Schild doesn't like WoW

[Morfiend]

Here you go. Your very own thread about how much WoW sucks and kills babies and rapes dogs.


Post Hate Here

[Der Helm]

[Rasix]

We've got a lot of material to sort throught.  When complete, it could be one hell of an epic.

Edit: This might be a tad mean spirited.. there's a lot of people here with irrational levels of hate/love towards certain things.

[Dren]

I hate your love for hate.

[Furiously]

I Love your hate for love.

[Azazel]

PSP

X-Box 360

[schild]

Do I have to make the following topic then?

"All you fuckers are paying for the exact thing you railed against 4 years ago."

[Azazel]

explain, then discuss.

[schild]

explain, then discuss.

Shift key plz.

Postcount++

[Shockeye]

Do I have to make the following topic then?

"All you fuckers are paying for the exact thing you railed against 4 years ago."

I wasn't aware all of "us fuckers" were rallying against fun for the last 4 years.

[schild]

I wasn't aware all of "us fuckers" were rallying against fun for the last 4 years.

Fedex quests.
Kill 50 Rats.
Item based gameplay.
Min/Maxing.
Uberguilds.
Typical PvP.
Queues.
Horrible Development Cycles.
Exploits.
Gold Farming.
Oh, and elves. Lots of elves.

[Furiously]

Yes - but the blond elves are not in yet. You can still laugh at the hunter name legolass.

[Azazel]

Fedex quests.
- I don't mind them. In fact I like them. Good for getting people to explore the game areas and learn their geography instead of sitting on their asses camping the <mob name> till they ding.

Kill 50 Rats.
- Well Implemented. Good for getting people to explore the game areas and learn their geography. Gets them moving around and whacking different foozles instead of sitting on their asses camping the <mob name> till they ding.  DAOC had a nice set of ideas here as well with the varying improved XP amounts given by uncamped mobs as well.

Item based gameplay.
- Might need some clarification here. I've always been attracted to computer games where your character is constantly improved. Levels, items, etc are a good way to do this. It's the gameplay carrot. I balance my WoW-type games with a healthy dose of online FPS, where the only constant is your own skill (and it's imporvement).

Min/Maxing.
- Meh. Play how you want. People min/max in all games. You've mentioned you've got a passing interest in Warhammer. I've played it for nearly 20 years now. Want to see some min/maxing, look at WHFB/40k. Or MTG, or GW, or... ..

or, you know, play how you want.


Uberguilds.
-They don't bother me in WoW. I play on a PVE server, so I can't be randomly ganked by catasses as I head to where ever I'm going, and unlike in EQ where they could cockblock others from content, +1 instancing FTW~!


Typical PvP.
-Easily ignored if you're not into PVP. If you're after fantastic MMORPG PVP, I don't think it's been done yet?


Queues.
-Agreed. EQ never had queues. And queues at +1yr into the game is just unacceptable.


Horrible Development Cycles.
-Mixed on this. Blizzard take their sweet fucking time on new content, but on the other hand, they always have. More to the point, the 5 or so new dungeons patched into the game since release for free would have been released as "expansion" +$ content in a SoE game.

The original EQ did release new zones or revamp older ones occasionally, but they were often very Meh. Such as the snow-ass mountains through The Hole, or Veksar which was okay, (but which was supposed to be included in Kunark and I believe included in their "x new zones" count at the time). For the last couple years the new zones have always been Meh, and simply tied to creating hype to sell the latest you-need-to-buy-it-if-you-want-to-keep-playing-(with-your-guild/friends) expansion. New Neriak Forest? New Lavastorm? Ledaria's Landing? meh.


Exploits.
-Not good, but they're exploits and obvously not deliberate. Pretty much every game suffers from these. Wall Hack anyone? Aimbot maybe?


Gold Farming.
-Agreed. I've never seen it so large or so blatant. But I think this is directly tied to the game's success, as well as the rise of sites like IGE and Yantis which simply didn't exist years ago.


