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Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

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Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#61

Post by cm2012 »

ropman76 wrote: post #48
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

God that was painful :-). I lost a lot of time in WoW, perhaps it was an escape, but I spent hours learning the various nooks and crannies, leveling up over 3 dozen characters of various types to the max level. I had people I never met that I felt were good friends, shared battles and triumphs and failures. Laughed at the sometimes incredibly subtle in game humor, and sometimes not so subtle. Collected odd recipes to…

Lot of nostalgia and time lost. My wife and I played together before we had kids so we could stay up to 2-3 AM on weekends and 40 man raid Molten Core or Blackwing Lair. We were lucky to find some married people who played and/or some more mature players. We stopped after we had kids (time crunch LOL) but we still keep in touch with some of our guild mates.

My wife and I play - but we have no friends who do. I am envious!

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#62

Post by lordnacho »

I am just so lucky WoW started after I was done with education. In fact I picked it up during a recovery from knee surgery. I figured if I couldn't walk in the real world, I could explore an imaginary one.

It's a beautiful place. The thing is, you can't explore it without levelling. And it's also pretty vast, at least the size of zone 2 in London tube terms. So I ended up spending a lot of time there.

I got so deep into it I even attended a wedding. I mean where the IRL players got married and their characters and online friends got together.

Anyway, there is something about the way it's constructed that gets boring after a few months of playing time. It's as if there's two games: levelling and raiding. Raiding is where your friends are, so levelling is what you have to do to get your friends the Tank/Healer that they need. (Nobody needs DPS).

It would be cool if the content just scaled so you could level everywhere, instead of having a predefined optimal quest/zone path. On your third character it does get tedious, because everyone levels by doing solo DPS.

Perhaps there is also a smarter mechanic for gold grinding. When I was playing there was always some zone that was optimal for finding the best ores, so I'd just fly a loop of that each morning.

Lastly, is it really hard to generate content? I mean of the type "here's a warrior, a druid, and a warlock, find us something to do that can't just be googled". Maybe smarter minds have thought about this than me, but I thought it could be worth a stab.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#63

Post by jimwalsh »

minimaxir wrote: post #3

I recently reactivated my old WoW account and purchased Warlords of Draenor out of curiosity, and ended up getting my Orc Death Knight to the new level cap of 100. This article only scratches the surface on why the old worlds are abandoned. As with most modern MMOs, the endgame begins at max level. In order to help players level faster, Blizzard added a heirlooms mechanic in the second expansion (Wrath of the Lich Ki…

The scaling zones of GW2 were not very popular for those of us that played in the beginning. Traditional MMOs allow your character to gain power. The power gain of your character is a large reason for many of the game systems to exist. To develop a system that takes away all this character power that you've gained felt boarderline 'slap in the face' like. Stripping character power is never a proper solution for an MMO.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#64

Post by Squarel »

abakker wrote: post #41
FlannelPancake wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're clearly correct about the game beginning at max level, but I don't think heirlooms or exp boosts changed anything. Even in vanilla, there were accepted "do this to level as quickly as possible" routes. No one really hung around silithus pre-AQ, with the small exception of people who chose to level there (and there were much better zones to do that). WoW and mmos in general just don't encourage explorat…

Good point - Silithus ALWAYS had a low population, because it sucked to get to, and sucked even more to level there. The quests are almost all formulaic, (kill 10 ant monsters, etc.) and there are few plots in any of the quests. Once you hit 60 in the original game, there was plenty to do in _any_ other area that made it worth leaving and never coming back. I did some leveling in all the areas that were available at…

I recently did silithus again....it reminded me why I hated it so much in Vanilla. Especially because you had to go there to get your cooking to 300

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#65

Post by digi_owl »

minimaxir wrote: post #3

I recently reactivated my old WoW account and purchased Warlords of Draenor out of curiosity, and ended up getting my Orc Death Knight to the new level cap of 100. This article only scratches the surface on why the old worlds are abandoned. As with most modern MMOs, the endgame begins at max level. In order to help players level faster, Blizzard added a heirlooms mechanic in the second expansion (Wrath of the Lich Ki…

Not just that you downscale, but that certain parts of the game, like dailies, actively encourage you to go to low level zones to do stuff.

