So, what's wrong with WoW?

[Soln]

Just started 3-4 weeks ago of casual play.  Completely ignoring forums, but reading patch notes.  Got the Prima Guide, only as rough reference.  In short, playing slow, playing short, playing non-obsessively.  Maybe 17-18hrs of /played.

So, someone pass on the "gotcha's"?  I know of access problems, but infrastructure (so long as connectivity is consistent and good) doesn't worry me.  What design issues are people choked up about?  What should I avoid or be warned about?

It's funny, when you completely ignore and avoid an MMO's forums, things seems way positive.   

[Shockeye]

WoW forums can contain some very useful information, just keep to threads that have the blue icon to the left.

[Rasix]

WoW forums can contain some very useful information, just keep to threads that have the blue icon to the left.

Class forums can be good if you have a built in filter for "whiney douchebags".

My take on what's wrong with WoW:

The game changes at 60.  It becomes less of a "group up and quest with a couple of friends" game and more of a "tackle instances only with 5-15 people" game.  Then there's the high end raiding, which can be at times very time consuming and very boring.  Before someone fires back with a "MY GUILD CLEARED MC IN 2 HOUR, KEKEKEKE", realize that building a guild to that point takes a signficant and frustrating amount of time. Of course, there are more established guilds now, but realize you're in for that whenever new higher end content is released. 

The level 60 game took a major positive step forward with Dire Maul.  You can complete parts of this instance (it's separated ala Scarlet Monastery) in 30 minute to 2 hour chunks.  The loot is pretty good too.  There's still some mudflation which can make the gap between the have and have nots a tad bit annoying when applied in a pvp setting.  I don't think casual instances will ever drop loot on par with MC or the top PVP ranks, but the gap shouldn't be allowed to widen too heavily.

You can PVP at 60 though. There's 2 options, but I don't care for CTF especially in a fantasy setting.  It's a fucking stupid idea IMO and I'll never try it no matter how fun or optimal it may be.  I'm not sure how Alterac Valley is doing nowadays, but I've heard it doesn't even get started on lower pop servers.

Yes, a big problem is the population imbalance.  This leads to a number of issues. One I addressed above.

There needs to be some fun solo shit to do at 60.  The solo game is a major part of the game up and until you hit 60. There needs to be something else to do at this level so other than farm. 

That all being said, I still think it's the best MMORPG on the market even if I am taking a small hiatus to play some single player stuff.  A lot of what I've mentioned above tends to be A LOT worse in other games. 

[Sairon]

Luckily loot doesn't have as much impact on you character as it has in a lot of other games. If you're a warrior or rogue, then yes it's a tad more important, but there's still some easy to get options which is pretty damn viable. Not to say that my guild clears MC in 2 hours but if you have the chance to get into MC/BWL, then it's pretty damn fun in the start before it becomes farming material, I would say it's the best content in WoW atm with very challenging encounters. Of course as stated you do need a guild with quite a lot of members, or some allied guilds to help you out.

[Fargull]

Hmm...

I have three major complaints with WOW.  None of which can be addressed by Blizzard.

The world does not feel interesting, there is a blandness about everything.  This is completely subjective and only came after the honeymoon glow was over.

I find the loot lacking and honestly seems only vaguely tacked on.  Some of it is interesting, but overall, from the people who gave us the loot system of Diablo, I was expecting better.

I think my biggest gripe and honestly it is probably what has killed the enjoyment for me, is that I only enjoy the movement speed of my avatar in the game after I get a mount.  COH ruined this view.  But after a couple alts, it feels like my time investment is more setup on moving from one area to another, not adventure.

Outside of that, it is probably the best Diku MUD I have played.  I am dabbling in EQII right now, and that world is better setup than WOW.  I hate SOE though, but they do know how to build interesting sandboxes.

[HaemishM]

It's a DikuMud, with all the flaws that entails.

Blizzard is glacially slow at actually fixing known bugs, such as the harvesting bug which has been known since release or earlier and still isn't fixed.

It's an MMOG.

It's currently in the "balance all the classes whether they need it or not stage."

The entire community is what you'd expect from a mixing of Blizzard fanbois and MMOG players, full of complete cocktard douchemunchers. General chat is best left off.

People are broken.