Oh, and elves. Lots of elves.
-I like Elves okay.


oh, and postcount +1. Like anyone gives a shit about postcount. ooh! my e-peen on forum-site #2498175 just got a millimeter bigger~!
My skill at Life has improved (2)

[Llava]

Fedex quests.
- I don't mind them. In fact I like them. Good for getting people to explore the game areas and learn their geography instead of sitting on their asses camping the <mob name> till they ding.

Kill 50 Rats.
- Well Implemented. Good for getting people to explore the game areas and learn their geography. Gets them moving around and whacking different foozles instead of sitting on their asses camping the <mob name> till they ding.  DAOC had a nice set of ideas here as well with the varying improved XP amounts given by uncamped mobs as well.

Okay, but were you complaining about them back in EQ?  Cause lots of the people talking about how awesome WoW is were, and schild is right in saying they're praising the same stuff they were bitching about a few years ago.

Item based gameplay.
- Might need some clarification here. I've always been attracted to computer games where your character is constantly improved. Levels, items, etc are a good way to do this. It's the gameplay carrot. I balance my WoW-type games with a healthy dose of online FPS, where the only constant is your own skill (and it's imporvement).

Hm.  Mostly, I think, the problem is that items aren't just a bonus, they're MUST HAVE OR YOU ARE WORTHLESS.  Which, I agree, is pretty shitty.  Looking at classic stories, folks like Arthur, sure they have Excalibur... but he's not also carrying two magic rings, a magic necklace, magic helmet, magic chestplate, magic sleeves, magic leggings, magic boots, magic trinkets, magic gloves, etc etc etc.  That's sort of a separate issue, though.  I think the problem here is that items=time played>skill.

Typical PvP.
-Easily ignored if you're not into PVP. If you're after fantastic MMORPG PVP, I don't think it's been done yet?

Arguably, but that still doesn't explain why WoW gets so much praise then- if it's not rising above the failures of the past, why do we care?  If you want PvP, and WoW's PvP is as mediocre as the PvP available in all MMOGs...?

oh, and postcount +1. Like anyone gives a shit about postcount. ooh! my e-peen on forum-site #2498175 just got a millimeter bigger~!
My skill at Life has improved (2)

Well yeah, that's the joke.

(Note: I apologize for doing what I did to this thread.  I did not intend to channel TFWSNBN.)

[jpark]

I cannot in good conscience harbour my silence any longer.  

Schild deserves compassion and understanding in his plight.  Yes plight.  In your chorus of defense against WoW you have failed to look at the man behind theses prescient words.  Failed to explore the depths of his wisdom and whether extraneous machinations have otherwise affected his erudite judgement.

Apologies Schild, but to quote him in a confidential email:

"Ya Jpark leveling my Paladin to level 60 in WoW took a lot out of me. I love the game, but the class broke me.  Last time a I level a damage specced Paladin in WoW."

That cat is out of the bag.  Schild does not hate WoW per se - he is burnt out from less than judicious class choice with a rather ironic choice for talent specs.

[Azazel]

Fedex quests.
Okay, but were you complaining about them back in EQ?  Cause lots of the people talking about how awesome WoW is were, and schild is right in saying they're praising the same stuff they were bitching about a few years ago.

=> Honestly? I can't recall but I don't think so. I'd been playing at level 60/65/70 for so long before i left EQ that I can't say this stuff has bothered me for a long time. Pair that with a Shadowknight horse, prenerf CoS and a 2-boxed Druid (Ports + Flight of Eagles + instant invis AA) and travel has been pretty trivial in EQ for a long time. And I was far from uber. Leveling up, I don't think I really noticed things like that first time around when it was all new to me.



Item based gameplay.
Hm.  Mostly, I think, the problem is that items aren't just a bonus, they're MUST HAVE OR YOU ARE WORTHLESS.  Which, I agree, is pretty shitty.  Looking at classic stories, folks like Arthur, sure they have Excalibur... but he's not also carrying two magic rings, a magic necklace, magic helmet, magic chestplate, magic sleeves, magic leggings, magic boots, magic trinkets, magic gloves, etc etc etc.  That's sort of a separate issue, though.  I think the problem here is that items=time played>skill.

