“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
Then why do you dislike WOW, with its quest content so much superior to other MMORPGs on the market?
It has the better journey, why are you focusing on the dings coming in faster?
Not to rain on your parade but that is just your opinion and not a fact.
And most old timers like leveling, and I don't see the problem with that. The whole endgame focus we seen in the last few years at least made MMOs more boring for me.
Leveling used to be fun, now it is just a tutorial.
Regardless of leveling speed or the structure around it, you do cooler shit in WOW than simply grinding mobs.
Unless killing mobs repeatedly is literally the only thing you care about, WOW simply offers a better breadth of activities than other games.
Cooler shit like what? What makes WoWs quest based gameplay any different then games like Lord Of the Rings or Everquest 2?
Sounds just like any other theme park quest based game out there and it all of it sounds like stuff a 10 year old kid would enjoy doing. If a mmo came out and gave a list like that of things to do people would laugh. That is not what people are looking for. The MAN is looking for a real mmo that offers challenge for him and his wife.
Holy cow, I just facepalmed myself so hard that I gave myself a concussion.
Then why do you dislike WOW, with its quest content so much superior to other MMORPGs on the market?
It has the better journey, why are you focusing on the dings coming in faster?
Not to rain on your parade but that is just your opinion and not a fact.
And most old timers like leveling, and I don't see the problem with that. The whole endgame focus we seen in the last few years at least made MMOs more boring for me.
Leveling used to be fun, now it is just a tutorial.
Regardless of leveling speed or the structure around it, you do cooler shit in WOW than simply grinding mobs.
Unless killing mobs repeatedly is literally the only thing you care about, WOW simply offers a better breadth of activities than other games.
Cooler shit like what? What makes WoWs quest based gameplay any different then games like Lord Of the Rings or Everquest 2?
The number of different types of activities is considerably larger than other games.
Joust minigame.
Plants vs Zombies minigame.
Jumping from back to back of dragons as you kill them.
Killing people while you're both on the same dragon.
Pseudo-RTS minigame.
Using grappling hooks to pull dwarves off gryphons flying in the air, before killing them.
Laying landmines to kill incoming rushes of enemies.
Fighting off werewolves as they chase you on horseback, while you flee through a forest
Becoming an giant abomination and fighting off waves of incoming zombies.
Firing grappling lines at giants and pulling on it to bring them down (AT-AT style)
Sneaking through enemy patrols stealthed to set demolition packs.
Gunning a tank turret.
Bombing from a bomber.
Obliterating things with dragonfire on dragon back.
Switching between tailgun, bomber, and engineer slots on a long bombing mission.
Rolling as a fireball to obliterate 1000 gnomes (Katamari minigame)
Entering the spirit realm to kill haunting spirits who can't normally be seen.
Becoming a death knight with completely unique abilities to fight off waves of spirits.
Dropping an ogre into a airship prop, slicing him into pieces.
Becoming the lich king and raising an army, starting with a single corpse.
Taming a seahorse by holding on tight as it tries to shake you.
Running from safe zone to safe zone inside the maw of madness as you kill tentacles to save shaman friends (who join you in combat.)
Leading packs of enemies with artillery fire.
Driving a steam tank.
This isn't subjective preference. The breadth of unique activities is objectively larger.
(sorry for the incomplete list...I got bored.)
Sounds just like any other theme park quest based game out there and it all of it sounds like stuff a 10 year old kid would enjoy doing. If a mmo came out and gave a list like that of things to do people would laugh. That is not what people are looking for. The MAN is looking for a real mmo that offers challenge for him and his wife.
On this one I have to agree with Axehilt- WoW does have an enormous variety of quests, moreso than any other MMO I've played. The problem is, almost the entirety of them are set up for soloing exclusively and you can find similar mechanics done to a much better degree in single player games. If you're looking for a single player experience while leveling with a great variety then WoW does this extremely well. If you're into socializing, grouping, or taking in the sights/lore then WoW is absolutely abysmal.
On this one I have to agree with Axehilt- WoW does have an enormous variety of quests, moreso than any other MMO I've played. The problem is, almost the entirety of them are set up for soloing exclusively and you can find similar mechanics done to a much better degree in single player games. If you're looking for a single player experience while leveling with a great variety then WoW does this extremely well. If you're into socializing, grouping, or taking in the sights/lore then WoW is absolutely abysmal.
EQ2 also have loads of different kinds of quests, and it has a lot more multiplayer quests than Wow as well. EQ2s longer quests like Signatures and HQs are very good multiplayer quests that varies between very easy and really hard.
