I have some time off (from both school and work) and I find my self staring at my hands. I see that WoW has a new expansion, but I know it’s a waste of time. Can you people remind me why WoW is not a good investment of time? I expect some witty jokes, sure, but I’d also appreciate some genuine explanations.
Thanks all ~
WoW sucks. It’s largely based on coop gameplay, but WoW players are pretty much the worst players in the world, given their MMO and JRPG history. Nobody is there for a good time. Everyone is just grinding out the progression treadmill. If they’re not terrible, it’s probably some jackass acting better than you simply and calling you a faggot because he managed to spend every moment of the last five years in front of the game. Half the people who play the game are so embarrassed that they do, that there was a huge outcry when Blizzard said there was a chance their identity would become public.
You’d get so much more value for your money if you wait until Monday and spend your Expansion + Fee money on a dozen awesome games during the Steam sale. The SDMB L4D2 group will offer you way more gameplay for 1/10th the price, for example.
I played for about 3 years and with the constant patch updates, Blizzard keeps taking all the fun out of the game by making it easier and easier. Pretty soon I expect that you will simply start off at level 1,000 with all your highest-level gear, highest-level mounts and you just click one button and it plays the game for you. Thanks, Blizzard for taking all the joy out of playing…
The game is a MASSIVE time sink. Unless you have 80 hours/week to dedicate, you’ll never see 75% of the game’s content.
People have no sense of sportsmanship. They’re either griefers, trying to take everyone in Azeroth down with them, or take the game so seriously god help you if you try to join a pickup group and don’t have the exactly correct gear/spec/etc.
The actual gameplay in all of the quests is exactly the same - there are three guys who give you quests for each mini-area - one says to kill 5 of creature A, one says to kill 8 of creature B, the third says to pick up six thing off the ground (or zap six things on the ground with some quest item they give you). Rinse, repeat 500 times.
Very mature so far. Good responses. May I also note that if I were to play I’d do only PvP.
That only compounds the problems. Your success is going to be based largely on your character’s progression, which you’re massively behind on. You’d need to spend two months playing before you have a chance against the others who’ve grinded for five years. Nevermind that the balance is terrible, the new rated battlegrounds require you to find 14 equally-skilled players (ain’t happening), and the most accessible PvP mode (arenas) is abandoned. If you meant world PvP, that’s completely dead since everyone just flies everywhere now. There is a reason every league and tournament dropped WoW. The WoW team made Everquest, not Starcraft.
If you want WoW PvP, just play it in it’s compressed well-balance extremely-deep form: Defense of the Ancients for Warcraft 3 (or clone like Heroes of Newerth or League of Legends)
Every expansion comes with a complete gear/progression reset, so you wouldn’t be five years behind anyone. Everyone at top level now since the expansion just came out a week or two ago is pretty much in the same boat.
Well, yes and no. The first sentence is certainly true. But I play 5-10 hours/week and saw about 75% of the endgame content of the last expansion, so it’s doable.
Since you’ve started this thread, I don’t think you really need any more convincing.
If you’re in the mood for gaming goodness, remember that single-player games do still exist. Get a single-player game like Fallout: New Vegas. It’ll be good for a few dozen hours of fun during your time off, but won’t stretch into hundreds or even thousands of hours in the new year.
If you want to make online friends, then go for it. You can probably find a casual guild that will welcome you. If you don’t really care for getting to know anyone personally, don’t waste your time. The game is massively based on doing everything in groups. It’s possible to do some stuff by yourself, but it’s going to take 10x longer. And then if you decide to do pick up groups, be prepared to be frustrated by idiots who either don’t know the basics of how to play, or are so obnoxious no other guild will take them.
I don’t play anymore, but when I did it was impossible to keep up with my real life friends (well, they were friends until WoW took over), who spend 40-60 hours a week playing, when I could only spend 5-10. Spend the time exercising, walking, reading, or learning to do something useful. When the world ends, having 275 in leatherworking isn’t going to help you. Knowing how to make your own shoes will. 
ETA: well, if the world is ending, nothing is going to help you I guess, but I think you get my point…
Without knowing you and your life goals, as well as your immediate goals for this current time off, it’s really hard to tell you why you shouldn’t do something that I personally get a lot of enjoyment and reward from, whilst still having a rich and fulfilling ‘real life’.
However, the fact that you have posted this thread indicates you have some pretty good reasons for not wanting to play.
What is it you’re wanting to achieve in this time period? Perhaps if you focussed more on what you DO want to do, then you’ll have a better chance of actually doing it.
WoW causes cancer.
