Many good posts in this thread.

I just wanted to comment on WoW considering I recently quit EVE and tried Archlord and Vanguard and was thinking of coming back to WoW (I played in 2005 and hit level 60 and quit almost immediately after as end-game wasn't appealing to me).

But my experience with WoW is still burned in my head, it was my first true MMO and I liked it for two months until i hit max level. But what really struck with me WoW was its popularity and reasons for it. I find it very clever and interesting to think why does WoW have 11 million subscribers and other games can't even get 5% of that.

Archlord for instance looked nice but it was still kind of grindy. Vanguard looked decent but with the server problems and the visual problems, no wonder it failed. I find it funny how these companies actually think their game will be decent when it is not even finished and has serious issues and is just a poor man's version of WoW.

I think Blizzard designs the best games out there, and by best games, i'm defining it as most popular. Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo 2 (my most addicted game ever by far), WoW have been immensely popular games and it is clear that no one does it better than Blizzard. So why does blizzard usually always succeed?

Because they now their population base and they know what makes people tick. WoW is easy to use which is perfect, it is where EVE fails, WoW has many things to offer and not much of a grind, so all types of people can play it. Once you have this design, make some decent graphics, and seriously, Vanguard is retarded in that i couldn't even play it on my computer. Complete utter failure on Vanguard's part, i just don't get the point of making a game where everyone can't play it on their computer. I thought it was proven that graphics are good but usually not the deciding factor, gameplay trumps graphics.

I personally, would probably not play WoW again as i dont' like raiding and after being a diablo 2 hardcore player, unless getting great gear keeps you alive, there's no point in really getting it. Which comes back to my next point in that, it is of my opinion, why get epic gear in WoW when it doesn't really matter? That's my opinion and i ultimately realize that i'm the minority. I don't like raiding or the end-game in WoW or all the other clone games out there, but i'm the minority, and Blizzard realizes that, and they pander to the majority.

So variety, more raiding, more high level content, easy stuff, slim facile and rudimentary economy, I LOVED EVE's economy, made 20+ Billion in liquid isk when i figured it out :), 1 bil per week. But my main point is that, regardless of what anyone says about WoW, i guarantee you, the majority of people surveyed will be properly and positively piqued by the expansion and that's because blizzard is a master at knowing what people want and giving them.

The reviewer happened to be one of those people. Personally, based on what others say, would have been immensely impressed by a more robust market but that's how my brain works and i'm a minority.

I would have put "easy to play" also on the con list. Its starting to get embarassing.

I thought the reason for such a late review would be that the reviewer wanted a chance to experience the content but clearly he wrote this while still under the influence of his New Year tipple.

Levelling was admittedly a pleasant experience, with the new piloting mechanics giving a nice variety to quests, and the new zones being extremely impressive. However, once you have reached 80 (and you can get there without going to any of the higher level zones, simply do all the quests in lower zones), the game starts to lose its shine.

There is no need to do the level 80 instances on their normal setting, you can simply choose heroic mode and start to farm badges and epics straight away. The difficulty level is ridiculously low, requiring virtually no cc and only one or two bosses pose any challenge for an averagely geared group.

Raids can be PuGGed by any group with even half understanding of their class. This is certainly true for 10 man Naxx and the Wintergrasp boss on both his 25 and 10 man versions. Other bosses and heroic raids are more challenging, but not for any guild who got into even SSC in TBC. I know of players who have full epic sets for their main spec AND for their offspecs, such is the ease of endgame in wotlk.

Now we come to the true mess in wotlk, PvP. Damage has scaled beyond belief, while healthpools and healing have lagged behind. This leads to certain classes two shotting cloth, and perhaps needing to spend a couple more seconds finishing off anyone else. Certain comboes faceroll in 2v2, healers hardly survive long enough to cast a heal, and warlocks are entirely useless. Claims that resilience will fix some of these issues look like PR talk when a 10k ambush will be reduced to at best 7k even at resilience cap.

So in short, I don't believe the reviewer really took his time to experience wotlk, and instead wrote about that initial "wow" feeling he got when he first entered Northrend. Of course that wow is great while it lasts, but now a month and a half later I really am finding it hard to say wow and more often find myself asking why I continue to play what amounts to a McDonalds MMO.

The average of ALL professional internet reviews is 92.3 (from about 35 different most reliable sources).

