Originally posted by Ragnaven

imho wow was made to draw in a new crowd to mmo's, that crowd being one that would enjoy a easier less penalty based game. Unlike it's predicesors when you die in wow it didn't cost you money, gear, or xp. Just dmged your armor and that you could always repair once you killed enough mobs to get the coin for it. To me wow was always easy mode, and I will hold that it opened the doors of mmo's to a lot of people we would have been better off without.

Ok you call that easy mode, which means less painful death penalty.  By that definition very true.

Originally posted by Ethian

Since playing Aion, I'll likely never return to WoW. I get tired of unchallenging content in any MMO, whether its WoW or not. Questing and not feeling a sence of fear of death for me gets old very fast. In Aion I fear death around every corner, the way it should be in an MMO imo. So ya, WoW is way to easy and bland for my taste anymore.

lol aion being hard... I forgot you can walk around Theobomos and level a bot there with absolutely no chance of someone from the other faction being able to kill you. Don't act like some of us haven't played that terrible game already. 

Aion is a typical you play 10+ hours a day and you'll be the best, thats so 2005. 

Originally posted by Zorndorf

...

 

I was somewhat surprised from the reaction of Metalhead, because it shows - all along - we share the same thoughts in analysing WOW, but we always came to a different conclusion. He hates it, I like it. But I can understand his reaction.

The core problem of this site is indeed that Blizzard added pure "gaming fun" elements to its MMORPG design and this disturbs old mmorpg fans who want the old times back.

The challenge of EQ was NOT the  low intelligent boss fights (tank/spank), nope: the challenge was - essentialy - to assemble 70+ people to play on line for 6 hours plus to ... wait and see the group assemble and the "time grind" towards these fights in ALL aspects of the game.

Blizzard is succesful in its MMORPG because it added pure gaming fun elements that lacked in first generations MMO's. But I do think they need to be careful with this technique. They may not stretch it too thin, because ... people who like living in an mmorpg are mostly NOT the best "video game players".

------

Coming down from 70+ to 40+ people to Raid was excellent. Going further down to 25+ made sense. The problems arise when you include  10 men Raids and scaling from easy to extremely hard Raids in 10/25 Raids..... These are sound video game principles, but like I said ... MMORPG players are terrible at playing fast action video games (for the most part).

Arena was a perfect example of the above. In its purest form, Arena contributed to an extreme balancing tool for the classes we will EVER see in any fantasy based mmorpg in the long run (see Pardo's excellent analysis of it - he thinks they went way overboard with it). Arena is EXTREMELY hard to succeed in:.... only  0.5% of the PvP players can get the highest rewards (skelton mount, title, etc...).

So that means 99.5 % ... fail. Even if they would "time grind" for 20 years. Unseen in "normal" mmorpg's.

The same can be seen in the scaled Raids these days: forget heroic 25 men modes of ToTC. Simply too hard for 99% because of .... video game play and coordination needed of ALL 25 at the same time. No more "noobs" hiding in 40+/70+ Raids...

I think the above is the only REAL challenge Blizzard is facing at the moment. How to implement the right scale between the traditionnel mmorpg playing options without giving in to too hard mode video game elements.

At the moment Wow is rather easy as an mmorpg (traditonnel sense), but has the most gaming fun. And at the same time - in viewing the above video game techniques - it is by far the hardest to beat - videogame wise -  highest content.

I just don't think that a lot of traditonnel MMORPG players are really good at videogames. They liked the "hide in" 40+ groups to camouflage their "normal" video game skills. Which I don't even mention in a negative way.

With add ons like "recount"  these days and very hardcore (harsh) Arena ratings, players are painfully analysed and confronted   with their own limits.

That hurts and so a lot of frustration shows up on mmorpg.com.  But clearly WOW is both one of the easiest and most hard video games. Hard as used in video game, not "grind hard" or "assemble 100 people" hard.

I have some reservations about using recount, or any of the WW series without further considerations.

Take heal.  There is effective heal, total heal, and the difference being overheal.  Do we look at effective heal only?  Or take into account overheal for some fights for some classes.  Pre-HoTting a raid obviously adds a lot of overhealing, but that is exactly what we want to happen.  Beaconing overheals a lot if your beaconed target is not under fire (tank rotation, or more paly than active tanks).  I do not deny that there are bad healers who just randomly heals anyone and spam heals till OOM to choke up totally healing.  I know of a paly who simply beacon the tank and heals himself as fast as he can, and look great on total healing but overheals so much that ...

