Sorry but Pre-Cu SWG was my first MMORPG. I moved on after they "dumbed" down that game. Now I'm spoiled. I thought the point of MMO's was to be in-depth and complex? Otherwise why not play a consol game or pump your quarters into the arcade?
sometimes i wonder if harcore mmo players simply are jeleous that all the work they had to invest into their games seems a waste if you can have it so much simpler with same fun. i liked wow for a while, then got bored. why is that? because it is "dumbed" down?
take swg pre-nge (cu or pre-cu) as an example of hardcore: the jedi grind fest. simply killing bols for hours and hours (yes, i was so stupid myself...), hologrind of villagegrind, whichever. so why does that make swg such a great game??? isn't this actually "dumbed down"?
then again, it's not always the better product on the market that wins (see VHS versus beta-max as a classical example).
A MMO is meant to be a world and not a normal single player game xp like tetris : RPG = role playing game and how can you do this with no customisation?
The OP actually pissed me off here, the fact GW is even on this site says something.
Originally posted by airhead uh... 1-60, probably best game ever made, because it's great for the casual player. A few months after 60 and it's not for the casual at all, i.e. 2-3 hour time block commitments required.
For me, the really interesting oddity of the wow playerbase is WHY people play for months or even years after finishing the game? running the same instances over and over... it's mind-numbing. I have to think it's because of the friends they have made in game, I can't concieve of what else it could be...
Basically.
I've done every bit of content in the game, over 3 60s, and all the raid instances but Naxxramas. It's pretty much boring as heck right now for me, I'm in a holding pattern until BC, because really, I've done every 5-man dungeon hundreds of times each and its just pointless to log in now except to chat with my friends. There isnt anything else I can do ingame.
But I had lots of fun that first year and a half, I only hope the expansion content lasts that long for PvE-type people like me. I love quests and grouping most of all, not really big on PvP. So we'll see.
But the limited scope of WoW is its biggest weakness. Also the reliance on scripted dungeon content only, with no allowance for player-interaction like housing or crafting or better visual character customisation. I mean, more than 4 customizing options per race would be nice, honestly.
I've played them all and WoW is the only one still getting my money. It's just fun - and I am a "casual player." At least as far as the time I have to spend in games.
Say what you will, the numbers don't lie. Blizzard got it right. At least for the VAST majority.
My first mmo was FFXI, honestly I thought it was great at first and it was... but the limitations killed the ability to really explore near areas and see new places, Why am I scared to death of easy prey???.... SWG was a content free void.. Tried Eve demo.. WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too complex. No way this side of a small moon I'm going to remember all that.. I was also greatly disappointed that I couldn't get out of the ship and explore all these planets and the players there-in.
EverQuest 2 was fun.. honestly, were it not for the introduction of the RMT servers I would have stayed with EQ2 over everything else.. but no, the Station Exchange went live and the only way to make displeasure known to companies is through subscription cancellations.
so here I am in WoW.. graphically it's not even able to hold a match to EQ2.. gameplay wise it's fun in a faster paced way. Crafting is a touch *TOO* simple but that's fine.. means my crafts make profit faster.. At the whole.. the game is fun.. to make it so Blizz had to dumb it down and get rid of a lot of "old school" conventions.. I'm fine with that though.. Fun > all.
I've never said that WoW was dumb, but it is accurate to say that it is a dumbed down version of other MMO's. The game is simplistic in style and for those of us who did play MMO's before WoW, it is overly simplistic. Hardcore? Casual? Who gives a crap. What I want is a game that offers a variety of races, a skill system or a class system with many classes to choose from (ie. DAoC or EQ2), a social system that encourages community relations (ie. SWG economy), and player ran cities (for our virtual selves to live in). The point has been taken over and over again that people like those that wrote this article look at MMO's nothing more than a median to have fun. While others like myself look at MMO's as virtual worlds where we can "be" whoever we want or can't be in real life. People like me choose to RP in a game through the bad times and the good. It is a second life for us.
Originally posted by docminus sometimes i wonder if harcore mmo players simply are jeleous that all the work they had to invest into their games seems a waste if you can have it so much simpler with same fun. i liked wow for a while, then got bored. why is that? because it is "dumbed" down?
take swg pre-nge (cu or pre-cu) as an example of hardcore: the jedi grind fest. simply killing bols for hours and hours (yes, i was so stupid myself...), hologrind of villagegrind, whichever. so why does that make swg such a great game??? isn't this actually "dumbed down"?
then again, it's not always the better product on the market that wins (see VHS versus beta-max as a classical example).
Jedi were actually the beginning of the end for SWG. First of all, neither Jedi nor Sith had any place in the Star Wars universe after Episode IV. It was "common" knowledge that Vader had killed off all Jedi other than Luke, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. Beyond that, the Empire rooted out any developing Jedi. Palpatine was a control freak and didn't want anyone getting in his way of universal domination.
