WoW Reviews Compilation Thread

[Nebu]

When is the fundamental gameplay going to change?

You draw some good analogies and I've asked the question above many times.  I think I've found an answer:

MMOG's will change in gameplay when hundreds of thousands of people stop paying to play the current incarnation.  

As they are, treadmills seem to be cash cows.  Innovation hasn't produced a guaranteed cash winner.  Sure, one day someone will hit the gaming homerun.  Until then, it's safer from an investor's view to go with what brings home the bacon.

[Morfiend]

The problem is that MMORPGs aren't changing.  We've just got graphical updates to muds that have been around for 20 years where you whack a mole over and over and build your character.  When is the fundamental gameplay going to change?

What about the fact that in WoW you dont wack-a-mole over and over to build your character?

[HaemishM]

CoH beat it at that category by a good 3-4 months.

[kuro]

Look doing quests where you get item x from person y and give it to person z isn't  anything new.  WoW is nice in that it tries to get you to explore over sitting in the same place playing wack a mole. However, it's hardly new in terms of gameplay.

[Xilren's Twin]

The problem is that MMORPGs aren't changing.  We've just got graphical updates to muds that have been around for 20 years where you whack a mole over and over and build your character.  When is the fundamental gameplay going to change?

What about the fact that in WoW you dont wack-a-mole over and over to build your character?

Come now, whacking a mole as part of a quest to get exp is hardly different from just whacking a mole for direct exp gameplay wise.  No question I prefer doing the quest aspect of the two, but it's not THAT different.  The gameplay is still you do combat to advance your character, just with more purpose given.

Now if you could do enough quests that didn't involve combat at all and still advance an adventure type character (as opposed to crafting experience as a seperate curve), that would be new.  Show me a game where you can be a lvl 50 master explorer/sage/thief with no kills on his history and now we're talking...

Combat = exp is just easy, and known.

Xilren

[Alakhai]

For example: split screen multiplayer, item pickups, role playing elements, track editors, online multiplayer, realistic physics, liscensing real cars, demolition derby games, car wars games, off road racing, motorcycle racing, spaceship racing, boat racing, cart racing, rc car racing, etc.

But was it Pole Position, and then suddenly a game that had all of those things?  No, they were gradual.  I think MMOs as a whole are taking small steps toward innovation.

EDIT:  I guess I should add, that the racing genre evolution was much faster, but it is rather stagnant now.  With such a large market for games, people are afraid to take the big leaps that the pioneers took, because the potential loss if your game bombs is huge.  An unfortunant side effect of having a big-budget gaming industry.

DAoC having consensual PvP as an endgame was a good step, the problem was their treadmill to get htere was just so damn bad.

Shadowbane took huge leaps in the PvP endgame area, but they fucked it bad, and even if they fix it now (which my understanding is, the game is exponentially better than it was at release) they missed their chance.

WoW moving to a quest-and-exploration based exp system is another good step (though CoH beat them to the quest-based by a few months).  They also have consensual PvP in certain areas, though this system is still being worked out so I can't comment on whether it will be good or not.

I'll agree that it would be awesome to be able to be a master crafter with no combat xp.  As a matter of fact, Blizzard has heard this complaint, and my understanding is they are doing away with the Skill Point system, and moving to a just-money system.  Meaning, if you can get guild mates to get you crafting supplies, and you sell the items you make to learn new recipes, you could be a master crafter with no combat xp (this is my understanding, which may turn out to be incorrect.)

Baby steps to be sure, but steps.

[geldonyetich]

Some steps forward, some steps back.

I'm under the opinion that City of Heroes made a bit of a U-Turn.  Many steps forward  with the genuinely fun gameplay.   Many steps backwards with the lack of compelling MMORPG-grade purpose to keep logging in.

World of Warcraft is feeling very much the same, but it's premature for me to say if this is because it genuinely lacks such purpose or if I just haven't found it yet.

Clearly my expectations in what I'm trying to find in a MMORPG are pretty dang complex.

[AOFanboi]

The problem is that MMORPGs aren't changing.  We've just got graphical updates to muds that have been around for 20 years where you whack a mole over and over and build your character.  When is the fundamental gameplay going to change?

It can be said to have changed in the form of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

What I would really like was a MMORPG that threw out combat. Right out. No whacking rats, no looting corpses. Gone! Instead, you have full-PvP economy, perhaps Uplink-style hacking, diplomacy, do missions for organizations for influence which you invest in access to other contacts, improved rank, access to better equipment, training etc.

