Originally posted by L0C0Man

I doubt they'll do 3 factions PvP. It would work for regular battlegrounds, but would cause havok in the full world and in the leveling.

Everything in WoW is laid in twos. For every questing area that leans heavily to one side in the vanilla world, there's another that leans to the other side in the same level range, and in cases where the questing is done by both sides in the same area, each one has their own towns and outposts, plus sometimes a neutral one.

Making WoW a 3 factions game would mean redesigning the whole world to create new areas for the third faction in the level ranges where areas are not shared, and new towns/outposts equivalent to the ones that already exist (along with everyhing that implies, for quests line, vendors, auction houses and so on). The location of main cities can be problematic since they're seem to be linked in twos (note that my knowledge of WoW is up to WotLK) as in SW - IF (tram), TB - OG (these are the ones "less" connected but still close to each other), UC - Silvermoon (teleport) and Darnassus - Exodar (boats to both share the same pier), and main city in WotLK is also divided in alliance-horde. So, basically, reorganizing the races on 3 factions (not hard, I always felt that undead - blood elves and probably worgen now could form their own faction) would be easy... remaking the world for the 3 factions to work (not just end game but whole leveling process), not so easy.

If anything, maybe their next MMO would be 3 factions.. WoW, very much doubt it.

Now, what they could do if they wanted to, is a 3 way battleground, maybe when you join you're assigned to one of 3 sides along with people from both factions.. :)

The levelling problem is quickly solved by adding new continent that cater to the third faction. It is quite the work, yes, but less than re-re-tooling the all world again.

So like Pandaria could have been the neutral faction home, level 1-90 zones and home to some neutral races. Either make specific neutral races or permits existing races to be also neutral as many WoW races have spinoff and groups that are not part of Horde or Alliance. (Grimtotem taurens, Goblins, different troll tribes than dark spears, non-gilnean worgens, non-Stormwind humans etc... why would this disparate group band together, however, is another story).

Alternatively, they could reshuffle existing content in three factions. It would not be ideal, but they might succeed. Outlands and Northrend already have less bi-polar content with many regions having common quest hubs.

But yeah... while this would seriously rock, I am doubtful Blizzard would see a significant gain for what is a great deal of work.

Originally posted by Dissolution

So, I have recently been getting ALOT of WoW spam for the expansion beta, this and that. Just received one where I was asked to come back with a couple of perks. Once of which was:

""A single character boosted to level 80"

This made me laugh. I had considered opening one of my accounts after years of cancelled time just as a pocket PvP MMO. However, free rides to 80? That killed any chance of me ever returning to WoW.

From what I remember you could practically level a toon from creation to max on a weekend. Free ride to 80?

Seriously?

So they give you ALL free xpansions including CATA, but you fixate on the "one char to level 80" thing? and that is the reason you would not return to WoW?

Really? Why?

You do not have to take it. Even if you take it you said it yourself it does not take very long time to get to 80, even less now as WotLK is boosted. So it cannot be they removed difficulty that in your own words never existed. They just made it more convenient for someone wanting to play with his level 85 friends to get back in the game quicker without having to go through 1-80 all over again... but still giving you the latest content to try your completely new class mechanics on.

So what exactly is your point again?

Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by miagisan

i give it less than 3 weeks before its cracked and pirated servers are up. Sorry but no game is unhackable. 

 

i dont support hacking, my past history of posts can prove this....but to say this game wont be hacked is just retarded.

That's not a hack.  That's brute force trying to emulate what they see blizzard doing.  It's a lot of work just to take money out of developers pockets. 

Yeah, that hasn't stopped all the WoW private servers. It probably takes a lot less work to emulate a game like D3 than it would to emulate an actual MMO. I don't know how those people aren't constantly in fear of being prosecuted, but there are servers that have been live literally for years. It's definitely possible, even probable.

Some private servers take donations, that seems like a big red flag to get sued by Blizzard.  They must have some fair use claim that keeps Blizzards lawyers off their backs.  Or maybe they've researched and found they actually get people who started on the private ones.

I can explain why private servers get immunity for the most part.

1.) The client. You cannot prosecute someone for "stealing" what you allow everyone and their brother to download freely from your own site.

2.) The server. You can be prosecuted if you reverse engineer and/or steal the actual server code. You cannot be prosecuted if you simply write your own server code to emulate the functions of the "official" servers. Basically, the coders find all the "hooks" in the client, then write their own code to connect those "hooks" togethether in a fashion similar to the official server. This is why you can have cases of a private server running better than the official one, as well as servers that run completely shitty due to an inexperienced coder who built the server code.

