f13.net

I dropped by to see my father today and he was playing World of Warcraft (it occupies more and more of his time, much to my mother's distress). He mentioned that my brother and his fiancee are playing again and asked if I wanted to spend some time playing again. Dad still considers it my account because I'm paying for it. I assured him that I wasn't terribly interested... but the thought was intriguing (I've been away long enough that I thought I could see it fresh, my interest in Guildwars has waned, and I still have the software installed), so I let him know I'd start up a character on the new server they'd all chosen.

I got to level 8 before I began to recall the reasons for my absence, and level 11 before I gave up completely.

First, Guildwars comparisons:

1) Having played Guildwars, I cannot tolerate meaningless travel time. Getting there may be half the fun, but getting back is NOT. Being sent a long distance only to be required to return the same with little more than a few words and a salute is maddening. Pointless adventures around Durotar only reminded me of future pointless adventures around the WHOLE CONTINENT... or those which would span the world.

2) Guildwars also spoiled me with easy access to generic henchmen. It's easy to find somebody to help you with quests in the starting areas of WoW, because there are always a lot of beginners, but even by level 10 that's starting to thin. Running back and forth to join people whose capabilities and personalities are undefined is an exercise in futility.

3) Some bastard wandering by and killing the boss I need for a quest after I've killed everything else... and asked if he'd like to join a group with me for that purpose. He did not respond, killed the boss, and ran off. The instanced world has all sorts of flaws, but in keeping this sort out of my way it excelled.

Annoying quests:

4) The first quest type for you to reconsider if you ever make one of these MMOmonsrosities is "find X of Y that drops randomly off of Z". Nothing is less fun than killing a dozen Z's without getting a single Y... or finally getting X-1 Y's and realizing you still have no idea how much longer the quest will take. Also, grouping to finish this sort of quest actually feels counter-productive because you come to see that your odds of being the person who gets a Y are even lower. "I've got all the Y's I need... why am I still helping you fifteen minutes later?"

5) Escort quests. In theory: YES! In practice: NO! I don't want to wait for the NPC to reappear because either somebody else has done it or I have failed some time in the past hour. I don't want to be trying to kill threats to the escortee while he strolls off to find three more. I want to choose the pace rather than running circles around him.

6) Did I mention it's no fun to have to run back and forth a long distance over and over again? Finding out that there's another step to one of those things makes me scream.

Then generally:

7) Tradeskills that require a lot of time or money to produce things I don't really need.
8) Guilds with no purpose other than as an additional chat channel.
9) Baobao challenges you to a duel!
10) "level ?? elf on the road"



I don't miss it. Not a bit. I can barely even remember what I once enjoyed.

I liked escorting that chicken to his UFO or whatever. I thought it was funny.

As for the rest, I agree. That's mostly why I only play my one 60 and never looked back. I think it's up to 50 days played and 34 of them at 60.

Meh, I actually found the 1-59 game to be very fun.  I've leveled up about 3 chars to 60 since the game has been out, starting a new one after I take a break for awhile.  With WOW, I find I actually enjoy the process of leveling up my character.  Which has NEVER happened for me in the past with mmogs, which killed me with the boring PvE.  I am also raiding for the first time in any mmog as well, since a friend got me into a big and very nice guild, which has turned out to be pretty damn fun.  The high end boss encounters are actually really fun (except for Vael.  FUCK YOU!).

I don't remember what I found fun either - probably because I never found it fun. Run around and kill shit the MMORPG. Sign me up!

The term "high concept" certainly doesn't apply here. In my old age I tend to get bored more easily especially when a game is simple to understand and WoW is nothing if not simple. Simple is fine if you have fun gameplay but WoW really doesn't.

Since we're all representing our opinions as fact, here's mine:

I could basically have written Teleku's post (except the three level 60's part.  I'm not there yet, but I'm sure I will be one day).

I could have written Margalis' post... in an opposite but parallel universe.  I basically disagree with everything he said.  I find WoW's gameplay extremely fun - in itself alone, but even moreso when compared to what else is out there.  I still can't beleive I used to login as a freshly minted level one in <insert game> and just start killing snakes and bats aimlessly.