Healing too well also hurts in some scenario, notably last phase of anub fight in ToC/ToGC.  Knowing when not to heal is vital in that fight.  Healing the right person at the right time also matters.  If a healer HoTs everybody but let the tank die when the tank healer is in trouble (snobold on his head during Gormok fight), or let a mage die, he is doing nobody no good even though he stands tall on the heal meter.

As a heal team, if the raid survives, the team works.  During some fights, where there is massive raid damage, PoH+PoM spams will shine.  In long fights where mana is an issue, mana efficient HoTs will last the druid a long long way.  Looking at the charts alone does not tell the story.

Sometimes even DPS does not go along the damage meter alone.  Dispel, spell steal, counterspell, CCing, a lot of things are required of DPSers (even trapping from hunters).  The easiest way to climb the dps meter is aoeing whenever there are 5+ mobs, but does that really helps the raid?  Not always.

I would say use the meter only if there is serious issues.

Indeed WoW is easy to take up casually, but pretty complex in the dimensions to minimax.  Complementarity of classes and difference in boss fights also adds extra food for thoughts as raid leaders sort out who to do what to make the whole raid effective for each raid makeup and each boss.

(my cat is on the shift key)

so true. but i guess thats what raiding is for but i hate the idea of raiding... so i quit the game at lvl 71 with the release of dk's. they ruined the game it's awful. druids make it not so easy to solo on... but... still...

i loved it for so long the game... it just got stale.

WoW is easy because of all the add-ons.  A noob that doesnt use quest helper may find it time consuming to finish a some of the quests.  All the books that you can buy make it even easier.  I hate people that have to buy a strategy guide to be suceed in a game.

Originally posted by Goatgod76

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by tro44_1

 

Cause of Lvling being faster? Well lvling imo, was never intended to be the main focus of WoW or any MMO for that matter.

 

Actually the original EQ was just a leveling game. That was indeed the main focus of the entire game.

Later they added raids, but when it released, people didn't know there would even be an "end game". Everyone was playing the game to level.

Which makes sense, since single player RPGs, and then later Multi Player games, are based on paper and pencil games like Dungeons and Dragons.

There wasn't really a "raiding" or "RvR" game, it was just leveling. When you reached max level, you started over. Same with RPg single players. You leveled, got to the end, that was it.

So yes, current MMORPGs like WoW have evolved into an "end game" focus, and made the leveling part superficial, but it's just incorrect to say leveling was never intended to be the main focus of any MMO.

but I can see how you might think that if you started playing MMORPGs with WoW.

 

Agree.

Yeppers.

I think the reason I like LOTRO is the fact that  for me and others ive played with leveling and the journey is exactly what the game is about. When I played WOW it seemed like everyone was in a hurry which i never understood.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

I think the reason I like LOTRO is the fact that  for me and others ive played with leveling and the journey is exactly what the game is about. When I played WOW it seemed like everyone was in a hurry which i never understood.

I would say its because of its extremely competitive nature. The dude who gets the "World First lvl 80" gets such a massive exposure from many websites (and it mostly ended up being a huge pile of 'clever use of game mechanics').

Originally posted by Emhster

Originally posted by grandpagamer

I think the reason I like LOTRO is the fact that  for me and others ive played with leveling and the journey is exactly what the game is about. When I played WOW it seemed like everyone was in a hurry which i never understood.

 

I would say its because of its extremely competitive nature. The dude who gets the "World First lvl 80" gets such a massive exposure from many websites (and it mostly ended up being a huge pile of 'clever use of game mechanics').

Was it really a 'massive exposure'?  It was posted as a curiosity article on a the more popular WoW websites but almost noone cared.  i can't remember who it was and where he was from and i am sure that is true for almost everyone who plays WoW.  All I really remember is that another guy got suspended at level 79 for exploiting some instance bug that got him massive XP numbers but what he did faded out of memory pretty soon. 

yet we still remember Leeroy Jenkins

There is no justice, is there?

Originally posted by Gishgeron

yet we still remember Leeroy Jenkins

 

There is no justice, is there?

youtube FTW

Calling WoW a MMO is almost pointless imho all it is a Multiplayer game where people can gather in a city and sell stuff nothing more...

MMO is something that brings all people together to fight something together and that concept have gotten lost with Blizzard, all they did was making "Ironforge" into a battle.net chat channel,

I have no hope for Blizzard to ever being able to make a true MMO game cause they lost all thier innovation when they got thier eye on the mighty $$$$$$ since then they robbeb every other MMO for content they could use in WoW while inventing nothing new. Thier massive income have produced nothing but a few new pixel and alot of stolen features.

