f13.net

What is it that draws you to WoW? I can't figure it out! I first tried WoW when it was released getting bored of EQ and not wanting to play EQ2 yet. It was merely ok, the graphics were slightly better then the aging EQ, quests were similar ("Kill 20 boar, kill John the Battlebot." Sometimes they'd try to trick you into thinking the quest was interesting by saying "Find 5 missives that the battlebots stole.") I often had to petition and wait hours until a GM would unstick me from waterfalls and the like. Combat was ok, the mark I, II, III etc. system seemed flat out lazy. I was told PvP was good, but I'm too much of a carebear to care.

Anyways... I didn't mind the game much, I was able to get a few friends to switch over from EQ for a couple months which was fun. Then though, I leveled my rogue up to around 40 after playing a couple months (with EQ still) and did some rogue mansion quest.... I don't remember the name but the area starts with a chest that says OPEN but kills you and then you have to build up a ridiculous amount of faction with the group until they give you a quest. I spent a couple days on it but then when it came time to talk to the NPC for my next quest, nothing. Nothing. Two days of faction grinding with the promise of further questing and the quest line was broken. Not very cool. I furrow my brow and decide I'll play it later when there aren't as many bugs and they fix the questline and switch to EQ2.

I play EQ2, happily leveling up a 70th conj and 70th templar. Once my guild had raided through most of EoF, I decided to try WoW again finally. First, I was excited to see all the servers and picked a relatively new one since I heard WoW had a lot of gold farmers. After just a few months of the server existing, around 40% of the toons were already level 50+ (according to Census) and I received gold spam minutes after creating my toon. Chat in Elwynn forest is relatively (to EQ2) dead and upon asking if they fixed the questline yet, I received no answer. No matter, I leveled up another rogue to around thirty and headed into Arathi Highlands where I asked again if questline was still broken, this time many responses came laughing at Blizz devs for not fixing it after years of being released. The graphics still haven't been improved (And are in fact, painful to look at, especially trees) and after joining one of the largest guilds on the server, I was disheartened to hear "That's what she said!" every 3-4 lines of text =/.

I spent most of my time playing the market to further twink my toon, which I admit, was quite fun. I had three gold farmers on my friends list who sold me many goodies at 1/4 of what I sold em for, usually asking me "Is you want buy an A Enigma Robes?" I basically bought a major 18+ guild of 150 members (Because the server was new [and filled with kiddies], no guild was able to capitalize on the hordes of unguilded adults) by paying for their tabard and "donating" some epic items to guild bank. I was quickly promoted to officer, then senior officer. My toon was fifty with some of the best gear he could have and then I thought..... I could be playing EQ2 right now. I quit and started playing EQ2 again, just like that (I donated around 120 gold to guild after logging in a week later to get what was left of AH items).

I understand even 7-8 year old computers can run the game and that it isn't hard to level to 70 in a couple months, but.... why would you want to?

No, we're not signing up for any k-rad SoE station passes, thanks.

I can understand shrugging at WoW if you're an anti-diku kook like me who'll probably be playing UO until the heat-death of the universe, but an Everquest guy?  What's even the difference?

That's what she said!

WoW, in my experience, is very polished and very stable in ways that other MMOs aren't.  The rogue quest is kind of a disappointment, but it's one of the worse examples in the game, rather than being typical.  And even then, it's not so much broken (the quest does get completed) as it just ends abruptly (and nowadays, it doesn't take more than a half hour or so to finish that last bit).  If your main complaint against WoW is that one quest line (out of a few thousand) isn't finished, then that doesn't seem too bad, especially compared to the competition.

In terms of graphics, that's very very subjective.  I personally would rather see more games take a more stylized look, like WoW, than try (and fail) to build yet another generic, super realistic looking world, but either position is really just personal preference.

And you're not making a really solid point when you say that you basically bought your way to the top of a clueless guild of idiots and were then shocked to find they didn't have a whole lot of intelligent comments to make.  Or that you were close buddies with a bunch of gold farmers, but were surprised to note that they weren't great english speakers.  Is that really a problem with WoW?

Personally, I play it because it seems more complete and more user friendly than any other MMO I've played.  I also like the setting; the graphics, the writing, the atmosphere, all that.  If some other game wants to pull me away from WoW, it's not going to be EQ; it's going to have to be something that tries to do something different than WoW.  Switching from WoW to EQ would be like switching from Coke to Pepsi.

Don't answer the question, this is a mole account. They should at least try harder.

Hey EQ mole, fuck you. Die in a poopsock fire.

Ten year old computers. My father plays it on the tempermental 800 MhZ Pentium III that I bought in 1998, and gave to him when I bought my new computer a few years back. He's basically playing with the bare bones graphics, but he can walk around the Burning Crusade just fine with considerably less RAM than they list in their recommended specs.

He loves the game because it's the first and only MMOG he's ever played.

I think a substantial percentage of WoW's players are in the same boat.

Yes.  But trying to explain that to traditional PC gamers just gets you blank looks.  They have trouble comprehending folks on machines 4-5 years old as it is.  Most Devs obviously have an even larger problem.. as they seem to expect users to upgrade their machines just for their game.  Yeah, that may have happened in the 90's when the majority was geeks and tech-sector folks.. nowadays, not so much.

Wow gives me points for killing elves.

