Cracks starting to show?

[Sjofn]

That said, the new levelling experience is seriously tempting me to do 1-80 again with something new, and take the time to enjoy the ride.

You really should at least once, I think. There are a lot of really fun new quests.

I find the default quest helper stuff is more than sufficient, and it never stopped me from reading the text and such, but also never felt like it was overly holding my hand (I think the sparkly quest clickies break more than the arrow saying "this way, you moron," if we're complaining, which we are!). There's been plenty of quests I've done so far where merely knowing where to go is not a gigantic help. I had some quests that had puzzles! Not hard puzzles, I totally overthought one in fact, but merely knowing OVER HERE, GO OVER HERE AND CLICK THIS didn't solve the quest for me.

Another thing that I'm liking is they sort of know there's a lot of people that don't read the quest text, so they're doing a lot more showing than telling as far as quest payoff goes. As someone who DOES read quest text, it's still a great step because seeing your result rather than just being assured there was one in your text is always going to feel better. The quest text generally seems more like a "if you want a little more detail, read this" thing.

[Ingmar]

Even if you were a person who used guides/quest helper mods before there's really no reason to do it now. The time optimization part is more or less 'built in' now as each zone has a fairly ordered storyline.

[DraconianOne]

I don't get it, either Nebu.  I'll turn to a guide if I'm stuck, but I like to actually explore the world I'm in.  In any game.

If you go on holiday to a city you've never been to before, do you buy a guide book and a map and ask people who have been before if they've got any tips or suggestions of things to do or even avoid?  Or do you go blind and wonder around in case you see something interesting (but also run the risk of missing all the good stuff and only seeing the bad stuff?)

A city in WoW is like a block in real life.  I've got the equivalent of the entire realms of five WoW's between work and home alone.  That's a terrible analogy.

I wasn't talking about cities in WoW so I don't know what you're getting at. My analogy was comparing using a guide to go sight see a city to using a guide to level in WoW. It doesn't have to be a city - it could be a museum. Or a theme park - which might be a more apt.

On the other hand, and where I do side with you and Nebu, is that I don't try to rush past content. I just don't do exploring very well and get really fucking bored very quickly if I feel that I'm wandering about aimlessly and failing to find something to do.  Apart from the odd occasion when my plan is to wander about aimlessly and just see what's there.

[Ratman_tf]

 After 10+ years of playing MMO's I'm starting to appreciate Schild's assertion that MMO's just aren't very good as games go.

Is it my turn to say "Obvious answer is obvious"? 

[Nebu]

Is it my turn to say "Obvious answer is obvious"? 

/McMahon

You are correct, sir.

/McMahon

[Dren]

I disagree, but I'm not going to jump on your wagon of "play like us or your wrong."  If you don't want to use an add-on, don't.  Those that do aren't doing any less "gaming" than you.  You are equating the RP aspects of the game as the entire game and it quite obviously is not.

I don't care how other people "play".  I'm just wondering where we draw the line between "playing" and some Pavlovian response.  To me the addition of a quest guide is along the lines of "Follow the arrow to the X and we'll give you a treat".  If that's fun for people, great.  They'll have a plethora of gaming options available.  It just seems like a veiled attempt to turn the "game" into an exercise that a 3 year old can do. 

I'm probably skewed due to running those quests over and over just to get other classes to highest level.  I certainly had fun the first time through where you had vague directions, etc.  I wouldn't still be playing if I didn't.  After one time through, the quests were just something I had to do to get to where I wanted to go.  So yes, it was a Pavlovian response at that point.  However, the quests weren't the "gaming" I wanted anymore.  It is now Raid content and PvP.

All that said, I do plan to run a new Worgen or Goblin from scratch at some point.  I'll have all the help we are talking about, but I won't be in any rush.  I'll be doing it for the fun of experiencing the new content rather than trying to get yet another 80.  I'll probably go to a totally different server and switch to horde too.....maybe even a PvP server.  I'm ready to do this for a completely different perspective.

[Azazel]

I use an addon called Lightheaded that pulls in the quest comments from WoWhead. I tried Carbonite but I don't like how it makes my minimap look shitty and really the Wowhead comments are all anyone could possibly need to complete the quests.

