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World of Warcraft: Editorial: Two Casual Years Later
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Steve Wilson looks at why he believes WoW has held players' attention despite what pundits had predicted. Each week, we try to bring you a range of editorials, including one focused on World of Warcraft.
| Two years later and I find myself doing something Ive never done in any other MMORPG, Im still playing World of Warcraft. As a casual player I should have long since gotten bored and moved on. It only took 6 months with EverQuest, six months with Asherons Call, three days with Ultima Online, three months with World War II Online and Planetside and about a year with Star Wars Galaxies. WoW has not only kept me playing longer than all the others, but kept me active and interested in it nearly the whole time. |
The whole editorial is here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
After two years of "casual" play, whats your
level?
And what is your definition of casual?
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
This is rich.. just 2 days after WoW erroneously bans users who are using Linux/CEdega you come out with this warm fuzzy about WoW.
I wonder who's lining your pockets??
From MMORPG News
Linux users getting banned from WoW?
Posted Nov 15, 2006 at 09:33PM by Victor B.
Listed in: World of Warcraft, News
Tags: Blizzard, Linux, Cedega, TransGaming This does not bode well for Linux gamers, and it's a weird coincidence that we hear about this a few days after announcing Wine on the site. It seems that Linux-using World of Warcraft players are getting banned left and right.
Current speculation among the members of the WoW community, Linux and non-Linux alike, is an attempt to ban users of third party software who use said software to cheat the game. Unfortunately, users of Cedega, a Windows programs portability app for Linux, has been picked up as a cheating application by Blizzard, leading to the closing of many accounts of Linux users.
Discussion has been ongoing in the forum of TransGaming, Cedega's developer. Currently, Transgaming is working with Blizzard's engineers to resolve the problem and hopefully get the unjustly banned accounts back into a state of gaming readiness. Till then, however, all we can do is wait for TransGaming and Blizzard to do something about it.
I got bored of WoW after 2 weeks ~_~ Hiding grind with quests isn't a good idea imo.
Wow was fun while it lasted but when you have done as good as everything possible, with only the end game instances left (cleared most of them along with couple of naxx bosses) you just run into a boring rince and repeat.
I think wow is first hitting the "boring" sign now, as expansion is closing in, which might be overhyped, people expecting things to renew thier love but wow can no longer give what i want, because for a year i was nothing more than a raidslave, seing it as the only progression left, there are no skill point system or hard to hit lvl, which i somehow didn't fond before but now i see the reason.
When you realize that the items you gather might make you think you got stronger it's only marginal, many if not most are stuck in it, with all the addons it's no wonder that 30 bonus overall dps could make you thrill for some time.
Many people play just because thier friends does and in their guilds. I remember when i started wow, it would have nothing to do with some pranky huge guild just me and friends having fun for many months it was like that but then people started venturing into MC, as interesting it all was it was the beginning of the end. Now i'm sorta looking for a mmo that grants progression without having the game controle when you have to play instead of you just playing when you feel like it.
I am all in all looking for a game where you do not achieve max lvl within few weeks but a game with constant progression, a game where it's not the 40-man dungeon or monster that decides "you're progressing for an item" but instead you can go into an instance 8 months after and be there because you still are far from max lvl but there's things to be found there and most importantly of all, you will be there with close friends of 3 or 5. What game can give that sort of feeling? the ability to solo throughout, yet still instancefun with friends for glory, xp, and treasure, with a spice of action and bloody mess?
Age of Conan or 2Moons? Only time will tell but one thing is for sure, WoW seems dead to me and looks like just another heavy guild raiding game, as EQI-II looked like, now.
In short: Wow still casual? don't make me laugh, it's just how good they can keep that thought of denial alive, which makes people continue to play. As soon you hit lvl 60 it all changes, 1-59 is the only casual solo play.