People are lewtwhores, especially in instances, which you'll find out if you do instances in pickup groups.

The chat system leaves something to be desired.

Foot travel feels very slow, especially compared to CoH.

If you play Horde, expect to be outnumbered, alone and in the most brown, boring zones ever. Unless you play undead.

If you play Alliance, get used to fucktard paladins, and lots of mangina Night Elves. LOTS.

Populations are fucked, because the Horde side is boring to play and has no jiggly. No good jiggly.

Queues. 1 queue is too many, you'll see more than that.

Server downtime. Apparently approximately $52 million USD a month in revenue does not buy the best server hardware money can buy.

Blizzard.net fanbois.

The official forums.

Level-based PVP.

A graphic engine that is tolerable on slower machines, but isn't optimized for jack shit.

[Shockeye]

[schild-type rant]

You make me cry.

[Zane0]

You could say that WoW tricks their players, almost.  At first, as said, it's very friendly to casuals and small groups, but makes what you could almost call a U-turn, at level 60.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I'm very impressed with a lot of their end-game content design, and the paradigm has to change at max level anyways, but it can be very disorienting for some people.  Most other MMO's don't try to fool their players to such an extent- in their case, you're going to grind to the end game and you're not going to be surprised with what you find when you get there.

I'm into the high end raiding, so 1-60 was sort of a bore for me.  I'm sure it's the opposite for others, which is probably the greater pain, since leveling only takes so long.  Fortunately, (as said before again) DM is a nice 5-man level 60 instance, and the new dungeon coming out, Zul'Gurub, is a 20-man raid stepping stone from UBRS towards MC/BWL.

I guess the only other 'trick' is that crafting isn't nearly as useful when you get to level 60.

[Rasix]

I'd say the MC boss encounters are mega-fun before they get super easy.  When you're still at the point where one douchebag fucking his role up can mean a wipe, it's a blast.  The yard trash is not.  The yard trash made me hate it, by the second or third time though it, it's just goddamn trivial.  There should be no respawns considering it's all just a time wasting cockblock.

I don't like raiding (variety of reasons) but I will say that WoW has the best and most casual friendly raiding there is to be had in this genre that I've experienced.

[Sairon]

Yes movement speed is irritatingly slow, especialy with all the delivery boy quests, they want you to run around as much as possible. I used a mod which displayed time spent travelling and it's somewhere around 50%, and I've played US closed beta, US open beta and EU open beta and pretty much knew the optimal way around the quests. Movement speed is partly why I'm not currently playing, with mount it's better but I would still like it to be faster.

Not only that but they really fucked up with the travelling system. For horde zeppelins transports you between the continents, thing is you have to wait for the freaking thing to arrive, which if you're unlucky is a good 5 minute or so of waiting, which is pretty damn much when you're doing nothing. Orgrimmar which is the horde capital and the place where you look for teams is on the continent which has only 1 of the end game isntances, and that is the instance not a single soul wants to go to. To go from Orgrimmar to Black Rock Mountain, which is the end game instancing area, you have to first wait for that zeppelin which I mentioned. After that you have to do a little runing, mostly by foot since you can't use mount in Undercity. When you get to the flight guy in Undercity you have to sit and look at your avatar flying across half the continent which is a good 5 minute more or so, and then you're looking at another 5 minute or so travelling by mount to reach the entrance to the instance. Chances are that when you finaly reach the entrance to that instance another guy in your team is still in Orgrimmar browsing the AH or something, happens all the time.

Oh and another thing which directly relates to the problem with very few experienced MMOG players is the incometence. There's A LOT of warriors out there who thinks he's a dmg dealing barberian from D2 and fail miserably at tanking. Not only do the warriors not have a clue of what agro is, but the same goes for the healers. You have rogues with the weirdest talent and equipment setup useless for everything. And if you ever find a shaman which actually do heal and adapt to the situations, be sure to add him to your buddy list because so far I've seen none.

However it's still a good game if you're playing with the right people :D

[MrHat]

/agree with everything Rasix has said.

As for travel times, it's the main reason that every class I've enjoyed since my Rogue main has been shaman/hunter.  Movement speed buff.  After 40 it's not that bad cuz of the mount, but still, it doesn't seem like enough in a lot of cases.