Beyond that, the thought of introducing a "superior character class," to any MMO is a kiss of death. All games have to maintain balance. The Jedi was, by it's very nature, an unbalanced class. Making such a class available will destroy every other aspect of your game as everyone and their uncle will be trying to obtain it. That is EXACTLY what happened to cause the beginning of the end in Galaxies.
Before the introduction of the FS slot, Galaxies had a strong, player driven economy. It had vast player owned cities, and the Galactic Civil War, though in development, promised to be a heck of an end-game with AT-AT's, speeders, etc doing battle on the planets while starships converged overhead. When the FS slot was made available, all of that story driven stuff went right out the window. SWG became a Jedi grind fest.
When folks refer to how awesome SWG was, they are not referring to the Jedi grind fest. They're talking about the MMO Utopia that was in place before the FS slots were made available. They're talking about realistic trade between cities, setting down in your house after a long day of adventuring, camping out on the Tatooine desert while hunting huge lizards, grabbing a drink in the cantina to recover from the stress of fighting rebel scum, etc. That was the game that we lost. The game had bugs, but the environment that was created was one of the best that has been seen in an MMO to date.
I completely agree with nthnaoun. I will say taht after reading posts like these, and with a little thinking of my own , I have decided that the reason why games like WoW are so dumb are because the makers focus only on combat, so that its perfect. Well i have to say that perfect combat is really not always fun, i mean i play AoE III WC and part of the fun is trying to figure out OP and then exploit it for as long as you can till the nxt patch. But thats not my points. What i have seen from playing SWG especially is taht in game crafting is essential to a game. SWG was awsome because of its crafting. Take the misssions in WoW they are such a load of crap its not even funny, almost no reward but experience, which is stupid. In SWG money actually mattered because the only way to get good stuff was to find other player crafters selling the stuff, and the missions in SWG actually gave a good amount of money, and you got xp at the same time. Now the reason why SWG's crafting was soo good was because it was soo diverse. I have not seen or come a cross a game that comes even cose to SWG's crafting system(i'm talking precu of course), i mean if you were really hard core and wanted to make some money you had to really search hard for the high quality recourse spots, and there were so many recourses that could be interchanged too. Games like WoW copmletely overlook this and makes me very angry. Part of the reason why i liked SWG was the crafting alone.
Next point...DOCTORS!! SWG was genius in the way they created the doctor proffession as a combat medic and crafting proffessoin all in one, not to mention the combat in SWG was easy to do, but very intricate.
Next point: Combat: games like WoW extremely dumb down combat, since there are no player crafted items, good ones at least, you basically must kill thousands of mobs for loot to become uber, which means only a few people will get way way ahead. In SWG it wasn't hard to get top armor, it just took a little money and it wasn't that hard to come by.
Conclusion: I am dissapointed in the way Blizzard has dumbed down the MMO universe. Companies will try to copy Blizzards example, and it will cause for more and more generic MMO which the noobs will love. NOw i'm not saying WoW isn't poorly crafted, its very well crafted, almost no flaws, but theres a trade-off that blizzard made. They made no new steps, and so its not hard to make a game with no flaws and no new stuff, and not to mention there are a very limited amount of things you can do, something that has me perplexed.
AREN'T MMORPG'S ABOUT LIVING YOUR DREAM? All Hail PRECU SWG!!!
Originally posted by Zippy Pretty awful article. The writer has no understanding of why many hardcore people find WoW to easy. Rather he spends his entire article defending casual players and putting down and atacking hardcore players.
WoW is a great game but many people think it is to easy and flawed. SOme of the reasons are:
4. Leveling is siimply to fast. My last character reached level 60 in 8 days played all solo withyout grouping at all. If I was more careful it could have been 6 days played. I am sure there are much better players than me that could do this much faster. The problem with fast leveling is two fold one is makes characters dispoablke and it is hard to bond with a character than one invests such little time in. Second WoW's world has some beautiful fantastic areas but because leveling is so fast players rocket through each area and never get ,much of a chance to spend more than a few hours in each area.
Wow...( no pun intended) I had to stop and post at this one. Sorry but if you levelled in 8 days then you have a completely different idea of what casual is.
I'm finding a lot of people in this thread a little elitest. "dumb"/"smart"... hmmm, I wonder how many of you listen to music that is "dumb". I'm sure all of you have all of the smartest music in your collections like Milton Babbit, Elliot Carter, Thelonious Monk and J.S. Bach. Or maybe you have music that you just really like and you don't question why. You just listen and enjoy.
Casual means casual. It means only a few hours here or there. People who are casual are not really bothered by whether or not they can get the best gear or not. They just enjoy the game for the hour they put in. They might even play every other day. I"ve played WoW casually since it came out. I have a lvl 27 Warrior and a lvl 14 Necromancer. I have enjoyed it for what it was, met some nice people and have found it to be a very well made game for the time I've put into it.
I also play Lineage 2 and have a lvl 76 Spellhowler that is about to complete it's 3rd class change. It has taken me about 3 years to get to this point. Not a very casual game. I enjoy Lineage 2 but in no way do I think it is "smarter" because all of its rewards have taken so long.