=> It just depends on the mindset you have playing the game. And I do agree with your formula above, but it's not bothering me since I don't PVP and just play with friends and another bunch of fun raiding casuals my group has just recently met up with who live in the same city. There's some guys talking about how no class should have less then 5k hp in another thread on here, but they're playing a different kind of WoW to me. I'm not competing with anyone.



Typical PvP.
Arguably, but that still doesn't explain why WoW gets so much praise then- if it's not rising above the failures of the past, why do we care?  If you want PvP, and WoW's PvP is as mediocre as the PvP available in all MMOGs...?

=> I'm not a PVP-guy, so I'll bow out of this part of the discussion. I played WSG a few times and it was fun to play a Team Fortress map in a MMORPG, but outside of that I really have no experience with PVP in these games.



oh, and postcount +1. Like anyone gives a shit about postcount. ooh! my e-peen on forum-site #2498175 just got a millimeter bigger~!
My skill at Life has improved (2)

Well yeah, that's the joke.

=> No really! It did get bigger!



Oh, and Schild: When you resub to WoW next time, try rolling up a mage or Rogue. Very different to Pally and way fun to level up (though I enjoyed levelling my Pally) but with the bonus of not being generally shit on like Pallys once you hit 60.

[Ironwood]

Azazel pretty much summed up the way I feel about Schilds list.

And I disagree with most of what Llava then refutes, but I don't wanna Bruce it up.

Basically, the fedex quests are fun and rewarding in WoW.  There's only a few I can think of that felt tired and cliche.  The Kill 50 rats quests - yeah, there ARE a few too many.  Whatcha gonna do ?  It's a balance of good versus bad and I think there's enough content so that you don't really have to do as many of these quests as other games force you to.

I wholeheartedly reject the notion that items matter.  Totally.  I have had my shanker since lvl 50 and it's the same dagger I am using today.  Similarly, I upgrade my other items 'driftingly'.  I feel no need whatsoever to keep up with the Jones. I'm a well adjusted 31 year old bloke with a great family, TONS of money and a lovely house.  Virtual items can suck my cock and it just DOESN'T affect my gameplay or fun.

PvP.  I enjoy it.  Fuck you if you don't.  Show me better.  Could they do better world stuff ?  Sure.  Who gives a crap ?  What they have is fun.  Suck it up.

FUN.

THE GAME IS FUN.  I AM IN A GOOD GUILD WITH NICE PEOPLE AND I'M HAVING FUN.  WE KILLED TWO BOSSES TONIGHT IN ZG AND IT WAS FUN.  FUN !!!!!  IT DISTRACTS ME FROM WORK AND THE SOCIAL PRESSURES OF BEING SURROUNDED BY FUCKING SCOTS.  IT'S FUN !

Oh, and I demand more epic poetry in this thread.

EQ, AO, DOAC, hell even UO ?  Not as fun.  Sorry.

(ok, maybe UO.  It's hard to remember.)

[Nebu]

Must resist... must... resist...

Suffice it to say that I'm with schild on this one.  WoW just never grabbed me. 

Still, for $15 a month it's cheap entertainment if you're having fun.   Different strokes for different folks! (/insert Gary Coleman photo here)

[Xanthippe]

Oh, and I demand more epic poetry in this thread.

Haiku summation of Ironwood's post:

I like PvP
Could they do better world stuff?
Sure, who gives a crap?

What they have is fun.
Fuck you if you don't have fun.
I'm a fucking Scot.

[Ironwood]

Long story short, it's a game and as long as people are enjoying it, they can enjoy it.

The reason this thread sprang fully formed from the brow of Zeus was because someone who didn't like it kept coming over to chat to those who did and all he could repeat was 'no, I don't like it', 'It's rubbish', 'how can you play this' and 'that sounds awful'.  With the prime offender being 'it's only because it's companyx that made this that you like it.  That's the only reason it's made it.  You're all brainwashed.  It's rubbish.'

