Posted By ChaosD1 about 1 year ago
MMO Grinder: World of Warcraft, 
So this is what all those end credits gags leading up to. In this entirely too long review, and his 20th episode, Chaos looks to quell the flames with a look into a game that’s gone mentioned without reference for long enough…
So what were all those end credits gags leading up to anyway? In this entirely too long review, and his 20th episode, Chaos looks to quell the flames with a look into a game that’s gone mentioned without reference for long enough…
Patch 4.3 is coming… but does the appearance of a Sarlac and the proximity to SWTOR’s release date going to effect the success of the patch’s launch?
What constitutes a good character? Join me in this series that attempts to look at these characters and tries to peel away the layers of depth they have. Join me as we find Characters with Character. This week is Sylvanas Windrunner.
Gamescom and Blizzard, making a splash and getting all the WoW players wet with news of just what that picture they leaked out to Facebook last week was all about… and so much more.
World of Warcraft steps forward and declares that the free to play model is ok… maybe… if we do it this way… kinda…
Only after releasing dungeon content a few days ago, Blizzard is turning up the heat with new information about The Firelands, the next hot zone to be wrought from the Cataclysm.
A look at the lore behind the 4.1 Patch to World of Warcraft.
First came the Mobile Armory… and it was good. Then came the Remote Auction House, and I guess it was okay for the cutthroats. So what’s next for Blizzard’s WoW-based take over of the iOS?
Patch 4.3 is coming… but does the appearance of a Sarlac and the proximity to SWTOR’s release date going to effect the success of the patch’s launch?
What constitutes a good character? Join me in this series that attempts to look at these characters and tries to peel away the layers of depth they have. Join me as we find Characters with Character. This week is Sylvanas Windrunner.
Gamescom and Blizzard, making a splash and getting all the WoW players wet with news of just what that picture they leaked out to Facebook last week was all about… and so much more.
World of Warcraft steps forward and declares that the free to play model is ok… maybe… if we do it this way… kinda…
Only after releasing dungeon content a few days ago, Blizzard is turning up the heat with new information about The Firelands, the next hot zone to be wrought from the Cataclysm.
A look at the lore behind the 4.1 Patch to World of Warcraft.
First came the Mobile Armory… and it was good. Then came the Remote Auction House, and I guess it was okay for the cutthroats. So what’s next for Blizzard’s WoW-based take over of the iOS?
Another week, another crack at throwing questions into the swirling maw of the Blizzard Forum Community!
Posted By James C. about 2 years, 5 months ago
Upon Further Review: World of Warcraft (Levels 1 – 60)
MMO Grinder: World of Warcraft, 
Even though there are a multitude of MMOs out there, either free or pay to play, it is a good idea to go and check back on products already released or constantly being updated. Upon Further Review is BT’s way of keeping you up to date, detailing the current state of game for an MMO, either via content patches or expansion packs that change the core game in some way, so you can get the skinny on what’s old and what’s new.
World of Warcraft.
Reigning king of the Massively Multiplayer Online market. A juggernaut RPG that has lasted above the standard of quality for six years with two expansion packs further expanding the experience. A virtual denizen to which it can call home in at least 12 million active subscribers worldwide. If you’re an MMO player and don’t know those three words, it’s time to either get out from the rock you’ve been hiding under, to turn off the computer and lay down in your grave because you’re obviously dead, or to hit the break and get on with the story!
| PROS | Linearized questing, Storylines with weight to the game, New Class/Race combos |
| CONS | Some zones not as impactful as others, Overall easy experience, Gathering nodes absolutely everywhere |
| WTF?! | Goblin expansion is EVERYWHERE! |
The level 1 to 60 content hasn’t changed much over its six year lifespan, maybe some quest additions in new zones during the ‘vanilla’ phase of the game but nothing major once Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King introduced new shiny areas with bizarre landscapes to take in or ferocious creatures to slaughter in bulk. However, Blizzard has decided to break the trend of keeping the lands of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms safe, by…well…breaking the world.