Of course do EQ2 have loads of boring grind quests as well, more than Wow but you can level up without doing them,
Wows quests are not bad I wouldn't call them the best either, neither in variety or quality. Better than average.
It's not how fast you gain levels. It's what you do along the way. When a really grindy game asks you to go kill 1000 furbolgs in order to level, then problem isn't that it takes a long time to gain the level. It's that you have to kill 1000 furbolgs, which is way too many unless you can kill them at a rate of about two per second.
Or conversely, if you level fast in a game, the problem isn't that you reached the level cap too fast. It's that you ran out of content too soon. In both cases, the problem is the same: not enough content. Or more to the point, not enough real content, as opposed to mindless grinding.
On this one I have to agree with Axehilt- WoW does have an enormous variety of quests, moreso than any other MMO I've played. The problem is, almost the entirety of them are set up for soloing exclusively and you can find similar mechanics done to a much better degree in single player games. If you're looking for a single player experience while leveling with a great variety then WoW does this extremely well. If you're into socializing, grouping, or taking in the sights/lore then WoW is absolutely abysmal.
EQ2 also have loads of different kinds of quests, and it has a lot more multiplayer quests than Wow as well. EQ2s longer quests like Signatures and HQs are very good multiplayer quests that varies between very easy and really hard.
Of course do EQ2 have loads of boring grind quests as well, more than Wow but you can level up without doing them,
Wows quests are not bad I wouldn't call them the best either, neither in variety or quality. Better than average.
If WoW doesn't have the best quests, please tell me what game does.
Then why do you dislike WOW, with its quest content so much superior to other MMORPGs on the market?
It has the better journey, why are you focusing on the dings coming in faster?
Not to rain on your parade but that is just your opinion and not a fact.
And most old timers like leveling, and I don't see the problem with that. The whole endgame focus we seen in the last few years at least made MMOs more boring for me.
Leveling used to be fun, now it is just a tutorial.
Regardless of leveling speed or the structure around it, you do cooler shit in WOW than simply grinding mobs.
Unless killing mobs repeatedly is literally the only thing you care about, WOW simply offers a better breadth of activities than other games.
Cooler shit like what? What makes WoWs quest based gameplay any different then games like Lord Of the Rings or Everquest 2?
The number of different types of activities is considerably larger than other games.
Joust minigame.
Plants vs Zombies minigame.
Jumping from back to back of dragons as you kill them.
Killing people while you're both on the same dragon.
Pseudo-RTS minigame.
Using grappling hooks to pull dwarves off gryphons flying in the air, before killing them.
Laying landmines to kill incoming rushes of enemies.
Fighting off werewolves as they chase you on horseback, while you flee through a forest
Becoming an giant abomination and fighting off waves of incoming zombies.
Firing grappling lines at giants and pulling on it to bring them down (AT-AT style)
Sneaking through enemy patrols stealthed to set demolition packs.
Gunning a tank turret.
Bombing from a bomber.
Obliterating things with dragonfire on dragon back.
Switching between tailgun, bomber, and engineer slots on a long bombing mission.
Rolling as a fireball to obliterate 1000 gnomes (Katamari minigame)
Entering the spirit realm to kill haunting spirits who can't normally be seen.
Becoming a death knight with completely unique abilities to fight off waves of spirits.
Dropping an ogre into a airship prop, slicing him into pieces.
Becoming the lich king and raising an army, starting with a single corpse.
Taming a seahorse by holding on tight as it tries to shake you.
Running from safe zone to safe zone inside the maw of madness as you kill tentacles to save shaman friends (who join you in combat.)
Leading packs of enemies with artillery fire.
Driving a steam tank.
This isn't subjective preference. The breadth of unique activities is objectively larger.
(sorry for the incomplete list...I got bored.)
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
Then why do you dislike WOW, with its quest content so much superior to other MMORPGs on the market?
It has the better journey, why are you focusing on the dings coming in faster?
Not to rain on your parade but that is just your opinion and not a fact.
And most old timers like leveling, and I don't see the problem with that. The whole endgame focus we seen in the last few years at least made MMOs more boring for me.
Leveling used to be fun, now it is just a tutorial.
Regardless of leveling speed or the structure around it, you do cooler shit in WOW than simply grinding mobs.
Unless killing mobs repeatedly is literally the only thing you care about, WOW simply offers a better breadth of activities than other games.
Cooler shit like what? What makes WoWs quest based gameplay any different then games like Lord Of the Rings or Everquest 2?
The number of different types of activities is considerably larger than other games.
Joust minigame.
Plants vs Zombies minigame.
Jumping from back to back of dragons as you kill them.
Killing people while you're both on the same dragon.
