WOW sucks.> Anyone else with me?

[Jedi359]

No player housing? What a crock . This is a persistant world?!? NOT..

Most MMORPGS don't start out their life with player housing, as it takes a tremendous amount of time to implement well, and the designers would rather focus on more essential things in early development. Wait a little ways down the road.

I don't have any real problems with it so far. Granted I just started playing. The only issues I'm having are with latency, which is part their fault, I've been told, and part mine, as I'm on my crappy school connection.

Nonetheless, what exactly would you have them do for quests? There are limitations for what they can do for everyone on such a large scale.

People on these forums have a way of having too high expectations. Anything short of perfect is a disapointment.

WOW is far from perfect, but I enjoy it, and that's all I need to know.

 

[DarkSign]

Im playing WoW and as someone said, it beats EQ2 but thats not a real accomplishment. Its to the point where I stopped leveling my character and just bought one at the top level to get to play with my guild that started ahead of me. Its the PvP and the time spent with friends in PvE raids I savor anyway.

Precisely my point. Pretty much all quests in CRPGs (with a few exceptions in games like Arcanum or BGII) are Kill Mob, Fetch, or Escort (arguably, Escort could be defined as a combination of Fetch and Kill). What elevates them from tediusness is most often the writing.

You bring up an interesting point.

All MMO quests boil down to:

1. kill
2. protect
3. collect
4. type in chat code words
5. craft
6. courier

which is highly limited.

For our MMO Im proposing a lot more.

First of all, more interactivity with the world...like SP games have. Ever play a mystery game that not only had puzzles but had inputs (radio dials, bombs to diffuse..etc.) that were unique to the story? Thats what we want to bring to MMOs.

Second, steal some great gameplay from UT2K like assault maps (multiple objectives in succession) but in our case we would add skills from the RPG side. So for example...your mission is to find the VIP and get him out. Well that means using the hacking skill to get the plans for the building, a comm guy to jam their radio...etc you get the point.

Invasion maps and deathmatch maps also yield good ideas. Heck I wont steal the thread with all Ive got to say.



If anyone else here has the silver bullet for breaking MMOs out of those 6 boring actions...Id like to hear it.

 

[tristram of lyonnesse]

totally agree with you even though i havent played it I just hate all MMORPGs because they are all shit.

 

[Ortchel]

It might outsmart EQ2, but that's not saying much.

What's wrong with Everquest 2? It's name?

 

[Kuato]

WoW seems like another extremely time absorbant power leveling MMORPG treadmill

Isnt Guild Wars coming out soon they tote a lot about having a more balanced pvp game and being more about tactical gameplay than raw power leveling and the part I like no monthly fees

 

[Ortchel]

It's just like Diablo except boring.

 

[DarkSign]

Can someone expound on this question of mine?

All MMO quests boil down to:

1. kill
2. protect
3. collect
4. type in chat code words
5. craft
6. courier

What more can you guys think of?

 

[Ortchel]

In SWG there were 'recon' missions where you just had to go to a certain point. They were my personal favorite as I enjoy exploring.

All this talk of MMOs lately is making me miss that horrible, horrible game.

 

[Fez]

Ingelligence gathering missions and spying. You could have the PC take photos, as in Anachronox. Perhaps missions where stealing and stealth were important to obtain or reach a goal, rather than slaughter, maybe place poison in someone important's dinner. Part of the skill of making decent quests is the plot device around it too, and weaving the types together.

 

[Sol Invictus]

No player housing? What a crock . This is a persistant world?!? NOT..

Most MMORPGS don't start out their life with player housing, as it takes a tremendous amount of time to implement well, and the designers would rather focus on more essential things in early development. Wait a little ways down the road.

Housing isn't going to be implemented in WOW - unless it comes in the form of a pay-for Expansion Pack. Check the forums for dev responses on Housing.

Housing was supposed to be a part of the retail release but they pushed it back, along with the Emerald Dream and PVP modes like Siege and Arena, and the Epic Classes. Those will only be in expansions.

It's a cash cow. People will buy the expansions.

