Let's be honest. Noone can beat 40$ milion marketing expanditure pre-release. There are WoW posters everywhere in every shop, there are TV spots, there are warcraft figures. Most of these were already available at the release date.
Why is WoW so successful: 1. Free open world you go anywhere and do anything you want there. No loading screens to take you out of the fun. 2. Choices. Classes are different and offer a wide variety of what to do and who to be. 3. Polish. It works. It is stylistically polished as well - like the toon look or not it is polished. 4. Easy to get into and with depth you can delve into if you wish at end-game. As usual on these boards this post will bring many detractors but that's why ti is successful.
In fact
WoW has not free open world. It's pretty zoned crap. Each zone has its level range 10-19, 20-29, and one two three exits to other zones. Pretty linear world.
4) Easy to get into with no depth yeh. The mechanics are very simple (that's what depth means). You have 5 attributes, then critical chance, to hit chance, bonus to varius spell schools, healing bonus and that's it. You have mounts either 60% speed or 100% speed, nothing between. You can't make horseshoes as a blacksmith you can't make saddlebags as leatherworker. That's what depth means. This game has none. It's item centric crap.
You misunderstood what he meant by a non-zoned world. There are zones of course, but there is no load screen when you move from 1 zone to the next. It's a seamless world for the most part. The only time you see a load screen is when moving from one continent to the next or when taking the tram or when entering an instanced zone.
And how long has it been since you played? 5 attributes? Here's a list I came up with:
That's 27 and I'm probably missing a couple. And of course some of those like Attack Power, Hit Rating, and Damage, there's one for melee and one for ranged and in some cases another for spells.
For mount speed there are several different ways to increase mount speed including spurs and a riding crop and some of them stack, so no, it's not a straight 60% or 100%. You either haven't played in a very long time or your memory isn't too good.
If you want I can send you a scroll of resurrection and you can see for yourself. The game has changed in the last 3 years.
If you could hotwire a monitor to a toaster you could play WoW on it
They are getting all the people with low to midlevel machines that can play with reasonable performance all the time.
Is EQ2 a better game? Probably, but a fraction of the people who play WoW could get decent performance out of that game without all settings on low.
MMO developers try for the best and latest grafix, that means a very small % of people can play it with decent performance. Fact is people dont wanna shuck $2k+ on a comp to play another MMO.
The next big MMO i think will be another which can run on mid to low level machines like WoW can.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Why is WoW so successful: 1. Free open world you go anywhere and do anything you want there. No loading screens to take you out of the fun. 2. Choices. Classes are different and offer a wide variety of what to do and who to be. 3. Polish. It works. It is stylistically polished as well - like the toon look or not it is polished. 4. Easy to get into and with depth you can delve into if you wish at end-game. As usual on these boards this post will bring many detractors but that's why ti is successful.
In fact
WoW has not free open world. It's pretty zoned crap. Each zone has its level range 10-19, 20-29, and one two three exits to other zones. Pretty linear world.
4) Easy to get into with no depth yeh. The mechanics are very simple (that's what depth means). You have 5 attributes, then critical chance, to hit chance, bonus to varius spell schools, healing bonus and that's it. You have mounts either 60% speed or 100% speed, nothing between. You can't make horseshoes as a blacksmith you can't make saddlebags as leatherworker. That's what depth means. This game has none. It's item centric crap.
You misunderstood what he meant by a non-zoned world. There are zones of course, but there is no load screen when you move from 1 zone to the next. It's a seamless world for the most part. The only time you see a load screen is when moving from one continent to the next or when taking the tram or when entering an instanced zone.
And how long has it been since you played? 5 attributes? Here's a list I came up with:
That's 27 and I'm probably missing a couple. And of course some of those like Attack Power, Hit Rating, and Damage, there's one for melee and one for ranged and in some cases another for spells.
For mount speed there are several different ways to increase mount speed including horseshoes and a riding crop and some of them stack, so no, it's not a straight 60% or 100%. You either haven't played in a very long time or your memory isn't too good.
If you want I can send you a scroll of resurrection and you can see for yourself. The game has changed in the last 3 years.
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Why have WoW seen such big success? Now passing 10 million this is the exact question all us game-developers wants to know. Whats your take?
