid tokens that convert to an item of your class, no more reforging, and no more upgrades are all things I've been hoping would happen for a long time.
Use of this article please?
Can we really use the term "Polish" when they utilize the very low end graphics and at least in the normal start-up there is absolutely nothing that needed to be even tested to polish.
However in stating that they did have very broken quests which i am sure have been fixed by now but claiming the "most polished" i guess is fair at this point but not in reality based on when the content was released.
I will admit there were a few really good quests but so happens those very best were the exact ones that were broken when i played,so kind of ruins the experience when your best is botched badly and knowing that they have a test server to iron out the prominent bugs before release.
The most polished is actually FFXI,i played it on release and never after 10 years did i ever experience a bug,no way could Blizzard ever make that claim.Also at the time FFXI had no test server either,but then again why test content ,in case of Blizzard if you are just going to release your best content bugged anyhow?
There is literally no excitement to the start of playing Wow,it actually encourages one ,a vet mind you to forget the game and move on to a more exciting start because simply walking up to a yellow ! is quite boring.However what Blizzard did do was make the game very simple to an introductory gamer,simple to grasp,simple to play the combat,you can literally play with your eyes closed and just hit hotbar 1 2 or 3 for quite some time.
I just find it extremely odd that a player that played mostly Blizzard games never played Wow ,i find it extremely unbelievable.The timing of this article on Wow a very old game,coinciding with mass Blizzard advertising right now feels a bit more as to the why.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.