Ingelligence gathering missions and spying. You could have the PC take photos, as in Anachronox. Perhaps missions where stealing and stealth were important to obtain or reach a goal, rather than slaughter, maybe place poison in someone important's dinner. Part of the skill of making decent quests is the plot device around it too, and weaving the types together.

It would be nice if you could take photos, as in Beyond Good & Evil and Anachronox. Collecting pictures of each monster in the game would be a lovely past-time, but it should be hard to get to various locations. It wouldn't be much fun if you could just walk in and see a dragon and take his photo.

Surprisingly, World of Warcraft DOES feature such a quest, where you have to take the photograph of a giant turtle with a gnomish camera. Too bad it's only 1 quest, and the turtle goes nuts when you take its photo. Haha.

It's nice to know that Blizzard did a lot of good with the quest variety in the game, but it could use a lot more of these quests instead of the usual fetch/kill 5 monsters type of quest.

The quests in the latter part of the game (e.g. level 50 and upwards) are really boring and bad, though, because they were designed by Everquest expansion pack designers. They're really long, arduous quests where you run around all over the fucking world map for some worthless reward.

 

[Avé]

Did any of the blizz designers work on Horizons?

So far the game feels like almost a fucking carbon copy of it, with about a years work thrown in.

(except for alliance/horde, even the areas look really really similar, so too the interface & mobs, and its inferior to horizons crafting & trading)

 

[Jedi359]

Housing isn't going to be implemented in WOW - unless it comes in the form of a pay-for Expansion Pack. Check the forums for dev responses on Housing.

Housing was supposed to be a part of the retail release but they pushed it back, along with the Emerald Dream and PVP modes like Siege and Arena, and the Epic Classes. Those will only be in expansions.

It's a cash cow. People will buy the expansions.

Why exactly do you believe that every choice they made had to be motivated by profit? Blizzard games are almost always a million years late. They cut what they had to to get a complete game out in a reasonable amount of time.

You act as thought the dev teams can get an infinite amount of work done in a limited span of time, and that some maniacal board of directors sat around one night trying to decide what they could cut and move to later expansions. games are an ever changing, dynamic thing. Not every cool feature that a team wants to implement can be put in, and sometimes things change. Look at how different Warcraft 3 was supposed to be at conception. This goes back to the same things on a previous thread. Some of the posters seem to think that either A: Companies have as long as they want to put out a particular game, and damn the expense, or B: Companies can put impossibly huge amounts of content into games in a relatively short period of time.

I get this feeling that if Blizz had delayed release to implement these features, there would be people equally as adamant about how long the game was taking in being released.

Again, here are your horribly unrealisitc expectations, this time backed up by paranoid bullshit about the company being out to get you. Nothing is perfect, and if you keep expecting perfection, you'll be disapointed. WoW is enjoyable, and a good way for my friends and I to hang out together. That's all I ask of it, and that's what it provides.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Why exactly do you believe that every choice they made had to be motivated by profit? Blizzard games are almost always a million years late. They cut what they had to to get a complete game out in a reasonable amount of time.

Simple. When VU bought Blizzard, policies changed. People left (see: Bill Roper, Schaeffer brothers, Diablo guys, Diablo 2 guys, all the Battle.net guys and some of the Starcraft guys). Now, VU's in a heap of trouble - they've got funding problems with the French government because instead of hiring French citizens (thats why the French government invested in the company) they're hiring Americans for their talent, and even cheaper Indians to work the QA departments. On top of that, VU's been losing a lot of money over the years. They need a lot of money to sustain, and to make a profit.

What they have on their hands right now is WOW - a total cash cow. It'd be stupid for them not to cash in on it by releasing expansions. Blizzard was content and quality driven, but VU-run Blizzard is profit-driven. The servers are overloaded, the netcode is sub-par, and on top of that the game was rushed out of development, and remains completely imbalanced even now. (See WOW forums for details). It's profit-driven.

 

[Jedi359]

Obviously I agree with the strategy Making expansions=money. Many, many games have done this, and you can't lay blame on a company for wanting to make expansions for their games. But your accusation sounds a little paranoid to me.