3.) Profit. You can be prosecuted for charging a fee to play, as you are directly profiting off the original company's product ( the client ). You CANNOT be prosecuted for accepting donations as you are not requiring anyone to actually donate so you are not considered to be "profiting" under the law. You can thank churches for this in a way, because laws protecting the "tax exempt" status of churches, including the difference between "profit" and "donation", are also the laws that help private server admins.

2). You CAN be prosecuted for using copyrighted parts in your own code. So even if you write your own server code, as long as you use Blizzard art/animations/graphics, you are infringing some law for sure, no matter that the client is given for free to anyone, the copyright remains with Blizzard and using it for your own work is definitely NOT fair use.

The main reason why Private servers do not get prosecuted is because they are tiny. When you have millions of people paying for the official servers, the fact some thousands are playing on some private server somewhere, without paying, is not a big deal.

If those thousands would become much more... like Hundreds of thousands, then you would see a lot more of lawyer activity going on from Blizzard.

As For Diablo 3, the biggest change in cracking this from a single player game, is that you need to mess A LOT with the code as pretty much everything in Diablo 3, beside graphics, is told to the client from the server, like in a MMO. Even the characters are stored server-side!

So, yeah, you might get a cracked version in which you have a fake server running on your computer, but it won't be the same game as a lot of the work must be either done by the crackers or somehow stolen.

What you WON'T see is a cracked version that permits you to log in Battle.net and that was the whooooole point of the online-only connection: so that you could not hack and dupe items/gold and so ruin the RMAH.

The Real Money Auction House is there because Blizzard is not stupid: they saw how people have been playing and paying for a 10+ years old game of THEIRS... but they were not saying a single dime of those money.

So for Stacraft they went the whole e-sport scene and do their money with tournaments, events and the like. Diablo, however, has never been structured so you could have a great e-sport out of it, so they went with real money auction house to they take a cut of the money people are willing to spend on it, even 10 years in the future.

The problem with these is that, after release but already in the beta week end, when you google something game related, the first likely results will be.... from Comunity forums of people talking about those quests and their solutions.

Of course nothing compell you to check those out :D

Originally posted by Terrorizor

out of all my friends that played WoW, the last two have quit and are hoping to sell their accounts.  So it's 10,199,998 now unless 2 new people started up. Unless someone can prove 2 new players, I won't buy into this whole 10.2 million thing.

Really? All the "rez scoll plz" threads in here would not convince of that?

Well, ok. 2 of my friends took a scroll recently and are back in the game, we are back at 10.2 millions people! (the rest of the post answers random other posts in the thread, not to the quoted part)

As for the "gimmick" of the yearly subscription... what gimmick? what RIP OFF? why???? you pledge to pay for a year of WoW (in whatever form you want, you do not pay all up front) to get free diablo III, assured partecipation in MoP beta and a free mount... what rip off is there??

I Think MoP will be more succesfull than Cata as well, it is a "Real" expansion, much more like Wotlk and BC, with a clear theme, continent and chocked full of new things. New way to play the game, both at max level and while levelling up especially should be all needed here.... Plus somehow they managed to top their graphics once again and Pandaria looks incredibly amazing.

As for people trying to speak for the "vets" do not believe them. Me, my wife and all my friends have NEVER been hardcore but we ARE MMOs vets, from UO to EQ and yes, from Vanilla WoW...only I do not keep my rose tinted glasses on, Vanilla had many good memories but also many really glaring flaws and I'm quite happy how the game has progressed to this point... So yeah.. not all "vets" are leaving in droves... this one certainly isn't (that won't stop me from trying new MMOs of course... I tried SWTor and will try TSW as well :D) and neither are my friends.

Originally posted by Anzie

Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by Anzie

Originally posted by Gajari

Originally posted by omegadethh7

Thanks for the info, Ive decided to buy the game.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzhoGX_7uFY this video swayed me some too.

Ohh nice video. Back then they said there were somewhere around 2.8 trillion builds in the end.

So much for dumbing down the game as people keep saying. ;)

Don't matter what they say at the end only a handful of build will be good enough to rip everything apart.

And your reasoning behind this comment is what? Do you have proof or have you played inferno yet? Didn't think so.

Like I said only a handful of build will be good enought. The game is coming out in 8days if there is not problem at launch people will be high  lvl in 2days so come back and prove me wrong in 10days.

It is actually the other way around.