I'm old too, but patient, so maybe that accounts for me not getting all arsed up about someone stealing my kills like the OP.  Seems to me that the OP doesn't like WoW because of the variety in quests, but Margalis doesn't like it because the quests are too much the same (run around and kill shit).  Maybe I misunderstand but that's my reading.

My GW experiences were different. 

I couldn't solo because the henchmen were shit while still sucking up most of the XP.

I couldn't group because people would bail on the instance as soon as there was any kind of setback or disagreement on how to proceed.

Before UO2 was derailed the first time, I remember them making a dev statement about the kinds of creatures you kill at low levels.  They had a screenshot of a brand new character felling a 20 foot minotaur.  Not a game-making idea, but sort of nice for the newb ego  :-P

I can play WoW, but not with random people. I'm with a couple of my buddies now.

But they invited me to their guild. I open up the Guild Chat, and I'm bombarded with "o rly" owls and other spam macros.

Fuck that.

They coded in a super easy way to deal with that:

/gkick

Oh, I already /gquit, I don't need that nonsense cluttering up my chat windows.

Just FYI, I've never seen a guild that would tolerate that.  If you really really want to like WoW you're going to need to find a good guild that works together (just like any other online game, including FPSs, if you want to have fun, you're going to need to find other likeminded people).  Don't let one fucktarded guild let you not shop around for the right guild.

I honestly don't care about "high end content" - I just want to play with my friends. When I get to 60 eventually (if I ever do), I won't be caught dead or alive in anything above the "casual" instances. Not only do I refuse to sit around in a clusterfuck raid, but I also refuse to respec because someone tells me to, and I will also never go into someone else's Vent/TS.

I had a hard enough time dealing with listening to Schild on TS. I might have a cerebral embolism or something if I have to listen to the average WoW gamer go on about how one warrior spec produces 3% more rage per hit than another build with 1 talent being the only difference.

Also, I never, ever even entertained the idea of joining a clan for a FPS, where it's not even neccessary. I perfer to jump onto random servers when I play.

I'm in one of the "best" guilds on my server.  If they told me how to spec I'd tell them where to shove it and the guild leader knows as much.

And I'm not talking about high end instances, I'm just talking about having a sane group of people to have fun with so you don't have to go looking for that (a thing which you'll never find without picking a choosing a guild) every time you need it.  I'm talking about a group to go jaunt through ZF with because you need a carrot on a stick, or a group to go to BFD with because you just feel like going through BFD.  I'm saying "if I were you, I'd find a group of people that it's fun to play with, because it enhances the playing experiene."

But you do whatever pleases you, that's why it's a game! :)

Comments on specific points raised:

1.  Without travel time, you lack a world.  Guildwars point and click insta-port system made for a world that I had no sense of.  I couldn't really tell the flow of how certain areas lead to another. It wasn't a continent or landmass, it was just a point and click map.  I found it extremely counter immersive.

WOW's travel system does have a number of flaws, however. 

-Most classes don't get an intermediate travel form at 20 to tide you over until you get mounts at 40. 
-The two most popular raid locations do not have any sort of instant port anywhere close.  They're both far from the population centers and in the case of Silithius it's only got one route in and out and NO direct flight paths from a population center.
-Hearthstone timer is arguably too long.

Otherwise, you can pretty much get to any place in the world in about 10-15 minutes.  Longest conceivable trek of Silith to Kargath should take about that long.  Only people really attempting that would be level 60s and most 60s probably don't bind in Cenarian Hold.

2.  Never had a problem finding people when I needed them for quests.  But I'm mostly a soloer as far as leveling goes and only seek out others when it's in my benefit.  Access to a henchman system would be kind of nice, but they'd have to be significantly less retarded than GWs.  If possible, I'd rather they just include more quests like the "assault the elves" quest in Ashenvale where you help a group of NPCs conquer an outpost.

3.  Yep, instancing removes assholes.  Of course, instancing would remove the smirk from my face when I FROSTSHOCK! the mob before the other guy can tag it.  Next time they'll likely agree to group.

4. Yep, these quests suck. Only group for them if you're grouping with friends.  Most of these are quests are designed for solo advancement (except those that require instances).

