The draw of WoW....

[Ironwood]

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

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

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

[Merusk]

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

[Ironwood]

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

 :-D

[Lightstalker]

I never got stuck.  Not once.

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

[Tannhauser]

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

[Tale]

WoW's success is no secret

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

[Merusk]

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

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

[Kail]

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

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

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

[Merusk]

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

[Fabricated]

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

[Elsebet]

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

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

[jpark]

I want to go back to EQ but it feels so shallow now. And after what they did to Freeport....

What did they do to Freeport?

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

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

 

[MrHat]

WoW's success is no secret

1. A MMO of a highly popular IP Hot Celeb Pics
2. Polish
3. Interesting and varied world design Kinky Coeds
4. Polish
5. Distinct races at start all with unique and interesting lore, skills and areas. Exotic Chicks
6. Polish
7. Amazing art design Hentai
8. Polish
9. Focus on questing as a levelling up mechanic instead of grinding. Prentending to think about your wife, but you're not
10. Polish
11.  Technically stable, low system reqs. Everyone can do it

WoW is alot like masturbating, without the finish.

[stu]

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

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

[Chimpy]

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

It will increase your priestly fun a hundredfold.

[Threash]

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

[Phred]

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

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

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

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

[Fabricated]

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

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

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

[Sogrinaugh]

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

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

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

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

[Kail]

Derail:

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

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

Ah, well.

[Fabricated]

Derail:

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

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

Ah, well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sogrinaugh]

Derail:

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

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

Ah, well.

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

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

[Azazel]

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

 

[Chimpy]

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Ironwood]

Anyone who ignores any quest in Silverpine is a retard.

[SurfD]

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

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

[Koyasha]

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

[SurfD]

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

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

[Sogrinaugh]

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

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

[Chimpy]

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

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

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

But I could be totally wrong.

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

[Fabricated]

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

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

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

[Koyasha]

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

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

[Fabricated]

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

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

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

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

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

[SurfD]

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

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

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

[Fabricated]

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

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

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

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

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