No game brought more decline than WoW. Change my mind!!

[laclongquan]

What WoW brought to the RPG market?

Normalization of Dark Elf race?

before WOW, Dark Elf is the word for a race of nymphomaniac Sadist Mistress. There's a single male in the entire race, Drizzt

After Wow we realize there's a bunch of normal male Dark Elf. Also, sadly a tidbit, that they are not a race of nymphomaniac Sadist Mistress.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Aren't Night Elves just the stereotypical hippie elf but taller and stupider looking?

 

[Daemongar]

millennials(...) use terms like ludonarrative dissonance, and post blogs. Those assholes.

gamingghd is not a millenial and has a good video about it

Well, I watched the video you posted. He makes a case and cites some examples. Oddly the first game I thought of when he started his premise was Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. However, if you'd be kind enough to explain how WoW has a ludonarrative dissonance? Maybe the ever sprawling story may have brought it to the table with a constant need for bosses and more challenging dungeons, but I didn't feel much dissonance upon release - what I saw was what I got.

 

[Bara]

Aren't Night Elves just the stereotypical hippie elf but taller and stupider looking?

That or edgy "Night warriors" whose eyes glow black as they channel the dark side of the moon/elune to empower themselves for revenge after the burning of their tree house.

Or edgy demon hunters. Warcraft lore really took a nose dive after they "killed" the lich king.

It use to be decent saturday morning cartoon level stuff until then.

 

[Cryomancer]

, if you'd be kind enough to explain how WoW has a ludonarrative dissonance?

Simple. Warlocks are supposed to be a class who uses "Fel Magic" and Fel energy literally corrupted an entire race(high elves to blood elves). They suffer no consequences of using this type of magic. Hellfire warlocks on 3.5e took a point of CON damage when channeling the hellfire. And Kineticists on kingmaker has the burn mechanic(and note that they channel elemental energies). Channeling "Fel" energy on wow has ZERO consequences in gameplay and in lore, potential to corrupt an entire race.

In classic wow, you still have the "everyone has the same base attributes BS" but at least had trainers to train you and to have a succubus pet, you need to "tame" in a long quest. This was removed, and now, just by killing a bunch of mobs, he somehow gets a demoniac pet and the knowledge needed.

I never bothered to read much about warcraft lore. All I know is from WC3 and a very limited experience in a private server. So I can't detail other classes.

Or edgy demon hunters. Warcraft lore really took a nose dive after they "killed" the lich king.

Everything on Blizzard took a nose dive after activision. Is like BioWare and EA.

 

[Bara]

Speaking of WoW, decline, and TTRPGs there was also the offical rpg books for 3.5.

 

[Daemongar]

, if you'd be kind enough to explain how WoW has a ludonarrative dissonance?

Simple. Warlocks are supposed to be a class who uses "Fel Magic" and Fel energy literally corrupted an entire race(high elves to blood elves). They suffer no consequences of using this type of magic. Hellfire warlocks on 3.5e took a point of CON damage when channeling the hellfire. And Kineticists on kingmaker has the burn mechanic. Channeling "Fel" energy on wow has ZERO consequences, gameplay wise and lore wise, potential to corrupt an entire race.

Yeah, but this wouldn't be an example of ludonarrative dissonance. Ludo ((study of) Game) narrative (not sure if this word has a non-Latin equivalent - think the closest folks can come to is "book") . Your explanation is a little elaborate and posits extraneous knowledge - not in game micro knowledge but external Warcraft universe macro knowledge, and appears to be not enough to damn the whole game (but it would after a year or so, cuz all the story contradictions started to add up.) I won't belabor the point, tho. I'll just say that my ignorant belief is that WoW was a symptom of the decline, but not the catalyst of the decline.

 

[Zer0wing]

Aren't Night Elves just the stereotypical hippie elf but taller and stupider looking?

No. Those are trolls' descendants or evolution byproduct, if you wil.
Don't miss them with Dark Elves and don't miss those too with the proud folk of Dunmer, s'wit n'wahs!