Pseudo-RTS minigame.
Using grappling hooks to pull dwarves off gryphons flying in the air, before killing them.
Laying landmines to kill incoming rushes of enemies.
Fighting off werewolves as they chase you on horseback, while you flee through a forest
Becoming an giant abomination and fighting off waves of incoming zombies.
Firing grappling lines at giants and pulling on it to bring them down (AT-AT style)
Sneaking through enemy patrols stealthed to set demolition packs.
Gunning a tank turret.
Bombing from a bomber.
Obliterating things with dragonfire on dragon back.
Switching between tailgun, bomber, and engineer slots on a long bombing mission.
Rolling as a fireball to obliterate 1000 gnomes (Katamari minigame)
Entering the spirit realm to kill haunting spirits who can't normally be seen.
Becoming a death knight with completely unique abilities to fight off waves of spirits.
Dropping an ogre into a airship prop, slicing him into pieces.
Becoming the lich king and raising an army, starting with a single corpse.
Taming a seahorse by holding on tight as it tries to shake you.
Running from safe zone to safe zone inside the maw of madness as you kill tentacles to save shaman friends (who join you in combat.)
Leading packs of enemies with artillery fire.
Driving a steam tank.
This isn't subjective preference. The breadth of unique activities is objectively larger.
(sorry for the incomplete list...I got bored.)
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
They are helluvanice diversions and are very fun. But whatever, I guess 12 million, or maybe more, players must be wrong....
Seriously, there's quite a bit more goodies to be had now that WoW has redone the majority of the quests in the game. 80-85 is particularly entertaining.
12 Million people don't make them right either.. FYI.. When are people going to STOP using "quantity" as a tool in measuring quality or preference.. Can you imagine the rhetoric of "my religion is better then your religion because we have more people"... I can use amusement parks as an example too.. According to the numbers Disney is the best... Not in my world.. I grew up enjoying Cedar Point in Ohio and in my opinion that park BLOWS AWAY anything Disney can throw at it.. But that is just my preference.. We won't even bring up McDonalds... oops.. I just did.. dammit.. Sorry..
I like what I like, you like what you like.. neither is right or wrong in general.. BTW.. Back before McD's changed their recipe on french fries, I loved them.. I thought they had the best fries of any fast food chain.. I would often go thru the drive thru, just to order fries ONLY.. But their sammies suck.. I can't see how anyone calls a Big Mack a burger.. really.. Not sure I like the new Wendy's fries yet.. I loved their thicker fries, they were perfect for scooping chili
I wish there was a nice medium these days. Wow and its like are way way way to fast. Then there is L2 which is way way way to slow. I am one that would love a 10 month leveling curve but they do need to make it more interesting than go grind trees for hours. I thought EQ2 had it right in the beginning combining questing model with raiding and group content fairly early on. Epic mobs which may have taken 2 groups in the mid 20s I think it was were much fun.
I think the biggest issue with having lots of 'group' content at the sub max level mark is that your playerbase will eventually level up beyond that point.
And if they do who will the new players group with? This really becomes a problem if this 'group' content becomes mandatory to level up as this effectively hinders your playerbase (IE sub numbers) from growing.
To counter this, if the group content is optional, not many will do those group content in the first place.
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
A 'level' shouldn't be anything more than a graduated method to measure your overall progress in the game.... the sum of your overall experiences/encounters... your 'exposure' to various elements in the game (pvp/dungeons/open word npc's, exploration, etc.,..).
Acquiring levels fast helps those that need 'instant gratification'... they need reassurance that they are playing the game correctly. The 'ding' effect helps them. 2nd spin on fast levelling --- even though WoW has millions of subs, the number of people that play this game solo is overwhelming. Those 'solo' players need (psychologically 'need') some sort of interraction that truly does offer some form of praise.... and that 'ding' does that for them. Even if there's nobody with them to say 'gratz'.. they got it from the game. And trust me, there are some people that 'need' guild-mates and others to say 'gratz' when they hit lvl 10 or 20 (insignificant, easy to 'achieve' levels). Bizz even made those markers 'achievements' to help that type of person out even more.
Who else needs fast dings/levels? There are a lot of really 'fail' parents out there that allow MMO's to be their children's babysitters...... the 'carrot on a stick' + ding effect really helps keeps kids attention, too.
(I apologize in advance for spelling errors. I'm working from a system that is normally used for FPS games... and the keyboard is about 1/2 functional at this pt).
Until games are designed without level based boundaries and more skill based... we'll keep having this debate.