That would be worth my money. Not the umpteen whackamole games.

[Merusk]

I'll agree that it would be awesome to be able to be a master crafter with no combat xp.  As a matter of fact, Blizzard has heard this complaint, and my understanding is they are doing away with the Skill Point system, and moving to a just-money system.  Meaning, if you can get guild mates to get you crafting supplies, and you sell the items you make to learn new recipes, you could be a master crafter with no combat xp (this is my understanding, which may turn out to be incorrect.)

Nope, the day after they announced the change they addressed the problem of guild mules by saying that each step in crafting will have a required level. 1, 10, 20, 35 I believe they were.

  This makes sense, since if you're limiting crafting "for the economy" (which is a bullshit reason, IMO) it makes no sense to allow a level 1 to be a master, since you can harvest with your main character and mail the crafting elements to your various craft mules.

[Soukyan]

A couple quick points. I saw mention of thottbot on this thread and I do hope that Blizzard takes a cue from it and implements some of the features, if only to cut down on the use of third party programs or to avoid the need for players to have them a la AC.

Second, there's already a working run speed hack for WoW. Not that this is a terribly difficult thing to accomplish, but it can play hell on PvP.

Lastly, I'm enjoying the game. I didn't think I would, but yes, the quests do make a difference to me. The highest character I have is a level 11 Nightelf Druid and I stopped playing that character for the same reason as was mentioned earlier in the thread. I don't want to feel like I'm quest treadmilling on release because I've already done all the quests up to X level. This is actually one MMOG that I could deal with not beta testing. The stress test has been plenty of a preview for me.

[MrHat]

I have a level 50 warrior. She spends most of her time soloing, which she does just fine. She also does very well in a duo. For these she stays with her dual axes and battle stance (no taunt, more damage). In a full group (5), she switches to defensive stance and uses taunt. The funny thing is, getting hit generates rage, so if the mob is hitting her, she has plenty of rage to taunt with. One more thing to add, playing a warrior in a full group can be HARD. Against multiple enemies you need quick reflexes and good judgement, and you can always do a better job.

Would you say a dual wielding Warrior in berserker stance has as much damage potential as a rogue?

[geldonyetich]

Second, there's already a working run speed hack for WoW. Not that this is a terribly difficult thing to accomplish, but it can play hell on PvP.

Erp.  I wonder what else is done clientside in WoW.  The "Blizzard is weak against cheater prevention" angle just dawned on me as being a potential issue for WoW.

[MrHat]

So I was reading more b.net WoW forums because I like that dirty feeling I get afterwards.  Since the stress test finishes tomorrow, I was curious to read what levels people got to in the last 9 or so days.

Seems like 40-42 is about the highest.  Now this seems fine to me because these people probably logged a solid 6d13h or whatever on thier chars in that time.  Which doesn't seem unreasonable.

However, I can almost smell Blizzard just looking for an excuse to make the leveling take longer.  God Damn.  I can't believe people complain, hey this doesn't take very long, make it take longer!

If Blizzard wants to bring anything to the table, let it be a relatively shorter leveling curve.  Let us play at the current pace at least.  Fuck.

Edit:  This was just posted by a blizz rep:

After talking with the lead designer, the team is generally very satisfied with the level of progression and there's a good chance that it will remain the way it is from here out.

Unfortunately, I can't guarantee this might not change sometime later on.

Tyren

[Draive]

I think most everyone realizes that WoW is nothing evolutionary. That being said, after the shitacular year we have had for MMORPGs ala Shadowbane and SWG most of us are looking for something that is simply stable and fun to play.

Minor issues such as not being able to solo an elite mob (still lost on this one, why SHOULD you be able to take on leet encounters by yourself) or the fact that the graphics are not on Par with EQII are nothing compared to the fact that they are actually releasing a stable playable game that is not grossly imbalanced or has broken core systems.

Sorry if I sound jaded, but after the last few MMORPGs to hit the shelves, WoW to me is a Godsend. If you want revolutionary and not evolutionary you could look to games such as Mourning (aka Realms of Krel) but considering it is not released yet, nor have many played it... it could very well be another Shadowbane.

[Alkiera]

they are actually releasing a stable playable game that is not grossly imbalanced or has broken core systems.

This remains to be seen, really.  I watch over the shoulder of a friend who is in beta3, and was playing a hunter.  That 20 minutes or so countered everything I quoted you saying, with the possible exception of 'playable' and 'game'.

