Lord.. you missed the whole issue here.. WoW's raids and guilds are not social , but have mutated into competitve esports.. The quicker you ADMIT to that, the faster we can move on Just that simple.. Blizzard could easily solve most of their problem with "scaling" encounters.. Scallng as been around since BEFORE WoW was launched.. And it's very successful.. The strength of the BOSS is dependant upon the strength of the raid size.. If anything, if you want TRUE challenge you should be asking Blizzard for that.. I for one am looking forward to GW2's attempt to scaling encounters.. NO ONE is left out and sits on the bench waiting..
How are they not social? Sure you have to focus and do your job when it comes to it, but as far as I remember raiding there was always something to talk about while raiding. I've become friends with dozens of people while raiding. Some of them even became really great reallife friends. If the top guilds decide and rush to the very top like crazed bloodhounds this is their thing. I can't say I don't understand them as I was part of a very hardcore guild back in TBC, being among the top on our server and eu/us servers. And even then it was very much social. People didn't just log in, did their thing and logged off. They stayed online during the raid even if they were benched, fooling around on ventrilo, talking smack to eachother like old friends do (for shits and giggles. Nothing serious). If one of the members needed help with something, 10 jumped up to help the guy. Very connected, very social.
While I agree that scaling might solve some of the problems you are having, it also poses a big design issuse. See, if the developers know how many people are gonna do the said encounter they can base the mechanics around that. In turn, the difficulty can much easily be determined. In return, the scaling gives you many many more veriables to work around. Becouse you don't have a set number of people that need to be there to kill this boss, you have to work around all possible options. Sooner or later you'd have to give this scaling a hardcap. You can't have the same difficulty fighting a boss with 2 people and 15. It's simply not possible. You'd have to go and change the mechanics of the boss depending on the number of people. It just takes away developers time. There's a reason why there's no sandbox with millions and millions of people playing it. Becouse sandboxes are damn hard to make and I salute anyone trying it. They must have some balls.
But I do agree, it would be nice if they introduced scaling to WoW in between 10-25man raids, so you could go in an instance with 11 people and still be able to raid. That would indeed be fun. But sooner or later questions regarding loot distribution, class balance/stacking and other things would arise. I do not doubt that scaling can be well incorporated in a new mmo, but doing something so drastic to an already established mmo would do more harm then good.
The current system, albeit not perfect, works quite well. If blizzard thinks it needs overhauling they'll most certainly do it.
What happens if someone you are grouped with has not done that quest yet? Are you not allowed to help them? Oh wait who the hell groups in this game outside end-game raiding?
This was one of the issues I had with WoTLK phasing. One of my friends needed help with killing some mobs for a quest. We spent 5 minutes flying around trying to find eachother, only to realize that I wasn't as far in the quest chain so I was unable to interact with him while he was in the area of the quest.
Urgh, everytime this bullshit.
No it doesn't work like that, when you group up you enter in the phase that the person with the lowest phase is in.
If you aren't in the vicinity or you aren't in the same group than yes you'll have problems.
Phasing is a good thing. Or does everyone want a static world? or a full dynamic world where you miss things? Both has it's dissadvantages and phasing is just one of the means to counter it and cater to both groups.
But these are times people never are happy. An MMO is not about personalized design so you'll never find a game that does everything you like.
Anywho: Dislike or like fine... Don't waste energy in hating.
How are they not social? First.. Alt-itis.. WoW is the only major mmo I know that does not allow adjustment so that Vets can play with noobs.. Example: City of Heroes has "side kicking".. EQ2 has mentoring.. I'm sick and tired of having an army of alts so I can play with new friends or guildies.. Actually, it's impossible.. Sure you have to focus and do your job when it comes to it, but as far as I remember raiding there was always something to talk about while raiding. I've become friends with dozens of people while raiding. Some of them even became really great reallife friends. If the top guilds decide and rush to the very top like crazed bloodhounds this is their thing. I can't say I don't understand them as I was part of a very hardcore guild back in TBC, being among the top on our server and eu/us servers. And even then it was very much social. People didn't just log in, did their thing and logged off. They stayed online during the raid even if they were benched, fooling around on ventrilo, talking smack to eachother like old friends do (for shits and giggles. Nothing serious). If one of the members needed help with something, 10 jumped up to help the guy. Very connected, very social. As you have already admit to is that your guild did recruiting.. How you guys operate a guild is more like a competitive sports team.. Sorry, we have enough running backs, come back next year.. I fail to see how a game can claim to be social, when the mechanics of it promote exclusion (10/25 limites) and ID's.. The ONLY criteria for guild application should be, "are you a dork or not?" It shouldnt' matter their level, gear or class..
