I hate to say it, but I totally agree with this post. WoW was the last real MMO I played, I stopped at Burning Crusade - heck, I didn't want to play BC when it came out because I was really upset by the way they pushed the lore. I'm a hardcore gamer when it comes to it, in all aspects from roleplay to PvP.

One night at home, I told my wife I wanted a new game. She said "Ok." because I hadn't bought one in a long, long time. So I decided to take the plunge - without any real background work - and get Rift. WOW I was floored by this total ripoff of a game. I felt like I was playing WoW again, on even easier mode and with less storyline! The invasions were cool, that's all, that's it. Everything else just stupidified me. No death penalty when there are healers everywhere, the world is small with instant portals to every zone, and hitting max level in 2 or 3 weeks without having to play very hard? I don't see the poor game going very far, even if the developers are trying to listen.

I'll stop ranting now, sorry, this forum gave me an outlet to, heh. But yeah, sadly Asheron's Call on Darktide was the last game that offered me any kind of challenge. The threat of someone always out there that could off me at any time and take my two or three most valuable items made dying something to always be avoided. I look forward to the day when a game comes out that is incredibly immersive in all aspects, and where there are rewards as great as the risks. I'm not afraid of perma-death on a character, or forever losing some pieces of gear if I don't take care of them. What kills me are the games made for 6-8 year olds, the kind that take little to no brain power to play and are a button mashing orgy of stupidity based on grinding out gear instead of increasing a fantasy character's overall ability to pick themselves up off the road after being trashed by an invasion crushing the town, leaving them with nothing but rags and  yet still taking down enemies with a freaking branch or something.

I wait for the ganker or fight to come to me so that it is more of a challenge. But I think #1 is the best reason, people think they are supposed to on a PvP server.

I stopped playing WoW because it went from a very lore centric universe to a slapped together POS in so many aspects (in my opinion). I barely managed to stomach BC expansion and ignored things for the most part, FT I bought the collector's edition and never even opened it.

Edit: Yes, in my opinion it is way past reconciliation. As a previous poster said, the forsaken should have been a third faction.

Originally posted by Frey

Developer SquareEnix has expressed confidence that its forthcoming PlayStation 3 and PC MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV will be able to given even World of Warcraft a run for its money.

The Japanese firm's president Yoichi Wada has told Develop that it will be aiming to learn from its experience with Final Fantasy XI, its first massively multiplayer online title, to make the new game even better.

Among the changes it will be looking to make are the addition of more optional downloadable items and weapons to purchase, as he feels that Final Fantasy XI did not have enough.

The developer is also looking to make it easier for gamers to locate and join the parties of other players of a similar skill level.

Mr Wada said that Activision's hugely popular World of Warcraft represented "tough competition" for its game, but stated his belief that the new Final Fantasy will be a "serious rival".

Fans of the franchise will also be looking forward to Final Fantasy XIII, the new single-player adventure which launches for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in March.

So says the developer, and every other developer developing an MMO. Seriously, who wouldn't want to give WoW a run for its money? Saying "Our game won't be as good as WoW." is like a professional team saying "We're not going to try this year because we're not that good." Their investors would noose them.

I believe many people would play a 100% PVE MMO. Actually, many people that play WoW are 100% PVE'ers. They just hang out with their friends, go fight some critters and do raids / dungeons.

As for me, I prefer PvP too. I do believe there is a lot of skill that can take place in PvP, but there is skill overall playing a game. Having skill in PvE and PvP is difficult for many people. I always enjoyed playing a very well rounded character and hanging out with people who were also very well rounded, but not full of themselves. Talking crap in a battle is one thing, but just walking around putting down people is another, unfortunately a mindset so many PvP'ers seem to have. Relax, save it for the field. LOL

I guess you could call me a tweaker? I enjoy listening to some hard hitting trance while I A: Grind and B: PvP. Mostly because I push the limits in both, unless I'm close to dying I'm not having fun. LOL  So that crazy idiot rounding up a whole bunch of mobs and attempting to take them all on, yeah, that's me.  Or the guy that can't seem to stop moving / jumping / casting / doing random things in PvP and making you really confused is me too.

And OP, Dragonforce is great too. I would often listen to that as well. =D

We know there is a game and a basic premise to it. We have the classes and what the game is built on but details are very sketchy at the moment. The game isn't even polished yet, but from the videos I've seen it's already considerably smoother than many games that come out. No, wasn't hyped too early and hasn't even had the majority of of the hype released yet.

