f13.net

You'll forgive me for coming out of the blue. I've been a lurker for a couple years now but just never bothered to hop aboard for a little video game invective. Decided to but needed something to post about.

Khazam calls it quits (http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official)

Not, of course, that this means the impending death of WoW; righteous outrage on video game forums mean exactly nothing since everyone is ALWAYS pissed off on them. It's sort of noteworthy just because of who it is. The guy put up with far less polished and less successful games for years before quitting.

Your link, she is broken.

Fucked that up. Let's try again.

Khazam calls it quits part two. (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=6861259&P=1)

So, the head of Allakhazam quit playing WoW. Allakhazam is not being shut down.

A goodbye post? I didn't realize he was so young. I do like 2 of the posts though. 6th post down though makes it all worthwhile.

See, there's no point in reading threads that way. If you want his opinion, seach on his character name, and you'll lose all the twerp responses:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread-search.aspx?SearchType=1&Author=khazam&x=49&y=21&ForumName=wow-general

So basically he didn't like raiding, and isn't a fan of extended capture the flag games. The queue changes caused people on his imbalanced server to migrate from AB to WSG, and left him without interesting content.

Unless it's a fulltime paid job, who else but someone around that age would have the time to run a place like that? Yea, there's quite a bit of automation over there, but even still, so many portals, so many volunteers, so many games...

Otherwise, just another goodbye post from someone who should know nothing lasts forever by now.

Alla's pays all their affiliates, it's not a volunteer website.  That's why they have the premium subs with all the bonus features, so they can pay the folks who run it.

For him to be "so young" he'd have to have been 8 when he started the site for EQ 7 years ago. 

I find it notable only in light of the overall state of the game combined with who it is.

I'm going to try to frame that statement very carefully. I certainly don't think WoW is going to lose subscribers or implode or anything of the sort; that would be completely retarded.

Having said that I've noticed a general malaise coming over some of the original 60s, raiders and non, on my two servers. I'm not certain what to attribute it to but I think some burnout is finally setting in for this particular group. I do some light raiding with my Alliance on Khadgar and a bit heavier with my Horde on Lothar. On both servers the number of "GOODBYE INTARWEB FRIENDS FOREVAR!" posts have increased. On Khadgar my guild is part of a raiding alliance of six guilds and the exact same malaise has been setting in in all of them.

I don't think the problem is so much the raids, raids, raids as it is that there's one playstyle the game caters to. And the faction grinding. The fucking interminable faction grinding. Nothing says "out of ideas" like the reliance on faction masquerading as content.

People knew what playstyle the game would cater to before they started. Games are never fun forever. And these "raider" types play harder and longer than most. it' not surprising level 60s are quitting. Of course they'll resub when burning crusade comes out and grind through all that "content" also.

I think some buttons on my keyboard are actually broken. Sigh.

Make a macro.

That said, I haven't noticed that malaise.  You might be noticing it if you're hanging with people for whom this is their first MMO or first raiding experience.  Everyone gets tired sometimes, and first timers bitch more because they haven't seen the cycle or been through it.

Alla never had to bitch about it in EQ because the grind was so interminable he never got to the 'endgame.'   I wanted to laugh when someone in that thread suggested AAs for WoW was the best way to go.  Well.. if weeping bitterly is a laugh.

You'll get no arguments from me on that. I've noticed a distinct change in tone after the NYT piece came out, as well. In between the usual Blizzard barf there have been a few decent posts that might be representative of this whole raid vs. non-raid nonsense coming to a head. That would just mean 10K people unsub while 20-30K take their place.

Since I finally registered here thank you, by the way, for turning me on to EQ2. I figured if a couple dozen people who are filled with the #hate for most MMOGs can agree that one is worth playing it was worth checking out. I was right.

Ok, my keyboard is definately broken. A million voices cry out as a model M dies. Anyway, filled with what?

At the risk of sounding like some miserable kissass noob I've found that the commentary on MMOGs from this site over the years has been pretty much spot on. I never gave EQ2 a second glance since I hated EQ1 with a burning passion. I skim the boards one day and found a post saying to check it out because it had changed for the better. And then another. And another. So I did. The cheerleaders were right, it's a fun game.

Are you the mole?

Interesting way to take this thread.

From who? I don't think you guys are quite that important.

OH SNAP!

Anyway, battlegrounds in WoW sound like a mess. In WoW they keep managing to add content that substracts other content for a net no (or low at least) gain.

The second new battlegrounds came out I started reading that some old battlegrounds became wastelands...kind of defeats the purpose of new content.

AV was always kinda a one-in-a-while thing since took so long to get into and so long to finish, but people did it because it was actually pretty cool, and sitting on your ass you could get damn near a level of faction in a single AV run.

