All Posts by Josher

Have to echo the sentiments of some of the more grounded minds here.  People have to remember the difference between nostolgia and quality of game.  EQ by todays standards is terrible.  The game was difficult due to the time it took to accomplish anything not the actual difficulty of the gameplay.  The game was not DEEPER or more complicated than games today.  When compared with WOW, for example, the EQ's gameplay is actually a whole lot more simplistic when it comes to options and choices you can make.  The difficulty also came from a lack of structure or explaination of gameplay systems and loads and loads of bugs that wouldn't be tolerated today.   Imagine how much exploration EQ would've had in todays world of FAQ sites.  Think really hard=)

There won't be another EQ1 because by todays standards, its what happened to Vangaurd.  VG was the natural successor, sharing many similar gameplay styles.   It just doesn't work.  Players aren't as tolerant as they used to be and for good reason.  IMO, we were far too tolerant back then and had to put up with a whole lot of %^$&# developers put us through just to be entertained. 

The people did have a lot to do with it all.  Its a different group now.  Thats not to say the people are worse now.  There're just more of them.  I never have a problem finding great people to play with.  Thats like saying small towns have nicer people than big cities.   There're nice people everywhere, but in a city, there's more of everyone and everything.

Originally posted by r0hn

Originally posted by Pappy13

Originally posted by r0hn

My biggest beef with the programming is that I don't like the targetting system.  The combat targetting system in wow stinks.

Could you clarify what you don't like?  You have the option to use the mouse to target, target the closest enemy, target the next closest enemy, target the closest ally, target the next closest ally, target who is targetting you, target your target's target and so on.  The group leader has the option to mark targets.  What more do you need?

In a crowded area clicking the correct target I find annoying and lots of times, I'll have lost any target, so I end up with nothing targetted.  I find it annoying and frustrating, and this could be done better.  I've played other MMOs and haven't seen anything like this.

Another game design flaw in WoW is the fact the game is by far too loot driven.  Everybody is nutz for loot, and I don't understand it.  The only meaningful character development in the game is thru loot.

What about professions?

The gathering professions are good, but the professions that create something aren't that great.  Leatherworking, tailoring, and blacksmithing I find are a time and money sink.  Stick to using dropped loot and you are way ahead.

 

Other things I don't like about wow is how players with in the environment use the environment such as, gold sellers and people doing group requests and guild recruiting withing the trade channel.  People scamming on the AH is annoying.

Perhaps you missed Blizzard's lawsuit against 1 gold seller which effectively put them out of the business as far as gold trading in WoW goes?  I'm not sure what Blizzard can do about the trade channel.  They don't have the manpower to police them on every server 24x7 and I'm not really sure it's worth it to do that.  Could you please define "scamming on the AH"?  You mean putting up a low cost item at a ridiculous buy out price?  Where exactly is the scam?  It's not a bait and switch.  It's not false advertising.  It's not really even deceptive,  it's just an attempt to take advantage of someone who's not paying attention to what they are doing.  Caveat Emptor I always say

Oh my 1 whole gold seller.  You don't say?  Well I don't know about your server, but there are many gold sellers spamming /y /2 and /s in IF and SW on the server I pay to play on.

Guild Recruiting in /2 is unacceptable.  The people that spam guild recruiting in /2 are moronic. 

Group recruiting in /2 is more tolerable, but with the the changes to LFG system, it's unneccesary.

Putting an item worth 1g as 50s bid and 100g buyout is a scam.  Annoying and a scam.

Oh I thought of one more thing.  The use of the extended ascii character set in names and guild names.  This is really bad.  I like to type out peoples names, and use of these characters doesn't allow for that.  I have to wait for them to talk or have them on my friends list before I'll even know they are on. Same goes for trying to send them a tell or whisper or invite them to a group.   Blizzard needs to fix this.   Most of the time when I see someone with an extended ascii character in their name, I just put them on my ignore list.   The ignore list needs to 4x the size too.

