World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[TedNugent]

I'm just going to say, one of the most incredible feelings for me on WoW (and one of the few things I liked about vanilla) was starting a Forsaken character and starting in Silver pine and going into the Undercity for the first time.

Holy shit, they nailed the atmosphere. The Burtonesque characters, the color palate, the sense of dark and dreary with the oppressive atmosphere that something was wrong, a tangible emotional feeling of longing.

Then I walked into the city, that magnificent entrance into the throne room modeled precisely off the War3 cinematic where Arthas made the fateful move to kill his father.

Then the bizarre, playful, Nightmare Before Christmas humor in the Undercity itself.

I wish I had seen that level of genius anywhere else in the game.

They had such pathos and energy and character there. I had no desire to main a Forsaken just because all that energy left once you left their starting zone.

Seeing the direction they ultimately steered them in fucking hurt, man.

 

[Dr1f7]

they should give the cover art girl a massive cock and have her flying around fucking the hole world pussy and the 40 man raid is u cum on her face

 

[Hóngwèibīng]

Everything past WotLK was pure decline.

 

[Unreal]

wow's quality is inversely correlated with its furry appeal

 

[Dr1f7]

wow's quality is inversely correlated with its furry appeal

 

[Absinthe]

I'm just going to say, one of the most incredible feelings for me on WoW (and one of the few things I liked about vanilla) was starting a Forsaken character and starting in Silver pine and going into the Undercity for the first time.

Holy shit, they nailed the atmosphere. The Burtonesque characters, the color palate, the sense of dark and dreary with the oppressive atmosphere that something was wrong, a tangible emotional feeling of longing.

Then I walked into the city, that magnificent entrance into the throne room modeled precisely off the War3 cinematic where Arthas made the fateful move to kill his father.

Then the bizarre, playful, Nightmare Before Christmas humor in the Undercity itself.

I wish I had seen that level of genius anywhere else in the game.

They had such pathos and energy and character there. I had no desire to main a Forsaken just because all that energy left once you left their starting zone.

Seeing the direction they ultimately steered them in fucking hurt, man.

IIRC a lot of Blizzard Entertainment developers got thrown overboard before WoW even finished. The original WoW design was to be a very different MMORPG, but suits turned it into an Everquest-like and later some other shit happened where devs got laid off and replaced. IIRC a lot of the better touches of WoW's dungeons and environment design were made by the original devs before they turned it into some retarded repetitive endgame grind simulator.

 

[Late Bloomer]

IIRC a lot of Blizzard Entertainment developers got thrown overboard before WoW even finished. The original WoW design was to be a very different MMORPG, but suits turned it into an Everquest-like and later some other shit happened where devs got laid off and replaced. IIRC a lot of the better touches of WoW's dungeons and environment design were made by the original devs before they turned it into some retarded repetitive endgame grind simulator.

Thats interesting. I havent heard that before. I knew that a few of the people who came from Everquest such as Tigole and Furor remained with the company for a long time. From what I remember, WoW was in large part an answer to many things that the original development team didnt like about Everquest. The Plane of Time restrictions being the proverbial final straw for them. Many things such as corpse decay, de-leveling from dying, extreme reliance on groups for many classes and activities, long travel time between areas (why flight paths were conceived before the game released) were all core things the team wanted to remove. My recollection is that WoW was always designed with ease of play in mind. Its been decline for MMORPGs as a whole since its inception.

 

[Absinthe]

Furor and Tigole were some of the people brought in to make WoW more EQ-like, iirc.

