I have to ask.. what did you (the OP) expect...? Have you played any BW game.. like... ever... If not i can understand why you feel a bit cheated since the story loaded gameplay of a BW game is not for every one. But if you did play any of them *palm+forehead" But at least you had sense enough to realise it now. Thus we will not have to have you complaning later on how you invested several stacks of (your currency of choice) in to it before you found out it was not for you.

So... Gl/Hf

in the case of WoW it is pretty simple.

Samwise Didier(SP) like to draw pandas, and having seen the guy it is easy to understand. Samwise worked on the art for some (if not all) of the warcraft/starcraft games.  Other people found the little fighting pandas rather cute. They became a unit in WC3 as a sort of inside-joke. Other people liked them too. Blizzard needed a setting for  a new expansion. And having turned pretty much every other part of Azeroth insde out they used the Pandarans and Pandaria.

And in all honesty, since WoW have the gnomes they have... Pretty much anything goes.

Originally posted by Szasz

Sure the evil and criminal acts will remain but now it's done by a source we once (and apparently still do) regard(ed) as a hero. But I axe you, is it still heroic? Feeding greed and corruption and making success a measure of wealth and not skill or patience or practice or any other virtue? We truly live in an entitled age of instant gratification.

And let us all ignore the slippery slope this presents. The future of gaming: intermittent rewards for brainwashing combined with micro-transactions for those who can afford and need a quick fix. Why even make the game portion of this? Why not just make D3 be a lobby where randomly while logged in you are given items for an avatar and the longer you "play" the greater the quality of the random items you are given become and you just buy and sell trademarket style the items you get (maybe south korea's idea of gambling isn't that far off) for max profits!!!!

Tell you what, though. If you can conquer each and every argument I put forward here, then I will totally and completely change my opinion about this game. I still won't buy it, but that's neither here nor there.

1:st Argument: Yes this is a valid standpoint in most games that introduce a cash shop after release. But in the case of Diablo the problem is already there, since there have been a RMT community in Diablo for several years now. So you do not loose any measure of skill and patince with the system in Diablo 3 since the option to pay for gear have always been there. The only difference is that now you can get help if you are scammed as long as you use Blizzards way. And let's be honest valor and heroism have never had anything to do with running a company.

2:nd argument: The slippery slope, Well sad to say you already at the bottom end of that slope. Micro transactions are a fact and they work very well. Why, well because the people born in the late 70's and the 80's do not have as much time any more.. But they do have more money so they pay for convineice.. Just like how you go to the store and buy meat instead of taking your favourite kitchen knife to the woods and try to lay waste to a deer. Your second part of the argument... Well it still seems that most gamers want to.. Game.. So while you just as well could have a system that at random intervals gave you the option to roll a dice and get rewards, removing the game component would not work (well i am pretty sure it would at some level as people wold make a game out of it to collect stuff.) But it woudl not work as a adventure game.

Now do i care if you are "won over" by my arguments, not one iota (but i like a challange) but no matter of how weak my argumenst are yours are pure speculation and in the real world a company would go for my line over yours every day, better to try and protect the user from a system they can not force away then to turn a blind eye and say "na na na na does not happen na na na"

@grayghost: Well you do have a point. But the thing is that this problem will happen any way. Want thet sword of epic kill kaboom... It cost you 100M gold... You have three options.. earn it/buy gold/buy it of the black market 2 of 3 can get you banned. Or you can have earn it/buy gold/black market/BAH now only 2 of 4 can get you banned and thus you might have saved a few idiots from them self.

It is worth a try, and if it does not work you can always PM me and laugh in my face.

So what i get from this is that it is better to have a black market driven by hacking/duping and theft completley out of any ones controll then a legit source were Blizzard can monitor and support the user when something goes wrong? Because paying with real cash for tiems happen in the earlier Diablo games... No point in pretending like it did not. So it is not like this is a new invention.

But by all means, support the idea och black market trading and free for all scamming... It is a great motivation to protect... well i am not sure what you are trying to protect.