For me it's because the world feels 'real'. Not comparing it to the real world, but it's a world that's cohesive and well thought out. Yes, it's generic fantasy story book stuff but it's got the magic in it that you'd expect to find in such a world. It's a world with personality. Quests are pretty mundane but as I've been playing, WoW is pretty much the first game (besides CoX) that really focuses on quests. Everquest is pretty much an oxymoron. I've been playing it for more than 8 years and it wasn't until WoW that Everquest really began to emphasize the 'quest' or at least make it a desirable action for the player. Back in the day, pretty much everyone logged on and just found a group in whatever exp hot area there was and grinded and grinded and grinded some more to get mats or levels or plat or whatever they wanted or needed. There was almost no questing. WoW made questing important with rewards for doing the quest. CoX does a good job of this as well (perhaps better). I want to go back to EQ but it feels so shallow now. And after what they did to Freeport....

What did they do to Freeport?

They totally revamped it. And by revamped I mean fucked. They turned it into a souless mess.

Sounds like some of the original EQ II world builders got transferred over to EQ.

No, you can't even imagine how badly they slopped together FP. Basically, some black-looking walls with some buildings randomly plopped around. And, of course, the vendors think the buildings are so ugly, they now line up outside showing off recycled merchant graphics

I found WoW fun, and EQ2 seemed dull as dishwater and incredibly amateurish by comparison.  That's why.

I DO think it's cute that you cite one of the VERY few quests in WoW that are broken to suggest that many of them are.

It's been broken since release =/ I don't recall saying there are many broken quests, but my experience with that one was particularly annoying, a problem I didn't have in EQ2, though I'm sure there are many broken quests somewhere. Everyone has a personal bias based on their experiences, of course, I at least back my claims up >.>

So because there are broken quests somewhere maybe...we should go play EQ2?

<.< Reading FTL

Dude you are talking about like not even a fucking fraction of a goddamn percent of content here.  When BC was released i can recall ONE QUEST that was broken (the tomb thingy in nagrand), and yes its annoying but one quest out of several hundred?  So thats like 0.3% of broken content?  Blizzard is so far above industry standard on this particular issue (functional content at release) that i can't even believe you'd bother to attack WoW based on what is probably the most unassailable characteristic of the game.  Whine about Raid or Die, Tigole's Phallus, or something else that keeps you awake at night.

As to the actual topic of your post, i'd say its the game world itself.  Blizzard is very good at appealing to the geek heart, i very much like the design of the game world.  Their is just so much stuff that hasn't gotten old for me even after like 3 years.  Whomever does the zone design for blizzard is a creative genius imo.

The other thing is the UI i guess.  I dont care how cool your game is, if i have to "work" to interact with it i hate it and i hate you for designing it that way.  Blizzard is pretty good at laying out controls in a manner that makes you put up with a minimum of bullshit to play the game.

Graphics - i care 2 shits about polygon counts.  Aesthetics are to personal of an issue to bother argueing.

Class design is the other big thing.  I always wish they had this or that ability but of the 4 classes i have played (mage, priest, shaman, lock) each is alot of fun, though some more or less so depending on mood and aspect of the game.  Mage probably comes up shortest, but only because im an AD&D geek and my expectations of utility are probably both too high and uncodable.

Ok, some more reasons I don't play EQ2 vs WoW:

I found EQ2 to be 'unresponsive.'   It plays too much on the oldschool mechanics of "hit the button, wait out the cast, THEN the ability fires."   I prefer some instant gratification in my combat... even if it's seeing the silly cast bar for caster.  The lack of ability animations also lead to this perception.  

Combat is way too slow.   Fighting one mob at level 8 took as long as fighting two at 70 in WoW.   The single "solo" mob was as long a fight as some instance elite fights in WoW.  I'm not in this for a fucking lifestyle, it's a hobby.  The plodding pace puts me to sleep.

It's ugly.  No, really, it's fucking horrible.  The Fae stuff was nice when I played the trial a few weeks ago, but over-all you still have the old content and it's still ugly as sin.  Their armor textures aren't doing them any favors and the armor models are horrible.  That's before we even start talking about the PC models.  Unibody FTL.   Even EQ1 had more visual appeal than the 'new gen' game. (Miss my Half Elf and Dark Elf)

Flying Mounts:  Recent, yes, but still a big enough draw to me to give WoW another nod here. Flying is just fuckig fun.  So much so that I WISH they would go back and fix the old zones so that flying there wasn't the problem it would be.  (i.e. revealing the forced perspectives and fake backdrops to 'nothing')

Multiple experiences:  Playing one class vs another is a different experience in each game.  Shadowknights are different from Wardens as Hunters are different from Rogues.  However, only in one game can I experience both classes fully. Hell if I've got the time I can play 3-4 classes fully in WoW instead of 2 in EQ2.

So because you found a single broken quest, that's "backing up your claims"?  What claim would that be?  That finding a single broken quest is annoying?  Sure it's annoying.  You yourself point out that there's probably many broken quests in EQ2.  Clearly you're shooting your own argument in the foot here.

You consider the annoyance of a single broken quest a reason to quit WoW.  I consider the following reasons for not playing EQ2:
- It's ugly
- It takes too long to kill things in it.
- The abilities of the classes I've played seemed completely haphazard.
- The entire character creation process felt like everything had been taken apart and rebuilt. (Which, I understand, it has).
- The world is so bland and generic that I couldn't bring myself to care what was outside the main cities.
- Even if I wanted to GO outside said cities, I couldn't go very far before I'd be killed instantly. (I've been able to explore high level areas at a moderate level in WoW with every class I've played)

Seriously, EQ2 is like the amateur who is trying SO HARD to paint as well as his brother the artist, but just hasn't got the skill to pull it off.

