Cataclysm

[Selby]

*I* play with no sound.  Music is on unless it's a raid =P

I don't do voice and the other two I can't do at the same time I'm playing a game.

There are other aspects to it.  I'm picking the main social one since that's a big point of online games.

This is exactly my feelings too.  I enjoy playing a game while chatting with my friends when they are on.  The others are only for chatting, which I don't really care for overly.

[Malakili]

So instead of playing a full fledged single player RPG, you'd rather play a watered down version of one so that you can chat with your friends... Something that can be accomplished with Steam, mIRC, or Ventrilo/Teamspeak (applications already actively used by WoW players)

I don't do voice and the other two I can't do at the same time I'm playing a game.

There are other aspects to it.  I'm picking the main social one since that's a big point of online games.

Well, i think this is where the divide happens.  To me "the social one" is that I'm PLAYING with other people, not just talking to them.  If I want to talk to people while playing a game I will sit with my laptop off to the side of my desk and have aim, skype, irc, or whatever open while playing.

[Sjofn]

You have the option to play with those other people when they're all in the same game as you. I am perfectly happy to solo to 80 repeatedly, but I also like having the option to say "Me!" when someone asks if anyone wants to do an instance or could someone help them with some group quest or whatever. That's the major difference between an MMO and a single player game for me. It's a shared experience, but I don't have to depend on anyone if I don't want to.

[Nightblade]

You have the option to play with those other people when they're all in the same game as you. I am perfectly happy to solo to 80 repeatedly, but I also like having the option to say "Me!" when someone asks if anyone wants to do an instance or could someone help them with some group quest or whatever. That's the major difference between an MMO and a single player game for me. It's a shared experience, but I don't have to depend on anyone if I don't want to.

People here seem to be under the impression that having a more group oriented game will somehow rob them of the option to go solo if they so choose. The problem I have with WoW is that it's no longer a world. The overworld, once the expansion rush is over, is packed with three types of players. The type of player running around like a worker ant to get his dailies done, the guy who sits in town waiting for his queue to pop, and the guy who only logs on to raid. I'm not sure why people bother paying a subscription fee for something that can barely qualify as a persistent world at this point. If it gets any worse, you're going to have some shit like CRIMECRAFT.

[Rasix]

Again, if the audience overwhelmingly wants a game where they're forced to solo, why are they playing an MMO?

I don't play MMOs for the people. 

Why do you play them, then?

Because they're games and I'm a gamer. I may approach this genre different than most people, but MMOs are games to me first.  If it fails to me as a game, then I won't play it.  This why primarily I don't jump into every single goddamn MMO like a lot of people here.  I'm not looking for the next best broken piece of shit that lets me chat at the same time. 

WoW is a huge game.  Leveling a new character provides over 240 hours of content (even the longest RPGs rarely crack 100) even if you know where to look and are packing heirlooms.  The gameplay isn't honestly worse than a single player RPGs except for the fact that you're not getting cutscenes and expensive voice overs.  WoW's hotkey driven combat is just about as deep as anything Bioware's put out.  There's large landmasses, neat environments and quests, quests and more quests.  There's bank space, guild bank space to share between characters, an economy, tradeskills, PVP when I want to, and also, a couple of my friends play.  But for the most part, those other people could be NPCs and I really wouldn't care that much. 

I play WoW as long as WoW works as a game for me.  When I run out of stuff I can do, I stop playing. Once I stopped raiding, this would happen very quickly in Vanilla and TBC.  For various reasons which you probably disliked, WOLK kept me busy for much longer stretches of time.  Heroics were no longer off limits because I wasn't a well geared healer or cc and in ICC5 they even let me get some sweet weapons. I also didn't have to spend my precious game time organizing a group or sitting in a guild chat full of people I thought were rather odious but offered an opportunity to do content I couldn't do on my own.

SWTOR will probably work rather well for me.  WoW may continue to work rather well for me.  But I'll play them because I find them to be decent games worthy of my time.  I'll likely continue to ignore all of the other crap that releases in a sad state and thinks it can make money off me because it's on the internets.