 

 

 

Not 1 gold seller.  1 gold selling company which equals who knows how many individuals.  Besides that, they cancel accounts left and right for farming.  They actually cancel more famring accounts than the total populations of some MMOs.  Blizzard couldn't possibly do much more without nailing a whole lot of innocent people, which they already have done. 

The AH scams are only a scam on the stupid.  No offense, but if you don't look at the price of something before buying it out, who's the fool?  Do you check your bill at a resturant before paying?

The chat spam is annoying, but do  you exspect Blizzard to stick 1 employee in every single zone on every server 24/7 banning accounts?  Thats 100s of employees buddy.  In an ideal world, that would be nice, but be reasonable.  This isn't some niche MMO with a couple of servers, 10k players and 1 chat channel.   Its like blaming the cops for not being on every single street corner to stop crime.  

If these are your most annoying problems, be glad you haven't experienced MMOs with real problems=)  

I guess the person who said DAOC had a great launch missed the part where every dungeon was unitemized.  For the uninitiated, that means the mobs didn't drop gold or loot, because Mythic didn't get to it yet.   Thats about as non-polished as it gets.  Lets not forget how Hibernia was not even completed until 6+ months into release.  Major game breaking class balance and stungaurd problems plagued DOAC for months.   There was only 1 model for each weapon/armor type before any expansions.  They all looked identical from lvl 1 to lvl 50, besides dye color.  How about them rollbacks, losing 5-6 hrs of playtime?  Some quests didn't even have rewards or the reward was something completely useless or insignificant.  Those server crashes every night during every single relic raid were stable, weren't they? 

Polished??  Oh c'mon.  The game was playable and at the time its launch seemed great, because look at the games that proceeded it.  AT that time, if you could log in each night, it was considered a good launch;)

WOW's worst problem were the queues, but it was a necessity.  Waiting 15 minutes to log in wasn't that big a deal.   Some servers also had some stability problems, but its not like you couldn't easily switch.  WOW is considered the most polished MMO for a reason.  It was playable and had loads of content on day 1 with millions of players thrashing the servers and no game breaking bugs.  Maybe COH was comparable, but considering the scale of  WOW, COH was a tiny, tiny game.  Its like saying running a 10 table resturant is as complex as Cheesecake Factory.   A whole lot more can go wrong when theres a 12 page menu and 200+ customers.

I vote AO and Vangaurd as the worst, most unpolished games at launch.  Horrendous what those guys did.  Eve is up there as well.

You can say you don't like the game but to say its bad...popular opinion, critics and numbers don't lie and can't be disputed.  A subscription service isn't a CD or a movie ticket.  Plenty of popular musicians and movies get really lousy reviews.  Not WOW.  WOW is popular because people play month after month after month.  Its popular because every critic thinks its a great MMO.  People don't play MMOs they don't enjoy.  However, people can watch a movie once and hate it or buy a CD and think it sucks.  10 Million people don't pay $15.99 a month and go, "This sucks!" then play for another month and say, "this sucks", then 2 years later, say "this really sucks". 

A MMO sucks when loads of people try it and don't bother subscribing or no one even bothers trying it at all because the reviews are horrible. 

Originally posted by Va-le

 

Originally posted by Josher

 

Originally posted by Zindaihas

Who says its good?  Certainly not me.  I think a more appropriate question is - what makes it so popular?  That's the big question.  Actually, I think I already know why.

 

10 Million people and every professional critic.  Actually they describe it as excellent or outstanding=)  Its popular because its better than good.  Quite simple actually.

 

 

Are we going to get in to a debate about what popularity represents? Nazism was popular, drug addiction is popular, the spice girls are popular, teenage pregnancy is popular.... WoW was and is a game aimed at the masses, it's that simple. It is aimed at your average teenager, it's not complex, it's not challenging and it's easy to get in to. Tick, tick, tick.

The Beatles and Elvis are popular too and a small minority of people think they suck as well.  So your point is what?  Loads of people enjoy WOW, vets and new players alike.  Got a problem with that...seek help.

