Surprising Burning Crusade Details for WoW 278
Heartless Gamer writes "There is quite a few surprises waiting in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. The raiding scene in World of Warcraft is going to dramatically change once Burning Crusade is released. Here's the long and short of it: all of the new high-end raid content will be capped at 25 heads. Indeed, all the raid content that was mentioned in today's demo, with the exception of Kharazan (which is designed for 10 players) is being designed around a force of 25. Blizzard has completely done away with 40-man raiding; Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxrammas will still exist, of course. There just isn't going to be any new 40-man content. How's that for earth-shattering?"
"How's that for earth-shattering?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
wow = horrible game (Score:2, Insightful)
The vast majority of endgame play revolves around endless rep farming, honor farming in BGs, and doing yet another instance run.
So many PVPers played WOW, only to find out how bad the PVP system really is. Risk free pvp. Nothing remotely comparable to UO during the tank mage era. Instead, overgeared dimwits burning cooldowns. != skill. This led to a huge PVPer exodus from WoW.
Soon, there will be a huge exodus of the sheep out of WoW, I'm not sure to which game yet though.
Promising candidates include:
http://www.darkfallonline.com/ [darkfallonline.com]
http://www.vanguardsoh.com/ [vanguardsoh.com]
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/home/index
Re: Surprising Burning Crusade Details for WoW (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:4, Insightful)
MMO gamers want balanced skill-based pvp, functional economies not exploited by chinese-farmers, the freedom to create unique player-made content (like Shadowbane/EVE-Online), and to determine their own friends/enemies rather than being forced into pre-made "factions".
WoW fails in all those regards.
MMO gamers would move, provided a good improvement emerged.
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Could someone remind me.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could someone remind me.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously, if you don't like what's posted on Slashdot, don't complain about it, because the site isn't here to serve your personal desires. It's here to serve the personal desires of the editors.
The Dumbass Probablity. (Score:3, Insightful)
IE the more people you have in a group the greater the chance that one of them is going to be a dumbass.
Which requires that you somehow vet all the players, otherwise you have to go through a very long process to get decent players.
Allot of complaints people have about MMO's is that sometimes its nice to log in, blast about then log off, not wait about for an hour to get a group and then only to find out that because its a random group you have X number of dumbasses that get you killed 5 minutes or less into it. Or god forbid just at the very end of it.
I think that their needs to be a kind of rating system for players, so other players can rate them based on their experiences with them.. Sure it could be griefed... but I think overall it would be good.
Re: your fallacious logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Primacy in the market does not mean superiority either.
It could be merely because a better alternative does not exist, or how horrible the other competing solutions are, or a game learning curve issue.
Considering how many MMOs have actually been a market success versus the recent number of failures, perhaps the average board poster should be more involved in game development or requirements solicitation?
Re:Could someone remind me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Science and Technology is only one aspect of what the site is about.
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:5, Insightful)
MMO gamers want balanced skill-based pvp, functional economies not exploited by chinese-farmers, the freedom to create unique player-made content (like Shadowbane/EVE-Online), and to determine their own friends/enemies rather than being forced into pre-made "factions".
WoW fails in all those regards.
MMO gamers would move, provided a good improvement emerged.
What I want is for MMOs to make a lot more variety in the lowbie quests. Doing the same lame little quests in the begining just to same quests at level cap isn't fun. It kills replayablity. I'd like long term, story driven choices. Hell, I'd even support having a server where everybody started off maxxed out (rocket server, anyone?).
I'll agree with everything else but the farmer bit and WoW being a horrible game. I personally don't care about the farmers as long as they don't harass me, at which point they're just being individual pricks and should not represent the entire community. I've known enough gold farmers that mind their own business and grind, not bothering anybody. Many of the people who complain about farmers driving up prices the most are the first ones to snatch up the cheap, mass farmed goods and then resell at higher prices. If not, they're the ones ignorant of how prices would be if it was 100% player orientated. Supply and demand, plus the farmer's need to sell quickly, benefit many players, whether they admit it or not. This is especially true of commodity items like cloth, skins and even potions. Every time that the prices on those skyrocketed, it was due to "regular players", and was always brought back down by farmers that continued to sell at the lower, older price or cheaper. There are problems with quest mobs on occasion, but that happens with regular players who are farming the quest mob for the drops. The only difference between them and the regular farmer is the language barrier.
As far as WoW being a horrible game... Well, I liked it. I got bored eventually, but that's true of all games. I was heavily into CoH before that. Just because a game can still be improved on doesn't mean it 100% sucks right now.
