Every point that anyone has broughten up is in someway applicable to every other type of video game. FPS for example are technically the same thing over and over. Same with RTS games, same units, same build order etc.
sure, the quests are cookie-cutter, but instead of being annoyed by them, I consider them a refreshing change from the pure grinding I'm used to in most other MMOs. you're not just killing legions of monsters, you're killing legions of monsters with a little mini-story about why - a quest. and you get a decent chunk of XP and often money for completing the quests, meaning less straight grinding...
and as for not getting anything new - well, I don't know what y'all are talking about. I don't know what it's like for other classes, but for warlock, I'm level 17 and still have a lot to look forward to. between now and lvl 20, I'll get a new fire spell, a new armor spell, the ability to create a soulstone to revive myself when I die, as well as a new summon...
yeah, so far the only thing that has displeased me with the game has been travel time. there should be low-level mounts, or some other alternative for moving faster... I mean, level 40 for a mount? that's just cruel...
<!--QuoteBegin-Sirus+Nov 15 2004, 05:37 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Sirus @ Nov 15 2004, 05:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Every point that anyone has broughten up is in someway applicable to every other type of video game. FPS for example are technically the same thing over and over. Same with RTS games, same units, same build order etc. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I know.
The difference is that you usually only pay once for those games.
Fair enough. But I don't think you can ever eliminate these problems in any video game. WoW in my opinion contains less of these nuances and I also trust Blizzard to be adding new content quite often.
At times it may seem like grinding but there are actually rewards that even I didn't expect. I was just idly exploring West Fall, met up with some Murlocs, those fishy critters. I started to kill a group of them and guess what, they dropped me a treasure chest clue! The item unlocked a quest that lead me around West Fall to search for more clues, which in turn rewarded me with a treasure chest full of nice items.
The great difference in WoW is its large map with a lot of quests, some randomly rewarded, others shared from your group members. If you find yourself grinding in one spot and getting bored, leave it and explore. It's great they give you experience for exploring parts of the map you've never been to before. Head to Ironforge if the Stormwind area is boring you. Don't let yourself grind, explore and have fun. I'm level 20 and I've had fun since level 1.
WoW does a brilliant job of eliminating the grind. At least, in my experience. Go mining, do things. Explore, you get experience for finding new areas (I think it should be more for farther areas)
Uhh, yeah - all of you here should really check out guildwars:
www.guildwars.com
I played in the world preview event, and it was fun the whole time. There is very little grind - pvp is fast and fun (fps speeds), and 0 monthly fee. The quests seem pretty well thought out - with a story line quest, and then other side quests in "explorable" areas.
There was only 1 time that I did a bit of exteneded traveling - and that appeared to be an area the dev team hadn't populated with monsters yet. Otherwise the next set of bad guys is right on the edge of the radar, and only 10 second run away.
In terms of leveling - competative at 15, topped out at 20. You can always learn more skills - but that increases your available "strategy" - not necessarily your "effectiveness".
A little FYI - the guys making guildwars (area net) are the main dev team behind starcraft, diablo series, and the early warcraft. I imagine they left Blizzard when they realized how much WOW will suck.
One slight problem with GW Pepe: It isn't an MMO. Its nothing more then a co-op game. And whats the point in saying you can learn new skills, when you can only use 8? Unless you've already run through the mission, you don't know which ones to take, so you end up choosing the same broad ones again and again.
From what I understand, WoW is like all of Blizzard's RPGs. They are insanely fun to play through for a while, then you reach taht one point. Reached level 27 with my necro in D2, he was a bone necro with points to golem to help in keeping enemies at bay. He was still fun to play, but that is when it got a bit tideous. I'd either kill everything in a few spears, or would be casting it all day on a group of enemies in the later difficulties. I got him to level 72 before I was bored with him. Started a zon, got to level thirty, she got boring as it was too difficult to kill enemies without an uber bow.. Started a lightning sorc for the challenge. She was still fun when I gave up the game, she was really good in nightmare and had few problems in hell except for the magic immune or specific immune enemies, but that's why she had points in all the trees. Started a barb, got to level 30, still fun, got to level 35 and made a socketed polearm, and it became too routine...
Blizzard makes good RPGs, but they can't seem to keep many people's interests in them very well.
pepe I played the world event and the E3 for everyone event.... heck I was the major proponent of GW before it even came out, I think I was even the first person to mention it on the boards (though I'd mentioned it in IRC long before).
