Originally posted by Novaseeker Yet again another example of Blizzard taking the genre in the wrong direction.
I agree.
I just love the double standards in these forums and how nothing can't be laid to rest at the feet of success.
A) Warcraft just copies everything from other games. It didn't create a single new thing.
WoW is taking the market in the wrong direction.
Those two statements make me really chuckle. So which is it? Blizzard is doing everything that everyone else has already done or they are blazing a trail to a bad destination?
How many games have to fail before we blame the companies that make them? When will companies start making games that are FUN instead of making games they think will get a share of the market. When will companies stop releasing their game premature and wonder why people leave after a month.
When will players realize Blizzard can't stop a company from making a fun innovative game and releasing it when it is ready.
There are millions of people waiting to play a new game. As soon as you ask the question of why they are not sticking around other games it become obvious it is not Blizzards fault. Just look at the large amount of MMOs that have been canceled, licenses traded, merging servers a few months after release, companies gone out of business, etc etc.
The market is heading in the wrong direction, because so many companies have gold fever seeing Blizzards numbers and forget they are making games and games need to be fun. Games that are not designed to be fun don't succeed in todays market.
Blizzard is taking the market in the right direction if other companies would choose to look at what is important. Waiting to release the game until it is ready. Open communication with players and fine tuning their products based on customer feedback. Everything they are doing as a business builds good results. Blizzard as a business is doing everything right and those lessons can be applied to any type of MMO, hardcore/casual/pve/pvp.
Phasing for example is fun and has a lot of potential right now. It gave me a few really big WOW factor moments in the game. Cool stuff that can really add more atmosphere if built upon. I don't care if Blizzard did it first or not as long as companies keep using it to add value to their games. I'm glad the game isn't littered with phasing, because to much might be over kill. Also since it is new (at least to WoW) it still has some areas it can expand to.
Originally posted by Daffid011 So which is it? Blizzard is doing everything that everyone else has already done or they are blazing a trail to a bad destination?
They can't do both? They don't seem mutually exclusive to me.
And for those who think they saw phasing at work in the Sunwell patch (2.4), let me say that compares to the phasing used in WotLK as the first telephone with the new I-Phone.
I'm not quoting you to discredit your opinion or anything, but as i red this sentence i coulnd't help but giggle.
Did you know how many people complains on how they new I-Phone sucks? here
phasing? phasing you say? the only phasing that has stuck in my mind is the larger scale "phasing" that i experienced...
man i can't wait to get to 60
at this, this is kinda fun...oh an xpac
wth, all my stuff is trash..o well, let me get to 70, then i'll rock
yay, i am 70..cool, no this sux...i need rep and gear
sweet i got a zillion rep for that one item...oh, but now i need honor
7,000,000 battlegrounds later,,,nice now i stand a chance in arena..o wait
I'm not the right class....at least i can get some arnea gear
nice! what? next season...hmmm, more honor grinding
darn this sux, maybe some PvE....1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1
lame
So play something else. Many people enjoy the constant striving to make the character better.
Many games work this way.
hmmm here is something that might explain it "sort of". You'll have to watch it for a bit but it's kind of funny and I'm sure many of you know this guy...
WOW is not my kind of game, but anyone who says WOW hasnt brought a ton of changes to the MMO genre is simply fooling himself. You may really make a difference between "changes I like" and "changes which became influental". The genius of the Blizzard devs is not inventing everything new, but perfecting things and making them popular. They didnt invent radar or symbols over quest givers head, but they caused those things to become standard in most MMOs. Is just as it IS. Now you are free to hate those changes, but saying they dont exist is like covering your eyes with your hands and yelling "you cant see me". Yelling someone down because he is 18 and WOW his frist MMO is plain dumb. If experience would make humans wiser we would have a gerontocracy and live in paradise by now. I really would like to know what this phasing exactly is? Can someone describe it to me please?
I'll describe it as I've seen it in four occassions. This is from personal experience. If you're looking about mechanics, you need to speak to people more qualified than me.