The game CTD'd once, for no obvious reason.  His character was a night elf hunter, and his pet's damage is bugged to be far too low, hunters don't have talents yet, and the teleporter to get in (or in this case out) of his hometown was sketchy...  it ported him in fine, but it took him several minutes of running in and out of it to get it to port him back out later.

A finished game, it is not.  Nor has it been released yet.  It may well release in the state you claim above...  But I'll believe it when I see it, esp. if they hold to a November release.

--
Alkiera

[MrHat]

Just heads up to those that care:

1000 Beta Accounts Up For Grabs! Rush 6:46:PST

Great news from Nvidia today as they announce a further 1000 Beta slots are up for grabs through their Nzone website.

NVIDIA and Blizzard are working together to ready the game for play on NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), the preferred graphics hardware platform for World of Warcraft. The companies will also engage in strategic co-marketing activities as part of NVIDIA's "The Way It's Meant to Be Played" programme. To celebrate the collaboration, NVIDIA and Blizzard will randomly distribute 1,000 closed beta accounts to eager gamers hoping to be among the first to experience the game. Sign-ups will be held for one week only, starting today at Nzone.

As part of NVIDIA's The Way It's Meant to Be Played programme, World of Warcraft will undergo extensive compatibility testing to ensure a "no hassles" install-and-play experience for gamers equipped with NVIDIA GPUs. Blizzard has optimised the game for NVIDIA hardware and is working with NVIDIA to ensure the game plays well across a broad line-up of GPUs, from the brand new GeForceTM 6800 series to the GeForce 2. "The investment we're making with Blizzard in compatibility will pay out in spades as soon as the legions of gamers go from install to play quickly and effortlessly," added Rehbock.

A heads-up that the sign-ups are not yet live so I'm afraid you will just have to keep checking the site for an update :)

Here's the Link to NZone  

Give it a few though, I think the server is broke as is custom when shit like this happens.

[personman]

However, I can almost smell Blizzard just looking for an excuse to make the leveling take longer.  God Damn.  I can't believe people complain, hey this doesn't take very long, make it take longer!

The kind of pressure that comes from (a) people running away from life thinking advancement in a computer game beats having a real life, or (b) the professional eBayers.

I've long since given up why MOG companies think casual subs are a better long-term bet than burnouts, so I just don't buy their products.  I've giving WOW until the first major patch cycle before I consider a sub.

[Alkiera]

Just heads up to those that care:

Here's the Link to NZone  

Give it a few though, I think the server is broke as is custom when shit like this happens.

When will people learn that 'Just keep checking for the update!' is not a good marketing move?  It sounds good, 'cause people will refresh your site alot, and maybe see ads, or other topics on the site they find interesting...

But in almost every case, your site gets hosed by the extra traffic, and people end up thinking you suck 'cause you can't keep your site running.

--
Alkiera

[Resvrgam]

I had a completely different impression of the game than I was expecting.

I only signed up for the Stress Test because I was curious to see how Blizzard would handle the lame tread-milling of a MMOG-style game.  To my surprise, I had a blast.

WoW’s graphics suck IMO and are akin to the aged Quake 3 engine’s level of detail (and sometimes worse).  Fortunately, after 15 minutes of game play, the graphics didn’t seem to bother me as much as I expected them to.  Their Warcaft 3-style presentation ran silky-smooth on a variety of test systems with all features maxed out (sans the water due to it not being enabled in the Stress Test).  I ran the game on:

P4 2.8 GHz, 1 GB PC1066 RDRAM, Geforce 6800 Ultra OC’d
P4 3.2 GHz, 1 GB PC3500 DDRAM, ATI Radeon 9800XT
P4m 1.9 GHz, 384 MB PC2100 DDRAM, Geforce 4Go 440

And received very similar results with all the bells and whistles enabled in the test (circa 30 FPS-65 FPS).  I ended up enabling 4x FSAA on the 6800’s system to try and squeeze all I could out of the graphics presentation but hardly noticed anything special beyond a framerate drop.  The FSAA was nice and jaggy-eliminating but didn’t change the horrible textures and low poly models.