Arena in a MMO i mean really you wanna play a FPS or group game go play a game like GW.

The point of an MMO is to bring people together for a joined effort, fight for something or gather the server for a great event... they did it in vanilla they failed at it ever since.

Originally posted by Hydhra

Calling WoW a MMO is almost pointless imho all it is a Multiplayer game where people can gather in a city and sell stuff nothing more...

MMO is something that brings all people together to fight something together and that concept have gotten lost with Blizzard, all they did was making "Ironforge" into a battle.net chat channel,

I have no hope for Blizzard to ever being able to make a true MMO game cause they lost all thier innovation when they got thier eye on the mighty $$$$$$ since then they robbeb every other MMO for content they could use in WoW while inventing nothing new. Thier massive income have produced nothing but a few new pixel and alot of stolen features.

Arena in a MMO i mean really you wanna play a FPS or group game go play a game like GW.

The point of an MMO is to bring people together for a joined effort, fight for something or gather the server for a great event... they did it in vanilla they failed at it ever since.

 

 

WoW does bring people together. I have never heard of anyone being able to solo ToC25 before.

WoW is massive, multiplayer, and online. Exactly what MMO means. I think you're issue lies more in the community not liking each other rather than whether or not WoW is an MMO.

Originally posted by Vaguss

Originally posted by Hydhra

Calling WoW a MMO is almost pointless imho all it is a Multiplayer game where people can gather in a city and sell stuff nothing more...

MMO is something that brings all people together to fight something together and that concept have gotten lost with Blizzard, all they did was making "Ironforge" into a battle.net chat channel,

I have no hope for Blizzard to ever being able to make a true MMO game cause they lost all thier innovation when they got thier eye on the mighty $$$$$$ since then they robbeb every other MMO for content they could use in WoW while inventing nothing new. Thier massive income have produced nothing but a few new pixel and alot of stolen features.

Arena in a MMO i mean really you wanna play a FPS or group game go play a game like GW.

The point of an MMO is to bring people together for a joined effort, fight for something or gather the server for a great event... they did it in vanilla they failed at it ever since.

 

 

 

WoW does bring people together. I have never heard of anyone being able to solo ToC25 before.

WoW is massive, multiplayer, and online. Exactly what MMO means. I think you're issue lies more in the community not liking each other rather than whether or not WoW is an MMO.

So being 25 people together is what an MMO is for you... i mean really then Battlefield must also be an MMO and all other games with a multiplayer feature is a MMO.... really you got no clue what MMO means.

Originally posted by Hydhra

Originally posted by Vaguss

Originally posted by Hydhra

Calling WoW a MMO is almost pointless imho all it is a Multiplayer game where people can gather in a city and sell stuff nothing more...

MMO is something that brings all people together to fight something together and that concept have gotten lost with Blizzard, all they did was making "Ironforge" into a battle.net chat channel,

I have no hope for Blizzard to ever being able to make a true MMO game cause they lost all thier innovation when they got thier eye on the mighty $$$$$$ since then they robbeb every other MMO for content they could use in WoW while inventing nothing new. Thier massive income have produced nothing but a few new pixel and alot of stolen features.

Arena in a MMO i mean really you wanna play a FPS or group game go play a game like GW.

The point of an MMO is to bring people together for a joined effort, fight for something or gather the server for a great event... they did it in vanilla they failed at it ever since.

 

 

 

WoW does bring people together. I have never heard of anyone being able to solo ToC25 before.

WoW is massive, multiplayer, and online. Exactly what MMO means. I think you're issue lies more in the community not liking each other rather than whether or not WoW is an MMO.

 

So being 25 people together is what an MMO is for you... i mean really then Battlefield must also be an MMO and all other games with a multiplayer feature is a MMO.... really you got no clue what MMO means.

WoW is an mmo in every sense of the word. Yes its a lot easier than it used to but it is still one. If you can't see that then you don't understand what MMO means.

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Hydhra

Originally posted by Vaguss

Originally posted by Hydhra

Calling WoW a MMO is almost pointless imho all it is a Multiplayer game where people can gather in a city and sell stuff nothing more...

MMO is something that brings all people together to fight something together and that concept have gotten lost with Blizzard, all they did was making "Ironforge" into a battle.net chat channel,

I have no hope for Blizzard to ever being able to make a true MMO game cause they lost all thier innovation when they got thier eye on the mighty $$$$$$ since then they robbeb every other MMO for content they could use in WoW while inventing nothing new. Thier massive income have produced nothing but a few new pixel and alot of stolen features.

Arena in a MMO i mean really you wanna play a FPS or group game go play a game like GW.