No, you're not seeing things. Deathwing did decide to teabag the Badlands.
With the destruction of the world, Blizzard has gone and redone all of the old world, changing it in ways that players never thought they would attempt, along with the inclusion of new content when Cataclysm launches on December 7th. New gameplay additions, linearized questing, an update to presentation as a whole, and much more ‘weight’ to your exploits are what await you in this broken world wrought from the wings of the Destroyer.
With the Lich King finally defeated at the hands of Highlord Tirion Fordring and the Argent Crusade, the factions of the Alliance and the Horde, now bruised and beaten from a harsh campaign that I can only compare to Nazi Germany’s push into Russia, have withdrawn from Northrend to lick their wounds and enjoy the limited peace that the two factions have always shared with each other before destroying each other again, and it’s only a matter of time before the newest enemy shows its face.
The foe in question is Deathwing, the Aspect (see: Leader) of the Black Dragonflight, the entity put in command of the earth and the deep, and Grade-A certified nutcase thanks to some seriously evil deities. After being slapped around by the rest of the Dragonkin in the events after the Second War, the black dragon bode its time in the deeps of the world where none could find him. After his recuperation, he violently burst through the world, causing widespread catastrophe in its wake to the denizens of Azeroth.
Only problem I have with Cataclysm is that the Worgen models seem rushed and that the Worgen are left “hanging” after their starting zone. The only have a small quest hub in Blasted Lands and Dusk Wood, unlike the goblins who get the entirety of Aszhara.
Also, the “Lord Godfrey” gilneas plot being continued on the Undead Horde side and not alliance side shows that Blizz loves the horde more.
I hope the Worgen get Gilneas back in a later patch. Empty Gilneas with not even Forsaken soldiers in it??? Do something with the area blizz!!! And start balancing the servers.
70% horde on most servers = bad
Meh, it’s pointless to spend too much time thinking about 1-60 really. If you’ve leveled at least 2 toons to 80 you’ve most likely leveled a few other toons to a level lower than 80. At that point you “get it” and spend less time enjoying the scenery and more time leveling efficiently. Sadly if you level efficiently (and fast) now, you’re gonna zip from 1 to 60 in a matter of days. It’s really way too fast now BUT… 50-58 isn’t horrible anymore so, I’ll go with it.
I love world of wacraft however i don`t grind farming or even try to get epic armor. I don`t care that i love the pve leveling system more fun than raiding all day same stupid instance for some stupid armor no thanks. However the game its self ends for me when i hit 85 and offcourse all the archivements. Even if i need to do some long time pve pvp or pvc. 
The new level experience is smooth, fast, entertaining and almost never getting stale. Especially if you know 1-60 vanilla… As an ex-beta player I’m actually excited about Cataclysm. They did a good job despite rushing it before christmas.
For the music I can only say : Amazing.
Look (hear) for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZy9ziutmaA&feature=player_embedded
I’d really like to try out the new addon, but my girlfriend would kill me. I get too addicted to games like this. 
I agree with you on the questing flow, but disagree on missing the “Travels to the ends of the Earth” quests. In the old content, I dreaded levels 40-50. This is when Blizzard said that having a mount meant you should be able to travel from the northeast corner of the world, to the southwest, back to the northeast, and head to the southeast corner all for a single questline. Each of those transits took about 15 minutes or more. I didn’t enjoy spending hours of my time traveling, and often missing the boats to Kalimdor. Not to mention that the story linking these zones together did not make sense. They were disparate in location and theme yet joined together by nonsensical quests. I for one am glad they are gone.
As for the music, new is good. I love the new music and have actually lauded it. It reminds me of epic soundtracks from Pirates of the Caribbean or old Final Fantasy tunes. The pirates tune was very appropriate since I happen to be in a pirate cove at the time. The music pause does prevent it from grating your nerves, but there are times that I have wanted the music to continue.