[Ratman_tf]

I'll take another lap at this. I'm currently playing some ChampO for a change of scenery. And I'm mostly soloing it, or duoing with Sly once in a while. There does need to be a concession to the fact that sometimes your buddies aren't online, and you hate the seething cesspool of PUGing, and still want to play a bit. But ChampO and a lot of other games activley discourage grouping and set up soloing as the leveling paradigm. It's expected now, and that's how the content is done up.

As I said before, I blame a lot of soloing on the actual design of the game, where it has fallen out to be more desirable to play on your own except for clearly marked and segregated group content. And IMO that's a flaw in the design, not a feature.
Others may disagree, but they're wrong and should feel bad.  

[Ratman_tf]

WoW is a huge game.  Leveling a new character provides over 240 hours of content (even the longest RPGs rarely crack 100) even if you know where to look and are packing heirlooms.

If Mass Effect made you grind 1000's of foozles it would have hundreds of hours of 'content' too.

[Ingmar]

People here seem to be under the impression that having a more group oriented game will somehow rob them of the option to go solo if they so choose.

That's because that's always what happens when people set out to make a more group-oriented game. You get Vanguard.

[Rasix]

WoW is a huge game.  Leveling a new character provides over 240 hours of content (even the longest RPGs rarely crack 100) even if you know where to look and are packing heirlooms.

If Mass Effect made you grind 1000's of foozles it would have hundreds of hours of 'content' too.

Sounds grand?  (I've spent a couple hundred or so hours in the ME universe counting replays).

WoW isn't making me do anything.  It's presenting content in a manner that has me voluntarily killing 1000s of foozles.  This is something WAR and AoC did poorly enough that I gave up on them rather early.  Their powers of compulsion seem to be lacking.

I just don't play for other people.  My friends played a lot of Dark Age, but  I found that game so lacking that I gladly just listened to them bitch on the phone about it rather than play.  I don't really care if a game encourages grouping or not, but the current trends of catering to a solo style gameplay works for me.  This might be different if I had a stable group of people to play with and a set time when I could expect to play, but that just isn't happening.  And really, it'll never happen. 

[Lantyssa]

People here seem to be under the impression that having a more group oriented game will somehow rob them of the option to go solo if they so choose.

That's because that's always what happens when people set out to make a more group-oriented game. You get Vanguard.

Or FFXI, which was many people's ideal game, except you couldn't do anything solo past level 10.

[Selby]

If Mass Effect made you grind 1000's of foozles it would have hundreds of hours of 'content' too.

All of the single player RPGs from days of yore included sessions where you had to kill stuff repeatedly to actually advance to the next level of content.  Some were really bad about this too.  Hardly any different from WoW, except you can't use a hex editor to skip the parts you dislike in WoW.

[SurfD]

If Mass Effect made you grind 1000's of foozles it would have hundreds of hours of 'content' too.

All of the single player RPGs from days of yore included sessions where you had to kill stuff repeatedly to actually advance to the next level of content.  Some were really bad about this too.  Hardly any different from WoW, except you can't use a hex editor to skip the parts you dislike in WoW.

Yep, with very few exceptions, you usually played the game in mixed blocks of "do shit + advance story" and "Kick around and level till you slaughter everything in the area easily".   And after you had trained yourself to eat, sleep and breathe that kind of playstyle, it made it REALLY fun when you actually ran into the odd game that could actively punish you for leveling too quickly (7th saga, im looking at you, you fucking bastard).

[SurfD]

WoW is a huge game.  Leveling a new character provides over 240 hours of content (even the longest RPGs rarely crack 100) even if you know where to look and are packing heirlooms.

If Mass Effect made you grind 1000's of foozles it would have hundreds of hours of 'content' too.

Except that mass effect is less of a traditional RPG, and rather more a mission driven shooting game, with pseudo-rpg trappings and a cool story.   I mean, hell, Experience is almost completely meaningless in ME simply because it is impossible to "out level" your opponents, since all the mobs in the game scale to your current level.  Exp in ME is simply a clever way of gateing skill progression.  They could have simply removed the EXP system entirely, and given you X new skill points for every Y missions accomplished, and absolutely nothing would have changed in the way the game worked.

[Selby]

(7th saga, im looking at you, you fucking bastard).

