f13.net

Rules: Everyone gets 1 reply to each post. ONE. There will be no arguing Except by me. I can ban you. Don't be a fanboi. Each one of my posts will have two new gripes in it. And two pros. Just to balance things out.

To celebrate the kicking off of this thread, I will post 5 gripes.

All of these are being made as I play an undead rogue.

Pros:
1. I can have liberty spikes as an undead.
2. I can run the game on max at 1280x1024.

Gripes:
1. Liberty spikes is ALL the character creation has going for it. Otherwise I feel like I'm customizing peons in WCIII.
2. Too bad it still looks like shit at 1280x1024. Shit as in, could have been out 4 years ago.

Bonus Gripes!
1. You don't give me a skill at level 2? Die of syphilis, idiots.
2. ANIMATE ALL MY SKILLS. I WILL NOT PLAY WHEN I PUSH A BUTTON AND NUMBERS APPEAR. To set the record straight, 2 of my 4 skills were animated. But really crappy-style. Blizzard has no excuse whatsoever.
3. BITTORRENT. Another game that shall remain nameless took less than 2 hours to download. It was 5 gigs. Blizzard, eat me.

Edit: 2fer1.

Pros:
1. Did I mention I can play as undead.
2. Loot seems very Diablo-like. I like that. Too bad I can buy Guild Wars to get that + a better/freepermonth game.

Cons:
1. McFlyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, is anybody home? If you are going to record voices, don't do little greeting generic ones. Go full bore.
2. It's Everquest 1, you lying fuckers.

Which skills were not animating schild? Just curious as I played a rogue to level 20 in stress test and all of my abilities that were active had animations. Mind you some of them were pretty darn minimal but they all did animate.

As far as graphics everybody I talk to is in one of two camps they either really like them or they really hate them. With the style they went for I doubt there is any middle ground.  It was designed to make you feel like you were in Warcraft 3 and for that they reached their target well.

My big gripe in WoW is their spell art is really lack luster. For as cartoony as the game is I am shocked that most of their spell effects are so minimalist. This is even more odd due to the simplicity of the models the game runs hella fast on every system I have seen it on so I do not see why they would not spend some cycles on really impressive spell effects.

I have seen eq2 in person. There are newbie spells that make you go OOOOO PRETTY!. I have not seen any spell yet in WoW that was any better than bare bones acceptable.


Kaid

And you wonder why it took so long for you to get into the beta.

Hmm.. I used my one post for such a throwaway comment. So be it.

It's not that I don't like the graphics. I liked them.

5 YEARS AGO.

Oh and I noticed some type of animation was attached. the weapons just go through shit and I can run through enemies, etc etc. It's crap. For the amount of money they spent - a better product should have come out of it.

Edit: You are allowed one response each time I post. Point is, I don't want fanbois - which there are a few, but not Hrose :) - posting 2-3 times on a page.

Also: Just so everyone knows - I have gripes about a few other games. A lot of them. I just can't talk about them. So if it looks like I'm hating on WoW, it's not because it's Blizzard, it's because it's shitty and I can say so.

You have no taste.

I'm not going to argue with you there. This game is truly Attack of the Clones. After experiencing the character creation of City of Heroes, don't you think the other so-called "next generation" games that haven't been released yet should be embarassed? Especially WoW and [5 gig nameless]?



Gah! Curses! I want to disagree with you, but you keep bringing up legitimate gripes! Why can't you just be a kiddie whiner with no sense of grammar, like on the WoW boards?



Dude ... getting to level 4 takes about 15 minutes. Patience, young padawan.



Well, the problem I see here is many of the rogue skills are very fast. That's the whole point of being a rogue. You're a stabby-stabby-quick-quick guy, so not every move can be animated or else you'll look like a Wang Chung video. The big moves, like eviscerate, are animated nicely.



Yep. BT is still suckage. Would you believe me if I told you this last patch was actually an improvement?

I am pretty shocked that someone who has repeatedly and publically committed himself to WoW's suckage long before he ever played the game has written a negative review of it after playing it briefly.  Shocked I say.  Anyone have that smiley with the monocle popping out of its eye handy?  Because that's how shocked I am.

5 out of the 7 comments are pure eyecandy whines, to be expected from someone who has been humping EQ2's leg for months, 1 legitimate complaint about the beta distribution method, and 1 complaint that is, uh, utterly trivial.

Now, WoW has a lot of problems, but this review is a snoozer.

Why get levels if I get nothing? I WANT STUFFS. I PAY FOR STUFFS. GIVE ME STUFFS.


 
What's wrong with a Wang Chung Video? Seriously though, they are just cutting corners. I want elaborate swashbucklish animations. I'm a freaking rogue. I should be the lord of the undead....dance. Seriously. I just don't see where all the money went.



No.

I can't talk about EQ2.

I never said it was a review.

Blizzard is the company without the NDA.

What the hell do you want? Information you can't find somewhere else?

Think man, think.

I'm in a 6 month old beta. Shit isn't done. What's the excuse? It's an MMORPG? Mediocrity is ok? Meh.

There are many gameplay aspects I'd like to compare to two other games. But I'm not at liberty to do such a thing. The gripes until then will be shallow.

That said.

WoW is EQLive. If I wanted to play EQLive, I'd go buy the new expansion, kthx.

It is a 6-month old beta.

There have been several games with 6-month old betas.  They were all crap at this point.  WoW is releasable.

I don't know where I was going with that.  Fucking schild posted 3 times in a row instead of editing his original and now I'm all confused.

I think what schild is trying to say is that the beta has been going on long enough and enough money has been spent that some things should be taken care of already. In other words, WoW is a giant development sink for time and money without enough to show for it. If schild were an investor he would be very pissed.

I wish I had gotten into the beta but I'm probably the wrong person to give an account to. I would be evaluating the game based on the beta and not really "testing" per se. In the end I'd be satisfied with my time spent in WoW by release and would not need to buy it. Of course, the more I hear about WoW due to no NDA, more the chance I will not buy it.

