Schild doesn't like WoW

[Samwise]

In all honesty, I wasn't making fun at all.  You said you enjoyed a gameplay style, I mentioned another game with the exact same gameplay style and asked if you liked it.  I was mainly curious because I'd be interested in knowing if the playstyles are similar enough to capture your interest.

It's a very valid question.  I actually did play the Sims for a while and I liked it for a while, but I got fed up with it after about a week.  

The problem with the Sims is that there's no goddamn point.  There aren't other real people around to appreciate the aesthetic of my house.  My house doesn't serve any larger purpose, like being part of a virtual economy.  I can't walk around in my house and see what it actually feels like.  It didn't feel like I was contributing to a 'world', and it didn't feel like I was exercising any creativity.

Really, the Sims was just a cleverly disguised but extremely shitty RTS game once you managed to peel back all the layers.

[Bunk]

Housing sprawl was one of UOs biggest failures. Housing in SWG was built on a good idea, but there was nothing to make players socialize around them. Plus the damn sprawl of harvesters.. ugh.

AC did it well, but unfortunately most of you never played it.

[cevik]

SWG's housing DESTROYED the game. 

I think that housing actually may have retained many players longer than they would have otherwise stayed. 

I have no doubt you are right, hence the net negative effect that housing has on games.  Unless you think that people continuing to pay for defunct games that they no longer play because they are afraid they will lose their virtual items a good thing?

Ask yourself this: Why were people speculating on the housing market?  Because player housing was a valuable and attractive component of the game.  Players were willing to spend a lot of real life cash to obtain quality housing in UO.  Thank you for making my point for me.

Percieved monetary value in virtual items isn't postive thing.  I far from made your point for you.  In fact, the system had a very negative effect on the overall game.  People who did not have the material assets available in real life to obtain a luxury virtual item were left out.  People do not play games to have their real life inequalities translated into a game, in fact they play games for exactly the opposite reasons.

Much like raiding has a net negative effect on the game, though perhaps a small minority enjoys it and will argue until they turn blue that it has a positive effect, housing has a net negative effect on games.

[schild]

Horizons had the best and worst ideas for housing.

Devs set up where houses can go, how many and how the town will look when complete on the most base level. You can make your houses as nice as you want. That's awesome.

You have to build your house. Not awesome.

[Nebu]

I have no doubt you are right, hence the net negative effect that housing has on games.  Unless you think that people continuing to pay for defunct games that they no longer play because they are afraid they will lose their virtual items a good thing?

People play games to have fun.  If housing makes the game fun for some players, those players win.  If housing brings the developer more money from retention, they also win.  You didn't like the effect housing had on the game and left.  You did the right thing by voting with your wallet. 

I personally think that housing in SWG should have been restriceted to "housing only" areas and agree that it was poorly implemented.  I do have to admit that SWG combat was so awful, that housing and character creation were about the only redeeming qualities I found in the game.  However, I really don't think that housing broke SWG though... I actually think that housing was a broken element in a badly broken game.  In some ways the way housing was broken may have even helped SWG.  You got to scout out and pick your own site... which was more fun than almost any other feature.  Like I said... this is just an opinion thing.

Percieved monetary value in virtual items isn't postive thing.  I far from made your point for you.  In fact, the system had a very negative effect on the overall game.  People who did not have the material assets available in real life to obtain a luxury virtual item were left out.  People do not play games to have their real life inequalities translated into a game, in fact they play games for exactly the opposite reasons.

Much like raiding has a net negative effect on the game, though perhaps a small minority enjoys it and will argue until they turn blue that it has a positive effect, housing has a net negative effect on games.

I still don't see your argument. It had a negative effect on the game how?  UO wasn't successful?  You not liking the effect housing had on the way you played the game doesn't make housing a broken element.  My point was that the fact people were willing to spend real life cash on virtual items signifies that the virtual items have value.  These items can only have value if they are desirable. If housing was undesirable, it would have no value in game let alone outside of it.  I understand that your point is that were it not for housing that UO would have been driven in another direction, but that's not how it happened.  Housing was immensely popular and people did everything they could to ensure both a nice house and a good location.  Isn't that an obvious statement that a large number of people both felt that it was an important aspect of the game and something that they enjoyed?  