That's the one! Lightheaded + TomTom used to be 

[Azazel]

If WoW is such a great game, why are people in such a hurry to blow through the content?  I can see using a guide on the third or fourth time leveling an alt, but what's the point of rushing to the end game unless you really just don't enjoy the game itself?  

Malakili is at least partially right. The constant positive reinforcement (hello, fellow Skinner rats!) make me want to do dungeons where the exp is fast and the dings and new abilities and talents come quickly. At the same time, I've really enjoyed doing the new quests.

With the quests though, I enjoy looking at the (new) scenery as I go through and reading the quest dialogue (yeah, I actually read it), but I don't enjoy the part where I have to search for 10mins to find the NPC I need to kill or the button I need to press. I didn't use that stuff back in the Vanilla days, beng an EQ vet, I'd alt-tab to Allakhazam. In TBC I started using the addons, and did for much of it, and with LK, I really didn't play for that much of it's time, and when I came back recently, the UI had changed quite a lot.

When I took my Pally through the 60s in TBC recently, though, I honeslty just wanted to get him the fuck through it and to Northrend ASAP. My wife and I have 80s, so when I get around to levelling my Pally and Rogue through WotLK, it'll probably be with that mentality in mind again. And the same again, I'm sure when my alts that are going through the rejigged content now get to TBC/LK.

Because I'm doing dungeons (and enjoying them) with my insta-queue warrior alt, I'm outlevelling many of the zones I'd have liked to play through, but then again, I'll get a chance to do many of them with the other alts, later, and when we take our max-level mains through them for fun.

[Azazel]

I don't care how other people "play".  I'm just wondering where we draw the line between "playing" and some Pavlovian response.  To me the addition of a quest guide is along the lines of "Follow the arrow to the X and we'll give you a treat".  If that's fun for people, great.  They'll have a plethora of gaming options available.  It just seems like a veiled attempt to turn the "game" into an exercise that a 3 year old can do. 

These days I'm older and grumpier and probably less patient with the timesink of looking around for 10 minutes to find something as I used to do back in the days of EverQuest. Now that I'm a growed-up big boy with a career, wife, etc I have less time for mechanics and quest types that I class as a fucking waste of time (see LotRO) than I used to put up with well enough in the past as a young unemployed person or University student.

[Typhon]

I don't care how other people "play".  I'm just wondering where we draw the line between "playing" and some Pavlovian response.  To me the addition of a quest guide is along the lines of "Follow the arrow to the X and we'll give you a treat".  If that's fun for people, great.  They'll have a plethora of gaming options available.  It just seems like a veiled attempt to turn the "game" into an exercise that a 3 year old can do. 

These days I'm older and grumpier and probably less patient with the timesink of looking around for 10 minutes to find something as I used to do back in the days of EverQuest. Now that I'm a growed-up big boy with a career, wife, etc I have less time for mechanics and quest types that I class as a fucking waste of time (see LotRO) than I used to put up with well enough in the past as a young unemployed person or University student.

This plays into it.  Repetition plays into it (oh, another 'guess where it's hidden!', er, quest). 

But at a fundamental level it's down to what floats your boat.  Nebu seems like he enjoys solving the puzzles that the devs create and so he cannot understand why anyone would by-pass that (and when a game has too-predictable puzzles, you quit).  It's probably really hard for someone who gets some level of satisfaction out of solving those types of puzzles to understand folks that get their satisfaction elsewhere.  I have never had any fun at all playing "guess what I'm thinking" or "where's Waldo" in these games, in fact I find them annoying.

[Malakili]

I don't care how other people "play".  I'm just wondering where we draw the line between "playing" and some Pavlovian response.  To me the addition of a quest guide is along the lines of "Follow the arrow to the X and we'll give you a treat".  If that's fun for people, great.  They'll have a plethora of gaming options available.  It just seems like a veiled attempt to turn the "game" into an exercise that a 3 year old can do.  

These days I'm older and grumpier and probably less patient with the timesink of looking around for 10 minutes to find something as I used to do back in the days of EverQuest. Now that I'm a growed-up big boy with a career, wife, etc I have less time for mechanics and quest types that I class as a fucking waste of time (see LotRO) than I used to put up with well enough in the past as a young unemployed person or University student.

