World O' Warcraft

[peter eldergill]

Played this game at a friend's house last night for about 4 hours. Wow!

Fantastic game! Very simple ideas (at low levels, anyways), but it's the players that make it so good! Hope to play again soon. I got to level 7 human mage, but had to go home. Something about my wife being bored....

Anyone lese here play?

L8R

Pete

[Kristophe]

Yeah. I'm getting very frustrated by the lack of vision by the game devs, and the level of maturity demonstrated by a lot of players. I haven't decided if I'm going to renew my subscription or not yet.

[Doodler]

I've been playing for three weeks. A few hours a night, and a weekend bender over Christmas. Its stays consistently excellent as you level in terms of questing gameplay. You do reach the occassional point where you run into a few group-required dungeons and quests, but overall, its very easy to continue forward leveling without the mindless grind that accompanies most MMOROPGs.

The positives:

You can level your character through questing, which gives you some amazing items, or you can do it the hard way, and simply go out grinding, which has a low percentage shot of dropping some high quality items and gear as well. Another option suitable for your second characters is to PvP your way through the xp grind. For participation in the PvP Battlegrounds, you are given tokens which can be traded in to Generals using a repeatable quest for experience.

I personally do a mix of PvP Battlegrounds and questing. I HATE grinding with a passion, and avoid it at all costs.

The crafting/harvesting system is simplistic, but very low headache, unlike the crafting system in EQ2, which was just an annoying reflex exercise. It lacks the elegance of the Star Wars Galaxies old crafting system (may it rest in peace), but you can make a fair living crafting items and trading them at the Auction Houses.

Blizzard Customer service is top shelf. Compared to my other recent MMORPG experience with Sony Online Entertainment through Star Wars Galaxies, I've been shocked beyond belief that the Customer Service Reps are polite, professional and tend to NOT use canned responses to problems. I recently had my first ticket answered after a mistake that cost me 10 gold pieces, they actually reversed an action that is outside their usual correction policy, with an explanation of why and a politely worded request that I not make it a habit.

Downsides: If you get into the PvP Battlegrounds, they are fun, but you run into players known as twinks. These are people who run Battlegrounds with second generation characters having optimized gear financed through their level 60 main characters. They can be a pain, but the Player versus Player is still fun in spite of them. If you get onto a Roleplaying server, don't expect much in the way of hard RP. I play on Argent Dawn, which is the main RP server, and there's not as much as you could expect. PvP servers tend to be risky for some people who are not used to being out expecting an ambush without warning. Some mid level (level 20-40) areas are "contested", meaning they are PvP enabled, whether you want it or not, at all times. Also, entering an area aligned with the opposite side will automatically enable you into PvP mode, making you attackable without warning. On RP servers, PvP mode outside of Battlefields is only enabled by attacked aligned NPCs (Non-Player Characters) or by manually activating PvP mode.

In any event, from a mechanics standpoint, its about the best out there. Its a fairly short learning curve for basic gameplay without being simplistic to the point of insulting intelligence and the content is well thought out and executed. Sorry you missed what they just had for Christmas and New Years, but they did a fantastic job of adapting traditional Christmas themes into the world without overly breaking immersion (Santa Claus became "Greatfather Winter", an analogue written into the game's dwarven culture and shared by the elves, gnomes and humans).

Though I had long enjoyed the Warcraft strategy games, I admit I missed the boat on this one because I was still clinging to hopes that Star Wars Galaxies might someday live up to its potential. Given the insanity going on with that game now, I feel a little sheepish making the crossover.

[Fraser]

MMORPGs are super fun. I did a stint with Everquest, and World of Warcraft. Quitting Everquest was very hard to do, and I'm pretty ashamed about the amount of time that I put into them. Grinding to upgrade your character touches some ancient pleasure centre in the brain, and keeps you clicking away on your computer for hours long that you'd originally planned. I don't have a friend who played the game that didn't suffer in other parts of their lives. So if you've got an addictive personality, I suggest you stay away from them.

They can be great fun, though, especially when you're in big groups and raids working together as a team. I wish I'd spent more time doing that, and less time repeating the same task over and over switching numbers in some distant Sony/Blizzard database.

As you're playing the game, ask yourself if you're actually having fun, or if you're playing because you want to get some upgrade, new gadget, etc. There are better uses for your time.