World of Warcraft is very successful at getting new people into the genre. They might get tired and try something different and they might like that "different" or not. But I think it would be presumptuous to assume that once they try any other game than WoW they will immediately view WoW as a pile of dung. They might see that is has flaws or they might see that it has a type of gameplay that allows them to enjoy an hour or so of free time away from work or family or other hobbies.
I also think its presumptuous to assume that everyone wants the same types of challenges as more "hardcore" games. Not everyone wants brutal death penalties and open pvp or looting. I have several friends who are a bit more hardcore than the average person in their tastes for entertainment, very educated, and they think the whole mmo genre is a waste of good time that you can be spending doing "anything" more worthwhile.
Are they right? Not in my opinion. But any of the more hardcore games would not be of any interest to them whatsoever.
WoW is a fine game. It has its flaws but every game has its flaws. Quite frankly, I"ve gone on many forums for most of the popular games listed on this site and none of them is without their unhappy customers.
But you know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that people think WoW is fit for the garbage heap or that it is for people who are "dumb" and not worth it. The people who like the game will play it. They will enjoy it and quite frankly I'm sure they just don't care what others think. Just like I'm sure all of you don't really care what others think. You know what's right for you. As it should be.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I have no idea where this "CASUAL" label comes from,but i know for a fact ,you can play 100% of the games on a casual basis,what's to stop you otherwise?nothing.
IS this CASUAl label just a dumb down way of saying"EASY".I want to hit end game as fast as possible,i don't want to show any effort when i craft,i merely want to be given everything easily and quickly?is this what casual means?When i label a game with a score or my opinion of how good it is ,the word casual never crosses my mind whatsoever,because it is not even 1% a factor into how good or not a game is.
I look at battle mechanics,the mathematics behind the game.I look at how realistic the game looks for it's genre,be it fantasy/sci fi or whatever.I don't go for EASY or pastel looking graphics,i look for grit and effort,because this is why i am playing.Even the most time consuming games can be casual because playing a great game is NOT about speed levelling or as so many idiots do POWERLEVEL and pay to have it done.It is also not about cheating to accomplish things in the game ,i am playing for the challenge and satisfaction.There is neither when you cheat,no mattter how you slice it or whtever excuse you make.
When i played WOW i thought realistically ,with my quite vast knowledge of how and what makes up a game,that this game is at best a decent or average game,but deffinately not ground breaking or worth any extreme hype.Perhaps it's the huge infestation of kids that snowballed this into a kiddiefest i don't know ,but the timing of it's release and the large number of FOLLOWERS"soon made this average game into way more than it's worth.
I want to make it clear that WOW is not a BAD game nor do i have to really pick it apart piece by piece,but i do know its a very easy game to play and not alot of thinking or effort is needed.It is a simple point and click game with mobs spread around landscapes just like any other game.The battle mechanics are extremely simple,no real math wizards needed to figure out anything.To make it very simple WOW is about doing everything on a normal basis but nothing done well.There is not one part of the game that you can actuially say WOW,that idea took alot of thought and is simply brilliant,nope notta one.Goodbye and thanks for coming out.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But how can you say WoW is even for casual players, I am a casual player, and although it doesn't take alot of time to lvl, it is definitly a grind. A grind being to me when you must gain experience to lvl, and WORK at it. WHen i played SWG i lvl'd by grinding, but the grinding wasn't bad because there was so much variaty and the community was awsome, not something that WoW has. That is why i wouldn't even say that WoW is casual, because it is so much work to grind!
Originally posted by acmtalk However Most people are Dumb as Well, SO it explains why it seels so much
Exactly =
The avarage people is stupid and thats just the way it is.
Not that knowing a lot is good, Ive had my fair share of deceptions...sometimes ignorance can be a bliss, but its just sad beign stupid. Anyway, topics for another debate.
Its like products designed for class C-D people, they can make way more money than "elite" products. Masses sometimes = win. Which doesnt really translates into quality, on the contrary..
Although WoW did accomplish some stuff, it has its merits, but in the end its just "meh".
Well simple is pretty much what attracted people to the game, package an incredibly simple to play game inside a colorful pretty world, simply to attract the graphic whores, with an allready proven game system pretty much taken directly from EQ.
Blizz simply pulled the best things from the genre of MMO's rather than risk trying something new, which has shown by many other games to be a terribly risky venture. The end result imho though is akin to going from playing some awesome pen and paper roleplaying game to "Choose-Your-Own" adventure dvd's cause its got pretty pictures.
WoW has at best of times very standerd pvp, many other games have provided both more rewarding and immersive pvp elements. The pve content is very limited, in less than a year my 60 priest has done every single quest that was available to her, lets compare that to EQ for a minute. Hmm...ok there are more quests FOUND in the Basic EQ than in wow with horde and alliance combined and more than 30% of the games content in EQ (items quests story) is still undiscovered.