They were also responsible for obliterating the Paladin class's design before vanilla launch, which is why the vanilla WoW Paladin is so infamous as being nothing more than a healer in plate. The original Paladin class had a lot more offensive abilities, whereas the vanilla WoW version basically has none. All it does is autoattack people and you can use a judgment to do a small amount of instant damage every 10 seconds (8 sec talented, like almost everyone does). The other offensive abilities come from talents, including Holy Shock (which also does weak damage, and has a higher CD) and Consecrate (which gives you a smattering of AoE damage, and is usually grabbed by Paladin players also). That's it, unless you're fighting undead or demon type enemies (undead players do not count as actual undead, btw), where you get a few more abilities, or the enemy is under 20% health, where you get a spell that does ranged damage. It's horribly uninteractive and Paladin players basically AFK while killing mobs because all they do is autoattack and then stop paying attention until the mob is dead. Considering how piss-poor the damage is, casting spells will only cost you mana and time you'd spend regenerating mana, so you barely do it after the beginning of the fight. The severe lack of good abilities for Paladins that aren't just support shit means that probably over 90% of all Paladins in WoW have the Engineering profession because that's the profession that gives you a few much-needed abilities on the slide, like a ranged damage ability, a smidge of AoE, and sprinting. Paladins are so hard-up for abilities, damage options, ranged initiation tools, and mobility that Engineering is simply mandatory on them.

If you're in WoW, go mind control some Scarlet Monastery mobs so you can see the kinds of abilities the original Paladins had. It's also why you dealt with shit like Druid itemization being like 90% pure healer shit and if you wanted to push a Druid in a different direction you had to gear all kinds of weird off-set items. They had a thing against effective hybrids and basically pigeonholed them into healer roles.

 

[Ravielsk]

Furor and Tigole were some of the people brought in to make WoW more EQ-like, iirc.

They were also responsible for obliterating the Paladin class's design before vanilla launch, which is why the vanilla WoW Paladin is so infamous as being nothing more than a healer in plate. The original Paladin class had a lot more offensive abilities. If you're in WoW, go mind control some Scarlet Monastery mobs so you can see the kinds of abilities the original Paladins had. It's also why you dealt with shit like Druid itemization being like 90% pure healer shit and if you wanted to push a Druid in a different direction you had to gear all kinds of weird off-set items. They had a thing against effective hybrids and basically pigeonholed them into healer roles.

That actually reminds me of how Turtle WoW(custom content vanilla server) where they initially insisted on pretty much keeping the paladin as is because they wanted to maintain "the vanilla feel"(after adding goblins and helfs as playable races) and basically told anyone complaining to take a hike.

Currently they straight up boast on their frontpage how they essentially reinstated the paladin class to more or less how it was in WoW beta because as it turns out having half of the classes be borked until late game raiding is not fun for anyone. They essentially copied the design ethos of the paladin class from Vanilla to TBC with pretty much the exact same amount of whining and subsequently the same amount of changes. Funny how that works.

 

[Absinthe]

Paladins were simply an abomination of bad class design. There was plenty of bad class design to go around WoW, but when the holy warrior is utterly useless at anything other than healing you have a blatant problem, and when you realize there was a much better design that was scrapped shortly before release you know it's an intentional problem inflicted by shitheads.

 

[Ravielsk]

Paladins were simply an abomination of bad class design. There was plenty of bad class design to go around WoW, but when the holy warrior is utterly useless at anything other than healing you have a blatant problem, and when you realize there was a much better design that was scrapped shortly before release you know it's an intentional problem inflicted by shitheads.

Yup, which is why I brought up turtle wow because there the rationale for not fixing the class while all the other classes were getting a tune up was "that it has its niche" which is technically true but that niche was at lvl60 in endgame raids with nothing for lvl 1-59. Its rather telling that it was abandoned immediately in their first expansion and never came back.

 

[Absinthe]

Blizzard was way worse in that respect. Turtle WoW private server seems like they're actually trying to improve vanilla, but their website is a fucking slow-loading abomination.

 

[Keshik]

Everything past WotLK was pure decline.

Mists was pretty enjoyable as was Legion, although the latter gave them the idea people like grinding artifacts or something.

 

[Ravielsk]

Blizzard was way worse in that respect. Turtle WoW private server seems like they're actually trying to improve vanilla, but their website is a fucking slow-loading abomination.

