--I played WoW for a little over a year before becoming so disgusted that I ended my subscription, deleted all my toons, including ICC geared 80's, and became a WoW hater. There is an elitist attitude among players that is truly offensive, a definite lopsidedness between "factions" which give the horde definite advantages during player combat. Constant goldseller spam in trade-, general-, and player to player chat that is extremely annoying, and the general attitude that WoW doesn't need your business, they will be just fine without you.
--Well, I'm here to say that I wouldn't shop in a store that treated me in such a fashion, and certainly will not give anymore of my money to a Videogame who treats me in such a manner, either. I'm sure this post will get blasted, but I don't care. Buyer be warned is all I can say. There are definite reasons I played for over a year, but, there are also definite reasons I left the game in the manner in which I did as well.
--If you want a game to suck up all of your free time, and try to squeeze as much money out of you as it possibly can, offend you in open chat as often as possible, then, by all means, play the game. If you are not fond of people trying to "erp" with you because you enter certain areas of the game to complete quests, or tell you exactly why you suck because your "gear" is not the absolute best the game has to offer, then find something else.
--Also, for parents considering this game for your kids, or checking to see what is posted about the game your kids currently play, get a trial account and spend a couple days seeing what the game is about. I'm certain you won't want your kids anywhere near this game.
I started off loving WoW. I read every quest text, still remember getting my first 'greenie' ( [Tigerseye] from a snow leopard outside IF
P.S. (How many people tried to mouseover the tigerseye, just out of interest???)
>_<
Here here, I had to stop and move a cursor over that just to double check...
As for me? I actually loved WoW back during the Vanilla stage, TBC introduced a paladin class to the horde (my favored side, but I rather dislike the Bloodelves), but that's the only major point to it, and when I started playing on my own account.
As people have said, its this incessant dumbing down of content. While I love being able to do more raids, and not have to sacrifice my soul to do it, there's a point where they should of levelled off, but they skipped right on past that about one expansion pack or so. Same with their logic, which has been going downhill exponentially.
First case? Removing Cold Weather Flying from its quest. Why? They said their players in beta had no clue where to get it. Instead of doing a simple letter-in-the-mail or quest to lead there, as has been done in every other level where you could get a new mount skill. What was a fairly simple, 10-15min chain of quests, became 1k gold wasted.
Second case? The badge system. What was supposed to be something that encouraged actually going through raids in their respective Tier order, was gutted less than halfway through the cycle in favor of some extremely clumsy system of bumping up and down the badges. Had they kept TBC's badge system, this could of been avoided entirely. A sub-point of this is the lack of weapons in badge gear in WotLK. I've gone around with Onyxia 10man's Obsidian edge every since she came out, not by choice, but because I've been horrifically unlucky with weapon drops, and winning them.
Third? Chill of the Throne. This is the big one. It shows they paid zero attention at all to what they were doing long-term, and so much like Sunwell, they had to implement a raid-wide specific nerf to all characters, just to push certain stats back into line. Fast forward like a year, same thing occured. They got too ambitious with what was a nice thing, and soon gear became too strong for the instances ahead of it. In comes CotT.
Fourth, is more of general. Vault of Archavon. THE worst instance in the game. Drops are completely random, and unless you are in a 25 man, the chances of anyone in the raid getting anything of use is slim. In a time where they said they wanted us to not have gear going to waste, VoA is about as bass-aackwards it can get. The fact that it used to be part of an entertaining PvP zone gave it some merit, but once they had to turn it into a battleground essentially, it lost whatever little fun I liked.
Now, what's really killing my interest, is the lazy way of Gating content they have come up with. In Cataclysm, ALL raids will be gated. No... just no. Where's the gating system like that of Ahn'Qhiraji? Where's the system like in Quel'dalas? Let the server affect the time, not the people who deal with the money.
I've only stayed in WoW because I found a (what used to be) great guild. Once ICC came out though, that was broken. Because of the absurd requirements of Primordial Saronite to do anything even remotely usefull, prices are sky-high, and are kept up there due to the insane requirement of the initial Shadowmourne quest. Why does this affect my guild? The Guild Leader, ever since the 25man started, has been hording the Primordials that drop. Claiming they are for "guild gear upgrades" I've yet to see a single one deposited at all by the GL in the logs. A friend of mine already tried talking to the GL about this, and the requirement of 25 needed for Shadowmourne (a gear upgrade of legendary proportions), as well as needing them to learn his Blacksmithing plans (another upgrade). He was promptly kicked. I myself tried talking about it, and during that whole raid, gear mysteriously never was given to me when I won the rolls.
