Cataclysm

[Sheepherder]

I'm guessing you didn't play the RIFT beta?

No.  That being said, the Warhammer and Age of Conan betas were pretty well liked, and we saw how well that panned out.

[Arrrgh]

I'm guessing you didn't play the RIFT beta?

No.  That being said, the Warhammer and Age of Conan betas were pretty well liked, and we saw how well that panned out.

Fanboy goggles, the local equivalent of beer goggles.

[Lantyssa]

Both also hid certain aspects from their players.  AoC was limited to Tortage and wasn't thought well of until the miracle patch.  WAR had been split into discrete sections, and had a massive xp nerf at release, plus I believe there was still a vocal doom crowd.  RIFT had a mostly complete open beta, a hidden beta, and to my knowledge hasn't made massive release nerfs.

[Paelos]

The WAR xp nerf really was the nail in the coffin for that game. People really didn't like running out of shit to do while still being in the same area.

Also that stupid volcano bullshit with the knockbacks.

[Lantyssa]

For the lava bunnies it sucked.

[Rendakor]

The WAR xp nerf really was the nail in the coffin for that game. People really didn't like running out of shit to do while still being in the same area.

Also that stupid volcano bullshit with the knockbacks.

This. If the XP curve hadn't hit a deadend in the same tier as TA, I would've at least made it to the level cap with a few characters.

[Sheepherder]

Fanboy goggles, the local equivalent of beer goggles.

Schild thought both were pretty great up until Tortage and T3, and he's been around the block a few times.

RIFT had a mostly complete open beta, a hidden beta, and to my knowledge hasn't made massive release nerfs.

Have people been able to roll character from lowbie to max level in the Rift beta?  I was operating under the impression that they had done the same thing as War and allowed only specific level ranges for testing.

[Rasix]

There was an "alpha" that was all levels running in parallel.

And Schild will end up disliking any mmo.  Rift may end up being a dud, but at this moment it is fun and pretty technically sound.

[Paelos]

I won't doom Rift. It's a very solid game that will dent WoW's numbers slightly.

More likely than not, if you released this version of WoW and this version of Rift with no history involved, I would think Rift was the superior game. WoW has decided to increase difficulty and decrease options. Rift is borrowing/stealing from every possibly MMO source to distill the ideas that were fun. It's not the bad formula.

The problem right now is WoW has the inertia, and Rift isn't really all that different. It won't draw a a lot of players invested in WoW away except out of boredom and spite.

[Lantyssa]

RIFT's main advantage is that WoW seems to be driving a lot of people away from it.  They don't want to quit WoW, but the devs need to get their heads out of their arses to stop it.  It may not translate into a huge number of long-term subs, but it's perfect timing to get a nice numbers boost at launch.  The rest is up to Hartsman and company.

[Paelos]

Their timing is certainly good. They are hitting WoW at a low point where they can't possibly release anything that will hurt them. It's a time zone right now that I believed SWTOR should have been gunning for, but I believe Rift is going to screw them.

WoW will get it's head out of it's ass just in time for people to get 3 months into Rift, probably in June. They'll end up releasing some ridiculous cascade of nerfs and cool 5 mannable epics, and whatever other casual draw they can pile on while also releasing the Deathwing instance. Then what? SWTOR releases? It'll get lost there. Nobody is going to jump off the wagon that didn't already, and nobody is going to jump again after jumping and going back.

[Simond]

No sign of heroic nerfs on 4.1 PTR as of yet.

[Paelos]

No sign of heroic nerfs on 4.1 PTR as of yet.

There won't be until 4.2

[Ingmar]

No sign of heroic nerfs on 4.1 PTR as of yet.

The gear tier shift will nerf them indirectly, remember, as the valor point stuff will move down to be justice point purchases, etc.

[Sheepherder]

If you had asked me how well Rift had timed their launch two months ago I would have said poorly.  But I wasn't expecting Blizzard to fuck up with heroics quite this badly, and the length of the 80-85 experience is short enough that the alt collectors have probably done it enough that they're bored with it.