Problem is when I played it I found myself annoyed at yet another auto-attacking, mouse-clicking, 'omg strategy... whats timing?' game. I <b>know</b> some people are going to love GW to bits and I thought I would too, but once I played the game I was horribly dissappointed.
Sorry to drag this game up time and time again but to date PSO still holds my vote for the base MMOs should at least start learning from. Levelling in that was something you almost forgot because the focus of the game was in completing the 'story'. Essentially a fun-filled dungeon romp through 4 levels and 4 boss fights that verge on unforgettable all tied up in a tasty real-time collision battle system that wasn't twitch-based but needed timing, a twist of skill and some thought. Levels were just a nice bonus amongst many hours of chatting, boss fighting, mag rearing and rare trading. You could build your own emotes using the in-game tools. People kept in touch using 'ID cards' which had to be given to you by the person rather than strangers just remembering your name and sending you unwanted whispers. You could go play chu-chu football together XD
The point was that fights were different from creature to creature, boss to boss. The big bad guys were puzzles; you needed to work out how to avoid their attacks to take them on (with the exception of the cheap-tastic light-based attack from darkfalz the final boss in it's final form which is totally unavoidable and hits everyone -.-). There was also the fact that the game itself was pretty much instanced so there wasn't any 'camping' or 'grinding' because things didn't respawn unless you maimed the boss (which would reset the level after you left for pioneer 2 'town' basically) =P Even outside of the fighting things weren't too bad. Though there was no 'crafting' you could use an NPC to make items out of certain animal parts (which was expanded on in the later PSO version EP I & II). You had Mags as well which though could've been taken a lot further as an idea allowed for you to customise your character by how you fed them; their symbiote nature boosting you stats based on how you were raising them (which also allowed for crucial stat changing outside of the usual levelling fashion and you could even raise different mags for different occaisions; switching stats as easily as you switched your pet symbiote =3 ). There was also no 'kill stealing' as everyone got the same amount of xp pretty much for just scoring a hit on the creature before it died (though the person who dealt the final blow/most damage got a little bonus nobody really cared).
Given that what MMOs need in my mind is multiple ways of 'building' your character (the mags were a very clever idea... it was great to know you were still changing and improving even when you weren't levelling and trying to make it morph into certain forms was always interesting ^^ ) outside of 'omg combat'. Quests need to be decent epics with <b>proper</b> boss fights. It's not a boss if you fight it the same way as most other badguys and it has more HP and/or does more damage. Anyone who's a long time gamer knows a good boss has to have special tricks and patterns to it; look at zelda! beyond good and evil! Super Mario World! Gunstar Heroes! I mean jees... even the bosses in sidescrolling beatemups involved more frigging strategy than any MMO one I've ever seen XD
As for your comparison sirius. It depends how you look at it. In FPSes you might 'repeat' the same thing but the fights are never really the same. In MMOs most combat is downright formulaic. CoH suffered this tremendously; while fun for a bit once you realised you could use the same combo of abilities on nigh on everything you fight it started getting repetitive fast. You can't fight a gargant like a headcrab... not unless you like pain and the joy of having your internal organs on the outside =P I hear WoW has positional fighting which aids relieving the routine somewhat but I've not played it and to some extent CoH had something similar though that got old quick =/
As I said earlier, I can't speak for WoW but I'm sure as heck opinionated about general MMO stuff <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<b>edit:</b> ooh! I wrote an essay there ^^ Anyways, looks like I wasn't quite right. First person to mention Guild Wars that I know of in the NS community was Rage against the Pepsi machine; credit where credit is due =D
<!--QuoteBegin-Quaunaut+Nov 14 2004, 04:44 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Quaunaut @ Nov 14 2004, 04:44 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Maveric+Nov 14 2004, 03:12 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Maveric @ Nov 14 2004, 03:12 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Gwahir+Nov 14 2004, 02:10 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Gwahir @ Nov 14 2004, 02:10 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> meh, I like it.
And raids are amazingly fun "TO THE BRIDGE! FALL BACK!" "They're coming at us from both sides!!"
much fun. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah, what level, how much time did you put into it, which race, and how many kills/quests? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Play a Rogue, shut your mouth. No, seriously, their fun the entire game, from 1+. I love mine <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Agreed. I'm lvl 21 and have enjoyed it since day 1.
coilAmateur pirate. Professional monkey. All pance.Join Date: 2002-04-12Member: 424Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
I haven't played any other MMOs, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I'm really enjoying WoW.
