PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download,Retail | Retail Price:$19.99 | Pay Type:Subscription
Desktop Client | System Req:
| ESRB:T
World of Warcraft Editorial: Burning Crusade: Delaying the Balance
Hasani Davis is back with a new WoW editorial. This week, he takes advantage of the extra time before the Burning Crusade to take stock of what he really wanted from WoW.
By Hasani Davis on October 27, 2006
 |
The Burning Crusade: Delaying the Balance
Editorial by Hasani Davis
The Burning Crusade is coming! The Burning Crusade is coming! Oh wait, that's right, wait two more months. Blizzard is now releasing the next part of its Warcraft Universe in January 2007. This addition brings new areas, new monsters and new items. I am looking forward to this expansion! There I said it. I look forward to this expansion in hopes of caring about a game again. Contrary to popular belief, Warcraft is a game from 1994 and not a new game that was just created two years ago. I was a kid in high school back then and found a copy of Warcraft and loaded up the game from DOS and began my first steps in the land of Azeroth! I have been with Blizzard since its first steps and am one of the many who started in its fan base, spending countless hours battling against my friends for control over Azeroth! I expected the same feeling when I began playing World of Warcraft as I had eleven years ago. The journey started out with a tale of great lands and powerful armies and a promise of fun and excitement, built to be the Template for next generation MMORPGs. But can I really care about a game again after being treated so badly? Blizzard has done a horrible job for casual players and avid fans of player versus player combat, a PvP fan base that they helped to create from the beginning of the modern computer gaming era. I have spent two years wallowing in a world rich in graphics and countless tongue in cheek based quests and combat so simple and repetitive that my nephew could excel at it (literally, my nephew is 10 years old and a rank 9 rogue). This game has been nothing more than a time sink; putting countless hours of mind numbing faction grinding, killing the same monster 100,000 times to gain favor with said faction. The repetitiveness of the game is worse than any MMORPG I have played in the past fifteen years. For some reason I wait for the expansion, and I wait for a game that I can care about again. This year of gaming has been one huge arms race of powers and items, granted mostly to those who choose to band together in large groups and kill computer controlled pixilated dragons locked inside instances far away from players of the opposite faction. At the same time it punishes those who do what the Warcraft franchise was based on, using tactics and skill both together to crush the other faction. The competitive spirit is lacking from the game and it needs to be restored. It needs balance, a way to shed the faction grind, a way break down the doors of instances, and bring the game out anew! So many things were right with the initial concept of this game; but once you reach 60 the game went down hill. This expansion brings a chance to correct the imbalance that items have caused. Right now you can have a level 60 Warrior in average gear with 4000 armor, 4100 Hit points, dealing 400 damage, and he is supposed to exist in a game where another Warrior of the same level that has 7000 HP, 7300 armor and deals 1100 damage? With new weapons and items coming out there is a chance that this can be corrected. A new hope can be brought to all! Will people who PvP and the people who just toil in the game with a solid small group of 5-10 friends now be able to compete on the same level? We can also look forward to new groups coming into power. I think the level cap raise should happen in all MMORPGs! Now the groups and guilds that joined late have a chance to push forward and press the top guilds to be the best. The best will have to work harder to show they have what made them #1 in the beginning. It could have a chance to bring back new life to servers and a renewed excitement we haven't seen since the opening few months. The Arena system sounds like it will reward small close knit groups who work together. Isn't that what an RPG is all about anyway? Forming that group and setting off on conquest? Well, now we can hope that this new system will let your groups do just that, and also segregate it based on Gear/Stat points and levels. With new levels come new spells and abilities. We have seen Blizzard add spells to classes that already should have been in the game to balance and flush out the talent trees. Warriors can now "protect " group mates, mages can finally summon elementals, druids get more CC and priests get newer and more innovative ways to heal. Although it looks like the game is becoming a who can deal the most damage to whom the fastest, I still have hope that the game will evolve with each expansion and grow. This is a major step in the right direction. Blizzard can expand the game to have more landmass, more quests, more enemies and encounters that will require puzzle solving and cunning AI as they get harder. Imagine having fun instead of grinding the same mobs five hours a night for two months? Imagine having more innovative player versus player combat? Remember the first game of Warcraft you played it back in 1992? Creating your army and sending it into the city of your rival and burning things to ashes or defending against attacks as your heed the calls of your peasants. "We're being attacked!" Rumor has it that neutral towns and outdoor player versus player action will be a part of the game. Not just in the Southshore versus Tarren Mill scenario; but actual conquering of towns and regions, actual playing, actual fun, actual creativity, and hopefully in the end, actual Warcraft.
|
Maybe one day, they'll release those Hero Levels and we can start to see a skill/strategy component come into play, as opposed to a Purple Item wearing strategy.
CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT SOMTHING ELESE?
Really, i don’t hate WoW, but I am getting sick of all the posting, and news, AND editorial being about it.
Most of these editorials are only "official" mmorpg.com bitch fests anyway.
Im also a hugely PvP oriented player and the new arena system looks like it could be what Im looking for in an mmorpg aswell.
Im especialy excited about the fact they are using the same europian ladder match making system from there warcraft 3 RTS. High rank teams will only be competing against high rank teams, so the "best" teams will have to compete against all the other great PvP teams meaning that if you see a high warlord / grand marshal you will automaticly respect what he had to acomplish to achieve that rank, and you will know that this player is skilled. Unlike now where there are chinesse honor system farming business's that will gather honor in bg's 24 hours a day for you. Anyone with the time or money can hit rank 14 right now but not for long.
They are bringing back the skill and they will be heavily rewarding the players with the skill to achieve the high ranks with incredible gear just as good as the PvE end gear at 70.
I cant say for certain that I will love the game again, but this does mean theres a good chance a lot of us can fall in love with WoW all over again. Either way my copy has been long pre-ordered and I look forward to checking it out.