This plays into it.  Repetition plays into it (oh, another 'guess where it's hidden!', er, quest).  

But at a fundamental level it's down to what floats your boat.  Nebu seems like he enjoys solving the puzzles that the devs create and so he cannot understand why anyone would by-pass that (and when a game has too-predictable puzzles, you quit).  It's probably really hard for someone who gets some level of satisfaction out of solving those types of puzzles to understand folks that get their satisfaction elsewhere.  I have never had any fun at all playing "guess what I'm thinking" or "where's Waldo" in these games, in fact I find them annoying.

I can relate to both sides of it really.  I used to be relentless with my desire for progression that I didn't really care if I used quest helper or anything else, it was all about using any tool just to keep reaching the next goal, the next level, the next item upgrade etc.

At some point I hit a huge fucking wall and I haven't really enjoyed an RPG since, whether it be an MMORPG or not.  Using the guides or not I feel like every RPG (and most single player games in general I should add) I play lately are just glorified laundry lists of tasks to complete, and I frankly don't give a shit to run down the list checking them off anymore.


Edit to add:
Somewhat ironically, a game like Portal or Half Life 2 where the player has no choice at all what to do seems less offensive to me in this regard.  You just keep forging ahead and eventually beat the game.  RPGs like to tout all the choice you have, but the reality is ..well like I described above.

[Typhon]

I enjoy how getting new abilities modifies your options during combat.  That is why I enjoy leveling.  I'm also not immune to the lure of phat loot.  But primarily, I like the combat.  If the network and technology supported having you characters be controlled like they were in a console's fighting game, I'd go to a game that pulled that off in a heartbeat.  Something like an MMO version of Demon Souls (yes, I know that technically it is an MMO).  As that isn't available, this style of combat (WoW, GW) is the current high water mark.

I agree with what you have said in other threads (or maybe I read into what you said) - I have no love of traditional stories told through a game (single or multi player).  Party because the writing is frequently weak, but mostly because the implementation results in the story telling being detrimental to the action (and vice versa).  Whatever the reason, the effort that it takes to read and solve the quests too often just isn't rewarded with a good story (or, a good story is ruined by the frequent breaks due to action).  Which is why I'll get out of the habit of reading quest text.  Which is why I'll use wikis to get past quests.

All that said, I'll be leveling a worgen after the 7th and I'll be giving the quests another chance.  I'm very willing to be pleasantly surprised.

[Lantyssa]

You mean like Vindictus?

Somewhat ironically, a game like Portal or Half Life 2 where the player has no choice at all what to do seems less offensive to me in this regard.  You just keep forging ahead and eventually beat the game.  RPGs like to tout all the choice you have, but the reality is ..well like I described above.

I think it's because they dress it up like you have options, but when you step back you realize it's just as linear.  The draw of Portal or Half-Life is the story.

[bhodi]

In the end, Nebu enjoys trying to find Mankrik's wife. I don't. That's why I used tomtom+lightheaded+questhelper. Though, that was for my 2nd, 3rd, 4th characters. When I did my first runthrough at launch, none of it existed.

[Nebu]

Apperantly I'm the only one that thinks that the dumbing of society is becoming evident in games as well.  People are even too lazy to read (and write using WHOLE FUCKING WORDS). I guess that's the curse of being an educator.

I'm not talking about guide use for the nth time through content, by the way.  I'm describing the avoidance of core 1-80 gameplay (namely questing) due to sheer laziness.

[Malakili]

Apperantly I'm the only one that thinks that the dumbing of society is becoming evident in games as well.  People are even too lazy to read (and write using WHOLE FUCKING WORDS). I guess that's the curse of being an educator.

I'm not talking about guide use for the nth time through content, by the way.  I'm describing the avoidance of core 1-80 gameplay (namely questing) due to sheer laziness.

Oh, I just figure that angle was just assumed. 

I think the laziness thing is misplaced though, there are people who put in serious time and effort to plow through the content.  I think its less laziness and more wanting to skip boring shit.  It has less to do with reading (they are reading the guide after all) and more to do with the fact that realistically no one gives a shit WHY the town needs you to go kill 20 bears and bring back their asses.  Its not the amount of words per se, but the fact that the majority of the words are actually irrelevant to what they actually care about, namely the objective, where to go, what to kill, etc. 