Regards- a player, who played wow from open beta and throughout retail till a couple months ago.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
The early days of WoW were definately fun for me but as time went on the game slowly began to get on my nerves. I do not like having to get together with 20 - 40 other people just to play boring content for gear you may or may not be able to get. Being a shadow priest w/ only the option to pve for healing gear, or pvp endlessly for pvp gear did not help my situation. WoW went down the wrong path when the game started to be about gear instead of fun. Once you get the gear, then what? Wait for the next patch or expansion for more gear? Instanced pvp and the honor system killed the game even more. The only reason I wanted gear was to do World pvp, not instanced. Sucks for those of us who grinded for the pvp gear and now want to have fun with said gear but you've already played the hell out of all the battlegrounds. I highly doubt the expansion will bring enough to World of Warcraft to get me back into the game. There are many good titles coming soon that wont be based on gear but hopefully rather, skill..
Playing WoW 2 years casually would destroy any normal person. But if you are satisfied with this kind of game more power to you. You are easy to please. Not only is the combat system way too easy but you'll only be killed by someone who has spent that much longer getting gear(aka a non-casual player, or a shadow priest because they can kill anyone). AND If you aren't getting gear for pvp then what else could it possibly be for? Sitting in town looking at your character? I personally cannot derive any pleasure or satisfaction out of that.
I wish you luck, as a casual player it just must be taking you that much longer to realize you are doing this for nothing. Former Shadow Priest of Gorgonnash,
-Xelroh
The final straw for me was the intentional disabling of alot of addons in patch 1.10 (including many that worked unmodified for over a year). All the addons did was implement things that should have been in the main game (ex. making sure pet will always save enough energy to use growl every 5 seconds) or remove annoyances that were easily achieved manually but shouldn't have been required (ex. feeding pet every time happiness dropped) or just making the game more enjoyable (ex. keeping buffs up on yourself (my Priest had 5 different buffs with 5 different durations ranging from 3 min to 30 min (4 were 15 min or less))). Did some of the addons give some advantages? Sure but that's really secondary to providing fun and irrelevant except in PvP (so just disable them in PvP).
At this point, I'm playing EVE and CoH/CoV and waiting to find out more about Vanguard, LotR, and Warhammer.
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
Through all of my years of gaming... Taple Topping... Mudding...
MMORPG'ing... I've always been aware and easily accepted the fact that
there are different strokes for different folks, but this i can not
wrap my head around.
I tried it. I kept on playing because I thought there must be something
I was missing. i played for a couple months. I just never "got it".
I didn't even enjoy the early levels. I just kept going hoping that "6
million" people were right and I would eventually "get it".
There are games out right now that i find to be a ton of fun, so i know it's not just me getting old and cranky
This one blew right over my head, I guess
That's fine with me. I now understand that by not playing this, I am missing nothing.
though i dont get the true meaning of another editorial, another "praise wow"-thingy. I mean...it was fun, it was tempting and my rl-buddies had fun with it too. But i honestly have to say that, if a so called casual player is looking forward in playing wow on and on and on...., then i´m kinda worried about the future of mmo´s. because of the faxt that for those who want more than the let´s say casual content, they just get off board and i think that the community will suffer for lshort or long from those kind of mmo´s. Ok they might be the best choice for Casuals, but what about those who want to get really in to a game instead of fishing 6 motnhs or goin to raid over and over again.
WoW is just leading the path to a future in mmo´s i really don´t want to see.
with best regards...Oronwe
Which FF Character Are You?
Call things like they are. WoW is a Dumbed down mmog. I too read the doom and gloomsayers about how WoW was never going to survive. All I can say is, I thank the gods that WoW does survive, if only because it keeps a majority of the immature brats in one location, one I will never set foot in again.
One of the admittedly many reasons that WoW is so popular is NOT that it answers everyone's prayer, as that editorial believes. The game does NOT fulfill the wishes of 3 out of 4 of the major groups who play. Rather, it is one of the only games currently out there that has anything available.
-Everquest 1 is an old game, and spending 7 years in one online world, especially one that is so antiquated in terms of graphics in much of its content, is beyond the ability of many many gamers. I loved EQ1 for 5 years. I would try most newly released games for the free month that accompanied purchase, only to return to EQ1 along with the rest of my guildies very quickly. That is, until EQ2 and WoW were released, when my guild disintegrated. I did not have the willpower to start over again with a new guild in the same world, so I tried unsuccessfully to find a new game. I really should have just stayed with EQ1, it would have been a lot more satisfying for me.