1) Travel is an issue; I'm aching for Travel Form and my mount. However, the wyverns do a good job of cutting distances down, while still keeping you within the world (more than I can say for EQ1/2, now with more zoning!).
2) I haven't been bored yet, mostly due to the milestone quests/skills. For a druid, these are very pronounced - specifically, the acquisition of my various animal forms. Bear Form refreshed combat for me just when it was beginning to get dull. Aquatic Form helped ease traveling -- from Ratchet to Orgrimmar is now just a quick(er) swim up the river, instead of a long hike or a trek back to Crossroads for a wyvern. And Cat Form gave me an entirely new role in groups, as well as fun new abilities to play with.
3) My trade skill, leatherworking, has been rewarding; I just made 1 gold (doubled my current cash) through making and selling pants in Thunder Bluff. On top of that, I need to go skin more animals to make stuff for *me* -- it's nice to be able to use what I make! I never feel like I'm grinding for supplies, either; I simply skin everything I kill or come across, and all of a sudden I have over 100 leather waiting to be fabricated into clothing.
4) The world is a Blizzard world, plain and simple. My pics from the Screenshots thread show how much in awe of it I am; exploring is a reward in itself (literally and metaphysically). Every new area is like caek and pai for my eyeballs, and while many quests are cookie-cutter "kill this, collect this," there are gems scattered throughout that bring the world to life (for instance, L10 Bear Form quest series).
the form quest are fun. And they force you to explore. Which is great. I don't know how long it would have been before I went to the other continent if not for aquatic form. And before completing my work there I killed off some night elf scum. Then I teleported back to moonglade and did a little there, then flew back to thunder bluff. And the flight from thunderbluff really isn't that long, plus it's free.
<!--QuoteBegin-coil+Nov 15 2004, 02:11 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (coil @ Nov 15 2004, 02:11 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> And Cat Form gave me an entirely new role in groups, as well as fun new abilities to play with. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Help me get it. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Last night I just took the Griffon ride from Stormwind Keep to Ironforge. I know you can take the tram for free but the ride is well worth its 90 coppers. All I can say is wow... just wow. The terrain and what I saw during the long ride, is amazing. It really shows what there is to work towards, when you get to the later part of the game. I really suggest atleast taking a ride from Stormwind to Ironforge before Open Beta ends.
I have to say... after playing a Troll Hunter to 14, I'm extremely disappointed.
WoW was supposed to roxor my boxors. After playing EQ for 6 months and being seriously frustrated with the crappy direction SOE took it in, I figured WoW and Blizzard would finally fix the MMO experience. But, I guess I'm just washed up on the whole style of gameplay. Once I hit 14, I couldn't bring myself to play the game anymore. It had such a "been there, done that" feeling to it.
The level of polish in WoW is indeed insanely high. The textures and animations are stunning. They fixed a number of fatal flaws of the MMO genre. The thing is, it's just... boring. I can't really explain it I guess. But, my recommendation to anyone who's ever played an MMO like AO, EQ, or DAoC: pass up WoW. You've done this all before.
So, I'm heading off to EB right now to refund my pre-order money and get HL2.
Well, it's always a lot more fun when you have a group of friends to play with. Also, games like this does get rather boring if you play more than say 4 hours a day, it could get tedious and fustrating. It seems to suit me pretty well since I have to work stupidly long hours. I'm glad I can get home and relax a bit with World of Warcraft for a couple of hours, the game has been surprising me quite a bit and with Beta, I've tried out a few different character types which keeps everything interesting. Anyways, with a group of friends you know who have around the same playing schedule as you, the game could be a lot more fun since you can tackle a lot of different things with them instead of solo, plus a lot more exploration and fun can be had. Not to mention getting insanely drunk with them in the game.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
personaly I think that it is about lvl 14/15 that does it to people.
I got to 15 with my main, and then just kept on making new chars.
the problem is that they realy just are not different enugh. And even withing each class, it just get booring very quickly.
I think I realised that my main gripe with the game is the idea of buying the higher level skills, just so you can keep on ussing the same skill set. there are no differences between the levels of the skills, so your reward is.... being able to grind more.....