The PVE side of GW2 have a bunch of other issues though.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#66

Post by prawks »

FlannelPancake wrote: post #35
minimaxir wrote: post #3

I recently reactivated my old WoW account and purchased Warlords of Draenor out of curiosity, and ended up getting my Orc Death Knight to the new level cap of 100. This article only scratches the surface on why the old worlds are abandoned. As with most modern MMOs, the endgame begins at max level. In order to help players level faster, Blizzard added a heirlooms mechanic in the second expansion (Wrath of the Lich Ki…

I think you're clearly correct about the game beginning at max level, but I don't think heirlooms or exp boosts changed anything. Even in vanilla, there were accepted "do this to level as quickly as possible" routes. No one really hung around silithus pre-AQ, with the small exception of people who chose to level there (and there were much better zones to do that). WoW and mmos in general just don't encourage explorat…

> unless you're really into just having fun - which the game mostly does not encourage

This is the exact reason why, no matter how many times I tried over the years to play this game with friends, I could never stay attached for longer than a few hours. There seems to be less and less emphasis put on enjoying the experience of exploration and being in a space in modern online games, and more emphasis on rote activities for the sake of progress.

And thus I return to single-player games, which I certainly do not mind. There is a seemingly never-ending stream of creative ideas coming out of that space.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#67

Post by digi_owl »

atom-morgan wrote: post #29
Raphmedia wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GW1 was amazing for that. Vanilla had you spend some time to level up to 20 (max), and you felt like an adventurer by the time you maxed out. The next expansions however speeded up the leveling process. You start level 1, do some story mission that kickstart your adventurer into the real world and you are level 20 by the time you finish the prolog (i.e. you start on an island, and by the time you get to the main cont…

> As much as I like GW2, I wish they had kept more gameplay mechanics from the previous game. This was my biggest surprise with GW2. All the videos leading up to its release had me really excited. The combat looked so much more engaging and interactive. In the end, I found myself preferring GW1. But to be fair, it may just be age. I find it harder to play games for extended periods of time than it was back when I was…

The issue is in essence that GW2 has become overly streamlined for sake of PVP. It is a curse i see with all MMORPGs that provide some kind of "competitive" PVP. Sooner or later the PVE side suffers because of some "exploit" or "OP" combo that makes PVPers cry foul.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#69

Post by digi_owl »

raker wrote: post #33
Someone1234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't use the mechanic of more and better gear as a reward, so content doesn't get obsoleted by that. Interesting. What do they use instead? Most games use either gear or something akin to gear (like ships in Eve).

Progression through Guild Wars rewards you with access to new skills. At any given time you can only bring 8 of those skills (and only 1 of them can be elite) with you at any given time. In addition, your character is limited to using skills from 2 classes. Many of the skills have specific interactions or triggers. Some skill specifically counter, defend against, or take advantage of other skills. Mobs have a set of…

I have taken to liken GW1 to a trading card game.

You collect a bunch of cards (skills) and then build a deck (skill bar) from that.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#70

Post by bovermyer »

bearlikelion wrote: post #30

I've recently started my first adventures in Azeroth, and its been quite an experience. Being very familiar with the genre I knew what I was getting into, but didn't quite understand the differences of WoW versus Guild Wars, Wild Star, or another MMO. I really enjoyed how they continue to have players level through the expansions, the over joyous feeling of a new loading screen when I reach the next leveling mileston…

There are over ten years' worth of stories and content in WoW. There are very few people in the world who can claim to have experienced all of it.

One of my favorite "wow, that's random" discoveries in WoW is the Plants vs Zombies minigame by the Dalaran crater in the Eastern Kingdoms.

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