I think when it comes down to it, besides all the above listed shit, its the Blizzard humor that really seperates the game. The little bits of humor that Blizzard throws in are fantastic.

Also, graphics. I love WoWs cartoony graphics. EQ2 had the most bland and boring graphics when I played. I did hear they made the high end loot look a little better, but when I am escaping to a fantasy world, I like big glowing swords, and shoulderpads with skulls impaled on spikes. I like that I can ride a dragon. I like that I have a Murlock pet that does the "New York, New York" dance. I like that PVP has very little consequence. I like that death penalties are light.

I could go on, but whats the point. Ether you like it or you dont. You dont, so dont play it.

EQ2 is a decent game, but suffers from being an EQ descendent. Slower combat, ability to take on fewer enemies, more group-centric (though this has changed since release and even since I played) and a very uneven graphic standard. Some stuff looks great, others look very plastic and stiff. Landscapes are gorgeous, but many of the character models just don't work well.

So the OP doesn't dig WoW? Great, PLAY WHAT YOU LIKE. Don't post barely coherent moley posts on a message board as your first post.

Exactly! Wait until you have thousands of posts and then whore yourself out to the highest bidder.



ATTN- MMOG Publishers- THIS SPACE FOR RENT

Hmm. I could go for a tasty burger about now.

Just wondering though, when did EQ 1 get kill 20 wolves quests? Not in the 5 years I played it.
Except the quests in LDoN and they were barely quests.

The others have pretty much covered why I like WOW and dislike EQ2. In the end, WOW was fun, EQ2 wasn't.. so I stopped playing EQ2 and went back to WOW. What a concept!

Your Ravenholdt example is pretty much one out of 2-3 "dead end" grinds in the game, so using it as a measuring stick is hardly fair... especially when you consider that there are many thousands of quests out there, almost all of them working fine.
I'm no WOWboi (the game has plenty of faults and I will likely stop playing it when a better game comes around), but it's definitely not a bad diku, especially compared to EQ2.

(there's also something to be said for making solo play viable for those of us living in the "wrong" timezones)


-- Z.

I don't even get the Ravenholdt quest bitching. On my rogue I grinded to friendly (which was like 2-3 quests worth of killing, aka. nothing) to complete that quest and then went on with my life when the chain ended there.

Yeah, after he said that he'd 'spent a couple of days on it' I blew him off.  Anyone who's leveled a rogue and done the series knows it's a few hours, max.

Yeah, I've done it on my rogue too back in 2005 or so... but I figured he was trying to hit exalted, hoping for a new quest or something. To my knowledge, the only four 'dead end' rep grinds were this one (Ravenholdt), the Dire Maul elves (only way to get rep after the 2 quests is by turning in class books... heh), the Ravasaur Trainers (no way to actually get faction with them, so no grind) and Wildhammer Dwarves (this was taken out with BC). So yeah, on second thought, he managed to single out the ONLY completely pointless rep-grind in the game.

... of course, pre-BC rep grinds in general were stupid, but some people liked to do them anyway (see also: Furbolg, Wintersaber Trainers, etc).

It was also funny when he referred to the 'chest that kills you when you open it'. It's a rogue quest for a reason. Kids these days! :P


-- Z.

EQ was *close* to touching on what I feel would be the holy grail of quest giving. The quests were there, you just had to talk to the NPCs and based on the bracketed parts of their spiel, you'd get the quest or clues to what may be needed for the quest. What I would LOVE to see done is quest giving and NPC interaction similar to the old text adventures like Zork. But then we'd have to have a general playerbase that was actually literate. I can dream can't I?

Indeed - it was this part that convinced me the thread needed shot in the head and what we actually had here is someone who didn't like WoW because they didn't like WoW.

Fascinating.  And over here we have the 'Paint Dry Marathon', followed by the 'Grass, it still grows' contest.

Yawn.

IIRC they took out this faction with BC, too.  It might have been a patch or two behind.

I'd just like to say I stand by my point.

The graphics are painful? Give me a break. The look of the game is one of the most appealing things about it. You know what's painful to look at? Uninspired generic drab fantasy crap like EQ2 or Vanguard. WoW has style, and it's a consistent style that is very pleasing IMO. Colorful , varied, detailed, and with some humor.

And while it runs fine on old computers, it also looks stunning on new ones. After playing for 2+ years at 1024x758 on my old 19" CRT, the game is just a wonder to look at in 1920x1200 on my new 24" widescreen.

Here again with the Wow style issue. Ok, folks, its this simple; if you love Terry Pratchet, you're probably going to find WoW just great. The world is not meant to be taken seriously; its not meant to replicate a 'real' fantasy experience, ala RR Martin. If you want 'realism', you'll have to hold out for Conan, or go back to DAoC, Vanguard or EQ or some such.

Kludge sees polygons. AcidCat sees trees.

I was thinking about the whole how it looks argument in here a little bit as I was making my dinner.

And I came to this hypothesis on the graphics and their appeal based on conversations I have had with the 'haters' who want "photorealism".

