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World of Warcraft: End-Game Review
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
We originally wanted to do our customary re-review of World of Warcraft. Given the timing - Burning Crusade is coming - we decided to hold off. Instead, we offer you a review of the spot so many people are in: the end-game. Find out what Garrett Fuller thinks of where the game stands for level 60 characters.
;) Players who have reached level sixty can work on several things for their character in the end game of Warcraft. The two biggest that come to mind are PvP and raids. Warcrafts end game is not based on achieving skills for your character, but on getting loot that will boost your characters abilities. Simply put, it is all about your gear. A player who is all geared up in epic armor and carrying an epic weapon will crush their opponents whether PC or NPC. I know, some NPCs are huge bosses that are designed for raids, but on a solo level, players who have acquired the best loot are extremely strong opponents. This dynamic has forced many (if not all) players to work on getting high-end gear for their characters. Using this gear based system Blizzard gives its players few choices to get the best armor and weapons. |
You can read more here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
What you could have mentioned/added are the 1.12 changes (bg queues are dramatically cut down now), the 2 opene world pvp scenarios.
Blizzard has also announced that they won't add any more 40 man raids in the expansion. Max cap is going to be 25 from now on. They are also revamping the honor system.
and when it comes to the not so long anymore logon queues: I wonder if that isn't because many "vet" players have simply quit/paused....
Nice write-up! You have clearly played WoW for a while, and it is striking how similar our views are on the end-game. As for "what to do at 60", I would add 1 more favorite pasttime...ALTS. No kidding. Most of my friends spend more time levling alts than playing their mains. We would have severaL raids a week, and then everyone would basically level their alts in the downtime. I found this fun for a while, but now am hoping for a deeper game experience with some upcoming tiles like LotRO (pls pls pls be good
I would also add that your WoW experience at 60 depends completely on how fun your guild is. One night when our server was down, we all leveled undead rogues to 7-8 and raided Menethil Harbour. There must have been 35 of us causing all kinds of grief and confusion...but it was super fun. And yes, 35 level 8's can kill several level 40's
Never review games again please!
7 is not low :S
10 = perfect
9 = amazing
8 = great
7 = good
6 = above average
5 = average
4 = below average
3 = poor
2 = horrible
1 = worst thing ever ever ever!
As you see you've rated things you thought wernt good at a 7 :
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Don't click here...no2
I'd give WoW a 6, and the reviewers ability to rate games a 0.
The review was pretty dead on most of the time, though I dissagree about the CS rating you gave. Customer Service on WoW is far better than any other MMO I have played, personally I've never waited for more than an hour on my full server, that is good considering, and ussually the bug is fixed immediatly after they discover it.
They've invested all their resources into more end game instances so people can raid all over again to gain "Super Man" power suits. No focus on community - you're still forced to join a guild regardless if they're a bunch of idiots or not to get what you need.
I spent years raiding in other games... so I can't help but think you are fools for thinking this is what end game is supposed to be. Raiding just for gear is boring compared to what's out there. What do you do when your guild isn't raiding?
The reviewer said a lot of people only log on to raid. WTF? Where IS the end game? What keeps them playing? You answered it reviewer... NOTHING.
My advice to anyone playing WoW is go out there and play a few more
games. Learn what you are missing and how you've been cheated.
There isn't even any real PvP in WoW. PvP = Player vs Player... not Faction vs Faction. And excuse me... but capture the flag is for kids... you play games like that at lvl 20 to learn PvP in other MMOs.
Imagine, if you will.... stats that are pretty much the same across the board at lvl 60. That it takes skill rather than "power overwhelming" to win at PvP combat- where combat isn't over so quickly. Oh, sorry... that would ruin the ganker's fun. That idea wouldn't fly. They will continue to mess up PvP and FvF even with the expansion.
If you weren't pressured to join a guild after 60 levels of soloing... to learn overnight how to work with others. Where getting to 60 wasn't so easy an 8 year old can do it in 2 weeks (there is one in my guild who did his family are friends in RL).
All the good PvP guilds are on other games... WoW is useless PvE raiding and watered down PvP. To be a pure PvPing guild on WoW means you get rolled in BGs by people with raiding gear.