Blizzard is an old gaming company that listened to its player base from the forums of battlenet. It takes more than just a bunch of people with computer science degrees and 140 million dollars in their pockets. You need feedback and able people that will record and process it.
Years after wow's release many devs tried to do that and even they copied some elements of the game they failed to copy the community behind it. MMO's must be shaped by their player base and not gaming companies.
In a few words we make games and you just code them.
Of course i agree with previous posters that marketing is important and there is nothing more powerful than a satisfied future customer. That's presale marketing and is as important as a succesful beta. Which is also presale marketing too... and not just the "test the game" cover.
Attributes are your basic stats that greatly influence everything you do. So there are actually 5.
Crit chance, Block, Parry, hp, mp, and so on are influenced by Str, Agil, Sta, Int, Spi.
Also, for the record, the list of lesser features you listed are not something other MMO's do not offer and by no means makes WoW the game it is today. They have less than other mainstream MMOs.
WoW has not free open world. It's pretty zoned crap. Each zone has its level range 10-19, 20-29, and one two three exits to other zones. Pretty linear world. 2) Classes are different but there is nothing between. You can't mix them. YOu have some cookie cutter builds. Classes and customization is obviously one of the worst features of WoW. 3) Polish after 3 and half years should be there, but still isnt. My friends that play WoW still bitch about many bugs in classes (rogue vanish thing, hunter's pet etc) that are not getting fixed yet even after 3 and half years. And if you recall the wow beginnings, server char wipe out, server maintance extended for 2-3 days, lots and lots of quests bugged etc. 4) Easy to get into with no depth yeh. The mechanics are very simple (that's what depth means). You have 5 attributes, then critical chance, to hit chance, bonus to varius spell schools, healing bonus and that's it. You have mounts either 60% speed or 100% speed, nothing between. You can't make horseshoes as a blacksmith you can't make saddlebags as leatherworker. That's what depth means. This game has none. It's item centric crap.
Classes are different and while true there isnt something in between, they have several different playstyles each (in order so that you dont bored of your character). Honestly there's very little you can ask for. Every game has cookie cutter builds deal with it. If one person thinks X skill is better then Y...believe it theres more people that think the same--and that is how u get cooki cutter builds. A big majority of MMO's have them. The Rogue vanishing bug has NOT been there since release..you might wanna pay a visit back to WoW as you seem to be getting alot of things wrong.
Someone else tackled the stat attributes so I wont talk about that...WoW has just as many as other MMO's if not more. As for mounts, you're wrong yet again. There's 60%, 100%, 280% and 310% excluding several ways to make them faster such as Carrot on a Stick, 2 different Riding Crops, Mithril Boots etc.
Why have WoW seen such big success? Now passing 10 million this is the exact question all us game-developers wants to know. Whats your take?
You really shouldn't make a poll like that if you want objective responses. The choices are not only limited, but also clearly unfavorable towards WoW and Blizzard. I mean, hello, Starcraft was a great game.
The reasons why I think WoW has sold so much and is a continuing success:
The 'Blizzard' and 'Warcraft' brands. An already hugely successful RTS IP combined with Blizzard's excellent reputation for producing extremely well thought-out, polished, themed and balanced games.
No real competiton. EQ2 was more or less a very sour lemon at release. WoW offered the starved MMO consumer base with an aesthetically pleasing product, that was extremely polished and easy to pick up at release, this made it a treat that was very easy to swallow for many. At release most people ranked WoW as the only viable 'next-gen' MMO choice.
A lot of 'first-time' MMO players were introduced to WoW due to the 'Blizzard factor'. You could argue that WoW put MMORPGs into the mainstream gaming scene.
An easy learning curve, and a colorful, humorous game-world with a certain 'cuteness factor' that lowered the treshold for younger gamers to start playing.
Marketing, marketing, marketing. Nobody can deny Blizzard/Vivendi did not do a good job here.
PVE content, WoW is a game that in general satisfies the 'hardcore' gamers as well as the newcomers and casual gamers. At least until the tedium breaks in.
The snowball effect, once WoW became a mainstream article, it was no longer considered weird to be an avid MMO player and teenagers could hype the game to their friends without being considered freaky geeks.