Its sad to say that a game could be called great if everything its has to offer can be discovered and completed in the span of 9 short months. Is WoW bad game, god no, but it is a rehash of allready used mechanics inside a pretty shell. Its saving grace was its simple gameplay, WAY simpler than EQ2, and i tihnk that is the 1 and only thing that truely drove the games success. Most players i have seen that have emerged during the age of WOW are seriously put off by real challanges and dont have any true drive to overcome them, waiting on someone else to devise a strat or find a high level to do it for them, or skipping it completly
On the bright side with BC coming out all the silly lil noob players that suddenly became MMORPG players with wow will stay for the expansion allowing the actual gamers to head out into a few of the newer games which have more game content in the starting city than in all of WoW.
Don't know why anyone would regard it as dumb, it is just simplified and made more accessible. So what it doesn't have a steep learning curve, it still can be quite fun. Just if you want a more in-depth game, or more challenging one you have to find something else.
Bah wow was succesfull before they even started making it, the HUGE fun base of warcraft and starcraft loved blizzard and all thier story driven games. How many of you played the WC3 and WC3:FT 3 or 4 times just to experience all that storyline again? And yes all they did, was take the best from MMORPGS without innovating(a chance to actually go wrong) and make a game where quests are so irrelevent that if you change the storyline of WOW to contradict one of the quests, noone would even notice. Tumbs up for blizzard for expanding the MMORPG gamer market for us, now all turn your heads to Vanguard, as it is going to move WoW off it's pedistal(ones people hit 70 with BC and will look for something better).
We're talking about something that is piece of entertainment. And entertainment is very subjective. But the art-movie snob analogy for hardcore gamers iis completely accurate.
I don't really care if an arrogant movie critic thinks some tedious, black and white film spoken in Russian is the greatest film ever. If no one wants to see it, if most people who do see it think it's garbage, then it will be lost and forgotten regardless if some tiny percentage of viewers think otherwise.
In the end, games are like movies. A game that fails to entertain most of the people who try to play it isn't a success and the company that made it will suffer for it.
MMORPGs are at last entering the world of real gaming numbers instead of only existing in a little niche market. Frankly, it's past time the MMMORPG genre grows up and evolve the way single-player games have evolved over the last decade. MMORPG's have been stagnant following the tired old UO and EQ models that only a small percentage of gamers ever found entertaining (and based on the amount of complaints from those same players over the years, one wonders how entertaining those games really were even for them)
The MMORPGS for the 21st century will entertain far more gamers, because they will be better designed, better-made and based on better game play. The art-snobs types will cling to the old ways, refusing to see the inevitable change, they'll say this is a step backward never seeing that they're the ones who have always held the genre back in the first place.
Originally posted by Kyleran An excellent article with several valid points. I'm sure its about to be torn into pieces by those who disagree... but its hard to argue with the appeal of WOW to the casual gamer....who makes up a substantial portion of the market.
Last time I checked the hardcore asain market made up most of WoW's 7 million subs. I don't understand how people can call this game casual, because it's not. The End-Game is a part of the game too, making it one of the worst casual games on the market atleast for long term gaming.
I do play WoW and enjoy it, I think it could have been one of the best game's out there. That changed when they saw or predicted the Asain Market's interest. Which make's up 70% WoW's subs(last time I checked it was 2.5 U.S./4.5 Asain).
For all the explanations on why WoW is so bad lets take the best thing from WOW.
The combat.
Do I want all these ideas that the so-called "hardcore" gamers wants, absolutley. However it seems like every game that I try with these ideas (SWG, EQ2 etc...) the combat really sucks. If some developer will just put a combat system in like WoW with the player housing and all the other fun stuff, the will probably get my money.
Steve Wilson's second column looks at the simplication of World of Warcraft. "Casual Play" is a weekly column by Wilson on MMORPG.com that looks at MMOs from the eyes of someone less than hardcore.
For many hardcore MMO fanatics simply asking this question is enough to launch them into a torrent of bitterness. Seriously though, what is it about WoW that earns it such a bad rep among those 'in the know' players and amateur ludologists? Right off the bat WoW has attracted more new players than all other MMOs previously. It has also proven that the casual market is willing to pay ongoing subscription fees, something many were sceptical of prior to its release. These millions of new players have proven that the MMO genre is one that can be profitable, insanely so for the games that get it right. For the hardcore this is a double edged sword. On one hand it means that there will be a lot of new MMOs developed, but most of them will be directed at capturing that casual market. However an increase in development over all means more independent and niche games, more opportunities that there be something out there that appeals to everyone, just not all at once. The full article is here.
This was the first editorial on mmorpg.com that actually hurt to read. Poorly written and executed.
-Ashyn
Edited: Was not trying to be a prick with the comment,it just was not one of the better editorials. Mr. Wilson may have had a bad day. I think it lacked clarity on some points and maybe would have been written better on a different day.