1. Starter areas. Death Knight starting area is a big demonstration of this technology. I won't go into spoilers but the whole area around you changes with every quest line you complete. For example, first the fields have farmers running away from their houses, later on the same houses are burning etc etc. You're never alone. You can still see all the people on the starting area, but they see the world around them differently, depending on their actions. For you the farmers may still evacuating the areas, for them the villages is already burning.
2. Daily quests. Dragonblight daily to defend the tower have you attack dragons while you're mounted. The difference is that you get many more aggressive dragons when you get the quest than they normally fly on the area.
3. Story telling progression quests. Same zone, once you completed a certain long questline, you participate in a storytelling event in a part of that zone. From that moment on, that particular side of the zone changes for you.
4. Raid bosses. Blue dragonflight dragons (the time shifters) create paralel realities. You're in the same place with the rest of the raid and you're not. The transition is seamless, no loading screens etc. It's like putting a filter in front of your eyes and suddenly you can see the shadows but not part of the real world any more (hope that made sense).
Anyway, they use this in various spots. It's a really storytelling enchancing mechanism. To whoever said that it's not the same with LOTRO starting area, he is right, it's not. LOTRO starting area is cut off from the rest of the world. In this case we're talking about a transition that is happening in and out of in real time, sometimes having temporary effect on the character, sometimes a more permanent effect.
Lets hope that other storytelling MMOs pick up this technique, because it does enchance the experience and the illusion of playing in a changing world. To whoever brought the sandbox argument into the thread, get a grip with reality. This is not a sandbox game, nor it was ever meant to be, why you're blaming an apple for not being an orange is beyond me. For those more akin to enjoy a good story, I think they will like the use of this particular technology.
WOW is not my kind of game, but anyone who says WOW hasnt brought a ton of changes to the MMO genre is simply fooling himself. You may really make a difference between "changes I like" and "changes which became influental". The genius of the Blizzard devs is not inventing everything new, but perfecting things and making them popular. They didnt invent radar or symbols over quest givers head, but they caused those things to become standard in most MMOs. Is just as it IS. Now you are free to hate those changes, but saying they dont exist is like covering your eyes with your hands and yelling "you cant see me". Yelling someone down because he is 18 and WOW his frist MMO is plain dumb. If experience would make humans wiser we would have a gerontocracy and live in paradise by now. I really would like to know what this phasing exactly is? Can someone describe it to me please?
I'll describe it as I've seen it in four occassions. This is from personal experience. If you're looking about mechanics, you need to speak to people more qualified than me.
1. Starter areas. Death Knight starting area is a big demonstration of this technology. I won't go into spoilers but the whole area around you changes with every quest line you complete. For example, first the fields have farmers running away from their houses, later on the same houses are burning etc etc. You're never alone. You can still see all the people on the starting area, but they see the world around them differently, depending on their actions. For you the farmers may still evacuating the areas, for them the villages is already burning.
2. Daily quests. Dragonblight daily to defend the tower have you attack dragons while you're mounted. The difference is that you get many more aggressive dragons when you get the quest than they normally fly on the area.
3. Story telling progression quests. Same zone, once you completed a certain long questline, you participate in a storytelling event in a part of that zone. From that moment on, that particular side of the zone changes for you.
4. Raid bosses. Blue dragonflight dragons (the time shifters) create paralel realities. You're in the same place with the rest of the raid and you're not. The transition is seamless, no loading screens etc. It's like putting a filter in front of your eyes and suddenly you can see the shadows but not part of the real world any more (hope that made sense).
Anyway, they use this in various spots. It's a really storytelling enchancing mechanism. To whoever said that it's not the same with LOTRO starting area, he is right, it's not. LOTRO starting area is cut off from the rest of the world. In this case we're talking about a transition that is happening in and out of in real time, sometimes having temporary effect on the character, sometimes a more permanent effect.
Lets hope that other storytelling MMOs pick up this technique, because it does enchance the experience and the illusion of playing in a changing world. To whoever brought the sandbox argument into the thread, get a grip with reality. This is not a sandbox game, nor it was ever meant to be, why you're blaming an apple for not being an orange is beyond me. For those more akin to enjoy a good story, I think they will like the use of this particular technology.