I saw this coming as this is the state of the game right now - I would say since patch 2.3 (Nov 2007) Blizzard is in full control of all its mechanics. The secret is very simple really:

Make a game where everyone can find his playing style and gets rewarded. You like BG's, dungeons, raids, crafting and make a profit, fishing, role playing (68.000+ pages now on wowwiki.com - no other lore comes even close), and now they added BIG PvP clashes in WotLK, 100 against 100 is the rule on most servers in prime time.

The secret is to keep everyone interested with (gear) progression on every front, but make a Lore that is a pleasure to come to: bright, shiny and colorful - and a breeze to play.

As to the easy of play: Heroic dungeons are NO laugh. There is a BIG difference between the normal editions and the heroic ones. PUGs made up of leveled out characters in 6 weeks are NOT going through most of these heroics without the much needed gear. 7 wipes yesterday only and 1 out of 5 bosses is proof you won't come far without rep gear and some good groups.

Guys referencing to this "easy mode" are simply not doing the heroics. Period. And certainly not with PUG's. So indeed there is a big difference between the ease of doing it all in "normal mode", Mostly doing a level 76 dungeon with lvl 80's  (as we all know what you all do ).

But Blizz has the stats. We know the unfounded bragging on the web.... But that as a sidenote to trolls.

In fact with these mechanisms, an expansion is rather a hic-up than a relaunch. Because stats need to be redevelopped by its players, so an expansion is now more a kind of a redirect than a boost. The system is a success (understatement) and it all promises for the next MMO Blizz should launch in 3 years time. The only thing that could have gone wrong with WotLK was the Lore setting and they did it right this time.

In WotLK some very new techniques were used for Blizz: the phasing (changing worlds) and destructable fortresses with mobile combined arms come to mind.

But the most important thing is that WotLK now is as far away as the original old raid Wow as can be. And that's a good thing, because options prime single purpose games.

For the non players: watch april 09, the first content patch of WotLK that will demonstrate the now well known 6 months boost technique used since Nov 2007.  It's these content/gear boosts that makes up the mechanisms, even more than new expansions.

i agree its a great expansion . the only thing i think blizz missed out on was adding more low level content . around the time of the burning crusade there was a huge influx of new players . theres plenty of returning players but it lacks the same buzz as two years ago . having said that this is far far better than the burning crusade .

Ignore Zorndorf his mum works for Blizzard.

Originally posted by Windywoo

Ignore Zorndorf his mum works for Blizzard.

Apparently all pro reviewers are Blizzard employees to you.

And Windywoo just made up an account to post the usual Wow trashing, credibitly = zero.

So far the trolls coming in.

Yes I made an account because I couldn't let such a fanboy review go unopposed. You must be a terrible player if you find heroics hard.

What's wrong with gnome Death Knights?

Leveling is not hard this is true. Do the quest and you can reach max level no problem. You don't have to do the quest that might require a group, although it would help.  However, to get better gear you will need to look at instances and raids. It is true that you can probably get pug groups and raids but you still have to do them for better gear. Once you could PvP and do battlegrounds to gain honor points and be able to get deceint gear, but with WotLK that is no longer the case unless you also do Arenas as it takes Arena Points as well. Why? Is Blizz now saying that if you don't PvP completely you can't have even deceint gear? Cloth wearers have always had a bit of a challenge but from what I am hearing now it is worse.  I haven't played any of my clothies yet so can't speak from first hand knowledge yet. I can say though that my honor from battlegrounds before has been wiped with the launch of this expansion. I suppose it doesn't matter as I would not have had arena points to go with them. I for one and not a hard core PvPer nor player and  the money I pay every month is not a drop in the bucket to those who are and who Blizz caters too. Suppose you can't blame them for those are the peeps that keep them going.

Yes WoW is a nice game, great graphics, nice story lines some fun quest(some not so fun) and nice interface. They allow the use of add on which really is useful in playing the game.  All in all I don't have the same lust for the game as I once had.  I began my gaming with Diablo and on to D2, EQ then WoW. Since WoW has geared more and more to the high end and hard core with PvP as well I have tried others like Archlord, Requiem, Shiaya and Atlanica. The latter being the one I most enjoy graphics aren't as beautiful as in any of these and story lines are not as complete but I can play and have fun and feel like I have to be a hard core player to do so.  No none of these will last as long as WoW but I am not paying $15.00 a month plus the added expansion cost to not have fun. Nice graphics and story lines are not going to last forever and even Hard Core get bored after a time. Many came back with this expansion but they will get bored again and they will wander again.