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:3, Insightful)
WoW has been successful because the casual gamer can play it easily. It isn't for the die-hard PvP'er.
Since Shadowbane has been a major flop as a primarily PvP game, I would hardly call it a great model. And V:SoH is going to be mostly PvE, with PvP servers offered in limited amounts.
Yes, WoW offered little but grind at lvl 60. So did EQ at lvl 50 initially, and at lvl 60, too. It wasn't until there were AAs and the ability to customize some gear with stats/resists that things got better.
And if gameplay in UO was so great, how come they were losing so much marketshare that they had to go to a model that allowed people to not be PK'ed? Sure, that killed the remaining population off, but they were losing the subscription battle to EQ already, and numbers were dropping.
So, in MY opinion, most MMO players don't want PvP at all, or limited PvP. Which is what WoW offered them. You might not like how it turned out, but a whole lot of others did, to the tune of the best subscription numbers for a North American MMO ever.
Re:And for the majority of us with you know, lives (Score:2, Insightful)
No need to be an ass, but I guess that's par for the course with this article.
Basically what it comes down to (Score:4, Insightful)
i am sick of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Raids take too long (Score:5, Insightful)
That's on top of your usual requests from the guilds to get NR, Frost or Fire resists up. They need to somehow figure out a way to force guilds to trim the time down.
Let's also not forget that most guilds either run a DKP (Dragon Kill Point system) or Zero-Sum. Which adds to the madness because you're never going to get any loot unless you attend every single run.
4-7 hours a night is too much for one video game. Some of us have other things... 2 hours is cool. Blizzard would be really nice to implement some new scheme for loot, one that is a mixture of raids attended and luck.
Also, ever notice the "females" in guilds tend to get free loot even when they don't even have a microphone. I was halfway tempted to create a female character with no voice communication to get loot, then seduce all of the men in the guild with a fake picture I picked up from Google. But alas, I quit before attempting that.
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:4, Insightful)
WOW isn't for you. It also isn't all about raiding, let alone PvP. It never was. I know people who have played multiple characters to 60 who don't see PvP or raiding as the game. To them its the world. See, not everyone looks to be uber. Many people, and probably a majority considering their numbers, look for an engrossing world that is fun to play in with friends. WOW succeeds brillantly because it is easy to play.
So many comment on the need for "hardcore" or difficult games. Well news to ya'll, they are already out there and most of them are floundering. Why? Because its a game. It isn't supposed to be work. The raids of WOW offer that *IF* you choose to devote time to it. There are many "simple" raids that can be done with friends and those are good enough for a lot of people.
If wow lost 1 player for every claim an exodus was coming because of PvP and Raiding there would be no one left. Fortunately some of the people making the claims do leave. People who cannot be satisfied in a game should not play a game.
Dude! The endgame isn't FOR you (Score:2, Insightful)
Endgame content is for hardcore players, period. It HAS to be, because those players max out their characters the fastest and complain the loudest, that the game is boring because there is nothing for them to do. If you make it any easier or any less time-consuming, it will be too easy for the hardcore players and it won't consume the massive amounts of time they are willing to throw at the game.
Honestly -- up to about level 55, WoW was one of the more interesting MMORPGs I've played (it was certainly better than EQ, DAoC, CoH or SWG). You can actually solo all the way to 60 in WoW, and also do interesting instance encounters that should keep a casual group of players occupied for MONTHS.
If you played through to 60 in the first month and are now complaining about raid content, don't expect much sympathy from me. I spent almost a year in WoW getting my first character to 55, and I enjoyed it nearly all of that time. (Then I quit.)
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:5, Insightful)
What you end up with is heal bots, buff bots, tank bots and damage bots. Whereas in a five man group, players will need to use their secondary skills because there isn't anyone in the group that has that skill as a primary. Five man groups also can contain more interesting combinations, while a raiding group always is constructed after the same formula.
The absolute worst part about raiding is how it tears the community apart. Unless you whore (whoring is the correct term since you effectivly is selling your body and soul) yourself out to a raiding guild, you will have no access whatsoever to the high end content. A pickup group of 5 people is workable. 10 people is possible, but tough. 25-40 people is impossible.
World of Warcraft had two big selling points. Excellent level 1-60 solo/party fun. Secondly it is a Blizzard product which automatically created a big fanbase (Although Blizzard has lost most of its original developers by now). After the release they have added a lot of raiding, and simultanously destroyed PvP due to messed up items strengths. Level 80 items doesn't work when you have level 60 special abilities, where some of the abilities scale with item strength, and others don't.