I no longer play WoW, but I did devote a lot of my time, probably too much, to it. I tried to be as objective as possible, but hey, I can't deny that WoW is still somewhat alluring to me, even when I don't have an active account.
Attributes are your basic stats that greatly influence everything you do. So there are actually 5. Crit chance, Block, Parry, hp, mp, and so on are influenced by Str, Agil, Sta, Int, Spi. Also, for the record, the list of lesser features you listed are not something other MMO's do not offer and by no means makes WoW the game it is today. They have less than other mainstream MMOs.
Actually all those things I mentioned are influenced by a lot of things, not just those 5 attributes. You can have equipment that specifically boosts those attributes, enchantments, trinkets, skills, gems etc that effect those attributes.
What "lesser" features? Because you don't find them important they are "lesser"? The fact that other MMO's also offer them speaks towards the richness of WoW. It offers many of the features found in most mainstream MMO's. And yes there are some that WoW does not offer, however I defy you to find me one MMO which offers EVERYTHING that every MMO offers. There's not a single MMO that does that. All of them pick and choose features they wish to implement and WoW's is pretty extensive.
Maybe you need a scroll too. Things have changed. Much of the most sought after equipment now has at least 1 and usually more bonus modifiers like "to hit", "chance to increase critical strike", "increases damage", etc. On top of that many are also socketed and you can place whatever gems you want there and gems can increase a lot of different attributes as well. It's fairly obvious to me that some of you have been away from the game a long time and have not kept up with the changes.
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.
There ARE ways to increase stealthness for a rogue, thru skills, items etc. No it's NOT static based on your level. You CAN increase your ability to detect stealth thru skills, trinkets, items etc. You CAN increase your mount speed thru skills, items etc. Yes it HAS all these things.
No, diplomacy has yet to make it into WoW, but almost everything else you have mentioned IS there. The fact that you continue to make false statements about the game shows your lack of real knowledge on the subject matter.
I don't pretend to know much about Vanguard. It's time you stop pretending to know much about WoW.
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
People directly migrating over from Battlenet and word of mouth helped out as well.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
You are wrong. Im not comparing it not to Vanguard really so I dont know why are you coming up with that. Im comparing it to DDo in most of the features. From noncombat skills (listen, hide, knowledge, jump, swim..) to the character customization depth.
And no you can't become whatever you want in WoW. You mean shaman is a battle cleric? You got to be kidding me. What if i want to be a healer+elemental mage. Or divine mage or simply illusionist. In WoW you are either fire or frost.
A combination of first 3.. But serioulsy, after you tried out WoW, it's hard to get past the first 10 hours of other MMO even if they have better end game content.
What he said....
Also i loved all the famous titles blizzard made, Diablo, Starcraft, and warcraft... They prooved that they didn't make bull products since long ago, when thier games didn't have the finest eye candy they had the gameplay and fun, also back in the days they became famous for making the best cinematics to games and to this day they still hold that title aswell.
WoW was everything of the good features each of the other mmorpgs had, combined the fast paced action gameplay from asian mmorpgs, gathered the guild themes from EQ and so and created the best quest system in mmorpg's history.
Blizzard's name stand for several things which is why thier games are worth gold:
Quality - blizzard are stubborn and even when you hate the delays you'll understand it in the end and love it so much that blizzard actually waited and showed patience
Polished - patience, even when it hurts it's patience worthwhile.
Funny stuff - Blizzard does a fairly great share handing some funny aspects into the games, cow level anyone? dancing morlucs attack quest? i mean in each of thier games, there's is something highly amusing quality stuff in it, may it be just through emotes or certain places but often you see it through certain npcs, whose just a little too special, gives the game a soul.
Trademark - Blizzard doesn't do what EA or SOE has done, if they do, they quickly try to make it up for people.... blizzard shows even the little guy something good, they try to please as many as possible and does it very well.
Trust - you can trust that when you buy a blizzard game, it's going to give you many hours of entertainment.
I have hated blizzard when they delayed certain things for months and months or changed something.... but those days are over, now it's just trust and understanding.