No, it's not. Not when you have problems like the below on a good system (p4 2.8ghz, 1GB DDR333, FX5200 Ultra):

(http://www.f13.net/schild/wow01.jpg)

I think that map is supposed to go in that circle. And those words, yea, perhaps they were supposed to go over the buttons.

Never had that problem. Suck to be you.

I should point out. It's not gamebreaking. It's just unacceptable at this stage in development.

Let's make this clear though:

Blizzard could pee in a box and people would buy it.

Blizzard pees in a box and people buy it.

I have bought every Blizzard/BNorth product released, some up to 4 times (ahem, diablo II).

Azaroth is not interesting enough for an MMOG.

If I don't bash it who will? The only other company that gets such unanimous knobgobbling from everyone around is Nintendo and their first party games.

The "It Must be Good Because Blizzard Made it" does not apply to WoW.

My only major gripe is that I can't get into the beta.

Schild, rather than have you suffer playing a game which is so utterly incapable of gratifying your exquisite tastes I will graciously take your beta account for you.  No need to thank me, you can PM me your login and password.

Personally I don't think it ever applies.  Besides Diablo and Warcraft II, all of their products to me have been somewhat of a disappointment.

I think it's good for what I outlined in it's my stress test review.  Well, good enough.  

As for the other game, I'm just not convinced yet that:

a) I'll be able to run the fucker as fluidly as WoW.  And WoW's graphics bother me not.

b) With all that I'm reading, EQ2 just won't meet my needs. It won't go far enough with solo/casual  support (special mobs on dungeon fringes doesn't count).

I'd love to actually get in the EQ2 beta and be proven wrong. I think I forgot to sign up, so that could be a problem.  I think Norath is a much better setting than the War 3 world and would love to be convinced that my time spent in it would be worthwhile.

What are your impressions on the combat, quests and stuff other than eye candy?

Combat feels like horizons. Attacks to match up with the enemies. There are timers for related skills.

Quests? Same as everything else. Choice is neat, but uhm, that never mattered to me anyway.

I haven't seen any new eye candy that I didn't already see in Warcraft III.

I think it all comes down to - Blizzard aimed low and hit it's mark. That doesn't impress me. Far too much money spent on a refined 1st generation MMOG.

Warcraft III:
http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/PC_Previews/WarcraftIII/WarcraftIIIB.jpg

WoW:
http://www.miateam.de/wow/bilder/new2.jpg

See what I mean by aimed low? At least you could "Win" the first one.

NDA Rasix.  Can't compare WoW and EQ2 now, as much as I would love to.  For me there is very little comparison.  But I can't discuss it.

WoW didn't impress me.  Nothing in the world made me think "Holy shit, that's cool".  Some other nameless game has done that a lot so far.  But that other nameless game is not only under an NDA, it is also a lot earlier in their beta phase, and has it's own problems at the moment.

Bottom line is I am not considering buying WoW.  Not even crossing my mind in a dream anymore.  I won't even be back for the open beta.

I strongly disagree. I only played the Horizons beta for a week, so I had to quit before opening up my wrists, but WoW combat is far superior. You are given tons of options for combat strategy, especially for the melee and hybrid classes. Will any sane person tell me that combat with a WoW shaman or warrior or rogue (or even druid) is WORSE than Horizons?? Please.

As for that fucked up screenshot you posted above, I can't explain that one. I've been in WoW beta since January and I've never seen that before.



Me too. Insert poopy-sad-face emoticon.

Some of us liked EQlive's gameplay and just hated the timesinks. That's always been the crowd I've seen Bliz as going after. Them and the crowd that enjoy raiding and guild mechanics.  EQ2 is targeting the old folks who played EQ and might have enjoyed it, but left for various gripes. Lack of soloability, inability to get a group and timesinks being the biggest I've heard them addressing.

You guys are the first I've heard of actually enjoying EQ2.  You know as well as I do that if an opion of the game sucks people break the NDA without a care.  Mainly because they think their anonimity on the internet will protect them from litigation.  I've heard from others in the beta that it's not worth the time.  I'll still check it out when I get my invite, but It's got a lot of ground to make up.  Eyecandy doesn't impress me much, gameplay and fun do.  If the grind is anything like EQlive I'll give it a pass without a second thought.  I'm done with the pointless treadmills.

As for the customization.  No, WOW doesn't have as much as EQ2, but then EQ2 doesn't have as much as CoH, which has far lower system specs. Shifting my eyes around and moving my ears on my head don't compare to looking absolutly fucking different from another character.  That said I fully expect EQ2 to suffer from the same complaints as WoW, EQlive and SWG.  "At high levels, everyone looks alike! WTF!?" That's what happens when you've got looks based on equipment (All of those) rather than personal tastes, like CoH.

People also keep defending EQ2 with "It's a lot earlier in it's beta stage."  No, it's not. It's at the same beta stage, they just have less time under their belt and got there a lot faster.  Part of that is their experienced team. Part of that is SOE at least can turn things around fast when they have to.  It also means they rush shit out the door, but we've all bitched about that aspect of SOE for years.

  Bliz has a glacial pace that I think will hurt them come live.  They've started speeding up, but they'll never match SOE's frenzied pace of 2-3 patches a week. Not if they want to maintain their reputation with their fanbase.  (Hell it's already taken a small hit just on rumors that the game will be live in November.)

"Just put it out there and see if it fucking works" is SOE's motto.  Yes, you pay to beta test SOE patches.  They know you'll still keep paying, and it's to their advantage to use that.  I kind of admire them for it, really, because they play their playerbase for the tools they are.  Advantage of being run by suits who game rather than gamers who are suits.

WoW and EQ2 both say they will release this year. I know they'll both do it, if only out of fear that if they don't the other guy will. My summation is, I expect WOW to be the winner in the short-term, but over the long-term EQ2 might just win out because of their understanding of MMOs.