Yes, no argument there but their process is the exact same as with blizzard. Only they did not need 3 years and a expansion to fix a day one problem.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Mists was pretty enjoyable as was Legion, although the latter gave them the idea people like grinding artifacts or something.

I was able to play MoP for about a week before quitting in disgust. I had fun with Legion. I feel Legion was one of their better expansions. Any specifics you enjoyed about MoP

 

[Absinthe]

Well the problem wasn't one of capability. The problem was the mindset of the WoW devs, and that was a problem that very much refused to be fixed. Hence the slow and piecemeal improvements even when there are better solutions staring them in the face. And sometimes they make shit worse too.

That reminds me of WoW CMs being garbage too. People would post in-depth analyses of class problems but in the end pretty much all of it would get ignored. CMs just operated as a wall between the devs and the community, instead of actually trying to facilitate some form of dialogue between players and devs like they claimed was part of their job, and most of the CMs were fucking terrible at the game too, so their personal judgment on what was worth addressing was trash as well.

Anyway, the subject of why WoW is a sack of shit and always has been has pretty much been done to death.

 

[Ravielsk]

Anyway, the subject of why WoW is a sack of shit and always has been has pretty much been done to death.

Yet its the most engaging to discuss about the game because... well what is there? Lore? Graphix? The non-existent spinoffs?

 

[Keshik]

I was able to play MoP for about a week before quitting in disgust. I had fun with Legion. I feel Legion was one of their better expansions. Any specifics you enjoyed about MoP

I enjoyed Pandaria as a setting, the levelling experience was fun for me and they had neat things to explore. And Kun Lai's music is some of the best in the game. Were no elaborate systems we needed to grind, well other than the farm .

 

[Sarathiour]

Paladins were simply an abomination of bad class design. There was plenty of bad class design to go around WoW, but when the holy warrior is utterly useless at anything other than healing you have a blatant problem, and when you realize there was a much better design that was scrapped shortly before release you know it's an intentional problem inflicted by shitheads.

Paladin was indeed a dogshit design in vanilla, because, as you said, it basically only was effective as a healer in PvE. The thing that was really horrible though it that it was also the best healing class with the most boring gameplay, you're literally only spamming flash heal at max rank because that's your most effective move, which fuck up the rest of the healing meta.

 

[Absinthe]

Anyway, the subject of why WoW is a sack of shit and always has been has pretty much been done to death.

Yet its the most engaging to discuss about the game because... well what is there? Lore? Graphix? The non-existent spinoffs?

Well, the alternative is to talk about better MMORPGs than WoW or have a thread on what better MMORPGs ought to be.

Paladin was indeed a dogshit design in vanilla, because, as you said, it basically only was effective as a healer in PvE. The thing that was really horrible though it that it was also the best healing class with the most boring gameplay, you're literally only spamming flash heal at max rank because that's your most effective move, which fuck up the rest of the healing meta.

Eh, ultimately Paladins got out-done in their healing department by everyone, because late-game everyone solves their mana and aggro issues and enjoys way better scaling heals, plus they have AoE heals, HoTs, etc. Paladins justified a lot of their presence through things like Judgment of Wisdom, Blessings, and Cleanse (hey, better the Paladin do this than the Priest) really, along with Lay on Hands being the strongest "oh shit" heal (although a Druid dropping trinket+NS heal is also pretty massive). Ultimately they were more of a utility pickup than a healer pickup (just like how you get Hunters for their tranq shot and not their DPS), and pretty much the best argument for Paladins as raid DPS is that no one really gives a fuck about Paladins' normal heals either and the Paladin can deliver his utility abilities + LoH either way so why not try to kill a boss slightly faster.

 

[Sarathiour]

I'm curious to know your criteria for healing on vanilla, because a druid is certainly not going to beat a paladin any time soon. We're talking about vanilla, most of the heal is more about reactivity than ressource management.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I was able to play MoP for about a week before quitting in disgust. I had fun with Legion. I feel Legion was one of their better expansions. Any specifics you enjoyed about MoP

I thought Legion was a mixed bag.