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by tawess

Originally posted by Metentso

The picture is not altered? That's a carbon copy! I can't imagine a company with a record budget not bein able to design a unique combat system. And it's STAR WARS ffs, get some inspiration! jesuschristfenton!

I fail to see the point... If you can offer a set of abilities that people feel familiar with why in the long tooth would you do a lot of wonky stuff with it "just to be different". Were i get my education that is called "art school crap" and widley regarded as a bad idea, never put form before function. And since it would not have finctioned better if it did +2% fire damamge and +3% electrict damage i fail to see how they woudl have made it different.. You need a main attac, a cone attack, a AoE attack, some form of self buff and so on and so forth.

 

But do elaborate please how you think that they could have done it better.

I don't know, I'm not a game developer, but give me 1 milion dollars and I will assemble a team and try.

Well i am not a game developer either and i still can provide a few good reasons WHY you shoudl do it like that.

Originally posted by Metentso

The picture is not altered? That's a carbon copy! I can't imagine a company with a record budget not bein able to design a unique combat system. And it's STAR WARS ffs, get some inspiration! jesuschristfenton!

I fail to see the point... If you can offer a set of abilities that people feel familiar with why in the long tooth would you do a lot of wonky stuff with it "just to be different". Were i get my education that is called "art school crap" and widley regarded as a bad idea, never put form before function. And since it would not have finctioned better if it did +2% fire damamge and +3% electrict damage i fail to see how they woudl have made it different.. You need a main attac, a cone attack, a AoE attack, some form of self buff and so on and so forth.

But do elaborate please how you think that they could have done it better.

Sooo... .. . First and foremost, would yuo OP be so kind and take of the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. Thank you.

Games of today are still complex and i dare say difficult, even hard. But what the smart game designers of today have figured out is that a major part of the community no longer have a desire for boring. After all i am pretty sure the guilds running heroic raids in WoW would agree that there is a good amount of trials and tribulations there and that they are a fairly close group of people. And that of course trickle down. Same goes for most other games i have been in contact with. I don't think any one can call EVE a "easy" game nor would i call a game like Darkfall easy (i would call it a sinkhole for people with severe crawings of self inflicted pain, but that is just me).

Sure i can agree with the OP that bleeding and crying together does build a strong group but to dismis most modern games as void of these is to stick your coinslot/joystick out there and dare people to whack you with a stick because you are over-simplifying a rather complex issue and are in several cases wrong. Most of the games of today have some hard challanges but most of the people with opinions like the OP refuses to see it and actually when confronted with it tries to worm their way out or get all defensive and agressive about it.

"I know games like WoW now have scaled dungeons and most is soloable,"

Only by over-gearing them... No body solos dungeons in WoW with the same teir of gear unless they are very very skilled. SW:TOR does this to a ceartin level since a smart player can use their companion to almost act like a second person... But they still can not take down a flashpoint alone with out out-gearing/out leveling it.

I am glad to see that a new flashpoint is comming out. And while a few old tarts might not like the whole "zombie" vibe and deem it not "star warsy and iconic" it seems to me that the licensing department of Lucas Empire did and that is good enough for me. And at least they had a good zombie proxy, instead of defaulting to a normal zombie like SWG did with the death troopers.

I guess because it is a non-vital problem at the bottom of of a long list of vital problems... But i am sure you can make a claim with the BBB or your credit card company and get a refund if you really really work for it... If not do like the rest of the world and chill a bit, it will come when it comes.

trust me it is better to just roll with the punches... Trying to tell the industry that something does not work, when it from their perspective does is like trying to pass a brick... Painfull and pretty futile, and in the end you will bleed.

Why it failed...

Simple it was a buggy mess and in essence not WoW nor DAoC... So it got slammed from every side. Add to that the balance issues and you had a game ripe for a fail.

It is sad... i still think it was a very very good game.

Originally posted by Yamota

Yes this surprises me too. DAoC was leaps and bounds better in PvP and supposedly the same guys developed WAR? Hard to believe, either it was another team or there was some corporate suits who forced their views on the dev. team.

