Schild doesn't like WoW

[Tale]

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

True, but large, well-run player cities were not like that. I'm thinking of rival cities called Mos Veris Imperium (imperial) and Mos Vegas (rebel) on Tatooine on Valcyn server. Each had about 150 citizens, and their inhabitants lived in them to defend them against large-scale PvP attacks, buffs were free to overts (in Veris at least), the cantinas were actually used, and so lots of people from other cities in search of action hung around too. Roleplayers came along and did events in Veris, griefers tried to destroy it all and failed, leaders had mini-political careers in the cities. For about a year, this rivalry overcame the lack of point in the GCW and the game in general, but everybody's gone now.

[Samwise]

How the fuck were there PvP attacks on cities?  Houses are indestructible.  Set them to "private" and go inside.  Threat eliminated.

[Ironwood]

Schild, I think it's not so bad that you don't like WoW.  But when you don't even seem to understand WoW, that's when I get screwy.  You don't seem to be coming from an informed viewpoint, merely one of dislike.

And I can't take you seriously when you say 'WoW is just a goddamn Diku clone guys, which is evil and awful and we don't need.  When I'm playing EQ2......'

Er.  Logic disconnect there.

WoW is a game you don't like and don't play.  I don't see the point in commentary on it from that stance.  I dislike Curling and don't play it.

I'm sure as fuck NOT going to go to the Curling thread and keep interjecting my uniformed and killjoy positions on the game.

I say all this with love, of course.

[Tale]

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.

Raiding was my thing in other games. I enjoyed it even if it failed, and if it was successful I enjoyed seeing other people get the loot, even if I got nothing. Maybe it was my guild, but WoW seemed to have more loot fever and e-peen obsession than previous games. Everyone seemed to have a menu of what they wanted, and got mildly frustrated when someone else got it. For once, being 60 was not the start of the enjoyable part.

[Tale]

How the fuck were there PvP attacks on cities?  Houses are indestructible.  Set them to "private" and go inside.  Threat eliminated.

Bases (destruction sequence triggered with a team of the right classes, and completed if you held it successfully during the destruction countdown). For some reason both sides continued to place the large detachment HQ bases within their cities. It was a source of pride to defend one that had survived for months, leading to bigger attacks and stronger defense. The benefits of bases were easy access to factioned mission terminals and recruiters in your city, but I think the main reason for placing several at a time in each city was to perpetuate the war (and have the city with the biggest e-peen, I guess).

[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.

Raiding was my thing in other games. I enjoyed it even if it failed, and if it was successful I enjoyed seeing other people get the loot, even if I got nothing. Maybe it was my guild, but WoW seemed to have more loot fever and e-peen obsession than previous games. Everyone seemed to have a menu of what they wanted, and got mildly frustrated when someone else got it. For once, being 60 was not the start of the enjoyable part.

Same with me on the raiding, and I enjoy it in WoW as well. I know what you mean about the lists and frustration, though.  In large part it's been my experience that the people like that weren't raiders, or weren't able to raid in other games OR this is their first MMO.

 The (very few) vets of raiding I've come across are like me, and know that they'll get their shot eventually, and seeing it go to someone else who's there frequently just means things will go smoother later due to the added mana/ dps/ whatever.  Hell, one of the officers in my guild, who is there all the time, was arguing vhemently against DKP and collecting those crappy ZG tokens because he didn't see it as fair.  'Nobody comes away with loot!'   Yarg.

[Ironwood]

Loot Raiding is the total suck.  Like you, our guild is currently in the throes of a huge argument over whether or not to implement DKP.

I HATE DKP.

It assumes that everyone's a greedy cockmunch.  I don't think it has a place in our guild.  Guess what ?  The greedy cockmunches WHO ARE ALREADY IN 2 RAIDING GROUPS OUTWITH THE GUILD disagree.