" The art-snobs types will cling to the old ways, refusing to see the inevitable change, they'll say this is a step backward never seeing that they're the ones who have always held the genre back in the first place. "
I have to disagree on this point, i agreed with what you were saying about how video games are like other entertainment, and movies were the perfect anology, but on this point i must say that most players look for intricate games, that include alot. Games such as WoW are one timers, the only thing you can improve on is the story and graphics. The problem is with the MMORPG genre, is that you can't really improve on the story without completely changing the way the game plays. Thats why the MMORPG universe is growing, people are starting to see the potential stored within just waiting to be unlocked. Although you may be right about some companies copying what WoW did, it will get boring very fast, i mean if you play the MMO for its pve and storyline just go play a single player. Bottom line is that MMORPG's are still in their youth, and it will be a very long time before pvp and community, the parts that set MMO's apart, grow. SWG is a prime example of a game way ahead of its time...precu of course...and yes it did have its bugs, but it also gave the player tons of possibilites.
People play MMORPG's, or at least i do, to live in another world and live out your dreams. And thats what games like SWG do, they allow you to do almost everything and it wasn't complicated, i only played a few hours during the week and a few hours on the weekend and i had the most fun ever. I tried WoW and immediatly got bored with it, because of the limits that are placed on you, I felt like i was a slave to Blizzard which technically i was. I mean Blizzard obviously made a choice of cutting down on content to have an easy to run game for them, i.e. very few bugs and not much combat to balance. But they also sacrificed all the content that could've been there.
Bottom Line: All players are looking for lots of content with simply Interface, and so don't make stupid generalities that make no sense what-so-ever. And don't tell me that players aren't looking for content, just use your imagination and think about if you had the power to make a game and what you would put into it, and i mean really use your imagination and be original!
Originally posted by Jawzenator For all the explanations on why WoW is so bad lets take the best thing from WOW. The combat. Do I want all these ideas that the so-called "hardcore" gamers wants, absolutley. However it seems like every game that I try with these ideas (SWG, EQ2 etc...) the combat really sucks. If some developer will just put a combat system in like WoW with the player housing and all the other fun stuff, the will probably get my money.
Ok, i have to respond to this one!!!!!! SWG had good combat, think about it!, I played precu and i remember people complaining and whining, "mommy the TKA kicked my butt and he looks cool" or " help me mommy the Rifleman killed me" and then suddenly people would master polarm and heavy swordsman and suddenly it would be "o no the polarm killed me!" or "the swordsman killed me" After they died they would cry, "NERF NERF NERF!!!". The reality was that there were some weaknesses and strengths but they weren't that much different. And the diversity of the combat proffessions made it so that there was really no way to compare them since they had so many different strengths and weaknesses, and if you looked at combat there was always a way to counter another proffession.
But the biggest downfall to WoW combat is the items and equipment. THey aren't player crafted and this pisses me off, it means that players have no power with items...again Blizzard is trying to control the game and ensure they don't embarass themselves...it also means that money really isn't worth the same as in a game like SWG where money and player trading was the only way to get good. NOt to mention that WoW, and almost every other MMO out there, has a sucky healer system. I think that SWG had it right, where a doctor could craft meds and heal and stuff, but i also think that the doctor and combat medic should be two different careers
But i will agree with the second part about combat housing and othere stuff. I just dont' like it when people complain about precu SWG combat, because that was the best combat i have ever seen in a game, and crafting was part of the reason why it was soo good, it diversified it.
Ballsy editorial, considering that so few of the folks that frequent this site were likley to "get" it. And indeed, it seems that few that bothered to respond did. My hat off to you sir
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Comments
Sorry but Pre-Cu SWG was my first MMORPG. I moved on after they "dumbed" down that game. Now I'm spoiled. I thought the point of MMO's was to be in-depth and complex? Otherwise why not play a consol game or pump your quarters into the arcade?
i liked wow for a while, then got bored. why is that? because it is "dumbed" down?
take swg pre-nge (cu or pre-cu) as an example of hardcore: the jedi grind fest. simply killing bols for hours and hours (yes, i was so stupid myself...), hologrind of villagegrind, whichever. so why does that make swg such a great game??? isn't this actually "dumbed down"?
then again, it's not always the better product on the market that wins (see VHS versus beta-max as a classical example).
To the Shit OP
A MMO is meant to be a world and not a normal single player game xp like tetris : RPG = role playing game and how can you do this with no customisation?
The OP actually pissed me off here, the fact GW is even on this site says something.
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Don't click here...no2
Basically.
I've done every bit of content in the game, over 3 60s, and all the raid instances but Naxxramas. It's pretty much boring as heck right now for me, I'm in a holding pattern until BC, because really, I've done every 5-man dungeon hundreds of times each and its just pointless to log in now except to chat with my friends. There isnt anything else I can do ingame.
But I had lots of fun that first year and a half, I only hope the expansion content lasts that long for PvE-type people like me. I love quests and grouping most of all, not really big on PvP. So we'll see.
But the limited scope of WoW is its biggest weakness. Also the reliance on scripted dungeon content only, with no allowance for player-interaction like housing or crafting or better visual character customisation. I mean, more than 4 customizing options per race would be nice, honestly.
I've played them all and WoW is the only one still getting my money. It's just fun - and I am a "casual player." At least as far as the time I have to spend in games.