Even if blizzard had the largest team of game makers, they would still take thier time to polish things, they don't wanna give you a beta state of a game.... VU seems to finally have stopped bullying around with launchdates, which were the only times when blizzard might launch something that wasn't quite as it should be ect.
Played wow since US beta and i still enjoy the game, i don't play much but it's the only mmorpg i now have running on my sub list, others fail to entertain me or just seems to being a downgrade compared to WoW.
I hope other companies will learn from blizzard on the good parts (Quality, polished, trust, fun) and create great games that will be in thier own right but sadly Blizzard took many years to gain my trust and now i guess i'm a rather loyal customer, because they didn't fail to deliver lots of fun and entertainment to me, thus i keep buying thier productt.
That's pretty much how we all buy things isn't it? O mean a nice clothing store with nice people who have nice clothing and always in for a funny chat about stuff create loyal customers who will come back and buy other stuff from them instead of going to another place.
Next game to convince me is Age of Conan the lore itself has me hooked, the company behind the mmorpg however hasn't earned my trust and with it's gloomy past i have a bad feeling.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
God hell yeh. I agree with that. Play what you enjoy, but then don't say WoW has depth. And by the way i see now why do you think that if you call oblivion or witcher depth RPG's. They are not. Simply depth RPG are Planescape Torment, Fallout, BG1, Arcanum. That explains.
Let's be honest. Noone can beat 40$ milion marketing expanditure pre-release. There are WoW posters everywhere in every shop, there are TV spots, there are warcraft figures. Most of these were already available at the release date.
I've seen you yammer on about this a dozen times. Can you please post a link to some evidence of this?
I seriously doubt your figures are anywhere near close. That is almost the revenue from 250k users for a full year and that doesn't even count exspenses.
I've seen you yammer on about this a dozen times. Can you please post a link to some evidence of this?
I seriously doubt your figures are anywhere near close. That is almost the revenue from 250k users for a full year and that doesn't even count exspenses.
Do you want to tell me that 40$ mil was a bad thing for them to do to popularize WoW so much? Or are you really so naive that WoW's popularity was made with no marketing or a little marketing? That just the word spread out among people? Do you really believe that?
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
You are wrong. Im not comparing it not to Vanguard really so I dont know why are you coming up with that. Im comparing it to DDo in most of the features. From noncombat skills (listen, hide, knowledge, jump, swim..) to the character customization depth.
And no you can't become whatever you want in WoW. You mean shaman is a battle cleric? You got to be kidding me. What if i want to be a healer+elemental mage. Or divine mage or simply illusionist. In WoW you are either fire or frost.
Healer + elemental mage = elemental shaman.
An enhancement shaman is very much like a battle cleric. He can wield a shield and one handed weapon, a two handed weapon or even dual weild two weapons at once. And, he can heal, debuff enemies, remove poison, etc.
WoW is not based on the D&D ruleset so no, jumping does not have a set skill level.
Also, please prove me wrong before stating it.
Like someone posted earlier, it is clear you do not know enough about WoW to make the accusations you are making.
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
You are wrong. Im not comparing it not to Vanguard really so I dont know why are you coming up with that. Im comparing it to DDo in most of the features. From noncombat skills (listen, hide, knowledge, jump, swim..) to the character customization depth.
And no you can't become whatever you want in WoW. You mean shaman is a battle cleric? You got to be kidding me. What if i want to be a healer+elemental mage. Or divine mage or simply illusionist. In WoW you are either fire or frost.
Healer + elemental mage = elemental shaman.
An enhancement shaman is very much like a battle cleric. He can wield a shield and one handed weapon, a two handed weapon or even dual weild two weapons at once. And, he can heal, debuff enemies, remove poison, etc.
WoW is not based on the D&D ruleset so no, jumping does not have a set skill level.
Also, please prove me wrong before stating it.
Like someone posted earlier, it is clear you do not know enough about WoW to make the accusations you are making.
No don't tell me you consider enhancment shaman a battle cleric. You must be kidding me.
This discussion is pointless if you think that someone must spend at least 2 years in WoW to know enough about WoW.
Comments
Let's be honest. Noone can beat 40$ milion marketing expanditure pre-release. There are WoW posters everywhere in every shop, there are TV spots, there are warcraft figures. Most of these were already available at the release date.