While a fun game in places, it was so evil with it's leveling system.  You could get overleveled, then get utterly stomped by the next area's worth of monsters - who gave barely any XP or $$ differences from the old, so you had to grind yourself on content for days.  Then if your companion died or you wanted another, you had to face these COMPLETELY over-powered monstrosities in the form of the other 6 NPCs who pretty much 1-shot you.  Yes, that game had moments of fun I really enjoyed but I wanted to punch whoever designed the leveling system in the junk.  And this was when I was 14.

[SurfD]

(7th saga, im looking at you, you fucking bastard).

While a fun game in places, it was so evil with it's leveling system.  You could get overleveled, then get utterly stomped by the next area's worth of monsters - who gave barely any XP or $$ differences from the old, so you had to grind yourself on content for days.  Then if your companion died or you wanted another, you had to face these COMPLETELY over-powered monstrosities in the form of the other 6 NPCs who pretty much 1-shot you.  Yes, that game had moments of fun I really enjoyed but I wanted to punch whoever designed the leveling system in the junk.  And this was when I was 14.

The worst part about it was that Key NPC's leveled up directly in relation to your level, however, if an NPC reached a level where new skills and abilities became available, they AUTOMATICALLY got them, where as you had to actually progress far enough story wise through the game to find a store and buy them.   This could be devistating in some fights, like the pre-determined nemesis boss fights, where your character's nemesis would come out and fight you, and you would have Fireball 2 and Healing spell 2, and your opponent woul have Ice Spell 4, and Heal spell 3, AND a 3rd spell that you didnt even have access to yet.

Sort of like a Warrior in WoW hitting level 60, and having to fight a level 60 rogue, except the warrior hasnt been able to buy any new abilities or gear since level 40, while the rogue has access to everything he normally would have.

[Selby]

The worst part about it was that Key NPC's leveled up directly in relation to your level, however, if an NPC reached a level where new skills and abilities became available, they AUTOMATICALLY got them, where as you had to actually progress far enough story wise through the game to find a store and buy them.   This could be devistating in some fights, like the pre-determined nemesis boss fights, where your character's nemesis would come out and fight you, and you would have Fireball 2 and Healing spell 2, and your opponent woul have Ice Spell 4, and Heal spell 3, AND a 3rd spell that you didnt even have access to yet.

Exactly.  Most of my fights were "NPC uses barrier spell\B Power, I use something and miss\not kill them, NPC 1-shots me with something I've never seen."  Then they take your stupid runes and gain EVEN MORE power.  I think my SNES reset button still has dents from my fingers hitting it so much learning to play that stupid game (I moved the console right next to my chair specifically to avoid getting up and hitting it every 5 minutes).

Kind of like going in to MC and being made the bomb, which hit for 4k damage and the highest you could muster up in blues was 3200.  You prayed for the RNG to not choose you long enough in that fight to win it without having to eat a repair bill.  An exercise in frustration and anger.

[Nightblade]

People here seem to be under the impression that having a more group oriented game will somehow rob them of the option to go solo if they so choose.

That's because that's always what happens when people set out to make a more group-oriented game. You get Vanguard.

That doesn't necessarily mean it HAS to be like that though.

I just don't play for other people.  My friends played a lot of Dark Age, but  I found that game so lacking that I gladly just listened to them bitch on the phone about it rather than play.  I don't really care if a game encourages grouping or not, but the current trends of catering to a solo style gameplay works for me.  This might be different if I had a stable group of people to play with and a set time when I could expect to play, but that just isn't happening.  And really, it'll never happen.  

I don't exactly have a group of people I play with either, but games today do little to encourage team work and cooperation. Forcing people to do it isn't the same as encouraging it, when you force people to group you get shit communities like the one in FF11; where White Mages were allowed to be giant pricks because they were an exceedingly rare and valuable party member, far moreso than in any other game.

[apocrypha]

I don't exactly have a group of people I play with either, but games today do little to encourage team work and cooperation. Forcing people to do it isn't the same as encouraging it

OK, I do have a group of people I play WoW with. It's a small group (often only 2-3 of us online, occasionally 5-6) but we find that WoW gives us a perfect balance between soloing, small group content and large group content. We are all perfectly happy solo levelling, or using the RDF to do dungeons solo, and if someone else is online then we can choose to either just carry on doing our respective solo things whilst chatting on Skype or we have a range of group stuff we can do.