I think a lot of the success of WoW may be that the whole photo-realistic "dragon fighting guy in a chain mail hat" reeks too much of "Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying nerd" for the rest of society. Because WoW is not attempting to immerse you in such a game world, and instead is more outlandish and fantastical it is easier for people who are uptight about being labelled one of those "D&D Geeks" to come to the table and play.

You add into that the criticisms (which are valid) of people who see previous and current attempts at photorealism in a game as being uninspiring and not all that interesting and you get something that only caters to a small subset of the overall population. It is part of why naturalistic theatrical productions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries really did not gain a widespread audience. Seeing real dirt and live pigs on stage sounds great on paper, but in reality it is difficult to get an audience to immerse itself in that and not feel weird. Sensationalism and fantasy are much bigger sellers.

Agreed. Childish things are in now and have been for a long time, that means it's cool to like cartoons and whatnot. My brother and his friends sing goddamn lazy town songs in the middle of the main quad at lunch time (ie. in front of half the school). All the schoolgirls have hello kitty or some other cutesy cartoon themed bags and clothes. They also have colorful dummies. Dummies. What the fuck? The whole thing is you can get away with liking this stuff because the idea is that you don't really like it but you get into it because it's not something that's cool by default, you're being "different" and crazy. So when it comes to WoW with it's cartoony graphics and over-the-top humor it's all good. Gnomes and baby pets just make it all that much more appealing. You can get away with liking WoW because you can always laugh it off for not being serious, you're just messing around in this crazy cartoon world.

I love WOW graphics.  I also love Oblivion graphics (someone please make a good mmo with that engine whatever it is).  They're two very different styles.

EQ2 graphics, I thought were meh.  LOTRO is better, but still, can we please see less green/gray and more colors and more bright shades?

I thought TBC was simply stunning.  The Disney influences on the artists is obvious and a great tribute.  I'm talking old Disney here - Fantasia/Sleeping Beauty/Bambi, not new Disney Hercules/Lilo&Stitch/Emperor'sNewGroove, btw.

Combat in WoW isn't stilted the way it is in EQ2 and even LOTRO.  Movement is smooth.

Polish is what WoW has. And style, and humor.

Its not just about cartoony vs photorealism though. I can live with both approaches just as easily. In MMOGs such as EQ2, LotRO and Vanguard the characters look like they were first created in a 3D design tool by artists who are uncomfortable working in that manner, while the WoW characters look like they were created on paper, and then transferred to 3D tools painstakingly by people practiced at the art of such transfer. I have no idea if this bears relation to reality, but that's how it comes off to me. It might just be that Blizzard have megabucks animation tools from Pixar, and SOE have a knocked off student copy of Maya with no plugins.

It's a heavily modified version of the Gamebryo (spelling) engine with Speedtree Technology for the pretty foliage. If I recall DAoC uses a much older version of that engine.

Two words.

Appropriate visuals.

Appropriate visuals which compliment the theme, setting and atmosphere as cartoony as WoWs may be. And to me, that's much more important than visuals which obstruct the setting and atmosphere and look out of place.

It's like how castlevania seems to work so much better in 2D.

One thing that blows my mind is the level of sophistication in the details in WoW's engine. Look at cobblestones at your feet while running down a road. You can see the 3d'ish impression from the pixel shading. LoTR doesn't come close to this dispite trying for a more realistic look.

You put your finger on the issue right there. There's an apriori feeling of 'doneness' with WoW that really hasn't manifested itself in an MMO since FFXI. AO came close, in terms of toon animation and toon art, but EQ, DAoC, EQ2, VG, all of them feel oddly 'computerized', as I think you mean to say.

EQ did not feel "computerized" in the same way EQ II did. EQ had cartoony graphics -- they weren't going for realism like some of the games that followed -- and the animations were really well done and the characters had real faces even if they were flat. EQ II and many other games have those plasticy crappy looking "This is my first time using Poser"-style faces and bodies with Play-Doh hair -- in other words they look like crap. EQ II also had some of the crappiest animation work ever done in a 3D game.

Highly unlikely that's pixel shading. Much more likely it's just very good texture work.

You sure? It fades away in the background too. At around 10-15 ft.

This is a point that devs really need to pay attention to... The days of designing to the hardcore techies and making cash are fading as Blizzard has brought WoW to a larger mainstream audience. This more mainstream crowd is never going to keep up with hardware developments meaning games in development now need to have a much wider hardware requirement band.

FFXI and WoW both have characters that really look like they are part of the world, like they belong there. In games like Vanguard you have the world, then characters that look like they were beamed in from the Renfair Mannequin Company.

Uh, just to be fair, knowing how to crack open your computer doesn't make you a hardcore techy. I couldn't build a computer worth a shit, and I certainly couldn't tell you what half the crap inside there does, but even I can pull a memory/video card out of there and upgrade it. It's not even close to rocket science. It's about as simple as adding fluids to your car. Sure, some people are so ridiculously hopeless that they could never figure it out, but most kids and most young adults I've met are extremely saavy about computer technology and inner workings.

It doesn't require buying new computers every 2 years, or even upgrading your graphics card constantly. That's simply a copout by the few who want to bitch about a small group of developers who constantly try to push the graphical envelope to cover their (mostly shitty) gameplay. I think the last game I honestly knew was going to put me out to buying a new computer was Elder Scrolls III, and it was more than high time for the change.

