Avoid If You Can

[Esoteric]

I played WoW for a year I got epic bits from MC and nearly a full set from BWL. I was in a good guild and for a while it was fun.

However the end game is just one huge grind, faction grinding, raid grinding and PVP the biggest grind of all aka 16hrs a day 7 days a week for about 4 months will maybe get you the top rank. There are no proper war battles, skirmishes are held on small instanced maps. The pvp ranking system isnt static its based on averages and mathmatical equations and it degrades.

WOW starts out promising but the end game is solely designed to keep you grinding rather than having fun. I played and enjoyed daoc for around 4 years the end game was great and I play others too I am also press so I know roughly what Im talking about (I hope)

I enjoyed most of my time in the game but I had to end it as the content was not addressing many of the core issues. I'm just glad I quit before the expansion.

[WiZe^]

World of Grinding

[Gray]

Im considering calling it a day myself

Things just have to be put into perspective and before you know it you relise WoW isnt the most important thing after all

Gah. damn it :/

[Chrystina]

<shrug> there's not just one type of end-game... for PvE addicts it's GREAT and even PvP junkies like it...

I don't PvP at all (93 days /played as holy/disc priest and 8 HK's) and I still love the game... my guild doesn't have BWL on farm yet (we killed Nef for the 1st time last week, yay) and progressing "OK" in AQ40... and it just gets better and better... Blizzard have learned how to make encounters a challange and not a simple 2 1/2 hours (including slack) zerg-place like Molten Core

[Jupitus]

Originally Posted by Chrystina

<shrug> there's not just one type of end-game... for PvE addicts it's GREAT and even PvP junkies like it...

I don't PvP at all (93 days /played as holy/disc priest and 8 HK's) and I still love the game... my guild doesn't have BWL on farm yet (we killed Nef for the 1st time last week, yay) and progressing "OK" in AQ40... and it just gets better and better... Blizzard have learned how to make encounters a challange and not a simple 2 1/2 hours (including slack) zerg-place like Molten Core

Agreed... I think people who have 'rushed' through to the major instances may well be getting a bit bored, but certainly I have gone at a (very) steady tempo and I am still enjoying our guild's progression towards harder and harder encounters, bit by bit... what's the hurry?

[Garok]

Originally Posted by Jupitus

Agreed... I think people who have 'rushed' through to the major instances may well be getting a bit bored, but certainly I have gone at a (very) steady tempo and I am still enjoying our guild's progression towards harder and harder encounters, bit by bit... what's the hurry?

By the time the top guilds have Power grinded their way through the top level dungoen thier is a new one awaiting them. Tbh I think its more the people that cant do the major instances for what ever reason are getting bored.

Once the majour guilds are establised and have there set raiding group the smaller guilds of prehaps younger players or more casual players wont be seeing any of this content. The only stuff they added in for these players to do so far (once they have done the 5 man blue dungeons and got deceint gear) is faction grinding and we know how fun that is!

[Ctuchik]

biggest problem with WoW is that if you dont have 10+ hours a day to play you are not ever gonna get anything decent from any of the end game instances, even the T0 sets are hard to get if you are a casual. the full set epics are impossible if you are not in a big raid guild, or have a strong "alliance" with many small guilds that know what they are doing.

same applies to the pvp. if you cant pvp for 10+ hours a day, you are never gonna get rank 14 because every other pvp'er on YOUR side is fighting against you for the ranks. your not fighting the enemy side for it, your fighting your friends.

the pvp aspect of this game is probably one of THE most anti social "features" of anything i have ever played. sooner or later you come to the point where you wish your friends wouldent pvp so much so YOU can gain ranks faster.

that, in my oppinion, is not what a MMORPG should be about.

its a great game if u love to play a MMOG in single player mode to. there is never any reason what so ever to acually go out and get a group to be able to level. there is more then enough quests to be perfectly fine solo. sure some of the instance quests give great rewards, but most of them isnt that nessecary(sp?) when you level.

[Esoteric]

Heh jupitus long time no see <coughs> galaxy <coughs> (Eso will never forget cause it was just too funny)! For all who don't know, I found Jupi online in another game where we were both enemies but in that (Planetside) game you could talk to each other so there we were chatting away for about 30 minutes not expecting to be near one another (the game map was huge) I was sat in a tree launching tracking missiles at an enemy target and bam <Wic>Jupitus> we both laughed very hard I think ;p not that I needed to kill him apparently his driving skills were legendary! I do remember blowing galaxies up I flew too by jamming myself in the walkover at a base I don't think I ever flew one again after that.

Anyway back to the topic.

Erm right yes! Well the first time I attended MC I was excited and when I saw ragnaros I was ready to pee my pants "you fool you fool you lead them to me lair" bla bla! Squish goes the lizard. Its after a long time and hours spent do you realise the time you have invested. BWL was the same, in the end it was tough breaking it but once it was on farm and done in under 4 hours I found it bleh!. After the 30th raid of the same places ZG, MC and BWL I just got bored.