-Everquest 2 is a pathetic excuse for a game. It was hyped to an amazing degree by SOE, and had many people drooling at the mouths, particularly those who were decidedly unhappy with WoW's cartoonish graphics. However, a game that must reinvent itself every few months due to horrid class/content imbalance will have a very hard time maintaining customers. SoE devs have pushed through 2 MASSIVE combat revamps in 2 years, the 2nd coming out with the new expansion, not to mention countless retooling, breaking and rebreaking of individual classes. (thinking assassins up through patch 13 and DoF. Ranger archery DPS and poison stacking issues. Endless caster nerfs and fixes. IT took 18 months + to include PVP content. The raiding in EQ2 is a joke. A large number of raids are retooled every few weeks, making it so that a force not only needs to repeat the llearning process regarding strategies, (not necessarily a bad thing actually) but end up with loot that is decidedly poor compared to the effort to beat the mob. Not to mention the fact that a caster wears almost the same gear in terms of looks, for a vast majority of the levels. My level 50 assassin with endgame loot looked little different from level 30ish assassins with a few differences.
-SWG Another pathetic excuse for a game. It really requires an amazing lack of ability to take one of the most amazing IPs in existence today, with a rich history and lore and culture preestablished, and turn it into the drivel that is/was SWG. Many games devote a large amount of time in creating a world and then creating creatures and races to inhabit it, as well as history and lore of said world/universe. With SWG, a large portion of that was already done. SWG also saw multiple revamps, indeed, the game was almost entirely changed even, resulting in one asking oneself when patching, "what kind of c*ap am I gonig to find this time? What will my class description be?"
-DAoC Limited content and a PVP bent, making it uninteresting to a large amount of the population of mmogs. Many who DO PVP don't wish to do it 100% of the time, but rather sporadically.
-DDO Lots of potential that again, a company has failed to deliver on. Another IP that had a precreated world with preexisting classes and races. Unfortunately, this one plays more like an offline game with the same repetitive dungeons that change almost not at all. I am sorry, but if you want me to go through the same dungeon 3x on 3 different difficulty settings, you really need to make sure that the map and mobs change. As it is, doing a dungeon now means that everyone just splits up and runs to the various required spots in order to finish asap. I am not sure how long it took this game to be developed, but I would like to know what the devs spent that time on....
-CoH/CoV Though reasonably well done, it is limited to a smaller fanbase of those wanting to be in a world of superheroes. Not to mention that the missions are ridiculously repetitive, and there is almost nothing to do at max level besides kill ArchVillains, which loses its luster very quickly. Raiding is virtually nonexistant. Also, the game is anti-items, resulting in not a single lootable item from mobs that one can add to outfit or weapons. Besides the costume quests one gets every few levels, one looks the same, whether one is level 3 or level 50.
Now we come to WoW, inarguably one of the easiest and most basic mmogs on the market today. While I am a firm supporter in 'different strokes for different folks' I find it a sad state of affairs that this game is so popular. I think it says more about the gaming market than it does about the game itself. The average age of gamers in general is apparently in the upper 20s these days, yet in WoW, the big kahuna of games, that average age appears to be greatly inferior, lower by about 10-15 years.
Leveling- It is relatively easy to take a toon of any class from 1-60 in 1-2 months. A vast majority of this time is spent soloing. While I support solo-conducive games, I feel that it soloing should be a manner in which one is able to still advance when UNABLE to find a group. Soloing should be the exception, not the rule. Otherwise, one might as well play FFX 12 or some other game offline.
Raiding: Raiding is a joke, pure and simple. Rather, it is not a joke, but an activity that brought tears to my eyes. Take a game that encourages soloing for 60 levels, then convinves you to raid, and you have disaster on your hands. Players have spent 60 levels developing their skills in the solo capacity. Priests go Shadow in order to DPS. Warriors go offensive for DPS. Druids go Feral so they can do everything. Then, take these same people, with 60 levels of bad habits (see 100% DPS based) ingrained in them, and try to tell them they need to fulfill the roles for which their classes were intended.
Priest/Druid "What do you mean you want me to heal! Do you know how much dmg I can do!!!"
Warrior: "What do you mean you want me to tank that boss, I won't be able to be on the top of the DPS chart then!!!"
etc. etc.