Originally posted by Zindaihas

Who says its good?  Certainly not me.  I think a more appropriate question is - what makes it so popular?  That's the big question.  Actually, I think I already know why.

10 Million people and every professional critic.  Actually they describe it as excellent or outstanding=)  Its popular because its better than good.  Quite simple actually.

If WOW came out at the same time as UO, EQ, ect, people wouldn't know what those other games even were.  They would be what A Tale in the Desert is now. 

The level of polish & detail alone puts those games to shame 10 fold.   You think anyone playing EQ back then, with the horrible down time, forced grouping and 10 hr boss camping sessions would even get played, when people could do the same thing in WOW in a more stream lined and fun environment?  You think people would even touch UO or AC with all their tech problems?

WOW is what it is because of all the games before it.   Its an evolution of the genre.  It really couldn't exist back then because the features in WOW are what they are because of all the mistakes other developers made and Blizzard improved upon.

Stick a million people in front of Doom and Crysis or COD4 and guess which one they're NOT going to play.  We're not even taking graphics. 

Originally posted by SonofSeth

Originally posted by WootNation

 

 

PvP rewards ARE worthwhile, I agree... but battlegrounds are NOT fun at all, and there is absolutely no challenge present.

But, then what do you do once when you get in? I'm not saying you MUST at any cost find BGs fun, but not fun at all? It's PVP, simple goals, easy to understand, go and do objectives or kill people, that's it. Why is that no fun to you?

I imagine its because some people only PvP to get rewards.  And since you can just sit in a BG and do very little for rewards, which isn't all that much fun, THESE people get very little out of the BGs.  So they sit in the BGs doing nothing for rewards they'll basically never ever use.  Brilliant!!!

Its like people who say life is boring.  Who's fault is that?  If you don't try to make something exciting it isn't going to be.  BGs CAN be a lot of fun if you actually try to win, get organized and play together.  They can also be dreadfully boring if you just sit there and do nothing, bitching and moaning about how this is unfair, that person is cheating, this sucks and that sucks.  Unfortunately many people prefer to do nothing, get rewards, bitch and moan and wonder why they're not having any fun.  You can just get by or you can attempt to actually, you know, PvP. 

Many perfer the path of least resistance.  For some, thats good enough.  But when I hear these people complain how its boring, you have to scratch your head.  You know you don't HAVE TO take the path of least resistance.

Its the same reason a tiny insignifican't portion of movie lovers long for the days of silent movies because they thought they were more entertaining;)  They might've been really great way back when, but by todays standards, quite boring, overly acted and not all that interesting to watch, much like original MMOs.

I was there from the begining and do not wish for one second that we all make an about face and go back to what UO and EQ were.  The IDEAS were fresh.  The people were more enthusiastic.  Everything seemed so new.  But the games were utter garbage from a technical, gameplay and design standpoint compared to today.  Its the people, the common understanding we had and memories that some people want again.  Personally I got all of that out of WOW because I played with like minded people who came from all of that.  We just adapted to a newer game and brought those experiences with us.  We certainly didn't go into the game with a bitchy, elitst attitude that far too many MMORPG.comers have.  No wonder they can't find fun in newer MMOs.  Who wants to play with people with that kind of attitude?  They complain that the communities aren't like the used to be.  Maybe, just maybe, its you and not the community.  I never had a problem finding great people to play with in WOW or LOTR.   You need great people to play a MMO with or else its a bore. 

Also remember.  Most people who post here are burned out, bitter gamers, generally angry that time and most developers have passed them by.  Its a very tough situation to ponder...complete insignificance when you used to have it all.  Luckily, I've easily adapted to newer MMOs, still have a blast and welcome the future and refinement of the genre.

On top of that...life moves on.  Some people grow up.  I can't for the life of me imagine doing what I used to do 9 or 10 yrs ago.  With a family, kids and a lot more responsibility, I can't dedicate the time or effort that was required to get anything out of UO or EQ.  I NEED convenience and fun.  My time is too valuable now to go looking for it or waiting a few months until the game decides to get fun.  To me, the people who played back then and want games to revert to that style of play are still living with that same life style and/or havn't quite grown up yet.

