Ive been interested in this game for a while, and im a fan of online RPG’s. Im wondering if there are any big reasons why I shouldnt start playing it right now (player base vanishing, game gets too old too fast etc).
I work full time now and will be doing full time school in september… will I be able to enjoy the game if im only able to play for a few hours a week? Also i read somewhere that theres an expansion coming out, im just curious if i would have to buy this, or just download a patch. thanks for all your replies.
One reason you shouldn’t start playing it now; as you say, the Expansion pack’s coming out soon. Not only a good time to get into the game, it’ll also bring in a lot of other new people so you should be easily able to find people your level to play with. The Expansion pack you would have to buy if you wanted to be able to use it’s content, and it’s probably that they’ll be selling some full game + expansion bundles, so you could get the whole kit and caboodle at once. You can just buy the base game and still continue to play when the expansion goes online; you just won’t have access to much of the new content.
Will you be able to enjoy the game if you only get to play it a bit? Yes, i’d say so. The difficulty, though, is restricting yourself to those few hours a week; it’s pretty addictive.
That’s true, but the expansion also adds a lot of level 60-70 content which can’t be accessed right away. Also, if you haven’t played at all, the expansion may be too much if you find this game is not for you. The community is still strong, and you will find lots of people starting new Draenei and Bloodelf alts when the expansion comes out, so it is really up to you if you want to start now or wait.
Compared to other MMORPGs, WOW is more accessable to casual gamers, with some caveats. You can play to max level solo if you want, although it is easier with certain classes like hunter and rogue. You can play in short sittings, although most instances take longer periods of time. I assume you have self discipline, or else you might find yourself staring at the screen for days at a time, until they shut down your power due to unpaid bills ;).
Blizzard will almost definitely sell the expansion in stores, but AFAIK they haven’t anounced if there is also a downloadable version.
The player base is 6 million strong and still growing, as far as I know. It’s already the largest US-based MMORPG out there and it’s only getting bigger. Blizzard claims that at any given time, there are 500,000 subscribers logged in. The decline and fall is still FAR in the future at this point.
I just rejoined a couple weeks ago, after not having played for a year. There are plenty of folks at my level, and I’m having a blast.
Daniel
I played the open beta, and ran out and bought it at midnight when it launched around Thanksgiving 2004. available light and I played a lot for about a year, then she tapered off and stopped playing. I played on and off for another 6 months or so, then would just log in every once in a while to speculate on the auction house. I haven’t even logged in for several months now. I keep meaning to cancel the accounts, but I keep thinking I’ll play a little and then I don’t. I might wait until the expansion, I don’t know yet.
Out of the handful of MMORPG games I’ve played (a very little Everquest I and Ultima Online, a few months of City of Heroes and Guild Wars), WOW is probaly the best one. I’m just not sure if the genre is my thing. Unlike regular RPGs, the world is oddly static - other players are doing the same quests you are working on, or already did. After the 10,000th time you see stuff like “LFG Scarlet Monastery” on the chat channel, the sense of immersion crumbles and falls away. Playing with a good group can be a blast, but it takes a lot of effort to coordinate schedules for a long raid instance and the like. Playing with a bad group is hell. I don’t need bullshit drama when I’m trying to forget about my day at work, thanks. As for PvP, it’s OK but the lack of collision detection between characters or terrain height modifiers makes the tactics a bit odd. The battlegrounds also have the same lack of persistence as the quests.
I’m sure it’s a great game, but I do fear it’s the reason we’re not seeing Starcraft 2, and for that reason I think it’s probably actually immoral to support World of Warcraft.
Another reason might be that the original Blizzard guys all left to form Flagship Studios.
I joined a few months back and didn’t have a problem finding others who were my level. I played on several servers until I found one where I made a lot of friends quickly. The server was only a few weeks old at that time and since then I’ve noticed Blizzard seem to be opening up new servers on a fairly regular basis.
It’s a bad idea to start if you plan to do anything else with your life for the next six months. It eats so much time.
You can always find people at your level. Level sixty is jam-packed because it’s the maximum, but you can have up to nine characters on a given server. I don’t know anyone who has levelled their entire stable of characters up to sixty. Many people will start low-level “alts” to play the faster easier content again when their guild or raiding group aren’t around.
My main is a 51, slowly creeping towards 60… and my “alt” just cracked 40 and is going strong!
One piece of advice: pick-up groups are notoriously uneven. Join a server where you know somebody (I’m sure the WoW Dopers will all chime in with server name and character name) and restrict your dungeon runs to reliable trustworthy folks.
Digression: “Ninja” Looters
Most dungeons have a boss at the end who drops a piece of very nice equipment, and all of the players in the group have an even chance to receive this piece of equipment regardless of whether they can use it. Some of these rare items “bind on pickup” (BoP) meaning that only the player who first grabs the item off of the body can ever use it. The resale value of these pieces of equipment is low, and the only way to get them is cooperate with four other people for an hour or two of vicious fights, and hope that the boss drops a particular piece. The game comes with a “need before greed” rolling system that allows players to designate whether they really need an item or just want to sell it or disenchant it into magical dust. There exists a (thriving) subculture of players who deliberately wait until everyone else has rolled “greed” and then roll “need”, unfairly securing the item for themselves at everyone’s expense. It’s called “ninja looting” and it only happens between strangers, because if it happens in a guild, the jerk who did it is out on his ass. It can make an otherwise fun evening very frustrating. (end digression)
…so make sure you have friends to play with. I’m on the Azjol-Nerub server (Horde side), and am a proud member of Team Fers. We don’t ninja loot, we help each other out, and we all speak English in complete sentences.
