Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5328|London, England

Shocking wrote:

last time I played was wotlk s3 (or season 7 it was called I believe). It was the only season I played in wotlk, was fun. Haven't played since. Played during season 2 and 4 in TBC and played most of vanilla.

since vanilla wotlk s3 was the only time pvp was actually fun. Didn't bother much with pve because imho all of it after AQ was shit. Everything that came after s3 was shit, never bought cata or pandaria, haven't had an interest in the game since.

Actually I've lost interest in MMOs and RPGs entirely, played WoW so much that whenever I try a new game in which I have to level up or accumulate gear I'm done with that concept again within 10 mins of playing.
I installed Neverwinter Nights a few months ago and had fun up to level 19 or so. Then I got bored when it started resembling grinding.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
plus it's a terrible game.
Adams_BJ
Russian warship, go fuck yourself
+2,053|6593|Little Bentcock
Thought I might watch a raid to see if I wanted to play.

nope.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
watching raids always bored me shitless anyway.
Adams_BJ
Russian warship, go fuck yourself
+2,053|6593|Little Bentcock
Well, an encounter I guess. See if its how I remembered.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
have just spent quite a long while reading through andy gavin's decently in-depth commentary on WoW. if you don't know, gavin was the inventor of crash bandicoot, and a bit of an all-round gamer/tech/critic dude. it's interesting to see his commentary not only from the POV of someone who clearly has played WoW from the beginning (to a moderately high-level), but also someone who is a designer and an 'insider' in the games industry. a really thoughtful and encouraging read. nicely structured, and really highlights the core aspects of each expansion pack. heavily recommend - worth the time.

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/1 … s-vanilla/
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/1 … g-crusade/
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/1 … lich-king/
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/1 … cataclysm/
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2013/0 … -pandaria/

here is a neat summary of my point about changing item looks. he calls it 'the end of the silhouette', and within the wider context of his cross-game analysis, it really emphasizes just how much normalization/homogeneity/fast-tracking there was between WotLK and cataclysm (which he considers the absolute nadir of the series). first i'll include his point about 'reforging', introduced in cataclysm with much fan-fare - but which he assesses from a game-designer's perspective as an accessory in the march towards boring sameness:

A number of gearing innovations were introduced with Cataclysm. In the BC and LK eras, the number of affixes (different stats and attributes possible on gear) had expanded considerably. The game has a lot of gear specs: plate tanks, plate dps, plate healing, mail spell dps, mail melee, mail ranged, mail healing, leather healing, leather spell dps, leather melee, leather tanking, cloth healing and cloth dps. In the old days, the designers ignored some, like bear tanks, but with making every spec viable came the need to provide them gear.

With Cataclysm, the designers tried to reduce this gear proliferation and consolidate stats. For example, the new “mastery” stat, basically good for every spec, but does something different for each. It might improve healing for a Holy Priest and damage for a Shadow Priest.

To make more gear useful to more players Blizzard introduced the reforging vendor. This allowed players to exchange one secondary stat on an item for another secondary stat. For example, if you had an item with crit and mastery, but want more haste, you could take half the mastery off and turn it into haste. This was reversible and modifiable.

This allowed almost any gear that fit your basic spec to be adjusted to fit your overall itemization. The downside was that it made gear increasingly by the numbers. Individual items used to matter more. You sought out the Azuresong Mageblade or the Core Hound Tooth. After  Cataclysm, if the item had a higher ilevel (item level) and fit your spec at all, it was likely better. This meant that you stopped caring so much about the individualitem and its stats and more about its ilevel.
& lo:

Vanilla, BC, and LK WOW never allowed the modification of gear appearance. Other games had dyes and methods of cosmetic alteration, but in WOW, the gear actually looked good, and because each class had unique tier gear, it was usually possible at a glance to tell how good (or at least dedicated) a player was. In fact, when I first started playing I was really impressed by the way your character slowly improved visually. At first, you dressed in rags, and slowly but surely you got cooler looking (with a few setbacks). I, like most players, chose function over form, and sometimes had a patchwork appearance.