• The Broken Isles were boring compared to the rich and exotic Pandaria, and the brutal bronze age Draenor. You got more Night Elf ruins that you've already seen half a dozen times before, yet another magical forest zone, more generic dragons, and more generic vikings. The only interesting thing thing was the evil Tauren subplot in Highmountain.
• The non-linear zone progression made for an overall forgettable questing experience. The expansion was visually repetitive, with three years spent fighting demons on top of blackened rocks and green lava. You did not spend the entirety of TBC fighting demons, or the entirety of WotLK fighting the undead.
• Class order halls were a novel idea but many were poorly executed. The DK order hall is Acherus but it still looks like it's stuck in 2008. Rogues didn't get to go back to Ravenholdt Manor and got retconned into the Dalaran sewers. Non-Light worshipping races like the Sunwalkers got shoved underneath a Church. The Warrior class order hall felt very disconnected. On the other hand. The Monks getting to go back to the Wandering Isle was great, though. Also, the order halls were forgotten after the expansion ended.
• Class storylines were also a great idea but most were poorly executed. The Death Knight storyline is simultaneously the best and the worst.
• Some of the artifacts were cool. Finally becoming the next paladin to take up the Ashbringer is cool. Reforging the shards of the Frostmourne is cool. And some of the new, made up filler weapons like that Blood DK axe you looted off of a Legion commander was cool. On the other hand, wielding the Doomhammer, the weapon Warchief Orgrim gave to Thrall as a symbol, feels wrong. And some of the filler weapons like the mage staves felt meh. Worst part is that the artifacts were thrown away after the expansion ended.

And that's not touching other things like class design, artifact power grinding, RNGendaries, PvP, the character models becoming more cartoony, the decline of the music with the departure of Russell Brower, and so on.

Legion had two really great things: the Mage Tower challenge, and Argus. The Mage Tower provided a great singleplayer experience and it's a shame that they didn't create more challenges, and also removed it. Argus had great art direction (a lot of it carried by the skyboxes).

 

[mediocrepoet]

Furor and Tigole were some of the people brought in to make WoW more EQ-like, iirc.

They were also responsible for obliterating the Paladin class's design before vanilla launch, which is why the vanilla WoW Paladin is so infamous as being nothing more than a healer in plate. The original Paladin class had a lot more offensive abilities, whereas the vanilla WoW version basically has none. All it does is autoattack people and you can use a judgment to do a small amount of instant damage every 10 seconds (8 sec talented, like almost everyone does). The other offensive abilities come from talents, including Holy Shock (which also does weak damage, and has a higher CD) and Consecrate (which gives you a smattering of AoE damage, and is usually grabbed by Paladin players also). That's it, unless you're fighting undead or demon type enemies (undead players do not count as actual undead, btw), where you get a few more abilities, or the enemy is under 20% health, where you get a spell that does ranged damage. It's horribly uninteractive and Paladin players basically AFK while killing mobs because all they do is autoattack and then stop paying attention until the mob is dead. Considering how piss-poor the damage is, casting spells will only cost you mana and time you'd spend regenerating mana, so you barely do it after the beginning of the fight. The severe lack of good abilities for Paladins that aren't just support shit means that probably over 90% of all Paladins in WoW have the Engineering profession because that's the profession that gives you a few much-needed abilities on the slide, like a ranged damage, a smidge of AoE, and sprinting. Paladins are so hard-up for abilities, damage options, ranged initiation tools, and mobility that Engineering is simply mandatory on them.

If you're in WoW, go mind control some Scarlet Monastery mobs so you can see the kinds of abilities the original Paladins had. It's also why you dealt with shit like Druid itemization being like 90% pure healer shit and if you wanted to push a Druid in a different direction you had to gear all kinds of weird off-set items. They had a thing against effective hybrids and basically pigeonholed them into healer roles.

This brings back my WoW PTSD. I originally mained paladin. For years.