The thing is... if a game is 'skill based', then only 1 person really needs to do something in a game that requires said skill. If they document 'how' they did it and put it on the web, then even unskilled players can research and figure out 'how' to do the task. I'm not saying it's necessarily 'cheating', but games should be more adaptive, so that not every damned thing about a game can be easily referenced or categorized. If not... we continue down 'cookie cutter' pathways that games like WoW lead us... at 85, every player with class 'x' uses 'this spec', 'this rotation', 'this gear' with 'these enchantments' OR ELSE they wear the fail boat badge. I'm 10000% tired of that sh*t too... having had mutiple characters in each expansion RAID and see the very highest level of content.
My wife and I are sitting here thinking about what game to play, why because every game levels too damn fast now. We miss the FFXI days, or DAOC in it s early days. I had a real connection with my chars in those games and really miss the communities that came with most of those games. We recently tried Aion, only to leave for Cata:( We ve decided to go back to Aion because it takes time and some challenge to progress. This is coming from 2 of the more casual players you ll meet. So to sum it up, I hope more games will come out in the future where I don t get 4-5 levels in a day, doing next to nothing:)
Go play Vanguard,you can slow your level speed down. The usa server telon has a nice population and the game is the best PVE game out today.
BlackWatch for Pres 12.. You got my vote.. Perfectly said.. ty ty ty
PS.. Glad I'm not the only one that goes GRRR everytime says "grats" to a ding.. I loathe when people do that.. Saying grats to someone that just completed their 2 month long epic quest.. OK, I can go for that, but just simply leveling in a cake walk game.. GRRRR.. That would be like me saying "grats" to people after they get their paychecks..
A 'level' shouldn't be anything more than a graduated method to measure your overall progress in the game.... the sum of your overall experiences/encounters... your 'exposure' to various elements in the game (pvp/dungeons/open word npc's, exploration, etc.,..).
Acquiring levels fast helps those that need 'instant gratification'... they need reassurance that they are playing the game correctly. The 'ding' effect helps them. 2nd spin on fast levelling --- even though WoW has millions of subs, the number of people that play this game solo is overwhelming. Those 'solo' players need (psychologically 'need') some sort of interraction that truly does offer some form of praise.... and that 'ding' does that for them. Even if there's nobody with them to say 'gratz'.. they got it from the game. And trust me, there are some people that 'need' guild-mates and others to say 'gratz' when they hit lvl 10 or 20 (insignificant, easy to 'achieve' levels). Bizz even made those markers 'achievements' to help that type of person out even more.
Who else needs fast dings/levels? There are a lot of really 'fail' parents out there that allow MMO's to be their children's babysitters...... the 'carrot on a stick' + ding effect really helps keeps kids attention, too.
(I apologize in advance for spelling errors. I'm working from a system that is normally used for FPS games... and the keyboard is about 1/2 functional at this pt).
Until games are designed without level based boundaries and more skill based... we'll keep having this debate.
The thing is... if a game is 'skill based', then only 1 person really needs to do something in a game that requires said skill. If they document 'how' they did it and put it on the web, then even unskilled players can research and figure out 'how' to do the task. I'm not saying it's necessarily 'cheating', but games should be more adaptive, so that not every damned thing about a game can be easily referenced or categorized. If not... we continue down 'cookie cutter' pathways that games like WoW lead us... at 85, every player with class 'x' uses 'this spec', 'this rotation', 'this gear' with 'these enchantments' OR ELSE they wear the fail boat badge. I'm 10000% tired of that sh*t too... having had mutiple characters in each expansion RAID and see the very highest level of content.
/rant off
sorry, I need more coffee, stat.
Nice.. I actualy enjoyed reading that! lol
side note.. i would just like the chalenge of mmos back..to explore again.. *sigh*. also for devs to stop listening to people complain about things being too hard and cutting the dificulty in half when the game normaly isent even that dificult.. just takes TIME.
Even though I did not play Guild Wars long I think it has the best way of doing missions / quest. I remember getting a mission and it really took time to get a good group together and fight your way through a desert or mountain to reach the destianation. You did not have a quest book full of simple go here and go there quest. You were mostly always in a group and not running around solo like in these theme parks.
Interesting read. As far as the WOW quests and whether they re the best on the market has no releavence to how we feel. Good quests help sure, but I don t want to complete 1 or 2 and gain another level. I know theres so many people out there that need instant gratification, but maybe if a company could just bring out 1 game that takes some time, and it actually felt like an achievement to level again. As far as Vanguard goes, if the population is decent on a server, we would consider it again, we had chars around 35 I think on Seradon. We left because we hit a wall of harder quests (which we still liked) even though we couldn t find enough people to do them.