But I don't want to see something that other players are not seeing. This "enchanced storytelling" makes WoW more and more just like a single player game with a shared chatroom. I love in WAR when I'm doing a public quest with other players, and we all see the story develop simutaniously. This is what makes me feel like I am playing a multiplayer game.
------------------------------ "Capitalism is currently working as intended."
WoW has redefined the MMO market, in some good and some bad ways. I feel the greatest disaster to come from WoW is that MMO's now seem to lack the one thing that made them great, community.
WAR suffers from this as well.
MMO's are devolving into MSO's sadly. Massivly Singleplayer Online experiences.
I'm not sure that you understand the concept I'm trying to visualise with words. You both reside in the same world, it's however like you have a 6th sense and see more things than your friend that's not as gifted. Hope that makes sense. There are quests where the phasing shifts you to a sort of parallel reality, but most cases are more mild and you do share the world around you with others.
Since you mentioned public quests, you need to realise that they only work when you actually have people around you. For me they were great fun in Tier 1, but only in Empire space, just because there were people around. Everywhere else I had to solo grind influence (which wasn't really fun with a rune priest, at least up to 25) and that pretty much killed the whole concept. WAR is heavily dependant on full servers. If this is not the case, the experience changes dramatically from great fun to horrid grind.
On another note, people in this expansion seem willing to team up a lot more than in the previous expansion.
Edit: About the community bit, I have made RL friends from only one MMO surprisingly, and that's WoW. It's easy to generalise, but at some point people need to mature and realise that playing a certain MMO does not make them better in any shape or form than others that play something else.
Good for you, have fun with the other 11 milion heroes.
"The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands, To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming! On we sweep with threshing oar, our only goal will be the western shore."
It's by no means revolutionary tech, but the way Blizzard have implemented it is very interesting.
Last night me and my guildies were fighting Herald Volasj (final boss in Ahn'kahet) and part of the fight involves being phased out and fighting shades of your party members. It was a real suprise and a hell of a lot of fun. One of the best encounters I've seen in-game, and a great application of phasing.
amazing how everyone hates WoW and its still light years ahead of everyone else in sub. Look, i dont play it myself, but you haters might want to consider that its your life that sucks, not WoW.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
amazing how everyone hates WoW and its still light years ahead of everyone else in sub. Look, i dont play it myself, but you haters might want to consider that its your life that sucks, not WoW.
amazing how everyone hates WoW and its still light years ahead of everyone else in sub. Look, i dont play it myself, but you haters might want to consider that its your life that sucks, not WoW.
While to suggest that people's lives 'suck' may be a little extreme, I do think that those who harbour such bitter hatred over a computer game need to re-evaluate what is important in their life. This doesn't just apply to WoW, but any game that seems to elicit extremism (pre-CU for example).
I have to admit some parts of this xpack are superb, two of the areas, storm peaks and Icecrown are incredible vistas, best I've ever seen, I'll wager they are as good as those seen in vanguard.
A few of the big questlines which end in a phased event are easily the greatest gems I have seen in any game.
I am however wondering how long it will be before the magic wears thin again though...time will tell!
If playerA_quest132123325553_completed = "yes" load zone_completed; else load default: This is the new era of MMOs? Ok.
Yep, nothing we ever seen in games like LOTRO, totaly amazing and completly Blizzards own idea.
I surely don't hate Wow but phasing isn't that impressing in any game, we seen it before. Wait until Guildwars 2 launches, they have events that affects the whole server and changes everything. That is something we havn't seen before in that way... Like if a team fails a quest to protect a bridge, it will be destroyed until someone fixes a quest to repair it and so on.
Wow do have 1 thing that it was first with, the way it loads in the zone your near so you don't have to wait with a loading screen. Jeff Strain who made it is the head programmer for GW2 and he say he made another way of doing it, one where the graphics can be a lot better (Yeah, he quited as the head programmer of Wow before it even launched, he argued that no game should have monthly fees, and some artistic differences with Blizz staff).
Sorry, but "wait until X game launches" got old a couple MMO launches ago. GW2 may end up being a great game, but until that happens, my fun and free time will be dedicated to something already available.