A raid is a group of people, willing to subjugate their own interests, to further the objectives of the group. Raids require Healers, tanks, buffers AND DPS. Not ONLY DPS. Try telling many WoW raiders that though. With no tank, the mob will just chew through the raid force. With no healers, the tank will die and the same wipe will occur etc.
PVP: Skill has little to do with one's success here. Rather, one's PVP ranking is directly linked to the level of gear. Add to that the endless grinding it takes to max faction with a zone's population. Then on top of all that, you add the endless ranting and raving and idiocy exhibited by so many WoW players. That is supposed to be fun? I beg to differ. I would rather just take a hammer and bang nails into my head. more fun really.
Tradeskilling: Useless in this game. One can find better gear with half the effort adventuring, not to mention spending less in the AH on an item than it would cost to level up the skill to make said item.
Again, I believe WoW to be THE MOST DUMBED DOWN GAME on the market today. I sincerely hope WoW survives for many years to come, and that it will keep drawing the same type of player it currently does. The more that go towards WoW, the fewer I have to deal with in whatever game I will be playing.
thank you. this is EXACTLY what i am talking about. WoW rocks and so will WoW BC expansion. Hold on oldies, your time is comming. Don't listen to as you said "amutre experts" they just hate WoW becuase so many others love it, and it is the best MMO out there.
-WoW BC will have, 70 caps, flying mounts, 100+ NEW QUESTS!, new armor, items, MINIGAMES!(the only game that has this is ----------), new battle feilds, new doungons and races, and much much more
-WoW hit 7.5 million players.
Welp...
Wow is Wow.. Love it or - leave it.
I myself am not a teenager... (oh to be one once more.. On second thought cancel that thought).. Lol!
Seriously, I still play Wow and probably will, regardless of what others say, or when Blizzard gets a hair up their arse and does stupid things at times.
The only other game that possibly peaks my interest to pull me away from WoW.. is the upcoming Vanguard. Who knows.. may keep both on my machine.
Thats my 2cp's for the day anyway.
"Huntress"
"By letting players be selfish, and solo inside a multiplayer game, they've kept me as a loyal customer that now looks forward to my weekend jaunts when I've got a couple of hours to hang out with friends. "
This needs to be quoted EVERY single time some ignorant dolt asks on any MMORPG forum why would someone solo play in a massive multiplayer game.
There have been many other answers but an explaination this clear and concise should be understood even by the clueless type who constantly ask that.
It's amusing seeing all these posts ragging on WoW. Now I have my problems with the game. I canceled when it looked like they were doing nothing but raid-content and only recently returned to see this 'fixed' PvP they claim to be introducing. I'm likely going to play WAR when it comes out, but in spite of all of this I don't ignore reality, I don't ignore the one thing most of the posters in this thread would never admit because it's true:
WoW is a SUCCESS.
A REAL success. Something so many veteran MMORPG players hate facing is that in the rest of the gaming world a real success when a game is played by millions, not thousands.
WoW has brought MMORPGs into the real gaming world. A world where the subscription numbers of previous MMORPGs like UO and EQ won't cut it anymore.
Maybe that means introducing game mechanics that veteran MMORPG players think are too 'simple'. They don't like that because maybe that means those 'challenging' game mechanics from previous MMORPGs weren't worth anything afterall. Maybe those game mechanics weren't 'challengning', they were just bad, unplayable excuses of gameplay that people swallowed as 'challenging'.
It's time for MMORPGs to evolve. It's the future and for better or worse, WoW was the game that has finally shown the way.
And you can't stop the future, you just have to deal with it.
In the world of Beers, Budweiser is a huge success. It's served in more countries than any other beer. Why is it so successful? Because it appeals to the "General Public". But ask a Beer connoisseur, like myself, and you'll hear that it's simply a "Bio Waste product". The true Beer drinkers prefer beers like Samuel Adams and Guinness.
