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Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

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Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#71

Post by Ocerge »

prawks wrote: post #66
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…

> 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 activiti…

This exact reason is why EverQuest grabbed me so much harder than any other MMO since. Another huge reason is the danger factor. In WoW, there is effectively no punishment at all if you die, so there's no fear of exploring new places. In EQ, there are (or at least were) steep penalties if you die in the wrong place. Ignoring the fact that you lose XP that could amount to hours of lost progress, you may compound your woes with continued deaths trying to get the loot that remained with your corpse. The fear-factor had me addicted, and made accomplishments that much more rewarding.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#72

Post by digi_owl »

minimaxir wrote: post #17
oconnor0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyria is not as robust as Azeroth. What does that mean?

There's a side effect to the downscaling of all content in that all content feels the same . Guild Wars 2 has public world events, where large numbers of players (50+) team up against a boss or a mob of enemies. Almost all bosses are HP sponges, so it gets repetitive very very easily. (ArenaNet attempted to make more complex areas, which mostly just added grind.) In terms of world exploration, Guild Wars 2 has a few…

Their problem is that so much of the defensive options in game are active ones that avoid or nullify all incoming damage. Mobs don't do that, so instead they are given a massive health pool.

This in effect turn every fight into a fight between mob health pool and how many active defenses you brought along.

On top of that, anyone can "heal" someone that has gotten defeated and so bring them back into the fight.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#73

Post by IgorPartola »

prawks wrote: post #66
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…

> 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 activiti…

This is the opposite of my experience playing multiplayer Minecraft. There are no goals here, other than ones you set yourself. You simply log in, hang out with people, and mess around. Here are some things I've done that were the highlights of my time on this one particular server (semi-vanilla PvE):

I helped a fellow player build an iron farm when he didn't know how.

Helped another player try to debug his auto-brewer setup.

Built a vending machine so new players can get cheap food. Got a full set of diamond armor as payment one time.

Exchanged Christmas gifts.

Helped a new player find a place to live. Upon arrival, we stood at the top of a cliff and admired the view. Then, he noticed a lone chicken and immediately named him "Colin". When the night came the chicken got out, and we both went leaping down the mountain after him. We lost half of our gear, but Colin was safe and sound in the end.

Had a pool party. A player was living in the extreme hills biome. Upon visiting him, I remarked that it'd be fun to jump off the cliff and try to make it into a tiny pool of water. So that's exactly what we did. Invited other people, and spent about two hours climbing up the mountain, then jumping off.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like this all the time, but if you find a good server with good players, it can be a really fun experience.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#74

Post by IgorPartola »

I play Minecraft on a small server (semi-vanilla PvE). Some stuff I found can be downright creepy. Here's an example: http://imgur.com/52wZxvp. This was a huge structure in the middle of the ocean that I stumbled upon. The giant sign on it said "HAIL TITO" or some such. The inside was really strange too: dark, with random traps and creatures roaming about (all intentional, such as golems). Abandoned Minecraft buildings in general are really interesting, but this takes the cake.

After some asking around I did find that the person didn't in fact go crazy, and this was supposed to be a temple of sorts, with traps and treasure. But at the time (3am) it really creeped me out.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#75

Post by ghrifter »

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…

>> have access to Garrisons, which is a FarmVille-like mechanic which has the easiest financial ROI in the game

This gutted the economy (especially on small-medium servers) and led to me quitting.

Raiding was fun, PvP was alright, but when the economy was mustered into farmville-time gating...I gave my favorite MMO up.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#76

Post by t0mbstone »

jimwalsh wrote: post #63
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 MM…

The trick is to make the level scaling optional.

If I'm level 100, I should be able to go into a level 5 area and kill everything with one hit, but I wouldn't get any XP because it wasn't challenging.

However, if my low level friend is playing and they want a buddy to help them with low level content, it would be nice to have the option of scaling my character down to my friend's level where I would be challenged by level 5 content alongside them (and even gain some degree of proportional XP or maybe scaled loot from it)

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#77

Post by chiph »

I'm back playing again. I have a few lvl 100's, but I decided to start a new character -- this one would have no weapons and no armor -- just a tabard. I wanted to see how far I could get with just my fists. I'm up to 21 so far. I can take out regular mobs that are 3-4 levels below me with few problems.

But I do die -- about as often as I did in BC, so about 3 times as often as everyone else does these days. The best part is my repair costs are zero gold.

Skywall\Fistsofdeath

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#78

Post by pvg »

patio11 wrote: post #40

Interesting note: every ghost-town of a zone in WoW, and some of them were ghost-towns immediately, cost N fully realized software startups to develop. (Like, mid-single-digit million dollars per zone.) It's one of those things to keep in perspective when folks say "Why did anyone sink $1.2 million into $A_FIELD_I_DON'T_CONNECT_WITH?" I don't know, but that's literally less than it cost to put that mid-30s swamp leve…

The whole game cost somewhere between $50 and $60 mil, so individual zones were not quite as pricey.

Additionally, it was specifically designed to avoid dumping lots of players into chokepoint zones (what they called 'player collision') and providing multiple paths for progression.

I imagine they were quite aware some places will be less populated than others, from the get go. Still, on high population servers, it was perfectly normal to run into random players in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#79

Post by outworlder »

The 'level' thing is something inherited from old RPGs and computer RPGs and reused to death. It is nice for a sense of progression, but ultimately leads to all sorts of issues.

Why can a 99 level whatever kill dozens of level 1 charaters effortlessly, by mistake even? Why does it have N times more health? Makes no sense.

One of the first successful MMORPG games was Ultima Online, which didn't have any levels. Just skills. And they didn't matter all that much. Equipment did to a degree, but noone was walking around alone with a +9 weapon for fear of losing it. So it was relatively even.

It was FUN. All areas mattered, even if they didn't have as much variety as WoW. Monsters didn't give XP, so they were mostly killed for resources. And some tiny skill increase, sometimes.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#80

Post by cjslep »

outworlder wrote: post #79

The 'level' thing is something inherited from old RPGs and computer RPGs and reused to death. It is nice for a sense of progression, but ultimately leads to all sorts of issues. Why can a 99 level whatever kill dozens of level 1 charaters effortlessly, by mistake even? Why does it have N times more health? Makes no sense. One of the first successful MMORPG games was Ultima Online, which didn't have any levels. Just s…

Honestly, that was what I loved about EvE: no levels. Pick a goal and the skills to get there. Enjoy the journey along the way.

Edited to add: There was once the perception that if you weren't an older player you could never catch up with them because of the first-come nature of skills, but that was demolished long ago (for better or worse) by blobbing with Caldari battlecruisers. Sheer numbers will beat anything, and if you are losing it is because your sheer numbers aren't big enough.

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