Wait until Guildwars 2 launches, they have events that affects the whole server and changes everything. That is something we havn't seen before in that way... Like if a team fails a quest to protect a bridge, it will be destroyed until someone fixes a quest to repair it and so on.
This is exactly what developers need to start thinking about and move away from the 'static' feeling of MMO's. Phasing is fine, but it still doesn't make any permanent change to the world, it just makes you feel like you're making a difference for a short period.
phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.
Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.
Comments
I agree.
I just love the double standards in these forums and how nothing can't be laid to rest at the feet of success.
A) Warcraft just copies everything from other games. It didn't create a single new thing.
Those two statements make me really chuckle. So which is it? Blizzard is doing everything that everyone else has already done or they are blazing a trail to a bad destination?
How many games have to fail before we blame the companies that make them? When will companies start making games that are FUN instead of making games they think will get a share of the market. When will companies stop releasing their game premature and wonder why people leave after a month.
When will players realize Blizzard can't stop a company from making a fun innovative game and releasing it when it is ready.
There are millions of people waiting to play a new game. As soon as you ask the question of why they are not sticking around other games it become obvious it is not Blizzards fault. Just look at the large amount of MMOs that have been canceled, licenses traded, merging servers a few months after release, companies gone out of business, etc etc.
The market is heading in the wrong direction, because so many companies have gold fever seeing Blizzards numbers and forget they are making games and games need to be fun. Games that are not designed to be fun don't succeed in todays market.
Blizzard is taking the market in the right direction if other companies would choose to look at what is important. Waiting to release the game until it is ready. Open communication with players and fine tuning their products based on customer feedback. Everything they are doing as a business builds good results. Blizzard as a business is doing everything right and those lessons can be applied to any type of MMO, hardcore/casual/pve/pvp.
Phasing for example is fun and has a lot of potential right now. It gave me a few really big WOW factor moments in the game. Cool stuff that can really add more atmosphere if built upon. I don't care if Blizzard did it first or not as long as companies keep using it to add value to their games. I'm glad the game isn't littered with phasing, because to much might be over kill. Also since it is new (at least to WoW) it still has some areas it can expand to.
They can't do both? They don't seem mutually exclusive to me.
I'm not quoting you to discredit your opinion or anything, but as i red this sentence i coulnd't help but giggle.
Did you know how many people complains on how they new I-Phone sucks? here
www.who-sucks.com/tech/15-reasons-why-apples-iphone-sucks
and also the google results for "I-Phone Sucks"
www.google.com/search
Don't take it too seriously, i just found it funny.
WoW fans ... like some options in another game? don't worry most likely Blizzard will rip it off and use it as thier own.
/popcorn
What a load of rubbish. WoW hasn't brought a SINGLE new idea to MMO's. All it has done is made the genre accessible to idiots.
Mate, you're an elitist
You're just sore because
1) MMORPG is no longer a niche area, now millions more play because of wow, and you don't feel as special.
2) WoW killed your favorite MMORPG and now you hate it.
3) You're an elitist. (sans being elite)
You can't deny all of the above, some but not all.
Ciao for now.
{ Mod Edit }
----
MMORPG's I've Played: World of Warcraft: 10/10 - Rappelz: 7/10 - Ragnarok Online: 8/10 - DnD Online: 2/10 - Runescape: 6/10 - LotR Online: 5/10 - Anarchy Online: 7/10 - CoV: 8/10 - Rohan Online: 8/10 - Guild Wars: 7/10 - Flyff: 8/10 - Warhammer Online: 8/10
My HARDCORE Story
So play something else. Many people enjoy the constant striving to make the character better.
Many games work this way.
hmmm here is something that might explain it "sort of". You'll have to watch it for a bit but it's kind of funny and I'm sure many of you know this guy...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9-Tabula-Rasa
Not that is matters, but yeah, I quit awhile ago (and got lucky making my money back too).
That is a darn funny video though.
Mate, you're an elitistYou're just sore because
1) MMORPG is no longer a niche area, now millions more play because of wow, and you don't feel as special.