[Triforcer]

I don't see how anyone can play WoW without teh Mage teleport crack.  I would cancel after one day if I didn't have that.  The Horde cities, at least, are pretty conveniently central to get me where I am going with a minimum of fuss.  You just can't beat an instatrip to the Org AH wherever you are...

[MrHat]

I don't see how anyone can play WoW without teh Mage teleport crack.  I would cancel after one day if I didn't have that.  The Horde cities, at least, are pretty conveniently central to get me where I am going with a minimum of fuss.  You just can't beat an instatrip to the Org AH wherever you are...

Eh?

[Sogrinaugh]

However it's still a good game if you're playing with the right people :D

Pretty much the bottom line.
I guess some people really don't like the starting horde zones.  Thier was recently a post on my guild forums asking "what is your favorite zone" and i still havent answered, because almost every single one has something interesting and cool about it.  The more i ponder the question, the  more i realize that i love this game worlds design.  Each area has something cool about it, each has a feel.  Some areas are treasured gems, like Silverpine Forest, who can forget serial-gankings by grizzly bears and bastard Son of Arugal?

Barrens/durotar bland?  If you're talking about the color palet, i guess, but it doesn't bother me in the least because that palet is appropriate.  Durotar in particular reminds me alot of Luke Skywalker's  homeworld, especially the canyon area i keep expecting those mask-guys to spring out from somewhere and do thier battleshout.  Quest-wise, i found them all pretty fun, but the UD ones more so then Troll/Orc.

End-game crafting becomes VERY good.  From the Epic fire resist shit you get from thorium brotherhood which is GREAT vs rag and vael, to things like Robe of the Archmage, which is compareable to the best robe in Molten core (Robe of Volatile Power).  Enchanting?  Umm, Healing Power, Spell Power?  +15 Agility from Timbermaw?  Weaponsmithing, i will agree is pretty damn aweful at the moment.  And alchemy could use some love, though even as it is its extremely useful.  Engineering is great in pvp and for those who just loving interesting "things" to do.

As for transportation, All Good People bind thier hearthstone in Kargath, and have mages in thier groups who aren't dicks and make portals at the end of instances.

[Kail]

Problems that I've noticed... hmm...

Classes don't really seem to be balanced.  That is, they're balanced well for PvE, but horribly for PvP.  Rogues can dominate easily on PvP servers, while Warlocks are screwed and Paladins are pretty dependant on being able to stay alive long enough to attract help.  For the low tier (21-30) CTF battleground, I don't see any reason to play as anything but a Shaman.  They heal, have decent DPS and armor, are the only class that actually gets a bonus from playing defense (I'm thinking of totems here), is the fastest flag runner on offense, and so on.  Classes work real well in PvE, but they don't seem to be balanced for PvP.

The CTF battleground in general, in fact, is kind of sub-par.  Because combat is based on skills and levels rather than terrain position and surprise, defense is basically boned.  There's no real way to defend your base, you've just got to try to kill the other team before they can get in there.  It's about as easy, from a tactical point of view, to capture and hold the enemy flag room as it is to defend your own, which leads to a lot of frustrating flag dancing.  Also, there's only the one map available until you hit 50.  One map gets old fast.  Faster if you have to tack a forty-five minute wait on between five minute play sessions.

The classes are diverse enough that you'll probably want to give them all a shot, but the early game is extremely linear, which means if you do roll a few alts, you'll be doing the newbie area quests over and over and over again.  Gameplay tends to get a bit repetitive after a while, too, but that's pretty much par for the genre.

[Righ]

As for transportation, All Good People bind thier hearthstone in Kargath, and have mages in thier groups who aren't dicks and make portals at the end of instances.

That's as good an indicator of the major game problem as any. All the level 60 content consists of visiting the same instances over and over and over and over and over until you finally get the optimum loot set, reroll an alt or quit. Kargath is of course the home to Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Blizzard is producing new content, but way too slowly, and it is over-focused on raid content. The game is fun, and solo friendly for levelling if not loot. If you like fiddling around with different classes and talents like I do, it'll keep you amused for a fair while.

[Sairon]

It's suprisingly balanced in PvP imo, I think I've played almost every class except paladin. My main is a shaman though so take my input on this matter in any way you like.