Cataclysmchanged all that by introducing Transmogrification. The transmorg vendor, would for a fee, make any piece of gear look like any other of the same type that you owned (i.e. you couldn’t make a bow look like a sword). Suddenly, your best gear was disconnected from your best-looking gear. The cool part of this was that old gear, which often looked very cool or nostalgic, was useful again as a template for appearance. It also allowed characters to construct unified thematic sets without compromising function. Negatively, the specific new gear you got became even less memorable. It was just ilevel and stats.
the whole thing really is worth a read. even if you're not a major WoW player. even if you never played WoW. it's a fascinating history of how one of the best PC games to ever be released for the PC platform turned into what it is today - and what that says about game-design trends and changes in the gaming market/gamers themselves. and he does present it with some fairness and rationality; it's not another 'everything sucks, vanilla ruled' jeremiad. he praises blizzard multiple times for their good intentions and willingness to experiment and try new things. so fuckin' read it, bitches. it's rare to get long-form writing on video-games that is actually worth the 30 minutes of your time.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-04 17:58:27)

DrunkFace
Germans did 911
+427|6651|Disaster Free Zone
Lotro > WoW

Yes I went there, blow me.
Aries_37
arrivederci frog
+368|6545|London

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i sunk a decent amount of time into WoW alternatives because of the mythical 'end-game' messianic faith that gets promoted in these games. everyone busily grinds out the leveling experience - no matter how terrible - with the fable of the promised land at the end of it, a rich cornucopia of end-game treats and new mindblowing MMO experiences. of course what normally happens is people race to maxlevel, which is quite a fun and exciting thing to do in any new MMO tbh, and then get to end-game and discover its nothing but tumbleweed and not-quite-done-yet content. the game is normally empty by 2 months in, whilst the MMO's devs/publishers continue hyping the game's novelties on twitter and facebook, increasingly detached from reality as more and more players become jaded and ask "wtf"? by 6 months in they've rinsed enough cash out of the promotion, and they downsize it to like 2 servers. i've seen this cycle repeat a depressing number of times.

the only MMO that has kept me for longer than that normal routine is TERA, and simply because the combat system is addictive and a joy. it seemed to integrate all the best (new) features of WoW and other current-gen MMO's into a game that had really seamless combat. the ultra-korean setting and terrible release schedule between guild wars 2 and diablo 3 meant it hasn't really rocketed over here in the west... but it is incredibly polished. the combat alone is worth trying it out. it even makes guild wars 2's incredibly-overhyped new combat/movement system seem basic and shit.

in between WoW's amazing epic feeling and TERA's next-level combat, i really think it's going to be hard to find an MMO that can beat it (especially in a timeframe where i still even care about playing computer games, or have the time). basically i'll just need a relaunch of vanilla WoW, or another korean TERA clone that manages to scrape more of a buzz/movement than the current 1.5m playing TERA.
TERA won't last long. I've finished most of the endgame within 3 weeks of picking up the game, there just isn't much to do. Also the gear progression late-game is some retarded RNG based grind system- being lucky can literally save you 2 weeks of grinding.

The combat system is also completely superfluous. Yes it feels like a watered-down Monster Hunter but in PvE the bosses are so easy you can basically faceroll your keyboard (99% of fights are tank&spank) and win up to MCHM and in PvP stuns last so long that every engagement is just a battle of which team gets the better engage.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
Lol. I played it since release. I led one of the top guilds in europe pvp for the first 2 months. it was a blast, and that was even before they introduced proper battlegrounds or any real thing to do. the endgame is the same as all korean mmo's: ridiculous grinds artificially inflated in price/duration by a hideous RNG game. but that's always kinda been the point of korean mmo's, hasn't it? some of the earliest ones i played involved 100's of hours of grinding for the slimmest chance that an item would drop for you, or an enchant would work or w/e, which would then make you significantly more kickass than everyone else (KAL online was an amaznig early example; silkroad was pretty fun too). yup.