I love the revamping of the world. I have spent the last couple weeks going around questing many of the new zones and loving it. What I have disliked is what was not changed. Arathi Highlands for example had improved flow such as an additional flightpoint closer to the main questing area that used to be an arduous cross country run and shortening needlessly long quest chaines, but the quests remained almost the same. Coming off really strong zones that had a lot of new quests and were completely different, this zone was weak and was not particularly entertaining. Another example is Darrowshire, an epic quest known for its bugginess, and unsurprisingly, was kept the same and is still buggy.
The majority of zones are not like this though. They feature many new quests, in-game cinematics, and many of the new features introduced in the past two expansions that enrich the playing experience. I’m just bothered by zones that lack this.
Alliance dog! The Horde will crush your insignificant, mage-powered rowboats with our mighty goblin riverboats with gnomes lashed to the bow.
The Alliance has John J. Keeshan and a Battle Tank. That is all they need to win.
I stopped leveling my pally at 55, I just got so sick of the distance between zones for leveling, I can’t feasibly juggle zones like I could with all my other leveling, by that I mean I would jump between like Khaz Modan and Darkshire for my leveling and things like that.
Horde 1-60 is fantastic, though in Kalimdor the 50-60 leveling isn’t as strong as it could be. After the awesomeness of Azshara, the epic of Stonetallon, and variety of Thousand Needles, it starts to get kinda dull.
So what were all those end credits gags leading up to anyway? In this entirely too long review, and his 20th episode, Chaos looks to quell the flames with a look into a game that’s gone mentioned without reference for long enough…
Patch 4.3 is coming… but does the appearance of a Sarlac and the proximity to SWTOR’s release date going to effect the success of the patch’s launch?
What constitutes a good character? Join me in this series that attempts to look at these characters and tries to peel away the layers of depth they have. Join me as we find Characters with Character. This week is Sylvanas Windrunner.
Gamescom and Blizzard, making a splash and getting all the WoW players wet with news of just what that picture they leaked out to Facebook last week was all about… and so much more.
Only after releasing dungeon content a few days ago, Blizzard is turning up the heat with new information about The Firelands, the next hot zone to be wrought from the Cataclysm.
Another week, another crack at throwing questions into the swirling maw of the Blizzard Forum Community!
A Blizzard Entertainment event, even one as small as a launch-day midnight release party, can be an electric event. The deep music of various Blizzard titles thumps through massive speakers all around you, each bass note sending a vibration right to your heart and core.
World of Warcraft’s latest expansion promises to both destroy and remake nearly 75% of it’s currently existing content, but after six years can Blizzard Entertainment still bring back the magic of those first few years? We got an early access pass to find out just that…
Music Mondays revisits the band that brought us tunes from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Bit.Trip Runner.
I have been watching your reviews for quiet a few months and enjoy them greatly. Alot of your feelings on mmo’s mirror mine, though not all. I am one of those rare MMO players who started out on FFXI, and despite enjoying WoW greatly and even liking Guild Wars, and not liking JRPGs much; I prefer FFXI. As an game to get into and just enjoy it is horrible, absolutely nightmarish at times and certainly for someone on their first month.
The Storyline, gameplay and graphics considering the games age is sublime, and it even controls well if you are not hardwired to the WoW interface. The main reason I enjoy it is even by Lotor standards (which I also played) the community is great; so good it exposes the games problem. It’s a nightmare to get into, people never backstab and fight as they do in WoW because even with all the easy mode updates; people like that cannot survive in it. Sadly a lot of those barriers get casual gamers too. You can level from 1-99 in a few days now, but good luck getting past rank 5 or any of the expansion packs done. You cannot review it because even if you can have a life and play it, it still takes months and months of diligence to get anywhere relevant to a review.
I love it even though I have many problems with it like WoW. As for WoW I do not care for its graphics, but can ignore it. It is the cost of the game and mainly the aforementioned community; many who literally see newbies as a threat.
Anyways keep up the great work Chaos. I love your work with those Korean MMOs, and yep I’ve been there too.
Hmmm, i myself made a new account on FFXI 2months ago (well 1month and like 2 weeks).
