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[General Article] World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Review in Progress #3 - The End Game
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
As the third week of the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor expansion has come and gone, many people like me are approaching the end game, the thing to which we are all supposed to aspire. Raiding guilds have their teams busily working through heroic dungeons to gear up to meet the item level requirement for the first raid set to hit the live game on December 2nd. It's an exciting time for many players.
And yet...
Somehow I am left with this uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach and the words quietly breezing through my mind, "Is this all there is?"
Read more of Suzie Ford's World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Review in Progress #3 - The End Game.
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Comments
I'm not really sure I understand the whole "grind" concept. Right, so you've paid X ($40 or whatever) to get WoD...now you have played the 30-40 hours required to experience *most* of the content you really wanted to experience. So why carry on if you're really only into "new" stuff? You got a good PC game's worth of time for your money...treat it like a single-player and walk away (cancel sub till the next content drop)...obviously RE-PLAYING content is going to be equal to "grind"....in any game in the past, present or future...
I'm doing Heroic Dungeons, gearing up but also improving my clear time (as that is something I personally enjoy). Repetitive? Yes, but my job is repetitive too by those standards...I am improving in both cases every day tho.
Been there done that.
Pandaria was my last WoW expansion. With much reluctance, I bought. I had a blast for 3 weeks. Even for a person like me who hates questing, there was something fresh about Pandaria that just felt good.
Then the endgame hit. It was like a switch was flipped. I was back doing the samething I had been doing for years. Grinding for gear. Grinding for gear I would have to grind for again in the next 3-4 months.
I pressed on for another week. By then I had realized my WoW days were over. I logged out in the daily area, and never logged in again. The seams were showing. I decided to leave it at that and remember all the good times I had years past.
I never grind'ed in Wushu or ESO. Saying that is all an mmorpg is is selling the genre far too short.
I played Wushu a lot in the past. And Wushu is all about grind too. Grind is not just about do something x321421 to gain an item. Wushu got one of the most grind based leveling system out there. Is it fun? Hell yeah. But it is pure grind. That's the reality. In Eso you're grinding for vr. That's a grind too. Even pvp has it's own grind. When I played War I grinded like hell for rr and renown gears with just doing pvp. Like I said. All mmos got grind in a way. That's the reality. And If you're not a rp player you have to do grind.
I think this review should be rewritten after highmaul. An take all that nonsense about grind out, it's an mmorpg.. there is long time-gated stuff to do in all of them. It's a staple of the genre. Kinda pointless to base the whole 3rd article on that fact. How about tell us about the cool stuff there is to do at endgame without equating it to a "grind" and making it sound bad. Ever heard of an "objective review". Try it.
Ps: I still like your write-ups Suzie Ford. I just think this one could have been done better.
HAHA LOL
Good ol' mmorpg.com will never learn really.
WOD is full of surprises, Grind is the argument. Really ?
Shrug: play the duds dudes./
Love WoW - but my sub runs out in 3 hours and I won't be resubbing for some time. I think Warlords is great, but my tastes have outgrown what Blizzard is offering at this time.
Lol yeah right - resubbed already
DMKano writes " ... there is an entire segment of playerbase that doesn't play any game longer than 6 weeks."
I think he's right. It could be grind, dislike for endgame activities, ADHD, 100 other reasons, or, more likely, all of the above.
I believe this will go on until someone comes up with a fundamental change to how these games are designed to play. These forums have a never-ending stream of threads about the next great WOW killer. What is needed is a way for players to grow endlessly in a perceivably meaningful way without creating a situation where new players cannot hope to ever compete. I do know that gear grinding is not the answer. It was new and fun 10 years ago but now its 10 years of ...SERIOUSLY OLD....
I don't know what the solution is. I thought skill based games had a piece of the solution but the implementation to date has been disappointing. I tried games that have a definite ending and restart, but there the social dynamic just created an insider player group that preserved across games making it impossible for newcomers to be competitive. Endless PVP is (to me) no better than raiding for gear; fun at first but it gets old. Dailies as currently designed (i.e.) do the same 4-10 quests forever; DEFINITELY not the answer.
Like I said, I do not know the answer, but I do wish a at least one of the AAA developer/publishers would start a game design looking this issue before they start building their game because I suspect it is economically prohibitive to retrofit into a game after its built.
I have a life, its just different from yours.....
double posted by accident - sorry.
I have a life, its just different from yours.....
Does a priest really need 50 spells? Small heal, big heal, group heal, and debuff removal should be enough. Why have 50 when 4 would be just fine.
Blizzard would find that so many more players would be interested in their dungeons if they cut the spellbooks down to 1/10 the size and reduced boss mechanics to one per boss.
