World of Warcraft: meh?

The Game Room
21

I’ll finish what Jas09 started. De gustibus non est disputandum. WoW doesn’t fit your playstyle. That’s cool, it happens. But why try to down on it? It’s as if you’re trying to persuade others here that they shouldn’t like it. What you’re claiming as drawbacks of the game are things other people find appealing about it. Your idea of a fun game is filled by CoH, some are filled by WoW, and some are filled by EVE (generally folks who find spreadsheets a turnon), still others prefer other games. You’re not a lesser person for not liking WoW, nor are others lesser for liking it.

Now, I want you to turn to a mirror – go on, I’ll wait – and repeat after me: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” :smiley:

22

I got addicted to it for a while but it was like an addiction to solitaire - I just found myself playing it without being all that impressed by it. What it is is very very playable. I think it’s possibly the least innovative MMORPG ever - every idea is blatantly stolen from somewhere else (notably Everquest). But what they are geniuses at is getting rid of the flaws that other games have had. They really think very carefully about how the features work in ways I don’t think other companies ever have.

City of Heroes had some phenomenal innovations I love TO DEATH, but I don’t think they thought about playability much. I mean it’s impossible for me to stay involved with a game with no inventory and almost no joy in just exploring. Basic basic stuff that really helps keep you interested and for some reason they thought it was unimportant. It mystifies me.

23

I am perfectly content with not liking World of Warcraft. Not every game is suited to every player. I wanted to see if the game got better, or at least different, as it progressed; evidently not.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m particularly keen to hear people tell me that I don’t like WoW because “I don’t like cooperative play.” Or that I don’t like it because I’m not doing it right.

I like hearing Blaster Master’s explanations of what he likes about it. That tells me what I need to know: that it clearly doesn’t suit me. Miller’s explanations, that I am not allowed to dislike it because I’m judging it by the wrong context, is not so useful.

24

Those reasons are exactly why I do play it. I don’t enjoy running back to town every 2 missions to sell piles of Rat Noses to the local scrounger for 20 copper pieces so I can afford a minor health potion. Did that in Diablo, and in every other fantasy RPG in history; it gets really damned old.

I don’t like having to manage equipment, or repair my armor, or replace a worn-out sword. Did that in Star Wars: Galaxies. It got old.

I love being able to quit playing a character for 6 months and come back to find him just as I left him: no decay, no upkeep to handle, no food to replenish or supplies to purchase. That’s deathly dull to me.

I also really liked how City of Heroes didn’t obsess over the damage and stats. It plays more like a shooter than like an RPG, and I appreciate that.

25

I understand what you mean by not liking the style of the graphics. I happen to love the look of the Warcraft world, but I was very put off by Second Life’s style, to the point that I didn’t really want to give the game much of a chance because it was so ugly.

As you progress, the game isn’t really going to change that much so if you don’t like it now you’re probably not going to warm up to it later. Thankfully you figured it out during your free trial instead of paying a subscription fee to find it out. Some things are obviously going to change with a full account - not being able to trade with people, etc. Probably best not to let your frustration with limitations on the trial account affect your opinion of the game because they aren’t features of the game you’d be paying for.

I played for over a year without the QuestHelper addon, so I feel confident in saying that the quest system is not dependent on a third-party addon to be functional. If you’ve levelled as far as you have and it’s still annoying you then that’s probably never going to change. I don’t think the WoW Quest system is bad, but if you’re used to better then it’s probably going to be hard to step back down.

Also the case in WoW. During your time out of the game, your character will accumulate rest points for a little while, which will translate into extra exp points when you start using the character again, but your stuff won’t decay or disappear on you. I dropped my subscription for over a year but when I rejoined I was able to walk back out and finish the quest I started before I left, with all my stuff right where I left it (well, except for the spells that had disappeared when the talent points were refunded, but it was a trivial matter to respent the TP and get them back)

26

At least there’s no decay! Thank goodness. That was one of the most irritating things about SWG (and there were many things to be irritated about with that game).

27

That’s not even remotely close to what I said.

28

You told me that my basis for disliking it was unfair. What’s to explain?

29

I did the 2 week free trial. My review to a friend. An inferior 3-d remake of Diablo 2. Horribly bored by level 10

My main critiques.

Rubbish equipment. Reward for your quest. A leather bracer to replace your cloth bracer, which gives you +1 defence. Which is somehow then mystically tied to you so no-one else can use it. As opposed to all the neat attributes and bonuses from D2 stuff.

Your pitifully weak. attacked by 2+ attackers of the same level and your screwed. D2, you are a bad-ass who wades through screens of oppenents.

But it gets really good when you get to high level and go on raids with your guild. Ok, how long will it take to get there? About a 100+ hours. So i have to play your game for 4 days plus solid to get to the good stuff? Include me out.