expecting good end-game raiding in that sort of game is just plain funny. the PvP (and attendant guild politics thing) was always the most compelling element - and the new combat system is actually pretty great for that, so long as you don't lag too much and the server performs well (i.e. age of conan syndrome). i was pretty surprised by TERA, all in all tbh... i didn't expect much except a standard cookie-cutter grind, but instead the graphics and the combat really compelled me. some of the world feels a little bit 2D, and some of the earlier zones especially feels almost like guild wars 1 designs (i.e. here's 3 paths, you can't jump or go anywhere else). but later on it opens up and does recapture a bit of that classic 'korean grind mmo' feel, i.e. huge areas, long grinds, lots of BAM grinding fun etc. sure it's repetitive and there's never much to do at endgame except the fun you and your friends invent... but, and this may sound sort of masochistic, i kind of miss that type of game. it definitely has its favourable light compared to the current brand of 'hold your hand' western MMO.

WoW's current MoP endgame appeals to me even less than TERA's. just sayin'. i make TERA noteworthy because, of all the western 'wow killer', 'omg reinventing the wheel' hype-trains, the MMO i singularly enjoyed most in the last 4-5 frustrating years was a completely unpretentious and 'safe' korean one. i do think TERA, on that front, suffered a little from the western release schedule - right between GW2 and diablo 3. ouch. not to mention NCsoft were juggling both GW2 and TERA in their portfolio simultaneously. it didn't get any marketing love.

oh and also i should point out that the pitiful lack of endgame (or content, fullstop) is exacerbated hugely by regional-publishing differences in TERA. the NA game is in far better health than the EU game, and both are miles behind the original K-TERA development. not just in terms of stupid gimmick costumes, either, but actual solid item-diversity and 'stuff to do'. which is a shame. but the model in the west w/r/t korean MMO's seems to be large parent companies take on about 5 of them concurrently, and only ever halfarsedly aupport them. the company behind TERA atm (frogster) also waste their time on games like AION - what a shimmering success that is. no doubt in 12 months' time they'll have another new batch of korean MMO's to flog.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-06 06:51:35)

Aries_37
arrivederci frog
+368|6545|London
The pvp combat is really unrefined even if you assume perfect ping and server stability. You get uncleanseable permastuns, luck-based status/skill procs (so much more game-changing than just crits), luck-based skill cd refreshes, imbalanced race differences (elin are OP), inconsistent interactions between skills and the i-frame abilities (backstep etc), and a complete lack of matchmaking (3 separate 5 man +12 conjunct premades can get put together against 15 ungeared noobs). I don't really know how this compares to WoW pvp as I never played WoW but TERA pvp is a mess.

I think TERA will be dead in EU before it gets the alliance update that k-tera just got. There's been some talk about ArcheAge which should hit our shores within 10 month so maybe that will be good.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
i don't think i've ever played a single korean mmo that has 'fair' or 'balanced' pvp. it just isn't ever what it's about, really. i just enjoyed it for what it was. i was a guild master as well so there was a whole host of other stuff to keep me entertained/engaged.

archeage looks so boring. there are like 5-10 games that people are talking about right now. i've never known it be so spread out before. nobody is pinning their hopes on one single game anymore... except maybe project titan, in the long distance.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
http://nogg-aholic.blogspot.com.au/2006 … son-8.html

world of warcraft ALPHA screenshots and features

:'(
DrunkFace
Germans did 911
+427|6651|Disaster Free Zone
WoW Screenshots

https://static.bf2s.com/files/user/10538/WoW/WoWScrnShot_081905_032005.jpg
https://static.bf2s.com/files/user/10538/WoW/WoWScrnShot_081905_032027.jpg
https://static.bf2s.com/files/user/10538/WoW/WoWScrnShot_081905_032444.jpg
https://static.bf2s.com/files/user/10538/WoW/WoWScrnShot_081905_032635.jpg