2) WoW killed your favorite MMORPG and now you hate it.
3) You're an elitist. (sans being elite)
You can't deny all of the above, some but not all.
Ciao for now.
{ Mod Edit }
You're the one that rates WoW 10/10. Seriously, how the hell could you consider WoW PERFECT? No game deserves a 10/10.
------------------------------
"Capitalism is currently working as intended."
I'll describe it as I've seen it in four occassions. This is from personal experience. If you're looking about mechanics, you need to speak to people more qualified than me.
1. Starter areas. Death Knight starting area is a big demonstration of this technology. I won't go into spoilers but the whole area around you changes with every quest line you complete. For example, first the fields have farmers running away from their houses, later on the same houses are burning etc etc. You're never alone. You can still see all the people on the starting area, but they see the world around them differently, depending on their actions. For you the farmers may still evacuating the areas, for them the villages is already burning.
2. Daily quests. Dragonblight daily to defend the tower have you attack dragons while you're mounted. The difference is that you get many more aggressive dragons when you get the quest than they normally fly on the area.
3. Story telling progression quests. Same zone, once you completed a certain long questline, you participate in a storytelling event in a part of that zone. From that moment on, that particular side of the zone changes for you.
4. Raid bosses. Blue dragonflight dragons (the time shifters) create paralel realities. You're in the same place with the rest of the raid and you're not. The transition is seamless, no loading screens etc. It's like putting a filter in front of your eyes and suddenly you can see the shadows but not part of the real world any more (hope that made sense).
Anyway, they use this in various spots. It's a really storytelling enchancing mechanism. To whoever said that it's not the same with LOTRO starting area, he is right, it's not. LOTRO starting area is cut off from the rest of the world. In this case we're talking about a transition that is happening in and out of in real time, sometimes having temporary effect on the character, sometimes a more permanent effect.
Lets hope that other storytelling MMOs pick up this technique, because it does enchance the experience and the illusion of playing in a changing world. To whoever brought the sandbox argument into the thread, get a grip with reality. This is not a sandbox game, nor it was ever meant to be, why you're blaming an apple for not being an orange is beyond me. For those more akin to enjoy a good story, I think they will like the use of this particular technology.
I'll describe it as I've seen it in four occassions. This is from personal experience. If you're looking about mechanics, you need to speak to people more qualified than me.
1. Starter areas. Death Knight starting area is a big demonstration of this technology. I won't go into spoilers but the whole area around you changes with every quest line you complete. For example, first the fields have farmers running away from their houses, later on the same houses are burning etc etc. You're never alone. You can still see all the people on the starting area, but they see the world around them differently, depending on their actions. For you the farmers may still evacuating the areas, for them the villages is already burning.
2. Daily quests. Dragonblight daily to defend the tower have you attack dragons while you're mounted. The difference is that you get many more aggressive dragons when you get the quest than they normally fly on the area.
3. Story telling progression quests. Same zone, once you completed a certain long questline, you participate in a storytelling event in a part of that zone. From that moment on, that particular side of the zone changes for you.
4. Raid bosses. Blue dragonflight dragons (the time shifters) create paralel realities. You're in the same place with the rest of the raid and you're not. The transition is seamless, no loading screens etc. It's like putting a filter in front of your eyes and suddenly you can see the shadows but not part of the real world any more (hope that made sense).
Anyway, they use this in various spots. It's a really storytelling enchancing mechanism. To whoever said that it's not the same with LOTRO starting area, he is right, it's not. LOTRO starting area is cut off from the rest of the world. In this case we're talking about a transition that is happening in and out of in real time, sometimes having temporary effect on the character, sometimes a more permanent effect.
Lets hope that other storytelling MMOs pick up this technique, because it does enchance the experience and the illusion of playing in a changing world. To whoever brought the sandbox argument into the thread, get a grip with reality. This is not a sandbox game, nor it was ever meant to be, why you're blaming an apple for not being an orange is beyond me. For those more akin to enjoy a good story, I think they will like the use of this particular technology.