 

[Hag]

• Normalization of carnavalesque armor

This is an overlooked but real damage, so ingrained we don't see it anymore. Warcraft 3 had those ridiculous designs, but you saw them from above and were usually too busy clicking around like a madman to care too much about the "let's mix every race and watnot in fantasy together and bind them in Looney Tunes cartoon" style.
Now it is fuckin everywhere, from Warhammer to the Guardian of the Galaxy bad guy, and even when designs are not a direct rip from Wow's we got used to see flashy childish color everywhere.

Maybe it's part of the appeal. It looks like a toy world, nothing is serious or plausible, you are there to enjoy yourself and not think about the harsh socio-economico realities of fantasy war. Whatever.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Right.

 

[luj1]

WoW copied everything from EQ

 

[Cryomancer]

Speaking of WoW, decline, and TTRPGs there was also the offical rpg books for 3.5.

To be honest, wow with 3.5e ruleset would be extremely better.

Is the difference between SWTOR and KOTOR.

WoW dumbed down everything from EQ

Fixed for you. WoW copied but also streamlined EQ.

 

[laclongquan]

• Normalization of carnavalesque armor

This is an overlooked but real damage, so ingrained we don't see it anymore. Warcraft 3 had those ridiculous designs, but you saw them from above and were usually too busy clicking around like a madman to care too much about the "let's mix every race and watnot in fantasy together and bind them in Looney Tunes cartoon" style.
Now it is fuckin everywhere, from Warhammer to the Guardian of the Galaxy bad guy, and even when designs are not a direct rip from Wow's we got used to see flashy childish color everywhere.

Maybe it's part of the appeal. It looks like a toy world, nothing is serious or plausible, you are there to enjoy yourself and not think about the harsh socio-economico realities of fantasy war. Whatever.

More like, it show their audience include those very young teens where those flashes of colors are welcome.

 

[anvi]

WoW's biggest crimes are what it did to EQ which was basically WoW's blueprint. It really ruined a lot of the best bits. But it did add some really good things too. The Battlegrounds and Arena PVP is really good and fun to play, and so is the open world PVP. I don't know why people have any problem with cooldowns or hotbars. In EQ there was very little multiple cooldowns, it was mostly very tactical and you only had 8 spells. You could swap spells in but you mostly had to do that before fights so you had to know your enemy and have a plan. WoW has 100000000 spell slots so you are constantly running around bashing buttons. It seems retarded and maybe is, but it is better than it looks. It is like playing the piano, you can just run around pressing one or two buttons most of the time, but if something big comes for you, you tap out a planned routine and then add extra notes to do things as you need it. It is tactical and yet it all happens in realtime and requires some skill. It is fun, but it is like a Nintendo version of an MMO, and EQ was like a Da Vinci version of an MMO. Inventive, creative, brilliant, etc.

Some people blame consoles, and is undeniable that consoles brought decline to SP RPG's, however, WoW brought decline to RPG'S IN GENERAL. Tabletop, SP and MP. Thanks to wow, people see RPG's as gear farming, cooldown managing games. What WoW brought to the RPG market?

People were gear farming in MUDs in the 1980s, maybe even earlier. The context matters, it can be mindless and stupid or fascinating enough that people would pay thousands of dollars for something. It sounds nuts but imagine how much some people would want a Millennium Falcon of their own, it's the same thing. Imaginary cool shit. It could be Hamlet or Cap'n Crunch.

p.s. You should really try WoW, play on a PVP server and play as a Druid. It is fun as hell. Or it was in the month I played it for. But it did destroy the whole MMO genre, although the fault lies on the other companies who could only justify the huge budgets these games require, on something that is tried and tested and successful. The crazy thing is that no indie companies have stepped up to do the obvious, there are a few trying but they seem to be struggling.

 

[anvi]

p.p.s. It was consoles.

