Man "Beats" World of Warcraft 655
Precision pointed out that a Taiwanese man has been named the first ever person to successfully beat World of Warcraft, getting all 986 achievements, completing 5906 quests and /hugging 11 players. Insert joke here. There are many.
I call BS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does he have all the best gearr (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah try getting all that with a mage or (insert whiny "can haz buffz?" race / class combo here)!
But seriously, check out his Feats of Strength. He may have "only" done this on one race / class combo, but he's pretty done everything a druid could / should do. Realm firsts on nearly every Wrath raid boss that gives a feat, high arena ranking last season (probably explains the tree off-spec), has Atiesh, and did holidays before holidays gave achievements. Impressive, if not insanely time consuming. (also - no "the Insane" feat? Psh...)
Re:I beat it ages ago (Score:3, Interesting)
I can be mean, to be sure, and would really appreciate any personality input you may offer. But I think you're just not reading the same inflection on the words that I am.
I was one of the few ones lucky enough to turn away from that hell with my life still intact.
Either this is hyperbole, or you're the one reading it wrong.
This is what I read:
one of the few ones
This statement implies that only the minority 'escape'. This implies, in turn, that is normal to be unable to escape, or otherwise the majority would be able to do so.
lucky enough
This implies that only enough luck allows you to escape. Not differences in individuals, choices, etc - just chance. Use of the word 'luck' implies that this is a rare and fortuitous occasion.
with my life still intact
In the context here, the statement is that the 'hell' frequently renders lives no longer in tact.
Now its your turn. Show me where the parent owns up to anything at all. Because whatever you're seeing, I really did miss it, and it seems I have something to learn here.
Re:Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess these "1" people are suggesting that this Taiwanese guy is secretly CmdrTaco engaging in some sort of highly obfuscated navel-gazing exercise.
+1 Interesting
-l
Re:I fear the day (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not so sure about that. EQ was a game that gamers played. They were used to shifting from one game to the next, EQ kept them playing longer than the average game because of the carrot-on-a-stick MMOs usually dangle before you. My guess is they knew that eventually this game will go just like every other game they played before did. Eventually.
WoW is very different in the respect that it's played by many people who did not play any other game before, at least not to the same extent. I even know people who bought their first PC to play WoW. Exclusively. They never touched another PC game before. WoW is not a game that is played almost exclusively by "old school" gamers. There's also quite a few young gamers aged 14-25 that play WoW and do not remember any other (big) MMOs folding. WoW has always been there for as long as they play.
I don't know how they will handle the sudden lack of WoW...
Re:Does he have all the best gearr (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I fear the day, Too Big TO Fail (Score:3, Interesting)
Like American Auto, it's too big to fail. Very few MMOs to date have folded. AC2 and a few smaller ones but EQ is still strolling along. WoW, like EQ isn't a game, it is a setting, a mythology if you would.
WoW 1.0 may some day go offline but WoW 2.0 will be there. Nothing is preventing Verant from taking EQ1, rebuilding the game engine from the ground up and relaunching Everquest to a new generation. That is why certain toys are only advertised heavily every 21-25 years. Introduce it to a new generation. A 'reboot' if you would.
EQ is getting ready for a reboot I think, not a sequel, a reboot. Same for UO.
I consider MMOs not a new gaming addiction but mearly the 21st century version of fraternal societies. Rather then heading out for lodge night, people head out and raid. MMOs have simply filled the social gap that freemasons, knight of columbus, rotary club, etc. filled for 1950s. In short people 'hang out' in MMOs.
Re:I fear the day, Too Big TO Fail (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, there is EQ2. I don't know if it can be called a "fail", but it was anything but the huge success it should have been according to the logic you present here. EQ was a different generation of MMOs, and, bluntly, I think its success is owed largely to the fact that it was the first (well, the first that got big enough to attract more than a handful followers). EQ was hard and unforgiving. I doubt that it would attract too many people today.
When you look at EQ through the eyes of someone who has been playing WoW, you'd wonder why you could even possible consider playing it. It's confusing and difficult for someone who is used to a game like WoW where you get used to being led through pretty much any obstacle you might face. It's hard and unforgiving and you might lose your gear. You're highly dependent on the aid of others and you better have a good guild that doesn't mind staging a rescue party for your gear. People used to WoW would probably shake their head and wonder how you could possibly enjoy that.
Maybe some day someone will come along and present us a new kind of MMO where we will be looking at WoW and wonder how we could stomach the time sinks and tedium, the boring repetitiveness, etc.
So I doubt that a relaunch is the key to success. The formula does not work out anymore, it will not attract any players away from their current game.
Re:Does he have all the best gearr (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Feats of Strength" are much more telling. It looks like he made this character at 10-23-2008. He must of gotten a refer a friend because he jumped up to 80 within that month AND "technically" completed the game by the end of that year. He also must have mutipul accounts. See all the "collectors edition" pets? He wanted his main to have all those. The rest of this thing looks like he was just waiting for the world events to open and do some of the higher end raids. This guy was on the ball from day one. He was probably stuck at "Trial of the Champion" for a bit, but it looks like he got all his rep for EVERYTHING in the mean time. Once he got TotC, he hit the heroics in order.
I bet his guild was all in it too. No way you can burn though all those raids without good planing. Hell, look at some of the other Feats of Strength. ALOT of relm firsts on that first month he started. Humm.. His guild decided to start at that new server and completely own it.
