Large Content Patch To Precede Upcoming WoW Expansion 159
Blizzard has announced they will be releasing a sizable patch to prepare for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft. The patch, similar to one they released prior to the first expansion, will include the new profession (Inscription), new talents for each class, and two new arenas. The patch will be up on the Public Test Realm "soon," according to a Blizzard rep, but it will require significant testing before reaching the live servers. Blizzard developers Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack gave a related interview recently to Videogamer in which they mentioned that a graphical reboot for World of Warcraft "may never be necessary." We've been following the development of Wrath of the Lich King for a while now.
Re:Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
"Now, granted, the game is really geared towards leveling up and acquired virtual items so that you are better than someone else."
I never really cared about being better than someone else. I just wanted levels and gear so I could survive in new zones or instances and enjoy more of the game.
Living in the past (Score:3, Interesting)
VideoGamer.com: Do you guys expect a drop off when Warhammer Online comes out?
TC: It's hard to say. We haven't really experienced any meaningful drop-offs in the past.
After how successful the WAR Preview Weekend was and how exciting it was playing a new game with new classes and new areas, I think it's hubris for them to think that they aren't going to lose a lot of their player base. I know my household will have two accounts cancelled, and I know of about 10+ friends who are going to play as well. I don't know if they will cancel their WOW accounts but they won't be logged in.
I think the hardcore and casual PvP'ers will be playing WAR soon after launch if not at launch. The RvR in the preview was fantastic and just like what everyone has always wanted in WOW. It exists in every zone in WAR or you can do scenarios (battlegrounds). There aren't just 4 battlegrounds to play in and you can queue any where at any time and return to where you were when done. It's also possible to get gear without having to rely on a raid. And when you PvP you get XP.
Blizzard is going to try to implement some world PvP in with the expansion but it will probably be too little too late for the fans of PvP. Don't get me wrong, it won't kill WOW by any means, WOW will continue positive growth for a while until there is a contender in Asia, where the bulk of their user accounts exist. But WAR will make them stop and think about their direction. They might finally relent and merge many of their low-population servers. Maybe they'll drop their insane e-sport fetish that they've had for the last couple years and put more RPG into their MMO Arena Game.
Re:I work with a warcraft widow (Score:3, Interesting)
Sad that you think it is more likely her fault than his. I've known a fair number of people who play warcraft that will even ignore their wife/girlfriend's advances because they feel some silly raid obligation or somesuch. Most of these women are actually awesome people and some of those awesome people are attractive women.
I play WoW myself, but find that, for me, the game can't hold a candle to my woman. The great thing is that I managed to find a group of like minded people with a guild large enough and with enough associations that when we are raiding or doing whatever and someone has to/wants to leave for family/friends/other, no one gets upset, we just post for a replacement in our alliance channel and wait a few minutes before continuing on. It's really quite enjoyable.
Re:Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
Go ahead and jot down an exception next to my name too. For me the gear has always been tools to a greater goal. The closest this has become to a desire to be "better" is the realization that said gear (especially when "resilience" came in to the picture) was pretty important in a PvP encounter.
Granted - that still makes folks like me and the parent part of a small minority (or a very quiet majority).
Re:I work with a warcraft widow (Score:4, Interesting)
Beautiful woman and yet she has a boyfriend who lives in that game. (6hrs a day or more of playing, especially weekdays = living in the game.) MMO's, they're a helluva drug.
Ahhh - the oddity of human behavior. WoW (being a successful example of an MMO) is just another in the long line of activities that impact personal interactions. Ever hear of a "football widow"? Ever really seen a sign that reads "gone fishing"?
Yeah, sure... MMOs and other such ilk touch all these interesting psychological behaviors [wikipedia.org]. But they're hardly unique in the realm of personal interaction (neglected or otherwise).
As for me... in about an hour, I'm going to be sitting down at the computer area with my wife and leveling up some alts. We got matching recruit-a-friend accounts to play with. Re-running all this old content with player classes we rarely use has been a blast.
I can't play wow anymore (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Quests that require that you run for long periods of time. Who thought this was a good idea?! I've never liked this, but now I've lost all tolerance for it
2. There's an overall lack of theme or purpose. My first quest is to kill sprites, then boars, then harpies, then turtles, then orcs.... wait, I'm playing an orc. It seems like your people are fighting everyone and nobody. I want a common theme for why I'm doing what I'm doing.
3. I was ganked this morning by a 70 mage. Really honorable killing a level 30 who was fighting at the time. I don't know why I was never ganked in warhammer, but I wasn't. But every time I died I felt like I was killed honorably.
4. Noone cares about the world pvp in wow (I know I don't) and the BGs are about who has the highest tier gear. Not at all fun anymore.
I'm not claiming that warhammer is going to kill wow- I don't think it will. Nor am I claiming that warhammer is even better (it could use additional features). But, I can say that I just can't play wow any more- just like I can't stand to play pacman anymore.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
OK. Point taken on being free to walk in to danger at your own pace. Although I still maintain that it isn't really THAT much freedom when you're just as likely to be slaughtered (even more so when groups sell their services to lock down a dungeon - the aforementioned goon squads).
As for your naked mage... geared or otherwise, I'm willing to bet the guy still had several Grand Master skills under his belt. That took grinding / training to achieve even if it took a skilled player to put to good use.