Wow do people bash Funcom. I play AoC and enjoy it, even if I am casual. It's a pretty game, good music, good atmosphere. While I was once a hardcore MMO'er, I've taken the backseat after becoming older. Yeah, the game had issues upon launch but they've improved it.

As to funding TSW? I'm one of those 150k people that still pay a monthly fee AoC. They still have the rest of the world out there to play AoC, not just the US. I'm really looking forward to TSW and hope it delivers! 

1 g pls?

*runs by and kicks the dead horse* HAHAHA!! Onto the next everyone continues to kick!

I will not spend a large amount of time on this post, but I want to be the devil's advocate for WoW here. I played WoW since beta, bought the collector's edition of the original and Burning Crusade. I loved WCI, II, and III and is why I played WoW too. I was the guy that put a few maps up on bnet, such as Hero Wars EE, Battle for Helms deep, and etc. So I have a love for the Warcraft world and its lore.

When WoW launched I remember the original servers - and I remember them being absolutely flooded. Blizzard did not anticipate WoW becoming this huge. This was a fluke that was never ever intended by the original developers and story writers. I would go as far and say that WoW became its own "abomination" a patched together game that grew way too big for its own original skin. The original WoW was deep and the customizations and depth was going to be there for those original players - like me.

Anyone remember that mages were eventually going to have combination spells? Remember hero classes that were supposed to be put out there that had no level, but were based on quests and overall contribution to the server? WoW was to be a very RPG type game, but it mutated due to demand beyond comprehension at Blizzard. So, the top brass took the game and moved it towards what it is now.

Post is being kept short, use your imagination. If you were part of the original WoW crowd you may remember some of the stuff they were doing originally and remember how large the game world was and how much depth they were placing into it. The armor was incredibly varied, I ran a tank hunter - tanked Dire Maul, Stratholme, and etc. Look up the Savage Gladiator set (what I used to tank with), there was depth to the game originally, people could design characters that were not the norm. Today players are forced into a mold. I hope the core of Blizzard has not been lost though and we will see it in their future games.

What a great  article, and I will keep my response short since there are so many down the list. I'm 29 and this also resonated with me. Yes, games have become way too easy for me, but age has little to do with it. Anyone that started playing games, even MMO's in the late 90's or very early 2000's realizes this. What those players have been exposed to is drastically different than what players are doing now.

The difficulty and the depth of the game is a big builder of it. I read way back on the earlier pages about priests becoming high priests or popes of a town and warriors command guards or etc. The RPG element has died for the seemingly immediate rewards. WoW was going to create hero classes without levels based off of quests and RP, but that went to the wayside due to trying to cater to their massive crowd. I can't blame them either!

So, here is where older gamers that have experienced the evolution of gaming are being left out. We are indeed like old war veterans saying "I remember the day when there was no LFG channel, or tab. I remember when there was no thottbot." One could say we created this huge monstrosity. Imagine what WoW would be like if they prevented add-ons, if there were no sites that shared how to beat a boss, where the awesome gear is, or etc. I can garauntee you that it would be a world of different right now, just like it was when it first launched. The genre is adapting to the speed of the gamers themselves (or is it the other way around?).

The only way to do this is to build a totally dynamic, fluid, and highly adaptive game. I can't see that happening anytime soon, the depth to it would require a set of GM's always changing the world, but that would be a great job! I would love to mess with thousands of players every day, no, don't kill them but give them some world events to deal with. If there's any hope for a return to what "we" enjoyed, it is a move from data mining these poor games to death to creating a world where the players cannot command it.

Dang, my response got long.... haha!

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by johnmatthais

 Damn, I hope it's peaked and all the people that only know MMORPGs by the name of WoW get bored and leave so we can get some quality hardcore MMOs out.

It's not that I'm sick of themeparks (Vanguard proved to me that I can enjoy themeparks), I'm just sick of easy games.

Really, God knows how many people bought consoles for the sole purpose of playing Guitar Hero and its likenesses only to get bored a few months later and never touch the console again.

What about the Wii and its craze everytime the new line of "Wii yada yada" comes out? They don't stick to those games...

WoW has to die out at some point.

 

The world doesn't really work that way.

That's like saying pop star X has peaked therefore hopefully players will turn to more robust music.

Not going to happen.

Players who have played wow and liked what it offered will look for similar things. Oh sure, some might look for the next level of gaming but I think it can be safe to assume that most will apply what they experienced in wow to other game experiences.

And yes, I suppose wow will die sometime but it will die like any other game out there. If you look at EQ they still have die hard players. WoW will be the same way. As long as the company backs it it will have some players.