Goodness knows I lament the lack of reading that goes on in society in general, but I think the power leveling thing has far less to do with lack of wanting to read in and of itself, and more to do with the fact that people are just highly results oriented and not process oriented in general (which might or might not speak to your general dumbing down point, I'm undecided on that).

[Ingmar]

realistically no one gives a shit WHY the town needs you to go kill 20 bears and bring back their asses.

/raises hand

I read every word, watch every cut scene, etc., in any game the first time I'm seeing a given piece of content.

[ghost]

Apperantly I'm the only one that thinks that the dumbing of society is becoming evident in games as well.  People are even too lazy to read (and write using WHOLE FUCKING WORDS).

You're sounding like an old curmudgeon  .

On a serious note, I agree.  

As for the RPG situation, there are some games lately that don't necessarily feel like they are "on rails", but really only Fallout 3/New Vegas have fit that niche for me.  MMO's suffer from the following story line issues:  1.  the overall story line is too inaccessible to folks with normal time commitment availability, 2.  moronic story lines that are watered down because, "hey, it's an MMO", 3. fucking repetition, or 4.  story lines that are too broad to piece together (WoW syndrome).  I'm not sure why games can't look at how good AoC was in the Tortage portion of the game and try to do more with that style game.  

[ezrast]

Apperantly I'm the only one that thinks that the dumbing of society is becoming evident in games as well.  People are even too lazy to read (and write using WHOLE FUCKING WORDS). I guess that's the curse of being an educator.

I'm not talking about guide use for the nth time through content, by the way.  I'm describing the avoidance of core 1-80 gameplay (namely questing) due to sheer laziness.

Right, everyone who doesn't enjoy leveling is clearly just too dumb and lazy to appreciate the masterfully authored experience that is each and every whack twelve foozles quest.

Dude, talking about "laziness" doesn't even make any sense in this context. It's a video game. It's not supposed to be effort.

[Lantyssa]

If people do not enjoy leveling, then why are they playing a game that is all about leveling?  (Which I think brings us back to his original question about why people find it fun or is it just Pavlovian?)

[Minvaren]

It's a video game. It's not supposed to be effort.

I suppose it's time for Blizzard to start all new characters at 85, raid-geared, and all achievements already awarded?

[Malakili]

If people do not enjoy leveling, then why are they playing a game that is all about leveling?  (Which I think brings us back to his original question about why people find it fun or is it just Pavlovian?)

People enjoy the ding part of leveling more than the in between dings part of leveling I think.  Why do you think every game thats released now has some kind of leveling system even when its totally unneeded.  Hell, in Black Ops, it gave me the opportunity to start over at level 1 and give up all my unlocks just so I could go 1-50 again but this time at "prestige level 1." (and you can do this a LOT of times, prestige level 2 and so forth).  Clearly people enjoy/like/get some kind of positive feeling from seeing numbers go up.

[Paelos]

If people do not enjoy leveling, then why are they playing a game that is all about leveling?  (Which I think brings us back to his original question about why people find it fun or is it just Pavlovian?)

90% of the game time I play in WoW does not involve leveling. There are a lot of people out there like that.

[Ingmar]

If people do not enjoy leveling, then why are they playing a game that is all about leveling?  (Which I think brings us back to his original question about why people find it fun or is it just Pavlovian?)

90% of the game time I play in WoW does not involve leveling. There are a lot of people out there like that.

Not leveling in an overt YOU WENT UP A LEVEL sense, maybe, but the core of it is still character progression.

[Lantyssa]

Why do you think every game thats released now has some kind of leveling system even when its totally unneeded.

My snarky response is "Because WoW has levels and makes cargo plane loads of money".  Unfortunately, I come up with the same answer when I try to think of a serious answer.

[Ingmar]

The serious answer is "because (most) people like levels." It is just sometimes hard to get them to admit it.

[ghost]

If people really liked levels and experience bars then Warhammer Online would have been a raging success. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

To clarify a few things.

WoW is about progression, whether it's levels or just getting a new purple item from a raid you are still playing to advance your character.