Consider me guildless, and due to that, sick of WoW (was always sick of it, but having people to talk to tends to diluet that a little). The only reason a good chunk of people even play WoW anymore is because MMOs have been severely lacking lately. WoW isn't great. It's not fun. It's in dire need of the models being updated. But with Activision now a major controlling factor (as proven with the crazy prices of the Acti-Blizz store), WoW's doom is assured.
So for now, I'm forced to wait and hope that SW:TOR isn't brought down by the complete and utter lack of MMO experience Bioware has, or in general by the name itself. GW2 I'm looking forwards to, but Cataclysm? Nope...
I played wow for 4 years. Loved the first two years and then increasingly started to dislike it. At this point, i'm indifferent. The only time it bothers me is when I'm in beta and the public chat is filled with "this game sucks, wow is better."
Just like a very successful movie spawns sequels that arn't as good for the sake of making money by name brand alone, similiarly, new mmo's try to be more like wow.
As for the question of whether Wow is the BEST mmo? That is a subjective question and it does not have an objective answer.
Best = qualitative analysis (meaning) it's "just your opinion man." It doesn't matter that it makes the most money or has the most subscribers, because those are quantitative measure for an otherwise qualitative question.
Avatar is not the best move ever made, though I enjoyed it immensely. McDonalds is not the best restaurant, though I love a big mac and their fries.
Yes, WoW has the most subscriptions, but it's not the best mmo out there. Most successful doesn't mean best. There are different measures of success.
I for one, having played dozens of mmo's (including wow) believe FFXI and LOTRO are the best MMO's i've ever played. I played WoW longer only because it was more casual friendly. I quit FFXI because I was too addicted, not because i moved on to bigger and better things.
Those of you who blindly love WoW are going to hate its influence when you become sick of WoW. WoW has killed off creativity and there's no denying it. Their success was great for Blizzard but horrible for the MMO genre.
Too linear, makes you feel like it is scripted. Battlegrounds full of little kiddy whiners who only want a quick win for points. BOTs rampant in the battlegrounds. Chat abuse by immature knuckleheads is rampant. If you start another char after you get tired of level 80, it is like reliving the same nightmare over again. Too easy to level. I soloed a Rogue to level 80, that is lame. The crafting/skill systems are just run around and kill and/or harvest, repeat. I went from 0-450 skill in mining in 8 hours game time. They pandered to all the EQ/SWG whiners back in the day and created a monster of mediocrity. They installed an achievement system that is mostly worthless. Gives you trinkets and titles, etc but nothing of any use. Now they have gone to the final crap heap by starting to offer in game items for cash on their web site. Stick the nail in the coffin!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I think I'll make my funk the P-Funk
People hate it because it is on top. Many people deep down inside hates winners because generally they feel they are not winners so hate people that are. Also it is social "cool" to dislike what is popular to the masses.
People hate it because it is on top. Many people deep down inside hates winners because generally they feel they are not winners so hate people that are. Also it is social "cool" to dislike what is popular to the masses.
An alternative to your pop-psychology analysis would be that people don't like the game because it's a shallow gear treadmill with little to no freedom of choice. Or perhaps because some feel it's a representation of where the genre seems to be at or where it's headed. I don't like it because it bores me to tears after four years. It's become a lobby game with Dalaran being the lobby.
because some people want something to hate. wow is big and popular so some people like to hate it, they're rebellious.
its not as fun to hate FFXI(example) because no one cares if you do
yeh I never read the content only the title
This, I was JUST telling my girlfriend this. We just started back up in WoW, I was pretty tired of the game, however I figured it would be a nice time for the two of us to game together, since I wont have the desire to go and level a bunch when shes offline. I have to say, we are really enjoying it. Vaild points about global chat channels with a lot of people it.
People hate it because it is on top. Many people deep down inside hates winners because generally they feel they are not winners so hate people that are. Also it is social "cool" to dislike what is popular to the masses.
An alternative to your pop-psychology analysis would be that people don't like the game because it's a shallow gear treadmill with little to no freedom of choice. Or perhaps because some feel it's a representation of where the genre seems to be at or where it's headed. I don't like it because it bores me to tears after four years. It's become a lobby game with Dalaran being the lobby.
Or you just prove the point and come up with reason to hate. *shrug* Millions seem to love it...I believe that most likely less than that hate it, but more are netural to it.