YOU must prove them wrong. THEY have an assumption (the game builds are many, varied and many will be useful in the end) backed by devs interviews, videos and stuff. YOU have a counter assumption (there will be just a few valid builds in the end) backed by nothing.

So it is YOUR responsability to bring evidence to support your assumption, if not.... well then your opinion is quite worthless. Oh you can still have it, but it is like having an opinion that the Sun rotates around the Earth and not viceversa.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

A continuing decline in the quality of expansions.  If you still like WOW you'll probably enjoy the expansion for a while.  At least this time you aren't paying for a revamp of the original two continents just to attract new players.  It will be the first expansion I don't buy, unless I strike it rich in the D3 RMAH.

To be fair, I do not think WotLK was worse than BC. You will find as many saying it is better than others preferring BC, but you will find few that completely dismiss WotLK as instead they dismiss Cata.

Also the continent revamp was free, but it clearly took a huge amount of dev time to perform. Still I think it needed to be done and the new levelling experience is leaps and bounds better than what it was before, putting it much nearer SWTOR than it would be without the revamp (but with about 3-4x the content up to level 60).

I think with MoP, we will leave the wreck of Cata behind and return to WotLK/BC level at the very least, if not higher.

The content looks promising at least, with a whole thematic continent, giving Blizzard the possibility to spread the story across the whole place instead of breaking it out in small pieces scattered across the world like Cata was.

Also with the addition of all those game play modes, it looks like we are also finally adding more play modes, something Cata sorely missed.

(BC added Flying mechanics, WotLK added vehicle mechanics. Cata added... ????. MoP will add Scenarios, Dungeon Challenges and pet battles)

Originally posted by jason_webb

Originally posted by SteamRanger
Wait until you see what they're doing to classes. World of Ghostcrawlercraft is going full speed ahead! You PvPers will have a lot fewer skills to keep track of once MoP hits AND Ghostcrawler and his team will tell you exactly how those skills are to be played.

More wild speculations, scare mongering, naysaying, kung fu panda quips and general wow expansion bashing. Personally enjoying it at the moment, but hey, that's just me.

I agree. Pandaren starting experience is one of the best so far, less over the top as Worgen/Goblin but so full of pathos.

As for the REST of the expansion? well.... I like most of what I see... and cannot wait to meet the shaolin.... I mean.. shado-pa monks :D

Also... putting the WAR back in WARcraft is by no means limited to PvP. From what I heard, the first patch after the expansion hit will bring the forces of Alliance and Horde to Pandaria in full out war, that might take many forms.

Originally posted by CyanK

Ya really, I mean I just finished playing thru Ogre Battle from the ps1 for like the 6th time. Combat animations from that are limited to maybe 6 for 30+ hrs of gameplay.

Didn't make the game any less fun, for me at least, ymmv

Vid for example

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ogre%20battle%20ps1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1ndK8DlWy9I&ei=1MmWT5-hEOji2QXg_oSNDg&usg=AFQjCNHKMy476fNr6eC7RdRpyT2Mj82Bww&cad=rja

Eh, too easy.

Graphics is not cut and dry like you make it to be. Certain genres and certain game's graphics ages much better than other, especially graphics that is not meant to be realistic in the first place, like this one and many other 2d rpgs of the days gone by.

But try to load up Half Life 1 now... or Wing Commander 3 (the space battle part) or any other game of old that went with the realistic approach (like TSW uses) and your eyes will bleed in 3 seconds flat.

But hey, if you can do that... more power to you. I certainly can't, not without brain pain.

Now, not trying to say gameplay is less important, but that graphics need to be a certain minimum or then it detracts heavily from the mentioned gameplay, in my opinion at least.

Originally posted by Magnetia

I think i read somewhere that people complained about the space goats.

mmmh yes, they vehemently did, but that was more a complain about the lore retcon than the race itself.

There were complains against Blood Elves too, especially after the mid-beta body change for the male blood elves only that passed from a body much similar to their female counterparts to what they have now, basically body building bodies.

The only race I do not remember complains against are goblins.

Granted though, the complains against Pandaren are much more widespread as the rage is not limited to the race, but goes on to include the totality of the expansion due to the perceived appeal to Asian markets. This would be the same as saying that Creative Assembly, makers of the Total War series of games, is now appealing to Asian markets because after Medieval and Empire, two very western-centric titles, they passed to Japan, clearly to appeal to the Asian market, right?

I can understand some casting animations being placeholders, but do they really want me the believe the JUMPING animation is too?

Caused it looked horrible last time I checked and that is such an universal animation that was prolly done quite early.

Dude, entertainment is NECESSARY to human life.