[schild]

SW:G housing was awesome. Letting people build anywhere and turn the entire game into a concrete jungle was complete lack of forethought. There should have been places you could build. Little pocket areas, away from content. And once one person from a guild built something there, only guild members or friends of that original person could build there. And all the extra guild stuff should have been instanced out of a PA hall - except for things like the field hospital and forward outpost. My favorite thing to do in houses of my guilds crafters was hide in the equipment and talk to them. More often than not I could scare the hell out of them. I need to dig up the screenshots of us imperials hiding in rebel mission terminals.

[cevik]

I have no doubt you are right, hence the net negative effect that housing has on games.  Unless you think that people continuing to pay for defunct games that they no longer play because they are afraid they will lose their virtual items a good thing?

People play games to have fun.  If housing makes the game fun for some players, those players win.  If housing brings the developer more money from retention, they also win.  You didn't like the effect housing had on the game and left.  You did the right thing by voting with your wallet. 

But you have yet to explain how anyone can have fun with a house, minus schild's exploiting the lack of collision detection in SWG, which again hardly seems like it's worth the negative effect houses have on games.

I've listed a dozen negative things houses bring to the game (inflation of economy, real life gold trading for outrageously limited real estate markets, urban sprawl with houses causing the game world to become blighted and ugly, houses only having no real use minus being a container, bugs with houses, the list goes on and on), and you keep saying, basically, "sure those things can be bad, but the positives outweigh the negatives."  Yet you haven't listed any positive effects housing has on games (minus the "increases subscriber retention" which is probably neutral at best).

You not liking the effect housing had on the way you played the game doesn't make housing a broken element.

It didn't effect the way I played the game at all, it had an overall effect on the economy of the game that caused outrageous inflation, and created a caste system of haves and have nots.  That is not positive for ANY game.  The success of UO has nothing to do with it, lots of successful games have crippling bugs and horrible features, just ask schild about WoW sometime.

EDIT:  Just FYI, the argument "UO was successful, UO had houses, therefore houses are good" is silly on many many levels.

EDIT2:

Housing was immensely popular and people did everything they could to ensure both a nice house and a good location.

Handing out free epics in WoW would probably be one of the most popular decisions the devs could ever make.  The popularity of the dev team would skyrocket.  However, handing out free epics would not be good for the game.  Popular things are not always good for the game.

[schild]

Cevik, my problems are on core design decisions and lack of innovation - your problems are on how people use the design decisions to further themselves and put down the little man. Also, you're a bit loony.

[cevik]

your problems are on how people use the design decisions to further themselves and put down the little man.

Ahh, so you are a supporter of uber guilds and high end raiding now?

Or is it only a core design decision when it's a system you don't like?

[schild]

The core design decisions enable that shit. Of course people will make use of it. I hate uber guilds and raiding. Fix it at the core.

You liberals love putting words in people's mouths. /bait

[schild]

Edit: In other words, there are probably ways to let raiding and uberguilds exist in a world without fucking it up for the most part, but it would take real thought on the matter - something that Blizzard doesn't do. There's money in uberguilds - I'll admit it. Vanguard exists for that reason - though it'll fail in a spectacular way, for they aren't Blizzard. Point being, the problems are merely a byproduct of bad design decisions that were easily taken advantage of - like housing in SW:G.

Edit Again: Woops, postcount ++ I guess.

[Rasix]

How does raiding and uberguilds hurt the average/casual player in WoW other than the fact that 100% of the content generation is not aimed at them? 

I'm curious to see your response.  Please, go into to details and cite some personal experience.   

[cevik]

Edit: In other words, there are probably ways to let raiding and uberguilds exist in a world without fucking it up for the most part, but it would take real thought on the matter - something that Blizzard doesn't do. There's money in uberguilds - I'll admit it. Vanguard exists for that reason - though it'll fail in a spectacular way, for they aren't Blizzard. Point being, the problems are merely a byproduct of bad design decisions that were easily taken advantage of - like housing in SW:G.

And, as I have said above, there are probably ways to put housing into a game system without fucking it up.  Unfortunately developers fuck everything up so it's pointless.  Since, as I said above, I see no real benefits of housing, I hope that they stop putting it in games.  Because to date they've fucked up every attempt, and to date they have shown me no real desireable reasons to have housing in games.  You may differ, and I was asking for reasons that you actually like housing, but so far all you've done is tell me that my reasons for hating houses are loony.

Just like the typical conservative, as soon as you realize you're dead fucking wrong, you just flame the other guy and hope no one notices.

[Nebu]

EDIT:  Just FYI, the argument "UO was successful, UO had houses, therefore houses are good" is silly on many many levels.