AB was the shit for a while, but server balance issues made it fucking frustrating as hell for one side or the other. For my server it mostly meant getting steamrolled by horde gank squads in Tier 2+ gear and TS.

WSG I hardly ever saw people doing until lately. I've been doing it a lot with my horde priest alt at level 25, and I find it really fun except for the odd times when both flags get capped and everyone turtles up. Took 30 fucking minutes to break a stalemate last night...but right before that my team ran over the alliance in literally 8 or so minutes.

I've always hated the rule that you can't capture a flag while your flag is missing. It's stupid. I don't know why people don't have the guys the make that braindead obvious change and let you just cap the flag regardless of your own status.

Because in lots of different games capture the flag devolves into both sides hiding the enemy flag at the very deepest part of their defenses. MMORPG, FPS, it really doesn't matter. A simple rule change would rule out the most boring strategy.

Zerging seems to be the order of the day on WSG, at least at the 20-29 range. I've only lost one WSG match, and all the rest I was amazed to watch as 8-9 people total in our raid just rushed the hell out of the flag and got away with it every single time before ours got capped. Maybe the alliance were just retarded, or the couple hunters we left on D were really that good.

On a somewhat related note, people really hate Priests in PVP. I have no less than 3 hunter pets on me at any given time when I help cap the flag regardless of how many people are with me in the gigantic chaotic melee.

I agree, I think the flags should be capped regardless of status as well. It would certainly make the stupidity of hunting down flag carriers on roofs go away.

Battlegrounds ARE a mess. Up until the mltiple queue system you never saw WSG except for the holidays and even then it was filled with the hardcore PvPers who bitched about how much they hated it... as they did it for eight straight hours. New shiny comes in, old shiny goes out.

Just wait if they get this long rumored epic Azshara BG in. AV will never, ever be seen again.

Priests are my favorite targets ever.  They're so squishy and soft after you make that pesky shield go away.  My favorites are the ones that just stand around trying to nuke me while I autoshot them to death. Silly priest.

That's the the question I had as I got to about 4 posts in.

What evidence do we have so far?

- Plugging EQ2.
- Starts a discussion that masterfully turns into one on how WoW is dying. (Some quality manipulation there, folks.)
- Jokingly "we're not that important" comment to seem like one of the jaded regulars.
- Has low post count, which would say he is not because he has to infiltrate us first, but because we are savvy enough to know this it works in his favor.
- Is a "long time lurker".

We have a winner! He is definitely the mole.

---

Because of its PC architecture, and since we're talking about MMORPGs anyways,  I hear that most of the major developers are porting to the Phan... Ugh.  I can't finish that sentence.  It makes me want to cut my fingers off.

Shop at Best buy for everyday low prices!

I really have no defense against hunters at level 25, all I can do is just get in melee range, fear hopefully them or at least their pets, and go to work with my bonk branch and quick-cast spells/shadow word pain/devouring plague, while healing myself and praying for some nice warrior or rogue to come save my ass.

I greatly enjoy all the battlegrounds, (as I've posted numerous times) but the more I play WSG, the more I dislike the fact that you basically NEED a druid to win. Sure there are exceptions to that rule, but they are few, and overall pug on pug or guild on guild, no druid = lose. T'aint right.

EQ1 held people's attention longer because it appealed to a certain type of hardcore re-gamer that AC1, UO and M59 didn't attract. WoW is built the same way, but has come at a different time.

Sure it attracted a large slew of newcomers who are as concerned about losing their amassed crap as people were back in 2000. But it also grabbed a whole bunch of veterans who know better. Quit and resub, it doesn't matter when nor to what frequency because your stuff will still be there.

Unless you're one of those unique sorts of nuts who both needs to have the best and has the time to get it, chances are, even just a solid year of a single game in a genre with dozens is going to get boring at some point. Some people plow through it because of friends or they've climbed the social ladder. Others do so by rerolling. Still others maybe haven't hit the endlessly-repetitive "endgame" loop yet. The rest just quietly move on, checking out all the stuff that launched or changed while they were exclusively focused on their time-sink du jour.

WoW is the pinnacle of an old concept. We all know it, and many find it fun because of that.

Not lasting forever is not a "problem", and it's even less so when it's paid itself off many times over :)

I see what you're saying here, and Shaman are better if you're Horde.


I don't think they ever get defense vs hunters.  The best hope they have is doing exactly what you say.  However I've encountered more than one that just stands there within bow range (instead of the dead zone, or running in to fear) and tries to smite or mind blast me to death.  It almost feels wrong when multishot recycles and i kill them.

No game lasts forever but I'm curious as to what their subscription turnover is. They're obviously bringing in more people than they're losing and the raid guilds still have their people. I'm curious as to the people who never raid/will never raid and the in betweeners.

Of course, given that I'm an in-betweener and I'm still subbed...

