Honestly the sounding of 'confidence' in knowing where they are going isn't really good. So far every expansion has done more to harm the game rather then improve upon it. Its to the point nostologia stands no chance in ever bringing me back to the game like some of the older MMos I use to play (FF11 or Ragnarok Online for instance). Its just digging a deep deep deep deep deep pit in which I just have less and less insentive to play. 

Unlike other games, WoW keeps just losing that nostologia feeling that usually keeps players around a game. Its taking away what made the game good. Not saying of course Vanilla was perfect, there were changes that did make it better in TBC (which was a pretty good expansion really just with some flaws) and unfortunately they seemed to take more of the negative elements and just expanded upon them, as with every step forward there would be one giant leap back. 

Then again, maybe the vision isn't as bad as its made out to be? I'd love to see the talent system back in game (it is NOT a talent system now, no matter how you try to claim it, further making it cookie cutter then ever before) and making maybe raids and progression... I don't know... feel like they have purpose and geniune challenge and reward for completing? Till then, I have 0 intentions of ever returning back to play WoW.

You have to love how they think they can bring back people by saying they will "Bring back the older days". The only thing that will continue to happen is more people leaving. I don't care what the Wow kids, or blizzard bandwagon community says about it either. The fact is, the game has been in decline for some time, by thier own doing too. I know for one that I don't want to play a kid's game or a game that requires less than no thought to play. I don't blame Ghostcrawler for it's slow demise either, I blame Blizzard for their greed. We can debate about this topic all day (which usually leads to a tempt ban for me, hah!).

As far as Borcraft being the "first" successful MMO, I think you might want to look back further at the first MMO's that  "were and are" successful. Borecraft brought nothing new to MMO's; the only thing it did was create copies/clones and tell developers that watering down a game or taking away it's "thought" factor, was okay to do. This is not an attack at the game or it's developers. This is just the reality of it. Giving honest constructive input is not a bad thing either. It's just too bad that doing it on these forums results in a warning or tempt ban. (Which I'm sure I will receive nonetheless) :)

In Vanilla, and even Burning Crusade, we had pretty crappy quests.  Because we just didn’t have the technology or the experience to do really clever things.  So the entire game was based around combat being more interesting, and you had to be careful, and have help from friends.....

[mod edit]

This was a really good interview to read...I played WoW since beta until about 2 or so months after Cata came out. It wasn't that I didn't like the expansion I just finally reached my point where I finally quit and had no urge to go back. After reading this if I had time I would love to try out all of the new features and really sink my teeth in, but what a 19 month old that's not going to happen any time soon! Haha.

Anyways, I wish WoW and Blizzard the best. They kinda sucked it up with Diablo 3 imo. Hopefully they continue down a successful path with WoW - and even more so - "Project Titan" :D

Truth is it matters not what Blizzard say or do people will find something and anything to complain about,

D3 - "Oh what its not a straight up clone of D2, blizzard suck"

SC2 - "What! I have to pay for an expansion?"

WoW - "You mean Blizzard cannot make a game I have been playing for years and for 100's of hours still feel fresh and new?"

Now I have my issues with WoW but that is just that I am one of millions with one opinion, WoW is still a massively successful game by any measure and it's still the biggest MMO (8 years after it's release) due to the choices blizzard made this past 8 years.

Ghostcrawler -> Cata - how to lose a couple of million subscribers and still put a positive spin on it.

And for heavens sake, change the skill build system back to something with at least 1% of interest - simply awful.

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Originally posted by Nadia

i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview

 

I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week

 Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.

 

Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone. 

/rollseyes

Bill, its not a question of pleasing everyone... Its a matter of why the Ghostcrawler Syndrome exists...  Thats when a Dev, no matter how talented, is focused more on their spread sheets, and data mining (in the endless, eternal chase of PvP "balance"), than they are on what makes a game or class fun to play.  Its happend many times before, but Ghostcrawler has taken it to the level of an art form... ^^

I've lost track of the number of times and games, where PvE fun has been hammered into the ground because of that focus on PvP "balance".

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Originally posted by Nadia

i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview

 

I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week

 Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.

 

Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone. 

/rollseyes

Bill, its not a question of pleasing everyone... Its a matter of why the Ghostcrawler Syndrome exists...  Thats when a Dev, no matter how talented, is focused more on their spread sheets, and data mining (in the endless, eternal chase of PvP "balance"), than they are on what makes a game or class fun to play.  Its happend many times before, but Ghostcrawler has taken it to the level of an art form... ^^

I've lost track of the number of times and games, where PvE fun has been hammered into the ground because of that focus on PvP "balance".