You cannot work all the time or you will collapse of exaustion eventually. Alone-time is also necessary to many individuals (called INTROVERTS, of which I bet many WoW players are).

So saying you 'wasted' your time and you could have done so much more if you were not playing WoW is most likely false.

Sure, maybe you had an addiction and that is a problem, but if you didn't, most likely instead of playing WoW you would have been doing something else equally "worthless".

To notice I do not endorse shunning your family for a game, AT ALL! But if we assume you did your duty, took care of the family, played with your kids enough... then what time you have left is YOURS! And what you do in your free time is by no way wasted, it is needed to recharge your batteries.

As for your problem... so what? you had 1 bad instance of customer support, Blizzard employes thousands of CSR.. there are bound to be better and worse ones for sure. What you should have done is escalate the problem if you felt the CSR treated you badly, but I understand this event was just a catalyst for your epiphany, in which case.. it is fine, really.

Originally posted by Blackbrrd

Originally posted by Volkmar

Finally... Someone mentioned SWTOR... there were people at max level in SWTOR in less than a week, I hope this will not be the case here.

There are no levels. There are ranks for weapons and talismans going from 1-10. Having 10 in your two weapons of choice and 10 in the three chakras can probably considered being at max level. It will probably take around 10-20 days /played or 240-480 hours.

Since you aren't limited to 2 weapons, but can get all the 9 weapons in the game with all the abilities assosiated with them, the developers have calculated that you need about 3 months /played. Or about 24 hours * 90 days = 2160 hours to get everything.

The main story with some sidequests is supposed to have around 200 hours of gameplay, but you can probably add quite a few hours doing dungeons, minigames, persistent PvP and spawnable world bosses.

I know there are no levels and that 200 hours of gameplay is very nice to hear BUT it is also what they said of SWTOR before release "8 classes with 8 different class quests for hundreds of hours of gameplay!" and we know how that turned out yes?

YES, there are 8 class storylines, BUT they are a sheer minority in middle of most quests that are instead shared.

That is why this is an "hope" and not a certainity, the fact the devs have said it means quite little nowadays as sad as that is. Fact that Funcom partnered with EA does not do them any favors...

I've a special place in my heart for the "urban Fantasy" genre as it is called, defined as modern times games where the world is our own but there exists magic/mythological creatures and what not.

Secret World is basically the first serious attempt to bring this genre to a MMO, the World of Darkness MMO will be the second and I am looking forward to both.

My hopes for this game are:

1) That it has smooth and nice gameplay with many variations and possibilities

2) that the non-combat puzzles and quests end up being a nice way to introduce you to the theme, setting and lore of the game.

3) That the 3 factions are different enough from each other in flavor if not in substance.

Finally... Someone mentioned SWTOR... there were people at max level in SWTOR in less than a week, I hope this will not be the case here.

Originally posted by Mors.Magne

I really like the new vanity pet fighting that's going to come out with Mists of Pandera.

Collecting was my favorite passtime in WoW (mounts, pets, titles, tabbards etc) and I'm really looking forward to leveling my pet crimson dragonling.

Normally, I feel that WoW is a repatitious grind. However, I've just joined the EU RPPvP server Defias Brotherhood and I'm hoping for the best.

I'm looking forward to it.

From information released, it won't be as complex as Pokemon, but it will have certain amount of depth. (Oh yeah.. pokemon is not exactly shallow, no matter how many people claim 7 years old play it).

As I am in the beta, as soon as I heard it is implemented, I will go there to see :3

Defias Brotherhood is probably the best RP-PvP server this side of the Atlantic, so good choice, sir.

Originally posted by Winterheart8

 

I've played wow since 2007. A lot of my interest were held up by people I met in game and guilds. I was already feeling tired of game during Wotlk and I took month or two breaks here and there. With cata hitting, my interest was renewed with new guild but I decided to call quits simply because the game doesn't interest anymore.

It's always fun to read goodbye messages on wow forums, people thrash this game to pieces without realizing even good things get boring when you repeat them long enough. Wow will forever hold place near and dear to my heart. Best thing Cata did was completely revamped 1-60 leveling and never had I leveled up so many alts than during this expansion.

I think leveling up is the best part of this game. For end game, it might boil down what kind of guild you manage to find. Killing same bosses week after week is much easier when you've got equal-minded people to have a laugh with.

Biggest kick in the knee for me about pandaria is twiddling with talent trees. I didn't like when they stricted you having to spend 58(?) points in one tree until you can move on to another, but the new model for pandaria is even worser.