I thought multiple queues would help the BGs. As they are currently implemented they've only fucked up PvP even further because the Horde just gets to pick which BG they want to play. Guess which one that is? That's right, WSG. Which also I might add, FUCKING BLOWS FOR PVP. There's no battles there, it's just a tunnel hump with a shaman or druid running their asses off which the other team puts on the shields. It's moronic.

I don't want to play capture the flag, I want to have battles over territory with kills and fun. That's impossible now because AB hardly runs, and AV seems to pop at 10 EST, but you only get to play if you've been in the queue since sometime after lunch.

Honestly, I think a lot of WoW players didn't. The numbers this game has and the percentage of MMORPG virgins I run into, I don't think most people have any idea the endgame caters to lameass, no-life wastes of humanity. I think a large part of people bought it based simply on it being a Warcraft/Blizzard property.  By and large, the game up to 60 is as fun, or more fun than a lot of single player games. It's entirely possible to have no idea until you hit 60 and then get faced with the sudden shock of having nothing to do. Like I was saying in the other thread, unless they get a lot more casual content in, and fast, their numbers are going to plummet since the casuals are reaching 60 and finding the game hates them with the blinding passion of the sun. ItS had good numbers up to this point because only the hardcore had 60's, and they tend to like the shit endgame that's there. I was saying back in beta they should have put at least equal, if not more emphasis on PvP than Raiding since it was likely to attract more people interested in that than circle jerking with 40 other people.

When I said that I pretty much meant "people who have played MMORPGs before." The vocal minority who write goodbye posts for every MMOG they've played. Like Khazam. That said, the numbers won't plummet because of what you said - it's a Blizzard property. If they do start to plummet they'll just add more possible drops to the loot tables and make the scavenger hunt interesting again. They really should have just made Diablo Online instead of making World of Diablocraft: Now with Farming!

My favorite part of the thread was that he spends about half of the posts asking/bleating for an answer from "blue". Because his complaint deserves extra attention.

Cos, you know, since he runs Alls, he's (to quote Milhouse) a "big wheel down at the cracker factory."

 

I wasn't an MMMOG virgin but I wasn't experienced. I played UO, EQ1, DAoC and AC1. Not a single one of them lasted past the second month because they all funneled people through a grinding bottleneck of one sort or another. No, I played WoW for only one reason: it was fun. I was grinding but it sure as shit didn't FEEL like grinding. The more I've played the more I think the art direction helped, as well; everywhere I went felt colorful and alive even if there wasn't anyone else around. I'll state without shame that I was entirely ignorant of the endgame because all anyone can do with a game is assume that the same design philosophies that hold true at the intro hold true at the end.

I certainly didn't care about the Blizzard logo and still don't. I've always been bored with RTS games and found Diablo pretty one dimensional.

I've spoken to guildies in casual conversation on both servers about burnout setting in and they generally agree on a couple points.

1) The endgame grind. MC is fucking boring. Once you do MC/Ony/BWL you have NO REASON to log on other than to do the raids. Why? The game is solely based around loot and an achiever mindset. There's nothing out there in the larger world that's worth getting. That also gives the lie to the stupid hardcore/casual debate; it's raider/non-raider. As soon as we moved to raids every single one of us in the raiding rotation plays LESS than before we raided.

2) A little more "there" there. WoW never, ever lets you forget it's a game. People are starting to want stuff that makes it seem a little more like a world. Raids are on a strict progression (MC/Ony/BWL/AQ with ZG and AQ20 as Minus World). Even player housing or viable crafting would go a real long way to giving something else to do.

3) Faction grind. I don't know anyone who likes this. When it was just the Timbermaw and Argent Dawn it wasn't so bad. Now it's the cornerstone of endgame gameplay. It's just the height of fucking laziness.

Regarding huge subscription loss I don't think that's going to happen at all. What I DO think, though, is that there's a specific strata of players that will trickle away. A couple dozen here, a couple dozen there. It won't matter one bit because WoW will still gain more than they'll lose. I've never seen anything quite like this game. It's fucking everywhere. A NYT article that's not about market forces or synergy but about your next couple patches? That's nuts.

I'll agree with one thing in there, faction grind is complete ass. It's the ultimate timesink and now part of everything new they release.

It irritates me on a level beyond "this sucks". It irritates me on a "godDAMN these guys are lazy" level. A monkey can come up with repeated faction grinds.

It's true, I could.

One interesting side effect of the muti bg queue things is that Av is almost always up now and wsg is almost always busy but AB almost never spawns now.

WSG is ass especially if you are alliance but I am luving AV being up a lot now. I am about 2/3 the way to revered in AV and at this pace may get exhalted in a month or so. If I can get exhalted it will actually give me some gear that is a bit more equal vs all the god damn raiders I see running around in pvp.

kaid

Not to be overly suspicious but has anyone actually confirmed that that was the real Allakazam?