 

[Merusk]

No, see, DKP is about putting the guild first, the fact that it's a way of awarding loot is secondary.  With DKP you're ensuring that your people who are there the most often are getting loot, so the guild can make the best use of it.   

Suppose you get material drop for that Legendary mace (Hand of Sulfuras?).  Is it better for the guild that the tank that's there all the time to pick it up or that random guy who's only been seen twice in the last two months or the tank who's there often, but rolls on every damn thing that drops and has unusual luck with the dice?  Stuff like that is why DKP was created back in EQ.

[El Gallo]

To me, DKP is about putting the members in charge of what they get instead of the officers.  It's also about strangling future arguments about loot in the cradle.  It's the anti-drama pill.

[Ironwood]

Look, really, don't get me started.


Especially since you both just contradicted each other...

[schild]

How the fuck were there PvP attacks on cities?  Houses are indestructible.  Set them to "private" and go inside.  Threat eliminated.

Bases (destruction sequence triggered with a team of the right classes, and completed if you held it successfully during the destruction countdown). For some reason both sides continued to place the large detachment HQ bases within their cities. It was a source of pride to defend one that had survived for months, leading to bigger attacks and stronger defense. The benefits of bases were easy access to factioned mission terminals and recruiters in your city, but I think the main reason for placing several at a time in each city was to perpetuate the war (and have the city with the biggest e-peen, I guess).

This picture was back when bases were kind of broken (i.e. you could pick up the panels and hide them etc) but defending them was a big thing. I think this screenshot was the day before I quit due to some hurricane or rather knocking out my power for way too long, but we had an outpost and hospital. Defending it was by far the best thing in the game. I had lots of customers who were rebels and every time a rebel force was coming for us, we'd get tipped off and assemble. We were ruthless and had overpowered weapons and way too many smugglers (2 - which was way too many with the way panic shot worked). To say the very least - you can not have this sort of fun in a game without housing. Also, our base was out in the middle of flatlands on naboo in the boondocks. It was an ideal location, never an eyesore, and completely organized. It was in the same shape as the mall in Washington DC and instead of a washington monument, we had a forward outpost. Anyway, yea, it was good fun and had nothing to do with e-peen. Mostly because "Player Cities" as they know them now, did not exist. It was my like refugee camps.

Also, on the topic of DKP. I've said it before and I'll say it again, goddamn that is an insulting self-inflicted mechanic. Guilds that need to use it should be ashamed.

[Merusk]

Look, really, don't get me started.


Especially since you both just contradicted each other...

Not really, but you don't want to discuss it, so  :-D

[Xanthippe]

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

True, but large, well-run player cities were not like that. I'm thinking of rival cities called Mos Veris Imperium (imperial) and Mos Vegas (rebel) on Tatooine on Valcyn server. Each had about 150 citizens, and their inhabitants lived in them to defend them against large-scale PvP attacks, buffs were free to overts (in Veris at least), the cantinas were actually used, and so lots of people from other cities in search of action hung around too. Roleplayers came along and did events in Veris, griefers tried to destroy it all and failed, leaders had mini-political careers in the cities. For about a year, this rivalry overcame the lack of point in the GCW and the game in general, but everybody's gone now.

Now this sounds like a game I would have enjoyed immensely.  Unfortunately, I played SWG the first month of release, which killed any desire whatsoever to play it again.  Really was a shame, too, since it had several great things going for it.

[Mesozoic]

It sounds like there was a sweet-spot between intitial release shittiness and post-NGE frustration, assuming you were with the right people on the right server. 

I thought SWG sounded interesting, and planned on getting into it once they ironed out the bugs and  frankly, finished building the game.  Never has patience paid off so well.  A penny saved is a penny earned, etc etc. 

[schild]

The sweet spot was right before the player cities/vehicles update. Combat still sucked though.

[Tale]

It sounds like there was a sweet-spot between intitial release shittiness and post-NGE frustration, assuming you were with the right people on the right server. 