I’m an average PVP-er (1800s in 2v2 arena) who left the game early this year after playing WoW casually since Classic. I purchased Cataclysm just yesterday out of curiosity. I am disappointed and will not be playing. Yes, I know, just one day, I haven’t even seen everything yet etc etc.
No major principles are involved - I flew around a fair bit and find the much-vaunted geographical changes to Azeroth pretty…pathetic. Much ado about nothing. My humble opinion, of course.
Having played SC2 multiplayer, some LoTRO, and a few console games over the past year, my first reaction after logging into WoW yesterday was “Holy cow the graphics are pretty blocky, aren’t they?” I just found everything a big ball of meh.
Arena-wise, they’ve removed rating requirements from the gear and the 2v2 bracket is pretty much worthless. If you’re into 3v3 and 5v5, and rating rather than gear is a motivator for you, it will still be a satisfactory experience.
I’m not much for Battlegrounds, preferring an up close and personal battle with heavy personal involvement to large-scale tactical planning, so I can’t really comment about the rated BGs. However, I have to admit that, in concept, rated BGs sound really fun.
I’m sticking to SC2 pvp and LoTRO pve for now.
WoW is great birth control. If you play and you’re single, you don’t need any other method.
I started up a Worgen after the cataclysm update and have to admit… PvE is now so preposterously easy it’s hard to see it as being any sort of a challenge, or even a game. Even playing solo, my priest is effectively invincible unless he’s beseiged by a dozen or more enemies. Power Word: Shield. DOT, nuke, nuke, nuke, enemy’s dead, repeat. I haven’t even bothered to twink him from my other toons. There’s no reason to.
And of course I’m a thousand hours of gameplay away from being high level and geared enough to get into raids, because raid groups won’t take you unless you’re absurdly bombed up. And I don’t have a thousand hours.
So I’m cancelling my account right after a Dec 28 play date I promised by best friend.
As I don’t like Starcraft at all - give me Supreme Commander for RTS, thanks - I guess Blizzard and I are done unless Diablo 3 is cool.
Hah! Luckily you are wrong, though the hard part doesn’t start until 85. I don’t think they ever meant to have a difficult levelling up experience. Kinda shame there’s basically no 2-3 man quests any more since those were fun to solo, and it does make the abrupt shift from facerolling to getting your face smashed to the floor repeatedly when you start doing heroics even more jarring for some people.
Wait, wait… so I’m wrong, according to you, but then you say they didn’t mean to have a difficult levelling up experience. So I’m also right.
Look, if it’s not hard until level 85, then the game isn’t hard, because THAT’S THE LAST LEVEL. You can’t tell me that game’s not easy if you admit it’s easy for 84 out of 85 levels. If the only hard part of the game is high level raids, and levelling up is childishly simple, then the levelling up process is just boring and a waste of time. Which is an exceptionally good reason to not play it.
Don’t get me wrong; I have enjoyed WoW for years. It was a magnificent achievement in gaming and Blizzard deserves every cent they made off it. It gave me and my friends hours upon hours of fun. Part of what made it so great was that it was accessible and not overly hard, unlike EverQuest, which while awesome in its time was ridiculously difficult and inaccessible. But the entire PvE experience is now so easy that it barely qualifies as a game. IF your thing is playing an enormous amount of time so that you can get geared and do raid groups, then I suppose WOW is still a good time. If, however, you want a solid PVE experience that you can play casually, an hour or two here and there, it’s no longer a good game.
And to me, that’s a good reason to stop playing. No big deal, I had lots of fun, but it’s moved on to serving a different market.
I can understand that it’s no longer an enjoyable game for you, but talking about WoW like it is some single player game where every level is of equal length and importance just doesn’t work for the majority of players I know. 1-85 is a learning experience, a sort of boot camp that gives you the lore of the world, and the real game starts when you hit the max level – leveling up takes a week or two while gearing up and raiding and so on at the max level takes the rest of an expansion’s lifetime, 1.5 to 2 years.
It was quite different in EQ1 where you could spend a month or two on the same level and getting to 50 or 60 or 65 could take forever. You were playing the end-game and the leveling up game at the same time after you hit the late 40s or early 50s, more or less.
To mitigate this derailing a bit, if you are looking for a reason not to play WoW, at the moment from my point of view it would be easier to say it is too hard for many. Lots of people are just getting frustrated with the heroics, not getting anything done, since they are used to the easy-mode runs in Wrath. They queue up for a heroic for 45 minutes and then the group falls apart after a few wipes without getting anything done. You pretty much need a decent guild group.