5. I love escort quests.  Just love them.  Only real part I don't like is when the mob moves too slow.  I like them to be hectic. Most tend to respawn in less than 5-10 minutes.  Soloing or duoing escort quests is just a great test of the utility and survivability of your class/build.  I wish there were more escort/assault quests in the game. 

6. Noob running sucks. Get to 40 buy a mount. YAY! Get to 60, farm till your fingers break, get a faster mount. YAY!  I can see how this would turn people off.  The barrens especially can get quite tedius in the amount of running you end up having to do.  Having done the quests in these areas long enough, I know how plot out my course so there's little running without a purpose.

7. Well, this is mostly wrong. But heh, your impression.

8.  :| WTF am I doing then?

9.  /ignore Baobao. I think you can set it so you deny all duels also.

10.  Not on a PVP server.  Can't speak much to the ganking or what's your real issue here.

I don't much care for the 1-59 game anymore because I've already done it twice.  I enjoyed it on my shaman because I leveled with my friends.  I enjoyed it on my rogue because I got to attempt a lot of quests from a different perspective with vastly different tactics. None of my alts last past the early twenties anymore, which sucks, because my guild just opened up MC to brining alts.  Someone's fucking rogue twink got 5 set pieces in one night. 

I was wondering why you had left pxib.  I'm glad you cleared that up!

Otherwise, what Rasix said except I still enjoy the 1-59 game.  My altaholic nature is at an all time high with 7 total characters at the moment.  Anything beats avoiding raiding as much as possible.

Finding a good guild is key as said earlier.  I was close to quitting about 3 months ago until my friends and I found our current guild.  Now, I'm very satisfied.

I still really enjoy WOW. As most of you guys know, I have been in the same guild since closed beta, and we do pretty well for our selves. We started off as heavy PVP, but the battlegrounds and honor system kind of killed the "world pvp" that we liked. Also, you can only pvp so much. We then shifted our guild focus to PVE. We started a big PVE push about 2 months ago. In that time we killed Rag, which we had been unable to do before, and started work on BWL. We are currently up to Ebonroc in BWL, but we have had a bad 2 weeks, with Spring Break and Finals.

I have 2 level 60 characters on that server, a rogue and a warlock. I use my rogue for World PVP, and for PVE. I play my warlock for AV (which is a blast).

I am also currently working on Twisting Nether (RP-PVP) as a Paladin, since it was the only class I hadnt got to lvl20+. (OH MY GOD ITS EASY). I am actually having fun going through all the Alliance quests, and reading them for the lore and story. Also, while im not a big RPer, having people around RPing just helps with the atmosphere of the game. So far my Pally just hit lvl 26.

I might enjoy WoW more if I didn't feel like I had experienced most of what it had to offer, at least the things I am interested in.  If certain other games were not around, I'd probably be playing.

I am having fun in WoW again after absolutely having burnt out getting my mage to 60.  Leveling a druid (25 currently) is so much more fun than my mage it is un-freakin-believable.  I can solo things 4 lvls above me, do stealth assassinations, lot of fun diverse tactics in PvP (much more so than my standard response to every class with my mage) and my character even at 25 is in more demand for groups.  I only wish I had been smart enough to click on "druid" way back last year...

Choice on the class you like is very important in WoW.  I was ready to quit due to the boredom that is Paladin.  I switched my thinking to trying out 5 different alts and find my niche.  I am having way more fun with my warlock now.  There is no comparison.  That and a good guild has kept me playing for the last 4-5 months.

I think it really depends on the individual too.  Some people love the monotonous predictability and resilience to death that is pally-hood.  I have never even had the slightest inclination to start one though.

Don't worry, it starts to really slow down in the mid to late 30's. By the time you hit the mid 40's you'll dread the thought of even playing the toon. Sure, you have to work hard at dying, but taking minutes to kill even greens while using a purple weapon and no way to stop runners except for farmed defias nets gets helltasticly old. Plus, there isn't anything a pally can do that a different class doesn't do way, way better. And the class revamp actually made the class much worse. It was pretty much a spit in the eye compared to every other class revamp they did.

Oh, and good luck on keeping up with the repair bills. Warriors bitch about them, but having mobs beat on you for 3 minutes at a time really tears up your gear.

The solution to the pally repair bills should be to have them die quicker.  I hate god-damned paladins.  Those shiteaters just won't die.

