Better than Cata for sure, but still lacked what you'd expect from a Blizzard expansion these days. As someone who pvp's 90% of the time there just wasn't enough to hold me, even with the pvp zone.
Haxus Council Member 21 year MMO veteran PvP Raid Leader Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
MoP was the expack that finally made me quit. Don't get me wrong, I've taken breaks in the past. But this is the first time the last boss of an expack did not get me excited enough to even consider resubbing. Nothing wrong with silly NPC races like the Tuskar where your interaction with them is limited, however with the Pandas the silly bouncy animations are in your face likely from now on until forever. What finally got me burned out though was a combination of the dailies and the long queues for repetitive instanced content. With the leveling experience getting shorter and shorter you spend so much time doing boring repetitive content, and it just doesn't feel meaningful or fun anymore.
I just bought MoP from the Blizzard store for $10. I'll probably buy a month of game time for Christmas vacation. Hopefully it's better than Cataclysm. I don't think that's asking too much.
I would say it's a lot better than Cataclysm, but as you said, that wouldn't be hard to do
You people just don't understand...
Cataclysm was the BEST expansion ever made !!! The reworked all old zones , new quests , new mobs, new story, better graphics… Thats alone was a huge work. more then the whole panda add on. Then they made new zones for level 80-85 (actually TWO different zones for each level range), also with great quest and story. And the dungeons were pretty epic, especially the heroics at the beginning, where people were wiping as hell couse you actually needed to use CC to clear it. Oh yeah and they added who new races with its own starting zones.
I just bought MoP from the Blizzard store for $10. I'll probably buy a month of game time for Christmas vacation. Hopefully it's better than Cataclysm. I don't think that's asking too much.
I would say it's a lot better than Cataclysm, but as you said, that wouldn't be hard to do
You people just don't understand...
Cataclysm was the BEST expansion ever made !!! The reworked all old zones , new quests , new mobs, new story, better graphics… Thats alone was a huge work. more then the whole panda add on. Then they made new zones for level 80-85 (actually TWO different zones for each level range), also with great quest and story. And the dungeons were pretty epic, especially the heroics at the beginning, where people were wiping as hell couse you actually needed to use CC to clear it. Oh yeah and they added who new races with its own starting zones.
The reworking of old zones was actually not part of the expack, all players got that even ones that didn't buy Cataclysm. New zones, new quests, new mobs, and new story happen every single content patch. The same thing with subtle graphics improvements, they do it every expack. They did not have 2 zones for each level range, they had 2 zones to choose from for the initial zones of the expack only, after that everyone did the same zones. Wrath had far more leveling content. The story in Cata was subpar at best. While the increased difficulty was nice for guild runs, they created a toxic environment in the community and the community never really recovered. They required CC to be used, didn't give all classes CC, then proceeded to fill up groups with none of the classes that have the required CC for the instance they got handed. Bad design plain and simple. You had to kick DPS that waited 40+ mins to get in just to get a chance at differrent CC if kick was on cooldown that ended up with people yelling at each other to make the environment so bad they would leave on their own, nice design there. The races were nice, but as far as experiences go it was more like 1.5. They did a great job with the goblins, but the worgen got the short end of the stick, their zone(Gilneas) got cut due to time restraits and though they initially planned on making a nice section for them in Stormwind that also got cut and they got stuck in a tree in Darnassus.(so giving them .5 as probably kind).
Just because people got something without having to buy the xpac does not mean it was not made with the xpac. Most likely everyone will be getting the upgraded models for the next xpac, but it is still a feature of the xpac.
You opinion of the story line is just that opinion.
Just because people got something without having to buy the xpac does not mean it was not made with the xpac. Most likely everyone will be getting the upgraded models for the next xpac, but it is still a feature of the xpac.
You opinion of the story line is just that opinion.
If when you say made with the expack is funded by the expack, then yes I am sure it was funded by the expack. But it was given to people who didn't buy the expack at the expense of actual max level content for people who did buy the expack.
Obviously my opinion of the story is my opinion, as your opinion is just your opinion. But the big bad was a no show for pretty much the whole experience. The story of the expack was all about how a horde hero tries to save the world, great if you are horde not so much if you are alliance. This coming off of what was probably the most anticipated story line of Warcraft, The Lich King. The Lich King story was built up much better and had Warcraft 3 also helping build up that story for people that played it.