REALITY CHECK
I like WOW but anytime you take a boat or zepplin - you get a loading screen
EQ2 fan sites
WoW has not free open world. It's pretty zoned crap. Each zone has its level range 10-19, 20-29, and one two three exits to other zones. Pretty linear world.
4) Easy to get into with no depth yeh. The mechanics are very simple (that's what depth means). You have 5 attributes, then critical chance, to hit chance, bonus to varius spell schools, healing bonus and that's it. You have mounts either 60% speed or 100% speed, nothing between. You can't make horseshoes as a blacksmith you can't make saddlebags as leatherworker. That's what depth means. This game has none. It's item centric crap.
You misunderstood what he meant by a non-zoned world. There are zones of course, but there is no load screen when you move from 1 zone to the next. It's a seamless world for the most part. The only time you see a load screen is when moving from one continent to the next or when taking the tram or when entering an instanced zone.
And how long has it been since you played? 5 attributes? Here's a list I came up with:
Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect, Spirit, Armor, Weapon Skill, Damage, Speed, Attack Power, Hit Rating, Crit Chance, Dodge, Parry, Defense, Block, Resilience, Expertise, Bonus Damage, Bonus Healing, Spell Penetration, Mana Regen, 5 different Resistances.
That's 27 and I'm probably missing a couple. And of course some of those like Attack Power, Hit Rating, and Damage, there's one for melee and one for ranged and in some cases another for spells.
For mount speed there are several different ways to increase mount speed including spurs and a riding crop and some of them stack, so no, it's not a straight 60% or 100%. You either haven't played in a very long time or your memory isn't too good.
If you want I can send you a scroll of resurrection and you can see for yourself. The game has changed in the last 3 years.
If you could hotwire a monitor to a toaster you could play WoW on it
They are getting all the people with low to midlevel machines that can play with reasonable performance all the time.
Is EQ2 a better game? Probably, but a fraction of the people who play WoW could get decent performance out of that game without all settings on low.
MMO developers try for the best and latest grafix, that means a very small % of people can play it with decent performance. Fact is people dont wanna shuck $2k+ on a comp to play another MMO.
The next big MMO i think will be another which can run on mid to low level machines like WoW can.
Just my opinion
How about WoW is a fun game, accessable by all. Both in concept and in hardware. High quality. Good Launch.
YOU may not like it. But heck, there is not anything that you DO like.
WoW was launched at exact the right time. And that WoW episode on Southpark was not a bad move either.
There's a lot of truth in this statement.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
WoW has not free open world. It's pretty zoned crap. Each zone has its level range 10-19, 20-29, and one two three exits to other zones. Pretty linear world.
4) Easy to get into with no depth yeh. The mechanics are very simple (that's what depth means). You have 5 attributes, then critical chance, to hit chance, bonus to varius spell schools, healing bonus and that's it. You have mounts either 60% speed or 100% speed, nothing between. You can't make horseshoes as a blacksmith you can't make saddlebags as leatherworker. That's what depth means. This game has none. It's item centric crap.
You misunderstood what he meant by a non-zoned world. There are zones of course, but there is no load screen when you move from 1 zone to the next. It's a seamless world for the most part. The only time you see a load screen is when moving from one continent to the next or when taking the tram or when entering an instanced zone.
And how long has it been since you played? 5 attributes? Here's a list I came up with:
Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect, Spirit, Armor, Weapon Skill, Damage, Speed, Attack Power, Hit Rating, Crit Chance, Dodge, Parry, Defense, Block, Resilience, Expertise, Bonus Damage, Bonus Healing, Spell Penetration, Mana Regen, 5 different Resistances.
That's 27 and I'm probably missing a couple. And of course some of those like Attack Power, Hit Rating, and Damage, there's one for melee and one for ranged and in some cases another for spells.
For mount speed there are several different ways to increase mount speed including horseshoes and a riding crop and some of them stack, so no, it's not a straight 60% or 100%. You either haven't played in a very long time or your memory isn't too good.
If you want I can send you a scroll of resurrection and you can see for yourself. The game has changed in the last 3 years.
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
REALITY CHECK
Blizzard is an old gaming company that listened to its player base from the forums of battlenet. It takes more than just a bunch of people with computer science degrees and 140 million dollars in their pockets. You need feedback and able people that will record and process it.