I played a Night Elf Hunter and, throughout the 10+ day test, I only managed to advance to Level 14.  That may seem slow to many but I’m not a power-leveler/gamer and found my “slow” pace to be quite enjoyable.  Since I don’t appreciate being forced into a dependence on other players (the way SWG’s model worked), I find myself a 70% solo/30% group player.  This game fully supported my playing style and was a treat to explore and quest in.  The PvP and raids as well as the fear of the “other faction” was amazing to see unfold as bitter enemies within the same faction put aside their differences to drive off the opposition (saw it happen 3 times and thought it was a profound step in the right direction as far as game play design goes).

LevelQuest’s Planes of Power expansion inflicted a more hostile path on its players by forcing them to group and get flagged in order to progress.  This finite design is fundamentally flawed and, as a result, it looks like SOE’s answer to this problem is to force their playerbase into abandoning their characters of LevelQust Live and hop on over to LQ2 when it’s released…“Of course, we’re not making EQ2 to cannibalize our previous franchise!” SOE exclaims.  Well, it looks like they painted themselves into a corner if you ask me.  Omens of War is just another half-invested attempt to gouge more money out of its customers and EQ2’s poorly designed “We’ve built it for future hardware we’ve never tested it on” engine is yet another reason I’m not too happy with SOE.

Bottom line:  WoW’s graphics suck and it’s nothing revolutionary as far as a game in this genre straying from the same formulas, but it sure beats having to buy an over-priced system, multiple poorly-made expansions and a slew of “tweaking after release” we’ll be seeing from some of Blizzard’s competitors.

[Alluvian]

Wow, amazing how many people rip EQ as a failure when they are one of the biggest success stories in the industry.  So you don't like them.  Big hairy deal, hundreds of thousands of people still do.

And if you can't see that EQ2 will be different than your example of Luclin then you have not paid any attention at all.  EQ2 CANT pull off the big raids.  Four groups will be the max, which is still pretty big, but hardly the zerg rush of old.  Most content supposedly designed for single groups.  For those not going in with a group of friends it might be pickup group hell.  The soloability of the game is yet to be seen.  I will be going into EQ2 just like I played through EQ1, with a well balanced group of friends.  So I expect to enjoy it at least on some levels.  And when I stop liking it, I stop playing it.  

Try to separate your own opinions from global facts.  They are not the same thing.  I hated keying and all that crap as well, and have not been playing to see the last two expansions.  But there are still a lot playing that game.  Will WoW make a huge impact in EQ numbers?  Probably not, but you never really know.

WoW is a good game though.  I don't think in the end it is the game for me.  It was close, but something about it bothers me.  I think it was at least partly the graphics, especially the very boring simplisticly drawn enemies to fight.

I will try them both out in beta and see what I like.  I will be playing one of them.

[Morfiend]

I would just like to say, that I personally love the WoW graphics. I love how different the zones look, and you could pretty much be randomly teleported anywhere in the world, and run around for a minute and know where you are just by the atmosphere of the zone.

It really seems some people cannot stand the graphics, and its hard for me to understand, but to each his own I guess.

[MrHat]

I would just like to say, that I personally love the WoW graphics. I love how different the zones look, and you could pretty much be randomly teleported anywhere in the world, and run around for a minute and know where you are just by the atmosphere of the zone.

It really seems some people cannot stand the graphics, and its hard for me to understand, but to each his own I guess.

Don't you wish you could at least turn them up though?

[Morfiend]

I would just like to say, that I personally love the WoW graphics. I love how different the zones look, and you could pretty much be randomly teleported anywhere in the world, and run around for a minute and know where you are just by the atmosphere of the zone.

It really seems some people cannot stand the graphics, and its hard for me to understand, but to each his own I guess.

Don't you wish you could at least turn them up though?

I do, but on low settings they look so good already, I can almost forgive that. Also, they DO get better if you go up in resolution.

I just like the "cartoony" look so much, I think it give the world more "personality" than any MMOG so far, and they look so good already, that mostly, I dont feel then need to try and turn them up.

[MrHat]

I do, but on low settings they look so good already, I can almost forgive that. Also, they DO get better if you go up in resolution.

I just like the "cartoony" look so much, I think it give the world more "personality" than any MMOG so far, and they look so good already, that mostly, I dont feel then need to try and turn them up.

Don't get me wrong, I love them too.  It really feels like an escape when I play, like an alternate universe.  When I was in the stress test, I had all the options turned up, and there were still moments where I felt that the graphics needed to be 'rounded' or 'sharpened'.

[Draive]

I hate to state the obvious but most likely, they will have an option to increase the poly count by release or early next year. The important thing is they have the textures, animation etc down pat.