Couple of us going into a random heroic (or lower level dungeon if we're wanting to level lowbies) is more fun than doing them solo. Having 2 or 3 of us about gives the couple of shy/anti-social/low-geared guildies more confidence to join random dungeons with strangers. Joining up for a group quest with someone who's struggling to solo that level 58 elite is more fun than doing it at a higher level solo, although that option is always there if nobody is about. If there's 5 of us on then we can do dungeons as proper guild groups! We can do old raid content, we can do things like the arena combat quests in Nagrand/Zul-Drak/Icecrown etc.

There's plenty of raid PUGs going on our server most days. The weekly raid quest makes it easier for inexperienced and badly geared people to get into raids and means people run raids for content that isn't current - and often you can get people to do more than just the quest boss if you advertise it as such beforehand. We're on a low-population Horde side which means that you get to know people outside your guild and if you get a good reputation it's remembered. Our guild is a mature, friendly, helpful and well-behaved guild entirely lacking in retards. We all get groups easily.

Yes, it's perfectly possible to solo to 80 and solo dailies and use the RFD to do heroics solo. But WoW encourages us to do stuff together when we can because it's more fun and by providing content that is better done with more people. If you're simply min-maxing your levelling then solo is the most efficient way to do it, i.e. shortest route to 80. But not necessarily the most fun. Having a few good friends with which to do whatever content we like (and there is a LOT more content that you can do with friends than solo) has made WoW greatly more enjoyable for us. Voice comms play a big part in it for us, we have a great laugh most evenings regardless of whether we're grouped or not.

[Ingmar]

In particular I find the random dungeon finder has really transformed the level-up process - I group far more than I ever did before while leveling up now that I can queue up and go back to questing instead of having to wait around in a LFG channel and drum up interest to get anywhere.

[apocrypha]

Plus with some thinking and a friend or two you can reduce the queue waiting times drastically. I've dual-specced or respecced a bunch of my alts so that I now have either a tank or a healer at 50-ish, 60-ish and 70-ish. Any of my guildies levelling a DPS in those level ranges can group with me if I'm on and get a few mins queue instead of a 30-40 min one.

How is that not encouraging grouping?

[Sheepherder]

How is that not encouraging grouping?

BECAUSE MY DICK ISN'T BLEEDING.

[caladein]

In particular I find the random dungeon finder has really transformed the level-up process - I group far more than I ever did before while leveling up now that I can queue up and go back to questing instead of having to wait around in a LFG channel and drum up interest to get anywhere.

Yeah, the DPS queues are long enough during the mid-levels that you can spend a half-hour or so questing and then hop into a dungeon for another half-hour for a change of pace.  It's great.

[DLRiley]

Again, if the audience overwhelmingly wants a game where they're forced to solo, why are they playing an MMO?

I don't play MMOs for the people. 

Why do you play them, then?

Because they're games and I'm a gamer. I may approach this genre different than most people, but MMOs are games to me first.  If it fails to me as a game, then I won't play it.  This why primarily I don't jump into every single goddamn MMO like a lot of people here.  I'm not looking for the next best broken piece of shit that lets me chat at the same time. 

WoW is a huge game.  Leveling a new character provides over 240 hours of content (even the longest RPGs rarely crack 100) even if you know where to look and are packing heirlooms.  The gameplay isn't honestly worse than a single player RPGs except for the fact that you're not getting cutscenes and expensive voice overs.  WoW's hotkey driven combat is just about as deep as anything Bioware's put out.  There's large landmasses, neat environments and quests, quests and more quests.  There's bank space, guild bank space to share between characters, an economy, tradeskills, PVP when I want to, and also, a couple of my friends play.  But for the most part, those other people could be NPCs and I really wouldn't care that much. 

I play WoW as long as WoW works as a game for me.  When I run out of stuff I can do, I stop playing. Once I stopped raiding, this would happen very quickly in Vanilla and TBC.  For various reasons which you probably disliked, WOLK kept me busy for much longer stretches of time.  Heroics were no longer off limits because I wasn't a well geared healer or cc and in ICC5 they even let me get some sweet weapons. I also didn't have to spend my precious game time organizing a group or sitting in a guild chat full of people I thought were rather odious but offered an opportunity to do content I couldn't do on my own.