Let's be honest here;  if that was a bloke in a pub, you'd deck him.  Especially if he went on to tell you about how 'ConsoleX is just the best and screw you if you don't agree' all the while not seeing the irony.

Or maybe that's just me.


It is me, isn't it ?

Oh well.

[Ironwood]

Oh, and I demand more epic poetry in this thread.

Haiku summation of Ironwood's post:

I like PvP
Could they do better world stuff?
Sure, who gives a crap?

What they have is fun.
Fuck you if you don't have fun.
I'm a fucking Scot.

That's Fucking Epic.  That's getting printed off in Purple and wall-mounted it's so fucking epic.  That'd drop off Hakkar, it's so epic.

Cheers man.

[Azazel]

And I disagree with most of what Llava then refutes, but I don't wanna Bruce it up.

what's this mean? quoting and replying to bits piecemeal?

also, who is Bruce?

Must resist... must... resist...

Suffice it to say that I'm with schild on this one.  WoW just never grabbed me.  

Still, for $15 a month it's cheap entertainment if you're having fun.   Different strokes for different folks! (/insert Gary Coleman photo here)

I'll take that. I hated EQ2 but if someone else thinks it's the Dog's Bollocks, more power to them. Same with Vanguard, even if I won't be going near it with a 10-foot pole.

[Morfiend]

Azazel pretty much summed up the way I feel about Schilds list.

And I disagree with most of what Llava then refutes, but I don't wanna Bruce it up.

FUN.

THE GAME IS FUN.  I AM IN A GOOD GUILD WITH NICE PEOPLE AND I'M HAVING FUN.  WE KILLED TWO BOSSES TONIGHT IN ZG AND IT WAS FUN.  FUN !!!!!  IT DISTRACTS ME FROM WORK AND THE SOCIAL PRESSURES OF BEING SURROUNDED BY FUCKING SCOTS.  IT'S FUN !

This is how I feel about WoW. I couldnt have said it better. I just really in general have a lot of fun playing the game. And thats the reason I play games in the first place. My guild is working on BWL, not ZG, but its still fun for me.

Also, about killing 50 rats. In WoW, you get a quest to help an orc get revenge for his slain wife, by killing 25 rats and 25 ratfinks. You then return and get a nice chunk of exp, and some times a decent item.
In EQ, you went and sat in the same spot killing the same rat over and over for no reason other than to level. Yeah, it comes down to the same thing, but it doesnt feel the same to me.

[Azazel]

Well put, Morphiend.

[Paelos]

I think my fake interview with Badthing and Killbotx pretty much summed up my feelings on WoW. It's a good game dominated by polarized nutballs who try to outshout the other side in blatant personal attacks.

Kinda like Congress.

[Hoax]

I refuse to be an apologist for WoW, but I do want to see Schild write an epic on how Blizzard has misled the common MMOtard into thinking they like the same shit they've always hated.

Fedex quests.
-Agreed they suck, you break it down and the quests in WoW for the most part are the same old same old.  The only thing WoW does right on the quest front is, some are funny, some are random and there are tons and tons of them.  Finishing a quest is like a mini ding, more dings = more satisfaction from time invested.  We are all just hamsters on a wheel...

Kill 50 Rats.
-See my above comments.

Item based gameplay.
-Agreed, see the warrior class.  WoW sped up combat the point that some people can indeed suck at it.  People who dont bind keys auto suck at pvp this is a nice plus as well.  Without people who can suck there can't be people who can pwn.  I like some skill disparity in my game.  Unfortunately WoW did go the gear > skill route like all MMO's tend to.  Unfortunately nobody can agree on a great simple way to get away from this (first you have to get rid of levels, develop alternative reasons for the LCD to play the game etc etc)

Min/Maxing.
-Too broad, not even sure what you are saying here.  Min/Max'ing will always exist in every system ever made.  At least the classes actually have better pvp balance then any MMO with a traditional class system ever made.

