World of Warcraft: Cataclysm To Launch Dec. 7th 431
Blizzard announced today that the third expansion to World of Warcraft, dubbed Cataclysm, is set for launch on December 7th. In addition to upping the level cap to 85 and including several new high level zones, the expansion will revamp the parts of Azeroth that have been around since WoW's initial launch, bringing the 1-60 leveling experience more in line with the improvements Blizzard has made in the expansions. Cataclysm will also give players two new races to play, Goblins and Worgen, who have joined the Horde and the Alliance, respectively.
Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:1, Insightful)
Real ID lost me. I don't play online games so I can be stalked and harassed, and by failing to make privacy and security a priority from the start, you ruined any chance I'd trust you to handle it right,.
So I won't give you money.
I'm sure you miss me.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? You realize that you don't have to add ANYONE to your RealID list right? Nobody has been added to my RealID list, and so nobody "stalks or harrasses" me.
Re:Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
I started with MUDs, moved on to Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Everquest, etc...I absolutely LOVED my time spent with MMOs, especially WoW (closed and open betas, continued until about 1.5 years after launch), but the genre got boring for me. Not even The Old Republic can get me excited about an MMO.
I still find it surprising when I hear so many people are still playing WoW. Anyone on here still playing since launch? What's kept you with it all this time? Gameplay, community, what?
Been playing since early 2005. Blizz has managed to keep it interesting, despite some missteps. About time for the old world revamp though. Bring on the Cataclysm!
It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time. We knew the release date had to be soon, as Blizzard's WoW Updater has already pushed out 4.8GB of updates to each user for the upcoming version (4.0.0).
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been playing since just a few months after launch, but "playing" is used loosely for the last 6 months or so(I've been logging at most an hour per week during that time).
The community aspect - guildies to log on and talk to for a bit, is a big part of staying, but aside from that sometimes I just wanna kill some time. WoW feels like a decent way to spend that time. Repetitive? A bit, sure, but life itself is repetitive. Nobody asks the sports fans why they watch the same sport every Sunday, or why the fisherman goes out catching the same kinds of fish every Saturday, or why people go down to the same bars with the same group of people each weekend. People do the things they like because they enjoy doing them, and just because you can reduce it to "doing the same thing over and over" doesn't necessarily mean that it loses all appeal.
Re:Really? (Score:0, Insightful)
Reinforcement.
WoW is juts a Skinner Box for humans. Some people are more vulnerable to this than others.
Cataclysm is not evolutionary. It is just more of the same. I won't be re-opening my old WoW account.
So Familiar.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does a very destructive sneak attack from the ocean on major coastal cities around December sound so familiar?
To be serious for a moment, I still play since launch. The thing that kept my attention is their drive is partially beating the content and continuing drive to change the content. Seeing a new boss, dissecting its behavior, and attacking in a cooperative team manner is always fun. There is just enough complexity that it triggers my analytical side so when they revamp or change out mechanics I'm always interested.
Granted "WoW" isn't a perfect game and it does hinge on personal experiences (if you have no friends to play with, "WoW" is easily the dumbest thing to try to play) but I'm always stumped when people say "WoW" is a horrible experience.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought he covered it in his post:
by failing to make privacy and security a priority from the start, you ruined any chance I'd trust you to handle it right,.
Doesn't really matter if they 'backtracked' and 'fixed it up AFTER the community when batshit' to him.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:4, Insightful)
WoW jumped the shark when Blizzard created achievements and players started to use them as a criteria to participate in a raid.
Gear-score came along and gave the finishing blow.
I have nothing against requiring some prerequisites like completed a lower level raid or have a reasonable gear score. Unfortunately most players who spam the trade channel for a raid pug require that you've already achieved that particular raid instance or a gear score so high that requires you to have farmed that raid repeatedly.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever thought that someone who might like an Action-Adventure-RPG such as WoW wouldn't like a twitch First Person Shooter like TF2?
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they backed off from it, but that's like an abusive spouse apologizing after hitting you.