Years after wow's release many devs tried to do that and even they copied some elements of the game they failed to copy the community behind it. MMO's must be shaped by their player base and not gaming companies.
In a few words we make games and you just code them.
Of course i agree with previous posters that marketing is important and there is nothing more powerful than a satisfied future customer. That's presale marketing and is as important as a succesful beta. Which is also presale marketing too... and not just the "test the game" cover.
Attributes are your basic stats that greatly influence everything you do. So there are actually 5.
Crit chance, Block, Parry, hp, mp, and so on are influenced by Str, Agil, Sta, Int, Spi.
Also, for the record, the list of lesser features you listed are not something other MMO's do not offer and by no means makes WoW the game it is today. They have less than other mainstream MMOs.
Classes are different and while true there isnt something in between, they have several different playstyles each (in order so that you dont bored of your character). Honestly there's very little you can ask for. Every game has cookie cutter builds deal with it. If one person thinks X skill is better then Y...believe it theres more people that think the same--and that is how u get cooki cutter builds. A big majority of MMO's have them. The Rogue vanishing bug has NOT been there since release..you might wanna pay a visit back to WoW as you seem to be getting alot of things wrong.
Someone else tackled the stat attributes so I wont talk about that...WoW has just as many as other MMO's if not more. As for mounts, you're wrong yet again. There's 60%, 100%, 280% and 310% excluding several ways to make them faster such as Carrot on a Stick, 2 different Riding Crops, Mithril Boots etc.
The reasons why I think WoW has sold so much and is a continuing success:
I no longer play WoW, but I did devote a lot of my time, probably too much, to it. I tried to be as objective as possible, but hey, I can't deny that WoW is still somewhat alluring to me, even when I don't have an active account.
What "lesser" features? Because you don't find them important they are "lesser"? The fact that other MMO's also offer them speaks towards the richness of WoW. It offers many of the features found in most mainstream MMO's. And yes there are some that WoW does not offer, however I defy you to find me one MMO which offers EVERYTHING that every MMO offers. There's not a single MMO that does that. All of them pick and choose features they wish to implement and WoW's is pretty extensive.
Maybe you need a scroll too. Things have changed. Much of the most sought after equipment now has at least 1 and usually more bonus modifiers like "to hit", "chance to increase critical strike", "increases damage", etc. On top of that many are also socketed and you can place whatever gems you want there and gems can increase a lot of different attributes as well. It's fairly obvious to me that some of you have been away from the game a long time and have not kept up with the changes.
There ARE ways to increase stealthness for a rogue, thru skills, items etc. No it's NOT static based on your level. You CAN increase your ability to detect stealth thru skills, trinkets, items etc. You CAN increase your mount speed thru skills, items etc. Yes it HAS all these things.
No, diplomacy has yet to make it into WoW, but almost everything else you have mentioned IS there. The fact that you continue to make false statements about the game shows your lack of real knowledge on the subject matter.
I don't pretend to know much about Vanguard. It's time you stop pretending to know much about WoW.
Here's some information to enlighten you:
Deception:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Master_of_Deception
http://www.wowwiki.com/Racial_Traits#Night_Elf
http://www.wowwiki.com/Nightscape_Boots
http://www.wowwiki.com/Whisperwalk_Boots
http://www.wowwiki.com/Figurine_-_Black_Pearl_Panther
http://www.wowwiki.com/Sneaking_Potion
http://www.wowwiki.com/Enchant_Cloak_-_Stealth
Detection:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Heightened_Senses
http://www.wowwiki.com/Perception
http://www.wowwiki.com/Track_Hidden
http://www.wowwiki.com/Paranoia
http://www.wowwiki.com/Catseye_Ultra_Goggles
http://www.wowwiki.com/Marshal%27s_Dragonhide_Gauntlets
http://www.wowwiki.com/Distilled_Stalker_Sight
Mount Speed
http://www.wowwiki.com/Enchant_Gloves_-_Riding_Skill
http://www.wowwiki.com/Carrot_on_a_Stick
http://www.wowwiki.com/Mithril_Spurs
http://www.wowwiki.com/Riding_Crop
http://www.wowwiki.com/Crusader_Aura
I was talking about mechanics. There are only 5 attributes + varius spell (incl healing) school bonus + critical chance + to hit chance + armor and the resistances. Weapon skills affect only to hit and critical chance nothing else. Why there is no hide/move silenty skill for rogues? It's static equal to your level right? Why there is no listen skill ( to hear hidden mobs around?) What about diplomacy (To get some quests and some don't?) ... etc There are MMORPG games out there that have these. Those games have depth. WoW is not one of them.Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
People directly migrating over from Battlenet and word of mouth helped out as well.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
You are wrong. Im not comparing it not to Vanguard really so I dont know why are you coming up with that. Im comparing it to DDo in most of the features. From noncombat skills (listen, hide, knowledge, jump, swim..) to the character customization depth.