Comments
sure, the quests are cookie-cutter, but instead of being annoyed by them, I consider them a refreshing change from the pure grinding I'm used to in most other MMOs. you're not just killing legions of monsters, you're killing legions of monsters with a little mini-story about why - a quest. and you get a decent chunk of XP and often money for completing the quests, meaning less straight grinding...
and as for not getting anything new - well, I don't know what y'all are talking about. I don't know what it's like for other classes, but for warlock, I'm level 17 and still have a lot to look forward to. between now and lvl 20, I'll get a new fire spell, a new armor spell, the ability to create a soulstone to revive myself when I die, as well as a new summon...
yeah, so far the only thing that has displeased me with the game has been travel time. there should be low-level mounts, or some other alternative for moving faster... I mean, level 40 for a mount? that's just cruel...
I know.
The difference is that you usually only pay once for those games.
EDIT:: By "just playing" and not working, I was only level 12 by the end of the week of stress test. Had fun the whole time.
The great difference in WoW is its large map with a lot of quests, some randomly rewarded, others shared from your group members. If you find yourself grinding in one spot and getting bored, leave it and explore. It's great they give you experience for exploring parts of the map you've never been to before. Head to Ironforge if the Stormwind area is boring you. Don't let yourself grind, explore and have fun. I'm level 20 and I've had fun since level 1.
www.guildwars.com
I played in the world preview event, and it was fun the whole time. There is very little grind - pvp is fast and fun (fps speeds), and 0 monthly fee. The quests seem pretty well thought out - with a story line quest, and then other side quests in "explorable" areas.
There was only 1 time that I did a bit of exteneded traveling - and that appeared to be an area the dev team hadn't populated with monsters yet. Otherwise the next set of bad guys is right on the edge of the radar, and only 10 second run away.
In terms of leveling - competative at 15, topped out at 20. You can always learn more skills - but that increases your available "strategy" - not necessarily your "effectiveness".
A little FYI - the guys making guildwars (area net) are the main dev team behind starcraft, diablo series, and the early warcraft. I imagine they left Blizzard when they realized how much WOW will suck.
A.Net > B.Net
Started a lightning sorc for the challenge. She was still fun when I gave up the game, she was really good in nightmare and had few problems in hell except for the magic immune or specific immune enemies, but that's why she had points in all the trees. Started a barb, got to level 30, still fun, got to level 35 and made a socketed polearm, and it became too routine...
Blizzard makes good RPGs, but they can't seem to keep many people's interests in them very well.
Problem is when I played it I found myself annoyed at yet another auto-attacking, mouse-clicking, 'omg strategy... whats timing?' game. I <b>know</b> some people are going to love GW to bits and I thought I would too, but once I played the game I was horribly dissappointed.
Sorry to drag this game up time and time again but to date PSO still holds my vote for the base MMOs should at least start learning from. Levelling in that was something you almost forgot because the focus of the game was in completing the 'story'. Essentially a fun-filled dungeon romp through 4 levels and 4 boss fights that verge on unforgettable all tied up in a tasty real-time collision battle system that wasn't twitch-based but needed timing, a twist of skill and some thought.
Levels were just a nice bonus amongst many hours of chatting, boss fighting, mag rearing and rare trading. You could build your own emotes using the in-game tools. People kept in touch using 'ID cards' which had to be given to you by the person rather than strangers just remembering your name and sending you unwanted whispers. You could go play chu-chu football together XD
The point was that fights were different from creature to creature, boss to boss. The big bad guys were puzzles; you needed to work out how to avoid their attacks to take them on (with the exception of the cheap-tastic light-based attack from darkfalz the final boss in it's final form which is totally unavoidable and hits everyone -.-).
There was also the fact that the game itself was pretty much instanced so there wasn't any 'camping' or 'grinding' because things didn't respawn unless you maimed the boss (which would reset the level after you left for pioneer 2 'town' basically) =P
Even outside of the fighting things weren't too bad. Though there was no 'crafting' you could use an NPC to make items out of certain animal parts (which was expanded on in the later PSO version EP I & II). You had Mags as well which though could've been taken a lot further as an idea allowed for you to customise your character by how you fed them; their symbiote nature boosting you stats based on how you were raising them (which also allowed for crucial stat changing outside of the usual levelling fashion and you could even raise different mags for different occaisions; switching stats as easily as you switched your pet symbiote =3 ).
There was also no 'kill stealing' as everyone got the same amount of xp pretty much for just scoring a hit on the creature before it died (though the person who dealt the final blow/most damage got a little bonus nobody really cared).