I'm kind of rambling, I know. MMORPGs aren't all good or all bad. You need to keep an objective eye on how you're spending your time as they can suck you in like nothing else on Earth.

[Tog_]

Never did WoW. I'm a City of Heroes/Villains player myself. Same idea but super hero based. The thing I like the most about it is no real crafting and no loot. it's just about all action. The PvP is restricted to specific zones that are not equired to eter to advance, so it's optional. If a high level character goes into a PvP zone they are reduced in level to make everyone more equal. Tere are also PvP arenas where there are a number of differnt types of PvP. I hve a big (50+ pages/20 megs) website explaining the basic of the City of Heroes side of it, if anyone is interested I'll PM it to you. (Not sure if it would be a no no to post the link here.)

[Yoshua]

Lemme define some terms for readers here who might not play these games.

PvP = Player versus Player. This is players fighting other players.

PvE = Player versus Enviornment. This refers to players taking on computer controlled NPC's.

XP = Experience Points. You accumalate these to gain levels.

Grinding = Refers to performing the same task over and over to achieve a result. Someone grindinding XP is usually killing monsters in one particular area to gain levels. Where as someone grinding trade skills probably gathered or bought a lot of raw materials to make a lot of things to raise their skill.

MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game. A pretentious term devised by Origin to describe Ultima Online that wound up catching and now describes all manner of online only games that support thousands of users (I don't care for the term myself).

Group = A number of people allied for the purpose of pursuing some challenge the game has to offer (in WoW, groups can have up to 5 people in them).

Raid = A multi group effort to tackle challenges not possible for a single person or group to accomplish. (In WoW a raid can consist of up to 8 groups or 40 people, though instanced zones will only allow so many people to enter them)

Instanced Zone = An area seperate from the game world created for a person, group or raid. Nobody but the person making the zone, a member of the creators party or raid, can enter this area. (an exception are WoW's battlegrounds, which are instanced but open to all as long as there is room)

Anyways, I've played WoW since release on a Normal server (PvE). Reached level 60 near mid January of last year. Up till that point I'd been having a mighty fun time of it. But the post level 60 content has really eroded away at my enjoyment of the game.

I joined a guild to do raid content, given that seemed about all that was left to do other than start new characters. It was fun at first, but it gets old mighty quickly. I mean for the last 7 months I've seen little else but one area (Molten Core). Only in the last four months have I seen anything new (Blackwing's Lair), but now that is getting pretty stale too. Compound that with the fact to operate in those areas I have to collect a lot of supplies for myself and my guild (materials for potions, materials for bandages) and grind on NPC's to make money to cover repair costs for my equipment. The latter seriously cuts into my enjoyment of the game because I detest mindlessly killing the same things over and over more than words can describe.

But that's the bad. The good parts for me were working up the ranks with a steady group of friends. We started grouping together about the time we were all around level 20 and stuck together till we all hit 60. Always heading out and looking for new stuff to do or new challenges. It was a lot of fun and we got a long well. I strongly reccomend if you play this game, you try and find a regular group to play with as soon as you can. While you can play the game alone and reach level 60, I honestly don't think you will have as much fun as doing it with a good group of people.

[peter eldergill]

I've reread this thread after playing since January....I didn't really start playing steadily 'till April

I'm now a lvl 40 mage on Boulderfist (PJE) and really enjoy it. Your posts make perfect sense to me now, especially Fraser. That is some excellent advice, thank you!

I get irritated when Horde (I'm obviously alliance) that are 20 levels higher than me insist on waiting 'till I've resurreceted, then kill me agian. Congrats to them for that brilliant display of cunning. I'm sure alliance characters do it as well....perhaps they're bored witht he game.

Anyhow, if you're on Boulderfist (alliance), drop me a note (PJE) I'm with Children of the Fall

Thanks for all the responses before

Pete

[GDwarf]

I used to be a WoW addict, it is fun, and it's certainly better then any other MMORPG, but it gets repetative after about 2 months, at that point you realise that every time you fight a monster or go through a dungeon you hit the same two or three buttons over and over. At the same time, it's plenty of bang for your buck, so I highly reccomend trying it, some people are perfectly fine with doing the same thing over and over again, or at least think that it's only a minor setback to all the fun you get to have.