There are a bunch of things that sound a big gong in my head that say WRONG ... but it's easy to play and has the Blizzard name behind it... so it's popular.
Starcraft was the best 50 bucks I ever spent... but now that the old WoW, Diablo, and SC developers are gone and Vivendi owns Blizzard... I can totally see why the game is starting to suck. I played beta and it wasn't this bad. They hired Tigule and Forer... I remember them from EQ - anything they touch is sullied by their "raid or die" (Tigule's sign over his work desk) and "pallies should heal me not tank" (Forer - a warrior in EQ) mentality. If you played EQ you'll remember.
Currently playing: Eve, DAOC, Warhammer
Games I've beaten: AC, AO, CoH, DAOC, D&D, EQ, EQ2, FFXI, FlyFF, GW, Horizons, L2, Ryzom, Shadowbane, SpaceCowboy, SWG, UO, WoW
Stay away from: Eudemons Online, DNL, and Roma Victor
Though it is my understanding that the honor/reward system used for the bg's will be completely different with the expansion, as well as other things that will completely change the nature of the game (difficulty settings for dungeons, 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 arenas, the new talents and abilites). The review to come with the expansion will be very interesting.
Let me preface this by saying that everything in this post that follows has nothing to do with me being objective of this man's review, or being a current Warcraft player and loving the game. My comment is completely unrelated to the score the game was given, or how much I love it.
My beef with this review is simple: It reads like it was written by a two year old. What is your objective? You wrote a review geared towards players that are already playing the game, which is painfully obvious with your inclusion of a disclaimer on the state of Battle Ground queues.
Seriously, what is this crap? How the hell did you get hired to write a review with spelling and grammar like that? Did you not even edit this?
I certainly hope this was written on a volunteer basis and that you weren't compensated for it in any shape or form, kudos included.
The review isn't badly written, but the end level game is driving people away and I think the things that are driving people away should score less than 7 if your scale starts at 0 and goes to 10.
I also suggest trying the RP servers. There is no enforcement of the server rules and no RP there at all.
I have a problem.
It's not a problem anyone, least of all blizard, can resolve. Maybe I could resolve it using a combination of Ritalin and Modafinil ... but lets not get ahead of things.
I am in love with WoW. I think games and environments like these are the greatest thing to have happened to games, VR and entertainment as such. I think the choices made by Blizzard, from an engineers perspective, have been great.
However.... while I like PvP, PvE, world design, storyline, even some instances, I am for several reasons unable to compete at high level instancing. I get severe incapacitating migraines from places like ZG. As soon as group pressure hits me, I snap like a gnome baby's neck. I have tried and tried again but my chances are zero. I am, as such, incapable of competing in the high level instancing and end game of WoW.
I have a 60 Rogue now, fairlky OK equipped, but I restarted with a Priest. I am loving it, doing the same shit again. And when BC hits I probably will be tasting the pleasures of a Blood Elf Paladin. I will level em all up, Blizzard gets money from me.. ohh well.
But if Blizzard did give a damn, they'd better listen to me. I am not a casual gamer, scoring over 10 hours a day on average on WoW, SL and some other stuff. I am here for the long haul - and the realization that I am screwed inside WoW, and will never be able to enter the end game, like a cripple in awheel chair unable to fully experience the pleasures of disneyland, annoys me quite a bit. I escape the real world in MMO's to be able to enjoy not having failed at a lot of stuff. My mind has betrayed me many, many times. I can't compete in the job arena, and that competition ain't getting any prettier and I am not getting any younger. I even know Blizzard can't change much about it.
So I *hope* and *pray* that blizz is gonna make de facto losers like me happy with BC. I hope that at level 70 I will indeed be able to do something meaningful in ZG or MC or AQ for a change. For if I cant, well, I am not gonna be happy. Imagine me investing a year worth of effort at this. I could have learned Japanese in that year and be sitting at home, unemployed, fluent in Japanese. Imagine that.
Let's keep it simple.. People are addicted to wow, not because it's a good game, but because of the lack of other mmorpg's. World of warcraft is the new trend.. People get hooked on it quite easy.