Originally posted by Vistaakah

Games like WOW only hold a persons interest for a short time. Longevity of sustained play simply isn't there. WOW may appeal to  casual players but it doesn't' really appeal at all to veteran MMO which is growing by leaps and bounds as they get bored of their first love MM0 "World of Warcraft".

I'll bet that there are guilds in WOW full of veterans from UO and EQ.  Why?  Because I've been playing since the 90s, played with 3 guilds full of vets from past MMOs and that was on 1 server.  WOW appeals to casuals AND veterans.   There are probably more people playing WOW since release than the total playerbase from a few MMOs combined.

I don't know, I learn about life the more I live it=)  Funny points though.

I learned the opposite of some people regarding online friends.  REAL friends aren't pixels.  Real friends aren't people you talk with over your computer.  They're not just a voice.  Real friends will do almost anything for you.  I don't care how much I've played a videogame or talked with someone over Vent.  People are NEVER themselves on the internet. 

It must be a generatiion thing.  I can't trust someone I can't look in the eye.  If you call someone you've never met face to face a real friend, then you're idea of a friend is actually just some person you know.   You only have a few REAL friends in your life.  3 or 4.  Everyone else is just an associate.

For not being an American or ever lived here, having skewed biased views of our policies, people and history due to your  vast research on the intergeek web or accurate European socialist media, you sure have plenty of opinions on how we should be living, Madace...forgive me, I mean antisocial, anarchist, crackpot.

Now go hide under a rock Madace, awaiting our ultimate demise.  I'm sure you'll be dancing in the streets with all the Muslim extremists.  What a sad, frightened, deluded life you must live in probably a tiny little apt, only your computer to hug and kiss goodnight and all that knowledge of how we're supposed to be running things over here.

You want to change something?  In America you actually can if you bother to try.  But its far easier to sit in your dark little room telling everyone how bad it is for us.  How sad for you.  Do you stand on street corners with signs around your neck, yelling how the world is going to end some day and its all the human's fault?  Check that...its all Amercia's fault, because w're the root of all evil, aren't we crackpot;)

If you want to know what the life of someone who wants me dead is worth in taxes...I'd say 2 pennies maybe;)   If  they're willing to strap bombs to babies and women or fly planes into buildings to kill me, how much should their lives be worth? 

Actually I beta tested Eve, took a break a few weeks before release, then started over again and realized after an hour the game was still boring and didn't improve. 

So why would someone level 2 characters to 70 if the game took only a few brain cells?   You spent so much time leveling up characters in a boring and easy game?  Sounds like you have extremely lousy taste in games and an incredible amount of time to waste.  How sad for you=)

I played Eve for an hour and knew it sucked for me.  If I continued to play for a year and called it crap, what would that make me? 

Originally posted by namelessbob

WoW is just a bad game. I played it since release on and off. Came back at expansion beat all content quit again. It is not a challenging game, and the fact that they are constantly stealing other games content is laughable.

Whats more laughable is that you played a bad game on and off for at least 2 years=)  So you normally play bad games for that long?   Have to question the opinion of someone who willingly plays a game they aren't enjoying.  Screwed up?  Could be=)

Sorry, never said it was god send. Never said it was the best.  Never mentioned GWs.  I only commented that it doesn't take any less skill than any other MMO, which people just LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE to spout day in day out.  TO those people, its obvious they don't have much of a clue.  How much clue can they have complaining about it on MMORPG.com.  You'd figure someone who thinks the game sucks wouldn't post about it on a message board dedictaed.  They just wouldn't care.  But they DO care.  They care because they know they're wrong.  People need to understand the difference between why you PvP and the complexity of the fight.  WOWs PvP purpose is simple because theres no higher reason to fight.  This was done for a very good reason Blizzard is aware of and many people aren't.  If it needs to be explained, think really hard and it'll come to you.  But To say the tactics & options are any less simple than any other MMO reeks of pure ignorance.