It wasn't ever particularly sweet, because the game was always broken and unbalanced in so many ways. For example, to be effective in PvP you had to be able to attack the mind bar, which was smaller and harder to heal than the health and action bars, so as a carbineer I was useless (only had random-pool attacks that sometimes hit mind). I could knock people onto their backs occasionally and run away or get someone else to kill them, which was OK because I was primarily a doctor. There were bugs and exploits with bases, e.g. you could buy defensive turrets that fired at approaching enemies, but depending on the latest patch those were either simple to exploit and destroy, or impossible to approach because the rate of fire was increased too far.

The live team usually took weeks/months to fix the simplest exploits like being able to shut down a base destruction countdown with a character that was not PvP flagged. Each base was destructible for a two hour window per day, supposedly determined by the time you originally placed it, but the times shifted due to bugs (then you got raided at 4am and lost months of work). One guy had a bugged gun that spammed area-effect mind poison that killed in two ticks, meaning the fight ended if he was online (took a year for the devs to remove it). Other patches, people could be griefed by incapacitating them three times instead of deathblowing them, causing permanent damage to their gear.

But when you got around stuff like that and had the right people, yes it was sweet.

[jpark]

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

Aye.  The player base in my view for EQ/EQ2 has always been better than WoW.  But that's not enough :)

[Rasix]

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

Aye.  The player base in my view for EQ/EQ2 has always been better than WoW.  But that's not enough :)

I was on a server with a high Asian/European population and even higher guild drama quotient (The Nameless. Legacy of Steel's home server) in Everquest.  Nothing since has made me hate people as much, not even AC2's Darktide server.

[ahoythematey]

You must have not played Diablo2 enough.

[Soln]

Of course, outside of all the exploits the real problem with the GCW in SWG is that it meant nothing.  It didn't matter at all whether one side wiped all the bases of a faction off a single planet or more, because there was no tracking and no advantages or penalties provided.  Outside of any modifiers, there's not even any basic tracking, like the kind Mythic provides, so players can know, other than pissing off another guild, what the real motivation should be to destroy a base or stronghold.  All you produced in SWG PvP were personal vendettas between guilds and people, and t3h hat3 was exponential because of base destruction.  On Kettemoor, there was a general detente after awhile to get away from "basewars".

[Tale]

All you produced in SWG PvP were personal vendettas between guilds and people, and t3h hat3 was exponential because of base destruction.  On Kettemoor, there was a general detente after awhile to get away from "basewars".

Yeah we had personal vendettas and hate, but we also had these guys (I posted about them on Corp and it got slashdotted, Wired did a story, etc) and a roleplayed storyline on the server board that meshed with the basewars (some of the same participants - raid one day, roleplayed trial of a traitor the next).

[Tale]

even higher guild drama quotient (The Nameless. Legacy of Steel's home server) in Everquest.

LOL. They (or at least ex-LoSers from EQ) were my SWG guild, Renraku :) After SWG, that particular group of ex-LoS members became Ravage in WoW (but I went back to my Aussie EQ guild).

[EDIT] OMG I think I can bring this nearly back on topic.

Nothing since has made me hate people as much

How then did you feel about Tigole being involved with WoW?

[Rasix]

[EDIT] OMG I think I can bring this nearly back on topic.

Nothing since has made me hate people as much

How then did you feel about Tigole being involved with WoW?

Not particularly happy because the way he got the job wasn't 100% on the up and up.  LoS had a sizeable number of Blizzard employees as members including at least one developer and serveral artists. I don't remember exactly what he was hired for, but apparently his English degree was enough qualification. 

Plus, you know, there was that whole thing about him walking over the average player or anyone not in his guild his entire time in EQ.  At least everytime I have to clear trash mobs in MC or BWL I can aim my hate at an actual human being I never liked in the first place.  Luckily instancing has helped separate some of the intra-faction drama he seemed to revel in.  I can blame him for Lethon fight though, can't I?