You are forced into repeatedly running dungeon after dungeon after dungeon to farm badges to get your gear to raid which is more repeated dungeon running.
Once you are saved to a raid you cannot enter the dungeon again to help a friend. Example: Weekly raids, some people in guild will go on the weekly on Tuesday after downtime but a guildie may not log in til the weekend by which time most everybody in the guild is already saved to that dunegeon and cannot help them get their weekly done. Yeah thanks for not letting me help my friends out, is it too much to let me go in and just not get any badges or be eligible for any loot ?
Community. Many have said WoW has the worst community out there. I don't know if it is the worst but it's most certainly gone way down hill since vanilla days. Back in vanilla the game was played by a more mature audience. Now it's all XBox live kiddies spewing their racist elitest bullshit every 5 minutes. I actually had to turn off every chat channel in the game except guild chat.
Batlleground bots combined with more chat douchebags screaming shit like "You all fail!" the first 10 seconds into any BG made me really not have any fun in the one part of the game that wasn't just a badge farm.
The combination of these things and the fact that WoW is an on rails themepark ride make it a game that is terrible to ME.
Now having said that I do understand the appeal of this game to all the people who play it since for the vast majority of players WoW is their first MMO. I have a couple of friends who are just now getting to the point at which they are doing their first raids and of course they are having a blast with the game.
Just so I am not bashing I will actually post the things I actually like about WoW.
-Polished and relatively bug free gameplay.
-Smooth controls and combat system for both pve and pvp.
-Class balance is actually pretty good right now, most balanced it's ever been in my opinion.
-Very good raid boss fight mechanic design (though I am not a fan of straight dps race type of fights, they leave no room for player skill but make the fight totally reliant upon gear)
--There were only a few reasons I enjoyed the game. The graphics are very nice, the idea behind the gameplay is also very nice, and, at times the ingame interaction between players can be very nice. However, rampant "Erotic Role Play" or "erp" was very disturbing. People, at times, were aware of underage players being present, and yet continued or escalated this "erp" because of that knowledge. Harassment and elitism are prevalent on every realm, and with much of the content being group oriented players have to make the choice to accept this behavior or be excluded from "endgame content".
--Constant lag with fps dropping to 1 or 2 fps made moving through some areas extremely frustrating. The concept of an auction house was, at first, appealing, but the misuse of this makes obtaining necessary items very difficult without purchasing gold from third party websites. This, in turn, opens players to constant harassing and annoying goldseller spam as well as consistent attempts to manipulate players into 3rd party websites where account information is gleaned and used to hack accounts. This is not isolated or infrequent. Many players are tricked in this way.
--Anyone who spends any amount of time with this game knows after a certain point many people stop playing the game and merely exist to "troll" tradechat in order to anger others. This detracts from the game. Roleplay is also, supposedly, a founding premise of many realms, yet those who roleplay are often targeted by players for harassment or raids on known roleplaying areas.
--I could continue stating the issues I have with the game, but why? There are some very incredible aspect of the game, which kept me entertained for a while, but, in the end, there are far more detractions than attractions for me. Try the trial account they allow, and spend a while in a city, any city of either faction, and you will get a better idea if this is what you are looking for. It was not what I was looking for.
The amount of people who play WoW is a stupid argument to use because popularity does not mean quality.
Yeah it does.
Word of mouth is what got WoW 11 million subs.
If your game was good, word of mouth would get it 11 million subs.
The Internet spreads information or word of mouth quickly and efficiently these days. People hear about a game from an aquaintance, they try it and decide for themselves. It's a popularity contest with everyone voting.
If a better game than WoW appears, word of mouth will get it millions of subs and like in a week.
Unless you are saying 11 million WoW players are stupid? If you want to feel 1337, you would naturally look down on something the masses like.
I don't think 11 million WoW players are necessarily stupid, no, but.....I don't think it can be successfully argued that the "masses" are NOT stupid. If they weren't....you would have to explain a few notable presidential elections, and also the number of people that actually even CONSIDERED voting for ANY ticket that included Sarah Palin on it. Seriously. Was there really any CHOICE of who to vote for considering that she was on one of the two? O.o Well...to me....there wasn't. Not meaning to start up a controversial discussion here...only applying it to MY opinion of the "masses" being stupid.
I think some people play WoW because it was their first gaming "love," and they've never met any other gaming "suitors," so to speak. Others play because they HAVE played other games and like WoW the most. Others play because it's what their RL friends play, and they want to play with people they know. There are probably 11 million DIFFERENT reasons that people play, since everyone is different.