My favourite WoW memory is vanilla grinding around by engaging a mob and starting autoattack, tabbing out to read news, tabbing back in to see if the monster was dead or if I needed to heal, repeat. FML

 

[Absinthe]

I'm curious to know your criteria for healing on vanilla, because a druid is certainly not going to beat a paladin any time soon. We're talking about vanilla, most of the heal is more about reactivity than ressource management.

Healing Touch Rank 4 has a 3 second cast time and still gets a normal healing coefficient. Talented it becomes 2.5. With Idol of Health (ranged slot, which Druids can only use for Idols), it becomes 2.35 (while still retaining the coefficient of a 3 sec heal). If you throw Wushulaay's Charm of Nature on top of that (40% faster and 5% cheaper Healing Touches for 15 sec, 3 min cd), it drops all the way down to 1.68 seconds per cast. There is also Swiftmend, Regrowth, and NS+Healing Touch, of course. Regrowth has a trash coefficient on the instant heal portion, but it does heal over 1000 points base.

[This brings back my WoW PTSD. I originally mained paladin. For years.

My favourite WoW memory is vanilla grinding around by engaging a mob and starting autoattack, tabbing out to read news, tabbing back in to see if the monster was dead or if I needed to heal, repeat. FML

Pretty much everyone played Paladins like that. Either that or you had a Force Reactive Disk, maxed out reflective damage, and tried to get some AoE damage going. The last option was using Ravager for AoE swings, which you can do as early as level 37 if you're lucky. In that case it was possible for a Paladin to at least 1v2 mobs if he played his cards right. Mostly though, you just joined parties and healed.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I thought Legion was a mixed bag.

• The Broken Isles were boring compared to the rich and exotic Pandaria, and the brutal bronze age Draenor. You got more Night Elf ruins that you've already seen half a dozen times before, yet another magical forest zone, more generic dragons, and more generic vikings. The only interesting thing thing was the evil Tauren subplot in Highmountain.
• The non-linear zone progression made for an overall forgettable questing experience. The expansion was visually repetitive, with three years spent fighting demons on top of blackened rocks and green lava. You did not spend the entirety of TBC fighting demons, or the entirety of WotLK fighting the undead.
• Class order halls were a novel idea but many were poorly executed. The DK order hall is Acherus but it still looks like it's stuck in 2008. Rogues didn't get to go back to Ravenholdt Manor and got retconned into the Dalaran sewers. Non-Light worshipping races like the Sunwalkers got shoved underneath a Church. The Warrior class order hall felt very disconnected. On the other hand. The Monks getting to go back to the Wandering Isle was great, though. Also, the order halls were forgotten after the expansion ended.
• Class storylines were also a great idea but most were poorly executed. The Death Knight storyline is simultaneously the best and the worst.
• Some of the artifacts were cool. Finally becoming the next paladin to take up the Ashbringer is cool. Reforging the shards of the Frostmourne is cool. And some of the new, made up filler weapons like that Blood DK axe you looted off of a Legion commander was cool. On the other hand, wielding the Doomhammer, the weapon Warchief Orgrim gave to Thrall as a symbol, feels wrong. And some of the filler weapons like the mage staves felt meh. Worst part is that the artifacts were thrown away after the expansion ended.

And that's not touching other things like class design, artifact power grinding, RNGendaries, PvP, the character models becoming more cartoony, the decline of the music with the departure of Russell Brower, and so on.

Legion had two really great things: the Mage Tower challenge, and Argus. The Mage Tower provided a great singleplayer experience and it's a shame that they didn't create more challenges, and also removed it. Argus had great art direction (a lot of it carried by the skyboxes).

I had a really enjoyable experience overall. It felt like a culmination of many enjoyable years of WoW coming to a close. Going through each classes artifacts, class mounts, one last hurrah with Khadgar, the return of Illidan. For me, many games with MMO's in particular, it matters a great deal whats going on with RL. Things were going great when we played and we had fun. Its good you were able to get the things you didnt like about Legion off your chest but the music you are 100% in the wrong. Decline did not exist in that regard. Russel Brower departed for BFA not Legion.