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Is it worth it to start now?
ozerinx
Member UncommonPosts: 200
Basically curious where the game is heading was thinking about starting... a few of my friends play since release but not sure if the game is going to die like after FF14 , Secret World, and Star war release=/
Name some pros and cons and what you feel the direction the game is heading.
Comments
WoW is heading towards the E-Sports............but apparently that's what people want so I don't think is going to die any time soon.
Deestroy, your posts are some of the most accurate statements I've read about the state of WoW lately. And here, I thought it was just me.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Not calling this a bluff, but would you have any supporting evidence for this claim?
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
I faintly remember how a 3.x something update long ago started making everything disgustingly easy. My 3-4 first months in WoW were pure bliss, I was fond of what they created, but with the years they betrayed their players and turned their game into a massive cash hysteria not respecting their own words, allowing pve to pvp server transfer 3 days before Warhammer's launch, allowing faction change on same server (!!! seriously). Not enforcing RPG rule, not watching over constant channel abuse.
Community is still horrible, you still have a gold spammer every minute in capital cities, graphics is still poor, textures low, there's still no general story or epic backbone, housing, etc so it's really a silly cartoony playground for rude teenagers.
So I'd say, don't play it now and find yourself a better mmorpg 8-P
This game isn't going anywhere, disregard anybody who tries to tell you otherwise. For myself, I recently came back after 2 years break, and having a great time starting over some brand new characters. It's fun as long as you remember it's a game, and to not rush to lvl 80 because half of the fun for me was the lower level dungeon crawling and pre-80 BG's.
If you're interested, go for it. It's not like the market is full of wonderful MMO's to play anyway
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
You mean the basic safe-internet practices that all computer users should adhere to? Yes, anybody who has a computer and is connected to the internet should have a firewall and a solid anti-virus program installed. Anybody who uses email addresses should know basic things to safeguard themselves and not get tricked into clicking or entering their passwords on malicious sites.
As an IT guy, if it takes WoW to get people to start being more careful and learn more about protecting themselves online, then so be it. Better WoW account than your banking accounts.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
I'm sorry but i cannot agree with the stuff being said by the above posters. In fact, WoW is one of the few old games where you can barge in from the beginning and in an acceptable time you can participate seamlessly in the most high end activities. Also, the game isn't expected to drown or die in the next few years, so in that sense it's a good bet.
WoW is a pretty much easy experience from the beginning. It's very easy to start playing and level your characters, so even non-gamers can start playing right away and have fun.
That said, it's an hard game to master. The most competitive stuff, like the hardcore mode end raids, are truly unforgiving in that matter. Most of the people that you see around here screaming "WoW is too easy", can't really backup their claims with something valuable, it's just the word spread around and they like to bitch.
Also, "vanilla WoW this, vanilla WoW that", it's becoming annoying already. Vanilla WoW was good at the time. The game was fresh and new, and most stuff looked like epic. But really, if you were to play vanilla WoW today, it would S U C K bad. Nostalgia is what those people have, and it really distorts what was like "back in the days". It had great, good, bad and awful things. We have to live with that.
The community in WoW, is generally not good. But when a game has almost more subscribers alone than the entire competition, you'd think there are plenty more morons there. Also, it's obvious that gold sellers attack it more, but there are easy ways to deal with that through addons.
If you have friends there and are gonna play with them, the community won't matter much to you, really. It's not hard to find a good mature guild either, I've been in plenty of them, both casual and hardcore.
Also, the game has a great lot of lore and back-story. People telling you the contrary can't be trusted. It's one of the most extensive lore-driven games around, has 3 warcraft games backing it up and plenty of written books also. To be honest, I think you should at least get a feel of Warcraft 3 before playing WoW, at least to understand some of the story.
Also, the game plays nice, and you can easily play it your way. You can level through grinding (boring, but effective if you know what you're doing), questing (and there are lots of quests that set in the lore) and PvPing in the battlegrounds (afaik the slowest mode, but for PVP addicts the most fun one).