But I don't want to see something that other players are not seeing. This "enchanced storytelling" makes WoW more and more just like a single player game with a shared chatroom. I love in WAR when I'm doing a public quest with other players, and we all see the story develop simutaniously. This is what makes me feel like I am playing a multiplayer game.
------------------------------
"Capitalism is currently working as intended."
WoW has redefined the MMO market, in some good and some bad ways. I feel the greatest disaster to come from WoW is that MMO's now seem to lack the one thing that made them great, community.
WAR suffers from this as well.
MMO's are devolving into MSO's sadly. Massivly Singleplayer Online experiences.
I have no life.
I'm not sure that you understand the concept I'm trying to visualise with words. You both reside in the same world, it's however like you have a 6th sense and see more things than your friend that's not as gifted. Hope that makes sense. There are quests where the phasing shifts you to a sort of parallel reality, but most cases are more mild and you do share the world around you with others.
Since you mentioned public quests, you need to realise that they only work when you actually have people around you. For me they were great fun in Tier 1, but only in Empire space, just because there were people around. Everywhere else I had to solo grind influence (which wasn't really fun with a rune priest, at least up to 25) and that pretty much killed the whole concept. WAR is heavily dependant on full servers. If this is not the case, the experience changes dramatically from great fun to horrid grind.
On another note, people in this expansion seem willing to team up a lot more than in the previous expansion.
Edit: About the community bit, I have made RL friends from only one MMO surprisingly, and that's WoW. It's easy to generalise, but at some point people need to mature and realise that playing a certain MMO does not make them better in any shape or form than others that play something else.
Good for you, have fun with the other 11 milion heroes.
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar, our only goal will be the western shore."
If playerA_quest132123325553_completed = "yes"
load zone_completed;
else
load default:
This is the new era of MMOs? Ok.
It's by no means revolutionary tech, but the way Blizzard have implemented it is very interesting.
Last night me and my guildies were fighting Herald Volasj (final boss in Ahn'kahet) and part of the fight involves being phased out and fighting shades of your party members. It was a real suprise and a hell of a lot of fun. One of the best encounters I've seen in-game, and a great application of phasing.
If things were that simple, you'd be a succesful MMO developer
amazing how everyone hates WoW and its still light years ahead of everyone else in sub. Look, i dont play it myself, but you haters might want to consider that its your life that sucks, not WoW.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
OH SNAP......NO YOU DIDN'T!!!!!
While to suggest that people's lives 'suck' may be a little extreme, I do think that those who harbour such bitter hatred over a computer game need to re-evaluate what is important in their life. This doesn't just apply to WoW, but any game that seems to elicit extremism (pre-CU for example).
I have to admit some parts of this xpack are superb, two of the areas, storm peaks and Icecrown are incredible vistas, best I've ever seen, I'll wager they are as good as those seen in vanguard.
A few of the big questlines which end in a phased event are easily the greatest gems I have seen in any game.
I am however wondering how long it will be before the magic wears thin again though...time will tell!
Phasing is the next step in the grand evolution of the MMO genre?
Oooookay.... ~sigh~ If you say so.
Yep, nothing we ever seen in games like LOTRO, totaly amazing and completly Blizzards own idea.
I surely don't hate Wow but phasing isn't that impressing in any game, we seen it before. Wait until Guildwars 2 launches, they have events that affects the whole server and changes everything. That is something we havn't seen before in that way... Like if a team fails a quest to protect a bridge, it will be destroyed until someone fixes a quest to repair it and so on.
Wow do have 1 thing that it was first with, the way it loads in the zone your near so you don't have to wait with a loading screen. Jeff Strain who made it is the head programmer for GW2 and he say he made another way of doing it, one where the graphics can be a lot better (Yeah, he quited as the head programmer of Wow before it even launched, he argued that no game should have monthly fees, and some artistic differences with Blizz staff).
Sorry, but "wait until X game launches" got old a couple MMO launches ago. GW2 may end up being a great game, but until that happens, my fun and free time will be dedicated to something already available.
This is exactly what developers need to start thinking about and move away from the 'static' feeling of MMO's. Phasing is fine, but it still doesn't make any permanent change to the world, it just makes you feel like you're making a difference for a short period.
phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.
Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.