Ive played it since it came, even before that, in the beta versions.
But after 1 year, it got kinda boring. I mean.. Ive done everything, seen everything and probably completed about 80% of the game if you count the important things, such as end game instances, pvp and reputation farming.
The expansion gives us lvl 70, new races (not any new classes really, wich really pissed me off), flying mount etc.. But the game will still feel the same.. Nomatter what they change..
I can't say much more.. It's a good game.. sure.. But it's not THAT good.
It doesn't have that feeling that a mmo(RPG) should have.
Some nice looks, some fun stuff, but in the end, it doesn't feel so good that some people tend to make it.
Im just saying what im feeling, and to be honest.. ive been around since the top of the dawn and I can't really FEEL any differences in the game from the start to the presence..
/Gif new mmorpg with more feeling, more story, more unique characters/looks and such!
Oh yeah! DUff man!
On the minus side: I agree with the other posters above who commented that it doesn't seem right to give a 7 for something that the text described as weak. This site offers comparative ratings for games, so this can skew side-by-side comparisons of games. Out of curiosity (if a site staffer reads this) - is there a set of guidelines for reviewers setting out things like whether an average score should be a 5 or 7? If not, it might be something to consider.
Also, I don't follow what the reviewer considers Roleplaying. I'm unsure why he cites "pop culture references" and in-jokes as promoting a roleplay feel.
The last part of the "Fun" section doesn't make sense to me. "PvP is certainly fun when it is going on, what is not fun is waiting in a queue to enter a Battle Ground only to find your team is losing and get kicked out again to get back in the queue. That last sentence may sound like a lot, but for anyone who has been there, it makes perfect sense." What's meant by "a lot" - a lot of time spent, a lot of steps to go through to get in a fight, or what? It's awfully unclear grammar.
Still, the review was broadly informative about WoW's (arguably) most controversial aspect.It's just that as I mentioned above, there are places where I really don't understand what the reviewer actually means. I hope this is useful constructive criticism.
Dasharr Eandall, SWG, Smuggler/Pistoleer (retired after 2.5+ years)
I understand that the reviewer is an unbiased independant who has played 100's of mmorpg's over the years. Judging by the high scores he gave WoW there must be some really bad one. Is Wow the best game out there, possibly! Depends on what you look for in a game. Personally there is one thing that I look for in a game and that one thing is by far more important that all others. On a scale of 1-10 it is an 18 and that is friends.
That aside I do not like to raid, it leaves me cold. 20 or 40 people, consisting of 1 raid leader, 25% wannabe raid leaders all expressing their opinion on why things are going wrong and 25% of people who do not know what they are doing. That leaves 50% of the people who actually know what they are doing and even then some of them are yelling at the kids, getting yelled at by the spouse, kicking the cat or talking on the phone. Next I do not like PvP, don't really know why, I just don't care for it.
So where is my end game? WoW had promissed end game for the solo player. I like to solo and yap on the chat channels to my friends. I like 5 player instances (I wish the groups were 6 people instead like EQ). But Blizz has not given me and my style of player anyway at all of even getting some good gear, as this is the benchmark that Blizz has set.
Blizzard has done a good job with WoW but it is not the be all and end all of games. EQ thought that and look what WoW did to EQ. When LotRO comes out I'll be gone, with all my friends.
Unless there is a change and WoW gives me a reason to stay.
so, how can you write all that, and then give it a 7? i mean, you are rating the end game, people are already level 60. ratings should not be an average of 1-60 + endgame, it is only endgame we are looking here. well, EQ2 also has a 7 for value. does it mean that we can also say for EQ2 value that is near non-existant?
a 4 would have been much more acurate.
same happens with fun. 8? how can the end game of wow be as fun as Guild Wars or Ryzom? come on, Anarchy Online, one of the best MMORPGs made, has an 8 on fun, same as WoW end-game
. playing WoW endgame is as fun as playing DAoC and 2 points more fun than EQ2.
but i know where lies the problem, on the RP section we have this.
so, for you 7 is a low score
. yet, on many other game's reviews, when your mates say a game has a good RP, they give it a 7.
but there is more. you dont have much RP experience, so you give it a 7. why? is a 7 the minimum? in fact, it seems that 7 is such a low score... wow should get much more...
and the best part. so, at level 60, the RP almost goes away. how can that score a 7 then? you know Ryzom gets a 6? if 7 is almost nonexistant RP, what is happening on Ryzom?