I am pretty sure the two faction thing came from GamesWorkshop... They invested a lot in the years before the release of WAR to have both their settings have two clear sides of conflict... Order vs Chaos... And while it is true that both settings have "neutral" armies most of them does not work all that good together... Heck lore wise it was pretty contrived why Chaos, Orcs and Dark Elves would work together.

Honestly tho... three factiones would not have saved it... In the end a way to thight budget and deadline is what killed the game. Not enough time was put in to the mechanics of the game.

No... I like the game as it is now.. F2P woudl only cause a lot of clogged servers and drive up server costs, cutting deeply in to development budgets... Also all and every update would go taking a big NOM out of my wallet since that is the onlöy way to make money for a game like that.

Would it have had more people playing past 1:st month... Most likley but in all honesty bejeweld blits have more players.. does not make it a better game. Simply every one likes cheap or free stuff.

D3 is to SWTOR as apples are to oranges. If they were trying to snipe people from SWTOR would the releasedate not be around the 19 of january.. Just saying...

But i agree with the "if it is not from Blizzard a release date is worth water." after all it is only words and words are wind.

it is ok... The marketing division makes for shitty coders any way and video producers are usualy lazy texture artists.

Better that then having your servers economy ruined but dirty cheaters...

Originally posted by tixylix

 

I'm hoping Titan is good but Blizzard have been nothing but a let down with WoWs development.

Son... save your self the trouble and just push it out of your mind allready... Blizzard have found a formula that works and they will use it again and again... they always have and they always will... just look at warstarcraft 1-1-2-2-3

Me... i think swtor will settle in at 750-500k subs and maybe 120k concurent... Placing a nutkick from Eve.

Three faction PvP only solves the faction imbalance on paper.. in reality it makes it worse.

After why in seven heavens should you join the loosing side and maybe win when you can join the winning side and guarantee the phat lootz.

Meh... i see a major ban wave in the future...

Not touching that with a 10-feet pole.

"Doing to the policymakers what they are going to do to you is the best, most direct way to make the point that it isn't in the ruling class's best interest to try to do what they are doing.  When someone attempts to pass legislation enabling a police force to come to your house and take you away in the dead of night for absolutely no reason and just make you disappear, the best thing to do in opposition is to show up at the policy makers' homes and make their family members disappear.

It reminds them of the reality of what they are proposing, something that they believe they would otherwise be immune to."

But they are not doing it to them... It is our privacy they are invading... See the problem... Or is it you who refuse to see the problem in this kind of action...

Also as i said i find it a bit unsetteleing that a minority would choose to use threats and acts that inspire terror to reach ther goals... .. .

Originally posted by twodayslate

Originally posted by tawess

*spits on the floor*

 

Whoop *bleeep*ing dee doo... So i have to risk someone infringing on my right to privacy (EI i am not concenting to these people acessing my personal information that is stored with SONY) just so they can make a statment about a law that might be doing the same... To me that is a bit like pissing in to the gale wind... All it does is make you look rather stupid and with a feeling of wetness.

 

But i guess we will have to suffer their wang-waving for a while longer untill they meet a girl/boy and figure out that life actually is better lived as journey rather then a war...

 

Just my humble opinion... (not that it matters, i live in a contry that belive that it's citizens have nothing to hide. So they have a open book policy.)

 

 

edit: ""What do you mean I have to enter my social security number to look it internet porn!?!  This is outrageous!  Down with the damn politicians!"

Actually... At least someone in the household have to do this already,,. Unless you use a top-up mobile internet...

Don't believe for a second that your "private information" is safe simply because it rests in the hands of a corporation.  If they had their way, and they very likely will in the coming years, they would be able to sell your billing information to the highest bidder without your consent.

The second you start to buy into the misconception that ANYONE that you do business with is on your side, you have already lost.

But... two wrong does not make one right... And as i mentioned by going to a site and paying a few dollars you can get all the ifno you need on my to map out my life the last few years... I am in no way shape or form worried about my information... I am just stating thet it is a bit ironic that they do to others what they fear will be done to them...

And if i for one second though that any information i am about to release could hurt me.. i would not release it... So you can rest easy knowing that your closing advice, while in good spirit is completle wasted.