Most players aren't playing WoW looking to be challenged. Life has enough challenges already. They want to be entertained and they want to relax. It's impossible to get either when you're stressing out about whether you used the right heal.
Pretty much. Well said. Left WoW after we downed Rag in Cata...leveled two characters to 90 in Mists like..6 months after release. It was the worst leveling experience in the game, ever. I hated the expansion, I hated the idea, I hated the theme, I hated everything about it and it is half of the reason I stopped playing the game. Actually, its the entire reason.
WoD looks great, but the little good things about it came an expansion or two too late. There are better games that do things better, like tell a story...questing..dungeons...graphics, audio....character/build diversity...
Why play this old game? Done with ti.
I am sorry but no..WUSHU has grind too. You are telling me you never did any reptitive tasks in WUSHU an every time you logged in you had fresh and new things to do? i highly doubt that.
Repetitive tasks = grind.
You can not have a MMO without this till we can teach robots to programme MMOS for us and provide us with unlimited new things to do.
Thats...pretty much it. Thats the endgame. Level to max level might be tolerable, or even great. And unless pet battles, toy collections, or "crafting" or some other run of the mill non-raid system can keep you busy for months on end...you either PvP or raid. Thats kind of it. Unless you move like a TURTLE in the game and it takes you 4 months to level one toon and you are an altaholic...theres not a lot. Raid or PvP...thats the ultimate. Thats the "test your gear, test your skill, test your meddle" stuff.
For me, the only way Id play WoW again is if Id raid. And the game isn't worth 15$ just to raid. Id pay 15$ for games like ESO that have GREAT leveling content,. and are BUILDING on their endgame(and if youre too short sighted and immediately dismiss ESO, check again. They are adding to it in coming patches).
And FYI...I just picked up ESO about a month ago, so im not some long time fanboi.
Pandaria? Wake up! The review is about WoD!
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In Eso the Npc' s chase you with quests... and the boring grind for level 50 plus something...
Its the most boring single player game I ever played. Total waste of money and time.
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I kinda felt that way about WOW and that was during vanilla. After playing SWG it was quite underwhelming.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Yeas there's not much else to WoW to be honest, been there done that for 10 years. Now that we've played outstanding sandboxes games such themepark MMO just feel bland and unfulfilling once you realise that it's all about killing and looting the desire for more isn't met and the fact that they keep dumbing down and simplifying the game doesn't help. Instead of instantly buying WoD I picked a month of gametime to see if I would still feel like playing after 2-3 weeks and well it's been a week and im already bored of it overall so good move. It would qualify it more enjoyable than a game like League or DOTA overall but still hyper shallow with all these gameplay simplifications and emphasis on grind instead never ending loop of gear acquisition. Not an immersive experience at all anymore but it was back in 2004 when the art style and physics were pretty dam good for it's time.
At least concerning themepark MMO a game like ESO offer an immersive experience with voiced dialogues and all that up to date stuff. Big + for the first-person view definitely the closest to a true rpg experience. Im about to ressub now that they've added a bunch of goddies I left back in april because I had more important things to do and all these bots were ruining the experience but I could tell the overall quality and potential. Plus they're venturing into the sandbox style with their idea of justice system which is great. Also pretty sure that Blizzard threw a few bribes around to some gaming websites like their very likely "bitch" Gamespot, pardon my language. What's a few thousands when you can reap steadily millions from loyal customers. The game also received underserved flak because some players clearly expected Skyrim Online, where's some other clueless people expected no monthly subs and so.
So yeah no thanks Blizzard i'll keep an eye on EQ next and the likes.
What "outstanding sandbox" are you referring to?
I'm definitely getting bored. I actually preferred having tons of dailies with many factions to get some loot. The apexis dailies feel like a total chore compared to it.
I definitely feel forced to do heroics as there just isn't much else to go for. But my plan is just to do LFR content and so maybe I should just level alts for a while.
if you think WoW is only grind, then that is because you played it like a grinder.
what most people tend to forget; WoW has like 10 years of story writing in it, and when you actually DO those quests (and enjoy em like me for example), you will not only grind.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Ive played it, Ive found it to be just what I expected, Boring, and over priced with a lack of any meaningful content. Burning Crusade was done with more content, more attention, and more care towards the players.
WoD has Activisions feel to it... low quality with plenty of hype for the mindless masses.
If you disagree you have that right, however look at Burning Crusade and the content of that expansion then look at WoD and tell me you dont feel jipped.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
I have to completely disagree here. Burning Crusade was skipped by a lot of people I know because it really lacked content.
I like the garrisons feature in this game. I suppose if you don't craft, just doing the end game would be boring. Personally I don't see any grind at this point.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D