Given that what MMOs need in my mind is multiple ways of 'building' your character (the mags were a very clever idea... it was great to know you were still changing and improving even when you weren't levelling and trying to make it morph into certain forms was always interesting ^^ ) outside of 'omg combat'. Quests need to be decent epics with <b>proper</b> boss fights. It's not a boss if you fight it the same way as most other badguys and it has more HP and/or does more damage. Anyone who's a long time gamer knows a good boss has to have special tricks and patterns to it; look at zelda! beyond good and evil! Super Mario World! Gunstar Heroes! I mean jees... even the bosses in sidescrolling beatemups involved more frigging strategy than any MMO one I've ever seen XD
As for your comparison sirius. It depends how you look at it. In FPSes you might 'repeat' the same thing but the fights are never really the same. In MMOs most combat is downright formulaic. CoH suffered this tremendously; while fun for a bit once you realised you could use the same combo of abilities on nigh on everything you fight it started getting repetitive fast.
You can't fight a gargant like a headcrab... not unless you like pain and the joy of having your internal organs on the outside =P
I hear WoW has positional fighting which aids relieving the routine somewhat but I've not played it and to some extent CoH had something similar though that got old quick =/
As I said earlier, I can't speak for WoW but I'm sure as heck opinionated about general MMO stuff <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<b>edit:</b> ooh! I wrote an essay there ^^
Anyways, looks like I wasn't quite right. First person to mention Guild Wars that I know of in the NS community was Rage against the Pepsi machine; credit where credit is due =D
And raids are amazingly fun
"TO THE BRIDGE! FALL BACK!"
"They're coming at us from both sides!!"
much fun. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, what level, how much time did you put into it, which race, and how many kills/quests? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Play a Rogue, shut your mouth. No, seriously, their fun the entire game, from 1+. I love mine <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed. I'm lvl 21 and have enjoyed it since day 1.
And over.
And over again.
1) Travel is an issue; I'm aching for Travel Form and my mount. However, the wyverns do a good job of cutting distances down, while still keeping you within the world (more than I can say for EQ1/2, now with more zoning!).
2) I haven't been bored yet, mostly due to the milestone quests/skills. For a druid, these are very pronounced - specifically, the acquisition of my various animal forms. Bear Form refreshed combat for me just when it was beginning to get dull. Aquatic Form helped ease traveling -- from Ratchet to Orgrimmar is now just a quick(er) swim up the river, instead of a long hike or a trek back to Crossroads for a wyvern. And Cat Form gave me an entirely new role in groups, as well as fun new abilities to play with.
3) My trade skill, leatherworking, has been rewarding; I just made 1 gold (doubled my current cash) through making and selling pants in Thunder Bluff. On top of that, I need to go skin more animals to make stuff for *me* -- it's nice to be able to use what I make! I never feel like I'm grinding for supplies, either; I simply skin everything I kill or come across, and all of a sudden I have over 100 leather waiting to be fabricated into clothing.
4) The world is a Blizzard world, plain and simple. My pics from the Screenshots thread show how much in awe of it I am; exploring is a reward in itself (literally and metaphysically). Every new area is like caek and pai for my eyeballs, and while many quests are cookie-cutter "kill this, collect this," there are gems scattered throughout that bring the world to life (for instance, L10 Bear Form quest series).
Help me get it. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
WoW was supposed to roxor my boxors. After playing EQ for 6 months and being seriously frustrated with the crappy direction SOE took it in, I figured WoW and Blizzard would finally fix the MMO experience. But, I guess I'm just washed up on the whole style of gameplay. Once I hit 14, I couldn't bring myself to play the game anymore. It had such a "been there, done that" feeling to it.
The level of polish in WoW is indeed insanely high. The textures and animations are stunning. They fixed a number of fatal flaws of the MMO genre. The thing is, it's just... boring. I can't really explain it I guess. But, my recommendation to anyone who's ever played an MMO like AO, EQ, or DAoC: pass up WoW. You've done this all before.
So, I'm heading off to EB right now to refund my pre-order money and get HL2.
I got to 15 with my main, and then just kept on making new chars.
the problem is that they realy just are not different enugh. And even withing each class, it just get booring very quickly.
I think I realised that my main gripe with the game is the idea of buying the higher level skills, just so you can keep on ussing the same skill set. there are no differences between the levels of the skills, so your reward is.... being able to grind more.....
meh, other games have done better.