UO was successful primarily because it was the only kid on the block.  I'm not stupid enough to make a causal relationship as stated and feel a bit insulted.  At least I made an attempt at a concrete view while your points have been anecdotal at best.  For the record, UO was a shitty game on many levels and quite frankly, a game I really didn't care for.  I was attempting to point out that housing was immensely popular in UO dispite the fact that you didn't like it.  Most players went out of their way to have a good house in a good location.  The fact that people started paying stupid sums of real life money for houses seems to support my stance with more than an anecdote.    

Asking why people think housing is fun is like asking someone why they like candy.  Some people do, some people don't.  I happen to think that WoW is a derivative piece of trash yet the market figures indicate that I'm not with the majority.  It's all about opinion.  The bottom line is that game developers have been adding housing to many mmogs since UO.  I would assume that housing is implemented because it adds value to the product.  Why do you think so many mmogs have housing?  If it is ruining or having no effect on games, then why would all of these development houses waste the resources?

[Samwise]

But you have yet to explain how anyone can have fun with a house

Tell you what - explain to me how anyone can have fun with whacking foozles, and I'll explain to you how anyone can have fun with a house.   

[Shockeye]

Since, as I said above, I see no real benefits of housing, I hope that they stop putting it in games.  Because to date they've fucked up every attempt, and to date they have shown me no real desireable reasons to have housing in games.

I quit DAoC and CoH before they had houses.

I never played EQ2.

Hey, let's not make stupid sweeping statements unless you've played all the games with housing, k? Thanks.

[schild]

Unfortunately developers fuck everything up so it's pointless.

Stop playing games.

Since, as I said above, I see no real benefits of housing, I hope that they stop putting it in games.

Therein lies YOUR problem.

How does raiding and uberguilds hurt the average/casual player in WoW other than the fact that 100% of the content generation is not aimed at them?

I don't even have to tell you that lonely dude, playing the game alone, with no friends, in no guild, who just wants "fun" is fucked the moment he walks into an auction house. Uberguilds, for the most part, control market value thereby cutting off the possibility of independent crafters. There are ways of fixing this - assigning value to items - say something requires 2 generic metal and 1 generic cotton to make. That two metal and cotton has a total value of 100. The level 60 crafter who made it, because he's level 60, can add a certain percentage - say 20% above the cost of the materials - or even 50%. Games need more market control. You can't expect guilds full of schmucks to understand economics. Yes, I realize that some laws of economics continue to show themselves in online games. But these are fake worlds, not the real world, the developer needs to stop allowing this invisible hand bullshit.

[El Gallo]

If by "uberguilds" you mean "IGE" then you'd have a point there.

[schild]

If by "uberguilds" you mean "IGE" then you'd have a point there.

IGE can't be in everywhere, all the time, everytime.

[Rasix]

I don't even have to tell you that lonely dude, playing the game alone, with no friends, in no guild, who just wants "fun" is fucked the moment he walks into an auction house. Uberguilds, for the most part, control market value thereby cutting off the possibility of independent crafters. There are ways of fixing this - assigning value to items - say something requires 2 generic metal and 1 generic cotton to make. That two metal and cotton has a total value of 100. The level 60 crafter who made it, because he's level 60, can add a certain percentage - say 20% above the cost of the materials - or even 50%. Games need more market control. You can't expect guilds full of schmucks to understand economics. Yes, I realize that some laws of economics continue to show themselves in online games. But these are fake worlds, not the real world, the developer needs to stop allowing this invisible hand bullshit.

Well, this doesn't really happen in WoW I'm afraid.  There's really no market control by higher level guilds.   Molten Core capable guilds (which is really any group of lvl 60 schmoes nowadays) don't monopolize the epic crafting recipes and put them on the market for disgustingly high prices to fund their war machines.  The market is pretty much dominated by female night elf rogues in Mauradon/Dire Maul level gear or as I like to call them "asians".  EQ and WoW are similar in the way that it only takes a dedicated individual to wreck some havok on a economy.  This hasn't gotten as bad in WoW mainly due to some mechanisms in place that EQ didn't have the luxury of having at the time.

Different games have had differing problems for when casual collides in the same "fun" space as the hardened catass, but for the most part, WoW does a pretty decent job of keeping the two spaces separate except in the instance where they collide in battlegrounds. Then they can expect to be on the short end of the equipment stick to either the raid guild or the premade battleground farmers.  But then, I think as a casual, you've got to live with lowered expectations of success (or do the lvl 29 battlegrounds, power creep isn't going to be so pervasive there).