Uberguilds.
-These will always exist also, in any competition there will be people who take it more seriously.  This is like crying that there are CS:S servers where they kick anyone who isn't good enough to play there.  Or that you can't automatically get into a clan that participates in league games.  I'm sorry that some people try harder?  Besides there are uber guilds out there who aren't complete super douches about their dkp systems.

Typical PvP.
-Agreed, they dont do anything special, BG's are not special instancing while effective at removing some of the woes associated with the poorly designed systems of the past will never be special to me.

Queues.
-Suck balls, not sure how much this has to do with the game.  You know what sucks more?  The wait at retrieving characters is up to 20min followed by a 20min wait while looking at a full blue bar after you pick a character.

Horrible Development Cycles.
-When you think about it they have added several dungeons and the BG's hell they needed to add the honor system.  I wish they developed more faster but as long as the new content never starts sucking and they dont go EQ1 on our ass and make their flagging system any more retarded I'm ok with it.

Exploits.
-???  Which ones are we talking about.

Gold Farming.
-As long as there is a grind that is long enough that people who just want to play would rather invest RL cash to save themselves the hassle there will be gold farming.

Oh, and elves. Lots of elves.
-Yeah elves and UD, fucking tons of them.  If UD could be hunters I would stab myself in the face right now.  If blood elves get hunter or rogue I will stab someone at blizz in the face.

[Azazel]

Actually, to be fair, I just read the "save my n00b ass" thread, and actually, I'll agree with Schild on his point over there - long bullshit keying quests are a bullshit pain in the ass. WoW's not as bad as EQ1 (yet) - Vex Thal anyone?

EQ1 PoP Progression at least kind of made sense as an epic quest to get to Time, but it's poor implementation + atrittion + backflagging (+ some pig-headedness) means my old non-hardcore raiding guild still isn't in time (we were on the cusp of it right when the release of WoW and EQ2 took 60% of our guild away)

Seeing that it's again in WoW in such an annoying way isn't a good sign for the future, because as mentioned in that thread, once you're flagged/keyed for someplace, you don't mind helping people a few times, but when you're doing your tenth backflag run it becomes really fucking tedious and you'd just as rather not log in...

[schild]

Oh, and Schild: When you resub to WoW next time, try rolling up a mage or Rogue. Very different to Pally and way fun to level up (though I enjoyed levelling my Pally) but with the bonus of not being generally shit on like Pallys once you hit 60.

I played an Undead Rogue for the only 28 days I spent in the game. It was far from robot Jesus. It was a very nicely flavored same pile of shit I'd been consuming for the last 9 years.

Edit: And if you know me, you'd know I never played a Paly. I judge a game based on the rogue experience. I judged WoW to be recycled shit streamlined with a constant ding to make you feel like you've achieved something. On top of that, it wasn't a complete virtual world. I had no house to pimp, I was less than enthralled with the gathering/crafting (i.e. it was shitty and the best gear was still dropped), and the biggest mob at that time was......a dragon? A DRAGON? Christ. That's original. Wait? To top it all off it took a zerg of Koreans to kill it at the end of beta? I'd seen everything, I'd seen it all. I was done.

[schild]

I can't take the rest of your points remotely serious because you said this:

We are all just hamsters on a wheel...

No. No. No. No. No. Vote with your wallet.

[Phred]

Fedex quests.
Okay, but were you complaining about them back in EQ?  Cause lots of the people talking about how awesome WoW is were, and schild is right in saying they're praising the same stuff they were bitching about a few years ago.

As Fedex quests didnt really exist in EQ I think people weren't complaining about them. In fact, so few quests existed in EQ the complaints were more about the lack thereof than any lack of orignality on them. I don't remember a single kill 50 rat quest in EQ either for that matter.