It also suffers from the same flaw as other MMORPGs. Beginner areas quickly empty, and at the end you end up with all the people in high level zones (Or instances). This is however something that I have no idea how to fix.
Don't belive them (Score:5, Insightful)
1. level character(s) to 60
2. raid at lvl 60
Leveling is to be honest boring an repetitive. 98% the quests can be summed up in this scheme:
a. Kill X number of mobs Y on location Z.
b. Kill mobs Y until they drop N number of items I.
c. Take item J and take it to place P.
And once you leveled your char to 60, leveling another one will lead you doing the same quests all over again. True, if you reroll on another faction (horde/alliance), you get different quests, but only superficialy, not fundamentaly.
Then when you hit lvl 60 there is only one way to progress: getting better gear.
Better gear can be obtained through raiding 5, 10, 20, 40 man instances. You get best gear in 40 man instances. Comparing gear from 5 man instances, and 40 man instances is like comparing tiger to a cat. Considering equal skill, player with 40 man "raid eq set" will eat another player geared in 5-20 man instances.
Well, there is another way to get good gear and that is by doing pvp. To get comparable gear from pvp to 40 man (purple=epic) gear, you will have to get a pvp team and farm pvp battlegrounds whole days. Problem is you are competing against whole server, and to get first part of the epic/purple set you need at least 2 months of weekly full-time pvp-ing. And that is far from easy and casual.
Well, one would ask: "Why don't you farm 40 man instances then?". This is easier to say than do. Consider:
1. You have to be in end game instance farming guild
2. Be active (4-8 at least hours/day)
3. Have good gear
4. Raid every day, only with toilette breaks, from i.e. 6:45PM, to 1:00AM
5. Compete with other players from your guild that have the same class for points which you get from attendance, because points get you the loot/gear you want.
6. Farm money/materials(herbs, ore etc), so you can raid in the evenings.
And belive me this isn't casual, nor pleasant.
To be honest, in the game I always liked pvp most. But the problem was: Battlegrounds imbalance. Problem is simple:
1. Premade groups>>pickup groups (game is over in 10 minutes or less, if you are in a pickup group, you get nothing, premade gets all: honor, reputation etc. and 3x more faster than you)
2. Premade vs premade (they exit battlegrounds if they meet each other because fights are "too long" and premades need pickups so they can utterly destroy them)
3. Pug vs pug: I was the unlucky one which rolled alliance warlock. On our server horde pug beats alliance pug 9/10 of times.
4. It is not easy to have a good premade group.
One thing to note is this: few patches ago (2 or so), when you were in a pug and faced a premade group (who will eat you in 10 min and you will get next to nothing), you could "go afk", or in other words exit battleground and rejoin some other battle. This was bad for premade farmers so they complained and blizz introduced Deserter debuff. So if you exit battleground you get that debuff and you can't rejoin another one for 15 min. So when faced against a premade as a pug, the most dominant tactic was to do nothing and be killed as many times possible in 5 min. You get nothing, but at least you didn't get debuff. Premades were very happy because they could farm pugs more easily that way. And premades got smarter: when the battleground was open for their group, they would send one player which would scout if another group is premade too. If it is, nobody would join and that scout would exit, and the group would just rejoin another battle. That way, premades didn't fight each other, and the farmed non-deserting pugs. And this is very very unfriendls and uncasual. Blizzard as to this day did *nothing* to help casual pvper against premade groups. More so, they did exactly the opposite.
So I joined good p
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:4, Insightful)
That said the only reason half the stuff is affordable is because the gold farmers farm the item while the rest of us are having fun.
Re:Basically what it comes down to (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wonder how these kids do in school, or in real life?
I do just fine, thank you very much. I will be a senior when high school starts again, and already have 12 college credits to my name for computer science courses 200 and 300 level computer science courses I have completed at a local university. Unless by "these kids" you mean the handful that play 12 hours a day and not those who play more than an hour.
As for your idea of limiting gameplay to an hour a day - why? If people could only play this particular videogame for an hour, what makes you think they would go outside, write a book, lobby a congressman or do homework or whatever instead of playing another videogame or instant messaging? It would just make the $15 monthly fee even more ridiculous.
Re:Basically what it comes down to (Score:3, Insightful)
I graduated the University of Iowa a year ago with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Astronomy, and did well enough to get into Cornell Law School, where I'm president one student organization, an officer in another, and made the dean's list both of my first two semesters.
