World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Wilian]

Most PvP gear late vanilla is actually more like AQ level. They buffed it when they released Naxx, to keep up with the gear curve from PvP

 

[set]

it's the only point of playing MMORPGs

Have you ever played something pre-WoW?

MMOs are definitely about the journey. When you get to the "end game" that's supposed to be it, you quit. This is how all the good ones have played. Reaching the end game should be basically "impossible" anyway (at least for the avg player).

 

[Excidium]

Bullshit.

it's the only point of playing MMORPGs

Have you ever played something pre-WoW?

Yes

 

[set]

Bullshit.

it's the only point of playing MMORPGs

Have you ever played something pre-WoW?

Yes

How is it bullshit? What is the point of playing a game where the "point" of it is to reach the last 5% of content and play that over and over again?

 

[Metro]

I've never played another MMO (and don't really want to) but my impression was that UO wasn't like WoW at all and the emphasis was more on the sandbox gameplay versus 'endgame grinding.'

 

[Excidium]

I've never played another MMO (and don't really want to) but my impression was that UO wasn't like WoW at all and the emphasis was more on the sandbox gameplay versus 'endgame grinding.'

The grinding was on the "journey" there. There's a reason stuff like Razor existed

Count on LARPers to embellish it though

The fun was when you were already estabilished and mostly took to pvp and shard events and arguing on IRC channel with the same losers

 

[Hobo Elf]

There are only a small handful of MMOs that are about the journey. UO and SWG being the best examples that come to mind. Most MMOs are definitely about the end game be it raiding or PvPing. I mean sure EQ had a pretty fun journey too with the many different and fun zones and the dangerous dungeons to explore; just the though of dying deep in one of the dungeons was enough to make you shit your pants and hesitate to venture further, yet further you had to go anyway, but it had a pretty heavy focus on end game as well. Well, I guess you could say that it was a beefy game through and through. There was always something meaningful to do at any given level. They (usually) didn't trivialize their old content, they just gave the players more options. WoW has always had a very small amount of "real" content at any given time. I mean content that's worth doing for to obtain the latest gear. Blizzard always did their best to trivialize old gear, thus, trivializing old content as well.

 

[Excidium]

It just took much longer to get anywhere specially in asian games so scrubs gave up before they amounted to anything in the game

 

[set]

I've never played another MMO (and don't really want to) but my impression was that UO wasn't like WoW at all and the emphasis was more on the sandbox gameplay versus 'endgame grinding.'

The grinding was on the "journey" there. There's a reason stuff like Razor existed

Count on LARPers to embellish it though

The fun was when you were already estabilished and mostly took to pvp and shard events and arguing on IRC channel with the same losers

My point is what MMOs should be, not what they are.

The only profitable/enduring MMO where the "journey" isn't important is WoW. And it used to be important in WoW, back when the game started, there was a point to 1-60, infact, 1-59 is more interesting than 60 raids are - at least in vanilla. The other games that copy the wow formula have no staying power because they have no enduring early game. People ding to 60 in 1 week (like SWTOR) and then fuck off. The average casual player also gets bored of the SP before hitting max level, because it's not designed to be interesting (SWTOR is another good example, post level 20 all the content drops off in quality).

 

[Excidium]

I am not even sure how to reply because you probably believe what you just posted

 

[set]

I am not even sure how to reply because you probably believe what you just posted

What is it that you want in an MMO exactly? What is so appealing about raids that justifies raid-centric MMO design?

 

[Excidium]

What is it that you want in an MMO exactly?

A design that sustains playing for more than one month without artificially extending gameplay through grind aka "the journey"

Notice how I did not mention raids anywhere, I don't have the time nor patience for that model anymore

 

[Metro]

Ex wants shit that'll never come to fruition regardless of the genre. Thus he hates all games... but he plays them anyway.

 

[set]

What is it that you want in an MMO exactly?

A design that sustains playing for more than one month without artificially extending gameplay through grind aka "the journey"

Notice how I did not mention raids anywhere, I don't have the time nor patience for that model anymore

You're equating journey with "the grind" -- they are essentially the same thing and not.

At the end of the day, everything is a "grind" no matter how you look at it. Things progress. Progression takes time and energy. Often, progresion is doing the same things over and over.
"Grinding" in an RPG, aka 0/10 rabbits killed for 1000 experience -- this is "bad design", but the concept of "grinding" is not wrong. A good MMO should have you doing various misadventures to progress your character, they should not be the sort of "collect X of Y and go to Z" quests you see frequently in WoW-clones. At the end of the day you're still grinding, but it's not the same.

For example, you could easily have it such that players only obtain experience by killing a monster the first time it is killed and by making combat non-trivial. Killing a thief for the first time could yield 1000 experience, and the adventure of killing that thief could be intense (tracking down the thief, disarming the thief's traps, then engaging in the thief in mortal combat) and memorable. Instead of having to kill 20 thieves and collect their scarves to accomplish a quest, you accomplish a story-oriented goal a single time to advance your character. In essence, the mud Armageddon is sort of like this - if a player can go somewhere and kill a troll in somesuch place he's a bloody hero and noteworthy figure. If Armageddon were mainstream, it'd be a more lively game, because you'd have more players working together to "solve" it.