I also don't think anyone actually "hates" WoW. That is such a strong word. I think the reasons some people DISlike the game are as varied as the reason why some people LIKE it. No game is for everyone. There is nothing on the entire earth, games or otherwise, that will please everyone.
I'm also starting to think that a lot of the motives mentioned here is more a matter of projection, so that it says more of some people themselves and the people they hang out with.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
The first being people who have never played it but don't like what its done to the mmo genre .
The second being people that have played WoW and feel let down in the direction that Blizzard have taken the game in recent years .
I think people tend to overlook the benefits of having a game like Warcraft out there . It tends to attract the younger players because it is the in-game amongst school age children leaving many of the smaller mmos to have more mature and generally speaking nicer or more mature communitys .
It was'nt always like this . Warcraft in its initial couple of years or so had a pretty good community . I think a lot of whats happened in regard to this matter is that WoW has attracted increasing numbers of school age players .
I don't blame Blizzard for aiming it increasingly at children they obviously identified thier demographic and adapted the game accordingly .
The first being people who have never played it but don't like what its done to the mmo genre .
The second being people that have played WoW and feel let down in the direction that Blizzard have taken the game in recent years .
I think that sums up what I've seen said here on the forums by people who don't much care for the game and have therefore been labeled as "haters" by the "fanbois."
I think people tend to overlook the benefits of having a game like Warcraft out there . It tends to attract the younger players because it is the in-game amongst school age children leaving many of the smaller mmos to have more mature and generally speaking nicer or more mature communitys .
It was'nt always like this . Warcraft in its initial couple of years or so had a pretty good community . I think a lot of whats happened in regard to this matter is that WoW has attracted increasing numbers of school age players .
I don't know if the REASON it isn't like that anymore is what you said, but...it indeed had an entirely different community feel to it a few years ago for sure.
I don't blame Blizzard for aiming it increasingly at children they obviously identified thier demographic and adapted the game accordingly .
You have ZERO proof of what you are talking about.
On the contrary up to 2009 there were social studies proving the average age was 28 years in WOW. A study of the buro of Nielsen even showed WOW was played by 400K women in the US alone between the age of 23 and 50.
From movie stars to housewives.
The above is one of those typical pre judgements from haters against the game. Always putting out nonsense without any proof.
It's always nonsense when you don't agree, isn't it? lol
The others are Brittney Spears, Mac Donalds, community, easyness and the usual 4 letter words.
The arguments have all one thing in common: they are not even related to what makes a game fun to play, but they try to make the game less interesting as "the haters" fear their preferred games will be even more deserted.
Just as if the desertion of other MMO's is the fault of Blizzard.
Brittney Spears = hugely popular singer with tweens, all of her vocals SOUND like they are fed through AutoTune, or are using so much reverb in the studio that they sound more electronic than human, leading many people to conclude that she lacks natural talent, other than dancing, and generally not as appealing to adults as children.
McDonald's = hugely popular fast food restaurant with VERY unhealthy fattening foods that MAY taste good to some, but are making lucrative futures for heart surgeons with each bite....an inexpensive way to sabotage your own health, the health of your children, but EVER so conveniently and without great financial burden (at least until you get that medical bill). Popular, unhealthy, cheap (for a while anyway), and probably a lot of children would prefer a Happy Meal to a seven course meal at Cascone's Italian Ristorante. The quality of the food at Micky Dee's...is definitely up for debate. But man oh man...they have "billions served." Which means...McDonald's as a corporation is RICH RICH RICH, but...it doesn't mean that it's "good" as far as quality of nutrition goes.
Community = one of the most important features of MMOs, the community brings either a friendly environment of teamwork to the game, or a nasty and hateful environment of selfish greed and apathy for others, although...there are bad eggs in every game, those people that just love to be hateful, rude, and confrontational...some games seem to have a much higher percentage of those people than others, which may make the community of said game...very unpalatable to those that don't like that type of community "personality," so to speak.
Easyness = another important feature of MMOs, their level of challenge, or LACK THEREOF. Some people want challenge while leveling and questing. others want the challenge "saved up" for the highest of the highest "end game" content. Some people don't CARE about "end game," they care about the challenges and adventure of the journey. Some games are too easy...some are too difficult...and where they sit on that scale, in any given player's mind....varies from person to person.