One final though regarding the new match making system, not only is this a great system geared around peopel competing against players of equal skill but it is also a perfect system for tournaments much like they do in warcraft 3 all the time. They havent said there will be PvP tournaments on WoW yet but the system will be in place we could possibly see night time tournies (single elimination) allowing us to face the great teams from our own faction aswell perhaps. Least thats what I am hoping for :)
Again, an Editorial that has a few flaws, but these are the ones that are just a needle in my eye.
"
I have spent two years wallowing in a world rich in graphics and countless tongue in cheek based quests and combat so simple and repetitive that my nephew could excel at it (literally, my nephew is 10 years old and a rank 9 rogue)."
Congratulations, you just discribed EVERY MMORPG THAT WAS EVER MADE. Combat has never been a challenge, Combat has NEVER EVER required skill in any mmorpg. Quests have NEVER been anything else then simple. This is what is happening in EVERY mmorpg.
This game has been nothing more than a time sink; putting countless hours of mind numbing faction grinding, killing the same monster 100,000 times to gain favor with said faction. The repetitiveness of the game is worse than any MMORPG I have played in the past fifteen years. For some reason I wait for the expansion, and I wait for a game that I can care about again.
This is obviously saying more about the Editorial writer then the game. killing mobs over and over again, once more, is the same problem we have seen in every MMORPG. I'm sick of it people point the finger at WoW and tell everybody its doing point A wrong, its doing point B wrong. Its the same in every mmorpg, but yet I don't see an editorial about Lineage 2's repetiveness or RFO's? Or EVE's? I also don't recall 2 editorials before EQ2's expansion release? Everybody is complaining WoW's expansion adds nothing new. EQ2's expansion didn't add anything new either, yet I don't see anybody complaining about that. When will we stop pointing at WoW and look at other MMo's flaws?
Right now Blizzard is more or less like a Borg cube that has been cut off from the collective....in other words they don't know what the hell they are doing.
Now the Expansion is delayed till 2007, that means that we won't see the second expansion till at least 2008 and that's only if Blizzard sticks to its promise of yearly expansions. In 2008 WoW will look and play like EQ pre lucllin does now, meaning the game will die because blizzard can't produce timley content to appease its fans.
Then there is the whole Raid or Die fiasco....They desperately want to keep that 6.99 million of the 7 million Non-Raider fan base, but the game is being steered by and Ex-EQ Raid kiddies with a penchant for Liberachi and Bob Macke Armor styles. More than one industry insider is predicting an Implosion at Blizzard in the near future, I personally look forward to the day it happens, because if the continue down this road people are just going to quit in frustration anyway.
I'm saying the expansion won't come out until March.... January is a smoke screen unless balancing in the beta goes perfectly...
and who doesn't think the game will be laggy as hell, buggy and generally unfun for the first month or so?
I'm not as excited about it as I once was... gonna go try out some other games in the meantime to keep busy..
BTW. iam rely exited to see 12904708921782565 blood elfs mages and 12907408921478095 drenai shamans when it starts :)
Well...
All these hopes can be crushed in a moment, the OP only need to ask 1 question to devs: Is raiding still getting better rewards in PvE grouping and PvP? As long as the answer is a yes, the game will be flawed and hurting the franchise.
Raiding was brought to you recently by games such as EQ, however raiding was never part of the success of EQ, the success of EQ and these games came from the EARLY, what a new player saw...the fact you put raiding later, in a way they might not notice, is not better, since when they notice, they feel shafted.
Raiding is not part of the problem; it is the problem. Best raiders deserve to be good at raiding, nothing else, not even 1 hps extra for grouping, squat, nothing.
Looking for: Jan/Feb/March..
What year again??
Seriously, I do like to play WoW, but cripes even.. Since they are rolling this back to Jan 07(OR there abouts) .. It had better be polished like a smooth running Swiss Watch!!
I feel the same way, I really do....but i wouldnt be so optimistic. I want to see a smooth running game, but as most of us know....that just doesnt happen the first time around. Just by tha fact that they pushed the date back, shows that they just arent ready(duhh) and i think January is to appease the fans. I think that the programmers will most likely try and find temporary solutions to these problems to hit the launch date. Blizzard is relying on the first few months to really get this BC thing off the ground, then after that i guarantee there will be frequent realm shutdowns to put new patches or having daily maintenance checks (sounds familiar). By then, the fans will be dedicated enough to deal with these maintenance issues. Well, i hope im wrong, but this is my take on it.
M0d3st M0us3
Sadly, not a single MMO out there has had the balls to come up with an endgame that isn't centered on raiding. For some unfathomable reason, they think of it as some kind of cash cow. If just one of them would have the strength of character to make a game casual from beginning to end, they might find out that there is more money to be had in that market over that of hardcore freakish gameplay. Giving the best rewards and content to raiders is not the way to win over the masses and it never will. Get with the program or die like the ancient dinosaurs that MMO's are today. They go on and on about tapping into the mainstream market, how the hell will they ever do that with current paradigms? Mainstream players will never sit in front of a computer for 4 hours straight just to run a single dungeon or spend 3 weeks just to get a single piece of gear. Its retarded and its exactly why people label us as nerds.
In a way, I almost hope they don't change the raid or die formula in the expansion. Maybe, just maybe these narrow minded deveoping companies might take notice with WoW's decline as casuals bail from the game, that its time to make changes, that the old formulas just won't cut it anymore, that old and new players alike will not tolerate time wasting mechanics, eliticism and a caste system in their games.
Better PVP? No.
I'm playing the Burning Crusade, and PVP haven't really changed that much.
Yes theres outdoor objectives, no cities though (yet - theres still a lot closed off)
Theres 1 "town" which have 4 wing rider "towers" around it, which can be used to fly over the "town" and bomb people from above. It's funny once or twice.
Every zone in Outlands have a couple of captureable objects, such as the towers in Eastern Plaguelands, the size is about the same. The only change is that when you kill someone in these mini-zones, you'll be awarded a Mark, which can be used to buy PVP items.
The Arena is quite good though, but it boxes up PVP, making it much less epic and "roleplaying-like" not that I'm into the roleplaying stuff, but I signed up for fighting the Alliance, not for battleing them in tournament like games. Even though that can be fun to!