Yeah, but it's not like they can kill you either. Just do what everyone else does: Pretend they're a marginally annoying part of the landscape.

I learned very quickly to ignore them and take down the gnomes instead.

Minutes to kill greens?  Surely you exaggerate.   I don't ever recalling it taking minutes to kill greens at any time when I was levelling my paladin, and that was with a 1hs.

Also, there IS a seal/judgement combination that stops runners.


Duh.  That's what a hybrid is like.


How did the revamp make the class "much worse"? 


I've never had any repair problems with my Paladin.

Well, maybe they cant kill you, but they can sure as hell heal the person your fighting while beating on you. I am not going in to playing a paladin with any preconceived notion that I will be a dps badass. Pallys probably have the worst DPS in the game. Having said that, there is one thing they absolutly excell at. Thats being the bast damn support/combat healers there is.

You right, I will probably get burnt out on him before I reach 60, but as of right now its fun, and a big change from my rogue or warlock. My rogue will always be my frist and greatest love. He is just SO fun to play. I love the frantic fast paced action of playing a rogue in pvp.

I pick and choose which quests to do.  I prefer Killing and Farming quests because you have to kill things to level up anyway, so I see them as free xp.  I have no compunction passing quests up that require me to travel to some out of the way place.

Pallys aren't bad. There are just too many of them. I'd rather have a pally in my party any day over a rogue or a hunter. One of my best friends is a pally and he has saved groups I've been in more times than I can count.

Their DPS is glacial, but their survival abilties are almost broken. We were 4-manning Stratholme live out of boredom and accidentally pulled one too many scarlet crusaders. By the time I died (and subsequentially our priest and 'lock) we were down to 2 elites at full health and one at about 10%.

The nearly dead one pulled a runner and my pally friend chased him back to a small hallway. I didn't see what happened, but 10-12 minutes later he came back and rezzed us after killing all three of those elites. Alone.

On the older servers this seems to be true, but on the newer servers they seems to be one of the lowest population classes.

I'm seriously considering changing my paladin to a healing maniac.  That includes changing talents to do so, plus getting all gear related to healing even if it means going away from Plate.  :-o

Most the time I stop attacking things in raids just to help heal anyway, so why not go full heal spec?  I suppose I'll go holy/def to be the hardest to kill priest around.

Paladins are a freakishly powerful healing and support class.  Luckily for the Horde, 99.9% of paladin players think they are rogues in plate.

ElGallo is so correct that it's painful.  I've encountered exactly 2 paladins who even attempted to fit into the support role.  The rest were drooling about slow 2hders and +str +crit gear.  It makes my mana pool cry as I'm spamming Prayer of Healing to cover the mages and the offtank while the paladin tries their "nukes" and spamming fucking Consecration.  Goddamn people.

I went to the test server last night to try a destro spec on my lock (without spending my hard earned gold on the respec).  I decided I like the spec a little, but I need more time to see if I can deal with the complete lack of survivability (but man, 3 shotting everyone in sight was pretty nifty).

Anyways on to the main topic:  I jumped into AB on the test server and there were like 10 pallies on the other side.  Those fuckers kept doing this thing I had NEVER seen a pally do before, they would like cast a spell and instead of it barely hurting me, their allies would gain back some of their hp.  And when I DoTed someone they would cast this other spell, and my DoT would be gone.  If this new breed of pallies makes it to live, alliance wil clearly need a nerf.

The class is working as intended.  The players aren't.

I think you see the same effect with Shamans to a lesser extent - people see a class that has the potential to swing around a big weapon and can also heal. "Heck why roll a Warrior or Rogue when I can poke people with my big e-peen stick AND heal myself too! Sign me up!"

Reminds me of a friend of mine who rolled a druid because "they can heal, cast, tank, and stealth".  I told him that that's cool, but remember hybrids can't do any of the above as well as the class that's specialized for it.  He said no, he thought in this game they do it just as well.  He thought I was stupid for "just" being a warrior.

He later quit the class and then the game in disgust because the class was "useless".

Your friend is an asshole.

Gay porn title?

Thats a Blessing that they already have. I havent really seen many pallys use it ether, but I was reading up on it, and it sounds pretty cool. Specially if the pally is using a very fast 1h weapon.