4 letter words = used to communicate loathing and/or extremely jubilant liking (i.e. "THAT is a fucking GREAT game!" or "Fuck that game, it's idiotic." or "That game is a pile of shit." or "THIS game is da shit!") 4 letter words tend toward hyperbole whether they come from fans of a game OR those that don't like the game. Either way....4 letter words are used to describe almost every MMO by someone that likes it....and someone that doesn't.
Yup...EVERY one of those things apply to MMOs and our enjoyment of them and DIFFER from one person to the next.
And no one plays games that are "deserted." And games don't "get more deserted" because of a five year old game. I suppose that somehow in your mind, you've convinced yourself that because WoW is so popular, that LotRO, EQ2, Aion, and EVE....are "deserted?" ROFLMAO! Ooookay.
Yup...has to be some sort of twisted reason for people to NOT like WoW...the game of ALL games. (sarcasm)
I wonder how these two polls would turn out?
1) How many present players of WoW previously LEFT LotRO, EQ2, Aion, or EVE to come play WoW?
2) How many players of LotRO, EQ2, Aion, or EVE left WoW to play the game they are presently playing?
Would be very interesting the statistics there, I bet.
(I just chose random other successful games. A poll could be made with assorted games thrown in there, Fallen Earth, Darkfall, FFXI, etc.)
WoW brought a plague of people who don't understand how mmos work yet beg for a change to their fancy ,esport kids , bad casual whiners who cry for the game difficulty level to be brought down to them and elitest players who aren't even good nor at the high end of the food chain and sadly those players will be in the mmo scene for a while.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
I don't know about that Im happy with the success of Eve online.
To be totally honest we could use less people lol.
I couldn't careless about how much money Blizzard makes.
Could care less if people hate WoW. Everyone's entitled to their opinions. But for the sake of argument, please play more then a couple of hours before trashing the game. The stupidest arguments are from those who flat out refuse to play the game, and have never played it. I mean, its on par with "I hate hamburgers" "have you tried a hamburger?" "no, but I know I hate it." Its the sort of conversation I usually have with my 5 year old daughter, not something I expect from an older demographic.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
I don't know about that Im happy with the success of Eve online.
To be totally honest we could use less people lol.
I couldn't careless about how much money Blizzard makes.
I'm just stating the main reason people hate it. Many people have other reasons for hating WoW.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
I don't know about that Im happy with the success of Eve online.
To be totally honest we could use less people lol.
I couldn't careless about how much money Blizzard makes.
I'm just stating the main reason people hate it. Many people have other reasons for hating WoW.
The majority of the people I know that hate WoW hate it because it changed. THey enjoyed the original version of the game with its ladder pvp system and 40 man raids.
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
Er... do you honestly believe this? lmao
Yes, I do, prove me wrong please.
I do not wish WoW's success on Darkfall or Dark Age of Camelot, because that would mean both games have strayed from what makes them great, to appease the mass consumption ADD crowd. The only way WoW retains its 4 million population is because it is mind numbingly easy and simple. I don't want a game that simple, hence I'm not playing WoW.
What I hate WoW for, is for not innovating even the slightest bit, yet still recieving praise from Blizzard fanboys, and many of those fanboys don't even know an MMORPG genre exists. That, and how the MMO market effectively died after WoW came out.
There, I don't agree therefore you're proven wrong.
Comments
--I played WoW for a little over a year before becoming so disgusted that I ended my subscription, deleted all my toons, including ICC geared 80's, and became a WoW hater. There is an elitist attitude among players that is truly offensive, a definite lopsidedness between "factions" which give the horde definite advantages during player combat. Constant goldseller spam in trade-, general-, and player to player chat that is extremely annoying, and the general attitude that WoW doesn't need your business, they will be just fine without you.
--Well, I'm here to say that I wouldn't shop in a store that treated me in such a fashion, and certainly will not give anymore of my money to a Videogame who treats me in such a manner, either. I'm sure this post will get blasted, but I don't care. Buyer be warned is all I can say. There are definite reasons I played for over a year, but, there are also definite reasons I left the game in the manner in which I did as well.
--If you want a game to suck up all of your free time, and try to squeeze as much money out of you as it possibly can, offend you in open chat as often as possible, then, by all means, play the game. If you are not fond of people trying to "erp" with you because you enter certain areas of the game to complete quests, or tell you exactly why you suck because your "gear" is not the absolute best the game has to offer, then find something else.