[Doodler]

To some, WoW might seem like the same thing over and over again, but when you think about it, there's still a social dynamic to it that beats playing standalone games hand over fist.

[Damburger]

WoW is a great game, but it has a tendency to lose you jobs, lovers, and occasionally houses.

Personally I'v taken to the RPPVP servers. They have the PVP element which i do like, and also the players tend to be a little more mature than on straight PVP servers. Also, sometimes, I even roleplay :)

[peter eldergill]

I've heard of people losing jobs, etc and I've been told that there is a helpline set up by Blizzard to help people cope! Good game, indeed

Pete

[Doodler]

WoW is a great game, but it has a tendency to lose you jobs, lovers, and occasionally houses.

Personally I'v taken to the RPPVP servers. They have the PVP element which i do like, and also the players tend to be a little more mature than on straight PVP servers. Also, sometimes, I even roleplay :)

Maturity on PvP servers? Not in my experience, but I congratulate you on finding a good one.

I'm on Argent Dawn, I do enjoy the battlefields, and the occassional runs around Horde territory flagged and packing, but from what I've seen of AD's active PvP group, there's no way in Hades I'd leave myself open to them constantly. WAY too many twinked Horde PvP fighters on AD for my liking.

[Vermonter]

I play with a bunch of coworkers on Bloodscalp. For the Horde! I do have Alliance characters, including a 56 NE Rogue, and a few mid-level folks. I have a lot of fun questing with guildies and working together, even for little things. I get real irritated when I get ganked by Epic 60's over and over...and yet I do enjoy taking out people near by level. I'm currently playing an Orcish Destruction Warlock named Zongor...I can take out at-levels with three or four spells if I do it right. :-D

[Doodler]

My lead off toon is a 55 Paladin with a Healing/Retribution build. Fun class, till you hit the mid-40s, then your powercurve flattens, and you're finding yourself less able to throw levels like you could before. At the epic levels, Paladins are relegated to support ranks as secondary healers/off tanks. Not something that's been fun getting used to.

At 42, I could take on two 44 Elites and walk away with most of my health, now at 55, I'm running for my life from 52-53 Elites.

The one I'm starting to have fun with is the 19 Dwarf Hunter. Now there's a lethal class once you get a meatshield that can hold aggro.

[Vermonter]

I enjoy trashing Hunters with my Warlock. Soul Fire (700-1700) -> Shadowbolt (300-700) + Immolate -> Shadowburn -> Death Coil -> Conflagrate -> Dead Hunter...and that's if they survive the first two! I've nearly 1-shotted Mages with Soul Fire...4 second cast, but the results are worth it.

[Doodler]

I enjoy trashing Hunters with my Warlock. Soul Fire (700-1700) -> Shadowbolt (300-700) + Immolate -> Shadowburn -> Death Coil -> Conflagrate -> Dead Hunter...and that's if they survive the first two! I've nearly 1-shotted Mages with Soul Fire...4 second cast, but the results are worth it.

You'll never hear me question the power of warlocks. They are hell on wheels, literally.

[Vermonter]

You'll never hear me question the power of warlocks. They are hell on wheels, literally.

The only thing worse would be to give the Lock a better weapon. I've been thouroughly trashed by some folks if I'm caught off-guard or extremely low on mana, or just a simple gang-up. I've pretty much confirmed that if a Hunter catches a Lock off guard, the Lock is dead unless the Hunter is stupid...but I've been able to deal with that before. Rogues are phenominal at PvP if the player is good. Stunlock sucks, but so is getting critted every two shots.

[Doodler]

The only thing worse would be to give the Lock a better weapon. I've been thouroughly trashed by some folks if I'm caught off-guard or extremely low on mana, or just a simple gang-up. I've pretty much confirmed that if a Hunter catches a Lock off guard, the Lock is dead unless the Hunter is stupid...but I've been able to deal with that before. Rogues are phenominal at PvP if the player is good. Stunlock sucks, but so is getting critted every two shots.

Been so long since I've PvP'd, but wasn't it Hunter that had that mana bleeding shot? Good grief, they are painful to cope with in the BFs...