I'd be surprised if anyone gave a shit.

I wouldn't mind faction grind so much if you got faction for whacking enemies of that faction like you do with the Argent Dawn, and the turn-ins weren't so fucking insane. Requiring shit from raid instances AGAIN shuts the non poopsockers out of stuff. I'm looking at YOU Thorium Brotherhood, with your relatively easy first two levels of rep (easy junk turnins to friendly, and since you spend half your waking life in BRD when you first hit 55+, you'll have a fucking bank full of Dark Iron Residue by the time you can turn it in) and then requiring us to burn a mountain of incredibly valuable resources for the rest.

The Argent Dawn I actually didn't mind at all since you get a tiny spec of rep for each decent level undead you whack, along with larger boosts for bosses, quests, and the scourgestone turnins (which you could do without even touching an elite monster or instance). It's easier to get revered with the Argent Dawn than just about any other faction in the game. You do a single Strat dead or Scholo run as a human, boom, 800-1000 rep + whatever stone turnins you get. You can do Strat for fun (I find it fun believe it or not) or for whatever loot you're pining for, and without even thinking about it get to at least honored.

Of course, this is taking into account that Strat was nerfed down into less of a gigantic clusterfuck of undead.

I don't mind the rep grinds too much to be honest. No I don't find the majority of them fun, but that's why I don't do them. The timbermaw faction I don't care about at all. Yeah I could make some nice stuff if I ground out faction for them, but it's not worth it to me so I don't. Cenarion rep? Again, I don't care enough to go through that. Argent Dawn and Zandalar reps I do care about to varying degrees, but those just require me to do the instances a whole lot, something I don't find a problem. TBH I see as a guild thing. Sure there's some crazies who will grind up their rep for the +22 int enchant but for the most part you only get FR gear by upping your rep with them. The BG reps don't bother me either. I find AV and AB to be fun and up often enough that I'll eventually get up there. Hell I don't even want any of the rewards from AV and my rep is pretty high. WSG I doubt I'll ever get those bracers. I don't lose sleep over it though. I think it's basically about atitude. If you desperately want some reward from a faction or have a compulsive need to get all reps high, then yeah it's gonna suck to grind through it all.

I'm largely the same way. AD grinds itself, not everyone needs TBH faction. It's ZG and the Silithus faction stuff that really bothers me because it's a cockblock. First time in ZG and your group miraculously smokes it and takes down Hakkar? Sorry, noobs, run it another hundred times before you can get your nifty armor. Fuck sake, that's what they're saying is for casuals? That's more hardcore than anything MC or BWL offer. At least there you get your nifties up front.

In my experience the best way for a priest to be dangerous in pvp is to:  HEAL.  My favorite is to follow a mage.  Shield him, heal him and fear around him when needed.  The mage priest combination just rocks.

Yeah, but you're in an uberguild.

If I was able to get Nemesis / Felheart bracers (along w/ other pieces for the uber set bonus), I wouldn't need to grind WSG faction.
If I was able to get an Azuresong Mageblade, I wouldn't need to grind AB faction.
If I was able to get an earthshaker/OEB/untamed blade/spinal reaper/askhandi, I wouldn't need to grind AV faction.
Etc.. basically, if you can get superior items by raiding, the rep grind is optional, pretty much. :p

And Zandalar faction is REALLY FRIGGIN SLOW. Come on, 1 rep per mob? Considering you need to get 21000+12000+6000+3000 to hit exalted, that's... a lot of killing. Even if you get 50 for bosses and 100 for optional bosses (200 for hakkar?), with some extra rep for doing quests. Compared to that, AD rep was/is a breeze.


-- Z.

Yeah... I see what you mean. I never really thought of it that way. Always saw the rewards as either placeholders til I get better or sidegrades into stats I want more for PVP.


I get around 1500 rep froma full-clear (minus ghaz-whatever and the mojomadness). I can't quite recall the numbers, but I think I figured that to be 20ish ZGs, or roughly 2 months to get reverred from honored. That's not counting the time it takes to get to honored (not too much though), or to get to exalted (I don't wanna think about it...). That's is pretty damn crazy. But yeah, if I don't get that I'll just wait for transcendence if I'm lucky, or be forced to take prophecy before then if not.

Faction grind is the dullest bullshit ever added to WoW. I don't mind raiding - im not in a raiding guild but i made enough friends when i was playing that i got to do MC/BWL as often as i could, but the faction system sucks balls.

That and i *hate* the contrived CTF/college football PvP. World PvP is dead and that's not helping the game.

So like Khazam i've retired my 60 rogue and 60 mage. Will return when the 60+ game is fun again, assuming that occurs.