There's been a few threads about it on the WOW forums.  Something about certain cards, drivers & this latest patch if I remember right.  I was drinking at the time so I'm probably not.

I would reply to this but I'm unimpressed with these gripes. They all boil down to "Wahhhh! I want shiney!". Give me gameplay gripes and I'll consider it worth my time. But I have to second the other poster who said it's no surprise Schild is bitching and slamming WoW since he did that well before he was ever in Beta. At this point, if Schild was a paid journalist I'd suspect him of taking money from SOE.

I'll come back to this thread when I see something substantive to talk about.

If I wanted to play Everquest 1. I'd get the new expansion. WoW offers nussing except an uninteresting world and different graphics. If that's all it takes to throw your hair back, then, great. :) Have fun with it. Otherwise, I'll be looking elsewhere.

I will probably play through the mid-high game in the coming months to give full impressions.

Sounds like all your gripes are graphics related, if that's the best you can do, then I think Blizzard did ok.

To me, it seemed much more a clone of DAoC than of Everquest, of course there are elements of both.  As well as elements of other games.  

Personally, I'll be playing for what will hopefully be a full PvP community.  I cannot wait to kill the b.net fucktards in droves.

EDIT:  I find it ironic that you complain about fanbois, when you are, in fact, the biggest Guildwars fanboi on the planet.

Correction. I'm a huge single player Diablo I/II Fanboi who *thinks* Guildwars will be the closest thing to it online.

I could be wrong.

I'll do a write up as soon as I get done dealing with this fucking wedding (not mine, my brother's), but here's a summary of my impressions:

Good:
-For the first 10 levels or so there was just one quest after another. I barely felt the grind besides a few problems I'll mention in a bit.

-Excellent graphics engine IMO. Ran like butter with lots of people, all options max, at 1280x960.

-I like the graphical presentation myself. Simplistic, but colorful.

-I dig the interface and the overall presentation. Skills are easy to recognise, and the 2d art doesn't look like a rejected spelljammer card like most MMORPGS.

-Diablo-ish equipment.

-Friendly atmosphere, at least in the stress test. I was amazingly at no shortage of helpful people. I got buffs, free wizard generated food, and help on quests several times.

-Quest rewards actually don't suck. You get decent amounts of cash/equipment for your level as you progress. This is unusual to me since  I used to play FF11, where your reward for FedExing something across the field of level 500 Goblin Rapists was 5 gold and a piece of lint.

-The human capital city is fucking huge and cool looking.

-Even low level monsters drop loot that doesn't suck!

Bad:

-Lots of renamed monsters with color swaps. Nothing unusual for MMORPGS, but it's getting old.

-Lots of "Bop X monster" and "Collect X drops from Y monster" quests, and most of these have completely fucked monster distribution. (i.e. I need to kill kobold WORKERS for X item, but only 2 of those fucking things spawn every 15 minutes, whereas there are Kobold LABORERS everywhere that don't give me said item)

-That smooth progression of quests ground to the screeching halt after I got to level 10 and ran out of quests in the starting forest zone. I then walked out into a very pretty field area that my last quest pointed me at, to be greeted by monsters 3+ levels above me. BAH.

-Nothing here hasn't been done before. Nothing.

-Even on servers without mandatory PVP, players from another alliance can kill quest NPCs. Fucking weak.

Schild I don't find your gripes at the start of this thread compelling for me about WoW.  Perhaps you may find these gripes more appealing:

1.  Priest.  Warrior.  Do these key classes display improved gameplay over EQ?
No.

2.  Is there a compelling reason to adopt tradeskills in WoW with the belief they will not be an economic disappointment as they were in EQ?  
No.

3.  Is there a sense of avatar / skill tree identity in the game, unlike EQ, but like SB Or Coh?
No.

There is a great deal I like about WoW - I am a supporter currently.  But the above are disappointments for me so far.

WoW appears to have delivered on solo content, fast gameplay pace, an immersive atmosphere, intriguing pvp mechanics and a much improved quest system.

You're looking in the wrong place.  They spawn in 2 places, the camp and at the entrance of the mine. The mine has 6 spawns that spawn about every 3 mins. Or at least did during the stress test.  

Just make sure to start up a group, folks seem to think KSing these from each other and getting one every 20 mins is preferable to grouping and getting credit for each spawn.



I had the same problem.  What you're *supposed* to do if you're looking to continue solo, is head off to one of the other races' zone for that level.  I was in Darkshore and hit a wall at 10 until I took the boat/ griffon to westfall.  The other alternative is to group up and get the extra XP for killing tougher monsters plus the quest XP. This needs to be better communicated and is one of the sticking points.

That is a bug that was introduced in the latest patch, and it only shows itself when you're running in non 4:3 resolutions, i.e. 1280x1024 and whatever else there is.  You can fix it by editing your config.wtf file and adding the line SET Widescreen "0".

If World of Warcraft were to be released today, I believe it would be in better shape than any other MMO that has launched to date - by far.

City of Heroes. Of course, Cryptic aimed even lower than Blizzard in terms of depth.

I don't think it's even close.  From my limited experience with the WoW stress test and the last two days in the closed beta, it is far more polished in every aspect save for character creation.  I still don't understand why everyone has a friggin hard on for CoH character creation.  OMG you look different from everyone else but you all have the same powers!  WTF?

Dude, did you even read what I just said? CoH was bland, but completely releasable. Nearly bugfree. Why do people have a hardon for character creation in Coh though? Because it's freaking beautiful, that's why. Yes, same powers, but beautiful character creation. Now if the man in the ivory tower would just say 'capes for all,' things would be better.

Oh man, don't give me EQ flashbacks about being a manabitch. Or like the (underrated) Sacrifice...a manawhore! I always got a kick about being followed around by my pack of manawhores...

Really? You don't understand why humans want to individualize themselves? The holy grail of mmorpgs is to have each player's character look unique. CoH did more for that than any game so far, by a pretty decent margin, too (with a nod to SWG for being able to make my dancer, Weezy Jefferson)
(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/mamma.jpg)

Hey don't knock lint...