I play rpg's for dungeon runs and improving character and talent points are vital part of that. Even if I won't be around to see pandaria, I hope they would drop that idea and stick with the current model.

First you bash the Cata model because it locks you in a tree until you spend 31 points in it and then you comment Pandarias's even worse even if that one does not lock you AT ALL and all talents are useful to all specs?

Sorry, I do not see the logical connection between these two statements considering Pandaria's system is a complete 180 from Cata and more a return to Vanilla's freedom.

Yes, there are much less talents, is that the issue? if it is, then say so :D

Oh btw, also Prime Glyphs are gone, I wonder why I do not see more people crying about them too.

After trying it for myself, I found out the new system works pretty well and it leave you with about the same number of abilities you have now (at 85) only many have changed either in how they work or got substituted with others.

Minor glyphs are awesome now :D

I had heard though that the WoW screenshot was used more to show what a recluse and socially awkward person Breivik was than to imply the game was a cause of its problems.

Originally posted by delete5230

Well understand this :

You will speed level to 15 you have no choice. The open world then turns completely dead.  From their on out you will have to play using the Dungeon finder and speed through dungeons with groups as fast as they can run them.  You really don't have too but if you don't, you will be playing alone, getting sub par weapons armor and loot.

Dungeons such as Deadmines and Shadow Fang Keep and everything pass that now only take 10 to 15 minutes to do. What ever you do, don't slow up the group.  It's not about tactics anymore, but more about speed. 

You know all the cool abilities you get as a healer...Well forget them. Your job is to hit the one heal button to keep the tank alive as he moves quickly.

WoW is now a lobby game for using the LFG tool !.....It's made to shoot you to end game so you buy each and every expansion along the way...So have fun :)

 

Actually, as the weapons and armor you get in instances are not very much needed as you can always get better later on, this is quite false.

You basically have 3 paths to max level in WoW. 1) Questing, 2) instancing, 3) PvP. These are the major paths, then you also get xp for harvesting or archaeology for example.

You can take just one of the three or mix and match as you like. I find instancing quite boring for example, so I decided to do a questing path. it is very nice and there are some incredible stories out there I had totally forgot (or never saw as they were introduced in Cata).

Is the world dead? honestly this totally depend on your server. On my server, Argent Dawn EU, the biggest RP server this side of the Atlantic, the world is quite alive and I always see (and sometime have to compete) others going around in their quests.

It is true, however, that questing is a solo thing now. You can do it in a group, but there is quite not much of a point in it. All group missions have been scaled down to solo missions, so you will have to wait for MoP and scenarios for some casual group play to come back.

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

Originally posted by Minn

 

How do feral druids dps (catform), frost/arcane mages, affliction warlocks and enhancement shamans do now?

 

My opinions...

Feral cat, frost mage, affliction locks are all fine grouped or solo.  Personal preference is resto druid (for groups), frost mage and demonology lock (for stronger pet).

Enhancement shamans... I don't know about grouped, but I rolled one and leveled it to 35ish and deleted it because it felt very underpowered.  It could easily be my playing it.  But compared to other classes, neither survivability or DPS was to my liking.  Might be much better at higher levels once they get mail armor.

Not on your list, beast master hunters are way over powered at soloing.  Demonology lock not far behind.

I had your same impression (levelled a dwarf enchancement shammy to level 82 currently) and then they got way better.

I think it was Maelstrom weapon that did the trick.. or something else, but now I like my shammy. But I have not done anything "serious" with him beside levelling, so I have no idea how he compares in dungeons etc.

I like the fact I have a lot of tools and between me, my totems, my free greater heals and my elementals, I am highly unstoppable :P

Originally posted by fivoroth

World PvP died a looooooooong time ago when they introduced battlegrounds :(

Duskwood has always been filled with gnomes I am afraid. I don't see what's the problem with goblins? Pandas are still not in the game :)

 

I also feel nostalgic at times especially when I start listening to old music themes. I love the original and TBC soundtracks.

 

I still remember running to Scarlet on my ally toon and I was swimming in the lake near the Undercity and this amazing song played. I've only heard it once during my entire stay in WoW and unfortunately I never managed to find it on youtube. But it was so beautiful....................................... I loved it :(

 

Was it this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkpGYeLChng

That is the Lament of the Sin'Dorei that Sylvanas sing after a certain quest is completed, that is the reason you heard it only once, it is not the normal theme music of undercity by any means.

That being said, WoW has some really good thematic music for many of its areas. My favorites are Sholazar Basin and Twilight Highlands