[quote] Graphics: 8
While many people may disagree with me on this score, I think there is one major piece missing from WoW’s graphics, customization.[/quote]
I agree here. I'd also give an 8.
[quote] Sound: 9
The sound in World of Warcraft is great.[/quote]
It's also repetitive, very much so. I'd give it a 6.
[quote] Role-Playing: 7
I do not have much of a role-playing experience [/quote]
Then why even rate the RP category? We value reviews based on our value of the reviewer's opinion. That said, I have played on RP servers to end game, and I have discovered that there is no RP in the eng game, at all. What little RP you can get by joining an RP guild goes out the window the minute they begin to focus on raids. I'd give it a big fat 0.
[quote]Value: 7
very repetitive. [quote]
I agree with everthing except the number. Repetition gets a 1/10 from me.
[quote] Fun: 8
As mentioned in the Value section, the end-game really slows things down for players. The leveling up part of WoW offers tons of different zones and areas to explore. Once players reach the end game they seems much more limited to running instances and grinding for faction to advance their character. Exploring these areas for the first time can be a lot of fun, however on the fifteenth attempt at a boss the fun factor drops a little bit for players. PvP is certainly fun when it is going on, what is not fun is waiting in a queue to enter a Battle Ground only to find your team is losing and get kicked out again to get back in the queue. That last sentence may sound like a lot, but for anyone who has been there, it makes perfect sense. [/quote]
Again, I agree with the comments but not the number. PVP becomes a race to see who can give their life to the BG's all day for the longest stretch of time, and almost always favors people who got their gear in crappy PVE instances. Again 1/10.
[quote]Community : 8
. This can make for a sometimes immature mix of players. It is frustrating when you are almost through and instance and on the final boss when some kid says, “Gotta run and do my homework…” as they log off. While these circumstances may not happen all the time, they do happen enough to get players upset.[/quote]
Whatever fanboi
The community is about 90% preteens who don't know how to play their class. Sure, not all of them make it to endgame, so this factor is reduced. But, you have to tolerate Chuck Norris jokes all day every day in WOW, even on RP servers where OOC chat is bannable. Again 1/10.
LAG: Don't care. My system is a beast. Not averaged.
[quote] Customer Service
Blizzard’s customer service crew has always seemed like they do not exist to me. When a ticket is put in it usually takes several hours to get a response. However I have heard stories of guilds wiping on major bosses do to lag or bugs and the customer service team has rewarded them with the proper loot as if the boss was killed. That being the case I guess customer service would be considered outstanding [/quote]
Yet another fanboi-ish response. Try calling their cancellation hotline and talking about how FUBAR PVP is, or how they promissed hero classes at lauch, or how PVP was better BEFORE HK's, or how you don't want raids and you're not buying the expansion, or how WOW was better at launch than it is today! The way the Customer rep spoke to me is the reason I cancelled my account. 0/10.
Overall: 2.4/10
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
TBC will make or break the game as it's dev team although it's streamlining the exp for casual use, they have at least take the PVP aspect as seriusly as the PVE looking at what TBC offers, i feel they are bringing back the orginal feel of the game and Blizzard's 'style' so to speak..
WoW is still a good game, however due to the volume of players and profit margins, it had lost it's way, hopfully TBC will put it back on track, if it doesn't let us hope any new MMO learns from WoW's mistakes and not follow this imo faliling form..
Theres no such thing as 'the perfect' MMO, but the first thing to sucess is a balance of game styles to suit all types of players..
Only a few months till TBC, will it save whats left? Lets see..
Bring on the WARRRRGGHH!
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Don't click here...no2
Umm, yeah. Sorry but after reading the review I don't get it either.
I don't play WOW so I was interested to see what was said here. But for a review about "WOW at 60" you seem to have tallied the final score based on everything but end-game. In fact the only thing I learnt about PVP from your review was that it involves a lot of waiting in queues. And basically Raids = repetative and annoying.