You are correct, sir.

He's one of those type who think that he is MISTAR UBAR GAMER and any game he can't excel in is just stupid.


I think someone forgot their green text today.

Cevik wins the thread.  So many people responded to his bit of sarcasm that I had to re-read it to be sure I was right to interpret it as a joke the first time.


He was describing Heals and Cleanse, not that blessing thingy.  :-D

:)

The problem with green text is that it take some of the funny away from the joke.  I'll use green for sarcasm sometimes, but in this case you needed to think for a second that I just may be serious in order to enhance the impact of the joke.. :)

I would have done it the same way, but I could not think of a better way to creatively break the news.

I lose.

Seriously, I see a lot of threads that start 'This Friend of Mine did' and end up with the most ridiculous account of stupidity or cruelty.  My only conclusion is that you guys choose friends solely based on personalities that make you look better.

I would start such stories with 'This complete fuckwad I hate did....'

Reading this post reminded me of a few reasons I left, but it largely wasn't gameplay issues.  Sure, instances and such were boring, but that was largely my guild's fault (for being too nice: "Oh, when you hit 10 make sure to head to Westfall, I'll get my 60 Paladin and run you through the Deadmines") and I wasn't looking forward to raiding at all, but mostly I felt it was a pretty decent game.

Mostly it was because I lakced any sense of identity with my characters.  I came up with an interesting semi-personality for my Rogue, but I just could not get past how unbelievably ugly he was when I couldn't cover his mug with a scarf, and the fantasy world, but its very nature, restricts the sorts of concepts you can play.  I don't know why it matters to me so much when I almost never do any actual roleplaying, but if I don't have a good reason in the back of my head to be smacking down a foozle (aside from "cause it gives exp and maybe moneys"... I mean, like, an in-character reason) I don't really feel very interested in smacking down said foozle.

Short answer- no personality, no individuality.  Not for me.

Been running my 28 tauren warrior through WSG the past couple of days, and I gotta say...

At low levels, Paladins are incredibly powerful. It's makes me very angry.

Also, the fact that all the paladins I've run up against lately are actually good (healing, cleansing, changing seals to wtf pwn me) is even more frustrating - at that level, I really have no way to kill them 1 v 1.

Because pallies can live forever, they are often left to solo defend a node in ab.  Nothing warms my heart more than a CoS + Fear while I cap the flag.. :)

Try hamstring/kiting them.  They have no ranged attack (unless they have engineering) so if you can stay out of melee range, you are teh win.

Problem is, you have to outlast them, which means you might fall asleep doing so.

Pallies are pretty uber at low levels. They can get a nasty mace at level 20 that's good until the mid-30s [kinda like the warrior whirlwind quest, only 10 levels earlier] if they have guildies helping them with their quest. It's the mid-40s when the suck starts to set in... I have a lv48 pally and even though I literally never die while doing quests and grinding mobs, it's slooooow. It doesn't help that there are virtually no pally-friendly quest rewards [ie. plate with +int] until level 60, and even then it's sparse.
However, I agree with cevik that they are an insanely useful support class if played right. The fact that 90% of the pally populace thinks the best use of the class is getting a huge-ass 2h, loading up on str/crit gear and trying to melee dps while letting all teammates die, then failing to kill their target, bubbling, going oom with one heal and dying makes me sadf.

Anyway, I think a warlock is best for solo node defense. :p Either SL with felhunter [rogue-proof, can dispel most CC, pet is insanely hard to kill with spells], affliction with imp [coex kite and draintank with infinite mana, stick CoA on flag cappers.. though it's getting fixed next patch] or SM/ruin with succubus [if you're not alliance].


-- Z.

I agree.  I can hold off 5 guys for so damn long with my NF/SL build that it's not even funny.  And likely 2 of them will be dead by the time my team arrives (and my team ain't slow at all)..

Um, I thought you had to have a ranged attack in order to kite?

And besides, they'll just hit me with one of their handful of stuns.

But it's ok, because every now and then, I get to land a big fat Execute, and it makes the hardship sooo worth it.