I think it's wrong to say people enjoy only the ding part of leveling. With the new content revamp and all the new quests my guildchat has been filled with "did you see X, how about when Z happens in this zone!" New content is fun for a lot of people and seeing it is a goal in and of itself.

I believe many people, mmo players specifically have confused the concept of levels and content.  We have been trained in a pavlovian way in mmo's that levels are just a way to get to the content. We often forget that leveling for the first time 'was' content but we had done it so long ago it fades from memory.  Many people sit at max level, waiting for an expansion or blowing through old stuff on alts because they want something new.

There's nothing wrong with this of course, it's what most people do in single player games.  Long gone are the days of replaying a game over and over, now people simply play a console game such as castlevania, or a single player pc game such as fallout and devour the content. once it is over they move on(taking a couple playthroughs in the case of fallout)

Though single player games all have levels and progression too, we rarely consider that people play zelda just for the ding-grats of getting the hookshot.  

[Ingmar]

If people really liked levels and experience bars then Warhammer Online would have been a raging success. 

That's sort of like suggesting because I like ham, I would also like to consume an entire 15 pound ham in one sitting. 

[Typhon]

realistically no one gives a shit WHY the town needs you to go kill 20 bears and bring back their asses.

/raises hand

I read every word, watch every cut scene, etc., in any game the first time I'm seeing a given piece of content.

Me too, first time through.  But as you go through a game and start to realize that writers haven't succeeded in making you give a shit about the story, why waste your time if you still like the other parts of the game?  I don't understand how that is laziness.

Also, I like character progression, it pleases me to buy in to the illusion that my character is getting more powerful.  It's probably why I like these games more than FPS shooters (given that the combat in FPS games tends to be more fully realized).

[WindupAtheist]

If people do not enjoy leveling, then why are they playing a game that is all about leveling?  (Which I think brings us back to his original question about why people find it fun or is it just Pavlovian?)

Because they like killing things and leveling, but still don't care why the village needs bear asses.

[ezrast]

I'm not going to say I'm immune to the allure of ding-grats, but the most fun I've ever had in WoW, no question, was with a character that I stopped leveling at 29. I wouldn't dream of progressing him because being decked in near-BiS gear and playing BGs for no other reason than to win was just too damn enjoyable - until Blizz put an end to that.

Take that as you will.

[Malakili]

Though single player games all have levels and progression too, we rarely consider that people play zelda just for the ding-grats of getting the hookshot.  

As sort of noted above, but also particularly relevant here, I actually was totally unable to get into Zelda Twilight Princess, even though I loved the hell out of all the rest of them before.  Also, I tried playing that after I had my fall out with RPGs/single player gaming in general.  Possible relation there, but I'm not sure.  

I guess its the double whammy for me which is that I really don't care about the story any more, AND I don't care (with probably the very specific exception of ARPGs/diablo-likes just because the mass monster smashing style of those games does appeal to me from time to time) for leveling/progression either.

The remaining games I've enjoyed most over the past say...yearish, competitive multiplayer games.

[Paelos]

If people do not enjoy leveling, then why are they playing a game that is all about leveling?  (Which I think brings us back to his original question about why people find it fun or is it just Pavlovian?)

Because they like killing things and leveling, but still don't care why the village needs bear asses.

Because they don't need bear asses and we all know it. It's a farce. There's no reason for me to read flavor text because it has absolutely no change to the world. Except for this catastrophic event, that same guy is sitting there asking for bear asses 5 years after I GAVE HIM SOME FUCKING BEAR ASSES! How many asses will it take to fill the void in your soul, quest-giver? A hundred? A thousand? Millions? I pity you. I really do. Because your unquenchable lust for bear asses has cost you everything you held dear.

[Nebu]

You're sounding like an old curmudgeon  .

Too true. 

I am appreciating the banter here though.  It's interesting to see the different approaches to the game. 

What I'm trying to determine is: What is the primary motivation for wanting a quest guide to just tell you where to go.  Is it because the current content is uninteresting?  Is it because players are programmed to not care about the 1-80 content and instead only care about the content at 80?  Why do players pay $15 a month to play a game and then not want to play the game?  Why not just charge people $20 for a level capped toon?