World of Warcraft: God Bless Blizzard Entertainment

The Game Room
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World of Warcraft
Familiar with the MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game) World of Warcraft? Assuming you are not, you basically connect to a main server maintained in this case by the awesome company Blizzard Entertainment, which created WoW. Then you connect to any one of many different “realms” where you enter a fantasy world filled with thousands of other people who you can go on quests with to slay monsters, get all kinds of loot, and basically have a great time.

Before World of Warcraft was released, the most popular MMORPG was “Everquest”. Because of how fun this game was, lots of people were allowing their personal lives to suffer while they played Everquest for hours and hours each day. This precipitated Everquest being called “Evercrack” by many people.

As great as Everquest was, however, it was notoriously difficult to just jump on and play. World of Warcraft, however, was designed to guide a new player through the different gameplay mechanics, the methods of interaction with NPCs (Non-Player Characters) and other players, and everything that was necessary to learn to play the game. And they did this in a way that was FUN! Blizzard Entertainment consistently releases PC games that are extremely fun to play; they just know how to make a damn fine PC game. Everything that Blizzard Entertainment did with WoW was, arguably, perfection of the MMORPG genre. For example, most major monsters in the game are in “instanced dungeons”, which are areas of the game that are created specifically for a group of players seeking them. This addressed the issue seen in Everquest where a comically large amount of players, sometimes hundreds, who were divided into many groups, would huddle around an area for 4, 8, 16+ hours waiting for a major monster, such as a dragon, to spawn, so that they could all attack it and try to claim the kill, usually because a item necessary to complete a high-level quest would only “drop” (i.e., would be found on the corpse to be retrieved) from that monster. An example of one of the many small improvements WoW had over Everquest was that boats between continents arrived every 5 minutes. In Everquest, the boats arrive every hour, I assume to maintain the sense of reality within the game, as I never investigated the reason. Woe to the player who runs all the way across one “zone” (i.e., small areas that the entire game world is broken down into), into another zone, then into the zone that has the dock at the end of it, and finally up the dock, across the dock, and all the way to the end of the dock about 4 seconds after the boat has taken off. I know very well of the disgust that this situation will elicit. Many other different aspects of Everquest that were frustrating and dampened the fun of the game were corrected, improved, or otherwise addressed.

But the main thing I wanted to say is that World of Warcraft is so much more than just a PC game to me. It is the only thing I’ve ever enjoyed as much as something that I used to do that many people have fallen victim to: crystal amphetamine addiction. That is saying something! I had spent money on PC Cafe time instead of dope on a number of occasions during my addiction. I played WoW with one single character who I spent a great deal of time with, and he brought a lot of joy to me that was a really big deal during the times when meth withdrawal and depression were beating the shit out of me, pardon my language. He almost became like a friend in a way, like some kind of advanced Tamagotchi. The times when I was withdrawing from my addiction and hurting in a bad way, many of those times I found my way to a PC Cafe to spend some time with my Ret-Spec DPSadin. Lol, I’d like to remain anonymous, so I won’t put his name since I have many videos on my MySpace and YouTube. (Funny that it’s a pretty sure thing I’m a long, long way from being interesting enough to have my identity tracked down, lol). Lots of great times, clean fun, where I spent time hunting Murlocs in Westfall, gathering minerals in Stranglethorn Vale, or collecting bone fragments from the corpses of the skeletons and ghouls in Western Plaguelands. My bad-ass, mighty Dwarvin Paladin, Ret-Spec DPSadin, freakin’ rocks! I have a video on the net where I kill a 55 shaman when I’m 51, and it’s off the hook! I love World of Warcraft, and Blizzard Entertainment has my gratitude.

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Glad you found something to help you get over your addiction. You should seek to get with rehab groups to share your experience of what helped you. Not that WoW is for everyone but the notion of finding something to absorb a recovering addict’s time sounds good.

Also, you might want to switch from Paladin to Shaman :wink: .

Oh yeah…when you are done with Elves come join the dark side in EVE Online. :smiley:

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Now that you have found your precious, you must stay in your cave and protect it from that thief Baggins. Filthy Baggins! We hates it, we hates it forever!

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witnessing belongs in GD

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WoW and fighting addiction do not belong in the same sentence, paragraph or post.

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I will be grateful to Blizzard for putting their games on hybrid Mac/PC discs.