My gift at Christmas was a game card and the expansion I am not sure I will continue after my card runs out.

Oh there is nothing wrong with a gnome DK that is what I chose. Course be prepared to not be taken seriously due to your size. All I can say is dynamite comes in small packages.

My vision of mmorpg gaming is dead.  

I have to agree that being easy to play is good in terms of getting money for a company and getting a high subscription rate, but not good for us old school gamers. I'm pretty new to MMORPG (as the amount of posts can tell and my join date, although I have been reading articles on here for months), but I've been playing MMOs since MUDs, and Ultima Online was my first actual "MMO" game that I subscribed too.

That said, I hate the fact that WoW is so "easy to play". That's why when Tasos posted the beta quotes a couple of months ago and a lot of them said "the starting areas are too hard" or "I've never wanted to kill a mob so badly", I got a hard on. Us "old-schoolers", if you want to call us that, NEED and DESIRE a dangerous, hard game out there. I'm cautious with Darkfall because it has promised too much and I've fallen for hype before, but we need SOMETHING, and I don't think being "easy to play" is a pro for many of us out there.

Why don't people focus on the one thing which has always been WoW's problem since day 1: The lack of things to do at max level.

Seriously? Raid or PVP? Why? Raid for better gear? So you can do what exactly? What does PVP do for anyone? Does it alter the game world? Can you capture territtory? No, of course not. WoW is the definition of a themepark game.

I wanted to like WoW. I have friends who play WoW. But as much as I try, I just could never get into it for more than a month. SWG spoiled me I suppose. 

I agree with the poster who said that his vision of MMORPGs is dead. The success of WoW has pretty much ended all possibility of the seamless, player driven, classless, leveless, open-ended MMO design that I loved so much.

Now people pay to play single player RPGs with multiplayer capability.

Originally posted by Daedalus732

Why don't people focus on the one thing which has always been WoW's problem since day 1: The lack of things to do at max level.

Seriously? Raid or PVP? Why? Raid for better gear? So you can do what exactly? What does PVP do for anyone? Does it alter the game world? Can you capture territtory? No, of course not. WoW is the definition of a themepark game.

I wanted to like WoW. I have friends who play WoW. But as much as I try, I just could never get into it for more than a month. SWG spoiled me I suppose. 

I agree with the poster who said that his vision of MMORPGs is dead. The success of WoW has pretty much ended all possibility of the seamless, player driven, classless, leveless, open-ended MMO design that I loved so much.

Now people pay to play single player RPGs with multiplayer capability.

Sorry, but I had to quote this for truth.

I was so bored of WoW before the expansion.  I bought it in the hopes of rekindling some passion for it, but I got to level 74 and quit.  I just can't be bothered doing more of the same old same-old.  More levelling, more grinding, collect 10 of this and 10 of that etc.

Raiding it not something I enjoy any more, mostly due to the high amount of overconfident spotty-virgins and their purple-pixel envy.  Meh.  Not only that but most of the new games over the past few years have tried to copy all this crap like it's the best thing since bread and butter.

I simply can't stand the 'forced in to one class with levels' formula.  It worked for paper-based D&D with maybe 4 players and a GM - it's total garbage in a pvp environment.  It's Darkfall or Bust for me now. If it flops I think I'll give up MMORPGs completely.

I agree with all points of review except for the score, I would give it an 8.

Gnome Death Knights as a con? I always planned if I went back to WoW with WotLK and made a Death Knight I would definately go Gnome.

Originally posted by Kasmos

Originally posted by Daedalus732

Why don't people focus on the one thing which has always been WoW's problem since day 1: The lack of things to do at max level.

Seriously? Raid or PVP? Why? Raid for better gear? So you can do what exactly? What does PVP do for anyone? Does it alter the game world? Can you capture territtory? No, of course not. WoW is the definition of a themepark game.

I wanted to like WoW. I have friends who play WoW. But as much as I try, I just could never get into it for more than a month. SWG spoiled me I suppose. 

I agree with the poster who said that his vision of MMORPGs is dead. The success of WoW has pretty much ended all possibility of the seamless, player driven, classless, leveless, open-ended MMO design that I loved so much.

Now people pay to play single player RPGs with multiplayer capability.