Shamans are pretty versatile but have very little in form of utility, out of all the totems grounding totem and earth bind is pretty much the only 2 used, and they do have 5 hp. Grounding totem absorbs 1 spell IF the target is inside the very small radius it has. Earthbind is AE slow, can be great to drop down in your footsteps if you're runing away. A lot of the shaman power comes from purge which can remove buffs from enemies, it's only half of the priest spell dispel though. If specced for melee they can own with a weapon buff called windfury if they get lucky. If they specc for spell casting they have a high but very mana inefficient ranged DPS. Shaman is one of the strongest when it comes to 1on1 combat due to their versatile as well.

Mages has a 1.5 second cast long duration cc spell is invaluable, there's nothing which rivals this spell when it comes to cc. pbaoe root, one of the absolutely best PvP spells in the game, if not the best. A long range decent nuke with a brutal slow effect if you're specced for it. Blink, which is the best defensive spell in the entire game, this spell togheter with the pbaoe root means they have defense only rivaled by paladins. What's really fucked up about blink is that they can blink out of stuns. If they specc frost then blizzard becomes brutal, a gtaoe with decent range and ae where every wave has a chance to freeze the target in place + it always slows them down to 30% of original movement speed, and on top of that it does pretty decent dmg. Then they have arcane explosion which is the best pbaoe dmg in the entire game. There's also loads of great talents for them. Mage is the absolutely best class rivaled by absolutely none if you feel like runing around in the battlegrounds as a 1 man army, no need to beg water / food because these guys summon it.

Priests are also very powerful in team situations with insta hots, insta dmg absorb, pbaoe fear etc. Shadow specced priests is pretty commonly accepted as the best 1vs1 class in the game.

Druids has the only root which isn't on a cooldown and can change form to be able to sustain massive ammounts of physical dmg. They can heal and have the best hots in the entire game and a bad ass buff. They also have cc immunity, which is pretty priceless. Insta travel form speed increase togheter with cc immunity makes a pretty good flag carrier.

Warrior with healer back up and good gear kill everything, totaly freaky. Very gear dependant but with good gear they have the highest DPS in the entire game, even better than rogues. If there's more than 1 target it gets even better. With cleave they hit 2 targets every swing, cleave stacks with sweeping strike which does the same thing as cleave but is a buff which lasts for 5 swings, and they can hit a single target more than 1 time every swing with these 2 on. Then there's whirlwind which an instant swing speed independant attack which does weapon dmg to 4 targets, and mortal strike which is also an instant attack which does weapon dmg + 160 and reduces heals on target by 50%. I have a video which I can post later which shows a warrior with decent equipment. We have a warrior in the guild which is pretty trecked out and it's ridecelous what kind of dmg he does, I don't think blizzard took high end raid loot into consideration when they designed the warrior skills.

Paladins are awesome healers and support in PvP, crapy DPS though, which what most of the paladins try to do.

Hunters is another class which needs great gear to be great, but becomes a bit over the top when they finaly get good gear. With aimed shot follwed by multi shot and arcane shot they can insta kill casters rather frequently. They also have the highest range in the game. I think they should change hunters a bit because there's a lot of beginers which plays hunter, and they're the class which requires most skill in small scale pvp, 90% of WoWs playerbase doesn't know what kiteing is and there's even hunters rolling on melee gear. They also suck a bit to much until they get decent gear imo.

Rogue is another class which needs good gear, once they have good gear they can kill a lot of classes before they get to use any of their skills. Good rogues can kill casters ( except mages ) before they get out of stun, even shamans unless they fuck up. Since stealth is pretty got damn powerful in this game they're hardly bad.

The only class which I think is a tad underpowered in PvP is warlocks. Due to Mages being able to remove half of their tools and priests and paladins the other half along with being a soft target. Warlock can own if the other team has selfish paladins / priests though, which is very often the case.

Okay that became quite a write up, my 5 cents on WoW PvP though.

EDIT: Found the warrior movie on my HD http://zeb.rsn.bth.se/PvP2.wmv if you look at the start of the movie he has 370-450 dmg. http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=297564 here's a warrior with WAY better equipment.

[Rodent]

http://zeb.rsn.bth.se/PvP2.wmv

Ronneby student are we? Cool, I was born in that crappy little shithole and making my way back up there this weekend. =)

[Fabricated]

The main problem with WoW is that it focuses too much on the endgame and not enough on the trek from levels 10-50.