I have a love-hate relationship with WoW. It’s very playable, great for both casual gamers and hardcore raiders. It’s got fascinating lore, lots of personality and a good sense of humor. I love not having to party. But I hate how easy it is sometimes. I prefer the difficulty curve of other MMOs. It’s a much greater sense of accomplishment when you get a particular drop or achieve a particular quest objective or hit the crafting level cap in other games than it is in WoW.

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My bad.

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My thoughts exactly. Blizzard is an amazing company. I was addicted to Diablo II, and am now addicted to WoW (since the day after launch.) For someone with amore addictive personality than mine, it could be dangerous…

But fun.

Joe

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Until they release Diablo 3 (single player edition [not that they will]), Blizzard is dead to me. I know it’s just killing them, too.

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If all of us band together, we’d number in the dozens! Then, it would be impossible to ignore us!

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This’s been mentioned in other threads, so I won’t get into it, but I suspect that Hellgate: London is as close as you’re going to come: it’s a recent game with similiar mechanics, put together by a team that consisted of most of the Diablo II developers.

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It is unfathomable to me that Blizzard would decide not to craft Diablo 3, which would certainly be a humongously successful release. I could be wrong for all kinds of reasons, but it definitely wouldn’t be sound business practice not to, and Blizzard is not a company I associate with unsound business practices.

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**mburnquist **, if you’re interested in playing with other Dopers, we recently started a new guild (horde) on the new Cairne server. If you’re interested, roll a new horde character on Cairne and /join the SDMB channel, and ask for a guild invite (“Burning Dog Legion”).

Most of the guild is still under level 50, with many in teens and 20’s, and many lower-level alts, so you won’t be far behind. Plus we have a lot of fun in guild chat, and the higher level members are great about helping the lower-level ones.

Of course, I’ve found it highly addicting, so use your best judgement…

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Indeed Blizzard makes amazing products. I am so glad that I forced myself to stop playing WOW after a year. I did not have the self control to play without interrupting other more important aspects of my life. Combine the time I’ve spent playing Starcraft, Warcraft, WOW, and Diablo and it would easily fill two years worth of straight gameplaying with no breaks. The only way I have found to overcome it is cold turkey and a very concerted effort to replace my free time with enjoyable more constructive activities.

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It might distract from people playing WoW?

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I might just do that. Thinkin’ that a Troll Shaman is in the cards :wink:

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Well, this appears to be a great thread to semi-hijack, so here goes: I like MMORPGs. I have never played WoW. I played Ultima Online a long time ago but there were many mid to high level characters that would just prey on starting out characters (grief killing I think it is called). And I was fairly young without a sufficient income to justify the online expense. Fast forward a few years to Dark Age of Camelot (and it’s expansions). That was a great one, I did really well in that one and enjoyed it immensely. Immensely to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Including my wife and (at the time) baby. That was not so good. I cut back my playing time to a reasonable limit but found that the game did not really reward the casual player. A small period of financial difficulty and I cancelled my membership. But I am perhaps looking to start up again with a MMORPG. So, after that lengthy intro, how is WoW for the starting player? Is it a game that a casual gamer could get much out of? Would it take hours of prep every night getting equipped before I could actually “play”? Does WoW play well enough on a new but low-to-middle of the road PC or does one have to upgrade? What is the general dynamic concerning lone vs group play? Is there stuff to do for both? How is PvP handled? Ok, hijack over, thanks.

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Well, to hijack your hijack, while I’ve never played WoW and won’t comment on it, I’ve often heard City of Heros/Villains ( which I do play ) recommended for casual/time restrained MMORPG players. It doesn’t require a high end machine; the basic game is pretty easy to learn ( Inventions, aka crafting can get complex, but you can ignore that if you like, unlike other games ). You can play for short periods at a time if that’s all you have; if you have a kid and can’t play for three hours straight, say. There’s almost no prep time for a typical mission. Most of the game can be soloed, although some character types solo better than others; there’s also plenty of teaming. PvP, on the other hand isn’t very good; it was tacked on after the game was made and it shows; outside of a few specific zones it isn’t allowed though.

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It’s fun for starting players, especially with a guild. You won’t get much action until level 13+ in terms of instances (dungeons, except they’re reserved for a specific group instead of open to everyone).

Depends if you like leveling and such. You can feasably raid as a casual player, all you really need is one or two free nights a week (or every couple weeks) with a nice 3-4 hour chunk of time. Failing that you can do Arena PvP and Battlegrounds if PvP is your thing (which it seems to be), but as a casual a lot of your stuff is going to be normal instances, crafting, and leveling new characters.