--Also, for parents considering this game for your kids, or checking to see what is posted about the game your kids currently play, get a trial account and spend a couple days seeing what the game is about. I'm certain you won't want your kids anywhere near this game.
Here here, I had to stop and move a cursor over that just to double check...
As for me? I actually loved WoW back during the Vanilla stage, TBC introduced a paladin class to the horde (my favored side, but I rather dislike the Bloodelves), but that's the only major point to it, and when I started playing on my own account.
As people have said, its this incessant dumbing down of content. While I love being able to do more raids, and not have to sacrifice my soul to do it, there's a point where they should of levelled off, but they skipped right on past that about one expansion pack or so. Same with their logic, which has been going downhill exponentially.
First case? Removing Cold Weather Flying from its quest. Why? They said their players in beta had no clue where to get it. Instead of doing a simple letter-in-the-mail or quest to lead there, as has been done in every other level where you could get a new mount skill. What was a fairly simple, 10-15min chain of quests, became 1k gold wasted.
Second case? The badge system. What was supposed to be something that encouraged actually going through raids in their respective Tier order, was gutted less than halfway through the cycle in favor of some extremely clumsy system of bumping up and down the badges. Had they kept TBC's badge system, this could of been avoided entirely. A sub-point of this is the lack of weapons in badge gear in WotLK. I've gone around with Onyxia 10man's Obsidian edge every since she came out, not by choice, but because I've been horrifically unlucky with weapon drops, and winning them.
Third? Chill of the Throne. This is the big one. It shows they paid zero attention at all to what they were doing long-term, and so much like Sunwell, they had to implement a raid-wide specific nerf to all characters, just to push certain stats back into line. Fast forward like a year, same thing occured. They got too ambitious with what was a nice thing, and soon gear became too strong for the instances ahead of it. In comes CotT.
Fourth, is more of general. Vault of Archavon. THE worst instance in the game. Drops are completely random, and unless you are in a 25 man, the chances of anyone in the raid getting anything of use is slim. In a time where they said they wanted us to not have gear going to waste, VoA is about as bass-aackwards it can get. The fact that it used to be part of an entertaining PvP zone gave it some merit, but once they had to turn it into a battleground essentially, it lost whatever little fun I liked.
Now, what's really killing my interest, is the lazy way of Gating content they have come up with. In Cataclysm, ALL raids will be gated. No... just no. Where's the gating system like that of Ahn'Qhiraji? Where's the system like in Quel'dalas? Let the server affect the time, not the people who deal with the money.
I've only stayed in WoW because I found a (what used to be) great guild. Once ICC came out though, that was broken. Because of the absurd requirements of Primordial Saronite to do anything even remotely usefull, prices are sky-high, and are kept up there due to the insane requirement of the initial Shadowmourne quest. Why does this affect my guild? The Guild Leader, ever since the 25man started, has been hording the Primordials that drop. Claiming they are for "guild gear upgrades" I've yet to see a single one deposited at all by the GL in the logs. A friend of mine already tried talking to the GL about this, and the requirement of 25 needed for Shadowmourne (a gear upgrade of legendary proportions), as well as needing them to learn his Blacksmithing plans (another upgrade). He was promptly kicked. I myself tried talking about it, and during that whole raid, gear mysteriously never was given to me when I won the rolls.
Consider me guildless, and due to that, sick of WoW (was always sick of it, but having people to talk to tends to diluet that a little). The only reason a good chunk of people even play WoW anymore is because MMOs have been severely lacking lately. WoW isn't great. It's not fun. It's in dire need of the models being updated. But with Activision now a major controlling factor (as proven with the crazy prices of the Acti-Blizz store), WoW's doom is assured.
So for now, I'm forced to wait and hope that SW:TOR isn't brought down by the complete and utter lack of MMO experience Bioware has, or in general by the name itself. GW2 I'm looking forwards to, but Cataclysm? Nope...
I played wow for 4 years. Loved the first two years and then increasingly started to dislike it. At this point, i'm indifferent. The only time it bothers me is when I'm in beta and the public chat is filled with "this game sucks, wow is better."
Just like a very successful movie spawns sequels that arn't as good for the sake of making money by name brand alone, similiarly, new mmo's try to be more like wow.
As for the question of whether Wow is the BEST mmo? That is a subjective question and it does not have an objective answer.
Best = qualitative analysis (meaning) it's "just your opinion man." It doesn't matter that it makes the most money or has the most subscribers, because those are quantitative measure for an otherwise qualitative question.