I am in the same boat as you. I couldn't build a computer either and I can still slot in new memory or a new video card. However, I would still consider this level of computer savvy to be somewhat techie... certainly more than your average person wants to be involved with. My sense is that people are getting to the point where they are considering the computer to be an appliance and I can see a future where when its time for a component upgrade, they buy a whole new machine rather than crack open the case. Your average consumer just wants to get in and go... the whole comparison shopping for the right card, or the one with the features they want is not something Joe Mainstream wants to do. Then again, this leads into a whole discussion about the computer transitioning from a computation and business device into an entertainment delivery system. People don't want to crack open their TVs, their Playstations, or their DVD player. When it comes to entertainment, the more work you have to do, the less appealing it is.

I am all for pushing the envelope, I love eye candy. What I was saying is that developers need to understand the consumer dynamic and build to a greater bandwidth of hardware capability.

I like WoW's raiding.  As a Priest I feel I have a lot of decision-making to do which can always be improved and tuned even if my gear does not get improved during a raid.  I like reading all of the theorycrafting that goes on about maximizing healing efficiency and applying those ideas or doing my own experiments.

As someone who raids 3-4 nights a week, I doubt I will see all of TBC raiding before the next expansion so the content will last for me.  It's nice to be able to set your own guild's progression pace instead of having another guild set it for you.

Aside from that, it's something good to play until I get into WAR beta!

A priest who loves WoW Raiding... that is a rare thing indeed!

The best thing about WoWs graphics is that you can have a dragon, a giant robot, a mounted knight, a bunch of dinner guests and the motherfucking wizard of oz characters all be boss fights in the same zone without any of them feeling like they are out of place.

 :thumbs_up:

First, hello Im new to this community.

Second, I was going to write up a comment to this guys post, but after reading his opening line I figured he was clueless. Regardless of your taste in MMO's, most "gamers" can see the appeal has.

Hey, I'm a priest and I enjoyed my time raiding in WoW (stopped when I came to Japan, and my guild has since imploded anyways, so no more, heh).  Healing can be alot of fun, especially since you know you are the most important thing keeping raid going, heh.  Now, if only they hadn't made Druids and Pallies better overall healers......

Japan, huh?

You should swing by DATH'REMAR, since there's a few of us Korea-types playing. 

All you people saying "I couldn't build a computer", but will happily swap out video cards and RAM are smoking crack.

What the fuck do you think people who build their own computers are doing?  Soldering their motherboards?  It's just screwing the damn mobo in place and hooking up the power supply, slotting in a chip and heatsink, and attaching IDE/SATA cables.  It takes all of 20 minutes and a phillips head screwdriver.  I'm putting together prefabricated crap made in China, not building ENIAC.

There are few places you can mess up - not attaching heatsink properly (its not that hard but you need to use thermal grease) and not grounding yourself. Last but not least - not everything works together, you need to know (or be able to research) what components play nice together.

I gotta agree with Sinji, BG. Slotting RAM or GCard is a decent amount easer than building a system from scratch. Mostly because of BIOS, and jumpers and shit like that. Not saying its "Rocket Surgery", but its a little more complicated, specially if you plan on trying to RAID your drives, or you end up with hardware incompatibility.

I don't think I've used a grounding strap since I built my 386.

It really is not all THAT hard to build a computer, but once you start earning above minimum wage it just becomes easier to pay the guys you buy the parts from an extra $50 to do it for you.  And, beyond the hardware install i HATE installing operating systems and drivers and all that junk.  I am sure it is easier now than in the 90's when I did it last, but the revulsion that experience left in me has lasted until now... and I don't see it leaving any time soon.

More on Topic... yes WoW has a HUGE draw because of how easily you can enter it and play.  It truly boggles my mind when people make games that cannot run on 2yr. old computers.  My "new gaming rig" is 1.5 years old now and was middle of the pack when I bought it new.  And, it blew my old machine out of the water.  And, that machine was significantly better than my third computer that some friend game me a while back.  And... I could play WoW seamlessly on all 3.

I don't think I've ever run out of content in an MMOG, but WoW does have a lot that I can do that's actually within my reach.

There are lots of endgames, and they all offer at least some advancement for a small time commitment (except possibly raiding).  PvP, crafting, instance running, etc.

Wow, lot of conversation from a viral marketer post. Thanks, viral marketer!

I haven't seen a backfire this big since we tried to shaving cream a guy's room in college.

In the Army we used to just get the new guys very drunk and then shave them.

Also, DATH'REMAR.  Thank you evi marketing guy. DATH'REMAR.

Woooah.  Can totally see that now since the guy hasn't logged in since the day he posted this.

What's funny is how weak and full of shit the initial marketing-mole post is to anyone who's ever played WoW.  I mean there are valid reasons to dislike WoW, but the catch is that most of those reasons apply at least as strongly to EQ2.  Thus our guy is left with nothing to do but harp on one broken quest and make up shit about getting stuck in waterfalls.

By the way, one thing I would sometimes do in WoW is go around trying to climb up mountains and waterfalls by wiggling and jumping in weird locations.  I would go way off the beaten path and try to get into places I wasn't expected to go, cross between zones in places I wasn't supposed to, and so forth.  I never got stuck.  Not once.