Agreed.

Back to my personal bug bear, Cata. When will ghostcrawler be honest about the worst expac the game has seen.

Firstly the change from 10 to 5 levels - mistake. 10 levels gives you the room to progress your character at a decent rate. 5 levels was just not enough to feel like any acheivement.

Secondly the story - trying to follow on from the LK story was always going to be difficult, but to replace this with a fifty foot talking dragon was just terrible. In a single step you lost all the personal emnity lore of the LK, to be replaced with a toytown Godzilla with an awful storyline.

Thirdly and most contentious is of course the Cata dungeons. If you are going to have dungeons of that difficulty suddenly introduced then you got exactly what was expected - a God awful row. I do not have a problem with dungeon difficulty - what I do take issue with is dungeon consistency. Dungeons should gradually increase in difficulty as you progress, not thrown at the playerbase with seemingly haphazard difficulty.

You trained the playerbase to expect dungeons of a certain level from levels 1-80. Then after informing the playerbase that dungeons where like this you hit them with the original Cata ones - What a ridiculous thing to do, and one of the biggest reasons for player exodus.

What you should have done was give players an increasing difficulty curve with dungeons, not walk throughs then suddenly met with one mistake death instances. This was Cata's biggest problem and the exit door started spinning. 

Of course, the dungeons where toned down after a while - too late, sections of the playerbase had already voted with their feet. You should have increased the difficulty of the lower ones as players progressed, getting people used to the harder penalties, then the Cata dungeons would have streamed into this.

But no, instead there was the god-like edicts from ghostcrawler about Cata  - totally forgetting that the players are his customers. Well Cata was a lesson for you - listen to your customers and they won't, by the millions, walk away.

He's a well payed chimp, He is gonna do what he is told by the suits who wanna make WOW wizard 101

Until they have 500k subscribers nothing will change over there with old Wow. no legacy server like EQ. They will have new MMO's coming, one for the PC 'Titan' and one coming for next gen consoles. plus the movie is getting ready for production. I think gonna be a great time for them as they phase out old Wowcrap and start moving forward with soemthing fresh.

Great interview, its pretty obvious that 5.2 is a sucsess. The vibe i get in game is that mysts is one of the better expansions Bizzard has put out. They did a good job re-creating the excitment that you ussualy get in New MMO's, along with effective chages to classes & pvp they have given us tons of raiding content and everyone seems pretty happy with wow atm; raiders & pvp'ers alike so kudos to ghostcrawler.

And....This was cool to here:  "And we are working on updating all of the player models."

...Thank god my troll will finnaly bilnk (her eyes are SOooo dry.)

Until they have 500k subscribers.

1.  Dont hold your breath at this happening anytime in the next 15 years

2.  That would still have them as the #1 western MMORPG

I'm not a themepark person by nature, but I have to admit that I've played more WoW than I intended since MoP came out and as a player of rather quirky interests, I've had a much easier time "finding the fun" in Pandaria than in previous expansions. 

I'm a world person and credit where credit is due - the Isle of Thunder is a huge amount of fun to roam around - amazing atmosphere of lightning-lit trees, variety of goals to search for, sub-areas having their own distinct mechanics/behaviours, the swarms of cockroaches underfoot, the sense (real or illusionary) of participation in pushing forward the overall goal. 

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Originally posted by Nadia

i dislike Ghostcrawler but this is a good interview

 

I liked this more than Ghostcrawlers commentary via IGN earlier this week

 Warcraft Patch 5.2 brings back "old school" feel.

 

Thanks, Nadia.  And Greg gets a bad wrap.  I'm sure a lot of people would do just fine in his position and please everyone. 

/rollseyes

Great logic there sir, great logic. Do some research why people don't like Greg. You think gamers just don't like a PR or Developer for no reason? There are always reasons to everything when it comes to the gaming industry, and the gaming community. You should know that your a Journalist. Yes there are people out there who could do a better then Greg. The original developers who worked on WoW knew what they were doing and they wanted to cater it too "Everyone" not just one group of players over the other "hardcores" or "casuals". Greg and his team are the reason why the entire game was dumbed down to the point even a 6 year old could play the game. MoP isn't even WoW, it's a completly differn't game altogether.

When greg and his team came on board they slowly destroyed the game for the players who played the game because it was challanging, indepth, and competative. Most of the players who played this game back in the day don't play it anymore, Why? no not because it's old, but because the game is catered too Strickly casuals and little kids that can't handle games that require you to know the mechanics of the game. I'm willing to bet my next paycheck that if most of the Current players when back to the original World of Warcraft, they couldnt even complete a full Blackwing Lair or AQ40 run. Most of them are new to WoW, and are used to all the Tank and Spank bullshit that Greg and his Team have been spoon feeding the sheep since 2008.