I also don't understand the graphics score. General look of the game aside, you go on to bag out the character customization - possibly the most important thing to most players when talking about end-game - and yet award an 8
So if Waiting in queues while doing repetative and annoying activities with people who all look the same = 7.9 out of 10... Then I want what you're smoking
Based purely on your commens and the purpose of the review I'd be putting a 5/10 Tag on this one, max.
Well this review is a joke, and here's why:
I was on an overpopulated server, with bad lag and wait times, and took the opportunity to transfer to a new server with the promise of no lag or wait times. What I got was a low population server that is 2 hours off my time zone, so I am no longer playing with people in my time zone, the lag is worse as the low population servers do not get the equipment upgrades. When I called blizzard to switch me back, they want 25 dollars per player and I have 8 60's. 200 dollars to go back to what I had is ridiculous! There was no warning that the new server was in a different time zone.
You cannot review a game from one of wow's best servers which you fail to mention the name of, which is probably upkept by blizzard for review purposes, did you pick it or did blizzard assugn you for the review?
On a low population server it is near impossible to find a good raid group or guild, the guilds I have recruited to turned out to be drunk drug addicts that swear and tell sexual jokes. They are mostly looking for females and not recruiting others to share loot with.
The language and behavior on my server is on the level of a 7th grade school bathroom and the blizzard crew does nothing to remove these disgusting people, they only suspend accounts 3 days and the same people are back again spamming and ruining the experience for others.
This is why I have levelled 8 60's, and now that I have them with no groups or guilds to play with and the fact that I am not a big fan of pvp, I will be quitting the game, even if I found a guild that wasn't filled with disgusting language and talk of drugs and sex, the sitting there taking orders deal is very similar to work and not playing a game, blizzard, realize that people need a way to solo the higher instances or you need a system where 40 random people are assigned an instance and go in, without having to join a disgusting guild and answereing personal questions and using personal voices and software, like CT raid assist and Teamspeak, that are always required, these programs can be used to gather personal information and are not safe like the wow server system to hide origins and personal information.
I give the wow end game a 2 out of 10 at best......
Bad review of a bad game.
I agree for the most part about what you said when it comes to the leveling experience being okay, but then you lose me. I think the end game experience is the equivelent of listening to a skipping record. How can you review a game as good when the end game is just repeating the same thing over and over again? Nothing is fun when taken to that extreme.
And the score I disagree with the most is the "Community".
What the heck does this mean?
"While many players consider the WoW community no better than Sesame Street, I do not believe it is that bad. There are good players to be found on every server"
???????????
Huh? So what if there are good players to be found on every server? Aren't you supposed to take the community as a whole to come up with your score?
If you met a couple of nice people in France but had to put up with the 99% of them being snot ass elitist jerks, would you give France's community an 8?
Every game there is has a few nice people on their servers. So does every MMO out there now get an 8?
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Bring on the WARRRRGGHH!
World of Warcraft IS its lvl 1-59 game for most of the players. But it feels so... "not enough" to just stop there knowing about all the tier 1-3 sets who have such juicy stats. Only, raiding 40man instances is a bloody chore and boring beyond belief. It _can_ be ok if everybody is on the same page and you're not doing it for the 50th time, but thats rare.
Going from 1-60 is the peroid you can get really addicted to the game i belive, then it just turns into keeping you from ever reaching that carrot you so badly want. Ilogged on my alt after being away from wow for over 2 months, i really wanted the epic wolf mount from the AV battleground. I entered AV at neutral rep level (lowest), had fun for 2 games but i didnt stop playing untill i had the bloody mount (at exalted rep) wich took me a week or more! I got an epic ring and an epic offhand too.. fired up the mount and ran around for 2 mins as a happy idiot.
The end-game simply does not live up to the name Blizzard. Its not entertainment and is only for the most hard-core. It's supposed to have a really epic feel but you need a creative mind to really see that in these 40man dungeons and be able to look past its flaws and boredom.
All players need to be able to get what they want in a game like this... The hardcore can just do it again with a different class/faction/guild etc.