There can be some design decisions and mechanisms in place for leveling the playing field, but you're going to need to make it a conscious participation choice (as the lvl 29 BGs already are) as to not alienate the entire achiever segment of your playerbase. Have a battleground where there's a set group of gear that everyone has to pick and choose from.  Have a solo capable level 60 dungeon.  Have a solo/duo dungeon the size of Molten Core and as epic in scale.  Unfortunately there's already that content available (D2 *cough*), so Blizzard is instead focusing on what they believe is their money making segment. Now, I'd be completely FOR a lot of changes, a lot of challenges more on the personal level than the group level, but I know what I'm playing. 

I rambled a bit and lost some focus (tired, avoiding working, about to go home), but I think my key point is: you rail against WoW because there are a lot of fundamental things you HATE about the MMO genre and have decided, like some, to pick on the easiest, largest target while having a noticable lack of knowledge about your target.   There are some people here that can tear into WoW for the evils it's bringing upon the genre and how it's eating babies, but coming from you it would sound like me railing against the current incarnation of AC, EQ2 or hell, UO.   Everything I dislike about WoW and things I'd like to see changed would run pages long, I'm sure yours would to.  Which one would be a better, more insightful read?

[schild]

WoW isn't picked because it's the easiest largest target.

It managed to exacerbate all the problems by streamlining them.

[Ironwood]

Yup, we're almost ready to five man this.

[Alkiera]

Horizons had the best and worst ideas for housing.

Devs set up where houses can go, how many and how the town will look when complete on the most base level. You can make your houses as nice as you want. That's awesome.

You have to build your house. Not awesome.

Actually, the not awesome part was YOU couldn't build your house.  YOU had to find 3+ different crafters to come by and stages and build the pieces of your house... carpenters, stonemasons, blah, blah, blah.  Realistic?  yes.  They even helped some by allowing you to put up prices on a stone on the property, and crafters wandering by could see if their craft was needed on that property, and if so, was the price worth it, and work on it in exchange for cash the owner had left there.  Which would be great once an area has started establishing itself...  but crappy trying to find crafters until it does, unless you already have a guild structure to help.  OMG, another MMO featuer that pretty much requires a guild to do easily... Shocking.

In fact, Horizons had a lot of great ideas, and many were actually implemented.  Unfortunately, they also had skull smashing lag, and some other general bugginess.  And it was a level-grind-fest.

Alkiera

[Fabricated]

90% of my problems with WoW are with the players. The game itself is fine.

[Nebu]

I can honestly say that WoW is the best PvE based mmog on the market.   I just don't happen to like it. 

My greatest love for WoW is that it has demonstrated to future investors that the MMOG pie is bigger than they had anticipated. A larger pie means that companies wishing to make a niche mmog may get enough investor interest to develop a game aimed at a small percentage of that large pie while still providing a decent return on investment. 

Must be quitting time... that barely made sense.

[Tale]

I'd argue that SWG was just a bad game.  I think that housing actually may have retained many players longer than they would have otherwise stayed.  Of course, neither of us has anything but anecdotal evidence to support this unless Raph wants to pipe in.

Most of SWG's problems came from being an unfinished game. I don't think it would have been a bad game if the original team was able to finish its work (then again, it was so ambitious they might never have finished). Somebody said "release now, ready or not" and we got a Star Wars game where the only means of travel at first was walking. Some classes, such as Bio-engineer, were almost non-functional on release. Core decisions such as death penalty mechanics were still changing, and many other elements with potential were unbalanced or broken. Then it was handed over to an almost totally new team (the live team) who always seemed out of their depths. They finished the dev team's work on vehicles and player cities, then went off on tangents like adding more hairstyles for image designers while the unfinished game limped along.

Housing itself was good, but player cities turned housing into something awesome. Well-run player cities became the core of the game for the remaining players. You had the roleplayers living out their fantasies (remember the regimented stormtrooper city on Tatooine visited by Vader? That was on my server). And you had the PvP cities, the kind where I lived and raided, with military bases that could be permanently destroyed (at a faction point cost that really hurt) by an enemy attack. Battles to save bases became the core of the game for me: I remember one of our surprise attacks turning into a four-hour struggle in a ravine next to a player-owned base, with about 40 players on each side, doctors dragging the unconscious back behind lines and reviving, poisons and diseases flying and being cured, and laser bolts filling the air. My side eventually lost and I was chased down in the desert, but I was so happy and full of adrenaline. That was the kind of thing player cities could produce, on which they never capitalised ... and then they destroyed these communities by changing the entire game twice for the worse.