 

Sorry, but I had to quote this for truth.

Amen to that.

Once I had completed all the current high end content I took stock of what was next for my Druid, hmm cooking dailies or the HC dailies or perhaps even go and grind some leathers to get that last point in LW, then it struck me, I'd been sitting there for perhaps 30 minutes trying to decide what type of grinding I wanted to do, grinding = MMO death knell.

I've played the expansion and seen all that it currently has to offer, it lasted me 2 months and thats not bad for the £19.00 I spent, but for now I've quit WoW, well until 2 yrs time when thier next expansion comes out, back to playing DDO with my kids for now =).

Originally posted by qbangy32

 back to playing DDO with my kids for now =).

I've given some serious thought to trying to set up a pen and paper D&D game, as some of my friends have.

At least then I would have the cusomtization and creativity that I crave in games.

Thanks for the review. I understand where you're comming from. you are just pointing out somethings you like and dislike. Don't know why people get offended. My connectin is horrible and my computer is lame. yet somehow it manages to play wow really well sure it lags sometimes and we get mad because we are gamers. we rant yet we understand that its still good.

Yeah I wouldn't want to wait for consumer service either. I've found one game where you are instantly connected with a GM in a matter of minutes or seconds. But wow has a lot of players can't help everyone at once. Although if they did it might make their business better and players more loyal maybe.....

I'm gonna go ahead an disagree with the review. Wrath of the Lich King is great if you are a huge carebear. If you enjoy games that require no skill, it is a game for you. If you enjoy spending hours getting items that will be useless is a few weeks, it is a good game for you. If you would like to give up your social life to be good at a game, then Wrath of the Lich King is great for you.

If you are looking for an MMO that requires skill, isn't repatitive, and doesn't require you give up your life to be good, then you shouldn't play Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard is now just stuffing it pockets with the subscriptions from 12 year old boys who want to be uber-leet gamers, so they made this expansion. That and they wanted to take key features from Warhammer, and add it to their game.

That is my Wrath of the Lich King review.

Nice review.

After 4 years of raiding/cancelling/differentMMOS, all i can say is WoW-WotLK... is worth every penny.

I've never been so relaxed in all my mmo experience. The difficulty of the game is on the spot. No more boring faction grinds like before. Tradeskill stuff that actually sell! I can do RL stuff, in-game quests, PvP, and raid all in the same day. Now that's what mmorpgs should be like. No more long timesink grinds that's not really productive overall. No more over the top depressing raid boss wipes. PvP actually looks for me not the other way around.

People say it's too easy. EASY? No skill? I don't see everybody having the same raiding gear and arena gear. It's challenging enough to give you those "YESS !#%#%king YESSS!! WOO!!" ear destroying screams over vent after a boss kill or an achievement. It's easy enough to give you enough time for IRL and in-game productivity. My subscription is finally paying for happiness and not raidwipe-stress and "oh god how many hours do i need to complete these?" game experience.

My raiding guild(which is numero uno horde side !EPEEN!) runs 3 groups of 10manRaids and 2 groups of 25manRaids 3 days a week and the rest of the week for world PvP, BG, arena, and extra personal IRL stuff.

Thank you Blizzard for making a game that will piss off people who are too smart to be wasting their brains playing mmorpgs--that's you mr."hardcore". This game is perfect for the raiding PvErs and the bloodthirsty PvPers. That's WotLK4U.

I think WoW is very good entertainment. Its even that good, that it attracts people who never bothered to play computergames before. Why? Because it is so easy to get into and unlike many people think, also easy to master.

Challenging gameplay is not having to grind epic gear so you can soak up more dmg and deal more dmg. That is just what i call a treadmill preparation. But also a reason why many WoW players like WoW. After a hard day of work, they log into their favourite fantasy world and mindlessly do some fighting, crafting, rping or whatever. It is comparable to watching a movie or listening music. They also dont take an effort.

WoW is pure entertainment, not a gamer's game. There is nothing wrong with that and subscriptions also show it sells very well.

The players that want longer learning curves, complexity in crafting, tough AI, they move on after a short while of playing WoW. But those are apparently in the minority, so you cant really blame Blizzard for creating THE mainstream MMO.

