WoW: Mists of Pandaria

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

I honestly didn’t play WoW until about four weeks ago… and only because I got an installer CD for $0.99 and was told it was Free to Play. Didn’t learn until later that the F2P was only to level 20. So my WoW experience only lasted like 3 days. On the plus side, I got to see where BioWare got all their core ideas for the upcoming Old Republic MMO. :stuck_out_tongue:

So now Kung Fu Panda 3 is going to be the next expansion, and they’re changing so much, people are screaming DOOOOOOM! Is this bitching and moaning common for each major system change? I mean WoW is still the OVER 9000 beast that dominates the MMO market (though SWtOR might be able to unseat it). I seriously don’t believe all the rage-quit mania that Blizzard is doing this because they need money. They already paid off all the investors and infrastructure costs half a decade ago… it’s been 100% profit ever since.

IMHO, I think Blizzard is just experimenting with new ideas to keep the game fresh and bring in new customers. These days, I’m thinking they’re working on a World of Diablo or World of Starcraft to bitch slap the Star Wars rival if it takes away their throne.

But yea… my personal opinion of WoW? Only something to keep me partly amused until Old Republic is out. Then I’m totally gone like it never existed.

#2

Never played WOW. That out of the way, yeah they probably are doing that to inject in new. It is common for the bitching and moaning.

If ever a World of Starcraft happened I’d try it for a bit or until the trail ends.

#3

World of Diablo could be awesome … but Kung Fu Panda WoW edition is stupid. Mind you, I never cared for WoW anyway, but that’s just dumb.

I think, between TOR and Guild Wars 2, WoW is in serious trouble.

#4

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/08/30/blizz … r-numbers/

World of Warcraft isn’t in much trouble at all right now. Sure, subscriber numbers have been going down. But Cataclysm was the last expansion released; and it shot their subscription numbers to record levels. And at that rate of decay it would take the better part of a decade for WoW’s subscription base to erode. Now, I’m inclined to agree with Narg - Blizzard has to be at least thinking about their next MMO; World of Warcraft will eventually peak, stagnate, and wither away. Time shows no mercy.

The question is, is World of Warcraft in the position AOL was in when broadband had just begun eroding their customer base? If yes, then the new expansion will pick the numbers up, but not enough to counteract the erosion. The post-Cataclysm numbers will represent WoW’s true peak. If not … well, then the new expansion will break the records. Again.

#5

Blizzard has gone on record stating they know WoW won’t last forever and that F2P MMORPGs have begun to slowly become more dominate. They know they are the exception to the rule that subscriber MMOs are cash-cows. They also know their north-american market is saturated and I’m not sure about the RoTW, but its likely becoming saturated with more F2P games coming out every month and older dead MMOs being reborn as F2P or PFC like LotrO. IE, they know the days of WoW are limited.

The biggest issue they deal with is Power Creep in the form of End-game content and the ability of people to skip lower-level quests and areas to go after higher quests and areas for more powerful items. This ends up making low-level areas unpopulated while the end-game areas are quite populated. Part of this is because of legacy single-player RPG ideas: low-level players cannot deal with high-level monsters so the area around the initial town is always low-level enemies and as the player advances the character(s) levels, they can venture further. That kind of isn’t a good design system if you want the issues that caused Blizzard to be forced to create Cataclysm come out. You need to integrate signifigantly higher-level bosses and areas throughout the landscape going beyond mere instances. In this way it doesn’t make the world look dead to new players and thus they quit because no one is there to interact with them. There are ways to balance things and make it so that lower-level players don’t have to compete with higher-level ones.

#6

Speaking of WoW, here’s some interesting news:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … den-Speech

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … zcon-Video

#7

I have a friend who lost more than a year of his life to that game.

#8

Played WoW the 1st 6 months it came out. Then retried it for a few months when the first expansion came out. Still wasn’t for me. My biggest problem with WoW was the lore of it. I couldn’t get into the setting and I hate corpse runs :smiley:

#9

What, Corpse runs is the part of the fun. You get moment to reflect upon how noob you are. Not even mentioning they give you unparalleled ability to ambush your opponent at an handicap. One of the last remaining hard things in wow.

#10

I despised the corpse runs. :frowning: It was just a waste of time IMHO. And sometimes your body would be trapped in a position, where you’d just die again when trying to get to a safer spot to respawn and try the dungeon again. Another thing I don’t like, is how slow your toons runs. Takes FOREVER to get from one place to another, before you get your mount at 20. Also some of the “escort” missions completely blow hard chunks. I hate escort missions.