Originally posted by Mackeh

Greg you need ti watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H13K77Tmi8

Then you need to open Vanilla server or a BC server and watch the millions of players return to a game that was good, not this utter mess that you now call WOW.

Thanks for the link. That was better then I thought it would be. :) My wife and I would love a server that goes back to the old days TBC or earlier. 

Wow needs open tagging... I just reactivated my account for a month to check out what the Cataclysm did to azeroth, and I am having a very hard time with people kill stealing, they come in, aggro all the mobs... and killem... leaving me standing there with nothing to do but wait for a re-spawn.. sorry, ill spend my 15 bux else where if i have to sit and wait for spawns.. this wasnt just one isolated incedent either, everywhere i go... more kill stealers.. griefers... WoWs community has gone to the dogs, people are rude, and just dont care if they are ruining your game. I wont be paying for another month...

Okay WoW'rs you may commence with the flaming...

Originally posted by doug200463

Wow needs open tagging... I just reactivated my account for a month to check out what the Cataclysm did to azeroth, and I am having a very hard time with people kill stealing, they come in, aggro all the mobs... and killem... leaving me standing there with nothing to do but wait for a re-spawn.. sorry, ill spend my 15 bux else where if i have to sit and wait for spawns.. this wasnt just one isolated incedent either, everywhere i go... more kill stealers.. griefers... WoWs community has gone to the dogs, people are rude, and just dont care if they are ruining your game. I wont be paying for another month...

Okay WoW'rs you may commence with the flaming...

Sure buddy......

Originally posted by doug200463

Wow needs open tagging... I just reactivated my account for a month to check out what the Cataclysm did to azeroth, and I am having a very hard time with people kill stealing, they come in, aggro all the mobs... and killem... leaving me standing there with nothing to do but wait for a re-spawn.. sorry, ill spend my 15 bux else where if i have to sit and wait for spawns.. this wasnt just one isolated incedent either, everywhere i go... more kill stealers.. griefers... WoWs community has gone to the dogs, people are rude, and just dont care if they are ruining your game. I wont be paying for another month...

Okay WoW'rs you may commence with the flaming...

I totally know what you mean.  There are some good people left, but the majority seem to be spoiled, entitled, thoughtless, rude and full of themselves.  Just a sign of the times, I suspect.  But WoW is hardly the only such community. That is pretty common in all too many games these days.

I received a seven day pass, and decided to go back and see how 5.2 is working out.  Its fairly standard as far as such things go.  Some of its entertaining (bouncing around as a lizard warrior is funny).  But there have been way too many class changes, and people are even more fixated on dps meters, than before. 

I was thinking of running my 85 hunter up to 90, but I really don't see the point, right now.  I've been through quite a bit of the MoP content twice now, and I'm not really interested in a third time, right now.

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by doug200463

Wow needs open tagging... I just reactivated my account for a month to check out what the Cataclysm did to azeroth, and I am having a very hard time with people kill stealing, they come in, aggro all the mobs... and killem... leaving me standing there with nothing to do but wait for a re-spawn.. sorry, ill spend my 15 bux else where if i have to sit and wait for spawns.. this wasnt just one isolated incedent either, everywhere i go... more kill stealers.. griefers... WoWs community has gone to the dogs, people are rude, and just dont care if they are ruining your game. I wont be paying for another month...

Okay WoW'rs you may commence with the flaming...

I totally know what you mean.  There are some good people left, but the majority seem to be spoiled, entitled, thoughtless, rude and full of themselves.  Just a sign of the times, I suspect.  But WoW is hardly the only such community. That is pretty common in all too many games these days.

I received a seven day pass, and decided to go back and see how 5.2 is working out.  Its fairly standard as far as such things go.  Some of its entertaining (bouncing around as a lizard warrior is funny).  But there have been way too many class changes, and people are even more fixated on dps meters, than before. 

I was thinking of running my 85 hunter up to 90, but I really don't see the point, right now.  I've been through quite a bit of the MoP content twice now, and I'm not really interested in a third time, right now.

Hmm... ill agree that there are some good people left, but i have to disagree that rudeness is happening in all games, yes, you have your trolls everywhere, but i play a very wide range of games, and the level of rude-ness in other games is NO WHERE NEAR! the level of WoW. But im not going to go back and forth on the subject.. after my 30 days are up.. im done..