"Fluff is interesting stuff: a deadly poison on Bodega Minor, the diet staple of Frazelon V, the unit of currency on the moons of the Blurfoid System, and the major crop of the laundry supplies planet, Blastus III. One ancient legend claims that four pieces of fluff lie scattered around the Galaxy: each forming one quarter of the seedling of a tree with amazing properties, the sole survivor of the tropical planet Fuzzbol (Footnote 8). The ultimate source of fluff is still a mystery, with the scientific community divided between the Big Lint Bang theory and the White Lint Hole theory. (Footnote 8, should you care to check, informs you that it's not much of a legend really.) " (http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/Douglas.html)

WoW will do better in the market than *NDA*. Count on it. *NDA Reasons for my thoughts on this removed.*

WoW is a first generation MMOG polished to almost CoH levels of polish. We've all been playing first generation MMOG's for the last 6-7 years. It's as if I'm still playing Madden 1997 with progressive layers of shiney but without even new rosters or online play.

In other words, it's the same game as the last game, only tweaked as if it had been patched.

CoH gets so much praise because they released stable (which means an assload more than anyone cares to admit), it was fun from the get-go. It fulfills even the most sissy of roleplayers and most hardcore of ubers wildest MMOG dream, in that you truly can be as individual as your imagination allows, only now even more so.

I anticipate that the next major "Schild's Gripe Thread" will be far longer than this one.

Playing in the beta prior to the last patch, I experienced the following bugs:

- Died, no marker for my corpse on my map, but I remembered where it was, so I walked back and didn't get the prompt for resurrection.  Had to logout and log back in to fix things.

- Pathing issues with mobs.  Most common was the mob would run through me, disappear, and I couldn't see it anymore, or do any skills on it, but it would still be hitting me.  This could be an issue with lag, but I don't think it was, because the times it happened I was able to get the mob to reappear by moving away from where I was fighting.

- Lots of "stuck" mobs, though hell if I know what they were stuck on.  Went to the imp/demonic pig cave near  the Orc/Troll starting spot, and a bunch of the pigs were just standing around, I couldn't hit them and they didn't react to me.

Those are all legitimate bugs not gripes (and I do have gripes with some things like certain quests being really annoying, but that's less objective), and that was only from playing four chars to level 10 or less.  If I'm hitting bugs with relatively little play, I would suspect that there's a lot of them out there.  In fairness, I haven't played much post-patch, so it's possible they've been fixed.  But I didn't notice any of them addressed in the patch notes, and I've encountered the pathing issue since the patch, so that, at least, hasn't been fixed.  

In contrast, I bought COH about a week after release and while I know bugs existed, I don't personally remember  encountering one.

No, I totally understand wanting to be unique, but in CoH, you only look different - you have the exact same friggin powers as everyone else.  Maybe looking different from everyone else is your holy grail, but I don't think it's mine, nor do I think you can make that claim for everyone else.

I can come up with an equal amount of buggy content in CoH when I was playing in the beta.

- Zoning into instances with no mobs.

- Pathing issues.  Mobs running back and forth up and down stairs when attacked, never coming after the atackee.

- Crashing issues.

- No content!

CoH was just as buggy as anything else, and it had/has(?) zero content.  I still believe that WoW in its current form is more polished and more stable than CoH was at this point in beta.

Cosmetic bugs? Yep, a game this big is teeming with them. Before the last patch, the animation on my night elf rogue would wig out on a regular basis, and I looked like Stephen Hawking doing a Joe Cocker impression.

But basic gameplay? The only testimony I can provide is, I've played WoW longer than any other MMORPG ever released ... and it's only in BETA.

Opinion.  I found the human city to be pretty boring.  Then again cities just don't impress me in mmog games.  I can't think of one that has.  So it is not a warcraft knock.

I frankly think *NDA* diverges more from EQLive than WoW does.

My biggest pros for WoW are:
Runs well
seamless zoning
griffin rides are fun and have character

That is about it.  I like the questing to advance, but frankly the quest to advance model won't be unique to WoW this fall.  Not by a longshot.  And I can't even give WoW the nod for best quests I have played in a beta.  At best it ties.

The pro's above are about all I can really cheer WoW for.  And they all come down to the fact that the game is running 6 year old tech on modern computers.

Now the competition says our game will be around for YEARS, so lets design it for computers that will exist a few years from now.  I don't think that is the right choice either.  I would rather the game be designed for NOW, but at the speed tech moves that is hard to do on slow development MMOG games.

uh... what is a liberty spike?

Do you mean you get to be different or does it reference something I might actually give a shit about?

So what?  You're moving the goal posts.  You said if WoW was released today, it would be "in better shape" than any previous MMORPG was on release ("by far").  So, for that comparison, it doesn't matter what CoH was like in beta, it matters what it was like on release.  I never encountered those issues in release (with the possible exception of "no content" which is hardly a bug, and not an objective issue, so it's not comparable to what I listed) and I don't remember hearing about any of them, so persumably they got fixed in beta.  

I'm not knocking WoW for having bugs in beta, I'm just saying your assertion that it's currently more polished and more stable than any mmorpg has been on release is bullshit.  In most of my playing sessions so far I've encountered fundemental gameplay bugs.

Argh!  Am I the only person in the goddam world who HASN'T been able to play this yet?

You used to play Everquest. So you've played it. If you want to mimic the experience, change the skin on WinAmp.

Here are my pros about WoW

Melee classes fun to play. I have never enjoyed melee classes in mmrpg as they are usually to dull. I played a rogue to level 20 in stress test and really enjoyed it. I had the tools I needed for grouping>soloing and even pvp.

I also played a warrior and the way warriors work in wow is pretty darn amusing. They get a lot of fun tools to play with that I could only wish I had when I played a warrior in eqlive.

Very diverse character types. This is a pro and a con each character class is very different but this leads to the slippery balancing slope that eqlive has rode lo these many years.