Trash mobs suck. 

[HaemishM]

Do I have to make the following topic then?

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

How about "We railed against it because its implementation 4 years ago was not fun."

WoW is fun. It isn't great innovation, or good server architecture, or meaningful PVP. But it is fun. That's all that matters.

[HaemishM]

Um.  If you're going to start talking about TV's, you need to realise the enormous importance of networks and Advertising subsidies.

We want neither in Mmmogs.

Actually, if it meant less ball sucking, I'd have no problem with advertising subsidies and networks in MMOG's. I really wouldn't. But it would have to be done right. In sci-fi MMOG's, ad banners and flying blimps with logos and shit make sense. In fantasy MMOG's, /pizza is evil evil death. Fantasy MMOG's can use interstitial type ads, email marketing and other things to make that shit work and pay dividends.

But if it's used like /pizza to pad some marketing twat's budget or some CEO's bottom line, fuck it in its tiny stupid ass.

[schild]

/pizza was the most uninvasive advertising in the goddamn world. That's all I ask of advertising.

[Paelos]

/pizza was the most uninvasive advertising in the goddamn world. That's all I ask of advertising.

Uh, it was not promoted in such a manner at all, and it only made the MMOG stereotypes worse. So, I disagree.

[Ironwood]

it would have to be done right.

But it wouldn't be.  You know it wouldn't be.

[HaemishM]

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?

It makes the devs focus about 80% of content creation on the raiders, who at best make up something like 10% of the user base. The casual player gets fuckall for new content, unless they choose to start trying to play like the uber guilds and raiders.

[schild]

/pizza was the most uninvasive advertising in the goddamn world. That's all I ask of advertising.

Uh, it was not promoted in such a manner at all, and it only made the MMOG stereotypes worse. So, I disagree.

I don't care about how something is promoted. I care about how it's displayed in game.

And MMOG stereotypes? Shit, they do it to themselves. Wasn't there a guy complaining about a XXXX shirt not being offered on the WoW boards? WTG d00dz. I'm in your base supplementing your calorie intake, fattie.

[Sairon]

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?

It makes the devs focus about 80% of content creation on the raiders, who at best make up something like 10% of the user base. The casual player gets fuckall for new content, unless they choose to start trying to play like the uber guilds and raiders.

10% might be a little on the low side. If we measure the populance in WoW who are enjoying raiding, or has it as a goal to one day reach it, I think the numbers would be fairly high. Most of the people who I know who dislike raiding alltogheter in WoW are MMORPG veterans, which is a minority in WoW. I know a fair share of MMORPG veterans in WoW who enjoys raiding in WoW as well.

[HaemishM]

it would have to be done right.

But it wouldn't be.  You know it wouldn't be.

Yes, I know. /sadf

As far as housing, I've never been a user of housing. The apartments like in Neocron that are just storage space and decorating practice, I just really never needed. But when you start talking about bases and capturable/attackable structures, THAT is useful housing.

And Cevik? Shadowbane had housing. Personal houses AND your player city. The housing made it something worth playing, at least until you figured out just how fucked up the whole system was.

Also, Neocron didn't fail because of ugly models (though that helped), it failed because it had five treadmills instead of one and you needed to ride at least 2 or 3 of them before you could even be rewarded with a goddamn pistol.

[Azazel]

/pizza was the most uninvasive advertising in the goddamn world. That's all I ask of advertising.

Uh, it was not promoted in such a manner at all, and it only made the MMOG stereotypes worse. So, I disagree.

While it might have been promoted annoyingly outside the game, inside the game it was totally unintrusive. As for making the MMOG stereotype worse? Who outside of other computer game geeks even knows what a MMOG is, let alone a stereotype of a player of a subgenre of games.

[Ironwood]

You're assuming we all think we're as bad as each other.  I refer you to the word 'Catass'.

[Azazel]

which post is the "catass" replyi to?