I have to say you are right about the rank missions, hell to do alone on lower level XD the grinding though well…. right now i’m on 75. but the people i have met that started around the same time as me are already 99 and pimping themselfs up XD (but i am a really slow leveler and i enjoy crafting alot so most my time go’s into that).
I didn’t have any trouble with the limit breaks though,
random strangers would offer their help when i said “well i’m capped need to do LB again.”
That said yes i too play it mainly for the storyline, big big big fan of CoP/ZM and aht urghan story (i actually have like 4chars by now just to get the storylines done XD)
FFXI is one of those MMO’s you either love or hate and for me its love ^^
ZOMG Y U MENTION WARCRAFT HOW DARE U!!!11111oneoneoneoneleven
Naw….I only played the trial for a few days.
Yikes…I didn’t know there were so many weird cases with people killing and stuff over an MMO. >__>;;
Nice ! Hat btw
Oh yea what the heck is up with the Kung Fu Pandas? I saw the artwork for the first time last year or so…and I’m like UUHHHhh….is this a joke? Apparently not o.o;
Yes, this is quite a long intro.
LOL Vincticus….I used to play that until people started leaving. =/ and yes the graphics for that game is puurrttyyyy.
Dunno if you tried the Guild Wars 2 beta, but some things are similar to this game.
Thx man…I learned a lot about WoW. Pretty cool they add a lotta stuff over the years.
WoW frustrates me to no end because I see a lot of potential with it, and yet none of it realized. I had played EQ2 for the longest time, but I eventual gave up when I got sick of using boot camp to switch between Mac OS X and Windows XP or 7. As a Mac user there is nothing more liberating than erasing your boot camp partition and Parallels application from your machine. Still, Sony still has their head up Direct X’s ass so much, they refuse to support Macs.
Yet, WoW/Blizzard fully supports the Mac. And WoW is good enough for me to get the occasional “MMO RPG kick” worked out of my system from time to time (maybe once a year at most), but nothing made me stay with the game beyond a week or two. The game is just something… there. The character creation was too limiting, and I missed housing (both personal and guild) far too much. It’s just the bare bones of what I need, but nothing of what I want.
ARG! How can I hate Sony so much and really like EQ2 while loving Blizzard and hating WoW?
I’m hoping Blizzard puts out something that will truly pull me in. I’m too much stuck in limbo right now.
I played WoW almost since when it started. I remember the glitch that made players fall out of the airships for the horde. That was a straight fall to our deaths! lol
I remember Gnome Ball, which was quickly stopped when gnome playing characters were being hurled off cliffs or into rock walls. Or the dragon that was under Undercity. That was removed within the first few months.
Wow has gone a long way. Though have been times I quit playing. I even changed factions. I would recommend Horde because the players are nicer but currently Alliance.
My Favorite memory is my bf’s character ” Macrib ” tricking alliance into jumping off a cliff to their deaths.
I forgot to mention something about gnome ball. Some people made gnomes with the intention of them being thrown around like footballs.
WoW was great to start but I prefer the RP-ness of it and after you get so high it seems to go away
few things
1.You can create an alliance and horde on the same PvP Realm
2.Usually on RP realms you can find a Guild that specifically does roleplaying…their usually much nicer than the regular breed of characters.
3.i run the second best PvP Guild on our realm…and i invite everyone
I’ve made it my goal to try and get the whole realm into one guild since its basically dead with maybe 100-150 players left horde side. im Streetguru on Aegwynn-US btw
4.just find a dead low pop realm if you dont want to deal with people or you just want nice people :3
Also alliance…ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Horde for life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pssss dont forget about those other “free” realms…actually i think they’ve grown in popularity since blizzard doesnt want to put out old world servers for..some reason….
You are clearly wrong about one thing: it is the best mmo ever made to date. And that’s because WoW revolutionized everything concerning mmo’s in general. Gaming itself would not be the same without WoW.
For me the simple fact of being able to get to max level without any grinding at all while completing simple story driven quests was a breath of fresh air back in 2004.