Lets be frank though. I farm for achievements myself, but evey one of these things are easy to get. All of them just require patience and since most people need rep anyway, can be done with friends. This guy is not some anti-social nutjob who did this "on his own" A group of people decided to go in with him, support him to get this fair.
Besides, it might not be the original questions intention, but your right. You haven't really "completed" the game untill you do this with each character/class combination on both sides:)
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
And unfortunately the "sub games" are variations of "deliver item X to so-and-so" or "kill X amount of monster Z". Yawn.
It's the getting there that makes it fun, not the accomplishment. Last night we had a good run, and we're finally up to the last boss in Ulduar. It's not the highest and it's not the lowest, and the accomplishments were frosting on the cake. And nobody really cared all that much about the gear that dropped.
What did happen was the execution of a carefully planned approach using a refined strategy with a group of ten friends you can depend on to carry out the tactics well. It involved discussion, a couple of wipes, refined approach, then finally success against Thorim. That was hugely fun.
This is not simple carrot and stick. The win took a lot of thought, a lot of communication and some fairly fast and furious in-game action, a few close calls and some very close timing. If you see WoW as nothing but a level/achievement grind, then you're playing it wrong. It's all about the people you play with, not the counters, that make it fun. And an arbitrary challenge is still a challenge, isn't it? Otherwise you'd have to give up on all games and sports. What a dull life that would be.
Re:Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends how much you play and how you play. If you limit your playing to the leveling part of the game and don't play much at level 80 (or the new top level when the expansion comes out), then yes, 90% of your time could be chasing that carrot. If you make it to level 80 then spend most of your time in instances raiding with friends taking on challenges of the game (speed kills, attempting hard modes, etc...), then the 10% you refer to could become a larger portion of the time toward playing the game. Blizzard has done a bit to speed up the leveling process, but it does still take some amount of time. If you are a new player, it may seem to take forever, but once you get one character to 80, you generally know other people that can help you get there faster (power leveling through instances for example and help with harder quest). You'll also have special gear that you can send to your low level characters that will increase leveling so you aren't finding yourself killing the same X monsters to deliver to Y NPC for long.
Re:I fear the day (Score:3, Interesting)
I took that into account. And I'm not talking about the "average" WoW player. I know some people who play WoW. They still have a life. They go to raids once in a while, maybe once a week, unless something more interesting comes along. And most of the people that play WoW fall into this group.
What I fear for are the "hardcore" players. The ones that sunk their life into WoW, that raid 3-4 times a week and would rather miss their mother's furneral than the all important raid. Contrary to stereotypes and what hysteric media reports of teens that died during playing WoW want us to believe, this isn't the average player. They are a minority.
These people will not leave. Ever. They invested way too much time, they invested their life into this game. But they are most likely not enough to pay for expansion after expansion, maybe not even enough to keep the game running.
The first group will eventually up and leave. Either because they had enough, or because they found that they don't have the time anymore, or maybe they just want to take a break because there's nothing going on they can or want to be part of.
They're not the ones that I worry about.
Re:I fear the day (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I play WoW.
Better than it's ever been.... well, it sure is easier than it's ever been. It's now virtually impossible for a tank to lose aggro, no matter how much damage a DD lays on a mob (unless he's stupid, of course). CC is nonexistant because it's just way faster to mass bomb enemies, tanks can handle the damage and healers can easily compensate it. Skills that used to be "ohshit" buttons became part of the rotation due to decreased cooldowns.
What I actually meant was the bonus you get from gear. It's getting out of hand and starts to break apart the game. Allow me to illustrate. What is equipment? Basically it's additional levels. When you level up, HP, attirbutes, mana, chance to hit/parry/dodge/block etc. increase. The same applies to items. They give you HP, mana, and so on. We are already at the point where stats from equipment outmatch "raw" stats by some magnitude. This in turn means that a level 70 player with top level gear will be "better" than a level 75 player with ordinary garb. This may not seem important until you take the all important aspect into consideration, which WoW managed so far: New players. Other MMOs fell apart when it became impossible for new players to catch up. They joined, saw that they will never compete with the old players and quit. Since there's also a steady loss of old players, those MMOs eventually withered away.
Now, WoW gets new players still and they still grow to level 80. It's trivially easy in WoW to reach max level. WoW did away with the necessity many earlier MMOs had, that you HAD to group at some point to progress. Some will level quicker, some will take more time, but everyone will hit maxlevel provided he invests time. Until they get to 80, it is also not really a big problem for them to find a group. If they have inferior equipment, they will simply go into the instance a few levels later and still be useful.
That changes completely at maxlevel. You can't just level a little further. Now, these people would have to go into "normal" instances because they cannot survive in "heroics". And here's the catch 22: The old players have the equipment (and the group/guild, if they don't) that they can often skip the normal instances altogether. They got to maxlevel in the pre-expansion times and have all the raid equipment that was available in the old times. This is now impossible for the new players, because getting a group for for a level 70 is even more impossible than getting one for a non-heroic instance.
But nobody is going to take them along in a heroic instance if they're a liability rather than an asset.
This is the problem WoW will have to solve now. I'm not talking about rotations (which ain't that big a deal anymore... like I said, the game's been made easier and easier, not that it was hard in the first place). I'm talking about the game mechanics revolving around items and the effects they have on player's ability to find groups.
Re:Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
He did become famous. Just now. When was the last time something you did personally was reported on by the world media? I'm not saying that your criticism is misplaced, just that you're using the wrong argument. More significant than becoming rich or famous is whether you have done anything worthwhile and the answer in this case is no.