They are helluvanice diversions and are very fun. But whatever, I guess 12 million, or maybe more, players must be wrong....
Argumentum ad populum is a term you should familiarize yourself with. It's a common logical fallacy to assume that something is good just because it is popular. 12 million people can be wrong. In this case, I think they are.
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
Are you suggesting it's preferable to play a game where all you do is craft and kill monsters?
And please, before you state that 99% of quests are "kill x mobs" you might want to actually look at the ratio of quests in Wowhead. Perhaps 60% of the quests are kill x mobs, with 40% being the unique types of things I listed. And while that's not an ideal mix, it's leaps and bounds above what any other MMORPG out there is doing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I wish there was a nice medium these days. Wow and its like are way way way to fast. Then there is L2 which is way way way to slow. I am one that would love a 10 month leveling curve but they do need to make it more interesting than go grind trees for hours. I thought EQ2 had it right in the beginning combining questing model with raiding and group content fairly early on. Epic mobs which may have taken 2 groups in the mid 20s I think it was were much fun.
I think the biggest issue with having lots of 'group' content at the sub max level mark is that your playerbase will eventually level up beyond that point.
And if they do who will the new players group with? This really becomes a problem if this 'group' content becomes mandatory to level up as this effectively hinders your playerbase (IE sub numbers) from growing.
To counter this, if the group content is optional, not many will do those group content in the first place.
MENTOR baby.. mentor.. lol I just did this last night with a guildie that needed help.. So we grouped up and I mentored my level down to HIS.. Problem solved with NOT having players around to hook up at lower levels.. AND I was earning exp while grouped with him towards leveling my original level.. So it's a win / win situation
On this one I have to agree with Axehilt- WoW does have an enormous variety of quests, moreso than any other MMO I've played. The problem is, almost the entirety of them are set up for soloing exclusively and you can find similar mechanics done to a much better degree in single player games. If you're looking for a single player experience while leveling with a great variety then WoW does this extremely well. If you're into socializing, grouping, or taking in the sights/lore then WoW is absolutely abysmal.
Anyone who calls WOW a weak grouping game probably hasn't played since Dungeon Finder.
And the sights/lore comment seems really off to me too. I think only EQ beats it in terms of lore (even then, I sorta doubt EQ lets you interact so directly with the characters as I do in WOW. Do you fight alongside the major characters, or do they just sit there as static questgivers?) Sights is partially a comment on their visual tech, which is fair, but honestly they do a great job of putting you in a variety of interesting situations (see my big list: all that stuff is visually realized.)
The social comment is accurate, if overstated. Millions of players enjoy their WOW guilds, so even though I think WOW's overall social featureset makes it less suitable to really great social interactions it's still plenty social (or it wouldn't do so well.) TBH, since they added the real friends thing I've socialized considerably more since it's the real life people I know. I even xferred servers when I noticed they were clumping primarily on one server!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
Are you suggesting it's preferable to play a game where all you do is craft and kill monsters?
And please, before you state that 99% of quests are "kill x mobs" you might want to actually look at the ratio of quests in Wowhead. Perhaps 60% of the quests are kill x mobs, with 40% being the unique types of things I listed. And while that's not an ideal mix, it's leaps and bounds above what any other MMORPG out there is doing.
I agree. I'm normally in the "we need something different than WoW!" camp, but I will wholeheartedly admit that WoW is the very best in its class. It's class being quest/raid-based MMORPG. Especially after Cataclysm.
The quests in the game are so much more interesting than they were before. I mean there is a quest that is an homage to double rainbow (Oh my god!) where you get a device to make raindbows and imps run screaming "It's so intense!" or "It's too much!"
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
Are you suggesting it's preferable to play a game where all you do is craft and kill monsters?
And please, before you state that 99% of quests are "kill x mobs" you might want to actually look at the ratio of quests in Wowhead. Perhaps 60% of the quests are kill x mobs, with 40% being the unique types of things I listed. And while that's not an ideal mix, it's leaps and bounds above what any other MMORPG out there is doing.
Axehilt, im not going to bash you for enjoying wow. But there are alot better ways of questing out there. I played wow for 3 years and ended up quiting because the game 'fealt' WAY too easy for me. And yes the games leveling is fast, yes it can be tedious, and the cartoon style graphix arent for everyone. Either way there have been plenty of other games that handled the advancement fealing alot better and it still took time.. and was FUN. Guild wars for example, while it only had 20 levels it is one of the only mmo's created that actualy makes progression fun and chalengeing thats still on the market and thriveing today. Instead of walking into an area and getting 20-30 kill or fed ex quests ( yes i have read your list, please dont quote it again) theres real missions. Real story line and lore not butched up with each expansion to make odd things fit, also you cant just hop on a mount and run your way threw a zone ignoring most things, if you even thouhgt of it and your not build for it.. you will die in that game. Ok so i can go on a LARGE rant here about how gw is supprior in ways to wow and count the ways wow is better, Either way it hink the OP is mainly looking for a chalange, somethign that takes time to get somewhere. And no that does not mean more grinding, I think your mind is poisoned by other games you may have been dissapointed with because there has been, and still are more games comeing out that are not like that. Matter affact, GW2 has no quests AT ALL!.. just somethign to think about.