GW by the way certainly takes plenty of skill to play well.  However, you can also play it like a moron and easily beat other morons, doing just fine, just like WOW or any other MMO for that matter.

Bashing WOWs PvP mechanics means you're an angry bitter individual and nothing more.  Bash the reasons why you fight.  Bash the death penalty.  Bash the instances if you want.   But bashing how well the game controls, how many options you have and how fast you have to use those options in order to do well means you really don't have any idea what you're talking about.

UO had very few options in a fight and horrible controls.  DAOC removed moevement control almost completely and RAs and CC have never been balanced from day 1.  SB had horrible control and nasty tech problems.  In Eve, PvP is designed to be avoided.  People go out of their way to avoid a fight and then when you're in a fight, you're mostly looking at blips on a screen, extrememly automated combat and very little reaction time needed, about as exciting as watching paint dry.  Sure the stakes are high, but the fights are dead boring and painfully slow.

So when certain people mention WOW's PvP is horible, you have to question why loads of people are playing such a crappy game.  Maybe, just maybe, its because WOW PvP is actually quite fun and the people who hate it are quite bitter and the idea of fun differs greatly from "normal people".  Who plays a game that isn't fun anyway?

Originally posted by Scriar

Originally posted by Josher

Scriar, I think you are the exact "kid" that people didn't like dealing with in WOW.  WHy?  Because you're the problem.  Its really simple.  I never ran into anyone who actually knew how to play that said it took no skill.  

Do you have basic reading ability? where in my post have I gone on about WoW taking skill? I gave examples of posts where people say WoW is complex, WoW takes skill etc then I said very clearly that these were examples of posts that are never explained with any existant facts.

Usually they are just responses like this one you have posted. Instead of explaining why WoW takes 'skill' you try to insult me by insinuating Im a bad PvPer which I could not care less about because WoW is not a game that anyone takes seriously if they want to PvP. Due to it having Levels, classes, stats, dice rolls, etc

We're talking MMO style skill here.   Quick decision making, teamwork, preparation, having the right builds and gear set ups, knowing strengths and weaknesses of classes, ect.  Twitchy FPS skill is different, but even WOW requires a great deal of it compared to most other MMOs. 

At no point in my post did I even mention this, and yes it does take decsion making teamwork, and preparation, having the right builds etc None of that is hard to do, but it is what separates a good player from a bad one even if it is not a huge difference.

DAOC is a great example of not really needing too much twitch skill, with /face & /stick taking care of most of your movement.  WIth WOW you have turn the camera to keep your POV centered.  Thats not saying DAOC took less skill.  Its just different.  WOW is overall much, much faster and requires more decision making and less reliance on timed abilites that have no counter.   Every ability in WOW has multiple counters and those who know about them all play the game better than those that just say, "WOW is just gear and spamming spells".  You hear that and its quite obvious they never actually tried to win or got past the trial.  Many people think WOW PvP at low levels is the same at high levels.  They're not even close.

Again I do not deny that you need to know the counters, but those counters are a few for each situation and are very easy to learn given a certain amount of time, and once you have learned them there is very little chance you will lose, unless of course you go up against other people that know all the counters then the reasons why this games PvP will always suck kicks in.

1, level difference obviously this is not an issue at 70 but it is a deciding factor at other levels

2 class, alot of the classes in this game are imbalenced or will always win against certain other classes in 1 on 1 situations. In group PvP it comes down to certain combos always winning.

3 stats, and dice rolls are self explanatory, but in my opinion any game that has dice rolls is not going to be a good pvp game due to the random chances it causes bad players to some times win, and good players to sometimes lose despite their 'skill' That is the problem with WoW PvP it is predicatble and boring.

basically everything that makes this game a RPG is what takes away any potentional skill in PvP. All is boiled down to luck, and time because of the gameplay mechanics..

My guild was full of UO and DOAC vets.  We all came from other MMOs.  The only people who claim it takes less skill than others MMOs are those who just give up instantly.  I've seen them.  I played