You do know about the “master looter” setting? All your ninja looter problems go away when you set a master looter to parcel out the good stuff.
Unless he takes it all himself, or gives it all to his friends. You’re always going to risk being screwed on loot in a PUG setting. I wouldn’t worry too much though–it doesn’t happen often, and if it does, either they’ll be leaving soon or you will–them because the leader kicked them, or you because the leader won’t. The largest dungeons can’t be PUGged anyways.
One thing I’ve found quite interesting… although there are a lot of immature brats with a fondness for Chuck Norris jokes, I also find quite a few more mature players. I am 44 years old and I met a player this past weekend who has kids about my age. Grandma is playing WoW! She has 11 grandkids. We grouped with a guy from my Guild. I assumed he was younger than I. Nope, he is 50. So I was actually the youngest there.
Net, if you select well who you play with I think it can be quite interesting. But I like to digress into side chat sometimes about non-WoW topics.
Also important, learn to use Ignore. Sadly, they’ve opened up the 4. LookingForGroup channel worldwide and now you get a lot of crap that you could avoid by leaving the General chat pop into that channel. They do ban or silence people for that but it doesn’t get rid of everything. You can /leave a channel if it gets too annoying.
I have several characters over a few servers that I play somewhat haphazardly. This keeps me from getting too stale on one thing, but on the other hand I find that I am left behind the people who I enjoy playing with, so I wouldn’t really recommend that.
I just started playing WoW two weeks ago and I’m having a blast. Its the first MMORPG I’ve ever played, so I have nothing to judge it against. A couple of friends who have been playing a lot longer than I, created new characters so we can quest together. I have found that group adventuring with people I like is much more fun than solo. If I group with strangers, its for a very brief time, just enough to finish a quest and move on.
Since I’m new to the whole online RPG thing, I’ve had a bit of a learning curve to get over… still learning, but getting better.
I told myself I wouldn’t get addicted, but I guess I’m more weak willed than I thought. Luckily, my real life keeps my busy, or I’d be playing this fucker all the time.
To answer your question: yes, you shoudl get into World of Warcraft.
It’s fun, you’ll enjoy it. Rather than go straight for 60 hardcore raids, I’m experimenting with a few different characters. Fortunately, there are enough areas at any level that I’m not forced to repeat the exact same content.
My advice would be to find a newer server. New servers will have much more even level progression, and you’ll get to see some of the World Events that have already passed on old servers.
For a new player, I would strongly suggest a PvE server (player vs. environment, rather than player vs. player). There are still PvP options, but you can turn PvP off so you don’t get slaughtered just going about your business.
One other option, our server is about 3 months old. Some real-life friends and I are experimenting with starting a small guild to run non-raid instances and help new players, and we’re recruiting. We’re on Turalyon (Alliance side), if you want any info, send an email. We have characters at pretty much every level range up to the mid-40s right now, so you can find people to group with or help you with difficult quests. If you end up on a different server, I highly recommend finding an ADULT guild. There are lots of adults that play and I find it easier to work with them, as they understand such concepts as “not jammering on about equipment other people wear”, “using strategy” and “following directions from more experienced players”. 
Turalyon?
Unfortunately, I’m on Horde-side Turalyon. If you happen to see a Horde guild in a hot pink tabard with a giant bunny on it, give a wave!
jayjay
aka
Khermut
Adalbert
Grullah
Cloudbrother
I might have to start a new character just to see that. What’s the Guild name (he asks, almost afraid to learn the answer)?
Hehe…The Pink Nicies.
Hey, I have a mid-twenties tauren druid. Can I join?
I think that World of Warcraft up to level 60 is an absolutely wonderful game. You can make progress of some sort in small chunks of time, or spend all night grinding for XP. You can do quests here, quests there, do instances, kill various kinds of things, up your profession skills, group with others or go solo, etc. There’s a lot of varied and interesting content to explore.
Once you get to level 60, however, there’s really only one path left - group with X other people (where X is a number between 4 and 39) and monotonously go through dungeons over and over and over to get various bits of gear. As a (mostly) soloist, I find this tedious and dull, but some people enjoy it.
So, I would recommend the game with the reservation that the endgame has very little variety.
The only reason I even take my level 60 Tauren Druid out anymore is to do one of the following:
- Moonkin dance behind Alliance griffin in neutral towns. If you position yourself correctly, it looks like you’re humping the bird. Good times, good times.
- Bear-form dance party on the roof of the bank in Orgrimmar. We had 6 bears dancing in synch for a while.
- Attempt to get to that cave in Mulgore near Red Rocks. The one you can see on your map but can’t get to. I spent a couple hours trying. Turns out, you can’t get to it (anymore).
- Attempt to get into Mount Hyjal. Turns out, this is possible.