And no you can't become whatever you want in WoW. You mean shaman is a battle cleric? You got to be kidding me. What if i want to be a healer+elemental mage. Or divine mage or simply illusionist. In WoW you are either fire or frost.
REALITY CHECK
What he said....
Also i loved all the famous titles blizzard made, Diablo, Starcraft, and warcraft... They prooved that they didn't make bull products since long ago, when thier games didn't have the finest eye candy they had the gameplay and fun, also back in the days they became famous for making the best cinematics to games and to this day they still hold that title aswell.
WoW was everything of the good features each of the other mmorpgs had, combined the fast paced action gameplay from asian mmorpgs, gathered the guild themes from EQ and so and created the best quest system in mmorpg's history.
Blizzard's name stand for several things which is why thier games are worth gold:
Quality - blizzard are stubborn and even when you hate the delays you'll understand it in the end and love it so much that blizzard actually waited and showed patience
Polished - patience, even when it hurts it's patience worthwhile.
Funny stuff - Blizzard does a fairly great share handing some funny aspects into the games, cow level anyone? dancing morlucs attack quest? i mean in each of thier games, there's is something highly amusing quality stuff in it, may it be just through emotes or certain places but often you see it through certain npcs, whose just a little too special, gives the game a soul.
Trademark - Blizzard doesn't do what EA or SOE has done, if they do, they quickly try to make it up for people.... blizzard shows even the little guy something good, they try to please as many as possible and does it very well.
Trust - you can trust that when you buy a blizzard game, it's going to give you many hours of entertainment.
I have hated blizzard when they delayed certain things for months and months or changed something.... but those days are over, now it's just trust and understanding.
Even if blizzard had the largest team of game makers, they would still take thier time to polish things, they don't wanna give you a beta state of a game.... VU seems to finally have stopped bullying around with launchdates, which were the only times when blizzard might launch something that wasn't quite as it should be ect.
Played wow since US beta and i still enjoy the game, i don't play much but it's the only mmorpg i now have running on my sub list, others fail to entertain me or just seems to being a downgrade compared to WoW.
I hope other companies will learn from blizzard on the good parts (Quality, polished, trust, fun) and create great games that will be in thier own right but sadly Blizzard took many years to gain my trust and now i guess i'm a rather loyal customer, because they didn't fail to deliver lots of fun and entertainment to me, thus i keep buying thier productt.
That's pretty much how we all buy things isn't it? O mean a nice clothing store with nice people who have nice clothing and always in for a funny chat about stuff create loyal customers who will come back and buy other stuff from them instead of going to another place.
Next game to convince me is Age of Conan the lore itself has me hooked, the company behind the mmorpg however hasn't earned my trust and with it's gloomy past i have a bad feeling.
Shit i wrote alot... too much... bah
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
You can be Arcane if you want to.
God hell yeh. I agree with that. Play what you enjoy, but then don't say WoW has depth. And by the way i see now why do you think that if you call oblivion or witcher depth RPG's. They are not. Simply depth RPG are Planescape Torment, Fallout, BG1, Arcanum. That explains.
REALITY CHECK
I seriously doubt your figures are anywhere near close. That is almost the revenue from 250k users for a full year and that doesn't even count exspenses.
You can be Arcane if you want to.
Pffft... Fury all the way...