You can argue that the game was rushed, and I agree with you to an extent (netcode, sever overcrowding) but that's a farcry from saying that the Bigwigs purposefully made the choice to cut features in order to have easy expansion fodder later.

I haven't had any issues with class balance yet, playing a mage, and I know I don't browse the forums looking for things to complain about. I do agree that there is a glut of PVP servers, all with small populations, and not enough regular servers. But saying that the company chose to cut feature like that requires more proof beyond your assumptions.

 

[Jedi359]

Also:

Housing was supposed to be a part of the retail release but they pushed it back, along with the Emerald Dream and PVP modes like Siege and Arena, and the Epic Classes. Those will only be in expansions.

I'm not sure how you define arena, as you know stuff from the dev phase that I don't, but if you mean a PVP arena, it was added into one of the last patches. You can know go there and do battle with other players, from within or without of the faction. You can also sit in the stands and watch others duel.

 

[fnordcircle]

A friend got me into stupid WoW five weeks ago and I can't stop playing. Of course, I'm playing on a PvP server so that's half the fun.

It'll get old, no doubt about it, but right now I've got a full on addiction.

 

[xemous]

<wah

 

[xemous]

<wah

 

[Fez]

MMOGs can be scarily addictive or just bad for eating time, you can waste hours and then you realise all you've done is repetitive grinding and you didn't enjoy any of that time you spent. That's why I tend to avoid them now. I can use that time for almost anything, and it will be more fun. If DarkSign's MMORPG turns out good he may convert me though.

 

[Rhombus]

Heard the roleplaying sucks even on the so called rp-servers..?

Anyone got a informed opinon about that?..

 

[Sol Invictus]

What's to role-play? You just talk like whatever race your character is:

Orc - Zug-Zug! Dabu. After every sentence. Speak poor English and talk about Thrall's sacrifices.
Troll - Sound Jamaican and act 'cool'.
Undead - Talk about death a lot and sound angsty.
Tauren - Pretend you're a native american.

Human - Just be yourself, but don't say 'pwn'. If you're a Paladin make comments like, "BY THE LIGHT!" and "Uther's strength, I call upon you!". If you're a wizard, try to act cranky and intelligent.
Dwarf - Make random idiotic comments about dwarves and talk about how much you dispise those damn arrogant elves, and say "Aye laddie" a lot.
Night Elf - Be uppity and try to sound wise beyond your years.
Gnome - just act 'cute'.

Role-playing? Hardly. What's to do? It's not like you can commit your character to performing an 'evil deed' because you were role-playing an evil character. That's not doable. It's basically a PVE server with an arbitrary set of rules that disallow you from having l33t names and l33t speaking gets you a warning. And you can't speak "out of character" without typing (OOC) before you say anything. So if you wanna take a piss, and you say "I wanna take a piss", someone will get uppity with you and warn you to stay in character.

 

[DarkSign]

MMOGs can be scarily addictive or just bad for eating time, you can waste hours and then you realise all you've done is repetitive grinding and you didn't enjoy any of that time you spent. That's why I tend to avoid them now. I can use that time for almost anything, and it will be more fun. If DarkSign's MMORPG turns out good he may convert me though.

an honest to goodness plug! woot & roofles

 

[xemous]

>wah

 

[Astromarine]

Dear God, xemous, I so got the urge to punch you in the fucking face it's not funny.

Are you seriously COMPLAINING that you can't grief someone in a PVP server? What are you, 12?

 

[Ortchel]

What's to role-play? You just talk like whatever race your character is. Role-playing? Hardly. What's to do?

I've heard this argument before. When I've played MMOs in the past, I've worn the armor I liked because I liked it, not because it necessarily protected my character better. I've chosen the skills I thought best reflected my idea of who my character was, not just the ones that would make me strongest. In Anarchy Online I chose not to use any technology or guns. In Star Wars Galaxies I didn't use buffs and I didn't use vehicles, only mounts, etc. That's role-playing (in an MMO), not talking in silly voices. Unfortunately, 'role-players' understand this concept about as well as power-gamers.