[Merusk]

You're probably right.  I had 4 85s when I let my sub lapse and one of those I had to bring up from 75.  I didn't realize just how much focusing on one character and raiding had occupied my ability to do things like that.  If you're not doing it and you're not interested in the PVP because Alliance sucks and now there's proof but find the Horde queues intolerable, you quickly run out of other shit to do.

[Paelos]

When you think about how many pvp battles are run in a year, those percentages are horrifying.

[Nevermore]

Kind of validates my anecdotal Eye of the Storm experiences.

[Fordel]

Those charts are terribly made.

[Ingmar]

Those charts are terribly made.

Yeah they tend to exaggerate the size of the difference.

[apocrypha]

Also completely meaningless without more information. "scanning a lot of characters on the Armory" isn't particularly helpful. What is "a lot"? Is it 100? 1000? 100,000? What's the success/failure rate of the data mining tool used?

[Sjofn]

So I was all ready to sit in long queues on my rogue. I was! I was looking forward to it, even, as it meant I could level my archaeology while I waited. Good times, right?

It friggin' popped within five minutes every time. It was just for regulars, was that the difference? Because it was freaky.

[Shrike]

Even when I hit 85, regular queues were easily half to one-third what heroics queues were.

These last two weeks have heroics going better than in the past, though that really isn't saying anything much. Still, actually did heroic Stonecore last night and finished it without wanting to shoot puppies. That's high praise! Game community is both stupid and toxic as hell. I think when my sub runs out on the 8th that I"m done.

[Nebu]

Rifts releases March 1 and I get a "Come back to WoW for 7 days free" in my mailbox.  Is Cataclysm faltering?  Any of you notice any decreases in population?

[Paelos]

Rifts releases March 1 and I get a "Come back to WoW for 7 days free" in my mailbox.  Is Cataclysm faltering?  Any of you notice any decreases in population?

Yes. My guild numbers have gone down by 40% in online play. We have over 5 people who leveled 85s that have cancelled in favor of Rift in a stable of about 25 max level toons. I cancelled my sub, but it doesn't run out for another 2 months due to my plan.

The expansion seems to have created a have's and have not's amongst the guilds in the raiding alliance. Several have been absorbed by larger guilds because their members quit.

[Selby]

I don't see as many Chinese exploitation farmers stealing nodes from me like I did in WotLK, but there are still plenty of people out and about questing and sitting in trade doing what trade does best.

[Rendakor]

I wouldn't know, haven't logged in much since the rift head start.

[Setanta]

Playing the Rift head start because sitting in Orgrimmer in a queue for some boring shit that I've done before is not fun.

[Fordel]

I log into WoW for 30 minutes every other day to see if BGs have gotten any less terrible.


Then I find I'm a team that is 40% afk bots and go back to punching trees in minecraft.

[caladein]

Rifts releases March 1 and I get a "Come back to WoW for 7 days free" in my mailbox.  Is Cataclysm faltering?  Any of you notice any decreases in population?

Current prime-time numbers are about what they were all last year.  How that interacts with the subscription base, we can't know.

[Threash]

Last year was the tail end of an expansion, people were barely playing.  If its back to that now that is bad news indeed.

[Sjofn]

I log into WoW for 30 minutes every other day to see if BGs have gotten any less terrible.


Then I find I'm a team that is 40% afk bots and go back to punching trees in minecraft.

You should level Noradoril! Zandrys is so lonely. 

Can't say the servers I play on seem any less populated, although Northrend is creepy vacant. I haven't been playing on my Alliance server much, though, for mainly stupid reasons like "guild rep pisses me off" and "I don't feel like leveling any of my characters there."

[Paelos]

Rifts releases March 1 and I get a "Come back to WoW for 7 days free" in my mailbox.  Is Cataclysm faltering?  Any of you notice any decreases in population?

Current prime-time numbers are about what they were all last year.  How that interacts with the subscription base, we can't know.

Looking at that graph at the simplest way. There was a massive dip before the expansion that's now corrected itself to normalcy. I wouldn't have expected itself to correct that fast.

[Ingmar]

And if we accept the proposition that the horde population has more PVPers in general, that would explain why their line is worse than the alliance, who are at pretty high levels. Evidence fixing PVP should be near the top of their list maybe?

[Sheepherder]

Or just evidence that the smaller of the factions is more susceptible to large shocks by virtue of being smaller.