Granted - WoW is MUCH more gear-oriented. But I've run in to players that have pulled off really impressive combinations of actions that weren't entirely based on their gear (although trinkets, engineering gadgets, etc. really expand on that). Unfortunately I've also run in to mobile brick walls of gear - so I understand where the comparison comes from.
So basically you had a false assumption? (Score:3, Interesting)
Err... what? I'm pretty sure I began playing WoW (and EQ, LOTRO, COH, etc) right at level 1.
In fact, that's the bulk of the game: the levels 1 to 69. (Or 1 to 49 in COH, 1 to 79 in EQ2, etc.) Some 99% of the actual game content is in those levels. And you're perfectly equipped to play that game at any level along the way.
Yes, that seems to be a popular mis-conception, that it's somehow a competition to the top. So people try to skip the actual content, just so they can willy-wave about having a level 70 and get stuck in the endgame grind. Some even use a bot or pay for power-leveling so they don't even have to see the actual game they're skipping.
Unfortunately that's every bit like paying someone to watch the LOTR trilogy for you, just so you can come back and see the ending scene. Over and over again. And imagine that it was some kind of achievement to be there.
Levels and loot are actually the props there. With the level also serving the additional roles of (A) gently guiding you about in which order you're supposed to go through the story, and (B) giving your spells and abilities one by one, and giving you some time to experiment with them and let it sink in. You know, as opposed to just giving you 60 icons and dumping you at the end boss from day 1.
So, basically, you played a game only because you thought it's a completely different kind of game, quit when it turned out that it wasn't what you _imagined_ after all.
It's not even a WoW thing. All MMOs are about the same things: getting XP and gear. And it's not some competition with a finishing line and a gold medal for whoever finishes it first. Everyone can get there eventually. The game in any MMO is the road, not the finish line. The guy who finished it first, well, is simply the first guy who has no more actual game to play.
Well, that's fine too. Not everyone likes the same things, so it stands to reason that some people would be into entirely different genres.
But surely you realize that all that happened there is that you shafted yourself. You took an assumption that just wasn't true, and it was just your own assumption. The game didn't tell you to do that. And then inflicted some grind upon yourself based on just that assumption. It's not very different from, say, being the guy who thinks aids is already curable and fucks around without a condom, then has an unpleasant surprise eventually. It wasn't the game that failed you, it was your own wrong assumptions that did.
Mind you, you do have some sympathy for that ordeal, but nevertheless you shafted your own self with that basing a multi-month action on nothing more than a wild incorrect assumption.
Re:So basically you had a false assumption? (Score:1, Interesting)
Err... what? I'm pretty sure I began playing WoW (and EQ, LOTRO, COH, etc) right at level 1.
In fact, that's the bulk of the game: the levels 1 to 69. (Or 1 to 49 in COH, 1 to 79 in EQ2, etc.) Some 99% of the actual game content is in those levels. And you're perfectly equipped to play that game at any level along the way.
If that's what you think: fine. I disagree with you, and I don't play games to accrue exp and gear. I play them to compete in player vs. player combat. Not player vs. player gear accrual.
So for me, the game starts at level 70 (or 80) when I have the full skillset. It's a crapshoot to compete at any level where you don't have your class' full skillset at your disposal. Some people actually like twinking at level 19. I don't know why they like to restrict themselves to about 10 total character abilities, but they do it. I'm not one of those people.
No, that's not my misconception at all. I'm not racing anyone to 70. I want to be level 70 so that I have my full skillset. Furthermore, since I don't PvE at all, I have to rely on PvP rewards for gear. You can't get a whole lot of rewards anywhere below 70, unless you want to play 60s AV or get stomped in 60-69 wsg/ab.
Once again: that's just what you think. If you've been privileged enough to read a good story like LoTR, you should know that WoW's storyline sucks. The zones are random, the quests are random. It's played out cliche "fetch-for-me" and "kill-for-me" quests. You might like that corny stuff. I don't. I like player vs. player combat, and I like to participate in player vs. player combat when both players have fully developed characters. Not twinked level 19s that have 10 total abilities.
Re:Meh (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the same thing.
You're running Sunwell REPEATEDLY to get the loot you want. Same content, over and over.
I can go to 50 different locations in UO and have exactly the same chances of getting exactly the same loot.
I would have agreed with you on this for the level 60 game, with Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas pretty much a straight progression line. You didn't skip any of those steps, at least not
WoW at level 70 seems quite a bit different. You have multiple high-end instances that drop the same level loot (Serpentshrine, Tempest Keep, Zul'Aman all drop Tier 5-level gear, and Mount Hyjal and Black Temple all drop Tier 6-level gear), and the Badge of Justice system allows you to turn in tokens gained in any heroic five-man dungeon, karazhan... any heroic or better instance for loot that's Tier 5 or 6 level, depending on how many of those badges you want to spend. No, you're not going to fill every item slot through badge rewards, but you can still outfit your character with extremely good gear by doing any of the many endgame instances available for you. For heroics, the instance daily quests encourage players to visit different instances instead of the same/"best" one over and over again as well.
Granted, none of that is Sunwell loot, but only a very very small fraction of the players in the game are far enough along to be taking down those bosses anyway. To me, Sunwell is like Diablo II's cow level. It's a cute extra.