But let's not forget that it has flaws too. The game isn't perfectly balanced (no game is), the starting of a new char without any help can be a bit overwhelming, especially when it comes to some gear choice and talents glyphs. It should not be hard though, to find extensive and detailed help on how to develop your character, both in WoW forums or in fan-sites.
The graphics are outdated, even though I admit I like the cartoonish style. On the other side, you don't really need a great PC to play WoW decently, which is good for your pockets.
It has no survival sense, or housing. This isn't a real flaw, to be honest. It's more the style and feel of the game. Also, it's instanced, and the stuff you do won't alter the state of the game itself (well, except in some events, and also in WOTLK where they started a new concept of fading world).
Give it a try, and see the feeling of the game, and the combat itself. If you can beat the first 15 levels of a druid shaman (gee, the most boring classes at start) then you're probably good to go. Get a free trial, and never forget that friends > all. The game becomes a lot less fun when you're "alone".
You can also state what kind of features you do like in a game like this, that could help us helping you telling whether the game is or isn't, and what should you expect.
Yeah like paladins werent broken in vanilla right?
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
DKs aren't broken as of now (unless you mean blood DK on arenas, lol), but let's not get offtopic and try to help the OP instead
Any time someone asks "should I...?" you're bound to get a lot of differing opinions. It's more a matter of perception than anyone being "right" or "wrong" on the subject. I've played WoW on and off since the open beta stress tests that were run in the months leading up to release and while many things have improved, unfortunately, I feel that much of the creativity that went into the original game has evaporated in recent months. The focus now is on the Arena, Blizzard's competitive E-Sport. Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) seems to have been tasked with turning the game inside-out in an attempt to make Arenas viable, to the detriment of everything else. Much of what was based on lore and imagination has turned into an unfortunate pursuit of gear and numbers.
While I would have preferred a Diablo MMO (my personal preference), Warcraft does have a rich background and the early game of WoW showed that. The people who are working on the game now are not the same crew. Why does every sword in Northrend look like a cross between Cloud Strife and Fred Flintstone? Why are players encouraged to run the same instances over and over until they become running jokes? Why is there no real distinction between a Dwarf Priest and a Forsaken Priest? Who thought it was a good idea to create the ridiculous and annoying Mechano-hog? Mr T grenades? Temporary miniature skeleton pets with sombreros? Pilgrim costumes? Instant cross-server grouping? You think these were all good ideas?
The strategy seems to be to keep players distracted long enough to squeeze one more month's subscription fee out of them. Blizzard's partnership with Activision has turned their creativity into souless corporatism. What was once a vibrant, living fantasy world now resembles a box of crayons that someone's taken a flamethrower to.
That's my impression, but your mileage may vary.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I would wait until Cataclysm is out to be honest. I started a Warrior and then quit when I got him to 77 after the "nerf them again" announcements (We are aready a 100% gear based class with shitty line specs, what gives?).
Take it from me, there will be many people quitting after the changes hit and new folks coming in, just wait is my opinion (your not missing anything).
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3370013/Warning-to-WOW-Players-Compromised-Accounts.html#3370013
Accounts are being hacked daily and blizzard is doing nothing to stop it...other than delete the accounts of the unfortunates who got hacked and then tell them to "Buy a new account and pray to whatever god you serve it doesnt happen again". No thats not a direct quote but its pretty much what they told me in so many words. Enjoy the wonderful world of hackcraft.
WoW will not die when those games you mentioned come out, so you have nothing to worry about. WoW will probably go pretty strong for 3-5 years (if not more). I predict we will see a gradual decline over time.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
I think pilgrim costumes are ok, and cross-server stuff is awesome, it means that no matter what time you'll always have someone to do some instance with.
I understand the "forsaken and dwarf priest" view, they had some unique spells based on race, which gave some feeling. But why did only priests have them?
Also, those priest abilities meant that dwarf priests were awesome, human and night elf were sub-par, for example. Fear ward was really powerful back then, and that is bad for the game.
I agree that the game might have lost a bit of feeling, but it's not the culprit alone. It's an aged game, the feeling is bound to fade, so the game needs to come with new stuff.