The main question that hit me was what was the point in farming all this equipment, the main answer I returned to myself was so I can raid better. This was not for me really I wanted to get my gear haul my ass to a Elf held pvp keep and lay siege to it beating down the doors and looking pretty in my Stormrage while doing it.

Blizzard for me personally have lead the game in completely the wrong direction and they know what they are doing. All mmos have to have some sort of grind but its when the $$ totally take over the game play and not the game play over the $$. When the game play is brilliant and people find fun reasons to spend time and money in/on a game you don't need to insert huge amounts of grind.

Oh and I'd like to add PUGs in daoc were pretty damn good its where you met some fantastic people certainly in the early days! In wow your lucky if they know how to play properly let alone trust them not to try to "ninja" I guess though they have tried to fix that. Generally I find the communities are very closed where as all other games theyre open and most people know each other.

Anyway looking to the next game on the horizon now not sure which till I find one that suits me I'll probably be a space ship captain in eve!

[Gat_Decor]

pfft joop was the best Galaxy pilot out there

I especially remember the time he couldn't see where he was going (PC fucked up or something, more likely pissed ) and we were yelling at him on Teamspeak, left a bit, left a bit... no your other left! ...

[Ormorof]

im still only lvl 42 on my wee warrior :P

but then i love exploring (not got a mount yet but i spent most of the first 3 months wandering around kalimdor, walked from Tanaris to the elf place, darkshore isnt it? ) it rocks

dunno much about the PvP, i enjoyed messing around in warsong gulch though, but got abit sameish after the 15th time i must admit....

ah well, the future's bright, seems to be loads of exciting new things coming up that might be worth a bash

(ive heard Bioware are developing a mmorpg?)

[Esoteric]

Yep bio have something on the cards but its a looooooong way off!

[Chrystina]

Originally Posted by Ormorof

dunno much about the PvP, i enjoyed messing around in warsong gulch though, but got abit sameish after the 15th time i must admit....

heh, but people happily ran around in emain 6+ hours per day...

[Z^^]

Don't you understand how useless the pvp in wow?
Anyhow i used to pvp for hours in daoc but pve in wow is more fun then doing nothing.

Wow pvp as a purpose is to get the gear/horses sence anyother thing like getting the "high warlord" tag over your head is just stupid, and then pvp isn't about player killing at all its about farming flags or defending them, and doing
that there should be no player killing for the sake of it.

And anyone who say alterac valley should seriously reconsider that instance to moltencore with randoms + allys.

Wow is a fun game played with the right ppl and when you don't give a shit about gear/epics.

I can bearly stand "pvping" in wow for about 4hours max, then im tired of helping the druid in wsg or killing the druid, or defending taking flags in Arathi basin.

[Esoteric]

Originally Posted by Chrystina

heh, but people happily ran around in emain 6+ hours per day...

A good point but I feel that I made the choice to run around emain on my weekend or to spend 4 hours hammering at a keep. The big difference is that Emain is a permanent area, by taking a keep you effect the entire server and you came back saying "ooo my guild just took x keep". WoW pvp is based on short term instances, you don't effect the server or even the local area and no one gives a pap if you win or loose.

Emain is also XXX times larger than WSG probably compare it to AV but AV is useless currently because a match can take all day or until people leave it gimping any extra honour or faction points. Another major point for me is in DAoC I felt at war in wow I feel as though I am playing paintball for a practise war.

In daoc as well you could run out for an hour try to get involved with a couple of battles and gain a little R.P to your character then log again. The numbers were permanent.

As a journo I try to look at negatives and positives, the only plus for wow I can settle on is that the instances allow equal numbers vs equal numbers. In DAoC my early days were spent being camped at the home keep by Mids. However I feel this point is majorly negated by the fact that people organise their own teams and I did as well so I could gain rank 11 for my mount, random groups stood no chance matches were over within 5 minutes certainly in AB.

Gaining Realm Points is a grind and it is I think still reasonably difficult to gain the top echelons its a permanent attribute and players can track easily what they have and where they would like to be rank wise.

Blizzard is trying to address the issue but only outdoor pvp and they have said this since the first blizzcon, now its almost too little too late they keep churning out new battlegrounds and what is needed is not necessarily outdoor pvp but a total scrapping and reworking of the pvp system combined with outdoor pvp I might play the game again. For now Im looking at Vanguard/Warhammer for my next fantasy game. No game is perfect but WoW has just got it so wrong for me its not worth the effort at all.

Im gonna go over old ground if I type more that'll do for now!

Just a couple more lines then... I'd just like to add I did enjoy WoW I don't feel bitter that I did I had no major bad experience to make me want to quit, I choose now not to play it for various reasons and these above are the major ones.

[Esoteric]

bleh edit time ran out.

I dont play daoc either anymore I probably would if they made seperate "classic" servers for English, German and the Frenchies. I do feel though that I got as much as I could out of the game and it is best to try new pastures until I settle again.