#11

Dude wow used to be a real game.

Just spirit rez if it bothers u that much and pony up the gold for repairing ur equipment xD

And mount at lvl 20 hah, it should be put back at 40 with epic land mounts at 60. Epic land mounts used to cost like what, 1k gold? I was running around with my Golden Charger and night elf’s epic tigers. Additionally, they need to put the golden charger quests back in. That was a huge part of fun. I remember going wheee I got mah sparkly gold farting mount at last and riding around in IF with it. Did it with two another paladins and a warrior/priest.

#12

People are impatient.

#13

Yes we are. I hated walking around the maps in WoW so much just to get quests done. Seems they never pointed in one simple direction. Nope, had to get 10 quests that point in 10 different directions. Of course, each quest made you travel half a map just to find the spot and complete the quest. And if you died you had to travel the map all over again just to find your body. When I hit 40 I was so happy for the mount. It just shows a trend in the way I see customers as a want everything up front without working for it. While I hated having to take the time to travel everywhere just for what at the time seemed like stupid things, I look back and enjoy those moments. Seems games now are catering towards the hand-me-outs. Just my opinion.

#14

IMHO, it’s because MMO’ers are not blind anymore. We KNOW what artificial time sinks are when we see them. Slow walking speed and quests that make you travel across half a dozen world maps are just as overused and mind boggling pathetic as diminishing return grinding and full level resets for advance class advancements. What people want are CONTENT time sinks – new dungeons, creative monster mobs, gripping story and characters, etc: not wasting hundreds of game hours walking around, literally doing nothing so you can actually do something.

We’re getting smarter at noticing these things: not getting lazier. It’s the devs who keep recycling the same garbage time wasters – instead of creatively making new additions – that are lazy.

WoW is a good MMO with a lot of content, but it also has a huge amount of artificial time sinks. That’s what causes the game to not get “new generation” MMO’ers to join in massive hordes. WoW kinda figured that out, with the Cataclysm rearranging stuff, but there’s a lot of work to be done. On the otherhand, I can see why veteran WoW’ers like the nostalgia, so changing stuff for newbies will alienate them.

So there’s a problem here: changing stuff causes veterans to leave, but not changing stuff means newbies leave quickly. I’m one of the latter, and will readily tell my friends who haven’t played WoW, to avoid it because there’s too much time sinkage that doesn’t need to be there. It’s not hate or bias for another MMO (note that I never said WoW sucks or there’s a better MMO I want everyone else to play) – it’s simply something obvious.

#15

um there’s no time sinkage anymore, the exp needed to level up has decreased alot. U know, u could explore the scenery. I once on my human paladin ran all the way to winterspring from uh auberdine i wonder i got the name right the night elf destroyed town on foot yes. That included running all the way through felwood while i was in my lvl 30s.

And there used to be pvp in foothill bradhills and at that lake south of undercity those tiny islands there? yeah pvp occured there often. Sometimes horde will go there to try catch alliance groups traveling up north to do scarlet monastery.

The new generation is just a bunch of pansies. They even reduced exp requirement from like lvl 11 to 60? Dunno i haven’t kept up with news anymore.

Epic flying mount is like what, 200% speed boost. Teleport to ur quest hub and back and yer done. An teleportation society where there’s very little interactivity.

#16

XP is not the only time sink. I mean just as a random off the top of my mind…

“Collect X number of Y and bring them back to me.”
“Kill X number of Y and report back to me.”
“Take X and bring it to Y, then Y will tell you where to take Z to A and then bring B to C. Report back to X when finished for… more reporting to C.”
“Uber Quest Boss has OVER 9000 HP but only two attacks. Fight takes forever because his HP is so high, not because there’s any challenge or complexity.”
“Sloooooooooow unskippable text.”
“Go through Path A to unlock Path B so it will unlock Path C, when really all you’re trying to do is go through Path D.”

So forth and so on. Not to say WoW is alone with this… just that newer MMO’s try to shy away from this sort of stuff from being over and over again.