Ohh how beautiful.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
and it was still better then than during any expac

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-07 08:57:16)

DrunkFace
Germans did 911
+427|6651|Disaster Free Zone
Wouldn't know, quit before any came out.
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22464058

"gamers in the east are leaving world of warcraft".

this is what you do to us? we have to tolerate a shitty china-panda bear expansion, which everyone hates, and even you chineses are leaving?

blizz/activision are reaping what they sowed, years ago. the sooner the game dies off, the better.
Mutantbear
Semi Constructive Criticism
+1,431|5935|London, England

goodnight sweet prince
_______________________________________________________________________________________________ https://i.imgur.com/Xj4f2.png
Kampframmer
Esq.
+313|4812|Amsterdam
A team of developers that worked on vanilla wow is making a new MMORPG called Wildstar. Has a much more childish and cartoonish look that WoW, but is supposed to be very close to vanilla WoW gameplay-wise.
Let's hope they copy paste vanilla Wow, add some of the good later features. And nog copy the very few flaws that it had.
Mutantbear
Semi Constructive Criticism
+1,431|5935|London, England

it needs to copy the amount of players too
_______________________________________________________________________________________________ https://i.imgur.com/Xj4f2.png
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224

Kampframmer wrote:

A team of developers that worked on vanilla wow is making a new MMORPG called Wildstar. Has a much more childish and cartoonish look that WoW, but is supposed to be very close to vanilla WoW gameplay-wise.
Let's hope they copy paste vanilla Wow, add some of the good later features. And nog copy the very few flaws that it had.
lot of press about wildstar. personally i think it's inheriting way too many 'post-WoW' MMO features that will bite it in the ass.

- only 10 abilities max at any time, i.e. guild wars 2 syndrome, i.e. holy fuck i have all my abilities by lvl8 this is it jesus fuck christ
- stupid visual indicators and warnings for everything. it has an advanced gw2/tera style combat system, but every single fight/encounter is pretty much a colour-coded 'stand here! get out the way!' mini-game. blizzard banned mods that added this level of noob-shit to WoW raiding. wildstar thinks its a good idea to have it from the start.
- stupid emphasis on the 'new' again, including some of the stupidest ideas for a 'class' ever. explorer classes never work. they won't work this time.

i'm not normally one to care or be bothered by a game's 'theme' or 'setting', so long as the actual game mechanics are good. but wildstar is an astoundingly stupid idea, as far as intellectual property goes. it's sci-fi/space-ships, only all the classes fight hand-to-hand and use swords and daggers. one of the start areas sees you fighting in a zone which is a copy+paste of warcraft's 12-20 barrens zone, complete with wild african savannah vibes and mud-huts, and dinosaurs to kill... but then there are space-ships flying overhead. they have gone full-retard.
Adams_BJ
Russian warship, go fuck yourself
+2,053|6593|Little Bentcock
I can see the WoW artstyle in it though
Uzique The Lesser
Banned
+382|4224
that barrens-lite area they've shown in the video has taken the thorns from warcraft wholesale. like, literally lifted it.

it basically seems to be a WoW clone with all the worst 'current gen' MMO fads thrown in.
Adams_BJ
Russian warship, go fuck yourself
+2,053|6593|Little Bentcock
Am I the only one that hates movement based MMOs? Like rolls and diving and stuff. Leave it as a bonus if attacking from behind and thats it.
Mutantbear
Semi Constructive Criticism
+1,431|5935|London, England

Adams_BJ wrote:

Am I the only one that hates movement based MMOs? Like rolls and diving and stuff. Leave it as a bonus if attacking from behind and thats it.
I dont care for really advanced combat
_______________________________________________________________________________________________ https://i.imgur.com/Xj4f2.png
Cisse
Member
+63|4339
https://i.imgur.com/7ihsLDk.jpg

oh dear
pooppooppooppoophttps://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n223/Samtheman53/Sigs/6z8doqc.gif

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