Tell that to my old guild leader. He’d never shut up about Dark Age of Camelot. (Luckily, no one stole his Cloudsong.)
One thing i’m not sure he stressed enough, but did bring up, endgame raiding is not for everyone by a long shot. I was an officer in a raiding guild for 2 years, a bunch of us quit 5 months ago to do other things (we had all played for 4-6 years, burnt out in general) but being in a raiding guild sped it up.
Here’s how the traditional raid guild works.
1. 2 kinds of raids, 10 man and 25, each has a normal and hard mode.
2. You can only bring x amount of healers, melee dps, ranged dps, and tanks depending on the fight (the number changes depending on fight. So lets say you are in a 25 man guild.
4 tanks show up, this boss needs 2, the next needs 3. 2 of those tanks are sitting out unless they have a really good dps set and can do more damage then one of the 8 or so dps sitting on the sidelines. And hey, theres another point, being in a raiding guild doesn’t mean you get to raid.
You might be the wrong class for a fight, you might not do enough damage. I recall having to look through 40 people every raid and decide who got to come, i distincly recall sitting the same 4 people every single time we raided because they didn’t do enough damage. Or not bringing a certain tank because he wasn’t the best tank, or not bringing a healer because he wasn’t the best healer, or not bringing a good dps because he was, say, a mage and we already had too many mages and needed a rogue instead.
3. They work like jobs. Depending on the guild, you raid 3-5 times a week, at a certain time, many expect you to be on at that time, and stay for the entire time, somewhere between 3-5 hours depending on how hardcore the guild is.
4. If it is a progression minded guild, you may be looking forward to getting killed by the exact same boss, over and over and over again, posssibly for weeks.
5. When he mentioned people shitting on you for spending your talent points wrong? It’s true, but that’s the design of the game, theres an ideal talent build for every spec of every class in the game, it doesn’t matter if you are the greatest player on earth, if you don’t follow the expected raid build for your class and spec, you won’t do max damage.
You also have to put gems in your gear correctly, have the correct gear, the right consumables for raids, etc etc etc. You have to know how the fights work, because if you don’t and mess up in a boss fight you might kill the other 24 people and make them angry with you for wasting their time.
Theres a lot of garbage that goes into raiding, i can say that. However, spending so much time with people has it’s upsides.
My wife knew the names of some of my guild buddies despite not playing the game, we used to talk in ventrillo when we were playing other games, we knew each others names, what was going on in each others lives, etc etc. Theres bonding in this game damnit!
When i mentioned a bunch of us quit, what i didn’t say is a bunch of quit, and now we all play league of legends together and are looking forward to diablo 3.
And with the raid finder, just about anyone can see the cool raid bosses and enviroments, and get themselves some really nice loot, without every really having to interact with the group of people you are playing with, if you so choose. Even if you aren’t super awesome at the game (Raid finder is an incredibly simplified version of raiding, bosses do less damage, have less abilities, etc etc.)
Ah, WoW. How I’ve missed thee. Great video Jon! Yeah, the community in the starter areas are…really immature. The most annoying things I’ve had to deal with are farmers, especially when they see I’m questing and decide to kill all the enemies before I can, proceeding to do a little dance as if to say “Trollololol! Ur dum ass!” then leave. People that spam me with duel requests then call me any profane name they can think up because I’m not “being cool” and accepting their requests. And possibly the most annoying are the obviously underage guys asking me to be their girlfriend because I, or rather my character, is hot. Uh-huh. Thanks kid who has such poor grammar it causes my retinas to bleed. -_______-
I know you commented on it in the video, but the one thing that really sticks out to me about WoW is just how good the games music is, and how much it has improved since Vanilla. I know a large portion of the players just turn it off and never heard it, but I’m astounded expansion after expansion just how much effort Blizzard puts into the music of the game, and I’ll continue listening to it long after I’ve stopped playing.
One thing in the video, there’s no longer a restriction against having opposite faction characters on PvP servers.