Avatar is not the best move ever made, though I enjoyed it immensely. McDonalds is not the best restaurant, though I love a big mac and their fries.
Yes, WoW has the most subscriptions, but it's not the best mmo out there. Most successful doesn't mean best. There are different measures of success.
I for one, having played dozens of mmo's (including wow) believe FFXI and LOTRO are the best MMO's i've ever played. I played WoW longer only because it was more casual friendly. I quit FFXI because I was too addicted, not because i moved on to bigger and better things.
Those of you who blindly love WoW are going to hate its influence when you become sick of WoW. WoW has killed off creativity and there's no denying it. Their success was great for Blizzard but horrible for the MMO genre.
Too linear, makes you feel like it is scripted. Battlegrounds full of little kiddy whiners who only want a quick win for points. BOTs rampant in the battlegrounds. Chat abuse by immature knuckleheads is rampant. If you start another char after you get tired of level 80, it is like reliving the same nightmare over again. Too easy to level. I soloed a Rogue to level 80, that is lame. The crafting/skill systems are just run around and kill and/or harvest, repeat. I went from 0-450 skill in mining in 8 hours game time. They pandered to all the EQ/SWG whiners back in the day and created a monster of mediocrity. They installed an achievement system that is mostly worthless. Gives you trinkets and titles, etc but nothing of any use. Now they have gone to the final crap heap by starting to offer in game items for cash on their web site. Stick the nail in the coffin!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I think I'll make my funk the P-Funk
People hate it because it is on top. Many people deep down inside hates winners because generally they feel they are not winners so hate people that are. Also it is social "cool" to dislike what is popular to the masses.
I don't hate WoW itself. I hate Blizzard for casualizing it.
An alternative to your pop-psychology analysis would be that people don't like the game because it's a shallow gear treadmill with little to no freedom of choice. Or perhaps because some feel it's a representation of where the genre seems to be at or where it's headed. I don't like it because it bores me to tears after four years. It's become a lobby game with Dalaran being the lobby.
This, I was JUST telling my girlfriend this. We just started back up in WoW, I was pretty tired of the game, however I figured it would be a nice time for the two of us to game together, since I wont have the desire to go and level a bunch when shes offline. I have to say, we are really enjoying it. Vaild points about global chat channels with a lot of people it.
Or you just prove the point and come up with reason to hate. *shrug* Millions seem to love it...I believe that most likely less than that hate it, but more are netural to it.
Here are my reasons for hating WoW.
You are forced into repeatedly running dungeon after dungeon after dungeon to farm badges to get your gear to raid which is more repeated dungeon running.
Once you are saved to a raid you cannot enter the dungeon again to help a friend. Example: Weekly raids, some people in guild will go on the weekly on Tuesday after downtime but a guildie may not log in til the weekend by which time most everybody in the guild is already saved to that dunegeon and cannot help them get their weekly done. Yeah thanks for not letting me help my friends out, is it too much to let me go in and just not get any badges or be eligible for any loot ?
Community. Many have said WoW has the worst community out there. I don't know if it is the worst but it's most certainly gone way down hill since vanilla days. Back in vanilla the game was played by a more mature audience. Now it's all XBox live kiddies spewing their racist elitest bullshit every 5 minutes. I actually had to turn off every chat channel in the game except guild chat.
Batlleground bots combined with more chat douchebags screaming shit like "You all fail!" the first 10 seconds into any BG made me really not have any fun in the one part of the game that wasn't just a badge farm.
The combination of these things and the fact that WoW is an on rails themepark ride make it a game that is terrible to ME.
Now having said that I do understand the appeal of this game to all the people who play it since for the vast majority of players WoW is their first MMO. I have a couple of friends who are just now getting to the point at which they are doing their first raids and of course they are having a blast with the game.
Just so I am not bashing I will actually post the things I actually like about WoW.
-Polished and relatively bug free gameplay.
-Smooth controls and combat system for both pve and pvp.
-Class balance is actually pretty good right now, most balanced it's ever been in my opinion.
-Very good raid boss fight mechanic design (though I am not a fan of straight dps race type of fights, they leave no room for player skill but make the fight totally reliant upon gear)
--There were only a few reasons I enjoyed the game. The graphics are very nice, the idea behind the gameplay is also very nice, and, at times the ingame interaction between players can be very nice. However, rampant "Erotic Role Play" or "erp" was very disturbing. People, at times, were aware of underage players being present, and yet continued or escalated this "erp" because of that knowledge. Harassment and elitism are prevalent on every realm, and with much of the content being group oriented players have to make the choice to accept this behavior or be excluded from "endgame content".