So, don't expect WoW to turn into the Warcraft games, in terms of war and pvp. Not at all. Sadly :)
Everyone is still waiting for WARHAMMER, even with the TBC Expansion!
When you get down to it games are as repetitive as you make them. Diablo 2 could be seen as just clicking over and over and doing nothing else. Only Adventure games of old like Kings Quest and Longest Journey escape this. Heck life itself is horribly repetitive.
PVP wise I might almost agree with you. Some classes just suck at PVP while others seem overly strong in it.
It would take a drastic change to alter this as it is now. Perhaps BC is half the change. Who knows Blizzard doesn't let anyone know till their games are released.
If you don't like it don't play it and quit moaning. If you like it then play it.
/shrug
Agree, agree, agree!
I've played hardcore, 6 hours a day, 7 days a week -- now I barely even play casual, maybe a few hours on saturdays and sundays, that is if I feel like it.
What they're basically asking is to be allowed to do some event/quest that takes 1 hour and get the same reward as someone else that spend 2 days getting the same.
People who work less should have less. People who work more should have more. If you think that's unfair then maybe you should take a look at life and see what it's all about.
A small comparison.
Your neighbour have 2 big cars, a big house, a boat and a summer-/vacationhouse.
You have 1 mediocre car, a mediocre house and that's it.
You work 40 hours a week with a boring job where all you do is hang your brain in the locker and go do stuff that doesn't require any real focus and any mistakes only influences you.
Your neighbour works 60+ hours a week. He has to make critical decisions that might influence hundres or thousands of people around him, which in turn puts a lot of stress on him.
You want the same 2 big cars, the same big house, boat and summer-/vacationhouse as your neighbour, while still doing what you've always done 40 hours a week.
Do you really think that would be fair? Have you really deluded yourself to think that you are entitled to the same rewards for half the work?
Well, of course in real life that's a very loaded comparison. Say the third person down the street has a gated mansion, 5 cars plus 2 RVs, high-end security with guards, and 2 summer mansions in the Bahamas, all from working 12-24 hours a week. It's not how long you work, but luck, or even a little skill. Personally, I too think we need more non- high end quests for those who have a hard time grouping (CoH used to size the mobs according to the size of the party).
As far as the expansion, only real thing I like is the level cap. The races are, like the other PVE-friendly MMOs, just remeshes of the same old 2D characters (ie elf, orc, gnome, dwarf, human.... 2 arms, 2 legs). I'd prefer a more exotic race, like the dryad or naga, step up as a PC.
And as to Blizzards promise of a new expansion once a year, all I can say is O'Rly?
I liked the editorial, but i feel it's unfair on a couple of points.
WoW has some grinding, but levelling is fast and easy. Faction is a bad grind BUT it's volontary. The only faction you really _need_ is some timbermaw to ride/shop and AD/CC ofcourse. Now, doing strat 10 times cant really be considered grinding, we know those that has been there 100+ times, and those 10 times will give enough faction.
What i'm getting at is that you dont _have_ to be revered with every faction. There are only a select few where you need a decent faction to progress, and that faction will be had through normal play.
This is where i feel WoW is different from e.g. AO, the grind in AO is the levelling. You cant escape levelling. Thus you must grind. You also have a faction grind which affects xp gained. WoW has no level grind. See the difference?
Apart from that i think the WoW game is a good implementation of the franchise and although i would sometimes like to see more of the rts in it, i cant find a way how it would be done. AV is the closest you get where you can play a peon by collecting boxes in the mines.
I think the expansions release will be smooth. I dont think Blizzard would allow themselves anything else. There will be balance problems, as balance on the beta server with 50 players isn't the same as on the larger scale full servers. Performance wise it's just another continent with new maps and the same graphics engine. It'll be smooth.
Someone said pvp'ing dont require skill. To be a good pvp'er requires skill, but getting pvp-ranks mostly requires grinding. As i'm a bad grinder i'll never get much of a rank even if i never make a fool of myself in the BG's. I do hope the new system will put some more fun, meaning and incentive to pvp, it's a overlooked part of the game.
/Y
"I have spent two years wallowing in a world rich in graphics and countless tongue in cheek based quests and combat so simple and repetitive that my nephew could excel at it (literally, my nephew is 10 years old and a rank 9 rogue). This game has been nothing more than a time sink; putting countless hours of mind numbing faction grinding, killing the same monster 100,000 times to gain favor with said faction. The repetitiveness of the game is worse than any MMORPG I have played in the past fifteen years. For some reason I wait for the expansion, and I wait for a game that I can care about again."
While this editorial has some valid points, the biggest flaws are one of the major ones. Time sink? Repetitiveness? Have you played EQ before? or L2? The grind there is outrageous. The best thing about WoW (from the casual player perspective, the one that this game wasnt made for according to the editorial) is that you DONT have to grind or play repetatively. You CAN grind but only if you want to. Or you can quest, or you can PvP, or you can hunt for resources or craft. The player has choices and the game is to the player what that player makes it to be. If you do nothing but do raiding, of course the game will be grind and time sink for you. But you dont have to.
I consider myself a casual player, I could play for 5 hours a day or 5 hours a week, depending on my work schedule, and I never reached 60. I had like 8 chars, and top level is 55. I could grind, quest, trade ( I actualy had fun with auctioning stuff, good old bidding wars heh ), harvest or craft. It was the best casual game since single player games! So I think those statements in red are unfair and untrue.
I also would like to see more casual friendly Dungeons.. Large groups are such a time-sink :( Just to get everyone together.
THEN..
When you do get this landslide group together, someone has to AFK for several minutes.
GO-GO Smaller group Dungeons!
This can't be that hard to implement.. For the hardcore - large groups.. better loot - For the casuals, we can get the smaller Dungeons and loot to fit our size.
**Another thing I would of liked to see in the BC upcoming is..
Being somewhat (I say somewhat NOW).. to be able to communicate with the opposite faction. I play both Horde/Alliance and I would love to be able to talk to one or the other a bit.
NO.. I don't mean like /fart - /lick - /spit!
I mean have an actual conversation with them. On the lines of say: "Come-ON Big Boy.. let's see what yas got!"
Garble-Garble conversations drive me nuts.. sorry!
Just my 2cp's worth..
You do realize you used the word "work" 5 times in a post about a video game yes? K, just checking.
Anofayle, you hit the nail on the head bro. Seriously, WoW is a great game...until you hit 60. Then it all goes to hell. Casual friendly guilds disband so people can seek out "hardcore" raiding guild, while the casual players either put up with running the same damn instances for nothing else than the small chance to get a decent item, roll an Alt, or just flat out quit playing.
I think you should give Blizzard some credit on this issue. One of the major changes in this expansion is the lack of 40 man raid zones. Their new cap is what, 24 people? It is obvious that the 40 man hardcore massive raid guilds have become so dominate and has taken the game in a direction Blizzard recognizes it doesn't want to go.
I'm hopeful that when we start seeing 24 man raids dropping better/equivilant loot to these current 40 people raids it will change the entire structure of these guilds. I doubt the large guilds are ever going to go away but I do believe instead of 4 or 5 top guilds on a server that will open up to 10 or 12. These smaller casual guilds (If they are dedicated and organized) will no longer have to disband the moment all their membership hits 60 and they find they can't participate in the full endgame any more.
Now they will. If it works out this way I think it is a great sign for the game. It definately shows Blizzard wants to go a different direction than EQ as far as the end game goes. I guess we will have to see.
/bow
/respect
I dont understand how a casual player could possibly think that they should have equal rewards as a hardcore player.
Like everything in life you get out what you put in. If someone puts in twice asmuch time as you he should be twice as powerful. If this wasnt true why would anyone be hardcore in any game.
People should be reminded that even though WoW doesn't grind nearly as badly as EQ, AO or DAoC, it still has a grind and a bad one for a game slated to be very casual friendly. On its own merits, it most certainly does not deserve the moniker or casual friendly. Its game mechanics are specifically put into place to artificially slow progress down, not only in experience gain, but item acquisition as well.
To the poster above and others like him, don't forget that there is a subscription price involved. If this was a free to play game then your argument would have more merit, as it is, MMO companies are rewarding one play style over another and for no other reason than its the mechanism they choose to slow players down, keep them occupied while they come up with new content two years down the road. This game company in particular is slow, inefficient, combative against alternate viewpoints, elitists and they false advertise. Their box should plainly state that while the first 55 levels are casual friendly for the most part, the last 5 levels are stricly for raiders and no-lifers. That's a good 10 percent of the game, even more when you consider that most people will be spending a lot of time at the end game, where they completely turn around and shove it up the masses' collective asses. I have very little respect left for Blizzard, they have a history of putting out good games that appeal to many play styles and rewarding them equally. Now they not only have they become the typical MMO company that mistreats a significant portion of their player base, but they have become lazy with their updates, breaking more than they fix. Above all this, what possesed them to turn PvP into this grind fest? Its insane.
Just look at the new crafted items. BoE 1-handed weapons with 81 dps. Compare that to Arena rewards which is 88 dps, and that also means Raid weapons should be 88 dps since Bliizard has stated many times that Arena Armour/Weapons will be on par with Raid items, but you will still get the best trinkets/rings by Raiding. That´s a 10% difference in DPS between a BoE and Raid BoP. Quite a huge improvment compared to now when a raiders 1-hander is 15-20% better than a "casuals" 2-hander(AR, TUF)... ;]
I hope they add tons of more money/time consuming cool tradeskill items! More love for crafters!
Cheers,
Lelle
Changing the old endgame/PvP mechanics wasn't possible overnight. Its easy to say whats broken, but what takes time is coming up with a fix that's actually longterm good and doesn't break anything more. If you read anything about the additions/changes in BC, you can't help but see that Blizzard is attempting to fix their gameplay flaws. No, they're not OVERHAULING their entire game, they're trying to adapt it to both gameplay styles and having it be more inclusive. Maybe that's not enough for some people, but for most of the people who actually like this game, its what we wanted all along.
If Blizzard decided to let the "casual" player get easy access to rewards equal to those that the "hardcore" player gets, you'll soon see a great exodus of "hardcore" players.. Oh wait.. That's what already did happen in WoW. Reach 60 and go bored because there wasn't enough content for the "hardcore" players.. Blizzard has to keep those that reach 60 fast entertained, or occupied might be a better word, to continue to get those players money.
Since the "hardcore" player base spend more times playing, they plow through the content faster than the casual player base. Hence the "hardcore player base will need more content to keep them occupied than the "casual" player base will.
Yes, I quoted "casual" and "hardcore" because they're such relative terms. To most people however (and how you should interpret them in this post), the words are based on how much time you put into the game. I'm not interested to get into a debate on what defines a hardcore or a casual player.
Oh, and did you realize that you've posted an average of 2 posts each day for the past 847 days? Maybe you should consider posting less and make them more constructive? :) Oh, and just to save you the effort (or should I say work?) of figuring out my post average it's 0.004 posts each day for the past 990 days ;)
Agree, agree, agree!
bravo.
Pardon my two cents - but all the crap regarding the release date for Burning Crusade really goes to show how many new Blizzard fans there are.
"Back when I was a kid, we used to wait 50 years for a new Blizzard game."
So get used to it, kiddos. Blizzard always pushes things back, and half of you weren't even around to get furious when the release date for the core game kept getting pushed back.
Maybe Burning Crusade will go the way of Starcraft: Ghost. Fire the whole team and chuck the entire near-finished product. You can't help but wonder where all the old Blizzard talent is going. Keep your eyes peeled.
And on a same note, I remember a great article released by the founders of Blizzard about a month after the launch of WoW. Something along the lines of: "This is the best thing, and the worst thing, that has ever happened to Blizzard and the Warcraft series. WoW is a huge success, what more could we ask for right? But now we're being forced to expand... no longer are we a team of friends that got together and made games together since highschool. We're hiring people by the hundreds to run, manage and generally rebuild our world. Its no longer a family... we've become a corporation. Its a sad victory."
As for the classic fans of Warcraft... we need to realize that something close to us has become every kid's after-school activity, Globally. Its time to start investing our time in something else. Warcraft has reached a point of no return.
I'll see your two cents and raise you a nickle. I'm older than dirt and the matriarch of a three generation gaming family. Just because I had to walk backwards three miles in the snow uphill to school doesn't mean that it's acceptable nowadays. No one gives a crap that you and I had to wait 50 years for a game to come out. And no one cares if the expansion is being made by a family of programmers or a team of corporate code writers. In any other business, people are expected to make deadlines. Repeatedly missing deadlines makes Mr. Consumer quit looking hopefully at the Model T's upgrades when there's a brand new Lexus, Mercedes and BMW being unveiled at the local gaming store.
Raiding is still raiding, doesn't matter if its with 40 or 25 people. Its not fun nor is it accessible to the casual gamer. The time requirements alone are distasteful, let alone the necessity of doing the same instance hundreds of times before you even get one of your class items, let alone all of them. The raiding mechanic is fine with no-lifers, but its time to reward other play styles by giving out equal rewards during casual play and questing. As far as the new PvP, it still sounds like an atrocious grind, it may not be as bad as before, but looking at the rewards, they still don't compare to raid gear that's out now, let alone what raiders will get with the expansion.
By the way, I have a feeling that a mass exodus of hardcores would be far less impactful on the game than a mass exodus of casuals. Considering the casual focus of the 1 - 55 game and the fact that it was advertised as a casual game, I would think its the logical conclusion to reward casual play styles with the best the game has to offer. Doesn't make any sense at all to proclaim a game to be casual only to reward your non-target audience with the best gear. Its rude, its false advertising and its just plain lying in the face of fact.
Make "casual" servers and "hardcore" servers.
Hardcore people can compete against hardcore ppl and casual can vs. casual.
There we go, no huge item imbalances. :) Then you could even change the way you get the uber items on casual servers so mostly everyone can get those, or maybe just remove them altogether (but that would mean removing one part of the game..so..).
But then again, the problem with MMO's is the mentality. Everyone says WORK WORK WORK while its supposed to be fun.
People spend hours mindlessy grinding to be rewarded, SKILL was forgotten..and I doubt it will even be remembered again. If you take a minute to analyze any RL society you can see that it all is mirrored. :(
Today you're a "casual" player, tomorrow you decide that "casual" is a bit too slow paced so you decide that you wanna go "hardcore".
How will you make that happen? You're on a casual server. You'll just transfer? Sure, that could work. Lot of administration and name handling, but hey, if you're willing to pay for each transfer I'm sure they're up for it ;)
Let's turn it around for a moment just to take the other side.
Today you're a "hardcore" player, tomorrow you decide that you wanna slow thing down for some reason (real life, work etc.). So you'll just transfer to a casual server? Woah! Hey stop. Now the hardcore player who most likely have better gear and better skills/levels/AAs/whatever are now put among a herd of "casuals"? So now you have an uber toon among the not-so-uber.
Another thing you might wanna think about is this.
A casual server doesn't have a lot of competition for the spawns or events. What would prevent a group of "hardcore" players to start on the "casual" server and start harvesting it? Rules of the server? How are they to be enforced? Ban a player who plays too much? Autotransfer them?
You can't balance an MMOG in a way that will make everyone happy. There'll always be people who thinks they're unfairly treated. Poorly rewarded etc. The best that can be done is to as many people happy contend as possible, and hopefully some happy ones as well.
*cough*
Warhammer Online
Some of the new things in burning crusade look interesting, but I dont think that the game will be any better at level 70 than it is now at 60 so I am going to pass.
On the topic of why I still play? It's true, I should have cancelled by now, but with the expansion looming in the distance and no other games of interest to me, I thought it best to keep my account open at least until I feel out BC.
I have talked to a lot of people who feel as I do, and to be honest, I think there are quite a few hardcore players who don't raid. I want to care about the casual 1 hour a day players, but I'm not one of them. All I want is some content for me and players like me. Here's hoping BC delivers.
Warhammer isn't out yet and things can change before it releases and as we've seen in previous casual games, they can drastically change shortly after release. There is no irrefutable proof yet that raiders don't still get the best rewards in that game, especially in comparison to other play styles. With NDA still locking crucial information, we won't know for sure for quite a while yet, so my fingers are crossed, but I'm not holding my breath.
Even the most casual quasi MMO on the market, City of Heroes gives the best rewards to raiding. That game doesn't have any real loot, but the best power enhancements in the game drop from Hamidon, which of course is raid based. I do not have high hopes for current or near future games to change this archaic paradigm.
You gotta ask yourself this question, why is WoW so popular? Is it becuase millions of millions of hardcore players bought it, got quickly to 60 and are enjoying the high end content? No. Its becuase so many people who play 5-15 hours a week bought it and are enjoying it without even getting to the 60. Those people are the core of WoW subscribtion base. And those people it was designed for. If WoW were designed to accomodate hardcore players, then it would take 10 times longer to reach 60 (with much less content in between) but with huge amount of content to play at 60. Then again, we already have EQ1, and Blizz wanted something different.
Im not saying WoW is perfect or even that its something revolutionary or next gen MMO (heck I myself stopped playing about 5 months ago). What Im saying, stop complaining about things it wasnt designed to do. Your SUV is not gonna be able to carry 50-100 passengers becuase it is NOT a bus.
Maybe now, however, with all the money they got they may be able to design something better to do for all the people in their 60s. More quests, more land, more spells and skills, more items and dungeons. Id say the priority would be on more land and dungeons, the world of WoW is fairly small atm, could use much more breathing space.
i haven't played warcraft in about 10 months, i quit due to heavier class load + work + girlfriend. i didn't have enough time to keep up with my guild so i sold my accounts and moved on. i know i am not alone in having to abandon a game for lack of time but i don't understand why people will bitch about it, basicly stating the game sucks because to be the best and most powerfull you have to "grind" instances and faction, etc. so basicly they want all the benefits that putting a lot of time and effort into a game earn you, but without having to do anything.. otherwise the game sucks. and seriously.... do you really expect any game to have some new for you to do every day that you play for year after year? i guess some do and they should just play a single player game... or do something else.
i especially find it funny how the critics of WoW are so plentiful yet the game has 7+ million subscribers. the proof is in the numbers, it isn't clouded with opinions and doesn't need interpreted by a reviewer.