Hammer of Wrath [edit: I mean Hammer of Justice], and optionally Repentance (Which isn't a stun, it's a sleep and breaks on any damage) IF the Paladin is specced 31 points into Retribution.  The only other stun that is a class ability is a seal that gives attacks a chance to proc a 2 second stun, which is very rarely used by Paladins for the simple fact that it is completely random and therefore not very useful as a form of action denial.

My Paladin has 1 Stun on demand every 45 seconds.  Holy specced Paladins can stun once every 60 seconds. 

Not exactly a handful, more like 1.

Warriors are quite pathetic against paladins in that bracket because you lack the skills that lvl 60 warriors tend to use against paladins, mostly pummel and mortal strike.

Well, it certainly Feels like i get stunned a lot fighting paladins.

That's just the game telling you, "Look.  He's a Paladin.  I'm not even going to bother calculating or animating that attack you just did.  He's a friggin Paladin.  Do something else."

Damn Healadins.

Mortal strike so they can't heal as well, pummel it when they try, and keep rend and deep wounds on them.


And here's an anecdote about pallies, especially healadins:
This weekend we wiped at the Sulfuron Harbinger boss in MC.  Left standing were four pallies.  They tanked that boss for probably 15 minutes - long enough for our rogues to run back, re-enter the instance, and stealth back to them.

The whole time they did a grand total of 10% of his hit points before finally going down.

Don't have either yet, hehe.

Let my got off topic. (And back to the original topic) To clarify my thoughts. I don't like quests. I realize I am in the minority here but to me quests are very arbitrary and transparent.

In the end, the name of the game is to get XP. In a game without quests I get XP by killing what I want. In a game with quests I am led by the nose to kill 10 harpies to get 10 tail feathers. I may not like fighting harpies but that is where the XP is.

I would like quests if they felt meaningful to me, but they don't. I actually prefer just setting up a camp and pulling random mobs. Most quests in MMORPGs are just busy work. And I hate busy work. I'd rather just do something for no reason than do something for a lame pretense.

Maybe quests that advanced the story would be more interesting. "I need 10 tiger skulls - go kill some tigers" doesn't do anything for me at all. If I feel like killing tigers for XP I will. If I feel like killing something else I will. Fuck your tiger skulls.

I think people who view quests as somehow a lot more different and interesting than standard grinding for XP are easily fooled. They are just grinding for XP with slightly different clothing.

It's flavor, like so many other things in the game. It adds interest, it adds entertainment - I know I found many quests amusing for one reason or another. They serve a purpose, guiding first time players through unfamiliar zone progression. Grinding for XP with different clothing? People like clothing, it adds variety, it adds to the experience. My gear is just a set of numbers, why do I care what it looks like? I do, it's flavor. Environments are just holding pens for mobile bags of xp, what does it matter if they're aesthetically pleasing and immersive? All of these games are just "grinding xp" - it's all the other "clothing" on top that really makes the game what it is.

Agree.  Quests are just a flavoring put on top of grinding.  It gives me a list I can check off as I make my way through the game.  I'm not fooled at all.

WoW wouldn't be WoW without the quests.  They seem to be pretty successful.

It really is a matter of opinion though.  To say that people who like quests are "easily fooled' is like saying that people who watch TV are easily fooled.  Hey man, I have a secret:  it's just actors and ketchup, that guy didn't really just die.

I liked the quests the first time through.  My wife is now playing the first time through and while there are some pointless quests, some actually have a good storyline and make you feel like you really are the one and only agent of the Mayor of Darkshire or whatever.

I am leveling a second character to 60 now and I am preferring grinding this time around, so essentially I'm playing the game like you do Margalis.  But I still disagree with your basic premise, that the name of the game is XP.  To me that's like saying that the reason we watch sports is to gain encyclopedic knowledge of who won and who lost.  It's a lot more efficient just to read the sports pages the next morning and dedicate the evenings to memorizing sports encyclopedias.

But in both cases I think the experience is still important.  You could even make a case that if the end becomes more important than the journey, you've lost sight of the point of the game.

Give me quest grinding over camp checks and lists anyday.  At least there is some semblence of purpose, rather just watching a bar gradually edge upward.

I agree with all you guys in theory. I like flavor. I like cool quests, I like cool looking equipment.