Very true, this isn't about WoW dying, but having reached its peak. WoW will not leave for many years to come, there are just so many players that I will have moved to another country, had kids, and probably retired by then.  :)

I believe WoW has peaked. The numbers have remained still for a while now and steadily losing people as fast as they get them. I stopped playing in 2008 myself, and have watched many of the older players slowly quit and stop playing. It's a dramatic change in the game from what it once was combined with players becoming older, growing up, and just plain losing interest in it.

Cataclysm may return a bit of the WoW prime feel for some, but many the luster is far gone.

Originally posted by ForceQuit

When do 5th generation MMOs come out?

I'm guessing when something out-weights mindless grinding / gearing up in easy mode for a huge, articulate world that is story based on the players of the world and has more real time modifications. That's just a broad guess anyway. They're coming soon, we'll see them.

I'm an old man in this list (still in my 20's), I'm a 1st gen who balks at the now 4th gen! I spent so much time on MUDs...

Your post are pretty much the reason I left WoW as well. WoW WAS and MMORPG but evolved into exactly what you said, just an MMO, basically Diablo on steroids. The lore got shafted, everything slowly evolved into easy mode, just blah. I enjoyed having to run or fly waaaay out to get to the instance, whisper people to politely ask them to join my group and etc. I played when there was a community on the servers, it's gone now... it's all just a big group of people using tools to be thrown together to AoE spam down instances.

I too played since beginning / beta, day one, was in Deadmines day 2. However, I quit at the end of BC. Even then I could see exactly how WoW was evolving, heck, I was even upset with BC to a point when they released some of the details. I also destroyed tons of alliance on my hunter on Scarlet Crusade named Tarok. So there's my mini rant and agreement, leaving WoW to my good memories and not what it is.

Hahaha! Globalization at work! A company owned by someone in South Africa investing and making money from a company in Russia that deals with a game often played by Americans and those from England on a site designed at Harvard. Brilliant!

Originally posted by Pappy13

Still don't believe there is an upswing?  Blizzard just posted this Thursday afternoon:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748999538&sid=1

 

Hahaha! Blizzard got pwned! This must have been very well orchestrated! 

Originally posted by Varchar

Originally posted by aelieth

I want to give everyone a hint of information, I don't know if anyone will read this so far down on the thread, but my friend who had his account hacked repeatedly realized what was happening:

ACCOUNT SECURITY QUESTIONS

Do NOT use anything related to your family in your account security questions!  Do not use anything related to your job or previous jobs in your account security questions! Use obscure crap like "What is your favorite color?" and put something like "Pink fluffy polkadots" and remember that as your ridiculous answers. If you do decide to use something like "What was the name of your grade school" put something like IHATESKOOL. Haha.

Why? Because of public domain knowledge out there, the hackers are getting ahold of it and going through each and every account they can by using account password recovery. I know it may seem like a lot of work, but there are people out there doing it and it may be fun for some of them. Locate a person's e-mail address, maybe on boards or through one of the wow fan / picture sites, find the name to it, and then proceed to find personal information regarding their account. After they know the name to the e-mail address it doesn't matter if the person has their account cleared up, the hacker can simply do the same thing: a password reset and boom they're back in.

So many companies out there data mine and all of those data mining services can be cross referenced for so much dang information. I've done it before, won't say for what, but it really surprised me how easy it is to cross reference data and find out someone's identity to a t. All you need is a last name and a cell phone number, a home telephone number, a first name and maybe the city they live in, or an e-mail address with someone silly enough to put their real first and last name in their settings and it can be all over. Not being paranoid, just being realistic.

Yes we know!  Do you understand that most of us are not stupid and already know this stuff!  Yes I realize that if I use my name and birthday in my password that it will likely get guessed!  I'm not 10 years old I am an adult.

I used a complex password that would never (NEVER!) be guessed by anyone using a brute force program, rainbow tables, blah blah etc, yet still I got compromised!

It's a fucking mystery how could it happen!  We all know why it happened, because you wanted it to happen!  And now you want me to buy your Authenticator and pass the blame to hackers.

FUCK OFF!

No, you totally way missed the whole point of the post. Passwords have nothing to do with it, 0, zilch, zip, nada. You could have a 21 character password with no dictionary words, special characters, numbers, and different cases and it wouldn't matter at all. Passwords are pointless. It's the account security questions that 98% people put real answers into.

Edit: And I'm trying to help, not make you angry. Don't get angry at people who try to help. :-P  Change your e-mail address and change your account security questions to something stupid. Stupidity can beat logic.