I really liked leveling through MoP. I mean, they had a fucking kung fu training montage in the second zone. It was sweet and got my hopes up, then I deleted all my characters and unsubbed after a few weeks of those fucking dailies.
I just bought MoP from the Blizzard store for $10. I'll probably buy a month of game time for Christmas vacation. Hopefully it's better than Cataclysm. I don't think that's asking too much.
I would say it's a lot better than Cataclysm, but as you said, that wouldn't be hard to do
You people just don't understand...
Cataclysm was the BEST expansion ever made !!! The reworked all old zones , new quests , new mobs, new story, better graphics… Thats alone was a huge work. more then the whole panda add on. Then they made new zones for level 80-85 (actually TWO different zones for each level range), also with great quest and story. And the dungeons were pretty epic, especially the heroics at the beginning, where people were wiping as hell couse you actually needed to use CC to clear it. Oh yeah and they added who new races with its own starting zones.
Are you kidding? Cata was a huge failure. They took the entirety of Vanilla WoW and re wrote it, tying the entire world of Azeroth to the one expansion and an out dated on at that. They totally broke the timeline and continuity of the game. You hit the plaguelands in your 30s and run into Thaurissian who talks about how he has no family left...yada yada. Only to run into his sister 30-40 levels later and watch his story play out. Makes no sense. The only way they can fix this glaring error is to detach the game's other 2 expansions (destroy the portal to outland and make travel to northrend impasssible) And so the only access to Outland and Northrend should be through the Caverns of Time. It's weak, but it would somewhat fix the mess that WoW is now. Having all of the original content detached from the other 2 expansions the way it is.
Cata wasn't just a bad expansion, it wrecked Vanilla too.
It was more enjoyable that Cata, but so is pretty much anything ever. That's about the only nice thing I can say about. Timeless Isle was a disaster imo...
Time isle and looking for raid, it what actually kept me playing so far... scenarios too..
way better than cataclysm dailies.
I do LFR quite frequently. LFR is a good feature for sure, it works around my schedule. Scenarios aren't the kind of small group content I had in mind really, but those aren't bad either.
I was done with Timeless Isle in about 2 hours, I realized it was much less of a grind to gear up through raids /scenarios. The entire purpose of the Island is a catch up mechanism, but it seems to blockade you from catching up at every opportunity through poor RNG.
If you go around and collect all the one time chests you will more than likely end up with a full set of 496 gear in 1-2 hours after hitting level 90. Its far less of a grind than anything else in the game. Granted if you are going for the 535 gear (upgrading the 496 gear using 50k timeless coins) you will be in for a bit of a grind, but that's the point since its better than raid finder gear (528) and nearly on par with flex raids (540).
If you do it with a full group, you can get full 535 in a few days of chain grinding. Which is much sooner than you would get a full set of gear from raids.
For me, the problem with MoP wasn't the dailies or the pandas. What got me to un-sub finally was the horrific changes they made to PvP, basically beginning with the launch of MoP and getting worse from then on out. Grossly overpowered warriors and hunters (still), and other classes being nerfed into the ground...and honestly the biggest problem now is the way in which they have handed out 72 percent damage reduction vs. other players to Everyman. WoW is, and always has been, a gear-based game, so when you tell PvPers that suddenly their gear means nothing because everyone has the same damage reduction and PvE gear has become more viable for PvP than the PvP gear, I'm not quite sure how that begets "balance" or all of a sudden makes "skill" important in PvP. I understand that most of WoW's population is made up of people who primarily do PvE, but PvPers pay sub fees also. So whenever anyone talks about how Blizz is supposedly "listening to its players," well, I'm still waiting for them to actually listen to PvPers and revert this foolish business of making every noob instantly competitive in PvP without doing any work towards it whatsoever, whilst the rest of us spent time and effort to acquire PvP gear, which as I said is now basically meaningless. They can add all the housing and PvE content they want to WoD; unless they balance classes properly and roll back this "normalized" PvP system, I'm staying un-subbed.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
C'mon. You people kicked and screamed and cried for years to make the game easier, to remove time-sinks, make loot easier to acquire, to quite literally cater to your every wish and then you get mad when they do just that? WoW is the realization of all your themepark wishes! Lots of shinies for little effort. Silly themes and carnival side-games galore!
Fact is... the casuals won and now they are bored.