SWTOR will probably work rather well for me.  WoW may continue to work rather well for me.  But I'll play them because I find them to be decent games worthy of my time.  I'll likely continue to ignore all of the other crap that releases in a sad state and thinks it can make money off me because it's on the internets.

I'm the same. I play games because their games not because its facebook. Why play a game that sucks? Is local chat seriously that awesome that I need to spend $15 a month for it?

[Draegan]

So, they're completely changing the talent tree thing.

When we first announced our design goals for class talent trees back at BlizzCon 2009, one of our major stated focuses was to remove some of the boring and "mandatory" passive talents. We mentioned that we wanted talent choices to feel more flavorful and fun, yet more meaningful at the same time. Recently, we had our fansites release information on work-in-progress talent tree previews for druids, priests, shaman, and rogues. From those previews and via alpha test feedback, a primary response we heard was that these trees didn’t incorporate the original design goals discussed at BlizzCon. This response echoes something we have been feeling internally for some time, namely that the talent tree system has not aged well since we first increased the level cap beyond level 60. In an upcoming beta build, we will unveil bold overhauls of all 30 talent trees.

Talent Tree Vision

One of the basic tenets of Blizzard game design is that of “concentrated coolness.” We’d rather have a simpler design with a lot of depth, than a complicated but shallow design. The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don’t think that’s possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents. With this reduction in tree size we need to make sure they're being purchased along a similar leveling curve, and therefore will also be reducing the number of total talent points and the speed at which they're awarded during the leveling process.

As a result, we can keep the unique talents in each tree, particularly those which provide new spells, abilities or mechanics. We’ll still have room for extra flavorful talents and room for player customization, but we can trim a great deal of fat from each tree. The idea isn’t to give players fewer choices, but to make those choices feel more meaningful. Your rotations won’t change and you won’t lose any cool talents. What will change are all of the filler talents you had to pick up to get to the next fun talent, as well as most talents that required 5 of your hard-earned points.

We are also taking a hard look at many of the mandatory PvP talents, such as spell pushback or mechanic duration reductions. While there will always be PvP vs. PvE builds, we’d like for the difference to be less extreme, so that players don’t feel like they necessarily need to spend their second talent specialization on a PvP build.

The Rise of Specialization

We want to focus the talent trees towards your chosen style of gameplay right away. That first point you spend in a tree should be very meaningful. If you choose Enhancement, we want you to feel like an Enhancement shaman right away, not thirty talent points later. When talent trees are unlocked at level 10, you will be asked to choose your specialization (e.g. whether you want to be an Arms, Fury or Protection warrior) before spending that first point. Making this choice comes with certain benefits, including whatever passive bonuses you need to be effective in that role, and a signature ability that used to be buried deeper in the talent trees. These abilities and bonuses are only available by specializing in a specific tree. Each tree awards its own unique active ability and passives when chosen. The passive bonuses range from flat percentage increases, like a 20% increase to Fire damage for Fire mages or spell range increases for casters, to more interesting passives such as the passive rage regeneration of the former Anger Management talent for Arms warriors, Dual-Wield Specialization for Fury warriors and Combat rogues, or the ability to dual-wield itself for Enhancement shaman.

The initial talent tree selection unlocks active abilities that are core to the chosen role. Our goal is to choose abilities that let the specializations come into their own much earlier than was possible when a specialization-defining talent had to be buried deep enough that other talent trees couldn’t access them. For example, having Lava Lash and Dual-Wield right away lets an Enhancement shaman feel like an Enhancement shaman. Other role-defining examples of abilities players can now get for free at level 10 include Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, Mutilate, Shadow Step, Thunderstorm, Earth Shield, Water Elemental, and Penance.

More info in the link above.

[Nevermore]

Completely new talent system.