Artistic feel. The graphics themselves are not very advanced but the way they are done conveys a very consistant artistic feel that for those who like it is very appealing. I myself like the graphic style in WoW and would be fully happy with it if spell effects were more impressive.

CONs

Honestly the game feels very solo oriented till low teens 20's. Doing so many quests in a group of people makes you lose alot of the feel for what the quests are trying to convey.

spell graphics are underwhelming.


Class balance this is going to be the bane of their existance. With the 5 man groups I fear you are going to see big 3 type balancing issues with warriors and priests because for high level instances you NEED them. The only other class who can even come in the ball park of warriors is the fricking druid. When a backup healer is your next best option for tanking you are going to see a lot of folks lost in LFG land.


Most of the innovation such as it is in WoW will be matched by NDA at almost the same release Time Frame.

Patching. Does WoW even have incramental patching in the game yet? Most of what I have seen for big patchs has been full game downloads or bittorment crap. I will not buy a game that patching is that much of a hassle. Patching has been done right by to many companies big and small to give a game as expensive as WoW slack on this matter.


Kaid

No, I don't. I have the same potential powers that any other energy/energy blaster has. Cryptic has already gone on record that more powersets are on the way, as well as more avatar customization. It's no different than any other game, class or skill based, everyone has to choose out of the same limited pools of abilities. Druids have druid spells, same as energy blasters have energy powers.

Liberty spikes are a punk hairstyle where you spike up you hair to resemble the spikes on the head of the Statue of Liberty.

All of the bugs I encountered were still around on the final day of beta, which was just a short time before launch day.  The same bugs were still around during launch because I had two RL friends who play(ed) and they encountered them as well.  So no, my assertion is not bullshit.

Ug. Accusing an MMORPG of having bugs is like accusing the sky of being blue.

I'm far more concerned with a more fundamental question: based on current (and near-future) competition, which game is most fun to play? Comparing the timesinks ... er, I mean, games ... I've played lately, my answer is WoW, flaws and bugs and all.

No your not the only one, I haven't played it either. Bah stupid puter why did you have to catch on fire. Anyway I brought up what schild said on another forum and this is one of the responses so far:

After reading that I didnt even bother with the rest, this person (or yourself if your wrote / agree with it) doesnt have a clue? I mean he obviously only likes undead so is going ot be completely bias to EVERY other race?

    * Character creation is being worked on last time i heard, ITS STILL ONLY BETA!

    * Graphics look shit? i dont agree, ive seen that many ingame videos and screenshots (true i havnt played it myself but seen alot) and i like them, however he is prob one of the people that just hate the style of graphics it is!

    * Oh no! no skill at lvl 2?! WHAT EVER SHALL YOU DO!? Level again idiot!

    * The Aminations for the skills are being worked on, they said they havnt got them all sorted and that every skill is going to have its own special animation to make the game feel like you are doing something

    * I think the idea of Bittorrent is a good one, they are releasing all offical patchs to mirrors aswell as bit torrent (instead of just mirrors) and with the fan base of WoW it shouldnt be hard to get the patches (instead of waiting 4+ hours for a slot on a ftp server or downloading at 5k/sec becuase everyone else is doing the same!)


I dont think wow is going to be the greatest game on earth but i am expecting alot from it, however alot of people still dont understand that ITS IN BETA and that means its unfinished (and when it comes to mmorpg's being in beta its very unfished!)
____________________________________________________

Since I haven't even played the game I really cannot comment though. Ohhh well back to Rome:TW

Die in an MMOG level fire.

Shrug.  Maybe they were there, but I never experienced them in playing far more CoH than I've currently played of WoW.  Maybe my experiences are atypical, I won't claim that everyone has the same things happen to them, but all I know is I never really encountered any gameplay bugs (as opposed to stuff like some power isn't working completely like it should) in CoH on release (technically about a week after it) and I've encountered quite a few so far in WoW.  Sure, every MMORPG has bugs, but when I'm running into them during a few couple-hour sessions, it makes me wonder what the fuck people mean when they say the game is "polished".

Not to mention that if WoW released today, some classes would still be missing talents.

So when did reviewing a game based on a beta test become acceptable? I think it was when games started shipping in a beta state and people were paying to beta without warning. Until developers/publishers/crackwhores starts putting out games with a minimum of bugs upon release, as they should, I have no problem with schild ranting about some things not being done even though it is still a beta.

Out of all the gripes, this one bothers me the most.  All this tells me is that they have thrown in unnecessary levels that give you nothing but the opportunity to shout, "DING!"  Maybe for some that's enough, but I don't think levels without any reward will go far to motivate me, regardless of how quickly you can DING! early on.  I wonder why they would bother?   Hmm... could they be hiding something?  Such as... gasp!... grind?  

I can deal with grind in an MMOG, they all have it to some degree. Hidden grind, however, is likely to annoy the hell out of me... just because.

Actually, I've done quite a bit of fishing in WoW, it's fun. You can even get shinies that attract better fish. Claiming that WoW is unfished is just a filthy lie!

I agree. I prefer knowing the grind up-front, such as when I pour myself a bowl of Grape Nuts. I don't like the hidden grind such as when I'm eating a hamburger and I run across a little bone nugget.

Okay if a mmrpg has to rely on bittorrent and mirrors for downloading patchs that is just assinine. The harder you make it for for the slack jawed majority of your players to patch the more CS headach and cancellations you will get.

Hell if a company as small as cryptic can do a perfectly fine patcher WoW has no excuse for not making a good working in game patcher.


kaid

You know.. the bittorrent thing bothers me in one area... if some idiot figures out how to reverse torrent.. hands of the enemy and all.

I agree.

I don't understand how if I can get 4 new powers/skills at level 10, why I can't instead get 1 power at 9 and 2 powers at 10 and 1 power at 11.

Doesn't make sense to me at all.

