Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft • Hacker News Board

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#131

Post by simoncion » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

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…

GW2's scaling zones were exactly what got my friend group playing the game, and kept them playing. With every other MMORPG we'd played up to that point -and every one of the very few we've played since GW2-, our group would inevitably do one of three things:

1) Never start playing together, as the level gap between the newbies and the more veteran players meant that challenges were either impossible, or impossibly easy.

2) Rarely ever play the game because a) the group wants to avoid 1) and b) it's hard to get five friends spread across four timezones together on the regular.

3) Play the game as often as we want, as we each have "regular" solo characters, and "play-with-the-friend-group" characters, but get far less than the regulation amount of fun out of the group games, as all-too-often there's only like one set of low-level story content, so playing with the group causes to to re-run stuff for like the billionth time anyway.

And, really, even with the level scaling, your skills don't go away. Having a character in the party that's five or ten+ levels higher than the zone content makes it substantially easier than a character that's at-zone-level or just a few levels higher. (It remains quite satisfying to drop an offensive golem on some level one goblin and splat it in two hits.)

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#132

Post by rubicon33 » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:23 AM UTC

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.

Stop calling it 'time lost'! If you had fun, and formed beneficial relationships, then why was that lost time? Even relaxation, has utility.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#133

Post by rubicon33 » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:23 AM UTC

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.

Stop calling it 'time lost'! If you had fun, and formed beneficial relationships, then why was that lost time? Even relaxation, has utility.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#134

Post by morganvachon » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:25 AM UTC

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…

> not that anyone cared to visit these zones in the first place

For me the only exception was Un'Goro Crater. That was by far the most fun I had in the game apart from PvP arenas. Dinosaurs, cool quests inspired by 70s TV shows I watched as a kid, and just the fact that it was such a beautiful rendering of the real Ngorongoro Crater.

Of course I stopped playing in 2007, so I'm sure there's tons I've missed out on since. But I really enjoyed the early quests and their unique stories, even the hammy stuff like the Edwin VanCleef/Deadmines quests. Given the level cap is at 100 now, I don't see why Blizzard doesn't open up the game as free-to-play for the first 60 levels (the original game before any expansions) instead of just 20, and you pay to play beyond that. I would definitely pick it back up if they did that.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#135

Post by macwarlock » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:37 AM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #83

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 issue with a guild wars 2 model is that you can never really feel like the hero as no matter how low of zone you go to you are not more powerful. There is something visceral about mowing down opponents who only mere levels ago would strike you down if you were not careful. wow mediates the issue of content going stale by allowing people to mow through, especially older raids to get accomplishments and gear; mostl…

Both styles have their merits, as evidence by WoW beginning to implement a 'timewalker' feature where players will be able to run old content dungeons with properly scaled stats (it will offer rewards useful for max level characters). There's just so much content in the game now, glad to see them making the most of it in a relevant way.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#136

Post by thret » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:40 AM UTC

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…

Perhaps you only visited after the gate was opened? This zone was very busy on PvP servers, because of the horde v alliance competition to open the gate to AQ first.

I thought the AQ raids were quite enjoyable also. When else has a warrior tank needed a frost wand?

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#137

Post by swombat » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

mikerichards wrote: post #130

Ocerge wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you said and real nighttime in EQ. I remember being alone, a low level, lost in Karana as night was approaching. I knew if I died that I might not know where my corpse was for the corpse run, so I had real fear, and was real cautious.

And the final element missing to instil real fear? True PvP, where anyone might decide to betray you and kill you while you're resting to recover hitpoints or manna or whatever.

It's only when loss is possible that you can truly gain. It's only when betrayal is possible that you can truly trust. It's only when your character can completely fail that you can truly enjoy success.

Each of those are opposite sides of the same coin. A game like Wow (which I found it very addictive, compulsive even, and did "enjoy" it to some extent) is ultimately totally empty, because there is no way to gain, to trust, to win.