Did you seriously just compare an company considering then declining to disable anonymous commenting on their forum to spousal abuse? Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the dumbest argument I've ever heard of. They had an idea they thought would make the experience better. They put it to the public. The public hated the idea. They responded to the public and binned the idea.
And you're complaining that you can't trust them? You could just as easily say that they're trying new ideas to improve the experience, and they're clearly listening to their customers.
There is a pretty big difference between looking for ways of making people responsible for their actions online and hitting your wife.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW jumped the shark when Blizzard created achievements and players started to use them as a criteria to participate in a raid.
Gear-score came along and gave the finishing blow.
I have nothing against requiring some prerequisites like completed a lower level raid or have a reasonable gear score. Unfortunately most players who spam the trade channel for a raid pug require that you've already achieved that particular raid instance or a gear score so high that requires you to have farmed that raid repeatedly.
I read an opinion, which isn't necessarily mine by the way, that basically said that Cataclysm was the answer to all of these woes introduced by the new meta-game. The theory goes like this:
1) The talents and values on gear are simplified, making the basics of the game very easy to grasp without help.
2) The difficulty is ramped way, way up. The standing intention now is mana/resource conservation along with the return crowd control. Also, there will be a progression of 'Normals > Heroics > Raids' that cannot be skipped.
3) Two deeply-critical roles are seeing huge nerfs - tanks/healing - while damage is getting a sizeable buff, creating an inherent conflict of interests.
4) Guild are getting rewards, which translate into costs when one leaves said guild.
This is said to result in a climate where you're never, ever, ever going to want to play with people you don't like. Everyone will be dieing together, a lot. Victories will be by the skin of your teeth, and only when everyone is playing at their best. The days of 'one-wipe-and-bail' will be gone, and the players who seek to judge your ability by Gearscore+Achievement won't be worth playing with. You'll be intended to foster relationships with players and keep them around. You'll guild up for the rewards, and you'll focus on doing this stuff together to get more of them. As you do so, you'll work on getting more skill for those that need it, as pugging just won't be a workable idea.
Or so the theory goes, anyway.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
WoW is juts a Skinner Box for humans.
What isn't?
Re:No mention of flying? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you're looking at this a bit one-sided, I think.
Yes, CoH allowed you to fly early on, and their character-leveling game was the absolute best I'd ever seen when it launched. But that's all they had. Fast-forward to today and, as far as I know, that is STILL all they have.
It would be very easy for a game like WoW to see those good ideas and incorporate some of them, without losing the other stuff they had built up along the way.
As far as I can tell people play WoW because of either Blizzard's good reputation or because so many other people are already playing it.
Yes, certainly. The latter part is clearly more of a factor than the former, as I see it.
By measure of the actual gameplay, it's one of the worst MMOGs you can find.
That's going to need a definition of 'gameplay'. It is at least as good, if not better than most of the stuff out there in terms of pressing buttons and getting a satisfactory experience. They have mediocre content to play - whether PvE, PvP, AH, whatever - but it all plays reasonably well. So I'll agree with you only in that 'good is the enemy of great', and that WoW as a whole could be a lot better. And it likely would, if it had any serious competition whatsoever. But as it stands 'worst' can't quite be accurate, unless it also means 'equally bad'.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:4, Insightful)
How is that Blizzard's fault? Neither GS nor achievements are actually built-in requirements for raids.
Re:Your stock price? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, what's funny about that is that last year I bought some Activision Blizzard stock (ATVI on NASDAQ). I had a little leftover money, and I figured that with such a strong release schedule for 2010, there must have been room for growth in the stock. And guess what's happened - the stock is currently down from where I bought it, from about $11.70 at this point last year to about $11.00 today.
The problem is not Blizzard. The problem is Activision. Their side of this is sinking games like no ones business. Think about how they dealt with modern warfare debacle and how guitar hero is now more like guitar zero. Their goal in the game business is to extract as much money from franchises as possible. This means the games will just not be as good as before. Blizzard is the only good thing coming out of that stock so be glad it is as high as it is.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:2, Insightful)
If Cigarette smoking is that fucking offensive to you..
FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING ANTISMOKING NAZI FUCKER.
you dont hear us smokers whining that we cant make Mario light up, so stop whining that you cant make someone not light up.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:4, Insightful)
Its ok to penalize a company for bad behavior. Its the only influence we consumers/customers have.
I agree with your statement, but that's not what happened here. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Penalizing for bad behaviour promotes good behavior. Penalizing regardless of behavior (ie, cancelling your account even after the mentioned possibility has been canceled) sends the wrong message.
Consider it like a parent disciplining a child. Your kid comes home and says "Dad! I'm going over to Tommy's to watch some random R rated movie!", and you respond "No you're not! If I catch you over there doing that you're going to be grounded for a month!".
His response: "Sorry dad. You're right, I'll stay home.". You then respond with "Good. You're still grounded for a month just for bringing it up!".
What do you think the kid is going to take away from the incident? It's certainly not going to impart any good life lessons except for "Next time just don't even say anything about it.". That's not the lesson I want kids, or companies, learning.
Re:No longer supports PPC Mac (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:1, Insightful)
"Mistakes were made"
"Did my opponent rape and murder a young girl in 1990? I'm just asking questions"
Your pedantry is both unwarranted and dangerous. The grandparent attempted to engage in emotional manipulation with an analogy specifically chosen to align Blizzard with a particular group of heinous abusers, and I rightly called him out. By allowing him to retreat behind his semantics, rather than the obvious subtextual intent, you contribute to one of the core problems of modern society.
Inform yourself. [wikilivres.info]
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:1, Insightful)
This is the highest leaf node post on this page, so I'm just going to put this here:
"They revealed personal information!" False. It has been opt-in since day one.
"Well, they wanted to reveal personal information." No, they wanted to let people chat across games.
"Well, the feature could be used to steal personal information." That's why you can get a free two-token authenticator app for iPhone or Android. This allows it to be more secure than Slashdot or 99% of the other login systems on the internet.
"Well, inattentive people don't know that. That clearly puts it in Blizzard's hands!" No, that's the user's problem. It's no different from any other software.
"Well, it looks like it could be bad." No, it doesn't. You're gasping for air. Try again.
"Well, I just want to believe the big software company is doing bad things." That's better, let's keep this stuff on the level from now on, okay?
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's my point. I'm critizing their design of "real life friends only", vs. "players you play with" type philosophy.
They could have very well made it so that you maintain the same level of anonymity you have now with just character names, and not have to introduce the displaying of real names. Then the facilities of the service would be available to people like me who wanted it, but not at the expense of exposing our real name.
WoW is not Facebook. While I have no problem with people that I add in Facebook knowing my name, I definitely don't want the snot nosed raging WoW nerd I'm in the same PUG raid with calling me at home and telling me how badly I suck at tanking, etc.
Also, as a former guild master who had to kick/report a member for harrasing female members of the guild, I worry at the fact of what that person would have done if he could have gotten the female members real names, then their home addresses and phone numbers.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:3, Insightful)
For the forum RealID, I think part of what Blizzard wanted to accomplish was eliminating the "trolling" character post. Blizzard could easily solve that by adding an option to "show characters" link for any posting character. This would only show the character names/realms, not the user login or name, making it easier to figure out who is trolling the forums.
/agree
They could have created a unique id that was not your real name (or any real information) and that would have served the same purpose.
But it wouldn't have linked in with Facebook, which their agreement with Facebook probably states it has to.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm afraid I must disagree. When I quit, I made sure to be tell them my reasons in the forums, in an e-mail, in the comment field for unsubscribing.
I made every effort to be clear that I found their actions abhorrent, and why I was quitting, and that I believe no sane company should have even considered suggesting such a thing, let alone announcing that they planned to do it without actually asking for feedback. And no, I don't consider their retraction sufficiently convincing.
To borrow your analogy, not quitting, it's like catching you kid doing something wrong, getting a sullen apology, and instead of punishing them, taking them out for ice cream.