[Vermonter]

Perhaps, I don't remember. :(

[Doodler]

Perhaps, I don't remember. :(

Either them or Rogues, but I'm thinking Hunter, because I remember being shot, and I remember thinking "WEAK!!", until I go to hit Divine Shield and I'm like, "Whaddaya mean 'My mana is low'???"

[peter eldergill]

I'm not very good at PvP, I get killed really easily, so I try to avoid killing Horde if I can. They tend to come back to life all the time...and tend to bring friends with them.

If you've never heard of it, try www.thottbot.com , it has tons of info on quests, etc..

Pete

[Vermonter]

One war story I have is this:

Me and a buddy were on the Wild Shore in Stranglethorn Vale killing pirates. We're in our mid-40's, mind you. This Epic 60 rogue comes up and starts attacking us. We actually manage to take him out, but I died in the process. So we ress, and get back to health, and he does it again! This time my friend dies, but the rogue died too. At this point we couldn't quest, as we were fending him off. I called in the guildies (who loooove ganking) and they trashed the rogue a few times. Rogue whines to the ally's that there are bid nasty horde killing him, and so five alliance show up and start trashing us. My guildy congradulated us on fending him off so many times, we didn't know he was 60 at the time.

I find it hilarious that these gankers get so upset and have to call in support just because the tides turn on them, you see it all the time in the immature players.

[Doodler]

STV was always fun for Alliance players because of the Tauren that wanders up and down the road who's Horde aligned, and tends to aggro, causing you to become flagged (this being an RP server). So I remember nightly battle calls to deal with Horde 60's walking the line with her waiting to blast Allies in the 30-45 range.

The other one I had fun with was the pair of Horde warlocks that used to camp Gadgetzan. Nice duo, one was a 40, the other a 60. The 40 would stay flagged and draw Allies into attacking, and the 60 would come in and pop the Ally once they became flagged. Then when the Ally rezzed locally, still flagged, they'd stomp them again, and again, until they ran to another rez spot to clear the flag or thought it through and waited out the flag.

Needless to say I fell for this one, got splattered in Gadget, rezzed locally, still flagged of course, but far enough away that I was able to call my horse before they could close on me. Lead those buggers on a merry chase all over the desert till my flag dropped, then discovered I could still offer a few chosen words of advice across the faction line b y t y p i n g m y w o r d s o u t l i k e t h i s.

Much fun ensued. ;)

[Ilya]

Never played World of Warcraft, and from what I read about it, don't particularly want to. Might try Neverwinter Nights, though. Has anyone here played it?

[GDwarf]

Never played World of Warcraft, and from what I read about it, don't particularly want to. Might try Neverwinter Nights, though. Has anyone here played it?
Oh yes, and I loved it. I won't lie to you, the single player for the main campaign and Shadows of Undrentide(SP?) is pretty bad, but Hordes of the Underdark is rather nice. However, it's the multiplayer where it shines. They give you the toolset, the programs they used to make the game, for free, and you can use it to make your own games, you can then play these with your friends. Alternativley you can find an online dedicated server, and just log on and play, it's similar to WoW, only without the fees (And a max of about 60 people per server.)

If you like Roleplaying, as in Playing Dungeons and Dragons, or think that Roleplaying might be fun, I highly reccomend you try the server Narfell, I used to play there a lot.

Now, Neverwinter Nights 2 comes out in September, so you may want to wait and just buy that one, it apparently has a wonderful single-player plot, similar in quality to the Baldur's Gate I & II games.

Anyways, Doodler, Argent Dawn FTW!

[Doodler]

Jannu, Grelby, Valshain - Alliance

Gargrogg - Horde

Drop a line sometime.

[Doodler]

Never played World of Warcraft, and from what I read about it, don't particularly want to. Might try Neverwinter Nights, though. Has anyone here played it?

I ran a Neverwinter Nights server for about a year. Was fun, but a little bizarre. The game campaigns in the expansions were great (I liked Undrentide, myself. The writer for Deekin's scripts was a genius), and the .hak file writers made expanding its content just off the wall.

[khal]

Blizzard Customer service is top shelf.

No way I could agree with that. If you consider responding to a ticket and correcting sometihng you did as good customer service youre terribly wrong. You may be one of the 'lucky' people who got a response from a GM fast. 90% time they respond, of course after taking their own cool time, but most of the time they cant do anything about your problem unless youre stuck or something. They always will 'Look into it' tho..