WoW's success is no secret

1. A MMO of a highly popular IP
2. Polish
3. Interesting and varied world design
4. Polish
5. Distinct races at start all with unique and interesting lore, skills and areas.
6. Polish
7. Amazing art design
8. Polish
9. Focus on questing as a levelling up mechanic instead of grinding.
10. Polish
11.  Technically stable, low system reqs.

Not for nothing, but assbags with first posts like that usually get preemptively banned.  I'm not surprised there wasn't a follow up post.

Well, it wasn't actually his FIRST post here.  His first post was about Vanguard and all the fixes being patched in or somesuch.  Seems more like a bad troll with SOE love looking at his posting history.

Ah, ok, if his first post was about Vanguard, he's clearly got damn all to do with SOE Marketing.

 :-D

Try it in Un'Goro crater.  But, anyone who tries to go over the wall is asking for it, really.  There are a couple places near Stonewrought damn and you used to be able to fall through the world if you got to the gnomish airport on top of Ironforge too.  But, overall the world is tight.  I still find it funny that one can die while dead by running out of stamina (say trying to run across the deep water).

WoW should put in Deeds.  Reaching the gnomish airport, etc. 

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Lech_walesa_prezydent_RP.gif)

Deeds would be fantastic, as would EQ2's collections.  The biggest problem with Deeds, however, would be all the level-capped people bitching about "I can't get xxx deed" or "wtf now I have to go grind old instances/ mobs for xxx deed."  Why? Because achievers are like that.

Well, they do have titles already, which this would also theoretically apply to.  Well over nine-tenths of the people with titles are just using their rank title, which you can't get or change anymore.  And there are like, what, three other titles in the game, and one of them is the "You won the Ahn'Qiraj world event" title that noone will ever get ever in their entire life at all ever.  I haven't heard too much gnashing of teeth over these yet.  Adding a few more for people to mess around with sounds like a fairly decent idea to me.

I wasn't saying it would be a huge issue so it shouldn't be done, just that you'd hear more whining about it.  :-D

Also, people who PVP'd before the honor changes got to keep their rank displays, something no one else can get ever now.

I like things like this, it adds a sense of "veteran" status.  My boyfriend is an undead warrior, and in TBC he wanted to re-roll a Tauren warrior (since they are preferred for tanks) with me rolling a Paladin to help him level up.  We eventually decided against re-rolling and for that I am glad.  New people probably won't have Hydraxian Waterlords or ZG factions.   When we were levelling and I was still using Benediction, a Priest nearby asked me where I got that staff and how much she like it and wanted one.  Little things like that make me feel more attached to my character, especially since WoW can be rather shallow in that department.

 :evil:

WoW is alot like masturbating, without the finish.

I finally caved in and started playing WoW about a month ago after falling in and out of love with SWG (my first and longest) and then playing lot lizard at the pub by going home with every MMO I could pick up... and I have to admit I'm into the game Blizzard created. I have never had bug issues or broken quests (I play a lvl 34 Holy Priest). I thought at first I wouldn't like the UI becuase it was so different from SWG and the bags are small, but I really enjoy the accessibility of it. With SWG, dominating the learning curve was a quest unto itself and in WoW I was able to dive into the actually game quests right away. And I've been having fun on the Battlegrounds (although I stopped after I leveled past 29).

Yeah, there are a lot of gold farmers advertising on chat and the kids like to swap momma jokes but I spent 6 years in the army so I can get more perverse and degrading than anyone to make them shut up.  :lol: Well, the idiots anyways. Not the farmers. It's a pretty cool game and I'm as surprised as anyone. But, I guess after getting the double pen from dewbacks in SWG, I just wanted an experience that was safe and fun.

Do yourself a favor, beg borrow or steal the 5g needed to respec before you hit 40 and go shadow.

It will increase your priestly fun a hundredfold.

And to think SOE paid someone to start a thread that turned into a 3 page WoW lovefest.

Ya he better hope his bosses don't check up on him to see how bad he msesed up this one.

Back to the polish thing. I've been playing LoTR lately and I think the bigest annoyance for me at least is the noticeable lack of polish in the game, especially the lack in the ui, where window's don't layer properly and stuff. Having rolling windows pop up underneath quest text windows and a death notice window that also covers up every other window while it is onscreen are main examples. One of the best one's I discovered yesterday when I was playing aroun on my huntrer. As many of you probably know, most of the windows follow s similar design, with and accept/cancel button at th bottom and an x button you can also click to close the window in the drop right. Except the tracking window, which has a vague approximation of the upper right hand close button but it actually isn't clickable.

Another good one is I figurred out holding down the right mouse button to turn won't work if you have the moust button over a mob name text field.

Leveling a priest 0-70 as holy spec? You sir are a stronger man than I.

Its fun if you both enjoy playing a support character and can spend at least some of your time leveling duoing with other people and/or your server has a population of leveling characters sufficient to run instances.

As long as you have spirit tap and improved wand, and make an attempt to upgrade it when you can, even solo-grinding as a holy priest isn't that bad, especially on a pvp server.  Your life never dips that low and neither does your mana, so you don't kill mobs as fast as the next guy but your "window of vulnerability" is much smaller then other players as well.

My holy priest is my 5th character overall, and i no longer play this game enough to even use up all my rested exp (and i only play this 1 character now).  I have basically no drive to hit 70, because thats game over except for miscellaneous crap i haven't done (drift from ironforge to menethil via levitate, etc).