I agree wit this also. Having played a long time now my only responce is this:

The gameplay is just so much fun, that you are not sitting with bated breath for your next power. There are a few big levels, like lvl 10 for a rogue, when they get dual wield, lvl 10 for a warrior, when they get defensive stance. Umm, cant speak for the casters much. Also, lvl 40, for when you get a mount is huge.

Other than that, no skill or ability is really so badass that you are waiting and yerning for it. Its the same as CoH. You only get new skill every other level. Also, I just visit the trainer every few level, and am like, "oh, cool, a new skill". Also, equipment is level restricted, so I actually (as a warrior) find myslef looking forward to leveling to use a sweet piece of gear I have saved in the bank. Also, starting at lvl 10, you get a talant point every level, and those are great also.

Im not saying that you shouldnt get a skill every level, thats just how it is, and it works fine for me.

*Edit* Bittorrent sucks. I hate it. I want it to go away.

Is there any MMORPG where you get a new skill every level?

You acquire new skills in WoW far faster than you do in CoH or EQ2, so I don't know what these people are whining about.

They're just nitpicking because they don't want to admit that WoW is a good game.

No, we're nitpicking because every new MMORPG is the same one we've been playing. So we find new faults.

Anyway, Morph, combat isn't near as fun in WoW as it was in CoH. And look what almost none of us are playing anymore. WoW is the same shitty combat we've seen everywhere else with a little shittiness of Horizons thrown in (very linked timers).

Over the next month I'll be playing different classes, there is a chance that the rogue is just crap.

I am undecided about this - what the preferable pace of combat should be.  The CoH pace of combat is fast with lots of soloability.  That beats the pants of EQ (WoW) in most respects.  However, because it is so fast and easy - there is little need for group coordination.

The faster the combat the easier it seems.  When it's easy - group dynamics suffer - folks solo - and when we group it is sloppy as hell.  I am not sure if WoW is more like EQ or CoH in this regard.

I don't find combat in WoW (so far) to be all that different from City of Heroes.  Mobs die quickly so battles are usually quite quick, and with my experience from playing a Rogue and Mage, I am constantly pressing a hotkey to use different special moves/cast spells, which I liken to switching between powers in CoH.  It doesn't remind me of EQ combat at all quite frankly, which is why I am a little surprised that Schild is slamming it so hard since he at least enjoyed CoH somewhat.

Your statement on EQ2 is false.  If you are going to break NDA at least don't lie about it.  In fact EQ2 fits the bill and more to Margalis' original question.

Technically, you are right. I am also right, though, but my arguments to defend my position will have to wait until a future time.

I keep hearing this.  Do you mean releasable as in 'people will buy this', or releasable as in 'has a reasonably small amount of bugs and no glaring problems'?  Cause if it's the second, that's....absurd.  Not that I dislike WoW.  I wouldn't say I like it a lot either, but it's decent at least, and I like it somewhat, so far.  However, in no way would I say it's releasable.  Not when I walk into Darnassus and see no map (Stormwind has a city map, Darnassus and Ironforge don't), not when I run around Darnassus trying to find a sword trainer only to discover one doesn't exist now...not when I see a dozen or so quests with <Needs Reward> to indicate they're not finished, and my highest character is level 17, and not when I see vendors with no items, and vendors that have no actual item-selling script attached.

I agree with some of Schild's gripes.  Customizing peons...yeah.  I can get a look that I like.  *One* look that I like.  Well, pretty much like Pre-Luclin EQ, or DAoC, or FFXI (actually 3 in FFXI, but that's just because I happen to like more of those, not because of variety).  CoH set the bar pretty high for character creation options, but come on, give me a little more to work with here.  General graphics mean squat to me, but I'm one of those people who HAS to look GOOD.  I've refused to wear any visible helms over 5 years of EQ, and have been quoted to say 'Put Death Touch on a helm, and I *still* won't wear it!' because they look like crap, so what I look like is pretty important to me.  Not to everyone, though, so I admit, this is just a gripe, and doesn't compare to gameplay.

Bittorrent..  I have no problem with bittorrent normally, but there's something about Blizzard's downloader that makes my router go berserk.  My router normally only goes berserk once every day or two.  Every 5 minutes I have to reset the settings while I'm using the Blizz BT client.

I keep getting the graphics bug that Schild posted too.  The fix that liquidator posted worked for me.  Now why isn't this default?  Everyone wants to run in windowed mode.  By the way, why isn't windowed mode default, and I had to edit command lines on my shortcut to get that?  More minor gripes, though.

I'm not going to rail on a game for not being great, I'm just going to go 'mmm...decent' and treat it that way.  That's what WoW strikes me as so far.  Decent.  I disagree with the combat gripes noted so far; I find WoW combat to be pretty engaging.  It might even be as interesting as EQ combat.  Did I say as interesting as EQ combat - for any naysayers out there?  Yes, yes I did.  EQ has had the best combat system I've seen so far, at least as long as you weren't a pure melee class.  Read best as: strategically complex.  I can engage in combat with something and die easily, and I can come back and with some intelligence and strategy, defeat it.  WoW seems like EQ.  Without Bards.  That's important to me because I played a Bard in EQ and found them to be unbelievably fun.  WoW doesn't have that so far.  Then again, I didn't really see the brilliance of the EQ bard until level 55 or so, at which time I was completely in love with the class.

Some of the gripes seem silly to me.  No skill at level 2.  Yawn.  Big deal.  I don't care if I have to wait several levels for new powers, and WoW seems to have them every other level.  WoW's system of character customization so far is the Talents, and it's an interesting approach.  Not sure if I like it yet.  I'm a very big fan of absolute classes, and knowing that a level 50 warrior = level 50 warrior, with the only difference being his equipment.  It goes against the grain, but I've played too many games where I or someone I know get some crappy build of abilities.  Respeccing, while an acceptable solution to that, just seems blah to me.  Personal preference, really, but I like being told, 'this is what you do.  You WILL be able to do it well, and there will be no choice given to you that can possibly hinder you'.  I also like knowing what other people are capable of.  In EQ, I see a druid or a bard or whatever, and I know what they can do.  And thus I know if they suck, because if they aren't at least meeting my expectations, I know they're not doing things well enough.  In a game with all kinds of character customization and stuff, I have no idea what a person can do, and thus very little yardstick to judge whether the person sucks, whether their class sucks, or whether they simply made bad choices in character customization and are therefore reduced to a relatively ineffective character.  WoW gives me this absolute - and a little customization on the side.