MMORPG.com is out of touch.
While they throw up a new mega-praising feature on Everquest II's newest patch, which introduces two new shields and a brand new series of tunnels that looks exactly like the last newly-introduced series of tunnels (except this one has a recolored variety of ogre), they completely ignore WoW's much larger patch and instead wait until the smallest delay or gripe hits the internet so they can rag on it.
I'm tired of it. I'm no longer playing WoW, but the eight months I did play it were the best MMORPG experiences of my life. Much better than standing around Qufim in FFXI as a bard of all things, waiting 40 minutes for a party because the nearest skeleton can two-shot me to the grave and level me down. Much better than being level 30 in Everquest and still only having two or three useful skills to use over and over against the same monster I've been fighting for three days. And much better than Lineage II, in which I spent hours and hours of gameplay with no quests or goals and storyline moving my forward - the only thing left to do was grind.
MMORPG.com is apparently more old-school than me. All three of the experiences above are embraced wholeheartedly. A deep yet easy to understand interface and crafting system? Not complicated enough - noobs should not be able to easily craft until they have devoted eighteen hours to understanding how to mix grapes and water to make juice. Quests and storyline? Lame, of course, because MMORPGs are all about creating your own story, not having it made for you. I mean, who could possibly enjoy experiencing a battle against a reborn lich in his sickening green fortress of death and despair when you can stumble around a flat green field killing level 93 "mega rats of destiny"? And honestly, why solo? It's an MMORPG, not a video game. You should not be able to play it on your own time, but rather you should be forced to submit to the will of others in order to progress in the game. It's realistic. Name me one fantasy adventure in which there is some sort of lone-wolf mercenary hero who strikes out on his own.
If these attacks on WoW continue with as much regularity as noob complaints appear on the official site's boards, I'll have to say that I will no longer trust MMORPG.com as a source of unbiased information. If you're just gonna rag on WoW and let massive rapeage of its rating on this site occur, you might as well just remove it from your site, period. It's obviously too much fun to be an MMORPG - why should it be on this site anyway?
double post
/agree
For being treated badly, he sure is a sucker for playing.
Heh. The problem isn't raids or much of anything that can be fixed. WoW is basically flawed in design and doomed to continue to be flawed because the "fix" would alienate those who are used to the current version. Sure, it sells. That doesn't mean it is a good design. If it was a good design you wouldn't have WoW being gridlocked into making new content for level 60's just to keep the game interesting. The core problem is that the game lets players build up to level 60 with no real cost to them. Sure, you die and you have to run to get your body, but what kind of a cost is that? Time is what the game is made to burn. That's not a death penalty. You don't lose items. Oh carebears, this violin is for you. If you actually lost items the game might be worth playing. Oh, wait, the game is trying to be for both carebears AND hardcore players? Yeah, that will work. NOT.
No one has ever lost the game playing WoW. If there were winners and losers there wouldn't be a problem with content drives for the poor level 60 players charity ball. Case in point: ave you ever heard of any problems in arcade games with high content or players getting bored with the game? No, because the goal of the game i sto keep playing the game and dying in hopes of getting the high score. But if the game is giving different players a different advantage, then of course those who have the advantage (hardcore) are going to "ruin" the game for those who don't (carebears and those with a life outside the game). Now, if you still want to allow for the diversity of player power and item powers, then the best way to prevent level bloat and the need for constant higher level content (aka, grinding) is to introduce permanent death. I'm sure you guys won't go for that, so I';ll just stop here.
Face it, the prolbems of WoW are not going anywhere. The only thing left to do is to live with what WoW provides or wait until something better comes along. Right now there isn't such a thing as something better than WoW (sadly). Personally, I'll wait for something better. WoW isn't it for me.
no you didn't, I haven't played Everquest 2 in many months, nor did I group with the same person more then once :)
Sorry but I have to completely agree with this poster. I never really post here but I do read every new story on WoW , EVE and Planetside. MMORPG.com has been VERY anti-WoW for a long time now.
About this arcticle, well all it does is open the casual vs hardcore conversation again. Truth is that all the casual players want to enjoy their time with their gf/kids/wife/friends but when they log on to WoW they wanna be gods there aswell. Sorry buddys but that's not possible. You wanna be good with something --> Spend time on it and don't just whine that's it's unfair the hardcore raider is full of epix while all you can get is some blues.
Also someone said that the PvP gear isn't really worth it, well pre-Naxx my friend most items were still on-par with the gear from raid instances. But getting the gear from PvP again isn't something that you can do in 2 days, it takes time...which casual players don't want to/can't spend.
The last persons that should be whining about the expansion should be casuals. Being in closed beta myself I've seen greens that get close to BWL epics, only persons that are getting dicked over with the expansion are all those that worked hard so far and have to replace everything with blues from the new instances. Now I don't mind that much, it's a nice fresh start but don't expect that anything is going to change, those that put more time in it will still beat you.
a lot of people hate world of warcraft not because they hate the game but rather because they hate the fact that every other mmorpg thats been made or is being made falls short when compared side - side with world of warcraft.
WoW has its flaws such as the lack of solo or small group content beyond 60 (aside from grinding highwarlord which I have already done) but they are trying there best to address this issue in the up-coming xpac.
Aside from these flaws in the game world of warcraft is hands down the best mmorpg ever made. It is extremly easy to play, very smooth / polished, has just the right amount of questing when lvling without over doing it, is graphicaly pleasing, excellent itemization with reason to play and play to get the best gear and it has such a fun feel to it.
Personaly ive played the crap out of wow have full tier 2~2.5 and was a high warlord, aside from raiding naxx until its killable with my guild there isnt much left for me to do in the game but everytime I put wow down and try some of the new mmo's (I give ever beta a shot since the dawn of time) I dont find myself wanting to play these new games past 3-4 days of playing and I end up lvling yet another alt char in world of warcraft.
Say what you will about the game but noone can deny its success and it has its success for good reason. You cant hold it against blizzard for the fact noone has made a game to draw away from there customer base. I could think of some things to be changed in wow to make it better but I still feel its the best developed mmorpg to date.
And don't spout rubbish back that WoW must have done something right to get all those new players playing because the people joined on mass for one reason alone, it was Warcraft and had nothing to do with the game it just sucked in all the b.net kiddies.
For this game to be able to function as a 'True' MMORPG there needs to be several addtions to the game, for example much more exploration and that means LOT more landmass, more regard for the casual gamer with perhaps random instances like EQ. There needs to be more options to customize the look of characters (Armor dyes at the minimum), Guild and Personal house are also required to store all those trophies you get :), crafting needs to be revamped , a simple start would be to remove BOP on class items such as Truefaith Vestments, whats the point of paying a lot og gold for a substandard item that only you can wear ?
I really hope Blizzard give more than lip service ti casual/non raid layers in the expansion but..... I think the main focs of BC will be PvP in an attempt to stave off the obvious subscriver losses when games like Warhammer hit the shelves, its all about the dollar again, Blizzard seem to have forgotten that keeping the customer happy will help them retain the majority of their player base. As it is now Blizzard have people because of the fact that the name itself still generates a lot of good will, and the fact that the gamei is fun and easy to play to 59, after that it all changes, I hope 61 - 69 generate the same amount of fun for people otherwise subscriptions will slump.
I don't think any of this is due to the game as much as it is to the players.
Everybody is obsessed with getting to the highest level as quickly as possible and getting the "best" gear before anyone else. So of course if you want to do that you're going to be covering the same ground over and over again.
Back in the day, people enjoyed just being able to walk around in a virtual world, looking at creatures straight out of Tolkien's imagination (usually!), talking and interacting with people from all around the world.
If people would just learn to chill out and stop being obsessed with being "the best", they'd have less to complain about.
That said, it's also shortsightedness by the developers. New games are released with practically no end-game content because they don't think that people will ignore the lore and environment and go straight for the grind. They should know better by now. Because what you get then is a rushed expansion to try to prevent players quitting and going elsewhere. EQ2 has only been out a couple of years now and already has a handful of expansions, the first of these was within a few months because of the lack of end-game content in the original.
So basically it comes down to this:
If you're a hardcore grinder who spends all their spare time farming the same mobs over and over to gain levels and items then you can't complain that the game is boring because you've rushed through it.
If you're a game developer who refuses to admit that the above kind of player exists, you have no right to complain when they leave. Learn from what's already out there.
The day a game is released which has an actual balance between hardcore and casual players, that doesn't require farming to improve equipment and that remains new and innovative after 60 levels, we'll hav eachieved perfection.
There are many things I love about WoW...and I've been playing it off and on since just before release day...but the gear differences are just pissing me off now. Its really bad when you get these little idiots with even less of a life than you who think having tier 2 gear makes them superior to you....don't they realize that actually having tier 2 gear just advertises what a loser you are in rl? heheh
I gave up on the editorials after about a week of reading them. "Piercing insights to MMORPG design" and such proved to be nothing of the sort. So I simply read the site for interviews and information, and skip 99% of the editorials. Then I come read one, and remember why.
I must express my deepest sympathy for Hasani, and all the rest of you that have spent so much of your lives dedicated to misery. WoW drives you to such burning fury, such deep depression, and makes you weep for your time wasted. I wish that it were not the case that Blizzard sent armed goons to each and every subscriber's house, and forced them to play. I wish that you had enjoyed at least a moment of your two years playing WoW. I sympathize deeply that you enjoyed yourself not a moment. I wish you could have been playing all those *other* mmorpgs that are far far superior to WoW. Like...Um...EQ 2! Yes, EQ 2! With voice acting.
Seriously. It's suddenly become the in thing to hate WoW, have always hated WoW, never enjoyed WoW, and always told people WoW would suck.
WoW is fun. It's hellaciously fun in some cases, and annoying in others. It's an MMORPG, which as yet haven't gotten beyond their own limits. It's a video game, which means it has ups and downs. But as much as everyone tries to hide it, people enjoy playing WoW. And *you* enjoy playing WoW, or you wouldn't continue to do so.
If you *do* keep playing it, despite not enjoying yourself, perhaps you need to look at your own psychology, not the game.
Here's a simple fact that would save people a lot of grief: You can play an MMORPG, enjoy it, then quit. People grow unnaturally attached to the game. "But I've played it for a year! I can't quit now! I would have wasted a year!" Did you enjoy your time during that year? Yes? There you go. If you take a two week vacation to Italy, do you say "I can't leave Italy now! If I do, I've wasted all the money I spent here, and two weeks of my life!"? No, you say "Wow, that was great. I'll have some good memories."
When you finished FFVII, did you bemoan your time lost? No, you reveled in the time spent! How many of you, honestly, wouldn't have paid $15 a month to play FFVII?
It's a game. You play what you like. You have fun. If you aren't playing, you move on. You try to help it improve, if you feel it doesn't, you leave.
Oh, and yes. Blizzard games are delayed. It's a fact of life. There is a choice between deadlines and quality. Blizz picks quality. Some companies pick deadlines. Both have downsides.
on the article itself i for one am excited about the expansion. one of the few problems in the WoW world setting for me is its static nature (inn in westfall anyone? when is it gonna get finished?) but the expansion doesnt seem to do much for that which is too bad.
They could bring back the original Rest State modifier system. In addition to the current experience bonus when a character is fully rested, the system originally was going to apply a negative modifier if a character was played for more than a few hours.
If you wanted to go hardcore on a casual server under that system, the best way to do it would be to start additional characters and play them in alternation with the first one, so that all are rested up when they are played.
They could fix that by restricting how much gear and money would carry over when a character transfers to a casual server.
But is someone who was formerly hardcore really going to be that annoyed by other hardcores, just because he or she has less time to play now? It'd be easier to stay on the original server and just play less.
After a few hours of play, they'd be getting less and less reward per kill. Then they'd need to log out in an inn and let their characters rest off the fatigue for a few hours.
If they managed to fit their harvesting into that schedule, then apparently it's within reach of casual players anyway.
I played L2 to 52+ (50+ the grind got...special), I quit when I couldn't help but think I needed to buy a bunch of gold from ebay to compete. That, required grouping and the 4 weeks per level because I had a job, were real downers.
Here is the point I wanted to make about your post: The thing with Lineage 2 was, the purpose of the grind was to own a castle and PvP to keep it. The purpose of the WoW grind is to grind some more. Why grind up rank to wear the PvP gear? So you can grind up rank and wear the epic PvP gear! Why grind for weeks through MC for the first set? So you can grind for weeks through BWL and then weeks through AQ.
The Lineage 2 grind was a crime, but it had a point. Sure, you hit level 75 and own the best castle for a month and the boredome sets in...but such is life. In WoW leveling the first time, for me, was fun and fast-paced. Then I hit 60 and all that was left was to grind faction, rank or raid gear...so you could grind more of those. At first I did raids to get better gear to PvP, but then Blizzard all but removed PvP from the game with the "PvP" instance grind.
I really dont know what all you guys/ladies are complaining about, this is a "game". A "game" is meant to be a fun experience, not a lifestyle.
And btw all "games" are like this, if you wanna play a "game" and be the best at it, you have to play and play LONG HOURS to get better at it. Take Guild Wars for example, when you reach the end game(LvL 20) the only thing left to do is PvP, and the only way to get better at it is to go "skill farming" and "weapon farming". This takes hours upon hours upon hours of gameplay to just get the one skill/weapon you want. But it doesnt end there, take the original role playing games like D&D on paper. There it took years to get your character to get the best equipment and better levels. (knows from personall experience
)
So if you want to be "casual" about a game, expect to get "casual" results. If you want to be "dedicated/hardcore" to a game, expect these people to get better results.
Personally i think Blizzard is doing a good job, i have loved all their games (StarCraft, WarCraft 1-3, WoW, etc.), no matter how long it takes for one to come out. And btw Blizzard isnt the only studio to delay and delay their expansions and so forth, take Sierra with Half Life 2, they delayed that game for AGES, yet when it came out DAMN WHAT A GOOD GAME, it was worth the wait. Wouldnt you want more of the bugs that you find with WoW to be fixed, if you think its an easy thing to do then go apply for a job at Blizzard and help everyone stop damn complaining.
And remember no game is perfect no matter what you think.
Maybe we're complaining because we're sick and tired of the old paradigms, either way, we have the right to complain, to voice our opinions and to express our dissatisfaction with a product that we pay to play. This is a given right to all consumers over any product. Businesses are proud to state 100% satisfaction guarantee or your money back, so why not with MMO's? Most of them don't let you "Try out" their product before buying at least not till its been out for a year or longer, so the risk is higher in paying for a flop. Add onto that the good chance that gameplay will change over the course of the game and many times it changes in ways that are detrimental to a large part of the subscriber base.
How many MMOs out there started out casual only to become hardcore, not just in a raiding sense, but in ridiculous amounts of artificial time sinks. I'll tell you how many, they all started out as either hardcore or became hardcore over time, every single one of them. Why? Because the devs are either clueless or just plain lazy to come up with a casual paradigm for a MMO. They probably think the effort to program casual content isn't worth the revenues it might or might not earn. Whatever the case may be, hardcore will most likely be the content of choice for a very long time and it may never change from that old and outdated formula.
That is why I no longer subscribe to these pieces of tripe that have the gall to call themselves games or entertainment software. Currently, MMO's are the venue of nerds and no-lifers. When a MMO comes out that actually embraces the mainstream player, then I might consider going back, till then they can rot in hell for all I care. I will not support these MMO companies that treat their customers like nerdish junkies on crack.
First, I don't really care if my neighbour has 3 cars, a bigger house, a boat and what not, because he's not waving them in front of me to send me to a graveyard in less than 10 seconds. If hardcore raiders want to spend countless hours in an instance to get gear so they can spend countless hours in next instance ad vitam eternam, fine, really good for them... It's the impact on PvP that bothers me.
In my book, PvP should mean testing your SKILL as a player to overcome something else than a scripted mobs you can read hints and tips about pretty much everywhere on relevant web sites. Not a showcase of how many hours you've spent. If "playing more" meant "getting more" as in CHOICE of items instead of "getting better", that could probably solve the issue. For the same reason I can't agree either when people say "Gear HAS to get better in terms of stats". Instances don't need to get harder in the sense of requiring tougher stuff, balancing them so they still represent a UNIQUE challenge is completely feasable.
Yes I'm completely aware that being able to overcome a live opponent without the slightest effort may seem very seducing to some, however guess what, PvP ranks are based on something called "Honour", might as well give that word some meaning back in WoW.
When I got busted by a full "T2+perdition blade+core hound" rogue who burned Vanish on my Faerie Fire TWICE in a ROW (yes you read right) I found that very VERY wrong.
Second, when you have more/better stuff in "real life", you also pay higher taxes for ownership. I don't mean repair costs. In WoW, both the hardcore and the casual will be charged the same to access their account.
Third, and that is slightly off-topic though it's still against that logic, there are countless jobs with scary working hours and lousy wage.
As a side note about the expansion, I'm actually curious to see how gimped one might become without getting the CD. If not owning BC means less content as in less choice (which IMO makes sense and is perfectly normal, like it should be for every game) then fine... However I guess this is all wishful thinking.
DAMN U BLIZZARD. i am so burned with WoW and i am waiting for the expansion 3 months now.i think that wow will be so awesome with the new features in expansion.i heared they will release it at the 28th of november but i cant trust blizzard.......the dont know what the hell they doing