Bottomline...WoW may be a financial success but that doesnt mean it's a great game. Just as high budget Hollywood movies arent necessarily better than Indie films just because they net more money.
wow still is the best mmo out there hands down in overall, sorry but all the other mmo's just suck too much... they are sooo alike, man they even use the same engines lol...
a casual player is not a player that plays for leveling ok? its a player that sets a goal and gets to it at his pace, so you are all wrong saying that you need to level to be casual...
raiding is the best way to gear ur char to the max... once you REALLT, TRULLY gear ur char to the max u WILL see a diference... all you guys that claim to have done it all its all BS, cause if you did you woulndt have quit... its too much fun seing how others fall at ur feet in pvp or gawk at you when ur messing arroung in IF etc... So dont give me that crap that you did it al LOL... you probably just had like some tier 1 and a couple of tier 2 lol...
the expansion IS all its hyped up, im in BETA
so to all you wow haters/failers please post somewhere else, dont try to bring the rest of us millions (way more than any other game) subscribers down, it aint gona work...
Hagrin
"But WoW also offered something that was solely lacking in the MMOs before it, you could play alone and in short session even near the end of the game."
Countless hours instancing for weeks and weeks IS NOT A SHORT SESSION.
Failed at WoW? How can you fail at WoW? It's the easiest game out there. You can get to lvl 60 in like...one month. I played it for over 2 years. I have a lvl 60 Shaman, lvl 60 Warrior, lvl 60 Mage, and a lvl 60 Priest on the Khaz Modan server.
Another reason it's so easy is that there's no penalty for dying. No one cares if they die. Especially in PvP. When you die you just pop right back up. Sure theres a small wear and tear to your equipment but that's it. This game has no challenge. The 2 years I played it was just touch and go. I bounced back and forth between WoW and various other mmo's.
It's not a bad game. It's just not a great game either.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
Heh, I couldn't have said it better, Steve Wilson must really like putting as little effort into things as possible. I too share your sentiments about WoW keeping a specific type of person away from other games. Simply put WoW the size it is , is NOT good for the MMORPG Genre because it is beginning to stifle the entire genre, for WoW to improve (and I beleive Blizzard can make some worthwhile improvements) It needs competition that will make Vivendi/Blizzard management feel threatened. If not they will keep offering the same poor customer service and poor attention to what the playerbase needs instead of the the Blizzard designers who seem to live in Ivory Towers.
So who is in the lead on this site for the most hated MMO?
Finaly a good editorial and right on the spot, i can on laugh at people reactions that state the played for a year or even 2 years and they claim the game sucks, i mean how dumb can you be to be able to play a game for more then a year and say the game is stupid. Wow isn't my 1st MMO but it is my 1st MMO i made it to lvl cap 60, you may say oh thats easy and sonme may say that can be done in a month but to be honost people that say that are for me people that arn't real gamers as real gamers explore the world, make friends do not neccecary follow the gamepath but have their own fantasy on how to behave in the world, If i go out for some hunting i go out for some hunting and i do not go out for the grind, that word doesn't even excist for me really, same thing for the word Twink, unless it means being jalouse at a low lvl for his gear, i mean comm'n people screaming on RPG realms that some are twinks, people like that should leave the game cause twinks should be seen as family members as i see my character as one famlily meeting other family's, i do agree that at some point its hard to know if the so called twink is a person that worked very hard with a high lvl to gain some gold to spend on his lower lvl char. or if it is some goldbuying idiot , in that way i think the biggest bug in WOW is goldsellers/goldsellingsites/goldellingspammers. And something i also find wierd is people say that they find WOW boring, again i would ask them who is holding the 9mm against your head to force you to play??, for me its the other way around when i feel borred i going to play WOW cause i just can not get borred in it, and may i feel that one of my family members isn't worth playing at that moment i got more members in the famliy(Other character) to choose from or simply yet leave the realm and get back into the real world.
If you reach the point of bordem in a game you know that that game has taken full control over your real life else why would you hop into a game that is boring. Think about this the next time anyone say's he's boring in a game !! Junky's will say the same thing about drugs "do not use it cause it is bad" but they contineu using drugs
And now my qoute,
Bit dumb to make a statement for a game that surpassed 6 mill. subs
SWG could have been the king of them all untill they made into a Counterstrike online game for Jedi's, true it needed somewhat of more of a storyline especialy knowing the rich history from the movies the game had, but being able to creat city's, play rpg with non combat classes, pickup any of the 16 classes wich really gave you the feel of being in the SW world, and that's what SWG really was , it was more a world you could do almost everything possible in then it was a game, yes it had lots of bugs to bad they kept developing new stuff instead of fixing bugs first.