[schild]

Player Cities turned the game into an urban wasteland. Not something awesome. Too many, too everywhere. Completely uncontrolled. It was fucking Star Wars: Jackrabbits.

[Velorath]

you're not entitled to endless fun

Endless fun?

No, probably not.

But people are over in the D&D forum right now saying the exact same thing that I said- the trip from 1-10 is fun, but it's short and there's nothing to do afterwards, so it's not worth the monthly fee. Why is this different?  1-60 in WoW isn't much longer, depending on how you play. Hell, I got to 41 in under 2 months.

What's so hard to figure out about the concept of canceling your sub when you're done with the game?  If games required yearly subscriptions I could understand your point, but you need only pay a subscription fee during a month you plan on playing the game.  If D&D is short and you don't feel like making alts, you can cancel before your free month is up.  If you play it for two months, you cancel at the end of the second month.  At no point are your forced to keep subscribing to a game you aren't playing.  6 months down the line when more content has been added, you can resubscribe for a month.  I don't know, do some people here stay subscribed to games for months even if they aren't playing or something?

[Rasix]

WoW isn't picked because it's the easiest largest target.

It managed to exacerbate all the problems by streamlining them.

examples, give them.
no sound byte quality crap
put up or shut up

OMG I POEMED IT.   Really, I want the full "WoW is killing the genre" diatribe* with specifics.  Enough clever, glib shit.  I really want to see this because I don't think you can do it in a way that doesn't sound like a fairytale.

*Bonus points for structuring it like an epic poem. 

[Typhon]

Yup, we're almost ready to five man this.

Is Signe going to be healer?  Who's tanking?

[schild]

examples, give them.
no sound byte quality crap
put up or shut up

OMG I POEMED IT.   Really, I want the full "WoW is killing the genre" diatribe* with specifics.  Enough clever, glib shit.  I really want to see this because I don't think you can do it in a way that doesn't sound like a fairytale.

*Bonus points for structuring it like an epic poem.

Tell us why you quit WoW before?

If my market economy example isn't base enough for you, I don't know what to tell you. Oh right, almost everything I hear about WoW is that the game starts at level 60. If that's the case, I want level 60 out of the box, an uberguild of henchman and the ability to solo that oh so interesting raid content I hear about. How's those upper level small group solo quests going? Well? Tell me when you're pimped out in that high end gear that's necessary to compete. K?

[Alkiera]

Oh right, almost everything I hear about WoW is that the game starts at level 60. If that's the case, I want level 60 out of the box, an uberguild of henchman and the ability to solo that oh so interesting raid content I hear about. How's those upper level small group solo quests going? Well? Tell me when you're pimped out in that high end gear that's necessary to compete. K?

That's funny, almost everything I've read here says the game STOPS at 60.  We must be reading different forums or something.

Alkiera

[Velorath]

Tell us why you quit WoW before?

If my market economy example isn't base enough for you, I don't know what to tell you. Oh right, almost everything I hear about WoW is that the game starts at level 60. If that's the case, I want level 60 out of the box, an uberguild of henchman and the ability to solo that oh so interesting raid content I hear about. How's those upper level small group solo quests going? Well? Tell me when you're pimped out in that high end gear that's necessary to compete. K?

What exactly have you heard that would suggest that the game starts at 60, because that's pretty much when it ends for me?

I don't know about anyone else but for me the game started at lv. 1.  Then it gets better when my characters can get into AB.  Then it ends when my characters get into the mid-50's and I start again or cancel.  I'm not really into big raids and PVP doesn't really get any better at lv. 60 so I'd rather not have a lv. 60 out of the box, and I'm not exactly sure why you would since it doesn't sound much like raids appeal to you either.  The early game though is pretty fun.

[Merusk]

The game is fun before 60, it only 'begins' at 60 if raiding and purples are your thing.  Fuck, if anything hitting 60 kills it because you have to compete in PvP with the folks who DO get their e-peen on with the purples.  Prior to that I've heard very very few complaints.  Hell, it was enough to keep you amused up to 60.

[Rasix]

Tell us why you quit WoW before?

Because I played a game for 6 months solid and simply burnt out?  Nothing's fun perpetually.  I had other issues, but they all stemmed and were amplified from one core issue: I played way, way too much WoW. 

I'll probably hit the burnout loop sometime before the expansion, at which time every tiny issue will have become an elephant. 

Oh right, almost everything I hear about WoW is that the game starts at level 60.

   We're going to need some more DPS.  NO PALADINS.