Say what you will, the numbers don't lie. Blizzard got it right. At least for the VAST majority.
"Life is too short to play nerfed characters."
EverQuest 2 was fun.. honestly, were it not for the introduction of the RMT servers I would have stayed with EQ2 over everything else.. but no, the Station Exchange went live and the only way to make displeasure known to companies is through subscription cancellations.
so here I am in WoW.. graphically it's not even able to hold a match to EQ2.. gameplay wise it's fun in a faster paced way. Crafting is a touch *TOO* simple but that's fine.. means my crafts make profit faster.. At the whole.. the game is fun.. to make it so Blizz had to dumb it down and get rid of a lot of "old school" conventions.. I'm fine with that though.. Fun > all.
>_> <_< ^_^
Jedi were actually the beginning of the end for SWG. First of all, neither Jedi nor Sith had any place in the Star Wars universe after Episode IV. It was "common" knowledge that Vader had killed off all Jedi other than Luke, Obi-Wan, and Yoda. Beyond that, the Empire rooted out any developing Jedi. Palpatine was a control freak and didn't want anyone getting in his way of universal domination.
Beyond that, the thought of introducing a "superior character class," to any MMO is a kiss of death. All games have to maintain balance. The Jedi was, by it's very nature, an unbalanced class. Making such a class available will destroy every other aspect of your game as everyone and their uncle will be trying to obtain it. That is EXACTLY what happened to cause the beginning of the end in Galaxies.
Before the introduction of the FS slot, Galaxies had a strong, player driven economy. It had vast player owned cities, and the Galactic Civil War, though in development, promised to be a heck of an end-game with AT-AT's, speeders, etc doing battle on the planets while starships converged overhead. When the FS slot was made available, all of that story driven stuff went right out the window. SWG became a Jedi grind fest.
When folks refer to how awesome SWG was, they are not referring to the Jedi grind fest. They're talking about the MMO Utopia that was in place before the FS slots were made available. They're talking about realistic trade between cities, setting down in your house after a long day of adventuring, camping out on the Tatooine desert while hunting huge lizards, grabbing a drink in the cantina to recover from the stress of fighting rebel scum, etc. That was the game that we lost. The game had bugs, but the environment that was created was one of the best that has been seen in an MMO to date.
Next point...DOCTORS!! SWG was genius in the way they created the doctor proffession as a combat medic and crafting proffessoin all in one, not to mention the combat in SWG was easy to do, but very intricate.
Next point: Combat: games like WoW extremely dumb down combat, since there are no player crafted items, good ones at least, you basically must kill thousands of mobs for loot to become uber, which means only a few people will get way way ahead. In SWG it wasn't hard to get top armor, it just took a little money and it wasn't that hard to come by.
Conclusion: I am dissapointed in the way Blizzard has dumbed down the MMO universe. Companies will try to copy Blizzards example, and it will cause for more and more generic MMO which the noobs will love. NOw i'm not saying WoW isn't poorly crafted, its very well crafted, almost no flaws, but theres a trade-off that blizzard made. They made no new steps, and so its not hard to make a game with no flaws and no new stuff, and not to mention there are a very limited amount of things you can do, something that has me perplexed.
AREN'T MMORPG'S ABOUT LIVING YOUR DREAM? All Hail PRECU SWG!!!
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Wow...( no pun intended) I had to stop and post at this one. Sorry but if you levelled in 8 days then you have a completely different idea of what casual is.
I'm finding a lot of people in this thread a little elitest. "dumb"/"smart"... hmmm, I wonder how many of you listen to music that is "dumb". I'm sure all of you have all of the smartest music in your collections like Milton Babbit, Elliot Carter, Thelonious Monk and J.S. Bach. Or maybe you have music that you just really like and you don't question why. You just listen and enjoy.
Casual means casual. It means only a few hours here or there. People who are casual are not really bothered by whether or not they can get the best gear or not. They just enjoy the game for the hour they put in. They might even play every other day. I"ve played WoW casually since it came out. I have a lvl 27 Warrior and a lvl 14 Necromancer. I have enjoyed it for what it was, met some nice people and have found it to be a very well made game for the time I've put into it.
I also play Lineage 2 and have a lvl 76 Spellhowler that is about to complete it's 3rd class change. It has taken me about 3 years to get to this point. Not a very casual game. I enjoy Lineage 2 but in no way do I think it is "smarter" because all of its rewards have taken so long.
World of Warcraft is very successful at getting new people into the genre. They might get tired and try something different and they might like that "different" or not. But I think it would be presumptuous to assume that once they try any other game than WoW they will immediately view WoW as a pile of dung. They might see that is has flaws or they might see that it has a type of gameplay that allows them to enjoy an hour or so of free time away from work or family or other hobbies.
I also think its presumptuous to assume that everyone wants the same types of challenges as more "hardcore" games. Not everyone wants brutal death penalties and open pvp or looting. I have several friends who are a bit more hardcore than the average person in their tastes for entertainment, very educated, and they think the whole mmo genre is a waste of good time that you can be spending doing "anything" more worthwhile.