“How I Met Your Mother” had a episode where one of the main characters met someone in WOW and it was funny. If you want to check it out on netflix then look up: How I Met Your Mother – Season 3, Episode 5: How I Met Everyone, if you are curious
not a fan of RMB camera contol eh?just something that stook out.
can be a major drawback in pvp and such
Every now and then I get nostalgic and buy a month of game time for WoW, but inevitably at the end of that month I end up so frustrated that i wow never to WoW again (see what I did there, oh how clever I am).
It is not a bad game, not at all, it would not have that many subscribers or had me spend so much time with if it was.
But the community is atrocious, as soon as you hit the end game, it is one long dungeon grind and people (perhaps rightly so) has begun to treat it like a chore. So even a minor misstep or having dps that is slightly below average, will get you yelled at.
This is because they feel like you are “wasting their time”, because they no longer do those dungeons for fun, only to get a slight upgrade to their gear….
This is just sad, the moment I feel like an mmo is becomming a chore, I stop playing, and my tolerance for when that happens, has become lower and lower, every time I have heeded the siren call of WoW.
^^^ THIS
My logging in to see my guild of 5 years disbanded to go play SWTOR pretty much sealed the fact I won’t be going back for a while.
I don’t think a the hate people have toward WoW is unwarranted. Actually I doubt many people really hate “WoW” anywhere near as much as they hate the WoW fanboys who are really the only reason to hate WoW since they are the most angry, obnoxious human beings (using the term loosely) you’ll ever run into.
Heck, I’ve lost acquaintances because when asked why I quit WoW, I elaborated upon why, and was quickly raged at for being some old fogey who hates change. The community really is by far the worst part of the game and the addition of iLevel made it a thousand times worse.
As far as the rest of the game.. I just did all I cared to do. After 5 years, it was time to move on.
This is really more the fault of Popular Game Syndrome, and that’s about it. Nothing about the game itself breeds this kind of attitude, but I can understand how annoying it can be to have people constantly tell you how awesome their favorite MMO is…
It would almost be like seeing dozens of people talk about Guild Wars 2 and FFXI/FFXIV in response to this video.
Well, after 20 episodes, it’s “safe to say” that your “favorite mmo” seems to be WoW..
So, this video instantly feels like..
Heres the best strategy for the arcane mage:
1.Put Arcane Blast on every button
2.Locate target
3.Hit the keyboard with your face as fast os you can
4.30k+ dps
5.Profit
^^
I can safely say that the only reasons I quit WoW was because everyone I knew IRL quit and I couldn’t find a stable casual raiding guild to save my life (I get bored without having people to play with, I don’t like PvP and I can’t tolerate hardcore guilds that take the game too damn seriously).
And as a loyal Tauren who hates Garrosh Hellscream with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, I will say this: For Thunderbluff!
I think there’s something inherently wrong with making people pay monthly fees to be able to use the content they already paid for. It would be like paying for a year pass into a club & still having to bribe the usher to let you in. I suppose in retaliation they would argue that you buy a car & still have to buy gas for it every month.
True, but then again, most people don’t spend half the price of a car on gas every month.
Although, if gas prices continue to increase…
I think there’s something wrong with believing you deserve continuous access to one the largest server clusters in the world for a one-time cost.
actually now a days server cost is frankly not a huge deal, heck for years Blizzard has such a small server cost the numbers is one of those * note at the bottom corner of the rapport.
Ah, nostalgia. It’s made me come back to the game a few times over the years and you covered a lot of that. Not gonna go back but I can remember some good times.
I definitely liked the review and think this serves as a good primer to many other games since “WoW clone” is used so often and some may not know what that means and the mechanics behind it. It made the episode go long. But if your gonna explain what many other MMOs are like, this is the game to do it with.
Too bad the only mmo that will surpass WoW one day will be blizzard’s next mmo.
Your intro gave me ideas. Now I want to go troll WoW players.
Won’t work.There are enough trolls playing the game too even notice.
Nice review. I’ve never been much of a WoW player. It’s a great game but just not my style of MMO. I would love to see your review style and opinion of Final Fantasy XI since they have a 14-day free trial here http://finalfantasyxi.com/na/
You wouldn’t want to know my opinion on that game. You really, really wouldn’t. And that 14 day trial would only qualify it for a Sidequest.
HOWEVER… I’m down with looking at “RIFT Lite” sometime.
$5 says you could get Spoony to do it.
I didn’t think he’d like to give a meaning on that game either (like he said below) ;P
).
Glad to see somebody mention it though (since i been crackhooked on that mmo for years myself
lets just accept that FFXI’s gameplay is too diffrent for this kinda stuff. (Even after all the changes that happend to this game in the last 2years).
Great review!
I think the one thing special about WoW that you I feel you could have mentioned and that in my eyes makes it so popular (aside from its simplicity) is that is polished as no other MMO I’ve played. Granted, I haven’t played that many, but still.
Things like the dungeon finder took a lot of the stand-in-front-of-the-dungeon-or-in-a-mayor-city-looking-for-five-people-of-the-right-spec-combination-only-to-have-the-maintank-leave-when-all-people-finally-are-in-front-of-the-dungeon-frustration out of the game.
It was the main thing that bugged me about The Old Republic when I played, I often caught myself thinking “hey, why didn’t they make a dungeon finder, like in WoW.” “Hey, why aren’t the mounts cheap as all hell just like in WoW where they realized its stupid to make them really, really expensive about two years ago.” Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the two moths of SWtOR I played, I just wanted to show want I meant with “polish”.
Oh, and even though I stopped playing WoW about two years ago…
FOR THE HORDE!
Also, the continental travel for the Horde isn’t ships but Airships/Zepelins. They work exactly the same though, so it doesn’t really matter.
WoW had YEARS to get this “polished”. (The mess they created by “polishing” is an super easy family fun ride where nobody gets hurt or has to think about anything to be raiding the latest bosses… but that’s my opinion.)
SWToR mounts are as cheap as they can get without being insulting nowadays. (8000 c + 35000 c for the skill – you almost always have that at lvl 25 + you get “sprint” before you even reach lvl 10 ) An lfg tool is in the making but there is no eta yet. SWToR has a long way to go to be as “polished” as WoW but it’s just 6 months old and had 2 major updates already.
My point is : “Polish” in MMOs is something achieved over time since most of them get released in a kind of late beta state. I don’t think I ever saw a polished MMO that’s not at least 1 or 2 years “old”.
I agree, WoW wasn’t nearly as polished at release, and for some stuff took it’s sweet ass time to do so.
However, ToR came about a year (or maybe even more) after the dungeon finder was implemented in WoW, and at that point, I felt it was necessary if you include the same kind of dungeons as WoW does.
ToR had a lot of good ideas to counteract many of the problems vanilla WoW had (like having a hub of dungeon entrances instead of spreading them over the playable worlds), and it even reduced the cost of higher tier vehicles and lowered Sprint to a level 1 skill when I remember the patchnotes for 1.2 correctly. Those are great changes, and if they keep that kind of stuff up, maybe I’ll return in a few patches or so.
I realize comparing ToR now to WoW now is not necessarily fair, but WoW already had a lot of good MMO convinience fluff other games had at the time it was released that became the standard only after WoW became as insanely popular as it did.
a lot of my friends actually say WoW was best in vanilla. I hole-heartedly disagree. They worked a lot on improving a lot of small things for player convinience. Things I now expect to be the standard for MMOs. New games shouldn’t pick up where the market leader was a year ago, they should pick up where it is now. And in a lot of places, ToR did and even surpassed WoW, especially in crafting and especially especially story telling.
For me (and I’m pretty sure a lot of other players) a lot of “little” things like looking for a group to do a dungeon for an hour because there is no dungeon finder even though I play a tank and my friend a healer just isn’t acceptable any more.
(BTW, I’m really glad to hear they finally included target of target. The tanking mechanics where horribly dated and screamed for asap updates after release as well)
At the rate Bioware is improving ToR right now they are a lot faster than Blizzard was. I hope “a few months after release” isn’t too late to cater to the spoiled ex-wow players like me.