WoW does not really need any more 40-man raids. It's questionable to say if it needs more 20-man raids. Loot whores will say otherwise, but well, fuck them.

WoW does however need more level 30-60, 5-10 man instances. The less you need to group with 39 or 19 other people, the better. The less you need to be in an uber guild or wait around for 2 hours building a group to progress, the better.

And then there's the crippling lag and queues that plague the servers on the weekends, but well, that happens when you have half the world's population playing. It'd be nice to see server transfers come up again (with a choice of more than one server) so me and my friends can get our mains and favorite alts off the fucking awful server we're on.

[Jobu]

It's suprisingly balanced in PvP imo, I think I've played almost every class except paladin. My main is a shaman though so take my input on this matter in any way you like.

I agree. Every class seems to have it's foil. Mages get completely decimated by a druid of nearly any skill. Rogues just cannot kill a mage unless they luck out. End-game warriors can turn just about any rogue into jelly. Etc, etc. I understand their need to re-evaluate all the classes now that the game has been live for so long, but other than hunters and maybe warlocks (their new talents are being received very well), everything else is pretty rock solid.

[MrHat]

And then there's the crippling lag and queues that plague the servers on the weekends, but well, that happens when you have half the world's population playing. It'd be nice to see server transfers come up again (with a choice of more than one server) so me and my friends can get our mains and favorite alts off the fucking awful server we're on.

Come to moonrunner and give us monies!

[Shockeye]

I'm ready to leave Moonrunner for another server.

[stray]

I'm ready to leave Moonrunner for another server.

Instead of asking "Which server exactly?", I'll just ask:

Elf again or no?

[Fabricated]

I got wrapped up in my warrior main again recently and that's pretty much why I stopped playing on Moonrunner. The only two other classes I've wanted to play lately (Mage and Rogue)...I already have alts for that I don't feel like starting over.

[MrHat]

I'm ready to leave Moonrunner for another server.

I'd laugh if the story wasn't so sad.

[Shockeye]

I'm ready to leave Moonrunner for another server.

Instead of asking "Which server exactly?", I'll just ask:

Elf again or no?

No. I've had my fill.

[Kail]

I agree. Every class seems to have it's foil. Mages get completely decimated by a druid of nearly any skill. Rogues just cannot kill a mage unless they luck out. End-game warriors can turn just about any rogue into jelly. Etc, etc. I understand their need to re-evaluate all the classes now that the game has been live for so long, but other than hunters and maybe warlocks (their new talents are being received very well), everything else is pretty rock solid.

Yeah, but only if we're talking strictly about duels.  In battlefields, or when grinding in contested areas, certain classes are going to die a lot more than others, and certain classes are going to get more kills than others.  Yes, warriors will own rogues in straight up combat, but rogues have a vastly superior ability to choose who and when they fight, and to get away when they realize they're outclassed.  My rogue sees a warrior coming up the road, he drops into stealth and is gone.  My warlock sees a rogue on the horizon, and he can't do jack except hope that the rogue is feeling merciful.  My rogue very, very rarely dies in PvP outside battlegrounds, but he still gets huge amounts of kills, because he can decide not to attack someone that's obviously going to beat the crap out of him, or better, he can wait until they're weakened and then attack them.  Not every class can do that.  In straight up, one on one combat, the classes are moderately well balanced (although I still say Paladins and Warlocks get the short end of the stick), but in actual practice, the ability to pick your battles is key, and I'm not seeing any class that does it better than rogues.

[MrHat]

I agree. Every class seems to have it's foil. Mages get completely decimated by a druid of nearly any skill. Rogues just cannot kill a mage unless they luck out. End-game warriors can turn just about any rogue into jelly. Etc, etc. I understand their need to re-evaluate all the classes now that the game has been live for so long, but other than hunters and maybe warlocks (their new talents are being received very well), everything else is pretty rock solid.

Yeah, but only if we're talking strictly about duels.  In battlefields, or when grinding in contested areas, certain classes are going to die a lot more than others, and certain classes are going to get more kills than others.  Yes, warriors will own rogues in straight up combat, but rogues have a vastly superior ability to choose who and when they fight, and to get away when they realize they're outclassed.  My rogue sees a warrior coming up the road, he drops into stealth and is gone.  My warlock sees a rogue on the horizon, and he can't do jack except hope that the rogue is feeling merciful.  My rogue very, very rarely dies in PvP outside battlegrounds, but he still gets huge amounts of kills, because he can decide not to attack someone that's obviously going to beat the crap out of him, or better, he can wait until they're weakened and then attack them.  Not every class can do that.  In straight up, one on one combat, the classes are moderately well balanced (although I still say Paladins and Warlocks get the short end of the stick), but in actual practice, the ability to pick your battles is key, and I'm not seeing any class that does it better than rogues.

Nightelves to an extent.  That is a waaaay overbalanced skill.

[Paelos]

I'd add that warriors beat every class pretty soundly save one. Mages. God help you if you try and beat up on a mage. Unless you have an assload of luck, trinkets, and free action pots, your plate butt is going to be frozen and beaten up from a distance with attacks that ignore that tin can you're wearing.

[schild]

[schild-type rant]

You make me cry.

That's because you are weak. WEAK. WEAK. What's wrong with WoW? Shockeye is weak.

But I'll say this again - WoW is the best MMOG out there. Everything Haemish said is true. This industry needs a robot jesus.

[Hoax]

What's wrong with WoW?

Simple.

Bind rush pvp is boring, frustrating and unfullfilling.

If you are leveling and somebody jumps you, and you win through skill/gear/setup/class matchup it MEANS NOTHING.  Because if your opponent so desires they can be back up and running in 3min tops.  Which means persistence > everything but levels in WoW's pvp system.  Which makes it one of the crappiest pvp systems ever, even worse then DAOC's /assist /face mez 4tw system (so sue me I only played it for about 3 months from launch no idea if they made CC less then the only thing that matters).

[Fabricated]

I'd add that warriors beat every class pretty soundly save one. Mages. God help you if you try and beat up on a mage. Unless you have an assload of luck, trinkets, and free action pots, your plate butt is going to be frozen and beaten up from a distance with attacks that ignore that tin can you're wearing.

Mages can be utterly destroyed in short order with a strong two-hander (preferably with a stun on hit), intercept, and recklessness. This provided you get the lead off, which pretty much doesn't happen in a duel.

Without recklessness, you'll most likely die after scaring the shit out of the mage with your first couple hits.

But yes, reasonably well equipped warriors can pretty much stomp most of the other classes without a lot of trouble. In certain cases though it requires the burning of our timed skills (retaliation, recklessness). Paladins irritate the living fuck out of me in duels since while I can usually outlast them, it takes a year and a half to beat one if they shield up or use Hammer of Justice with heals.

[Ironwood]

Note to Self : READ BEFORE YOU POST.

[Sairon]

http://zeb.rsn.bth.se/PvP2.wmv

Ronneby student are we? Cool, I was born in that crappy little shithole and making my way back up there this weekend. =)

Yes, 2 years left until I'm a full fledged game programmer, on paper atleast :P

[Dren]

As for transportation, All Good People bind thier hearthstone in Kargath, and have mages in thier groups who aren't dicks and make portals at the end of instances.

That's as good an indicator of the major game problem as any. All the level 60 content consists of visiting the same instances over and over and over and over and over until you finally get the optimum loot set, reroll an alt or quit. Kargath is of course the home to Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire, Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Blizzard is producing new content, but way too slowly, and it is over-focused on raid content. The game is fun, and solo friendly for levelling if not loot. If you like fiddling around with different classes and talents like I do, it'll keep you amused for a fair while.

Agreed, that is what I like and what I am doing.  I'd really like to see Blizzard support that style more.  I'd even like to see instances for solo 60's or maybe groups of 2-4 people.  Make those instances really interesting (hand crafted like dreadmines) and large with lot's of little subquests.  Design it in a way that forces you to keep coming back to finish out little areas that you might have missed the first time, but each trip only lasts 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Make them challenging so that small groups have to use all of their skills/powers all of the time, but don't make it frustrating either.

Most of the time I'm either solo or hunting around with one or two of my friends that I actually enjoy grouping with.  I've tried larger groups and larger guilds and they just don't do it for me.  I'd rather have adventures with a small close-knit group that works well together rather than an all out zerg fest on a creature that is as big as a mountain.