While I agree that scaling might solve some of the problems you are having, it also poses a big design issuse. See, if the developers know how many people are gonna do the said encounter they can base the mechanics around that. In turn, the difficulty can much easely be determined. In return, the scaling gives you many many more veriables to work around. Becouse you don't have a set number of people that need to be there to kill this boss, you have to work around all possible options. Sooner or later you'd have to give this scaling a hardcap. You can't have the same difficulty fighting a boss with 2 people and 15. It's simply not possible. You'd have to go and change the mechanics of the boss depending on the number of people. It just takes away developers time. Incase you never played with scaling.. City of Heroes had that before WoW was launched.. GW2 is using their own form of scaling encounters, from trash quest to boss spawns.. There's a reason why there's no sandbox with millions and millions of people playing it. Becouse sandboxes are damn hard to make and I salute anyone trying it. They must have some balls. True.. sandbox games are more costly, which is the root problem.. Devs today want a quick ROI (return on investment).. I doubt we'll ever see another true attempt to sandboxing like SWG or EVE..
But I do agree, it would be nice if they introduced scaling to WoW in between 10-25man raids, so you could go in an instance with 11 people and still be able to raid. That would indeed be fun. But sooner or later questions regarding loot distribution, class balance/stacking and other things would arise. Already been addressed by other games.. Boss doesn't drop ANYTHING, other then reward tokens that are used at vendors like emblems I do not doubt that scaling can be well incorporated in a new mmo, but doing something so drastic to an already established mmo would do more harm then good. They just did a complete revamp and dropped the ball.. IT would of been easier and less costly, but they chose not to.. Maybe those that can post on the offical WoW boards can ask.. "Why can't we have scaled encounters from all instances?".. Like I said, City of Heroes/Villians has been doing it for over 5 years.. HELL.. it was great even doing an instance with 3 people if it was a slow afternoon..
The current system, albeit not perfect, works quite well. If blizzard thinks it needs overhauling they'll most certainly do it. I wouldn't put faith on that.. People have been asking why no player or guild housing for years, and no comment by Blizzard.. They avoid that topic like the plague.. Open world PvP has been pleaded since WoTLK destroyed it, and nothing from Blizzard.. I used to read and post on the offical forums when I was a customer.. it was amazing how a BLUE would respond to 70% of the goofy general threads, but when someone rehashed a touchy subject, a BLUE isn't anywhere to be found? I will give Blizz credit they are quite good knowing how and when to talk about toics.. almost as good as a politician..
What happens if someone you are grouped with has not done that quest yet? Are you not allowed to help them? Oh wait who the hell groups in this game outside end-game raiding?
This was one of the issues I had with WoTLK phasing. One of my friends needed help with killing some mobs for a quest. We spent 5 minutes flying around trying to find eachother, only to realize that I wasn't as far in the quest chain so I was unable to interact with him while he was in the area of the quest.
Urgh, everytime this bullshit.
No it doesn't work like that, when you group up you enter in the phase that the person with the lowest phase is in.
If you aren't in the vicinity or you aren't in the same group than yes you'll have problems.
Phasing is a good thing. Or does everyone want a static world? or a full dynamic world where you miss things? Both has it's dissadvantages and phasing is just one of the means to counter it and cater to both groups.
But these are times people never are happy. An MMO is not about personalized design so you'll never find a game that does everything you like.
Anywho: Dislike or like fine... Don't waste energy in hating.
Wrong.. unless they changed phasing it is a problem.. I had huge problems using the ICC summoning stone because of phasing.. Did they ever correct that problem? Doing the quest in IC and SP was the same thing.. My main did all the SP and IC phasing BS, and when a friend went to bring his alt through, there was NOTHING I could do to help him.. He was invisible to me because he was in an earlier phase.. Did they correct this issue? if not, then you are wrong my friend.. It's been a year now since I left, but I have not heard word that they changed any of the phasing in WoTLK zones
Blizzard has innovated questing with Cataclysm. EQ2? AoC? WAR? Aion? Same old quests. Don't get me wrong, WoW has them too, but I'm not saying that the 5000+ quests in WoW are all exciting and innovative. I'm saying many of them are now. Some are even better than any of what LotRO had. I haven't seen anyone implement phasing like they do. Here's some I liked:
In one area you get to defend a town from an orc invasion alongside John J. Keeshan. You are sent undercover (with camouflage, chloroform and all) to an orc base and plant some explosives; which later blow up and the orc base is reduced to nothing but a crater FOREVER. That means before there was an orc base, now it's gone. No "we're going to respawn and pretend nothing happened here". Then you get to ride a tank cooperative with Keeshan and blast through legions of orcs, until you finally get to fight the mastermind behind them, a dragon. After a while of fighting Keeshan jumps into the dragon and kills him in mid air and they both fall and die in a climatic ending, Keeshan dying as a hero to the town of Lakeshire. It's a very fun quest chain.
Another one is in Badlands. You come across a gnome, dwarf, and orc who are drinking and telling stories. You get inside their stories and play through what they supposedly did when Deathwing came. First you play as the dwarf and go punching everything in the face, even Deathwing. It's hilarious. Then you go as the gnome who grows up to a giant and searches for deathwing in the clowds until you finally grab him and shoot him to another continent. Then you go as the orc who rides a motorbike and takes a "babe" with him to challenge deathwing to a knife fight. These were hilarious quests. Blizzard even put a blood elf male as one of the possible "babes" you can take on your bike, nuff said.