Put that stuff back in, and you get a game like Eve.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#138

Post by mikerichards » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 2:39 AM UTC

swombat wrote: post #137

mikerichards wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said and real nighttime in EQ. I remember being alone, a low level, lost in Karana as night was approaching. I knew if I died that I might not know where my corpse was for the corpse run, so I had real fear, and was real cautious.

And the final element missing to instil real fear? True PvP, where anyone might decide to betray you and kill you while you're resting to recover hitpoints or manna or whatever. It's only when loss is possible that you can truly gain. It's only when betrayal is possible that you can truly trust. It's only when your character can completely fail that you can truly enjoy success. Each of those are opposite sides of the…

The only PvPing I did was on the RvR server over near Freeport, either as a human or dark elf. That was a blast, since there was no instanced battlefields.

Maybe one day a MMO will bring back that magic. Alas, nostalgia wasn't enough to overcome the shortcomings of original EQ with Project99 in 2015.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#139

Post by throwaway_gm » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 2:52 AM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #117

monk_e_boy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once went as far south as I could, I was determined to find something new. There were mountains, so I spent hours trying to climb them, using a combination of jumping and my horse I did eventually get to the top!! It was all WEIRD and FLAT!! The textures were stretched really really long, you could see the pixels. And the textures seemed random, from different realms and stuff. There were deep valleys in places, bu…

You can swim around very outside edge of the continents, even where all the mountains were. Somewhere miles away on the backside of nowhere there was a little dilapidated house. Ah, here it is. The internet documents everything. http://wow.gamepedia.com/Newman's_Landing?cookieSetup=true

In vanilla, I spent one full night just swimming around the Eastern Kingdoms on my druid. I'd recently heard rumors about the Ashbringer possibly existing in the game, just waiting for some wandering soul to come across its incredibly well hidden home, possibly requiring high level fishing skill to attain. Despite the fact that the scenery was mostly repetitive and to most anyone else should have been incredibly boring, I really enjoyed the evening.

I later became a Game Master and had the ability to fly invisibly through the terrain on live servers and occasionally would make a point to travel to random nooks, either not normally accessible or else very hard and time consuming to reach by legal means, and that was fun too. This was before flying mounts: characters would appear to swim through the air and could be made to travel very fast indeed.

The best hidden secrets in the game were things like The Chair, at the base of The Room, an underground dungeon that could only be reached by flying through the terrain of a castle that stood on Game Master Island, which itself could only be accessed using Game Master powers. Rumors were that early rule breakers in the game, perhaps in beta, were transported into The Room where all they could do is sit in The Chair or not. I don't know if that's true.

Probably people discovered all this on private servers as well, but there was definitely something magical about doing it on live realms - at least for me.

Re: Forgotten Corners of World of Warcraft

#140

Post by tedks » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 2:57 AM UTC

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…

It's important to note that while MMO's don't explicitly incentivize exploration, some of the memories my friends most enjoyed in WoW were glitching underneath Stormwind, into unimplemented areas in raids, all over the place. MMO's are social games, and even if they don't explicitly give you a token for having fun with your friends, saying that they "don't encourage fun" is pretty false.

I mean really, why do you think people get gear? It's so they can play more parts of the game and have more fun.

Personally, I can't really defend dungeon running that much because I always liked PvP more -- having human opponents to fight was always more fun for me, and the game certainly encouraged that. Some of my friends will still talk about how they were the top of their server or server group, and have folders of screenshots of them beating other prominent PvPers.

I never got very into WoW because by the time it got popular with my friend group in earnest I had switched to Linux and wine only ran WoW at about 20fps. But I had plenty of fun playing it and I barely got into it at all. Saying that the game doesn't encourage it is total bullshit. Finding night elf in Warsong, chasing them down, and watching their health drain from my warlock's curses was some of the most fun I've ever had in a video game. And I got a shiny token for that, too, so there.