Derail:

While I'm not thrilled with the prospect of agreeing with an absent mole (nor of disagreeing with my own earlier post), I have been noticing more unfinished quests as I'm levelling up alts.  They're not unfinished in the sense that they're broken, but that the story doesn't get resolved.  There's the rogue quest that the OP brings up.  There's the Shady Rest Inn series, where the inn was mysteriously burned down, you gather a bunch of evidence, but don't really ever find out whodunnit or why.  Or the Alliance's Missing Diplomat quest line, where the King of Stormwind (for crying out loud) has been kidnapped, and you go around tracking his kidnappers, kill a spy, and then the quest chain ends without mentioning where the, y'know, KING went.  There's the whole "Scythe of Elune/Yorgen Farmstead" bit, where some unknown evil gang ravaged the Yorgen Farmstead looking for the Scythe of Elune, but you never find out who they were or what happened to them or the Scythe.  There are a lot of quests like this.  They work perfectly fine from a Ph4t l3wt perspective, but as a tool for telling an interesting story, a lot of them seem unfinished. 

It would be one thing if they were just leaving themselves room to expand in the future, but after two and a half years they still seem to have an awfully large number of threads to pick up.  As far as I know, most of the new content is generally made from scratch, rather than expanding on a previous quest line.  And even if it did, where would it go?  Is Blizzard going to continue a level 35 quest line at level 70?  Are they going to stick in more content at the mid-level, so that everyone who's already run the old stuff is going to go back and one-shot all the enemies?

Ah, well.

Supposedly the King storyline is going to be finished sometime in the near future. I wish I could find it but I thought a Blizzard dev said something about players being able to save the King some time.

The Scythe of Elune angle ties into Karazhan and the dungeons beneath I believe...the Duskwood plot series mentions that he riders rode off towards Deadwind pass after their massacre. There's also 2-3 unpopulated areas of Deadwind pass including a campsite that has it's own name on the map.

As for the Shady Rest Inn, I have no idea what the fuck Blizz was on with that one. They just threw that questline out the door.

Blizz's glacial content development may burn out people long before they get to that though, since Blizz seems more interested in raid content than anything else.

There's a million other dropped plotlines and unused areas to be honest. Uldum, Grim Batol, the rest of the CoT, Hyjal, The Furbolgs, The Westmane Gate (remember that?), about 7-8 unmade zones in Kalimdor and EK, the Dire Maul elves (they mention there being new rewards from time to time for book turnins), the Maelstrom...

Oh yeah, there's a few unused areas of Stormwind too. There's an alleyway called "Cutthroat Alley" or something like that, and then there's the max-security slam that's supposed to be the building in the middle of SW. Then there's the player housing wing.

Of all those the only one that really fucked with me was the shady rest joint.  I must have rode around the site of the in and theramore for a good hour trying to find the continuation that did not exist.  Winded up having to consult thotbott just to make sure i wasn't missing the forest for the trees.

I can't really call it "incomplete" but in silverpine their is this badass UD warrior type guy out on the dock of the Decrepit Ferry.  He's named and does an "uppercut" type attack that tosses you into the air, i think he's hte lowest level mob in the game that has any really cool special ability like that.  But their is no quest for him, he doesn't have anything to do with anything, doesn't drop any special shit, he's just kinda their.  Always struck me as odd.  Ditto the Alter of Storms in burning steppes.  I had always just figured it must be an alliance questline or something, but now that im finally leveling an alliance character, no, its just their.

I get the feeling that a lot of this stuff was designed and put there physically, then they either ran out of time or they just didn't implement the content for those things. Funny, I thought the Altar of Storms in BS was some kind of Horde thing...

 

I always thought it was part of the fallen heroes questline in blasted lands. I never got very far with those, so I could be wrong. /shrug

The worst "just ends" quest line is the Eranikus line. I am certain that it was intended as part of the Emerald Dream setup but their zone release schedule changed things.

And the named guy in silverpine is actually part of some quest, but it is really obscure and I don't think many people ever bothered with it.

There are a lot of zones that have quests but ended up for whatever reason being largely ignored by the players. I don't know many horde people who ever even bothered with Blackfathom Deeps or even Shadowfang Keep unless it was alt-fest as they are both a pita to get to, and they fall around the same levels as Wailing Caverns.

That is probably one of the biggest strengths of the game as a whole though, that they put in a ton of different content early on, and were able to eventually adjust the continuation of things according to how much 'play' certain zones were seeing.

Of course, the metamorphasis from "FP you picked up to get to Un'Goro quickly" to "Hell-hole that everyone had to spend months of their lives in" of Silithus was not so great in my opinion.

Anyone who ignores any quest in Silverpine is a retard.

Concering the Altar of Storms, i believe there are actually 2 (one in Blasted Lands, one in Burning Steppes) of them, and i dont believe they are part of any quests.  Rather, if memory serves me, they are probably only there as a point of lore, since they were used in some ritual way back during one of the Warcraft games to open the dark portal.

And yeah, the shady rest inn / erikanus things always struck me as odd.  Hell, 2 of my characters still have the chained essence trinket :P

If I'm not mistaken, the Eranikus quest line is sort of picked up during the quest to open Ahn'Qiraj.  I'm pretty sure there's a part where you have to go back to Sunken Temple and Eranikus appears there after being re-defeated...and then of course there's the whole Eranikus the Tyrant of the Dream fight in Moonglade.

well, they DO deal with erikanus (the Green Scepter shard questline for opening the AQ gates), but the origional one, started in Sunken temple, where you get the Chained Essence trinket just totally dead-ends after 2 or 3 steps.  Questline sends you to winterspring, to talk to a mage who just never talks back.