Many starting zones now make you fight alongside an important character, sometimes even your race's faction leader, against a villain in a climatic final battle. There's story all over the place now. It really has changed. Also, tell me of an expansion that added 3500+ quests? They really outdid themselves with this one.
I saw another post like this and thought I would try it out. I disagree completely. Most of the quests are still get 5 of these. . kill 10 of these. They are a little more streamlined but I stopped reading quest text again after level 10 when I realized that there was not much change. The "climactic" battle that you speak of, from the Tauren side anyway, involves you going up to the guy. . the Tauren cheif appearing from nowhere. . killing him and then telling you something and then fading away again. I thought it was terrible honestly.
I can agree and related to the mentoring thing and think it could be fun to bring such an option to the table. One more thing to do. There really isn't anything bad to say against this and I am with you that this should be incorporated. That said, you can still play with them, help them do instances, you'll just make everything trivial. If you really wanna play with them, there's nothing stopping you. The leveling nowdays is so fast anyway that very soon your friend will be max level and you can take him wherever you want. This is one of the reasons why they removed attunements. So new players can get into action right away.
As far as running the guild goes, it operates like any other social structure with a set of rules and bounderies. You can see the same stuff in a sports team, a successful business, hell, everywhere where there's a group of people trying to achieve something, be it win the legue, get a lot of money, down a raid boss, build a structure. You don't just go off inviting people to be in your team. If you want to join a hippie guild that just invites anybody, you're more then welcome to do so, but don't expect to do any raiding.
While on the subject, every guild I've been in had social members. These are members that have no interest to raid with the main group, are usually friends with someone from the guild and are generally in the guild just for hanging out, joining alt raids(these don't have any strict gearscore requirements or any other stuff. You just have to be equipped to raid that instance. That means you can't just ding 80 and expect to go kill Lich king) and being all pesky. And there are usually tons of alts raids being formed during the day or on days when there's no official raid.
The main raiding body, while pretty dominant, is just one part of the guild. Mind you, I'm talking about a pretty dedicated raiding guild here. There are scores of casual guilds around that just invite anybody. They don't go far in raiding however.
I've gone off to read and educate myself, since I've never played CoH/CoV and read that they removed scaling in favor of chosing the difficulty yourself. The info comes from here: http://coh103.gtm.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=232873. I'm still of the opinion that such a feature should ship with the game and not get introduced 6 years later. It's too much of a game changer, very much diffrent then changing how some classes dps/heal. As far as tokens go, WoW has that too. But I like the suspense that random loot gives to a boss fight. It might be frustrating, but it's also very rewarding once you get the wanted item from that boss. This however is a personal reference and I can nor want to convince you this is the only true path. Somehow killing a boss and only getting some measly tokens doesn't seem so rewarding instead of seeing him drop a badass trinket or a WTFNEED sword. But that's just me. Current WoW has both systems and it seems to work quite well.
I have to disagree with you on the death of world pvp. It died with the introduction of battlegrounds. There really isn't any point to it, apart from getting the satisfaction of driving some poor nutter nuts. Blizzard had been trying time and time again to reitroduce world pvp into the game via objectives in zones and such, yet people still flood battlegrounds. Why? Becouse there are some real rewards available there. And I have to say they could do much better. When they overhauled the world, they could introduce city sieges with viable rewards and such. I've given this a fair share of thought and I might make a post on the official forums one day. But the point remains. While they are trying, they aren't trying hard enough. Thought this newfound hate betwen the opposing factions is giving me hope.
NIce post there lord.. I agree and disagee with most of the post.. But that is a good thing.. I used to think you like in some areas, but have changes after playing 5 years of WoW.. Joining friends or guildies, which trivialized the encounter, in my eyes is not productive.. It takes all the fun away when you already know the predetermined outcome.. "we win".. As you say, the leveling is so fast, then what? If WoW pushes and continues to keep restrictive elements in the end game.. I'm sorry, that was the straw that broke our back..
As for the guild thing.. The logistics and drama placed up the members stems from the ID lockout and hard cap limits.. Raid end game was like trying to get on a lifeboat of the Titanic.. Everyone was fighting over and competing to get their seat.. Well.. NOT everyone, but majority of the raiders were like that.. The community at large was infected by this behavior.. IMO..
I didn't read the article yet about CoX, but I assume they still left and option for flexibity tho on raids.. Which is ok with me.. because I can imagine the problems with "auto" scaling.. Example would be a couple of fellow guildies and friends of mine that I played with.. Their button mashing skills were not as "desirable" as Blizzard had programed.. or others liked.. One friend played a hunter and she struggled to achieve 1500 dps.. I personlly didn't care.. I play with friends for fun and I'll be damned to hell to tell a friend they can't group or raid because of some mathmatical program Blizzard pre-determined.. This was not uncommon either.. Our guild when doing charity 5 man runs would often run strangers thru dungeons and it was amazing to hear how thankful they were for not kicking them like other groups did.. I remember our guild joined up with a another to do a quick 10 man.. We brought 5, they brought 5.. However they were hosting it technically and lead the raid.. No worries.. Right up to the point when we wiped on the 2 boss because my 1 friend was blamed for not dps'ing fast enough.. They kicked her.. Needless to say, the other 4 of us quckly left as well.. This was the decline for most of us on WoW.. we saw just how ugly the community was becoming.. Bliz has done nothing to address that problem..
Now as for the loot thing.. That too was an issue.. I would need a calculator to figure out how many times I had players REFUSE to do a dungeon because there was no boss drop they needed.. The element of surprise.. OK.. I would be ok with that.. However WoW's drop table are fixed and everyone knew who dropped what and where.. Again, Blizz does nothing to solve this issue.. Why not just have a random global drop from a boss list that is 40 items long? Problem solved..
As for world PvP.. I loved WG, but being that only happened once every 2.5 hours and lasted 20 minutes on average. BORING.. what am I suppose to do the other 2 hours? pick my nose? Agreed BG's didnt' help.. I would of loved to see more contested zones like WG on a regular intervals.. Maybe a new one ever 30 minutes and have 5 of them.. You can world PvP non-stop them... However, if that was the case, increase the vendor items because what vendors offered was lame.. The rewards sucked.. Let people buy full sets of PvP gear like they did early on.. I remember farming AV daily to get the takens and HP need for everything from armor, jewelery, weapons to range items...Blizzard removed a good portion of the PvP gear from the general vendors, except arenas.. Which was only for the elite to enjoy..
Good luck in getting them to listen.. Many of us have been posting our concerns for years and NEVER once got a BLUE to respond to us.. It's like they are sitting in the corner with their fingers in their ears saying.. "na na na we cant' hear you na na na".. So we finally had enough and spoke with our wallets.. All 16 of us cancelled WoW within one billing cycle a year ago and we still talk on vent and keep in touch.. even play together on EQ2..
It's kind of sad to see this discussion. It's all based on greedy players and how you're locked out of raids and how everything is based on what you want. That's why if you get 9 of your IRL friends to play with you...no longer is there much worrying about spots or not wanting to do a raid/heroic because there's nothing in it for you. With a sincere guild composed of a group of actual friends, most of these issues just fade away. That is ideal, I know, but it's how I think WoW should be played. You're looking for an ideal world, why not try your best to help the process by cutting out that middle man known as...well, strangers who you need to help you. I'm all for end-game raiding, but I haven't played WoW in a couple years because my friends don't anymore. Once we couldn't play anymore for various reasons (that's couldn't and not wanted to stop), we dropped 1 by 1, the game lost its flare.
Blizzard addresses issues, but yeah they do not address others. One reason is because they specifically don't want it changed or most likely feel the current system is best. WoW has always adapted, and if a new system besides the ID system proves better, they will most likely adapt it in their own way. But I think any system is better than no system in this sense. And it's doing a relatively good job. It's funny how the topic of discussion is hardly being discussed anymore amidst the topics being brought up, but that always happens.
I've voiced most of my opinions. The system is fine, and they're fine-tuning it as best they can. Instead of raid ID, it'll be a boss ID or something right? And they're varying raids tremendously instead of just having 1 big raid you'll be locked out of. Maybe give the new system a try when Cataclysm comes out and it'll be better. Quests are fun. Yes there are the "gather 20 of this" and "kill 15 of that" quests, but those are in every MMO and are just standard to help you level. But there are the fun ones, driving tanks or something. Their innovation on quests is funny and fresh, despite the majority being redundant and there to help you feel like it's less of a grind and more of an accomplishment. Just try to have fun with it.
Blizzard has innovated questing with Cataclysm. EQ2? AoC? WAR? Aion? Same old quests. Don't get me wrong, WoW has them too, but I'm not saying that the 5000+ quests in WoW are all exciting and innovative. I'm saying many of them are now. Some are even better than any of what LotRO had. I haven't seen anyone implement phasing like they do. Here's some I liked:
In one area you get to defend a town from an orc invasion alongside John J. Keeshan. You are sent undercover (with camouflage, chloroform and all) to an orc base and plant some explosives; which later blow up and the orc base is reduced to nothing but a crater FOREVER.
Sorry... but phasing isn't innovative, and neither are those quests. WoW is just becoming more and more of a single player game each day... how can you have a persistant virtual world if it looks different for anyone?
And the quests can have all the cinematic value they want, but they're still easy as dirt and hold you by the hand the entire way so I can mentally check out. I don't find that fun.
WoW hasn't innovated anything in its entire 6 year run, I doubt they'd start now.
i have to say as a wow hater myself, i actually like playing the game now.
Then I don't think you could have actually called yourself a WoW hater before, because the expansion did pretty much nothing to change what most hate about it.
i have to say as a wow hater myself, i actually like playing the game now.
Then I don't think you could have actually called yourself a WoW hater before
he's not a true hater bro like we are. We'll stay true to our hate until the end! We just have to hold in there.
I have no temptation to try WoW. It's probably easier for me than most because none of my friends play it either. All of them started MMOs at the wee age of 11 like I did and were playing the classics like DAoC and Ultima Online. Now we're playing Darkfall and Eve, because everything else stinks of WoW. We miss the massive and social aspects of MMORPGs, as well as the persistant world and challenges. You don't get those with mordern WoW clones.
If the WoW community made you quit/not play the game, you've been owned by 9 yr olds. Honestly though, if your going to "hate" on a game, hate it for good reasons (like complaints about the actual game itself?) not it's community. Especially given the different varibles involved that could create a bad community (bad server?).
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
i have to say as a wow hater myself, i actually like playing the game now.
Then I don't think you could have actually called yourself a WoW hater before
he's not a true hater bro like we are. We'll stay true to our hate until the end! We just have to hold in there.
I have no temptation to try WoW. It's probably easier for me than most because none of my friends play it either. All of them started MMOs at the wee age of 11 like I did and were playing the classics like DAoC and Ultima Online. Now we're playing Darkfall and Eve, because everything else stinks of WoW. We miss the massive and social aspects of MMORPGs, as well as the persistant world and challenges. You don't get those with mordern WoW clones.
As long as those words are in your post, it's all good. You can hate the world and everyone in it except a few friends and still enjoy what the world has to offer with them. Good show. Enjoy whatever game you want .
i have to say as a wow hater myself, i actually like playing the game now.
To further (and probably unnecessarily) prove the differences in gamer personalities and preferences......
I went back and found myself almost immediately BORED....AGAIN.
I was disappointed that the world had not changed MORE. There are changes, but they're more like on the level of an accident than a CATACLYSM. I was expecting a lot MORE changes to the game world. Granted....after I got adjusted to Orgrimmar, I found it likeable. I like my new goblin trike that I had to grind instances for rep to obtain, but....I like it, nonetheless.
However......basically nothing has really changed that much. The talent trees are better, imo. But is that enough to renew my excitement for the game. Uhm.....no.
I'm actuallly starting to think it's just the whole modern MMO take on things that I have come to loathe. Perhaps I am starting to just hate MMOs PERIOD. For me the RPG part of MMORPG is awfully lean when they can't even provide your character with a HOME to purchase. I mean....I'm supposed to be "living" in this world right?
With rare exceptions....all MMOs fail to give me a world that FEELS LIKE I'm living in it and making a living there and forging a way through adventures and triumphs and loses. Most of them just are NOT dynamic enough to provide that suspension of disbelief and WoW is CHIEF among the failures, imo.
Wait for innovative and game-changing virtual reality or something completely new, otherwise you'll continue to be dissapointed with your high standards. Sad story. Game's not for everyone. :T
i have to say as a wow hater myself, i actually like playing the game now.
To further (and probably unnecessarily) prove the differences in gamer personalities and preferences......
I went back and found myself almost immediately BORED....AGAIN.
I was disappointed that the world had not changed MORE. There are changes, but they're more like on the level of an accident than a CATACLYSM. I was expecting a lot MORE changes to the game world. Granted....after I got adjusted to Orgrimmar, I found it likeable. I like my new goblin trike that I had to grind instances for rep to obtain, but....I like it, nonetheless.
However......basically nothing has really changed that much. The talent trees are better, imo. But is that enough to renew my excitement for the game. Uhm.....no.
I'm actuallly starting to think it's just the whole modern MMO take on things that I have come to loathe. Perhaps I am starting to just hate MMOs PERIOD. For me the RPG part of MMORPG is awfully lean when they can't even provide your character with a HOME to purchase. I mean....I'm supposed to be "living" in this world right?
With rare exceptions....all MMOs fail to give me a world that FEELS LIKE I'm living in it and making a living there and forging a way through adventures and triumphs and loses. Most of them just are NOT dynamic enough to provide that suspension of disbelief and WoW is CHIEF among the failures, imo.
Agreed and yes good point bout the RPG experience. That makes since to me right now Im playing EVE and your ship is your home and everything else its seems. Lacking the fact that if you leave your ship you become a pod lol. So basically I believe if you just hang on for a few more months TOR will be out and it should answer your concerns on the RPG experience.
Hahaha yes, there's always the next MMO'RPG' that promises innovation and that they'll stay true to what they say.....and then they get feedback from the majority that want it dumbed down and it changes...It's a vicious cycle unfortunately. But I've been around awhile seeing MMO's or any game promise something and a month later it's completely different. RPG to me is just me playing a different role. I play a game in some sort of role. How much I want to embrace that varies and is up to each player. There's no reason to bash a game for not having so many RPG elements, because RPG is a loose term anyway. Role.Playing.Game. Game I play a role in. That's the base. Anything from there, you're making up or drawing from what you want/your experiences. Pew peeeew.
Comments
Lord.. you missed the whole issue here.. WoW's raids and guilds are not social , but have mutated into competitve esports.. The quicker you ADMIT to that, the faster we can move on
Just that simple.. Blizzard could easily solve most of their problem with "scaling" encounters.. Scallng as been around since BEFORE WoW was launched.. And it's very successful.. The strength of the BOSS is dependant upon the strength of the raid size.. If anything, if you want TRUE challenge you should be asking Blizzard for that.. I for one am looking forward to GW2's attempt to scaling encounters.. NO ONE is left out and sits on the bench waiting.. 
this
How are they not social? Sure you have to focus and do your job when it comes to it, but as far as I remember raiding there was always something to talk about while raiding. I've become friends with dozens of people while raiding. Some of them even became really great reallife friends. If the top guilds decide and rush to the very top like crazed bloodhounds this is their thing. I can't say I don't understand them as I was part of a very hardcore guild back in TBC, being among the top on our server and eu/us servers. And even then it was very much social. People didn't just log in, did their thing and logged off. They stayed online during the raid even if they were benched, fooling around on ventrilo, talking smack to eachother like old friends do (for shits and giggles. Nothing serious). If one of the members needed help with something, 10 jumped up to help the guy. Very connected, very social.
While I agree that scaling might solve some of the problems you are having, it also poses a big design issuse. See, if the developers know how many people are gonna do the said encounter they can base the mechanics around that. In turn, the difficulty can much easily be determined. In return, the scaling gives you many many more veriables to work around. Becouse you don't have a set number of people that need to be there to kill this boss, you have to work around all possible options. Sooner or later you'd have to give this scaling a hardcap. You can't have the same difficulty fighting a boss with 2 people and 15. It's simply not possible. You'd have to go and change the mechanics of the boss depending on the number of people. It just takes away developers time. There's a reason why there's no sandbox with millions and millions of people playing it. Becouse sandboxes are damn hard to make and I salute anyone trying it. They must have some balls.
But I do agree, it would be nice if they introduced scaling to WoW in between 10-25man raids, so you could go in an instance with 11 people and still be able to raid. That would indeed be fun. But sooner or later questions regarding loot distribution, class balance/stacking and other things would arise. I do not doubt that scaling can be well incorporated in a new mmo, but doing something so drastic to an already established mmo would do more harm then good.
The current system, albeit not perfect, works quite well. If blizzard thinks it needs overhauling they'll most certainly do it.
Urgh, everytime this bullshit.
No it doesn't work like that, when you group up you enter in the phase that the person with the lowest phase is in.
If you aren't in the vicinity or you aren't in the same group than yes you'll have problems.
Phasing is a good thing. Or does everyone want a static world? or a full dynamic world where you miss things? Both has it's dissadvantages and phasing is just one of the means to counter it and cater to both groups.
But these are times people never are happy. An MMO is not about personalized design so you'll never find a game that does everything you like.
Anywho: Dislike or like fine... Don't waste energy in hating.
Wrong.. unless they changed phasing it is a problem.. I had huge problems using the ICC summoning stone because of phasing.. Did they ever correct that problem? Doing the quest in IC and SP was the same thing.. My main did all the SP and IC phasing BS, and when a friend went to bring his alt through, there was NOTHING I could do to help him.. He was invisible to me because he was in an earlier phase.. Did they correct this issue? if not, then you are wrong my friend.. It's been a year now since I left, but I have not heard word that they changed any of the phasing in WoTLK zones
I saw another post like this and thought I would try it out. I disagree completely. Most of the quests are still get 5 of these. . kill 10 of these. They are a little more streamlined but I stopped reading quest text again after level 10 when I realized that there was not much change. The "climactic" battle that you speak of, from the Tauren side anyway, involves you going up to the guy. . the Tauren cheif appearing from nowhere. . killing him and then telling you something and then fading away again. I thought it was terrible honestly.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I can agree and related to the mentoring thing and think it could be fun to bring such an option to the table. One more thing to do. There really isn't anything bad to say against this and I am with you that this should be incorporated. That said, you can still play with them, help them do instances, you'll just make everything trivial. If you really wanna play with them, there's nothing stopping you. The leveling nowdays is so fast anyway that very soon your friend will be max level and you can take him wherever you want. This is one of the reasons why they removed attunements. So new players can get into action right away.
As far as running the guild goes, it operates like any other social structure with a set of rules and bounderies. You can see the same stuff in a sports team, a successful business, hell, everywhere where there's a group of people trying to achieve something, be it win the legue, get a lot of money, down a raid boss, build a structure. You don't just go off inviting people to be in your team. If you want to join a hippie guild that just invites anybody, you're more then welcome to do so, but don't expect to do any raiding.
While on the subject, every guild I've been in had social members. These are members that have no interest to raid with the main group, are usually friends with someone from the guild and are generally in the guild just for hanging out, joining alt raids(these don't have any strict gearscore requirements or any other stuff. You just have to be equipped to raid that instance. That means you can't just ding 80 and expect to go kill Lich king) and being all pesky. And there are usually tons of alts raids being formed during the day or on days when there's no official raid.
The main raiding body, while pretty dominant, is just one part of the guild. Mind you, I'm talking about a pretty dedicated raiding guild here. There are scores of casual guilds around that just invite anybody. They don't go far in raiding however.
I've gone off to read and educate myself, since I've never played CoH/CoV and read that they removed scaling in favor of chosing the difficulty yourself. The info comes from here: http://coh103.gtm.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=232873. I'm still of the opinion that such a feature should ship with the game and not get introduced 6 years later. It's too much of a game changer, very much diffrent then changing how some classes dps/heal. As far as tokens go, WoW has that too. But I like the suspense that random loot gives to a boss fight. It might be frustrating, but it's also very rewarding once you get the wanted item from that boss. This however is a personal reference and I can nor want to convince you this is the only true path. Somehow killing a boss and only getting some measly tokens doesn't seem so rewarding instead of seeing him drop a badass trinket or a WTFNEED sword. But that's just me. Current WoW has both systems and it seems to work quite well.
I have to disagree with you on the death of world pvp. It died with the introduction of battlegrounds. There really isn't any point to it, apart from getting the satisfaction of driving some poor nutter nuts. Blizzard had been trying time and time again to reitroduce world pvp into the game via objectives in zones and such, yet people still flood battlegrounds. Why? Becouse there are some real rewards available there. And I have to say they could do much better. When they overhauled the world, they could introduce city sieges with viable rewards and such. I've given this a fair share of thought and I might make a post on the official forums one day. But the point remains. While they are trying, they aren't trying hard enough. Thought this newfound hate betwen the opposing factions is giving me hope.
NIce post there lord.. I agree and disagee with most of the post.. But that is a good thing.. I used to think you like in some areas, but have changes after playing 5 years of WoW.. Joining friends or guildies, which trivialized the encounter, in my eyes is not productive.. It takes all the fun away when you already know the predetermined outcome.. "we win".. As you say, the leveling is so fast, then what? If WoW pushes and continues to keep restrictive elements in the end game.. I'm sorry, that was the straw that broke our back..
As for the guild thing.. The logistics and drama placed up the members stems from the ID lockout and hard cap limits.. Raid end game was like trying to get on a lifeboat of the Titanic.. Everyone was fighting over and competing to get their seat.. Well.. NOT everyone, but majority of the raiders were like that.. The community at large was infected by this behavior.. IMO..
I didn't read the article yet about CoX, but I assume they still left and option for flexibity tho on raids.. Which is ok with me.. because I can imagine the problems with "auto" scaling.. Example would be a couple of fellow guildies and friends of mine that I played with.. Their button mashing skills were not as "desirable" as Blizzard had programed.. or others liked.. One friend played a hunter and she struggled to achieve 1500 dps.. I personlly didn't care.. I play with friends for fun and I'll be damned to hell to tell a friend they can't group or raid because of some mathmatical program Blizzard pre-determined.. This was not uncommon either.. Our guild when doing charity 5 man runs would often run strangers thru dungeons and it was amazing to hear how thankful they were for not kicking them like other groups did.. I remember our guild joined up with a another to do a quick 10 man.. We brought 5, they brought 5.. However they were hosting it technically and lead the raid.. No worries.. Right up to the point when we wiped on the 2 boss because my 1 friend was blamed for not dps'ing fast enough.. They kicked her.. Needless to say, the other 4 of us quckly left as well.. This was the decline for most of us on WoW.. we saw just how ugly the community was becoming.. Bliz has done nothing to address that problem..
Now as for the loot thing.. That too was an issue.. I would need a calculator to figure out how many times I had players REFUSE to do a dungeon because there was no boss drop they needed.. The element of surprise.. OK.. I would be ok with that.. However WoW's drop table are fixed and everyone knew who dropped what and where.. Again, Blizz does nothing to solve this issue.. Why not just have a random global drop from a boss list that is 40 items long? Problem solved..
As for world PvP.. I loved WG, but being that only happened once every 2.5 hours and lasted 20 minutes on average. BORING.. what am I suppose to do the other 2 hours? pick my nose? Agreed BG's didnt' help.. I would of loved to see more contested zones like WG on a regular intervals.. Maybe a new one ever 30 minutes and have 5 of them.. You can world PvP non-stop them... However, if that was the case, increase the vendor items because what vendors offered was lame.. The rewards sucked.. Let people buy full sets of PvP gear like they did early on.. I remember farming AV daily to get the takens and HP need for everything from armor, jewelery, weapons to range items...Blizzard removed a good portion of the PvP gear from the general vendors, except arenas.. Which was only for the elite to enjoy..
Good luck in getting them to listen.. Many of us have been posting our concerns for years and NEVER once got a BLUE to respond to us.. It's like they are sitting in the corner with their fingers in their ears saying.. "na na na we cant' hear you na na na".. So we finally had enough and spoke with our wallets.. All 16 of us cancelled WoW within one billing cycle a year ago and we still talk on vent and keep in touch.. even play together on EQ2..
It's kind of sad to see this discussion. It's all based on greedy players and how you're locked out of raids and how everything is based on what you want. That's why if you get 9 of your IRL friends to play with you...no longer is there much worrying about spots or not wanting to do a raid/heroic because there's nothing in it for you. With a sincere guild composed of a group of actual friends, most of these issues just fade away. That is ideal, I know, but it's how I think WoW should be played. You're looking for an ideal world, why not try your best to help the process by cutting out that middle man known as...well, strangers who you need to help you. I'm all for end-game raiding, but I haven't played WoW in a couple years because my friends don't anymore. Once we couldn't play anymore for various reasons (that's couldn't and not wanted to stop), we dropped 1 by 1, the game lost its flare.
Blizzard addresses issues, but yeah they do not address others. One reason is because they specifically don't want it changed or most likely feel the current system is best. WoW has always adapted, and if a new system besides the ID system proves better, they will most likely adapt it in their own way. But I think any system is better than no system in this sense. And it's doing a relatively good job. It's funny how the topic of discussion is hardly being discussed anymore amidst the topics being brought up, but that always happens.
I've voiced most of my opinions. The system is fine, and they're fine-tuning it as best they can. Instead of raid ID, it'll be a boss ID or something right? And they're varying raids tremendously instead of just having 1 big raid you'll be locked out of. Maybe give the new system a try when Cataclysm comes out and it'll be better. Quests are fun. Yes there are the "gather 20 of this" and "kill 15 of that" quests, but those are in every MMO and are just standard to help you level. But there are the fun ones, driving tanks or something. Their innovation on quests is funny and fresh, despite the majority being redundant and there to help you feel like it's less of a grind and more of an accomplishment. Just try to have fun with it.
Sorry... but phasing isn't innovative, and neither are those quests. WoW is just becoming more and more of a single player game each day... how can you have a persistant virtual world if it looks different for anyone?
And the quests can have all the cinematic value they want, but they're still easy as dirt and hold you by the hand the entire way so I can mentally check out. I don't find that fun.
WoW hasn't innovated anything in its entire 6 year run, I doubt they'd start now.
i have to say as a wow hater myself, i actually like playing the game now.
Then I don't think you could have actually called yourself a WoW hater before, because the expansion did pretty much nothing to change what most hate about it.
he's not a true hater bro like we are. We'll stay true to our hate until the end! We just have to hold in there.
I have no temptation to try WoW. It's probably easier for me than most because none of my friends play it either. All of them started MMOs at the wee age of 11 like I did and were playing the classics like DAoC and Ultima Online. Now we're playing Darkfall and Eve, because everything else stinks of WoW. We miss the massive and social aspects of MMORPGs, as well as the persistant world and challenges. You don't get those with mordern WoW clones.
Ditto and Ditto. lol
Happy Holidays
If the WoW community made you quit/not play the game, you've been owned by 9 yr olds. Honestly though, if your going to "hate" on a game, hate it for good reasons (like complaints about the actual game itself?) not it's community. Especially given the different varibles involved that could create a bad community (bad server?).
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
As long as those words are in your post, it's all good. You can hate the world and everyone in it except a few friends and still enjoy what the world has to offer with them. Good show. Enjoy whatever game you want
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To further (and probably unnecessarily) prove the differences in gamer personalities and preferences......
I went back and found myself almost immediately BORED....AGAIN.
I was disappointed that the world had not changed MORE. There are changes, but they're more like on the level of an accident than a CATACLYSM. I was expecting a lot MORE changes to the game world. Granted....after I got adjusted to Orgrimmar, I found it likeable. I like my new goblin trike that I had to grind instances for rep to obtain, but....I like it, nonetheless.
However......basically nothing has really changed that much. The talent trees are better, imo. But is that enough to renew my excitement for the game. Uhm.....no.
I'm actuallly starting to think it's just the whole modern MMO take on things that I have come to loathe. Perhaps I am starting to just hate MMOs PERIOD. For me the RPG part of MMORPG is awfully lean when they can't even provide your character with a HOME to purchase. I mean....I'm supposed to be "living" in this world right?
With rare exceptions....all MMOs fail to give me a world that FEELS LIKE I'm living in it and making a living there and forging a way through adventures and triumphs and loses. Most of them just are NOT dynamic enough to provide that suspension of disbelief and WoW is CHIEF among the failures, imo.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Wait for innovative and game-changing virtual reality or something completely new, otherwise you'll continue to be dissapointed with your high standards. Sad story. Game's not for everyone. :T
Agreed and yes good point bout the RPG experience. That makes since to me right now Im playing EVE and your ship is your home and everything else its seems. Lacking the fact that if you leave your ship you become a pod lol. So basically I believe if you just hang on for a few more months TOR will be out and it should answer your concerns on the RPG experience.
Hahaha yes, there's always the next MMO'RPG' that promises innovation and that they'll stay true to what they say.....and then they get feedback from the majority that want it dumbed down and it changes...It's a vicious cycle unfortunately. But I've been around awhile seeing MMO's or any game promise something and a month later it's completely different. RPG to me is just me playing a different role. I play a game in some sort of role. How much I want to embrace that varies and is up to each player. There's no reason to bash a game for not having so many RPG elements, because RPG is a loose term anyway. Role.Playing.Game. Game I play a role in. That's the base. Anything from there, you're making up or drawing from what you want/your experiences. Pew peeeew.