Now, I don't like every change they did, but most of them have some reasoning behind them, and can even be understandable. To appeal to more people, the game had to leave some of the crowd behind.
I think they'll be gone with the arenas in the next expansion though, and bring BG glory back. Yeah, I do loathe arena, and enjoy BG's. Arena kinda ruined a lot of the balance and class fun we had, but when I played (i've stopped playing since October or so) I could easily ignore the arena stuff and have fun with my raids and casual BGs.
Like other said, wait for Cataclysme, TONS of peoples will start new character to experience the low level stuff again.
Blizzard isn't responsible for stopping it, the end user is.
If you left your keys in the ignition of your car and the door unlocked, are you going to blame BMW when you find out your ride's been stolen?
People are responsible for securing their own computers and their online business. If they can't be bothered to educate themselves and take (very easy) steps to safeguard their online activities then they can pay the price and get hacked. Frankly, the internet was much more fun when it was populated by nerds and the tech-savvy as opposed to Facebook moms and grandpa. Good riddance.
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Blizzard isn't responsible for stopping it, the end user is.
If you left your keys in the ignition of your car and the door unlocked, are you going to blame BMW when you find out your ride's been stolen?
People are responsible for securing their own computers and their online business. If they can't be bothered to educate themselves and take (very easy) steps to safeguard their online activities then they can pay the price and get hacked. Frankly, the internet was much more fun when it was populated by nerds and the tech-savvy as opposed to Facebook moms and grandpa. Good riddance.
I have a sneaking suspicion that one culprit is the prevalence of add-ons that people tack onto their games without a second thought. It's rare to find players that have never used any sort of downloaded mod. Blizzard said during beta that they were allowing modders access to the game files so they could root out exploits and hacks. Well, that came and went and at some point, the developers decided that they could use the mods to add to the basic game. Now people download and install these things without thinking. There's no telling what they wind up putting into their game client in the process.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I would still say it's the best game out there right now. They have simplified some things in game but I don't think that necessaraily a bad thing. Pardon my bad spelling :-)
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
Blizzard isn't responsible for stopping it, the end user is.
If you left your keys in the ignition of your car and the door unlocked, are you going to blame BMW when you find out your ride's been stolen?
People are responsible for securing their own computers and their online business. If they can't be bothered to educate themselves and take (very easy) steps to safeguard their online activities then they can pay the price and get hacked. Frankly, the internet was much more fun when it was populated by nerds and the tech-savvy as opposed to Facebook moms and grandpa. Good riddance.
For someone who doesn't know anything about the history of Battlenet laying it all on other players sounds easy.
But there has been more than one instance of Battlenet itself being hacked, in late 2001 2002 they hacked the main server soo bad they had to do 2 weeks worth of rollbacks. in 2008 about the time they forced everyone to switch over, they had just implemented NEW Battlenet code. I know the difference between normal levels of hacked accounts and the BS we have going on now. There is no way with most computers running Norton, half if not all of us running some free anti Virus, not to mention most of use behind a firewall with anti spyware keylogger software. That all those accounts were personally attacked by their own hacker. I mean you really believe that there is a hacker army out there looking for us one by one, or would they just hack battlenet AGAIN. Get real.
Look I live with a Server Network Expert, I can tell you for a fact that Battlenet is shit.
Lol, ok.
So Battle.net is shit and Norton provides effective protection. Uh huh.
Better consult with your 'Server Network Expert' again. Your post is full of the type of computer ignorance that allows virus and malware writers to be successful.
People that get hacked are doing something they shouldn't be doing (or not doing something, take your pick). Do some research or pay a professional to educate you. There's no reason to ever get hacked.
You can be hacked without actually doing anything bad except connecting your computer to internet unless you wrote your own OS and all software and you're 100% sure there is no way that ...
I planned to write a very long comment to your "There's no reason to ever get hacked.". And then the truth stroke me. You would never understand.
Well... to the OP. I still play, and I still have fun with it to a degree. But I keep thinking to myself, why? Everything that made the game special before WOTLK is gone. I remember first starting WoW during the vanilla time, and seeing a level 60 for the first time, and thinking man, he looks awsome. Back then, epic gear was a bit more rare and EPIC, and when you finally got some, it was a HUGE accomplishment. Nowadays, the epic gear is EXPECTED.