Ultimately, progression has to stop for your character, and the exact pacing of your character's progression is important -- it's critical that as your character grows. But, it becomes less about personal power and more about social power; this is the reason MMOs are MM and O. A good MMO transitions from personal power to players working together to kill entities much greater than a thief in mortal combat -- the main problem is MMOs don't leverage enough of this concept. What if a guild could obtain a large amount of experience by solving a huge mystery in the game world -- instead of having the quest giver indicate that Archimonde is responsible for the death of whosawhat'sit, the players have to gather evidence to conclude this, they have to uncover clues, find hidden alcolves in the world, solve smaller quests to open up stuff... A single player could not arrive at this conclusion alone; it's unlikely, but a group of them could solve this "raid quest" together. There's definitely an overemphasis on personal power and prestiege and not enough for groups of players to do besides play whackamole.

You might say that what I'm talking about, especially by suggesting making combat less trivial, that it's madness, but it's not something I've come up with; it's been done before and it's been done before well.

 

[Cromwell]

The only profitable/enduring MMO where the "journey" isn't important is WoW. And it used to be important in WoW, back when the game started, there was a point to 1-60, infact, 1-59 is more interesting than 60 raids are - at least in vanilla. The other games that copy the wow formula have no staying power because they have no enduring early game. People ding to 60 in 1 week (like SWTOR) and then fuck off. The average casual player also gets bored of the SP before hitting max level, because it's not designed to be interesting (SWTOR is another good example, post level 20 all the content drops off in quality).

The only difference back then was that it took longer. Is that your understanding of meaning? Everything you did 1-59 was worthless once you hit 60. The Zones themselves were worthless for every endgame player except to farm gold for X. But because it was longer it didnt felt as trivial as it does today. But still, apart from pvp and endgame raiding (or gearing up in the 60 dungeons for raids) there wasnt much to do. I did like Classic WOW and Cataclysm more then everything that came after but that doesnt mean the journey to 60 or 70 was any more meaningful then it is now.

The only themepark mmo I played which was (and is) entertaining is tsw because the world is interesting enough, gameplay is meh.

 

[Wilian]

No, it actually was more. You had various level based things, various class based things, various faction and crafting based things through the entire leveling progress. Getting gear at level 20 could mean you still had edge at level 40. Things like choosing crafting direction and going with it. It wasn't until TBC 2.4 they started removing everything that was not end-games and they finished that with the Cata revamp, removing about everything that made leveling more involved part of the game while introducing the raid finder as final nail on coffing for content design.

Most of the things that defined characters were actually part of the leveling experience originally. Like Berserking quest for warriors. Back when stances were actually part of gameplay instead of just plain passive background buff.

 

[MapMan]

Ironically, what could revitalize WoW and bring new (old) audience to it would be... Original, blizzard server with Vanilla WoW. I'd play it. There was so much stuff to do, so much content to discover. And the raids? Hard, but those were one of the most rewarding moments in games.

 

[Wilian]

Well there's the raid myth. They really weren't that hard. MC was literally tank and spank, BWL first boss was more involved but most of the later ones were tank and spank. No one did AQ/Naxx anyhow (unless you claim to be that 0.01% who did, then lol.). They were more involving and probably actually hard but majority of raids people actually did were not. They were just fucking hell to organize and I happen to know this as someone who led 40 apes through them.

Majority of content was dungeons and leveling for about everyone (Or RP if that was your thing) unless you were part of the hardcore stuff and as such I think that's over-promoted. And dungeons are actually kinda difficult in vanilla compared to raids.

 

[MapMan]

Well, it's true that a lot of bosses could be boiled down to tank and spank. You're also right that it was much harderd to manage 40 apes through it, it's what made it harder and deaths often chained. Naxx was actually my fav raid. Dayum. All in all, I was sceptical about the raid size reduction in TBC but it was a good decision. Raids were less of a cluster fuck but much more unforgiving. A single death often meant a wipe. There were no raid pugs, it was impossible. I managed to clear all TBC content with my guild pre all those nerfs. So much joy was had. I remember when I got back to wow in wotlk for like two weeks and the thing that surprised me the most was people looking for raid groups. I wouldn't imagine that in my weirdest dreams. Then my noob friends who could hardly understand skill descriptions, not to mention game mechanics or raid strategies, cleared wotlk raid content and I said "aha, fuck it". Never played wow again.

 

[Wilian]

Ulduar is still best raid ever though, so WoTLK has that.

 

[MapMan]

 

[Wilian]

No, it's actually:

That char from WC2 you might know, Uther.

 

[Caim]

Welp, I bit the bullet and got back into the game, boosting a DK to 90.

Faffed about a bit, explored pandaland, tried to make sense out of the clusterfuck that is your spellbook and solo'd Molten Core for the lulz. Got one of the parts of the sword of the wind lord or whaver from one of the bosses, a neat trident that I might end up mogging and a battle pet based on one of those salamander dudes.

Bosses deal pretty much no damage whatsoever: Blood Boil pretty much ends everything that's not a boss when paired with the ability to spread diseases to other targets. Only guys who actually hurt me were Baron Geddon and the big man himself with their attacks that launch you into the sky and deal drop damage. Still fun to see old content like this.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm surprised they haven't corrupted him and turned him into a raid villain yet. Or maybe they are desperately holding on to it thinking that it's their last ace?

 

[Metro]

I'd say more than 0.01% did AQ and old Naxx. I did and I don't feel that lucky!