I'm not the 13-year-old who makes dumb jokes about Chuck Norris in Barrens Chat and brags about his 5 level 60s and tells all the female characters "I bet ur a guy." There's such a thing as moderation in Azeroth, just like in the real world.
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't belive them (Score:3, Insightful)
98% of basketball games can be summed up in this scheme:
a) get ball
b) dribble/pass or go straight to c)
c) get ball through hoop somehow
d) repeat
Sounds a lot like your "c. Take item J and take it to place P." doesn't it?
But lots of people love playing it. And lots of people love watching it being played.
So you don't like WoW? Well lots of people don't like basketball either. Try some other game instead.
BTW I don't even play WoW.
But it's obvious that lots of people like WoW.
The thing about games like basketball is you physically get tired within a few hours so you just have to stop (and if you aren't that young and fit, you might not even feel like playing it the next day), whereas you can keep at it for much longer in WoW (part of the design I guess).
Re:wow = horrible game (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an MMO gamer and I don't really give a shit about those particular issues.
I want:
Cooperative play that rewards good teamwork, and where the outcome of a fight is in doubt right up until the end.
Multiple ways to achieve a goal or quest. Maybe I can just charge in and whack some Lieutenant Dorkmeir to get the Symbol of Snazziness. Or maybe I can sneak in, pick his pocket and take off without a fight. Maybe I can walk in and simply persuade him to give it up. Maybe I can not bother with any of that and simply forge one and turn that in to the quest giver.
Some kind of game-world change to reflect accomplishments - even if it's just NPC's greeting you by saying "Oh, it's Kimmie the Dragonslayer!" Atmospheric type stuff.
An "interesting" economy - player driven and with interesting things to do. Maybe a future's market for crafting ingredients and so on (which there kind of is now, but I mean something official). I really liked many aspects of SWG's economic game (despite the rest of the game being incredibly simple and easy)
That's what *I* want. I wouldn't presume to speak for all MMO gamers - you clearly want something different.
Re:Don't belive them (Score:3, Insightful)
Around level 52, I got in a casual guild (Legion of Fate), which, over time, became less casual. We started mass recruiting (which is, of course, stupid, since you neither know nor trust the others in your guild). We started running MC weekly.
I hit 60 and started running MC. I stayed in the guild for another month (We got to, but never defeated Rag), until I realized the simple truth: raiding isn't fun. There's nothing fun about being 'locked in' to raids on specific days at specific times. Don't feel like raiding that day? Too bad - most high end raiding guilds have attendence requirements.
What kind of insanity is that? And what is your reward for raiding? Better gear, so that you can do more raiding. Raiding is boring, repetitive, and formulaic. Once you get good enough, it's almost scripted.
The worst part is that good drops are rare. Maybe 3 or 4 per class per raid, if you're lucky. I did 6 or 7 MC runs and got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not one item. You see, in raids, if you want anything, you need dkp. And you need to raid to get dkp. Thus the problem - to get anything from raiding, you ned to raid a lot. There's no "taking it slow" - if you do, your guild will invariably leave you in the dust. Casual play - or even pseudo-casual (10 hours a week) just isn't an option.
I decided that I didn't want to venture down that path. I have better things to do than raid 20 hours a week. I don't want to have to choose between mising a nighttime review session with a TA (which they are doing for my benefit) or falling behind my guild in dkp. My job never forces me to make that choice - why should a game?
How hardcore players stole WoW (Score:3, Insightful)
Then the hardcore players started complaining. "We reached 60, and there's nothing left to do", they said. They were right. Blizzard game them more. But soon the hardcore players grew tired of the new content, and Blizzard decided to give them even more. And more.
18 months later, WoW is still the same game for 60 players. Yes, there are battlegrounds, and a lot of nice new features, but for the casual player, WoW has never really changed.
See, the problem is that level 60 players represent about 5-10% of the total userbase. Hardcore players who enjoy the high-level content are a fraction of those players. Why should 2% of a userbase get all of the new content?
What do you do when you get to 60 in WoW if you're not a hardcore player? You quit. PvP is no fun when you are playing against opponents who are so much better equipped.
Casual players don't spam the forums with compliants. We don't play the game for hours a day, so we aren't going to invest time in complaining. But we do exist. We are most of the community. But Blizzard has ignored us.
Is WoW a good game for new players? Yes. But there isn't any major new content for casual players than there was when the game was released. WoW, like many games, has low replay value for casual players. And, like all games of its type, it eventually gets old.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)