"The harpies have stolen some supplies and you have to go kill some harpies and find the supply boxes" is not flavor for me. It's a fantasy-themed mad-libs. And the quest text and dialog in WoW are very poorly written and immersion is certainly not a strong suit. Cities are designed for a purely utilitarian basis, nobody in the entire world says a word unless they are a vendor or quest-giver, etc.

Maybe 1/10 quests in WoW is what I would call vaguely interesting. The rest are just paint-by-numbers stuff. I'm not one of those people that has to complete every quest or grab every item.

You can say that WoW must be doing something right because it is very popular. True. Then again, Britney Spears must be doing something right. Some popular things are very good, some are not.

The key point here is that I don't want to feel that I am being given a "semblence of purpose." I want to feel actual purpose, or else not bother. In the end I know it is a game and there is no *real* purpose, but I can suspend my disbelief and buy into the purpose being stated for the right game. If I feel the game is just going through the motions then I don't by into it.

Some fiction is contrived and some is not. The reality is that all fiction is fiction, but not all fiction is contrived. WoW quests are mostly contrived. Basically "well...people prefer quests so let's make a quest - um how about go collect some turnips!"

As far as my comment about XP - these games are about XP. That's not me talking. I like to take my time in games. I don't feel the need to rush around grabbing XP - if I'm having fun I really don't care how much XP I'm getting. But most people really aren't like that. These games are about hitting the next level and once that's over getting the next item.

This is just a question to get a point of reference but you seem to be talking like you've experienced a good deal of the content. Did you go any farther than a sub level 20 player horde side starting with arguably the most boring horde starting race (orc/troll)? Did you ever make it over to the undead area?

I can't say WoW does quests the best, but I can say that between the Alliance and Horde quests, Alliance wins hands down.  I played Horde with you peeps just past 20 and there is no comparison.

The team that designed Horde low level questing hopefully has been let go.  I don't want to see that kind of content continued in expansions.  Bleh.

Yeah... I played horde and alliance myself, and horde quests suck below 30ish. Duskwood > *.
However, 40-55ish seems to be easier as horde, as all the major quest hubs except for thorium point (which is minor anyway) are easily accessible from org, while alliance have to continent-hop a lot (there's no alliance-friendly poison vendor anywhere in southern kalimdor for example).
Doesn't make much of a difference in the end, though.


-- Z.

While I agree with you about the generic feel to so many quests in WoW, this statement is just plain bullshit.

I haven't played WoW in months and I still remember a few times in Stormwind nearly tripping over a couple children.  I think the girl was chasing the boy yelling "Give it back!  Give it back!"

There are plenty of other examples, but that's the most prominent in my mind.  Certainly it's not ALL OVER THE PLACE (and would be annoying if it was) but they did make an effort to include some background action for realism.

This is another one of those thigns that is MUCH MUCH more Alliance than Horde. There are a few places where Horde has this, but not even close to the extent that Alliance does. As some of you know, I have recently been leveling up and Alliance character. WOW their quests are so much better. I honestly feel robbed questing as Horde fo so long. Its really amazing the caliber of quests on the Alliance side compaired to the Horde side.

That's because Bliizzard hates the Horde.

Duh.

Blizzard hates Alliance.  Shamans and horde racial abilities should prove that for you.


Duh.





 :wink:

I made it to level 18 or so? Horde, Troll.

Let's not go into the "the game gets much better at level 40 argument." I don't care. 18 levels is plenty. In my time playing I literally did not see a single person who speaks other than vendors, quests givers and guards who give directions and things like that. (No random chit-chatters who provide color only)

"This game gets a lot more interesting after you grind through the boring uninspired part" may be true, but it isn't a compelling argument.

Did you ever make it to Undercity?  Pretty interesting place with a lot of little things going on outside of quest giving.


That wasn't my point in asking.  You experienced a very small portion of the game but it some how allows you to make grand sweeping statement about the nature of the quests and fiction when the path you took (through pure chance) is the most boring one available (especially if you limited yourself to the Barrens) and limited to the amount of leveling most people can do in less than a weekend.

It's like me passing judgement on EQ2 based on playing the Trial of the Isle months ago.   

Edit (of my edit): Bleh, screw it.  Not worth launching into a big argument over this.