Are they right? Not in my opinion. But any of the more hardcore games would not be of any interest to them whatsoever.
WoW is a fine game. It has its flaws but every game has its flaws. Quite frankly, I"ve gone on many forums for most of the popular games listed on this site and none of them is without their unhappy customers.
But you know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that people think WoW is fit for the garbage heap or that it is for people who are "dumb" and not worth it. The people who like the game will play it. They will enjoy it and quite frankly I'm sure they just don't care what others think. Just like I'm sure all of you don't really care what others think. You know what's right for you. As it should be.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I have no idea where this "CASUAL" label comes from,but i know for a fact ,you can play 100% of the games on a casual basis,what's to stop you otherwise?nothing.
IS this CASUAl label just a dumb down way of saying"EASY".I want to hit end game as fast as possible,i don't want to show any effort when i craft,i merely want to be given everything easily and quickly?is this what casual means?When i label a game with a score or my opinion of how good it is ,the word casual never crosses my mind whatsoever,because it is not even 1% a factor into how good or not a game is.
I look at battle mechanics,the mathematics behind the game.I look at how realistic the game looks for it's genre,be it fantasy/sci fi or whatever.I don't go for EASY or pastel looking graphics,i look for grit and effort,because this is why i am playing.Even the most time consuming games can be casual because playing a great game is NOT about speed levelling or as so many idiots do POWERLEVEL and pay to have it done.It is also not about cheating to accomplish things in the game ,i am playing for the challenge and satisfaction.There is neither when you cheat,no mattter how you slice it or whtever excuse you make.
When i played WOW i thought realistically ,with my quite vast knowledge of how and what makes up a game,that this game is at best a decent or average game,but deffinately not ground breaking or worth any extreme hype.Perhaps it's the huge infestation of kids that snowballed this into a kiddiefest i don't know ,but the timing of it's release and the large number of FOLLOWERS"soon made this average game into way more than it's worth.
I want to make it clear that WOW is not a BAD game nor do i have to really pick it apart piece by piece,but i do know its a very easy game to play and not alot of thinking or effort is needed.It is a simple point and click game with mobs spread around landscapes just like any other game.The battle mechanics are extremely simple,no real math wizards needed to figure out anything.To make it very simple WOW is about doing everything on a normal basis but nothing done well.There is not one part of the game that you can actuially say WOW,that idea took alot of thought and is simply brilliant,nope notta one.Goodbye and thanks for coming out.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
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Exactly =
The avarage people is stupid and thats just the way it is.
Not that knowing a lot is good, Ive had my fair share of deceptions...sometimes ignorance can be a bliss, but its just sad beign stupid. Anyway, topics for another debate.
Its like products designed for class C-D people, they can make way more money than "elite" products. Masses sometimes = win. Which doesnt really translates into quality, on the contrary..
Although WoW did accomplish some stuff, it has its merits, but in the end its just "meh".
an incredibly simple to play game inside a colorful pretty world,
simply to attract the graphic whores, with an allready proven game
system pretty much taken directly from EQ.
Blizz simply pulled the best things from the genre of MMO's rather than
risk trying something new, which has shown by many other games to be a
terribly risky venture. The end result imho though is akin to going
from playing some awesome pen and paper roleplaying game to
"Choose-Your-Own" adventure dvd's cause its got pretty pictures.
WoW has at best of times very standerd pvp, many other games have
provided both more rewarding and immersive pvp elements. The pve
content is very limited, in less than a year my 60 priest has done
every single quest that was available to her, lets compare that to EQ
for a minute. Hmm...ok there are more quests FOUND in the Basic EQ than
in wow with horde and alliance combined and more than 30% of the games
content in EQ (items quests story) is still undiscovered.
Its sad to say that a game could be called great if everything its has
to offer can be discovered and completed in the span of 9 short months.
Is WoW bad game, god no, but it is a rehash of allready used
mechanics inside a pretty shell. Its saving grace was its simple
gameplay, WAY simpler than EQ2, and i tihnk that is the 1 and only
thing that truely drove the games success. Most players i have seen
that have emerged during the age of WOW are seriously put off by real
challanges and dont have any true drive to overcome them, waiting on
someone else to devise a strat or find a high level to do it for them,
or skipping it completly
On the bright side with BC coming out all the silly lil noob
players that suddenly became MMORPG players with wow will stay for the
expansion allowing the actual gamers to head out into a few of the
newer games which have more game content in the starting city than in
all of WoW.
Don't know why anyone would regard it as dumb, it is just simplified and made more accessible. So what it doesn't have a steep learning curve, it still can be quite fun. Just if you want a more in-depth game, or more challenging one you have to find something else.
Bah wow was succesfull before they even started making it,
the HUGE fun base of warcraft and starcraft loved blizzard and all thier story driven games. How many of you played the WC3 and WC3:FT 3 or 4 times just to experience all that storyline again?
And yes all they did, was take the best from MMORPGS without innovating(a chance to actually go wrong) and make a game where quests are so irrelevent that if you change the storyline of WOW to contradict one of the quests, noone would even notice.