C'mon. You people kicked and screamed and cried for years to make the game easier, to remove time-sinks, make loot easier to acquire, to quite literally cater to your every wish and then you get mad when they do just that? WoW is the realization of all your themepark wishes! Lots of shinies for little effort. Silly themes and carnival side-games galore!
Fact is... the casuals won and now they are bored.
The time sinks are actually worse than ever, due to the insane amount of daily hubs everywhere. Back in Vanilla, there really wasn't other time sinks than repeating the same few raids over and over again. Well, except from slower leveling and spending eternities setting up groups/raids.
Little effort? I do agree to some extent that the Timeless isle suits that description, but I don't think the rest does. To get the reps up, which was pretty much forced on you before Timeless Isle if you wanted to progress, it took hundreds of hours repeating the same crap. Boring as hell and not hard, but don't give that "little effort" crap, because that's a lie.
Guys like you whine and cry about not playing Vanilla anymore. Well, the truth is that if WoW still was like in Vanilla, YOU would be the ones who got bored many years ago. The world evolved, but not you - you got stuck in the past and doesn't seem able to adapt at all. If WoW still was in Vanilla, there would hardly be anyone around anymore.
Personally i loved MOP, Coming back after a longggg break i was pleased to find how much more "time accesible" they made this game. I dont have the time nor the will to raid like i used to back in vanilla ,bc & wrath. All night wipe fests until the boss is down is just not very fun or appealing to me any more. I still crave the gear progression and challenge of raiding but not the time sink or learning curve of old....
Graphically without a doubt i found MOP to be gorgous. Although i could have lived without the kung-fu panda race the actual "asian themed" setting was gorgous to play in. The majestic sky ,mountains bamboo forests farms all the little details that was very visually pleasing which leads me to the next xpac.....
I have to say i am very, very disappointed the next xpac will send us back through a portal to Burning crusade esque space world. Although many rave how WOW was at its peak in Burning Crusade (which it was) i did not find the setting ie the zones to be very appealing, It felt more sci-fi than fantasy. I feel like this new xpac is just a lazy rehash of Burning crusade , I am really dissapointed blizzard did not take the time to create something new & fresh.
C'mon. You people kicked and screamed and cried for years to make the game easier, to remove time-sinks, make loot easier to acquire, to quite literally cater to your every wish and then you get mad when they do just that? WoW is the realization of all your themepark wishes! Lots of shinies for little effort. Silly themes and carnival side-games galore!
Fact is... the casuals won and now they are bored.
The time sinks are actually worse than ever, due to the insane amount of daily hubs everywhere. Back in Vanilla, there really wasn't other time sinks than repeating the same few raids over and over again. Well, except from slower leveling and spending eternities setting up groups/raids.
Little effort? I do agree to some extent that the Timeless isle suits that description, but I don't think the rest does. To get the reps up, which was pretty much forced on you before Timeless Isle if you wanted to progress, it took hundreds of hours repeating the same crap. Boring as hell and not hard, but don't give that "little effort" crap, because that's a lie.
Guys like you whine and cry about not playing Vanilla anymore. Well, the truth is that if WoW still was like in Vanilla, YOU would be the ones who got bored many years ago. The world evolved, but not you - you got stuck in the past and doesn't seem able to adapt at all. If WoW still was in Vanilla, there would hardly be anyone around anymore.
The reason that you have those rep grinds and daily hubs is because they can't design good, compelling content that can keep you engaged any more. You just blow through everything including leveling on your way to easy epics.
Also whether or not you want to admit to it, those hubs and easily completed (but boring) dailies are the casual's dream! You can log in whenever you want, knock out a few quests, then log off and do something else. You don't have to interact with anyone else or be on any longer than the bare minimum. You really can't gloss over Timeless Isle like that either.
Guys like me whine and cry about not playing Vanilla because the game was flat out better then. I'm fortunate to have been able to play just about every new MMO title since the birth of the genre and I feel as if I have good perspective on what makes a game better or worse. I'm not stuck in the past, I just haven't forgotten it.
Originally posted by mari3k Originally posted by AeonbladesOriginally posted by lizardbonesI just bought MoP from the Blizzard store for $10. I'll probably buy a month of game time for Christmas vacation. Hopefully it's better than Cataclysm. I don't think that's asking too much.
I would say it's a lot better than Cataclysm, but as you said, that wouldn't be hard to do You people just don't understand...