 

[Cryomancer]

It is like playing the piano, you can just run around pressing one or two buttons most of the time, but if something big comes for you, you tap out a planned routine and then add extra notes to do things as you need it. It is tactical and yet it all happens in realtime and requires some skill

This seems extremely repetitive and like a boring bussywork... Some people compare this type of """combat""" with rhythm games by a reason. I honestly can't get into it. I loved KOTOR 1/2 but could't get into SWTOR, doesn't matter how hard I try. Other problem of wow is that everything is ultra low lethality. Attributes 100% tied to gear, artstyle and so on.

And I an not that demanding on RPG's, I mean, I have my preferences, but I can enjoy anything from no magic/low tech games like Mount & Blade to high magic/high tech games like Kotor. Liked all Piranha Bytes games that I've played, all Old School BioWare games, indies like Knights of the Chalice, Dragons Dogma, the Souls franchise, most Obsidian games, OwlCat games... And If wasn't by the devaluation of my country currency, would have upgraded my PC just for CP2077. What I can't get into is this game loop of managing cooldowns and farming gear 24/7 in a world where you play as a soulless clone of everyone else.

 

[anvi]

It is repetitive but only in the same way as Street Fighter is. It is much deeper than Street Fighter, but similar. People repeat it because it is fun to blow stuff up, but it is partly because the fruit-machine thing with the items has hooked them. It is all total decline compared to the first generation games though. EQ, UO, DAOC, they were really interesting. Shadowbane too. And EVE. They are the only ones of the big MMOs. Basically they were like CRPGs, everything else is an ARPG.

 

[Ol' Willy]

And If wasn't by the devaluation of my country currency, would have upgraded my PC just for CP2077.

What CP77 has to do with RPG genre?

 

[Daemongar]

p.p.s. It was consoles.

Yeah, people forget it wasn't Apple or IBM that killed the C64, but the NES.

 

[anvi]

I remember the C64, IBM PC, and the Amiga 500 or whatever. They were cool. And the PC I had at that point didn't even have a color screen or graphics card. I only had a few games and most were text based. But it had a modem! Probably a 14.4 or something. I liked the NES and SNES though. Not enough to switch from PC (which was upgraded by then), but my friends who had NES/SNES got visited pretty often. I liked SF2, Mario 2, Megaman something, Mario Kart, and that brutally hard TMNT game. My friends with Xbox/Playstation never got visited. But either way I still preferred much preferred PC with the Falcon series, Prince of Persia, Wing Commander, Eye of the Beholder, Police Quest, etc.. It was always miles ahead of consoles :/

 

[Cryomancer]

And If wasn't by the devaluation of my country currency, would have upgraded my PC just for CP2077.

What CP77 has to do with RPG genre?

For a AAA game, it has a hell lot of RPG elements on it. It will have skill checks and attributes. And I an not only an RPG fan. I love shooters too.

It is repetitive but only in the same way as Street Fighter is.

You don't spend 99% of time spamming the same "rotation" in fighting games. All attacks on fighting games are more situational, just like on good RPG's.

 

[anvi]

WoW is mostly the same, the rotations are just like the whirlwind kick and hadookens and stuff, they require a key combination. But you still have to react to a lot and change things. It can be really mindless, the dungeons sucked for me because it was literally 1234 over and over. But in Battlegrounds and open world PVP it was much more interesting.

 

[Sigourn]

Counterpoint

 

[GrainWetski]

And If wasn't by the devaluation of my country currency, would have upgraded my PC just for CP2077.

What CP77 has to do with RPG genre?

For a AAA game, it has a hell lot of RPG elements on it. It will have skill checks and attributes. And I an not only an RPG fan. I love shooters too.

Pretty much every AAA game is filled to the brim with shallow RPG elements.

 

[Tavernking]

And If wasn't by the devaluation of my country currency, would have upgraded my PC just for CP2077.

What CP77 has to do with RPG genre?

For a AAA game, it has a hell lot of RPG elements on it. It will have skill checks and attributes.