But most of all, I wanted to comment to say: Damnit, stop saying WoW is in any way ready for release, because I'm TIRED of MMOG's releasing before they're FINISHED.  'Ready for release' does NOT mean 'is not in SWG/AO/Shadowbane condition'.  It means the damn game is finished.  It means all the classes have all their abilities.  Considering that my Rogue is the only one of three characters that I've gotten past level 10 that even has any talents, which are an important part of the character, although hardly central, I cannot believe any intelligent person with reasonable expectations as to the quality and state of a software release would say that the game is ready to go out the door, when not all classes even have all their abilities yet!

When every class has all of it's abilities, when the maps for all the cities are complete, when there are no longer any more vendors that don't sell, quests that say <Needs Reward>, when Night Elf rogues don't look look like - to quote, "Stephen Hawking doing a Joe Cocker impression." when they use throwing daggers, and when there are no glaring bugs (like either of the aforementioned graphical glitches), THEN the game is ready for release, and not before.  Otherwise, it's on the shelves only because they know that people will pay for it.

The big secret to the Bliz bittorrent client is to use something like NetLimiter to hard limit the upload speed so as not to completely saturate your bandwidth. I usually set mine at around 6k/sec so that I can do things like surf the web in the meantime; if I don't limit it, the client uses all 16k/sec of available upload bandwidth, which prevents ANY downloaded data from getting through.

Of course, doing this pretty much negates the advantages of bittorrent. Once everyone else figures this out, everybody will limit their upload speed way down and essentially everyone will be getting the majority of their data from Blizzard. Can't wait to see that train wreck when it finally hits.

Haha, thank you. Blizzard was pulling 100k up from me on a cable line limited at 40k. It was horrible.

If they based it off the original BT code, that's not true. You need to at least upload 10K/s to get a decent download. Anything below that and you're shooting yourself in the foot. This  is for broadband cable at least. I usually cap mine at 50 and get 300-400 down.

Er, no.  I hate windowed mode when I'm playing any games. Browsing, editing documents, AutoCAD, sure I'll window those.  Gameplaying I prefer fullscreen. Everyone's different.  That said, I agree you should be able to switch between the two without editing config files. That's just asanine.

As for 'finished at release.'  No major MMO has done this yet.  WoW won't do it and EQ2 won't do it either. They'll both be buggy and incomplete at release.  Not having gotten into the EQ2 beta yet (The hell is up with that anyway, 5-year account you'd think I'd get an invite.) I can't judge what won't be don there.  WoW is scrambling to get all the leveling content and some raid content in for release.  They'll probably do the 'polish' stuff after the gold is out.  Graphics bugs, animations, etc are things I expect to see on the back burner until they've knocked out talents and at least tried for some better class balance. (Since PvP is what they're worrying about currently, at the expense of some PvE fun.  A handicap EQ2 doesn't have.)

WOW and EQ2 are racing each other to the shelves and trying to bet on when the other guy is actually releasing. That's probably why neither camp has made an official announcement, even though the major retailers have dates.  You don't tell someone like Wal*Mart "Oh, November 15th" reserve us some prime space, right in the middle of Christmas Shopping, and not expect them to fuck you in the ass on penalties if you say "Oh , sorry didn't make it, keep some space open later."

You are a true hero. Taking the above advice (throttle outgoing bandwidth extremely low) was the reason my BTs took ages. Doing what you suggested makes them zoom onto my hdd... no I just need some tool to make me invisible to RIAA (or our equivalent) on the rare occasions something copyrighted is on the way (US tv shows, that I'm not interested in waiting years to see - PM me links if you have good sources, I need more 4400, Deadwood and Lost)

Most people use something like Bittornado now that usually doesn't have the "must have 10k/sec upstream" contingencies to it, I haven't seemed to have too many problems with limiting it and still getting 50+ k/sec downstream. Then again my DSL is slow as shit so the rules may be different for those with actual decent connectivity.

Hanzii: You'll probably want to google up something like PeerGuardian.

I'm thinking it might have to do with your connection. I've had some buddies set their upload to 0 and get 50-80 down. Which is decent if you want to surf in the meantime. As of right now my cable provider is farked and I can't use BT at all. (Download + Upload = Bai bai intarweb!)

Blizzard should just use a normal patcher. BT is not the way to go. Especially with the retardation that breeds on the B.Net forums. They barely understood why a monthly fee would have to be attached. Now they have to figure out BT? Not going to happen. Like someone else said, it's going to be a CS nightmare.

This is the part where you stop speaking for everyone else, who don't necessarily want to run in windowed mode. I don't, never would, and would bitch if it were default.

As far as BT, I'm not too dense to figure it out and get it running properly...I just don't want to for a stupid mmorpg. And I shouldn't have to.

I am, I think my router tells me lies.

What's to figure out with BT?  Dunno if Blizzard's using some gimpy version of it, but all I had to do to get the normaly version to work was run the installer.  Then, if you click a BT link, it magically works.  Not any harder than any other download.

Bit Torrent -
The trick to this is locating the .torrent file that ships with the installer and using a real client (i like azureus).  I was pulling down max of 50k a second through the blizz client and 320k+ through azureus.  I dont know where the pc client stores the .torrent file but for the mac you just right click the installer.app and go open package.

Wow -
I just got into beta with the last push and am thoroughly unimpressed.

Spell/Ability effects - suck
Quests - good system/rewards horrible quests
Graphics - meh
Grind - sucks
Interface - ok

Someone please make COH gameplay with eleventy billion times more content please.