30

Well far be it from me to defend WOW. I regard it like I do Microsoft - they stole other people’s ideas, then dominated the market long enough to stifle innovation for years. As far as I’m concerned WOW has set back online gaming by at least half a decade. I’ve played lots of MMORPG’s and most of them - even problem games with high annoyance factors - I have some nostalgia for. WOW I think - jesus I wasted too much time playing that game.

But still I think your criticisms are off-base. WOW’s strength is not forcing you to play a certain way. You can do anything or nothing - craft, quest, group, guild, solo, pvp, be a merchant, explore. Almost nothing’s required and most playstyles are accommodated. Way more than any other game out there. Travelling is trivial - I don’t remember it being that much different than COH. Same with equipment - you can obsess over it or virtually forget about it.

Being able to play to your style is WOW’s massive advantage over the competition. And comparing it to COH, which you can, um, design your costume, fly around, solo or group and that’s about it - there’s no game that I can think of that limits your options more.

I’ll grant you the graphics. Playing in a bland cartoon is not so wow. And I will always have more affection for COH than I ever will for WOW - just because they innovated and took risks. Hell, superjump beats anything in WOW - that alone clinches it for me.

31

Oh ye gods no.

In CoH, you get your first pseudo-travel power at 6 and your main travel power at level 14. In WoW, you get your first mount at 30 (some classes have a pseudo-travel ability at 20), and then you don’t get to go any faster until 60.

With your main travel power in CoH, it takes less than 2 minutes to cross the biggest zone that exists, and most zones are connected to each other via the train system. Many of WoW’s areas take several minutes to cross even with mounts, and though flight paths shorten travel time, even the shortest flight path I’ve seen is still just over 1 minute. And god help you if you need to get somewhere that you don’t have flight path access to.

In CoH, everyone has access to base teleporters and hub zones like Pocket D. In WoW, you have to be a mage or pay a mage to port you around, and Dalaran is the only town with immediate ports to other capital cities if I understand it correctly (never been there). WoW does have hearthstones, but they’re on a 60 minute timer.

Real example: right now I’m in my 50s in WoW, and many of my quests take place in Tanaris and the Hinterlands. To go between them, I have to take a ~3 minute flight from Gadgetzan to Ratchet, wait for the boat to Booty Bay, then take a 6-7 minute flight to Aerie Peak in the Hinterlands. Takes about 11-13 minutes, depending on if I miss the boat or not.

A similar situation in City of Heroes is that you might get a mission in, say, Peregrine Island that requires you to visit Eden. Even if you start at the north end of PI, it takes maybe 1-2 minutes to get back down to the ferry (less if you’re rocking the teleport), 20 seconds to zone, ~1 minute to get to the train to go to Founders’ Falls, 20 seconds to zone, ~1 minute to reach the entrance to Eden, 20 seconds to zone. That’s the long way, and it takes 5-6 minutes. If you have access to a base teleporter, you zone into your base, take 15 seconds to get to the teleporter that takes you to Eden, then zone in. Less than 1 minute. These are all estimates, but from what I remember in timed missions, it’s never taken me more than 3 minutes to get from the mission giver to the mission entrance unless I goof around.

Granted, you have to be active in CoH while traveling, unlike WoW where you can select the flight path and then go do something else for 5 minutes, but travel time is one of the biggest discrepancies between CoH and WoW. I probably spend as much time traveling in WoW as I do actually playing the game.

(Of course, it’s entirely up to you whether or not you prefer the longer travel times. They drive me crazy sometimes, but it does contribute to making the world feel bigger; Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are huge, but travel powers are so accessible and so fast that it doesn’t feel like it.)

32

I have an account in both games though CoX was my first MMORPG. Being a comic book geek it grabbed me instantly. I still play WoW. As I’ve said in the other WoW thread I play one game until i kind of burn out and then play the other for awhile.

I don’t consider one better than the other, I enjoy them both, and both games have thiongs I wish the other had. I’ll tryu to elaborate.