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
Are you suggesting it's preferable to play a game where all you do is craft and kill monsters?
And please, before you state that 99% of quests are "kill x mobs" you might want to actually look at the ratio of quests in Wowhead. Perhaps 60% of the quests are kill x mobs, with 40% being the unique types of things I listed. And while that's not an ideal mix, it's leaps and bounds above what any other MMORPG out there is doing.
Axehilt, im not going to bash you for enjoying wow. But there are alot better ways of questing out there. I played wow for 3 years and ended up quiting because the game 'fealt' WAY too easy for me. And yes the games leveling is fast, yes it can be tedious, and the cartoon style graphix arent for everyone. Either way there have been plenty of other games that handled the advancement fealing alot better and it still took time.. and was FUN. Guild wars for example, while it only had 20 levels it is one of the only mmo's created that actualy makes progression fun and chalengeing thats still on the market and thriveing today. Instead of walking into an area and getting 20-30 kill or fed ex quests ( yes i have read your list, please dont quote it again) theres real missions. Real story line and lore not butched up with each expansion to make odd things fit, also you cant just hop on a mount and run your way threw a zone ignoring most things, if you even thouhgt of it and your not build for it.. you will die in that game. Ok so i can go on a LARGE rant here about how gw is supprior in ways to wow and count the ways wow is better, Either way it hink the OP is mainly looking for a chalange, somethign that takes time to get somewhere. And no that does not mean more grinding, I think your mind is poisoned by other games you may have been dissapointed with because there has been, and still are more games comeing out that are not like that. Matter affact, GW2 has no quests AT ALL!.. just somethign to think about.
Sure, and I agree that the meaningful missions of GW are a fantastic direction for MMORPGs to go (in fact, historically I've frequently stated that GW1 was way ahead of its time for providing instanced story-driven mission-driven gameplay.)
I'll even rescind my comment about WOW being leaps/bounds above any other MMORPG in terms of questing. GW1 is the one exception. Really it's tragic that the rest of the game didn't carry through for PVE. GW1 had awesome mission design and amazing skill design, but the limited progression and skill cap prevented the game from being the PVE masterpiece it had the potential to be.
Also let's please stop throwing out this 20-30 kill quest nonsense. It only makes it sound like you have no clue about how WOW has played the last 4 years (since WOTLK, if not since BC.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Vanguard has a nice pace to it.
--John Ruskin
Holy cow, I just facepalmed myself so hard that I gave myself a concussion.
mmorpg.com has official jumped the shark.
On this one I have to agree with Axehilt- WoW does have an enormous variety of quests, moreso than any other MMO I've played. The problem is, almost the entirety of them are set up for soloing exclusively and you can find similar mechanics done to a much better degree in single player games. If you're looking for a single player experience while leveling with a great variety then WoW does this extremely well. If you're into socializing, grouping, or taking in the sights/lore then WoW is absolutely abysmal.
EQ2 also have loads of different kinds of quests, and it has a lot more multiplayer quests than Wow as well. EQ2s longer quests like Signatures and HQs are very good multiplayer quests that varies between very easy and really hard.
Of course do EQ2 have loads of boring grind quests as well, more than Wow but you can level up without doing them,
Wows quests are not bad I wouldn't call them the best either, neither in variety or quality. Better than average.
It's not how fast you gain levels. It's what you do along the way. When a really grindy game asks you to go kill 1000 furbolgs in order to level, then problem isn't that it takes a long time to gain the level. It's that you have to kill 1000 furbolgs, which is way too many unless you can kill them at a rate of about two per second.
Or conversely, if you level fast in a game, the problem isn't that you reached the level cap too fast. It's that you ran out of content too soon. In both cases, the problem is the same: not enough content. Or more to the point, not enough real content, as opposed to mindless grinding.
i say removed level completely, no point gaining level nowadays, really.
If WoW doesn't have the best quests, please tell me what game does.
Those watered-down minigames are nice diversions - for the few minutes they last. But they're all one-shot quests, most you can't return to once they're done. They break up the monotony, but they hardly elevate WoW's questing to anything special. 99% of the quests are still the same "Kill 20 wolves" or "Collect 30 goose feet" stuff.