Tumbs up for blizzard for expanding the MMORPG gamer market for us, now all turn your heads to Vanguard, as it is going to move WoW off it's pedistal(ones people hit 70 with BC and will look for something better).
We're talking about something that is piece of entertainment. And entertainment is very subjective. But the art-movie snob analogy for hardcore gamers iis completely accurate.
I don't really care if an arrogant movie critic thinks some tedious, black and white film spoken in Russian is the greatest film ever. If no one wants to see it, if most people who do see it think it's garbage, then it will be lost and forgotten regardless if some tiny percentage of viewers think otherwise.
In the end, games are like movies. A game that fails to entertain most of the people who try to play it isn't a success and the company that made it will suffer for it.
MMORPGs are at last entering the world of real gaming numbers instead of only existing in a little niche market. Frankly, it's past time the MMMORPG genre grows up and evolve the way single-player games have evolved over the last decade. MMORPG's have been stagnant following the tired old UO and EQ models that only a small percentage of gamers ever found entertaining (and based on the amount of complaints from those same players over the years, one wonders how entertaining those games really were even for them)
The MMORPGS for the 21st century will entertain far more gamers, because they will be better designed, better-made and based on better game play. The art-snobs types will cling to the old ways, refusing to see the inevitable change, they'll say this is a step backward never seeing that they're the ones who have always held the genre back in the first place.
I do play WoW and enjoy it, I think it could have been one of the best game's out there. That changed when they saw or predicted the Asain Market's interest. Which make's up 70% WoW's subs(last time I checked it was 2.5 U.S./4.5 Asain).
For all the explanations on why WoW is so bad lets take the best thing from WOW.
The combat.
Do I want all these ideas that the so-called "hardcore" gamers wants, absolutley. However it seems like every game that I try with these ideas (SWG, EQ2 etc...) the combat really sucks. If some developer will just put a combat system in like WoW with the player housing and all the other fun stuff, the will probably get my money.
This was the first editorial on mmorpg.com that actually hurt to read. Poorly written and executed.
-Ashyn
Edited: Was not trying to be a prick with the comment,it just was not one of the better editorials. Mr. Wilson may have had a bad day. I think it lacked clarity on some points and maybe would have been written better on a different day.
to see the inevitable change, they'll say this is a step backward never
seeing that they're the ones who have always held the genre back in the
first place. "
I have to disagree on this point, i agreed with what you were saying about how video games are like other entertainment, and movies were the perfect anology, but on this point i must say that most players look for intricate games, that include alot. Games such as WoW are one timers, the only thing you can improve on is the story and graphics. The problem is with the MMORPG genre, is that you can't really improve on the story without completely changing the way the game plays. Thats why the MMORPG universe is growing, people are starting to see the potential stored within just waiting to be unlocked. Although you may be right about some companies copying what WoW did, it will get boring very fast, i mean if you play the MMO for its pve and storyline just go play a single player. Bottom line is that MMORPG's are still in their youth, and it will be a very long time before pvp and community, the parts that set MMO's apart, grow. SWG is a prime example of a game way ahead of its time...precu of course...and yes it did have its bugs, but it also gave the player tons of possibilites.
People play MMORPG's, or at least i do, to live in another world and live out your dreams. And thats what games like SWG do, they allow you to do almost everything and it wasn't complicated, i only played a few hours during the week and a few hours on the weekend and i had the most fun ever. I tried WoW and immediatly got bored with it, because of the limits that are placed on you, I felt like i was a slave to Blizzard which technically i was. I mean Blizzard obviously made a choice of cutting down on content to have an easy to run game for them, i.e. very few bugs and not much combat to balance. But they also sacrificed all the content that could've been there
Bottom Line: All players are looking for lots of content with simply Interface, and so don't make stupid generalities that make no sense what-so-ever.
And don't tell me that players aren't looking for content, just use your imagination and think about if you had the power to make a game and what you would put into it, and i mean really use your imagination and be original!
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"Most players do not have their ego tied up in achievement, in games at least."
That alone proves he must not play very often in ANY MMO or MMORPG
In the shadows for now....
But the biggest downfall to WoW combat is the items and equipment. THey aren't player crafted and this pisses me off, it means that players have no power with items...again Blizzard is trying to control the game and ensure they don't embarass themselves...it also means that money really isn't worth the same as in a game like SWG where money and player trading was the only way to get good. NOt to mention that WoW, and almost every other MMO out there, has a sucky healer system. I think that SWG had it right, where a doctor could craft meds and heal and stuff, but i also think that the doctor and combat medic should be two different careers
But i will agree with the second part about combat housing and othere stuff. I just dont' like it when people complain about precu SWG combat, because that was the best combat i have ever seen in a game, and crafting was part of the reason why it was soo good, it diversified it.
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Ballsy editorial, considering that so few of the folks that frequent this site were likley to "get" it. And indeed, it seems that few that bothered to respond did. My hat off to you sir
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.