Travel: CoX has easier travel times to be sure. Starting out in CoX is a bit linear though. Depending on your achetype you get your “trainer” and off you go. but its also a pain in the butt, just like WoW. Only it will be 20 to 30 levels before it gets better in WoW. CoX is superior in the fact that at least the mission/questgiver is highlighted on the minimap in a way that makes them easy to find. WoW, I needed addons to make it easy. Many times in WoW I had quests in places I had never been and sometimes it was a real drag to find the place. A noob starting off will have little idea how to get to Westfall, though it isn’t realy hard. A pointer on the minimap would make that easier. Thats a simple example, but I’m sure some of you know what I mean.
GEAR: Theres no gear in CoX really, noty like WoW. Recipes, enhancements, etc. That works for CoX, but part of the fun in WoW for me is to trade/sell/disenchant/enchant/etc. That won’t be everybody and I understand that. I am not crazy about the “Gotta have the best gear” crowd in WoW, but I do like kitting m characters up. It makes it sweeter when I quest and sell stuff for the gold to get what I want. I don’t think a system like that would work in CoX.
CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION: WoW don’t got it. CoX…I have a lot of alts of different archetypes and levels and the best part is coming up with their bios, to me.
GRAPHICS: Meh…2 different games…doesn’t bug me. nless you include the lack of differnet tilesets in CoX. I took a beating in the CoX forums for saying that WoW had a bigger variety of tilesets for different locals than CoX. Its true though. Go into a warehouse in CoX and you’ve pretty much seen EVERY warehouse in CoX. And unless they’ve fixed it since december, you can go to a bank mission where the mission door is a freakin’ sewer! That takes me out of the immersion.
TEAMING: I like to solo, I really do. CoX has too many missions where you are almost forced to team up to complete. WoW, at least the mission log says “group” or “dungeon” so you know. I am not against teaming, but I don’t like being forced into it.
thats just off the top of my head and YMMV, of course. I can like both games, but I understand if some like one or the other or disagree with what I said. To each his own, I guess.

33

mmm… they have definitely gone all out to slow things down. It takes so fucking long to get anywhere. And the improvements in your powers happens so slowly- you gain a 1% increase in X - well great.

But I suppose that 1% increase adds up over the course of a fight. If your chance to hit improves by 5% then that’s one in 20 hits. In a fight there might be anything from 20 to 40 hits so 5% might be a lot.

I’ve got a 65 fury warrior, I only looked into new armor every 10 levels or so apart from stuff I came across. I don’t think you have to be too obsessive about it.

Warrior has some good points but I don’t do very well in PVP against spellcasters. Dunno whether it’s because I’m no good or whether it’s the warrior. It could be me because I often think afterwards of things I could have done that I didn’t do in the heat of the moment.

For instance, Intimidating Shout - makes all enemies within 8 yards cower in fear. Up to 5 total nearby enemies will flee in fear. Lasts 8 secs.

i always forget to use that yet in the 8 seconds it lasts I could bandage quite a lot of health back. Warrior seems to win battles if it can outlast the spellcasters mana.

34

OK, you’re right. There’s some difference. Partly I’m influenced by the fact that my last WoW character was a mage. Also the fact that I trained on EQ - where travel times were completely absurd - hour-long corpse runs, 5 minute zone loading, ending in immediate death upon resurrection, only to have to repeat? In comparison I didn’t even notice travel in either COH or WOW. Both are nonissues as far as I’m concerned. And seriously, leveling in WoW isn’t a big deal. You’ll have your horse and your flight paths pdq by MMORPG standards and you won’t be suffering that much travelling. Or play a druid or a mage.

35

I never said you weren’t “allowed” to dislike it. If you want deep story and intricate character interaction, then no, WoW isn’t the game for you. But then, neither is any other MMO in existence. Because that’s not the sort of thing MMOs can do. If you want to argue that MMOs are inferior to single-player RPGs, fine. If you want to argue that WoW is inferior to other MMOs, then you shouldn’t be comparing it to other non-MMO games.

36

I got the 2 week free trial, I only made it through about 4 days of it. I didn’t have the problems the OP had with it, I thought it was very slick and well polished. But I just found it boring. I kept thinking the game would get more exciting and I’d start doing all kinds of cool stuff, but I kept getting what seemed like the same quest over and over again “Bring me 5 wolf pelts!” “Bring me 10 Vulture feathers!” “Bring me…”. Ehhh not my cup of tea.

37

Sorry for the stupidly long post. If you took it as me going off on you, I certainly didn’t mean it that way. It’s just such a huge difference that it’s been stewing around in my head for the past couple of months when I transitioned from CoH to WoW, and I took the opportunity to rant on it. :slight_smile: And yeah, from what little I remember EQ was even worse.

38

I just wanted to compliment you on the post.

That is probably the nicest way of stating a negative reaction I have ever read!

I think you’d do great in the Dope’s Burning Dog Legion guild, should you decide that you do like WoW after all.

Admittedly I haven’t read the whole thread yet, but I will.:slight_smile:

Quasi

39

You might want to try running a few 5-mans to see if you like them, as they’re a rather different mode of play. I found 5-man dungeons to be a big step up from solo play. I’m not talking about raids, either. 5-man instances are accessible early on (starting in the late teens), though admittedly it may be difficult to find a group for them as most people are on their high-level mains.

…And for the record, the nightly queues have only been around for a few weeks. They are annoying as hell, though.

40

Oh God yes, Make that my 4th complaint. I’d managed to blot that part out until you reminded me. Plus, what’s up with only 1/3 of the creatures you kill actually having the piece of it’s anantomy you require.

Dammit, for a creature that didn’t have a heart, that Fishotaur was suprisingly hard to fight not to mention inexplicably mobile