Dailies and rep grinds are their way of artificially extending endgame. Too many players blow through stuff at an alarming rate. Unfortunately it's the casual gamer that suffers. Finding your niche is still possible, but all balancing is done around endgame raiding and PvP, so I feel like if you're not doing those things, WoW is likely a waste of your time. It certainly doesn't spend enough time on lore and quests to justify playing it solely for that.
Which is exactly my problem, I play WoW for the quests and lore (Give me Warcraft 4 damn it!), so when they add in daily requirements in the middle of the storylines, it just ****s everything up for me.
At least the low lvl zones are cool now, so there is still a possibility of leveling up new characters (which I could never do before as it meant replaying the same story).
Not sure if I've ever posted this here, but it's my youtube channel. Mostly for WoW-related stuff that I post writeups for on a popular hunter website.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ArthWoW
...very late, in the scheme of things, but might be interesting to those who have played or currently do.
New expansion announced - Mists of Pandaria.
Originally posted by BackFire
New expansion announced - Mists of Pandaria.
Self-parody status achieved.
Nothing about any of this is surprising. The "WoW Killer" MMO never existed and never will. However, games have shelf lives. WoW is not immune to this, it's just been great at prolonging it. There was a noticeable drop in active players when Rift came out, same with the Warhammer one. Small ones, but still there. ToR will take another chunk. It's slowly siphoning its players to other games, even if a percentage come back (a lot came back after Rift, for example). Slowly but eventually it will fade away.
So what's Blizzard's answer: do something drastic. At worst, it sends a few more away. At best, it brings some people back to the fold, or new players. It's only prolonging, again, but may stem the tide even longer than before.
The PvE scenarios, pet battles (which will appeal to a wide audience that the hardcore raiding does not), new classes, a friggin' panda race. It's not a bad move. Blizzard won't care about the people who aren't giving a sh*t, they were never going to play anyway. Decent business move, imo.
Whether or not it'll be fun and new for existing players, meh. May depend on how they implement some of that new stuff. Execution matters way more than concept with these things, so it's impossible to say. I'm kind of at a crossroads with WoW, or will be very soon (ToR is killing my guild, essentially, with most of the people I've played with for years). So I'm interested in everything right now, so I can make an informed decision.
Originally posted by ares834
Welp, it sure looks like SWTOR and GW2 are screwed...
Depends what the expectations for those games are.
If the developers are actually expecting either of those games to unseat WoW at the top of the MMO heap, then they were doomed to failure as that won't be happening any time soon no matter what.
If their expectations are realistic (as in, expecting them to be second or third behind WoW) then they should be fine, as that's where those two games will end up.
(Lots of other Fly-throughs in the related videos on youtube if you're interested.)
The combat looks pretty bad imo. But what do I know about WoW anyway?
Despite some graphical overhauls, WoW is a slightly dated game. Even the best of it is not going to look awesome.
The combat revolves around balance, personalization, and cooperation. Better than most games, they've managed to consistently find the balance between challenge and reward, while making encounters varied enough that each player is able to contribute meaningfully based on his/her role. It's a design thing more than concept or graphical presentation. They're the standard for a reason, but they're also not doing anything that's revolutionary (at least not anymore).
This is all for raiding at least. WoW's leveling kinda blows, and I can't speak to the PvP. Raiding is, to me, always fresh and nuanced enough to sate my ongoing desire for refinement in my playing. As such, all the bells and whistles in the announcements mean absolutely zero to me one way or another. My enjoyment of the game has always hinged on the raid content, so the execution on that will mean far more to me than all the cosmetic and talent changes in the world. I understand that I don't play like everyone does though, so the announcements mean more to them.
So I realize this thread is dead on KMC, but I still play. One of the things I do is pretty out of the ordinary. I've been leading some all-hunter raids made up mostly of members of an all-hunter guild that I and a friend of mine (who has a popular WoW blog) run. Traditionally we've done massive "events" where we kill world dragons and such with hundreds of low-level hunters. This is the next step.
The idea is to clear content from the current expansion. Not "endgame" per se, since we can't tackle the hardest raids. But content from Cataclysm, in the earlier tiers.
It's still in its infancy but growing fast since we've been advertising it on the website. Our next run is tomorrow, and I'm hoping to have a well-geared 25M and down a few bosses (we came close on a couple last time with a woefully undergeared group).
I don't have footage of our all-hunter raiding yet, but here's a couple of our previous events:
I actually wasn't there for the Thunder Bluff raid (where we accidentally crashed the server from the sudden numbers spike in TB!) but I was on-hand and helped coordinate the Whale Shark one. These are 2 of maybe 6-7 total events we've done.
So did anyone get Mists?
I bit the bullet and bought it even though I got tired of Cata after a few months. I'm currently alternating between my mage who is about 88 now, and a monk I made.
So far it's pretty impressive. The graphical improvements in the new continent is pretty enormous. The textures are a lot better now, and it's extremely pretty. So far it feels less focused than the other expansions, though I guess that's to be expected since this is the first one that doesn't have an obvious big baddy that they're building to from the start. As a result, there's a greater sense of mystery and wonder as the story is mostly about exploring Pandaria.
The Monk class is a lot of fun. Kind of a combination of a rogue and a paladin. Very fast paced and rewarding.
Thus far, a very solid xpac. We'll see how it is at end game - I'm pretty excited about scenarios.
I'm still going strong, but it's because I found an interesting niche with a dedicated fanbase.
About half of my experience is a regular raiding experience with a "casual serious" guild. The guild supports two 10M teams, and while I don't have a permanent spot on either, I'm a regular sub. I could push for a permanent role, but I honestly enjoy the freedom of not feeling obligated to raid, but still staying geared and skilled enough to do it.
The other half is the all-hunter army that a buddy of mine founded. He remains in charge of probably the most popular hunter-exclusive site on the web (and also blogs for WoW Insider), and I've become his #2 in command for filling in with blogs on the website and leading various things in the guild. Last expansion we killed...I think it was 7 current-expansion bosses with all-hunter 10 or 25M groups, including one in Dragon Soul, the final raid of the expansion. Incredibly fun, unique, and impressive to a large portion of the community. Leading those raids was a trip, because you're determining brand new strategies (without traditional tanks and heals) without the benefit of tutorials or data. The in-game guild has hundreds of hunters though, and there's all sorts of fun on a regular basis, including large-scale world events like those in the videos above.
If it weren't for that group, I'd have been done a while ago. Pandaria is, by all counts, pretty cool, but my play experience is directly tied to the hunter community. Any cosmetic changes are superfluous to my reasons for playing.
Here's our most recent event:
The guy in charge was lag-spiking, so this was put together entirely by me, which is rare for these events (usually I just contribute occasional footage). Head to youtube for full-screen, for some reason it has large black areas on top and bottom when embedded (still working on the ideal ratio for youtube on my video settings).
I also won't be playing a monk. I have an alt that I'll eventually get raid ready (disc. priest) but I don't really do alts at this point. I've heard mostly good reviews though.
Leveling is slower than it was in Cata. I'm still working toward 90. Decent questing though, and Pandaria is great-looking.