Unless you're behind a firewall or router with a firewall. In those instances you have to open ports or know how to forward the ports to the machine you want to patch.   If you've got MrHat's level of expertise you probably plugged in your router knowing you needed it, and are now wondering what's up that you can't get it working.

Or, if you're on a campus network, you're at the mercy of the campus sysadmin deciding if they want to open them up. Some guys might be cool about it, some will limit your ul/dl speeds and some might say, "BitTorrent? No, it's used for warez and we have a no-pirating policy here."

If you don't mind being 'wide open' on the net, yeah BT's pretty easy to get going.

Good points.

As far as the original "what's there to figure out"...exactly. There is /something/ to figure out. I come home with my shiny new WoW box, install, and pop....nothing. Can't patch, need new 3rd party app, need to open up ports on my firewall...err..isn't EQ2 coming out about the same time? Sure, I know how to make it work, but why bother? The game is not that superior to all the other new offerings, I'd play Ryzom before I'd dick around with BT for WoW.

Actually, after 2 weeks of trouble shooting and communicating w/ Netgear, I've determined that my RB814v2 wireless router is a fucking liar.  Says my ports are forwarded, but they're not.

I have trouble believing this is true.  Power players can max out WoW characters in well under a month of real time.  I am not in the EQII beta, but from what I have heard from various awful websites that will burn in the fires of hell for violating the NDA the same is not true of EQ2.

Not that I think this is necessarily a bad thing.

I didn't mean to knock on your level of commitment or knowledge. You were just a convenient example.

Still, 2 weeks!  After 2-3 hours I can see Joe Average Computer User saying "Fuck this shit, I want my cash back!"

I have nothing better to do with my time.  (in between jobs)

Edit: Just traded my Balt Defense for a beta key.  Heheh.  Downloading on Torrent at about 150kbps but it's all from Local users.  Schild, you playing on the PvP server? what's your name(s)?

If you need people to play with, you can check out my guild. I offered the invite to Schild also.

We are Horde/PVP.

www.dreadguard.com

Or you can look for me in game as Morvant.

OK, was playing a Pally, but I'll switch to an Orc Shaman named "Skrank"

Though I'll probably join for the beta - there's nothing more ridiculous than a guild with a site dedicated to one game, a purchased domain name, and php-nuke as whip cream on top.

What happens if Blizzard ruins your utopia? Do you all turn it into a 'I hate WoW' site?

Morph, you've read this (http://www.dreadguard.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1), right?

The only response to that charter is: Psycho.

Uhh.... I think I only qualify on #3. Oh wait, I have to swear by my soul. Ok, I fail on them all.

Its RP.  It may or may not filter into the actual game, but any attempt to tell a guild backstory is laudable.  Especially on a PvP server.

Please make the web site text LARGER... for the old folks. ;)

Cool.  I've got a 23 Rogue on Beta Server 2, but I've been intending to try out the PVP system and roll a horde character.  I take it you don't mind having lowbies in the guild.  When I log on again later this afternoon, I'll try and hook up with someone in the guild.

Schild, you should roll one also.  GOGO ZERG RUSH!! PK BNET KIDDY LA~ ^_^

Her question was relating to content per level not unit of time.  I was replying to her original question.  That of skills every level.

Yeah, I read it, I helped write it. Whats wrong with it? This is planning on being a successful PVP guild, we need structure and a clear plan. Do we have to abide 100% to the letter of the law or the charter? no, but it is a great guide line on how to run a successful guild.

User-friendly browsers (http://www.opera.com/) let you specify a minimum font size (e.g. 10 pixels). In version 7.54 go to Tools, Preferences, click "Font" and enter the size you want. Or you can set a default scaling (Tools, Preferences, Page style, Default zoom) to rescale everything instead.

To all the people complaining about Bit Torrent uploads:

You can find a BT client (and no, I'm not going to tell you where) that allows you to completely screw all your fellow downloaders and not upload at all.

I should not have to do that on my end. At 100% zoom, text should be readable. But PHPNuke was always like that anyhow. They seem to think the smaller the text, the more L33t the programmer.

And I use Opera. Web sites need to start learning to be user friendly. ;)

Thanks for the tip on the minimum font size. I did not realize that was there.

You'd think that in the last decade web designers would've figured that out...

I think there are still web DUH-signers out there that live by Jacob Nielsen's (http://www.useit.com/) early statements about design, and haven't noticed he's changed his mind and written that he was wrong.

Returning to WoW for a moment, Amazon.uk has it with a (European) release date of Feb 25 2005 - but my preorder still lists Oct 17 as shipping date. Them folx are weird.

I have a long standing bet with a case a beer at stake that WoW won't hit retail until 2005.  So maybe the Europeans are just as astute as I am :)

Web designers are still waiting on the browsers to start actually implementing a stable program that is compliant with the W3C's standards that 92% of the people will use. So, we're waiting on Microsoft.

The European date was announced as being "a few months after" the initial release, instead of the concurrent releases that had been previously announced.  Amazon.uk is probably just tacking 3 months onto the current rumored Nov 15th US date.

Thought some of you may like to know this: This is a question on the dreaded blizz forum with an answer from blizz.

Q.  Is there going to be an in-game patcher similar to that of EQ or are all patches going to be distributed over the blizzard downloader once retail hits? I myself fall into the college firewall problem and I was just curious as if there will ever be an alternative.

A.  I have stated elsewhere, but will repeat that we plan on having alternatives for those of you who have issues with our current method. - Caydiem -
Assistant Community Manager, WoW

They seem to be accelerating their patching schedule, and my buddies who work for Blizzard are getting one day off every two and a half weeks or so.

My conjecture is: the Powers That Be have told Blizzard "WoW before Christmas or we burn the building down with you still inside"

GM's are also available 24-hours a day for support.  I wouldn't think pay the wages to have a 24-hour GM staff unless they were getting very close to release.  But hey, what do I know. <shrug>