Cataclysm was the BEST expansion ever made !!! The reworked all old zones , new quests , new mobs, new story, better graphics Thats alone was a huge work. more then the whole panda add on. Then they made new zones for level 80-85 (actually TWO different zones for each level range), also with great quest and story. And the dungeons were pretty epic, especially the heroics at the beginning, where people were wiping as hell couse you actually needed to use CC to clear it. Oh yeah and they added who new races with its own starting zones.
The leveling content was fine, but to me it wasn't a significant improvement over the stock leveling content. I could have done without the changes and been happy if they just added new things there.
The level 80 to 85 content, whether it was the zones or the questing just wasn't compelling to me. Since I'm not a raider, there was no reason to get through that content and on to the end game stuff.
Hopefully with Pandas I'll feel like there's a reason to get past level 85 and on to more interesting things.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
C'mon. You people kicked and screamed and cried for years to make the game easier, to remove time-sinks, make loot easier to acquire, to quite literally cater to your every wish and then you get mad when they do just that? WoW is the realization of all your themepark wishes! Lots of shinies for little effort. Silly themes and carnival side-games galore!
Fact is... the casuals won and now they are bored.
The time sinks are actually worse than ever, due to the insane amount of daily hubs everywhere. Back in Vanilla, there really wasn't other time sinks than repeating the same few raids over and over again. Well, except from slower leveling and spending eternities setting up groups/raids.
Little effort? I do agree to some extent that the Timeless isle suits that description, but I don't think the rest does. To get the reps up, which was pretty much forced on you before Timeless Isle if you wanted to progress, it took hundreds of hours repeating the same crap. Boring as hell and not hard, but don't give that "little effort" crap, because that's a lie.
Guys like you whine and cry about not playing Vanilla anymore. Well, the truth is that if WoW still was like in Vanilla, YOU would be the ones who got bored many years ago. The world evolved, but not you - you got stuck in the past and doesn't seem able to adapt at all. If WoW still was in Vanilla, there would hardly be anyone around anymore.
The reason that you have those rep grinds and daily hubs is because they can't design good, compelling content that can keep you engaged any more. You just blow through everything including leveling on your way to easy epics.
Also whether or not you want to admit to it, those hubs and easily completed (but boring) dailies are the casual's dream! You can log in whenever you want, knock out a few quests, then log off and do something else. You don't have to interact with anyone else or be on any longer than the bare minimum. You really can't gloss over Timeless Isle like that either.
Guys like me whine and cry about not playing Vanilla because the game was flat out better then. I'm fortunate to have been able to play just about every new MMO title since the birth of the genre and I feel as if I have good perspective on what makes a game better or worse. I'm not stuck in the past, I just haven't forgotten it.
Easy accessed content is the casuals' dream. That doesn't mean countless daily hubs are.
Being able to play for short sessions is a requirement for many of us, it isn't something we choose. If you really played since the birth of the genre, then you've been an adult for a while now. Which means, if you are like other adults, you have responsibilities that prevents you from playing as much as earlier. Which again means accessible content should be a positive for you too.
Again, most adults have to be casuals, we can't just ignore kids, work, etc, because we wanna play hardcore. The days of spending hours just to set up a raid is over. Thank god for that.
Why then play a gear grind/raid/arena pvp endgame MMO like World of Warcraft? isn't there a lot of other options to spend the few hours a week that job/family/kids whatever leave you? Like farming simulator or something like that?
WoW was aimed at the more casual player - compared to older MMOs like UO and EQ - even in its beginning, but it had its difficulties and a rather steep learning curve in endgame nonetheless. Now it appears to me that it has become just a soclal platform with animations. The game has lost - or sold - its soul. it does not even feel like an MMO anymore. It was once a game that hardcore gamers and casuals alike could feel comfortable with.
Now the few hardcore gamers left just have to log in every couple of months to kill the latest "25 man heroic hardmode" (aka normal and only mode back in vanilla/BC) raidbosses and then can go to sleep until the next patch, because there is absolutely nothing else to do that is even remotely challenging, except maybe doing some arena PvP, which is not everybody's favourite.
WoW has come a long way, and while always being casual friendly it was ruined by overcasualization for much of its original population, and - surprisingly? I doubt it - has not become (looking at the development of its sub numbers) more popular over the years while doing so, meaning that a considerable number of gamers did not like the twists and turns of the game at all.