No, WoW is very pick up and play, you can really go out without anything but your weapons and some empty bags; potions and such are really just “frills” that make things easier for you but are hardly nescessary. Now if you’re raiding there’s always the chance you’ll be assigned to get materials and potions and such for the raid (they become more important in these settings), but oftentimes even there you can sit in the background and many guilds are nice enough to just let you contribute when you can.

I could probably run WoW on my toaster – in all seriousness, pretty much any PC that would be considered “meh” in 2004 can run it fine, because of the newer areas you may want to have a halfway decent one, but you should be able to run it fine.

You can solo pretty much anything except instances (and even some classes in the right hands can solo select instances near their level. I.E. a level 22-23 hunter can theoretically solo the level 17-22(ish) instance Wailing Caverns). There are some group quests that require a LOT of careful planning to solo, and some that you’re just not going to solo period. But that’s just because you can, grouping is fun as well, even in the non-instance world and outside of group quests. You do get bonus exp for being in a group, but sadly soloing is fast enough that most people do not group much so you’ll often be stuck soloing, however you can probably group with someone in your guild if you’re mroe of a team player.

The only issue is level 58-60 (so called “old world”) instances. Ever since the expansion Burning Crusade came out they made some errors (or a conscious decision, not sure) on tuning experience and leveling. 58+ is tons faster in Outland (the new areas) than the Old World is, even with instances. As such it’s difficult to participate in old content you may have missed because noone wants to group. Classes like Warlocks that have quests that rely on those instances (us warlocks need to go to two of them for a mount quest) oftentimes even have to resort to buying the normal mount because they cannot find anyone to escort them.

The opinions wildly differ, oftentimes people such as yourself, old time UO and DAoC fans dislike it. Most of the world PvP is dead, even on an open PvP server (open PvP means you can attack anyone after the first two “level block” zones). As such PvP usually just spices things up a tad because there’s always the chance you’ll get shot in the middle of killing a slow quest spawn. Some people like me like it a little, others (i.e. most of our dope guild) prefer the PvE servers (you can only PvP if you flag yourself or do battlegrounds/arena).

Battlegrounds have kind of lost their fun, especially the largest one Alterac Valley has become a joke. It’s usually home to a few people doing work and a lot of people sitting in the base letting themselves lose because they get the reward (honor, a type of redeemable currency gained through PvP) either way. The lower brackets are more fun (i.e. Warsong gulch a 10+ capture the flag and Arathi Basin a 30+ (I think) take and hold game), but often it’ll be plagued by “twinks,” people who decked out their lower levels in the highest powered gear for that level and deliberately keep them as the highest level in the bracket they’re needed (i.e. Warsong gulch will be played mostly by level 19’s, 29’s, 39’s etc because they’re the highest possible level in the bracket).

Arenas are where it’s at now. You need to be max level and you need to have a preset team, but they’re supposed to be really fun and “hardcore” as far as PvP go. There are 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 brackets, and the more you win the higher your ranking is. You also get arena points, they’re the arena equivilent to honor, but they’re a bit more serious because it takes just a little bit more effort to get it (i.e. no idling in a battleground). You can redeem this for PvP gear. If you win the season you can also get rewards such as a special mount.

The biggest issue with PvP is though, it’s quite gear based, someone decked out in the highest gear can often wipe the floor with people just coming in with greens, no matter the skill difference. It’s a tad bit of an exaggeration but not by much. Luckily you can always catch up with time and wins but that’s the biggest flaw that turns people away.

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Thanks Der Trihs and Jragon. I will consider both points. What is the Doper WoW guild like? How many players? Mixed time zones or do they play at pretty regular times? Are members expected to actively contribute to quests and such? (Like kjckjc, where were you last night? We were getting Cecil his mount and really could have used your help, don’t let it happen again.) I see from a quick look at wikipedia that it supports both text and voice chat, what do Doper use? I see you can have like 50 chars spread across the servers, do people usually maintain large numbers of chars? Do people typically level up one char (say a mage or it’s WoW equiv.) to around 50+ and then start a fighter, or generally rotate out 6 or 7 chars all at once? In your experience are there many true newbies playing or are most of the ones you see some guys 2nd char (or 8th) that he is just starting up? Does WoW encourage power leveling and buffbots or do they have controls in place to prevent it? Errr…ok…I think that is all for now.

-kjckjc