Though on the XP grinding thing: I didn’t have a problem with it on WoW. Then again, I just finished playing Dragonball Online – a Korean MMO – and anything American in comparison to a Korean MMO, is like they’re giving XP away. Not that I’m saying MMO’s should copy the grind insanity of a Korean MMO…

Sorry… but the scenery in WoW doesn’t greatly impress me. Played quite a number of MMO’s with better graphics before WoW, so it’s a bit bland. Of course I’m not trying to bash WoW on the graphics – it was a head of it’s time and looks great for the age it’s in – just that I’m not interested in looking around. There are those who do, and I’m not one of them.

Mists of Pandaria is supposed to awe me with Asian geography… but I’ve seen it done in two or three dozen Korean MMO’s already – minus the Pandas.

Couldn’t tell ya… didn’t play WoW in the “old days” – I’m one of the pansies you’re referring to.

Again: I’m not trying to argue that WoW sucks, I’m just pointing out that there are legit reasons why new people don’t like it. If you think we all suck, fine. No sweat off my back: I’m waiting for Old Republic to go public. :stuck_out_tongue: But if Blizzard wants the new generation of MMO’er to join, they’ve got more work to do. As I expressed in the OP – I think Blizzard would do better with making a new MMO series (Diablo or Starcraft or a totally original IP), to get new customers. Retooling WoW from scratch is doing damage with the veterans.

I can tell you love WoW, so I’m obviously going to fail in convincing you with anything (and vice versa with you trying to make WoW seem greater to me). Just citing my personal feelings on the game.

Honestly, the main thing that kept me interested with WoW was the music. I will happily admit the stuff is epic (used a file ripper to get the soundtrack out). Otherwise I considered everything else as average.

#17

From the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15672416

And almost a million people preordered for Star Wars: The Old Republic in the last three months.

I sense a Jedi Mind Trick. :wink: :stuck_out_tongue:

#18

Well TBH the resons I avoid things are the lack of good stories, the static world achitecture and the need to go through multiple times in a dungeon to collect everything seeing the same boss fight over-and-over again (sometimes on a harder level, but still over-and-over again). That’s the reason I never get into RPGs. The lack of a story where I see the world continue to move forward is my real issue. I don’t mind doing a boss fight again if its to help out a friend, but not for item grinding. I already been there and done that and want the world around me to reflect that I killed the big-baddie. I think its possible, but not profitable to code world architecture that would allow players to intereact on different worlds depending on what’s been done and what hasn’t. It would make for an interesting dimensional/time travel MMO though.

#19

Um my account is canceled for wow. And GO kill X of Y is normal its a quest. How otherwise is you supposed to not suck at playing for when you reach max lvl.

“Sloooooooooow unskippable text.”
oh so you’re the reason why my bankers don’t have text anymore. assassinates you.

And graphic don’t have to be wtf bleeding edge to be good. wow graphics is fine and awesome. It puts me in awe just like tera online as the same. Its a art style, you’re hating the art style not the graphic itself.

#20

Just because something is a widely-used norm - even an accepted norm - doesn’t actually make it good, or desirable.

Standard evolve over time; game design continually gets better and better. Ten years ago, there was a clear delineation between ‘action game’ and ‘rpg’. There were occasionally ‘action RPGs’ but their action elements were limited. Compare Street Fighter II to Secret of Mana. The difference is obvious.

Now, why was this? There wasn’t any fundamental reason for it. And action game designers caught on; now pretty much any action game has an upgrade system drawing obvious inspiration from RPGs. Ratchet and Clank is a great example. In the original game, there were no levels. Weapons peformed identically versus the end boss as when you first bought them. Your health could be upgraded once with significant effort. In every subsequent game, weapons gained XP individually and your health bar also levelled up.

Why was there such a stark distinction? Why did it persist for so long? There was no technical reason that RPG-style levelling couldn’t have been included in (say) Metal Gear Solid. The changes have mostly been for the better. So why did it take so long for action game designers to do this? I’m convinced it’s for two reasons: 1) The action genre has its roots in arcade games, and a levelup system makes no sense for an arcade game; and 2) Inertia; the “this is just the way it’s done” mentality.

Action games have continued to be influenced by arcade game design principles, even long after action games weren’t really in arcades anymore. Hell, arcades haven’t really even existed in the way they did in the 80’s and early 90’s for years now.

So … to get back to the original point (yes, it’s in there somewhere :wink: – Sure, “go kill X of Y” is a standard quest design right now. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good quest design. All it means is that it was a core component of one of the first successful MMO designs, and has been copied endlessly because “it works”.