The game is really adictive. Was fun to play at the start. I was beta tester played as a hunter on TEST 15 server, and I started playing the retail version few hours after they released it in the USA. I've played five classes to level 60, done every single end game instance including AQ 40. (didn't get to twin emps tho.. stopped playing before my guild could do it)

I always respected blizzard and was a huge fan of them. Played almost every single game they released and loved all of them.. Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft u name it.

I had high hopes that they will continue there good record of been relaible and I must say I'm highly dissapointed the way blizzard have acted during the last few months. Sad to say, but they COMPLETELY RUINED a nice game and their reputation too in the process.

Servers lag and crashes. Classes are imbalanced. There are so many bugs you will need a seperate thread to discuss them. And yet, what do they do?? Fisrt of all let me ask you something. What does the word "patch" mean? According to what I know, it's FIXING something. Over the past few months, Blizzard has introduced quite a few patches. Have they fixed a lot of bugs?? NO! what they do is introduce new content patch after patch, totally ignoring existing bugs and leaving some classes gimped as it is. Terrible :(

The forum blues are saying one thing.. Devs doing something else. Try browsing the forums for about hour or so and see how many customers are complaining and how they are unhappy and annoyed with the actions of blizzard team. They may have resources, money, and everything else.. but certainly lack common sense. Blue posters are posting crap in useless threads. Well placed posts with logical arguments are avoided and I have yet to see a blue post a reply to them and say something positive.

The way its getitng worse day by day is quite annoying. There is a hardlocking issue with Nvidia/ATI cards and last WoW patch. Few thousand people are experiancing the problem and all blizzard can say is that "it's something wrong with your hardware" and totally ignorng it. Few thousend players having hardware issues after a certain patch is the players fault?? beyond me..

Go to the WoW community site NOW and see. At this very moment they have taken all the forums down becouse they cant cope with the amount of posts by angry players after something really stupid they did with the two new oceanic realms. Its a shame. Really..

There are good aspects of the game. it is a fun game indeed. lets talk about it and I can discuss things for hours. but good customer support?? Dude.. blizzard doesn't know the meaning of that anymore. All they want to do is make fancy websites, add more content totally ignoring existing problems and make more money. that's it!

-Khal-

[Doodler]

A hard lesson I learned playing Star Wars, and a solid rule for any gamer.

NEVER SHALT THOU READEST THE FORUMS IF THOU INTENDST TO ENJOY THE GAME.

I will absolutely never consider a game's official forums to be an effective means of communicating with the development team again. Change happens, sometimes your class gets kissed, sometimes they get kicked. Life goes on.

As far as Customer Service, I've had to contact them twice. Once over a problem I was having with chat tabs, another over a misclick that resulted in me spending 10 gold on an extra bag slot in the bank that I didn't want.

The chat problem, they suggested a couple approaches and reset my chat settings remotely, which partially fixed the problem. Beyond that, there was apparently a chat channel issue associated with the patch, and the next restart of the server cleared it up.

As for the misclick, the GM actually broke policy and refunded me the gold and took back the slot, after telling me that they really shouldn't do it.

That to me is pretty awesome service. Nothing boilerplate or automated, and even though the first problem wasn't fully resolved, the fact is someone was there to at least correct the problem partially.

Believe me, I've played through bad service. If it weren't for the fact that there weren't another well established scifi MMO out there, other than the Matrix Online, I'd jump ship.

Right now, I'm following the development of the Star Trek and Stargate MMOs.

[khal]

You must have met a very helpful GM to aid u in that manner. There are good people who try to do thier job properly and sometimes even a little bit more than they are allowed to, just to help people. After all, its a game.

Anyway.. I was sharing my experiance. You kinda get annoyed when you pay 15$ a month and dont get the service you need.

[GDwarf]

No way I could agree with that. If you consider responding to a ticket and correcting sometihng you did as good customer service youre terribly wrong. You may be one of the 'lucky' people who got a response from a GM fast. 90% time they respond, of course after taking their own cool time, but most of the time they cant do anything about your problem unless youre stuck or something. They always will 'Look into it' tho..
Do you play a lot of MMORPGs? I used to, I can assure you that compared to anything offered by Sony Online Entertainment Blizzard is amazing. Just try submitting a ticket, and waiting a week to get an automated response to a different question.