“Does “nobody gets hurt or has to think about anything to be raiding the latest bosses” translate to “you could totally solo through raids” ?
I have to say this since it is a huge pet peeve with me. This isn’t a shot at you personally Drakonis but at everyone who was hyping SWTOR and then started complaining, “hey, why didn’t they make a dungeon finder, like in WoW.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cOwxLaW_nMk#t=1715s
That is why; both BioWare’s explanation and the fans actually stopping the developers to APPLAUD NOT HAVING A DUNGEON FINDER! So whenever I see someone make that complaint, say “What was BioWare thinking,” or say “Why didn’t they listen to the players?” Oh, they listened to what the players thought, and it was applause.
While I do agree that both building a community is an important thing, I’m not sure a dungeon finder would take away from that.
As for the “people should explore the world more” I would totally agree, but a dungeon finder wouldn’t necessarily change that. Just don’t give the player the quests for the dungeon via the finder. The only thing I want to get rid of is the additional 1 hour of playtime per dungeon where I can do nothing but lounging around in the fleets because we are one man down.
“lfm 2 dds for mandalorian” isn’t exactly community building either.
However, I’m sure Bioware has more qualified people than me who decided that, so maybe I’m missing something else completely.
chaosD1 they changed the PvP limit a while back so you can create both faction
also spawning is all dependent on the ammout of ppl in the zone so take the human starting zone witch has all the ppl in goldshire and you see the issue that happens here you have such a hugh procent that are just idle in that zone that if they where out leveling you would need instant respawning
in my 5 years of playing WoW in the end it really came down to friends and beaing the best you can with the gear you got. and i found so much enjoyment in just getting the best gear and specc, it frustraits me when ppl dosen’t do the same thing sens at that point they are just taking up my time and wasteing it.
sens wiping is not fun i would rather go bang bang dead now to play an other game and you have ppl just coming in half optimized and not read up on tactics and just wasting 24 ppls time and is just insulting i think
It’s about time they fixed that “No Horde and Alliance on PvP” thing. I didn’t think Blizzard would EVER change it, considering how insistent they were that the Alliance and Horde remained enemies for life. (Look into the origin of the Undead language “Gutterspeak” sometime. You’d swear Blizzard never spent more than a day on the internet. http://www.wowwiki.com/Gutterspeak)
Oh and that thing you said about respawns isn’t true. Yes, while that does seem to make the most sense, go into Redridge Mountains sometime and start killing the Gnolls around Three Corners. I wasn’t recording at the time, but every single time I killed a Gnoll, another immediately spawned in its place. There was NO ONE beside me in Redridge that time either. And if it was population based, my trip into Fargodeep should have only taken 15 minutes when it actually took an hour, because the respawn rate was so atrociously low compared to the 20+ people running around inside blasting every Kobold that walked by. Trust me… I want to make sense of it too, but it just doesn’t work that way.
In my past 5+ experience of WOW,the only nerd rage i witnessed first hand was if a Healer couldnt heal through mass boss damage or if the Tank could hold aggro etc etc,then you had the griefers in Battlegrounds.
Example:
“OMFG DUDE WHY YOU LEECHING HONOR IN AV? GTFO OR I’LL REPORT!!”
No..Dumbass we are waiting for Iceblood Tower to burn down while defending it..Dumb Fuck.
You know, “AV Cave AFK farming” was all the rage in Vanilla, and it’s understandable to think people are doing that, but now all anyone wants to do is rush the boss, rather than play the map as intended.
Is there really anything better then people threatening to report you for playing the game as intended. I remember killing NPCs in Crossroads one time because I was bored, and someone Alliance side starting whispering me threats like, “That is against the TOS!” (It’s not.) and “If you kill the repair NPC and the flight master it’s griefing.” (Again, it’s not.) with a final whisper of “ONE repair NPC and the Flight Master WILL stay alive or you’re reported.”
I… really hate these people.