Still, i'm pretty sure that their next major expantion is going to be Emerald Dream.  Doing the Druid epic flight form quest just adds yet another example to the massive string of hints leading to the conclusion that things are HORRIBLY FUCKING WRONG in the Emerald Dream.

Would you happen to know where that quest begins?  Both my UD priest and mage, as well as my orc warlock leveled in silverpine, i normally do all quests their (or thought i did...).  I never found a quest for this guy.

iirc it is actually part of one of the handful of Alliance quests in the zone.

But I could be totally wrong.

Just find his name and look him up on allak's or thott's, they should mention if he is part of a quest or not. I seem to remember there was something to do with him, though he may just be a named for local color.

Also there's the Morrowgrain grind quest that implies that the head druid guy in Darnassus was in on making sure whoever the head-honcho was that said it was a really bad idea to plant...well, Darnassus, got "lost" in the dream.

Teldrassil.  Darnassus is just the city.  Personally I think the Emerald Dream situation is more complicated than most people think it is - everyone knows that either the Old Gods or AN Old God is behind it, but I don't discount the possibility of involvement from other sources also, which is something most people don't seem to think of.

I rather like the lore of WoW.  They do screw it up a lot and leave a lot of stuff hanging or not quite making sense - but the lore is there and most people are at least tangentially aware of it, as opposed to say, much of the lore in EQ.  Luclin is the prime example of this, the place is stuffed full of all sorts of fascinating lore, but very few people know anything at all about it.  In fact, people were so completely obtuse to the lore that they wound up changing Takhashi's name in Acrylia Caverns to clarify who he is.  Takhashi is an anagram for Khati Sha, but very few people realized anything about the lore behind him and the Grimlings.  WoW doesn't quite beat you over the head with lore, and there's some to discover if you're into it, but it's obvious enough that most people have a general idea of 'what's going on'.  So it's good for people to be able to see that there's an interesting story going on, and follow it to some degree.

Staghelm is behind Malfurion being stuck in the dream IMO. It's heavily implied that morrowgrain is used for "ancient curses" and since Staghelm is pretty much a total prick when you interact with him (And wanted to grow Teldrassil despite Malfurion saying it was a really bad idea) I think he and maybe some other entities put Malfurion out of commission.

Oh yeah, another semi-dropped plotline is the Princess of Ironforge thing and the dark irons. You get a bombshell dropped on you when you rescue her and then nothing really happens.

I like how there's an underlying theme of total corruption among the alliance and the somewhat beaten-down nature of the horde. The Horde are just barely hanging on almost anywhere you go, whereas the Alliance seems to just be steamrolling everything, but every single alliance faction outside of the Draenai has some real serious corruption problems (SW is nothing but backstabbing and espionage and dragons masquerading as rulers, the Night Elves are no better, the Gnomes got some of the same problems in addition to their nearly race-ending betrayal, and the Dwarves got some funny business going on in their kingdom too with them being infiltrated by the cult of the damned I think).

The horde? Not so much outside of the pasts of each of the races.

man, its been so long, i cant really remember the flavour text that went along with the Horde Side Morrowgrain quests.  Dont recall it being anywhere near as sinister in implication as you say the Alliance one is.

As to the Princess of Iron forge thing, the Horde side quest seemed to wrap up fairly decently, with Thrall being made aware of her status as actually carrying the child of the dark iron emperor, and the fact that she is actually kind of pissed that you waxed her hubby.  Thrall promises to let Ironforge know through diplomatic channels or something.

And yeah, the Alliance sure seem to have some SERIOUS hidden agenda / infighting problems.  About the only thing the Horde seem to have is one or two odd tribes of Hostile Tauren here or there, and the giant umbrella corporation that is the "Demonic Cultists" that Thrall is constantly keeping an eye on (Burning Blade, Searing Blade, etc, etc, etc.)

You get the quest to grow the Morrowgrain from one of the Cenarion guys, and when you do your first turnin you take it to Staghelm himself who basically does the evil finger steeple and says "Good...good..." before telling you to fuck off because he doesn't need to be notified every time some piddly adventurer brings in some Morrowgrain. After that turnin, some other NPC asks you to bring him some Morrowgrain because he's "concerned" about what they're using it for.

I think that NPC is who you turn the rest into. He also mentions that Morrowgrain is used in ancient curses and I think even something about it being really "strange" that they're stockpiling it.

Edit: Yup, separate questline for the Alliance confirms it.

http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=3791

You mean Staghelm, the current Arch-druid, and douche-bag extrodinaire.  Malfurion is lost in the Emerald Dream

Not to mention the dubious morals of going to kill the "criminal" overlord - Van Cleef - who everyone in Stormwind admits has a perfectly legitimate reason to go criminal like he did.

Yeah, I got turned around when I went to look up the name.

Well, in the case of Van Cleef, even though you might agree with him, he does wind up picking on farmers in Westfall and such.  He's got a legitimate beef with the nobility but winds up terrorizing the peasants who, of course, couldn't do anything about the situation, so he's no good guy either.

He has a murloc in his employ, that alone is grounds for death by pre-patch 1.7 lacerate.