They are helluvanice diversions and are very fun. But whatever, I guess 12 million, or maybe more, players must be wrong....
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
Seriously, there's quite a bit more goodies to be had now that WoW has redone the majority of the quests in the game. 80-85 is particularly entertaining.
12 Million people don't make them right either.. FYI.. When are people going to STOP using "quantity" as a tool in measuring quality or preference.. Can you imagine the rhetoric of "my religion is better then your religion because we have more people"... I can use amusement parks as an example too.. According to the numbers Disney is the best... Not in my world.. I grew up enjoying Cedar Point in Ohio and in my opinion that park BLOWS AWAY anything Disney can throw at it.. But that is just my preference.. We won't even bring up McDonalds... oops.. I just did.. dammit.. Sorry..
I like what I like, you like what you like.. neither is right or wrong in general.. BTW.. Back before McD's changed their recipe on french fries, I loved them.. I thought they had the best fries of any fast food chain.. I would often go thru the drive thru, just to order fries ONLY.. But their sammies suck.. I can't see how anyone calls a Big Mack a burger.. really.. Not sure I like the new Wendy's fries yet.. I loved their thicker fries, they were perfect for scooping chili
I think the biggest issue with having lots of 'group' content at the sub max level mark is that your playerbase will eventually level up beyond that point.
And if they do who will the new players group with? This really becomes a problem if this 'group' content becomes mandatory to level up as this effectively hinders your playerbase (IE sub numbers) from growing.
To counter this, if the group content is optional, not many will do those group content in the first place.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
A 'level' shouldn't be anything more than a graduated method to measure your overall progress in the game.... the sum of your overall experiences/encounters... your 'exposure' to various elements in the game (pvp/dungeons/open word npc's, exploration, etc.,..).
Acquiring levels fast helps those that need 'instant gratification'... they need reassurance that they are playing the game correctly. The 'ding' effect helps them. 2nd spin on fast levelling --- even though WoW has millions of subs, the number of people that play this game solo is overwhelming. Those 'solo' players need (psychologically 'need') some sort of interraction that truly does offer some form of praise.... and that 'ding' does that for them. Even if there's nobody with them to say 'gratz'.. they got it from the game. And trust me, there are some people that 'need' guild-mates and others to say 'gratz' when they hit lvl 10 or 20 (insignificant, easy to 'achieve' levels). Bizz even made those markers 'achievements' to help that type of person out even more.
Who else needs fast dings/levels? There are a lot of really 'fail' parents out there that allow MMO's to be their children's babysitters...... the 'carrot on a stick' + ding effect really helps keeps kids attention, too.
(I apologize in advance for spelling errors. I'm working from a system that is normally used for FPS games... and the keyboard is about 1/2 functional at this pt).
Until games are designed without level based boundaries and more skill based... we'll keep having this debate.
The thing is... if a game is 'skill based', then only 1 person really needs to do something in a game that requires said skill. If they document 'how' they did it and put it on the web, then even unskilled players can research and figure out 'how' to do the task. I'm not saying it's necessarily 'cheating', but games should be more adaptive, so that not every damned thing about a game can be easily referenced or categorized. If not... we continue down 'cookie cutter' pathways that games like WoW lead us... at 85, every player with class 'x' uses 'this spec', 'this rotation', 'this gear' with 'these enchantments' OR ELSE they wear the fail boat badge. I'm 10000% tired of that sh*t too... having had mutiple characters in each expansion RAID and see the very highest level of content.
/rant off
sorry, I need more coffee, stat.
Go play Vanguard,you can slow your level speed down. The usa server telon has a nice population and the game is the best PVE game out today.
BlackWatch for Pres 12.. You got my vote.. Perfectly said.. ty ty ty
PS.. Glad I'm not the only one that goes GRRR everytime says "grats" to a ding.. I loathe when people do that.. Saying grats to someone that just completed their 2 month long epic quest.. OK, I can go for that, but just simply leveling in a cake walk game.. GRRRR.. That would be like me saying "grats" to people after they get their paychecks..
Nice.. I actualy enjoyed reading that! lol
side note.. i would just like the chalenge of mmos back..to explore again.. *sigh*. also for devs to stop listening to people complain about things being too hard and cutting the dificulty in half when the game normaly isent even that dificult.. just takes TIME.
Even though I did not play Guild Wars long I think it has the best way of doing missions / quest. I remember getting a mission and it really took time to get a good group together and fight your way through a desert or mountain to reach the destianation. You did not have a quest book full of simple go here and go there quest. You were mostly always in a group and not running around solo like in these theme parks.