[schild]

I never said EQ. I said the last 4 years. Since the beginning of Waterthread. I've read probably every single post on these two boards, the only thing WoW did to change all the gripes and complaints was make the dings closer together and speed up combat a bit. Which is pretty much the traditional Blizzard move when they enter a genre. Streamline the best parts of the game and make the worst parts more backroundish. By offering better loot, that 50 rat quest doesn't look so bad. By offering insane raid drops, raid doesn't look so bad.

It doesn't change the fact that you're still raiding for one or two great items and working to get to the raids.

It doesn't change the fact that you've just killed 50 rats for an item.

It doesn't change the fact that you're doing an (albeit short) grind to get to an endgame that hasn't changed since well....since.

[Samwise]

Deep down, my dislike of WoW all stems from the fact that it's not Starcraft 2.

After Blizzard makes Starcraft 2, I can start liking their games again.  Until then, every game they put out just makes me bitter that they could have made Starcraft 2 instead.

There, I've admitted it.  Carry on with your rational discussion.

[Velorath]

I never said EQ. I said the last 4 years. Since the beginning of Waterthread. I've read probably every single post on these two boards, the only thing WoW did to change all the gripes and complaints was make the dings closer together and speed up combat a bit. Which is pretty much the traditional Blizzard move when they enter a genre. Streamline the best parts of the game and make the worst parts more backroundish. By offering better loot, that 50 rat quest doesn't look so bad. By offering insane raid drops, raid doesn't look so bad.

It doesn't change the fact that you're still raiding for one or two great items and working to get to the raids.

It doesn't change the fact that you've just killed 50 rats for an item.

It doesn't change the fact that you're doing an (albeit short) grind to get to an endgame that hasn't changed since well....since.

I started playing new characters everytime I got up to the raid levels, had fun stealthing a lot of quests as a rogue, was able to solo more content than most other MMO's would allow, had some fun in the BG's, and stopped playing when the game wasn't that fun to me anymore.

My biggest problems with MMO's tend to be games with forced grouping and no quick solo content for when I don't have a lot of time to play.  I'd still be playing FFXI if it wasn't for those problems.  CoH was pretty close to what I wanted, but there wasn't enough diversity in the mission.  I wouldn't even care about the grind in CoH if there was just more stuff to do mission-wise.

[Margalis]

I'm playing FFXI again.  But I'm playing classes I know people want so I don't get stuck waiting for groups. (Red Mage main) Also soloing is easier now, you get more XP and you can also get items that give you more XP on top of that. In addition there are some items that do things like let you warp around to different outposts and such. It's definitely a bit friendlier. (Though still very much a group centric game, which is fine by me - I get bored soloing in MMORPGs)

It's actually pretty amazing going back to FFXI. I forgot just how much of a world it feels like compared to EQ2, WoW and their ilk. Especially moving from EQ2 to FFXI. It's just things like the towns in FFXI actually feel like they are towns rather than random houses and shit.

After the job system I'm not sure I can play any other game. The job system is the ultimate treat for those with alt-itus.

As far as the grind goes if I'm having fun I don't care. My goal is not to reach the "end game." (To me end game is roll another character or stop playing) When it starts being work I'll unsub again.

The fun in WoW never even really started for me. It was just blah the whole time.

D&D Online I think could be pretty entertaining given 6 more months of development. I found it oddly addicting for some reason, and not in the usual ding gratz sort of way.

[Llava]

I should point out- I don't think WoW is a bad game.  I enjoyed it.  I had fun.

But I'm under no illusion that it's a much more polished version of DAoC, which was a slightly more polished version of... well, need I go on?

I believe it was Schild who said it, and I agree, that WoW will be ultimately healthy for the MMG industry, in that it has announced "Innovate, or be crushed without mercy."  Because why would I pick up another standard MMG when WoW has polished the formula about as much as it can be polished?

I agree with Schild on principle.  But I still think it's a fun game- largely because I don't viciously hate that game model.  I don't even dislike levels.

All that said, CoV is better, nyeh!  (Though lately I've had my eye on FFXI,  which I never played.  There's no trial for that, right?  Papa likes to taste before he devours!  ....... I love being creepy.)