I played wow from beta until april 2007.  In that time my guild raided all the end game content except the very final encounters in aq40 (fought but didnt win) and naxrammus.  During that time I enjoyed what blizzard had made but it became obvious that they had run out of ideas. The raid encounters became overly complicated and annoying rather than fun and it didnt look like they had any way of changing this.

then blizzard dropped the raid numbers down to 25, killed my guild and said "its ok, you can grind faction by repeating the same instances over and over".

I think I peaked too early. The game was great in the first 2 years and I played it too much but there is nothing new there except rehashing of other games ideas (which they did in the first place but at first it was a nice change - a game that didnt want you to spend an hour walking somewhere just to drag out the lack of pve content - places were actually interesting). 

then grind. now walrus men. go figure.

Originally posted by Daedalus732

Why don't people focus on the one thing which has always been WoW's problem since day 1: The lack of things to do at max level.

Seriously? Raid or PVP? Why? Raid for better gear? So you can do what exactly? What does PVP do for anyone? Does it alter the game world? Can you capture territtory? No, of course not. WoW is the definition of a themepark game.

I wanted to like WoW. I have friends who play WoW. But as much as I try, I just could never get into it for more than a month. SWG spoiled me I suppose. 

I agree with the poster who said that his vision of MMORPGs is dead. The success of WoW has pretty much ended all possibility of the seamless, player driven, classless, leveless, open-ended MMO design that I loved so much.

Now people pay to play single player RPGs with multiplayer capability.

Hear hear. I agree entirely, 100%.

Hell, several people I know who play WoW share your view. They play WoW, basically, because many of their friends do and they get to "hang out", and nothing more. They find the game itself boring.

WoW did to the MMO genre what has happened in every other genre that's become popular... FPS, RTS, you name it. As soon as a game comes that is a "breakthrough", all ingenuity, originality and willingness to try something new or different halts. Suddenly, companies who wouldn't touch MMOs before are hopping on the bandwagon to get their piece of the pie. And what do they all do? They try to copy WoW, of course.

At the same time that Blizzard has broken MMOs wide-open into the "mainstream", they have created the barrier around and stagnated what made the genre popular in the first place; in particular, the open-ended, classless, player-driven elements that you mention in your post, Daedalus.

I have personally separated WoW and its ilk into their own sub-category, which I call "Massively Multiplayer Online Action Games". Because, to me, they've practically stripped out all the classic elements of a RPG.

In traditional RPGs, you have to seek out NPCs and see what they might have to say to you, do they have a quest, etc. In WoW, there's zero exploration necessary... the big yellow ! over their head says it all. No need to wonder which NPC in the entire village you have to talk to next in the quest line.. the big yellow ? over their head shines like a beacon... Even if they're indoors, no problem. The mini-map in the compass will display where they are as well.

In traditional RPGs, getting a quest usually means some major task that can take days to complete (not necessarily in one stretch). In WoW and its ilk, the typical quest is "go kill 20 boars and bring me their tusks". That's not a quest. That's a task.

In traditional RPGs, you have to actually seek out an object, or objects required for a quest, and they may not always be easy to find. In WoW and its ilk, quest objects now give off sparkles that you can see from 100 feet away, thus eliminating the only bit that actually required player effort to complete. It's now basically "run and collect the sparkly things and then run back to the NPC with the ? over its head and get your reward".

In traditional RPGs, the journey is as much part of the experience as the destination. In WoW and its ilk, it's "all about getting to end-game as fast as possible". Many people deem the grind to level cap ("the real game" as many call it), to be too slow and a waste of time.

And I can keep going with the examples. It's great that Blizzard seem to have put more focus on the story in WoTLK and started implementing in-game cut-scenes as a way of moving the story forward. It's about time, frankly... Guild Wars (whether you think it's a "real MMO" or not) and FFXI have been doing this for years... to name just two. The previous Warcraft games were big on cinematics, so I don't know why they waited so long to continue that into WoW.

Hell, even the one thing that is brought up as "proof that WoW is challenging", raid bosses, seem to be  too much for many players. I've seen numerous posts calling for raid bosses to be made soloable and/or take less time; because "being forced to group up for a raid boss isn't fair". Given enough time, I'm sure even those people will get their wish.

In all, to me, calling WoW a MMORPG is a misnomer. The game's focus is quite obviously on action and rapid progress, with RPG elements being demoted to near non-existence.

It's great what Blizzard have done and no one can deny their success, no matter what you think of WoW. But man it annoys me what they've done to the genre overall.