No thank you, I won't do it. That would be sending a mixed message.
If they get the wrong idea, well, tell me how I could make it more clear?
What's your alternative?
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blizzard and the sorry state of privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Go to your realm's forums. Read.
Go to your class forums. Read.
Go to the role forums. Read.
You'll see very quickly that forum trolling on the official Blizz forums is a huge annoyance there. Blizzard is basically spending a lot of extra money maintaining forums which actively scare people away because if you post anything, there's probably a 50+% chance you will be flamed or insulted by a douche posting from a level-1 alt who also happens to be from another realm.
The plan Blizz put forth WOULD have eliminated a lot of this, but it would have also killed the usefulness of the forums, because a lot of the people who post useful information would have stopped posting as well. If they has modified their plan to make it so you can only post on some designated main, or so that you could see all the characters on the account of anybody posting, or made everybody choose a non-changeable forum nickname, it would eliminate the "anonymous trolling" issue to a large degree without violating privacy and security.
There 10 or so women in my guild, and most of us are on a first-name basis on Vent... that doesn't mean they want to be on a first-name basis with the entire WoW community. I've heard too many horror stories from them about the skeevy things people say to blame them, too.
Re:Sorry Blizzard, no longer a customer (Score:3, Insightful)
The metaphor is crap. For one thing, while I disagreed strongly with the RealId system, it wasn't obviously wrong from Blizzard's point of view the way that punching your spouse is, and second of all they never did it.
Metaphorically it's a bit more like telling your wife you're going to grab her breast, her saying I really don't want you to and you saying "Oh, well then I won't".
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
WoW is juts a Skinner Box for humans.
What isn't?
Going to the dentist.
NOT going to the dentist is.
I think you all misunderstand what a skinner box is, or at least, you are not using the expression in the right way.
A skinner box is designed to promote one kind of behaviour by offering a reward for "doing the right thing" (or removing a reward / adding negative stimulus for doing the "wrong thing"). A pigeon for example, can be learned to do a little spin by offering it a reward every time it turns around, and thus learning it that turning around = food and thus = good.
Now, what do kids get after getting their mouth examined by a stranger with icky gloves? Well, a reward of course! aaand I guess you can see where im going with this from now on.
The point is that a skinner box is just a demonstration of a basic mechanism on how we learn behaviour. You could say that every form of activity that involves a reward has some skinnerian elements to it, and as thus you could even make the point that society is in reality a giant skinner box. Making the argument that something is a skinner box is a moot point because all it really implies is that that something involves learning through some arbitrary reward mechanisms. You might say that WoW as a skinner box is "bad" because it promotes certain kinds of behaviour that might interfere with the already learned "good" behaviour (which you got from the society around you). However using the term "skinner box" as a descriptive term of an activity such as playing WoW, is in essence completely meaningless.
You could also say that the term skinner box is used to describe something which reduces the reward-behaviour relation to its simplest form, and is thus for some arbitrary reason "bad". However, very simple mechanisms are involved in alot of the learning we do (like previously mentioned reward from dentist), although it is not easily visible as we tend not to regard our own existence, in a particular society, as a closed environment the same way many do with WoW, and thus do not see the same relation with the clean, sterile and calculated skinner box.
Also, i would like to comment on the argument made earlier, where it was said that WoW was in fact a skinner box because it discouraged not playing. Personally I think this comment is completely invalid on the subject of WoW because it concerns social interaction as a whole, and not WoW in particular. Yes, WoW "uses" social elements to keep you playing, but that is due to the social interactions occuring within the game, and not the game itself. Ironically, once you reach a certain part in WoW (i.e the max level) you could basically wait for an entire expansion, and then be on equal footing with everyone else as gear is effectively wiped and everyone starts from scratch (this point is lessened somewhat by the permanence of achievements, collected mounts, pets and such vanity items, but interest in these is socially driven and not what one would call a "core" feature of the game). One could thus say that to some degree the game rewards not playing at max level.