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Do you want to tell me that 40$ mil was a bad thing for them to do to popularize WoW so much? Or are you really so naive that WoW's popularity was made with no marketing or a little marketing? That just the word spread out among people? Do you really believe that?
REALITY CHECK
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
You are wrong. Im not comparing it not to Vanguard really so I dont know why are you coming up with that. Im comparing it to DDo in most of the features. From noncombat skills (listen, hide, knowledge, jump, swim..) to the character customization depth.
And no you can't become whatever you want in WoW. You mean shaman is a battle cleric? You got to be kidding me. What if i want to be a healer+elemental mage. Or divine mage or simply illusionist. In WoW you are either fire or frost.
Healer + elemental mage = elemental shaman.An enhancement shaman is very much like a battle cleric. He can wield a shield and one handed weapon, a two handed weapon or even dual weild two weapons at once. And, he can heal, debuff enemies, remove poison, etc.
WoW is not based on the D&D ruleset so no, jumping does not have a set skill level.
Also, please prove me wrong before stating it.
Like someone posted earlier, it is clear you do not know enough about WoW to make the accusations you are making.
Mount speed? Can you manage to have 67.2% mount speed? When your mount is wounded or it's old, with varius horseshoes bonuses, or your carry load is too much for him..? No it's static fixed NOT dynamic. You have a 60% mount so you have 60% mount speed. Then you can get 100% mount and that's it.
Are there saddlebags for your mount yet? Or bardings? And what about mounted combat? Nope, none of these I guess.
What about the class system? You are either warrior, paladin... with a minor differences in your build. But you can't become warrior healer (battle cleric), you can't really become plate mail armor wearing mage, .. There is nothing in between the classes, you see? You think WoW has depth? Please explain me where it differs from other generic MMORPG's (AC2...)
Many of the 'missing' features you point out here are actually featured in the game.
Vanguard style diplomacy does not feature in the game, you are right. However in the expansion you must ally yourself with either the Scryers or Aldor, and can only complete quests and gain items from the faction you've alligned with. There is also a similar system in a zone called Desolace during the early 30s with two Centaur factions. As I understand a similar, but more complicated system will be featured in WotLK.
You can get items and abilities to boost yout mount speed in WoW. No mounted combat, or saddlebags. However, these features are hardly critical. Mounted combat would be a nice bonus, though.
You can become a warrior healer, enhancement shaman, feral druid or retribution paladin. The different possibilites for classes and playstyles are quite numerous, though again nothing compared to your blissful Vanguard. WoW is a very a generic MMO, just a pretty damn good one. I must say that Vanguard actually suffers from its versatility, as the balancing is very poor, unlike WoW.
There isn't a listen skill in WoW, per se, but hunters have several purpose-set abilities to reveal hidden units. Other classes also have ways of revealing stealthed and invisible units.
You say there are MMORPGs out there that have 'real' depth. I would not call a vast array of unbalanced and buggy features and useless extra features and functions depth. I would consider complexity harnessed to purpose depth. Something like Oblivion, or the Witcher as a full-blown MMO. A game like that would take ages to make, but would be rewarding to play for the people that like that more complicated approach. I have no preference for complex or simple titles. I play the games that I enjoy, and are thus rewarding for me to play.
You are wrong. Im not comparing it not to Vanguard really so I dont know why are you coming up with that. Im comparing it to DDo in most of the features. From noncombat skills (listen, hide, knowledge, jump, swim..) to the character customization depth.
And no you can't become whatever you want in WoW. You mean shaman is a battle cleric? You got to be kidding me. What if i want to be a healer+elemental mage. Or divine mage or simply illusionist. In WoW you are either fire or frost.
Healer + elemental mage = elemental shaman.An enhancement shaman is very much like a battle cleric. He can wield a shield and one handed weapon, a two handed weapon or even dual weild two weapons at once. And, he can heal, debuff enemies, remove poison, etc.
WoW is not based on the D&D ruleset so no, jumping does not have a set skill level.
Also, please prove me wrong before stating it.
Like someone posted earlier, it is clear you do not know enough about WoW to make the accusations you are making.
No don't tell me you consider enhancment shaman a battle cleric. You must be kidding me.This discussion is pointless if you think that someone must spend at least 2 years in WoW to know enough about WoW.
REALITY CHECK