C'mon. You people kicked and screamed and cried for years to make the game easier, to remove time-sinks, make loot easier to acquire, to quite literally cater to your every wish and then you get mad when they do just that? WoW is the realization of all your themepark wishes! Lots of shinies for little effort. Silly themes and carnival side-games galore!
Fact is... the casuals won and now they are bored.
The time sinks are actually worse than ever, due to the insane amount of daily hubs everywhere. Back in Vanilla, there really wasn't other time sinks than repeating the same few raids over and over again. Well, except from slower leveling and spending eternities setting up groups/raids.
Little effort? I do agree to some extent that the Timeless isle suits that description, but I don't think the rest does. To get the reps up, which was pretty much forced on you before Timeless Isle if you wanted to progress, it took hundreds of hours repeating the same crap. Boring as hell and not hard, but don't give that "little effort" crap, because that's a lie.
Guys like you whine and cry about not playing Vanilla anymore. Well, the truth is that if WoW still was like in Vanilla, YOU would be the ones who got bored many years ago. The world evolved, but not you - you got stuck in the past and doesn't seem able to adapt at all. If WoW still was in Vanilla, there would hardly be anyone around anymore.
The reason that you have those rep grinds and daily hubs is because they can't design good, compelling content that can keep you engaged any more. You just blow through everything including leveling on your way to easy epics.
Also whether or not you want to admit to it, those hubs and easily completed (but boring) dailies are the casual's dream! You can log in whenever you want, knock out a few quests, then log off and do something else. You don't have to interact with anyone else or be on any longer than the bare minimum. You really can't gloss over Timeless Isle like that either.
Guys like me whine and cry about not playing Vanilla because the game was flat out better then. I'm fortunate to have been able to play just about every new MMO title since the birth of the genre and I feel as if I have good perspective on what makes a game better or worse. I'm not stuck in the past, I just haven't forgotten it.
Easy accessed content is the casuals' dream. That doesn't mean countless daily hubs are.
Being able to play for short sessions is a requirement for many of us, it isn't something we choose. If you really played since the birth of the genre, then you've been an adult for a while now. Which means, if you are like other adults, you have responsibilities that prevents you from playing as much as earlier. Which again means accessible content should be a positive for you too.
Again, most adults have to be casuals, we can't just ignore kids, work, etc, because we wanna play hardcore. The days of spending hours just to set up a raid is over. Thank god for that.
I'm not saying that there haven't been huge improvements in certain areas of games. I personally loved EQ but wouldn't want a game quite that hardcore again. But there are also many elements of hardcore games that are extremely important. I actually thought that WoW struck a fairly nice balance (not perfect) in its early days because they took many of those elements and integrated it with a more casual friendly play. There were still plenty of room for hardcore players to get their fix and for casuals to progress. Over time, the hardcore aspects have been diluted and degraded so that there is really little to no reward for playing that way any more.
I agree with you that dailies are a poor design element. But they place set limits on how much you can play (literally it is anti hardcore) and allow players to progress with minimal effort. Note: Casual doesn't have to necessarily mean "done quickly"...although leveling has sure been made just that.
Comments
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Dude amazing article.
You managed to eloquently put our frustration with WOW into 2 pages that I hope the Blizz devs read!
You people just don't understand...
Cataclysm was the BEST expansion ever made !!! The reworked all old zones , new quests , new mobs, new story, better graphics… Thats alone was a huge work. more then the whole panda add on. Then they made new zones for level 80-85 (actually TWO different zones for each level range), also with great quest and story. And the dungeons were pretty epic, especially the heroics at the beginning, where people were wiping as hell couse you actually needed to use CC to clear it. Oh yeah and they added who new races with its own starting zones.
Step in the arena and break the wall down
The reworking of old zones was actually not part of the expack, all players got that even ones that didn't buy Cataclysm. New zones, new quests, new mobs, and new story happen every single content patch. The same thing with subtle graphics improvements, they do it every expack. They did not have 2 zones for each level range, they had 2 zones to choose from for the initial zones of the expack only, after that everyone did the same zones. Wrath had far more leveling content. The story in Cata was subpar at best. While the increased difficulty was nice for guild runs, they created a toxic environment in the community and the community never really recovered. They required CC to be used, didn't give all classes CC, then proceeded to fill up groups with none of the classes that have the required CC for the instance they got handed. Bad design plain and simple. You had to kick DPS that waited 40+ mins to get in just to get a chance at differrent CC if kick was on cooldown that ended up with people yelling at each other to make the environment so bad they would leave on their own, nice design there. The races were nice, but as far as experiences go it was more like 1.5. They did a great job with the goblins, but the worgen got the short end of the stick, their zone(Gilneas) got cut due to time restraits and though they initially planned on making a nice section for them in Stormwind that also got cut and they got stuck in a tree in Darnassus.(so giving them .5 as probably kind).
Just because people got something without having to buy the xpac does not mean it was not made with the xpac. Most likely everyone will be getting the upgraded models for the next xpac, but it is still a feature of the xpac.
You opinion of the story line is just that opinion.
If when you say made with the expack is funded by the expack, then yes I am sure it was funded by the expack. But it was given to people who didn't buy the expack at the expense of actual max level content for people who did buy the expack.
Obviously my opinion of the story is my opinion, as your opinion is just your opinion. But the big bad was a no show for pretty much the whole experience. The story of the expack was all about how a horde hero tries to save the world, great if you are horde not so much if you are alliance. This coming off of what was probably the most anticipated story line of Warcraft, The Lich King. The Lich King story was built up much better and had Warcraft 3 also helping build up that story for people that played it.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
You got it wrong there...he said "WoW was my first true MMO love". Thats not necessarily his first mmo
Are you kidding? Cata was a huge failure. They took the entirety of Vanilla WoW and re wrote it, tying the entire world of Azeroth to the one expansion and an out dated on at that. They totally broke the timeline and continuity of the game. You hit the plaguelands in your 30s and run into Thaurissian who talks about how he has no family left...yada yada. Only to run into his sister 30-40 levels later and watch his story play out. Makes no sense. The only way they can fix this glaring error is to detach the game's other 2 expansions (destroy the portal to outland and make travel to northrend impasssible) And so the only access to Outland and Northrend should be through the Caverns of Time. It's weak, but it would somewhat fix the mess that WoW is now. Having all of the original content detached from the other 2 expansions the way it is.
Cata wasn't just a bad expansion, it wrecked Vanilla too.
If you go around and collect all the one time chests you will more than likely end up with a full set of 496 gear in 1-2 hours after hitting level 90. Its far less of a grind than anything else in the game. Granted if you are going for the 535 gear (upgrading the 496 gear using 50k timeless coins) you will be in for a bit of a grind, but that's the point since its better than raid finder gear (528) and nearly on par with flex raids (540).
If you do it with a full group, you can get full 535 in a few days of chain grinding. Which is much sooner than you would get a full set of gear from raids.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
C'mon. You people kicked and screamed and cried for years to make the game easier, to remove time-sinks, make loot easier to acquire, to quite literally cater to your every wish and then you get mad when they do just that? WoW is the realization of all your themepark wishes! Lots of shinies for little effort. Silly themes and carnival side-games galore!
Fact is... the casuals won and now they are bored.
No surprise ghostcrawler was fired. MoP showed how dumb, lazy, and arrogant Blizzard has become.
The time sinks are actually worse than ever, due to the insane amount of daily hubs everywhere. Back in Vanilla, there really wasn't other time sinks than repeating the same few raids over and over again. Well, except from slower leveling and spending eternities setting up groups/raids.
Little effort? I do agree to some extent that the Timeless isle suits that description, but I don't think the rest does. To get the reps up, which was pretty much forced on you before Timeless Isle if you wanted to progress, it took hundreds of hours repeating the same crap. Boring as hell and not hard, but don't give that "little effort" crap, because that's a lie.
Guys like you whine and cry about not playing Vanilla anymore. Well, the truth is that if WoW still was like in Vanilla, YOU would be the ones who got bored many years ago. The world evolved, but not you - you got stuck in the past and doesn't seem able to adapt at all. If WoW still was in Vanilla, there would hardly be anyone around anymore.
Personally i loved MOP, Coming back after a longggg break i was pleased to find how much more "time accesible" they made this game. I dont have the time nor the will to raid like i used to back in vanilla ,bc & wrath. All night wipe fests until the boss is down is just not very fun or appealing to me any more. I still crave the gear progression and challenge of raiding but not the time sink or learning curve of old....
Graphically without a doubt i found MOP to be gorgous. Although i could have lived without the kung-fu panda race the actual "asian themed" setting was gorgous to play in. The majestic sky ,mountains bamboo forests farms all the little details that was very visually pleasing which leads me to the next xpac.....
I have to say i am very, very disappointed the next xpac will send us back through a portal to Burning crusade esque space world. Although many rave how WOW was at its peak in Burning Crusade (which it was) i did not find the setting ie the zones to be very appealing, It felt more sci-fi than fantasy. I feel like this new xpac is just a lazy rehash of Burning crusade , I am really dissapointed blizzard did not take the time to create something new & fresh.
Aloha Mr Hand !
The reason that you have those rep grinds and daily hubs is because they can't design good, compelling content that can keep you engaged any more. You just blow through everything including leveling on your way to easy epics.
Also whether or not you want to admit to it, those hubs and easily completed (but boring) dailies are the casual's dream! You can log in whenever you want, knock out a few quests, then log off and do something else. You don't have to interact with anyone else or be on any longer than the bare minimum. You really can't gloss over Timeless Isle like that either.
Guys like me whine and cry about not playing Vanilla because the game was flat out better then. I'm fortunate to have been able to play just about every new MMO title since the birth of the genre and I feel as if I have good perspective on what makes a game better or worse. I'm not stuck in the past, I just haven't forgotten it.
You people just don't understand...
Cataclysm was the BEST expansion ever made !!! The reworked all old zones , new quests , new mobs, new story, better graphics Thats alone was a huge work. more then the whole panda add on. Then they made new zones for level 80-85 (actually TWO different zones for each level range), also with great quest and story. And the dungeons were pretty epic, especially the heroics at the beginning, where people were wiping as hell couse you actually needed to use CC to clear it. Oh yeah and they added who new races with its own starting zones.
The leveling content was fine, but to me it wasn't a significant improvement over the stock leveling content. I could have done without the changes and been happy if they just added new things there.
The level 80 to 85 content, whether it was the zones or the questing just wasn't compelling to me. Since I'm not a raider, there was no reason to get through that content and on to the end game stuff.
Hopefully with Pandas I'll feel like there's a reason to get past level 85 and on to more interesting things.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Easy accessed content is the casuals' dream. That doesn't mean countless daily hubs are.
Being able to play for short sessions is a requirement for many of us, it isn't something we choose. If you really played since the birth of the genre, then you've been an adult for a while now. Which means, if you are like other adults, you have responsibilities that prevents you from playing as much as earlier. Which again means accessible content should be a positive for you too.
Again, most adults have to be casuals, we can't just ignore kids, work, etc, because we wanna play hardcore. The days of spending hours just to set up a raid is over. Thank god for that.
Why then play a gear grind/raid/arena pvp endgame MMO like World of Warcraft? isn't there a lot of other options to spend the few hours a week that job/family/kids whatever leave you? Like farming simulator or something like that?
WoW was aimed at the more casual player - compared to older MMOs like UO and EQ - even in its beginning, but it had its difficulties and a rather steep learning curve in endgame nonetheless. Now it appears to me that it has become just a soclal platform with animations. The game has lost - or sold - its soul. it does not even feel like an MMO anymore. It was once a game that hardcore gamers and casuals alike could feel comfortable with.
Now the few hardcore gamers left just have to log in every couple of months to kill the latest "25 man heroic hardmode" (aka normal and only mode back in vanilla/BC) raidbosses and then can go to sleep until the next patch, because there is absolutely nothing else to do that is even remotely challenging, except maybe doing some arena PvP, which is not everybody's favourite.
WoW has come a long way, and while always being casual friendly it was ruined by overcasualization for much of its original population, and - surprisingly? I doubt it - has not become (looking at the development of its sub numbers) more popular over the years while doing so, meaning that a considerable number of gamers did not like the twists and turns of the game at all.
I'm not saying that there haven't been huge improvements in certain areas of games. I personally loved EQ but wouldn't want a game quite that hardcore again. But there are also many elements of hardcore games that are extremely important. I actually thought that WoW struck a fairly nice balance (not perfect) in its early days because they took many of those elements and integrated it with a more casual friendly play. There were still plenty of room for hardcore players to get their fix and for casuals to progress. Over time, the hardcore aspects have been diluted and degraded so that there is really little to no reward for playing that way any more.
I agree with you that dailies are a poor design element. But they place set limits on how much you can play (literally it is anti hardcore) and allow players to progress with minimal effort. Note: Casual doesn't have to necessarily mean "done quickly"...although leveling has sure been made just that.