Trial of the Isle takes about 3 hours to complete and gets you to level 6 out of 50 (?)

I played for WoW for two weeks or so and got to level 18 (?) out of 60. There is a big difference.

The fact that I chose a boring race and starting area isn't my fault. I'n not trying to argue or turn this into something acrimonious. From what I saw the quests sucked. I certainly believe that I got an unlucky draw with race selection and that the game gets more fun later, but 2 weeks is plenty of time for me to give up if I see nothing compelling. If I had played more I might change my mind but what reason did I have to play more?

You are right, as a horde troll up to level 18, THE QUESTS DID SUCK. That isn't your fault, it's just a statement of fact. The trolls are the least interesting race in the game (unless you are a big Bob Marley ganga fan), and their quests, especially the Horde quests in the teens located around the Barrens blow monkeys.

All they've been saying is there IS better stuff in the game, you just never happened to see it. Blizzard would do well to make the Troll stuff more interesting (oh and scour the Barrens from the world completely) or they could just keep it the same while they roll around in their sacks of money.

You can level faster in WoW doing nothing but grinding from the second you pop out of the den until the moment you ding 60 than you can by doing quests the entire time.  So, the quests are pretty much optional.  I agree with you that most quests in any of these games are mostly just a facade but, hey, what's not to like about facades?  Also, I think a lot of people just feel better logging off after playing a couple hours thinking "I saved Farmer Ted from the pig people and helped Little Timmy find his way back home through the kobold cave" or even "I knocked off 2 quests" than they do thinking "I ground 1.98% of a level tonight!"  That is, quests break down the grind into much smaller chunks so you get your pellets on a regular basis.

You also get more shiney.

When you know the quests very well they're way faster than grinding. Thing is some quests are simply not worth their xp in time while others are. I've done crossroads so many times now since US closed that I know the optimal way between all the quests, there's simply no way anybody grinding comes to close to the xp. Perhaps in the very late game when good quests starts to become scattered out to far in between grinding becomes better.

I think the superiority of quest-grinding peters out around 25-30. I remember levelling a few characters up to around 35-40, and it just sucked for a while. Quests start becoming cross-country, or else you need groups. STV is nice, but on a PvP server and solo, I found levelling much slower. And damn I hated Desolace and Thousand Needles.

But... up through 25, I did quests. I got really good at doing the Barrens quests in the right order to blaze through it, getting XP faster than I would by camp farming. Or, at least, it was for more entertaining. I'm the sort that gets a kick out of optimizing quest completion order, so that helped too.

35-40 badlands is crawling with quests. Not the easist place to get to as horde on a pvp server but you're gonna want the kagarth flight point eventually

Whatever, Alliance is gimp anyway. My 34 cow warrior and my 30 UD rogue friend were getting harassed a lot yesterday in Arathi/Hillsbrad. We each died once. The alliance people, all high-30s, died a Lot more.

newbs

It used to be much, much faster to grind than quest as a physical damage class (beta and early release when there were zero-ac grindable mobs for just about every level range).  I haven't levelled a character in a long while, but I still hear people say that grinding with some questing mixed (i.e. pick up the quests involving good grind mobs) in is the fastest path.  It'd be interesting to see the quest/grind mix of the people who win the test server levelling contestss.

Anyway, which is faster isn't really relevant to Margalis' point, which is that he wants to grind and feels WoW is anti-grind because quests give so much more xp.  Afer you leave the newbie zone, that isn't true.  You can pretty much follow either path and end up in roughly the same place in the end (the extra drops the grinder gets I would think largely balance out quest reward items).

Leveling speed depends on if you are talking actual ingame time or starting at 12 p.m. and going until 12 a.m. everyday until you hit 60.

I go the actual time played route, so I use the rest experience exclusively.  If I don't have rest exp on a character, it gets to sit on the "alt shelf" until it does.  Once a char has a couple of levels worth of rest exp, I hit the quests in the order of their location.  The quest exp gained doesn't take away from the rest exp, so I can actually stretch out the rest exp to nearly 3 levels sometimes.

If you organize your quests correctly so you minimize travel time, I beleive you can do better that route.

The other benefits of questing rather than all out grinding is the added quest items and reputation you get.