The point of an MMO is to bring people together for a joined effort, fight for something or gather the server for a great event... they did it in vanilla they failed at it ever since.

 

 

 

WoW does bring people together. I have never heard of anyone being able to solo ToC25 before.

WoW is massive, multiplayer, and online. Exactly what MMO means. I think you're issue lies more in the community not liking each other rather than whether or not WoW is an MMO.

 

So being 25 people together is what an MMO is for you... i mean really then Battlefield must also be an MMO and all other games with a multiplayer feature is a MMO.... really you got no clue what MMO means.

WoW is an mmo in every sense of the word. Yes its a lot easier than it used to but it is still one. If you can't see that then you don't understand what MMO means.

Well you are right i dont know what an MMO is but my take on an MMO is something to do with the whole server or a large portion of the players playing the game and where do you find that in WoW.... in the cities where people gather to chat and show off nothing more... they could do that on battle.net instead.

Ive played games where the whole server went PVP'ing to defend thier realm, thats MMO, WoW had some of it in Vanilla but they lost it all when they turned towards multiplayer features instead of evolving thier MMO style.

Originally posted by Hydhra 

Well you are right i dont know what an MMO is but my take on an MMO is something to do with the whole server or a large portion of the players playing the game and where do you find that in WoW.... in the cities where people gather to chat and show off nothing more... they could do that on battle.net instead.

Ive played games where the whole server went PVP'ing to defend thier realm, thats MMO, WoW had some of it in Vanilla but they lost it all when they turned towards multiplayer features instead of evolving thier MMO style.

You do realize that by these standards UO or EQ would not be considered MMOs as well?

Originally posted by Hydhra

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Hydhra

Originally posted by Vaguss

Originally posted by Hydhra

Calling WoW a MMO is almost pointless imho all it is a Multiplayer game where people can gather in a city and sell stuff nothing more...

MMO is something that brings all people together to fight something together and that concept have gotten lost with Blizzard, all they did was making "Ironforge" into a battle.net chat channel,

I have no hope for Blizzard to ever being able to make a true MMO game cause they lost all thier innovation when they got thier eye on the mighty $$$$$$ since then they robbeb every other MMO for content they could use in WoW while inventing nothing new. Thier massive income have produced nothing but a few new pixel and alot of stolen features.

Arena in a MMO i mean really you wanna play a FPS or group game go play a game like GW.

The point of an MMO is to bring people together for a joined effort, fight for something or gather the server for a great event... they did it in vanilla they failed at it ever since.

 

 

 

WoW does bring people together. I have never heard of anyone being able to solo ToC25 before.

WoW is massive, multiplayer, and online. Exactly what MMO means. I think you're issue lies more in the community not liking each other rather than whether or not WoW is an MMO.

 

So being 25 people together is what an MMO is for you... i mean really then Battlefield must also be an MMO and all other games with a multiplayer feature is a MMO.... really you got no clue what MMO means.

WoW is an mmo in every sense of the word. Yes its a lot easier than it used to but it is still one. If you can't see that then you don't understand what MMO means.

Well you are right i dont know what an MMO is but my take on an MMO is something to do with the whole server or a large portion of the players playing the game and where do you find that in WoW.... in the cities where people gather to chat and show off nothing more... they could do that on battle.net instead.

Ive played games where the whole server went PVP'ing to defend thier realm, thats MMO, WoW had some of it in Vanilla but they lost it all when they turned towards multiplayer features instead of evolving thier MMO style.

Lake WIntergrasp
 

those ez sayer never pug run with noob ,never run with green gear only never...any the thing is its easy because they

are too use .bring 4 noob in your group and you ll see how hard your raid truelly is,plus the fact add-on do so much for player that they dont need to think anymore(almost)

but even if its easy blizzrd still is trying to figure out ways to include player left out for various reason(no bad,must know,fight ,show thi and that and that etc

they made it easy but the target they made it easy for are STILL left out

so dont be surprised if blizzard make it easier till raider understand one thing .include the excluded

or we ll make the game so easy they will find group without the pro

for me wow started going downhill when they introduced faster leveling . after that it was a slippery slope . although other players will say it started earlier with changes to the battle grounds . the few players i still know who were playing gave up because of the allowing of both horde an alliance players on the same server . i guess at the end of the day its blizzards game they can do what they want with it but they would have kept a lot of long term players if they had nt made the changes they have . i personally dont think its reaped the rewards they wanted given theres been no official subscription numbers announced by them in nearly a year . to anyone with any sence that means one thing . the numbers hav nt stayed the same so they must have gone down .