Now, you just keep grinding instances with the dungeon finder, and, for instance, I got into a group with my DK tank, and was laughed at because of my gear... it's like these kids that play now just think you're supposed to magically be granted gear when you hit 80, not having to work for it. All sense of individual accomplishment is gone from the game, and like someone said earlier, it's all about gear and numbers now more than anything else, which is a shame. And it's becoming a huge turnoff for me finally after so many years.
The dungeons are nothing but zerg fests. Tank runs into the middle of a group, pulls them all, then tries to hold the aggro as the dps of the group gives no time to gather aggro before they start nuking everything down. There's really no sense of teamwork in normal dungeons anymore, that's all saved for the raids. I remember when a tank would try that and get killed immediately without the use of crowd control.
Okay, I'm done, I feel like an old man lol. But all in all, yes the game is streamlined for people who want a "get rich quick" themepark, But if that's not what you want, then pass on this and wait for something else.
Dont bring up spammers. You can simply get a badboy addon and they take care of it for you >.>
It depends on your version of "worth it".
WoW is a good game in its entirety. Sure it has changed since it started, but what game doesn't?
Everything you will experience will be "the norm" and "new and exciting".
That is what it is all about though isn't it? New and exciting? You have never experienced the world. There are TONS and TONS of people still playing, and you will likely be able to find friends quickly.
If you have not played, I suggest you do, people may talk trash, but it is a fun game, and very social compared to many other games.
There are other great MMOs out there, but it is not to late to play WoW, and it could be very well worth it if you enjoy the game.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
Does starting WoW now means to pay 72$+ for the game and data discs, being almost 90$ including first month fee? I ask because I considered to try it recently, but I think 90$ is a high price without guarantee that one will like it. Especially after reading of those so many negative posts on WoW. It is kind of surprising if I consider that 10+ millions of players think it is worthy of their time.
You can get a free trial whenever you want, and you don't need to buy all the expansions at a time to begin with.
So after trialing (14 days), if you decided it's worth your time and money, you could buy the first 2 ones (WoW battle chest, 37$) and play just as normally as you would. You only need WOTLK if you want to make a DK, go to northrend, or get past lvl 70.
And no, you shouldn't be even near lvl 70 after a month, unless you play too much time per day and get help boosts from other people.
For the best experience possible, do NOT take boosts, instance runs, gear, etc. Getting a couple of gold coins at beginning for repairs and shizzle is fine, but getting boosted ruins a lot of the fun and experience to be honest.
Reading the quests, understanding the lore, and the motivation and story behind the instances you'll get along the way also helps greatly. And now that most of the twinks are gone, BG's can be a lot more enjoyable while leveling, and provide a good rest.
Don't make the same mistake as a lot of people by boosting to lvl 80 ASAP, that'll ruin your game experience and soon you'll be just one more in the daily quests food chain. Get to learn your character, the class you're playing, and how to get the most out of it.
If you decide you don't like the game, make a new post with the stuff you didn't like and the stuff you were expecting in a MMO, and we'll be glad to point you some other game more to your liking.
Cheers
Yes.
If you enjoy a large amount of good PvE for small groups, solo and larger groups World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 still are the best options around there. LotRo could be one of them but the "group" content is not developed as in WoW and EQ2.
Final Fantasy 14, Guild Wars 2 and the future of AION will be probably very expressive, nothing is certain for Secret World and SW:TOK , but the success of these games will not "kill" WoW and even Everquest2.
You will start fresh so most of the criticism here will not affect you as it is based on personal experiences and comparison between the past and the present, usually the past is always brighter.
I know a couple of people that had their account hacked (in WoW and AION), all of them recovered everything withing a couple of days, but it is always good to be careful about internet and security.
World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Everquest 2 are huge games these days, they have nice and bad people within their communities like every other game, but in my opinion, they still are the best options in the market for a newer gamer. Aion will probably be with them in the near future, just like Guild Wars 2 and FF14.
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