Summary:

• Each tree will be 31 talent points
• Players will have 41 talent points to spend at level 85
• At level 10, a talent tree must be chosen.  You will be locked into that tree and cannot spend points on the other two until you have invested 31 points into your chosen specialty, at level 70.
• Upon choosing your tree at 10, you automatically get passive bonuses and 'class defining' skills (Dual Wield for Enhancement or Penance for Disc, for example)
  

While their are aspects of this that sound pretty nice for leveling (Shadowstep at 10!), it also sounds like they solved the 'cookie cutter build' problem by forcing everyone to have the same builds.    Having to invest at least 31 points into a tree and only having 41 total points to work with doesn't leave a whole lot for customization.


Edit:  My post is better than Draegan's because I didn't just cut and paste half the blue post. ;)

[Lakov_Sanite]

To be fair, everyone pretty much has the same build now.  I'm more worried that they're just dumbing it down now but it'll just get filled up with more bloat later.

[Ragnoros]

Bah, you both beat me to it.

Having said that, I really like the changes. It will make leveling alts much nicer, having your spec defining skill(s) / passive(s) at level 10 rather then 30, 40 50, etc.

I also like their idea to trim the amount of counter skills and talents in PvP down a notch. Playing a Holy Pally I had something like 3 buttons that were just for escaping, mitigating or preemptively avoiding a single mechanic, like snare or silence. Too much for us old guys to keep track of.

[Ingmar]

Love the change. There are too many classes now that are stuck waiting until level 30 or 40 before they start to play even a little like they do at 80. Letting people really do their jobs properly at lower levels can only improve the PUG dungeon experience.

[Nevermore]

Getting dual wield at 10 as Enhancement or Shadow Form (I assume that's what Shadow will get) = awesome!

Not having access to Improved Ghost Wolf or Spirit Tap until 70 if you aren't Enhancement or Shadow, respectively = not so awesome.

[Malakili]

Getting dual wield at 10 as Enhancement or Shadow Form (I assume that's what Shadow will get) = awesome!

Not having access to Improved Ghost Wolf or Spirit Tap until 70 if you aren't Enhancement or Shadow, respectively = not so awesome.

Yeah, that is the downside.  There were some oddball leveling builds that were nice to get a 5 points or so in just one talent at the top of one tree, and then invest in another tree.  Going to suck not to have those now.  Hopefully getting the passive/feature abilities earlier will make up for it though.

I don't even know why I'm posting here, i'm going not going to buy this.

[Rendakor]

I like that you're getting class-defining abilities at level 10 now; however, I don't like the decreased diversity in builds this will lead to. The odds of there being even a few free talent points to spend beyond the core "build" for most specs are pretty slim.

[Ingmar]

Getting dual wield at 10 as Enhancement or Shadow Form (I assume that's what Shadow will get) = awesome!

Not having access to Improved Ghost Wolf or Spirit Tap until 70 if you aren't Enhancement or Shadow, respectively = not so awesome.

I don't see shamans being taken down a notch or two for lowbie WSG as a real downside. 

[apocrypha]

Sounds great to me, particularly like the idea of defining specs right away. Will help the more normal and casual players (i.e. not us min-maxer forum reading, Rawr-using nerds) understand the difference between class specs better.

What needs to happen alongside this is clearer information about what stats/gear each kind of spec should be using. One of my guildies was very annoyed when we explained to them that Enhance shaman should be stacking melee stats, not spellpower, after they'd spent a week buying blues and grinding rep to gear up... wrongly.

[Nevermore]

Getting dual wield at 10 as Enhancement or Shadow Form (I assume that's what Shadow will get) = awesome!

Not having access to Improved Ghost Wolf or Spirit Tap until 70 if you aren't Enhancement or Shadow, respectively = not so awesome.

I don't see shamans being taken down a notch or two for lowbie WSG as a real downside. 

Elementals are getting Thunderstorm at 10 so they'll be a lot meaner in lowbie BGs. ;)   I liked Improved Ghost Wolf for leveling just for the convenience of insta-casting it.  Getting from mob to mob faster is a quality of life thing, not a power thing.

[Ingmar]

Well, presumably non-Enhance specs will actually be able to just use their nukes effectively now, so they won't need it as much. As far as spirit tap goes, I sort of expect that talent is one of the ones that will just be gone, based on all the other regen changes.

It seems to me like feral druids are going to be the hardest to handle properly, since there are really 2 and a half specs in that single tree already. Will be interesting to see what they come up with, I bet that tree will take a few tries to get right.