I had high hopes that they will continue there good record of been relaible and I must say I'm highly dissapointed the way blizzard have acted during the last few months. Sad to say, but they COMPLETELY RUINED a nice game and their reputation too in the process.
Not at all.

Servers lag and crashes.
You try hosting 6 million people.
Classes are imbalanced. And yet, somehow, no one can agree on which classes are broken. Actually, I've noticed that it's always the class that a person is currently playing that's too weak. I solo level'd a priest to 36, after having countless people laugh at me, after all, everyone knows that priests are too weak to level past 20 without help (Or, at least, that's what the forums say>)
There are so many bugs you will need a seperate thread to discuss them.
How many of those are game breaking? Maybe 2 last time I checked. Also, the reasons it's in a separate thread are these:
1. It makes it easy for the devs to see if there is a serious bug, if everyone posted separate threads they'd never be able to see a nice list.
2. It saves on forum clutter, without it everyone would post a new thread on the same bug (They do that already, really) which makes the forums impossible to use, as new threads get bumped down to the bottom by all the new ones.
And yet, what do they do?? Fisrt of all let me ask you something. What does the word "patch" mean? According to what I know, it's FIXING something. Over the past few months, Blizzard has introduced quite a few patches. Have they fixed a lot of bugs?? NO! what they do is introduce new content patch after patch, totally ignoring existing bugs and leaving some classes gimped as it is. Terrible :(
*sigh* every patch fixes at least some bugs. You also don't seem to realise that Blizzard is systematically buffing the classes, and they're doing an amazing job at it.
The forum blues are saying one thing.. Devs doing something else. Try browsing the forums for about hour or so and see how many customers are complaining and how they are unhappy and annoyed with the actions of blizzard team. They may have resources, money, and everything else.. but certainly lack common sense. Blue posters are posting crap in useless threads. Well placed posts with logical arguments are avoided and I have yet to see a blue post a reply to them and say something positive.
The forums are where the angry 1% post. I kid you not, have you ever seen a post on the forums praising Blizzard? I sure never did. The very fact that 6 million people play the game should say something about customer satisfaction.

The way its getitng worse day by day is quite annoying. There is a hardlocking issue with Nvidia/ATI cards and last WoW patch. Few thousand people are experiancing the problem and all blizzard can say is that "it's something wrong with your hardware" and totally ignorng it. Few thousend players having hardware issues after a certain patch is the players fault?? beyond me..
This is, obviously, after I quit, but I can assure you that there is some reason, and probably a solution in the works. Why? Because there always is, and the people who complain always ignore it. I'd also like to ask you this: WoW (Last I checked) had 6 million people playing, you say a 'few thousand' have this bug, I doubt it's even that many, but I'll use your numbers.

3 000/6 000 000 (100) = 0.05%, 0.05% of the people playing the game have this bug, and for all we know it could very well be because of a hardware problem, which Blizzard would be unable to do anything about.

Go to the WoW community site NOW and see. At this very moment they have taken all the forums down becouse they cant cope with the amount of posts by angry players after something really stupid they did with the two new oceanic realms. Its a shame. Really..
I agree, it's a shame that the angriest 1% of the community holds so much sway that they can knock down the site for everyone else who wants to use it.

There are good aspects of the game. it is a fun game indeed. lets talk about it and I can discuss things for hours. but good customer support?? Dude.. blizzard doesn't know the meaning of that anymore. All they want to do is make fancy websites, add more content totally ignoring existing problems and make more money. that's it!
That's all any business wants, to make money, they really are not in it so that you can have fun, although that may be a secondary goal.

Again, have you played anything made or published by SoE? If not you really can't complain about Blizzard's customer service, it is very hard to make sure that 6 million people are happy, especially when a small handful of them drown out the useful complaints with their own.


I apologize if the tone of this post is harsh, but I'm very tired of all the griping that goes on in the Blizzard forums, I would love for all the complainers to get to spend even one day trying to run WoW, I doubt they'd be able to do it any better then it's being run now.
Oh, and you don't pay for the customer support, you're actually paying for the content patches, the customer support is free.