Interesting read. As far as the WOW quests and whether they re the best on the market has no releavence to how we feel. Good quests help sure, but I don t want to complete 1 or 2 and gain another level. I know theres so many people out there that need instant gratification, but maybe if a company could just bring out 1 game that takes some time, and it actually felt like an achievement to level again. As far as Vanguard goes, if the population is decent on a server, we would consider it again, we had chars around 35 I think on Seradon. We left because we hit a wall of harder quests (which we still liked) even though we couldn t find enough people to do them.
Argumentum ad populum is a term you should familiarize yourself with. It's a common logical fallacy to assume that something is good just because it is popular. 12 million people can be wrong. In this case, I think they are.
Are you suggesting it's preferable to play a game where all you do is craft and kill monsters?
And please, before you state that 99% of quests are "kill x mobs" you might want to actually look at the ratio of quests in Wowhead. Perhaps 60% of the quests are kill x mobs, with 40% being the unique types of things I listed. And while that's not an ideal mix, it's leaps and bounds above what any other MMORPG out there is doing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
MENTOR baby.. mentor.. lol I just did this last night with a guildie that needed help.. So we grouped up and I mentored my level down to HIS.. Problem solved with NOT having players around to hook up at lower levels.. AND I was earning exp while grouped with him towards leveling my original level.. So it's a win / win situation
Anyone who calls WOW a weak grouping game probably hasn't played since Dungeon Finder.
And the sights/lore comment seems really off to me too. I think only EQ beats it in terms of lore (even then, I sorta doubt EQ lets you interact so directly with the characters as I do in WOW. Do you fight alongside the major characters, or do they just sit there as static questgivers?) Sights is partially a comment on their visual tech, which is fair, but honestly they do a great job of putting you in a variety of interesting situations (see my big list: all that stuff is visually realized.)
The social comment is accurate, if overstated. Millions of players enjoy their WOW guilds, so even though I think WOW's overall social featureset makes it less suitable to really great social interactions it's still plenty social (or it wouldn't do so well.) TBH, since they added the real friends thing I've socialized considerably more since it's the real life people I know. I even xferred servers when I noticed they were clumping primarily on one server!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I agree. I'm normally in the "we need something different than WoW!" camp, but I will wholeheartedly admit that WoW is the very best in its class. It's class being quest/raid-based MMORPG. Especially after Cataclysm.
The quests in the game are so much more interesting than they were before. I mean there is a quest that is an homage to double rainbow (Oh my god!) where you get a device to make raindbows and imps run screaming "It's so intense!" or "It's too much!"
I mean, come on that rules!
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Axehilt, im not going to bash you for enjoying wow. But there are alot better ways of questing out there. I played wow for 3 years and ended up quiting because the game 'fealt' WAY too easy for me. And yes the games leveling is fast, yes it can be tedious, and the cartoon style graphix arent for everyone. Either way there have been plenty of other games that handled the advancement fealing alot better and it still took time.. and was FUN. Guild wars for example, while it only had 20 levels it is one of the only mmo's created that actualy makes progression fun and chalengeing thats still on the market and thriveing today. Instead of walking into an area and getting 20-30 kill or fed ex quests ( yes i have read your list, please dont quote it again) theres real missions. Real story line and lore not butched up with each expansion to make odd things fit, also you cant just hop on a mount and run your way threw a zone ignoring most things, if you even thouhgt of it and your not build for it.. you will die in that game. Ok so i can go on a LARGE rant here about how gw is supprior in ways to wow and count the ways wow is better, Either way it hink the OP is mainly looking for a chalange, somethign that takes time to get somewhere. And no that does not mean more grinding, I think your mind is poisoned by other games you may have been dissapointed with because there has been, and still are more games comeing out that are not like that. Matter affact, GW2 has no quests AT ALL!.. just somethign to think about.
Sure, and I agree that the meaningful missions of GW are a fantastic direction for MMORPGs to go (in fact, historically I've frequently stated that GW1 was way ahead of its time for providing instanced story-driven mission-driven gameplay.)
I'll even rescind my comment about WOW being leaps/bounds above any other MMORPG in terms of questing. GW1 is the one exception. Really it's tragic that the rest of the game didn't carry through for PVE. GW1 had awesome mission design and amazing skill design, but the limited progression and skill cap prevented the game from being the PVE masterpiece it had the potential to be.
Also let's please stop throwing out this 20-30 kill quest nonsense. It only makes it sound like you have no clue about how WOW has played the last 4 years (since WOTLK, if not since BC.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver