Originally posted by Menetnashté
Lol yeah friends is the only reason I play it, without friends the game isn't that fun.
Which is the draw for any MMO. Without the social aspect of the game, it's sub-standard as an RPG, or at least not above other benchmarks in the genre (like Oblivion, for example).
Originally posted by Menetnashté
I'm a ways off from Ulduar but from what I understand when I go at it for the first time I should be anally raped quite thoroughly.
Depends on gear and your level of preparation. We only wiped once before clearing the first boss. Granted, he's not supposed to be among the tougher bosses, but still. We took an experienced group in, though, and had all watched the video(s) on the fight. But yeah, it's not easy.
Originally posted by Digi
[B]Which is the draw for any MMO. Without the social aspect of the game, it's sub-standard as an RPG, or at least not above other benchmarks in the genre (like Oblivion, for example).
I completely agree. That's the main reason I've been in love with mmo games since Diablo/Ultima Online. The ability to forge friendships and "vanquish" other RL people or tough mobs is appealing. WoW does both well.
Originally posted by BloodyBandage
I completely agree. That's the main reason I've been in love with mmo games since Diablo/Ultima Online. The ability to forge friendships and "vanquish" other RL people or tough mobs is appealing. WoW does both well.
The teamwork and strategy aspect of it is appealing to me, as well as being able to always have things to do in order to maximize my class, and then see tangible results.
My guild is also fairly mature, which helps. I couldn't play WoW if I was constantly running with teenagers and such.
Originally posted by jalek moye
gonna start this up again. i'll stop breifly to see if champions online is gonna, if not then i'll stay with this now that i have the cash.
Good luck.
Wiped for 2 hours straight tonight. Hard bosses (Maly and the new VoA guy), but still. Good times. 😐 ...I'm up to eight 213 pieces now, though, for those who know what that means. Still 2nd in our guild in dps, but inching closer to the leader.
Storyline:
1. Little to no originality or captivating quality. The vast majority of the quests are read out more like mission briefings; the emphasis is clearly on your mission objectives, rather than the context or background that leads up to why you're doing what your doing.
2. Absolutely no direction to the plot; the game mostly consists of a series of completely unrelated story archs that rarely if ever lead onto one another.
3. No purpose to the plot at all; it lacks a single underlying plot that drives your character through the contents of the game, and there's absolutely no implication of anything that your character is being lead to.
4. Not only is the storyline terrible, but completely minimal. Given the nature of RPGs, where you, the player, are supposed to take on the role of the character by escaping into the storyline of the game, the severe lack of emphasis on the plot is a huge drawback given the genre. The very vast majority of the game is based around the gameplay; the storyline takes a serious back seat.
5. While I personally don't care so much, the storyline is in some cases extremely contradictory/inconsistent/unrealistic with the already established Warcraft Lore from the rest of the Warcraft media.
6. No cinematics with the exception of the different openings. While that's not exactly the biggest issue such a game could face, it's definitely a noteworthy shortcoming. It makes the storytelling approach of the game far more limiting.
Visuals:
1. Technically speaking, the graphics are completely mediocre and in no way live up to the standard of modern day gaming; I know the game was developed like three years ago, but given that it's still being played and expansion material is still being released, the comparison is completely valid and reasonable.
2. The character models and facial expressions are extremely limited and unrealistic.
3. The melee visuals are absolutely terrible; there is no clarity whatsoever as far as your attacks making contact with your opponent goes, rather more of a blurry motion in the rough direction of your opponent.
Gameplay:
1. The character creation was far too limiting, and I'm not saying that's not the case in a lot of games but it's still a drawback and especially so in an mmo where the game world is shared by thousands of other players and you want to feel a sense of individuality.
2. The close combat system is far too rigid in such a way that it becomes completely flawed; to perform a successful attack you have to be facing your opponent, and this has to be pretty exact, and that combined with the extremely slow turning speed makes it easy for your opponent to simply run behind you or out of your aim and your attacks can no longer be pulled off or are cancelled. This is especially flawed with non instantaneous ranged combat such as magic casting, where you have to not only be facing your opponent when you initiate the attack but have to be facing them by the end of the cast time otherwise the attack is cancelled. While this largely only applies to PvP aspects of the game, the PvP aspects take up a large portion of the game and it really ruins the experience, especially when it's a ranged attacker against a melee user.
Sound:
1. NPC voices and spoken dialogue starts getting extremely repetitive after a while; while it's not a huge issue it's worth pointing out.
Miscellaneous:
1. There's a huge lack of structure to the game. For example, the Undead are treated as a race, even though it's more a state of being than a separate race, while the DKs, who are of the exact same nature, are treated as a class.
2. For both the Horde and Alliance, there's little to no real difference between the quests that your characters go on regardless of their class or race; in fact, with a few race/class specific exceptions, every single race/class goes on an absolutely identical set of quests, which only adds to how repetitive it gets and acts as a disincentive to investing time into multiple characters.
3. The game has been plagued by constant bugs and glitches since its release, the servers are constantly being shut down for maintenance, there are constant patches being released that require immediate downloads before you can continue playing the game, and all in all the maintenance of the game seriously detracts from the experience.
I'm positive there are other problems that I haven't experienced/can't think of right now but all in all the game is plagued with some serious issues, and I continue to remain gobsmacked at its level of popularity.
So you don't like MMORPGs. What you listed can be said about numerous MMORPGs. On many points brought up, World of Warcraft is better than many other games.
Selected few points of correction:
1. The undead are not treated as a race, but as a faction. The Forsaken. They aren't named Undead, merely defined as such. There are the Forsaken and the Scourge. Two factions that just happen to be undead. It's a players choice to call them Undead. When you create a character, you create by text on screen a Forsaken and not an Undead.
2. There is a weekly maintenance, which last only for a short period of time. If you can't be away from your computer for a few hours, you have a problem. If there were no maintenances, there would be a lot more problems with World of Warcraft than it is right now, and a lot more downtime.
3. The close-combat system is way more fluent than in many other MMOs and many other games in total as well. In WoW in comparison to many other, it often comes down to how good you are with the keys and timing. The spellcasting makes sense in every way you find it not doing so. In lore, if the regular magician can not see the target, it can not charge up the spell and shoot it. Also it's proven that the average mage can not shoot a spell behind his back. Medivh probably could, as can probably Krasus and the other bigshots, but not an average mage.
You are looking for faults. That's why you find them. Any game can be made out as a terrible game, since there are flaws in all games. You just need to find it. As long, and very much longer list can be created for pretty much every game out there.
Just like Q said, it looks like MMO is simply not your genre. And let's face it: WoW is 80% MMO, 20% RPG.
Also, if you use keyboard to turn in PvP you deserve to taste pwnage in all its myriad shapes and forms.
Anyway, I do agree about the lore part. I seriously don't like where the lore is going with WoW. I want WC4, damn it!
Originally posted by Q'Anilia
So you don't like MMORPGs. What you listed can be said about numerous MMORPGs. On many points brought up, World of Warcraft is better than many other games.Selected few points of correction:
1. The undead are not treated as a race, but as a faction. The Forsaken. They aren't named Undead, merely defined as such. There are the Forsaken and the Scourge. Two factions that just happen to be undead. It's a players choice to call them Undead. When you create a character, you create by text on screen a Forsaken and not an Undead.
2. There is a weekly maintenance, which last only for a short period of time. If you can't be away from your computer for a few hours, you have a problem. If there were no maintenances, there would be a lot more problems with World of Warcraft than it is right now, and a lot more downtime.
3. The close-combat system is way more fluent than in many other MMOs and many other games in total as well. In WoW in comparison to many other, it often comes down to how good you are with the keys and timing. The spellcasting makes sense in every way you find it not doing so. In lore, if the regular magician can not see the target, it can not charge up the spell and shoot it. Also it's proven that the average mage can not shoot a spell behind his back. Medivh probably could, as can probably Krasus and the other bigshots, but not an average mage.
You are looking for faults. That's why you find them. Any game can be made out as a terrible game, since there are flaws in all games. You just need to find it. As long, and very much longer list can be created for pretty much every game out there.
I was analysing it as a game, not as an mmorpg, so naturally there would be flaws that would also be quite common/potentially specific to the mmorpg sub genre. It also wasn't my intention to prove that it was the worst game to ever exist or anything, so naturally you might find examples that might possess the same fault, and even to a gerater degree.
1. That is quite simply untrue, they are listed as a race on the character creation screen, named as "The Undead" and not "The Foursaken" and treated exactly as the other races are.
2. The issue isn't that you don't get to play during those few hours on top of all the other hours in the world, it's that those few hours might prove more convenient to certain players or might just randomly be during a certain interval where someone intended to play the game. Among with the other issues I listed it creates a potential inconvenience worth noting.
3. How so? And regardless, I'm not forming any specific comparisons, you asked me why I thought it was such a bad game, and I explained why. As for you trying to rationalise the issue with the gameplay limitation being realistic with Warcraft Lore, all that proves is that the developers placed realism within the setting at the expense of the gameplay; my point remains that it makes the close combat system overly rigid and flawed. Not to mention the point was largely that the rotating speeds aren't fast enough to keep up with another character who's purposefully dodging the aim of your character, which in itself wouldn't realistically be in accordance with how it would actually really be in the setting where the mage would be able to adjust his aim and view far more fluidly.
The faults wouldn't stand out so boldly and I wouldn't feel the need to point them out if the actual overall experience made up for it. It didn't. I personally found it to be an absolutely horrendous game and I can support that using objective measures. Not to mention, it's not the quantity of the faults I pointed out that I'm focusing on, it's the sheer significance of many of them; the storyline, which is absolutely fundamental for an RPG, can objectively be proven to be absolutely terrible; the close combat system faults makes up a huge portion of the game's gameplay and it can objectively be proven to be faulty; the visuals can be considered to be an integral part of any game and the sheer quality of them was severely lacking.
Originally posted by KCOS
2. The issue isn't that you don't get to play during those few hours on top of all the other hours in the world, it's that those few hours might prove more convenient to certain players or might just randomly be during a certain interval where someone intended to play the game. Among with the other issues I listed it creates a potential inconvenience worth noting.
I think this is warned already in User Licence Agreement. If it does not work for you, don't pay the fee.