--Constant lag with fps dropping to 1 or 2 fps made moving through some areas extremely frustrating. The concept of an auction house was, at first, appealing, but the misuse of this makes obtaining necessary items very difficult without purchasing gold from third party websites. This, in turn, opens players to constant harassing and annoying goldseller spam as well as consistent attempts to manipulate players into 3rd party websites where account information is gleaned and used to hack accounts. This is not isolated or infrequent. Many players are tricked in this way.
--Anyone who spends any amount of time with this game knows after a certain point many people stop playing the game and merely exist to "troll" tradechat in order to anger others. This detracts from the game. Roleplay is also, supposedly, a founding premise of many realms, yet those who roleplay are often targeted by players for harassment or raids on known roleplaying areas.
--I could continue stating the issues I have with the game, but why? There are some very incredible aspect of the game, which kept me entertained for a while, but, in the end, there are far more detractions than attractions for me. Try the trial account they allow, and spend a while in a city, any city of either faction, and you will get a better idea if this is what you are looking for. It was not what I was looking for.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I'm also starting to think that a lot of the motives mentioned here is more a matter of projection, so that it says more of some people themselves and the people they hang out with.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I think wow hating falls into two categories.
The first being people who have never played it but don't like what its done to the mmo genre .
The second being people that have played WoW and feel let down in the direction that Blizzard have taken the game in recent years .
I think people tend to overlook the benefits of having a game like Warcraft out there . It tends to attract the younger players because it is the in-game amongst school age children leaving many of the smaller mmos to have more mature and generally speaking nicer or more mature communitys .
It was'nt always like this . Warcraft in its initial couple of years or so had a pretty good community . I think a lot of whats happened in regard to this matter is that WoW has attracted increasing numbers of school age players .
I don't blame Blizzard for aiming it increasingly at children they obviously identified thier demographic and adapted the game accordingly .
Brittney Spears = hugely popular singer with tweens, all of her vocals SOUND like they are fed through AutoTune, or are using so much reverb in the studio that they sound more electronic than human, leading many people to conclude that she lacks natural talent, other than dancing, and generally not as appealing to adults as children.
McDonald's = hugely popular fast food restaurant with VERY unhealthy fattening foods that MAY taste good to some, but are making lucrative futures for heart surgeons with each bite....an inexpensive way to sabotage your own health, the health of your children, but EVER so conveniently and without great financial burden (at least until you get that medical bill). Popular, unhealthy, cheap (for a while anyway), and probably a lot of children would prefer a Happy Meal to a seven course meal at Cascone's Italian Ristorante. The quality of the food at Micky Dee's...is definitely up for debate. But man oh man...they have "billions served." Which means...McDonald's as a corporation is RICH RICH RICH, but...it doesn't mean that it's "good" as far as quality of nutrition goes.
Community = one of the most important features of MMOs, the community brings either a friendly environment of teamwork to the game, or a nasty and hateful environment of selfish greed and apathy for others, although...there are bad eggs in every game, those people that just love to be hateful, rude, and confrontational...some games seem to have a much higher percentage of those people than others, which may make the community of said game...very unpalatable to those that don't like that type of community "personality," so to speak.
Easyness = another important feature of MMOs, their level of challenge, or LACK THEREOF. Some people want challenge while leveling and questing. others want the challenge "saved up" for the highest of the highest "end game" content. Some people don't CARE about "end game," they care about the challenges and adventure of the journey. Some games are too easy...some are too difficult...and where they sit on that scale, in any given player's mind....varies from person to person.
4 letter words = used to communicate loathing and/or extremely jubilant liking (i.e. "THAT is a fucking GREAT game!" or "Fuck that game, it's idiotic." or "That game is a pile of shit." or "THIS game is da shit!") 4 letter words tend toward hyperbole whether they come from fans of a game OR those that don't like the game. Either way....4 letter words are used to describe almost every MMO by someone that likes it....and someone that doesn't.
Yup...EVERY one of those things apply to MMOs and our enjoyment of them and DIFFER from one person to the next.
And no one plays games that are "deserted." And games don't "get more deserted" because of a five year old game. I suppose that somehow in your mind, you've convinced yourself that because WoW is so popular, that LotRO, EQ2, Aion, and EVE....are "deserted?" ROFLMAO! Ooookay.
Yup...has to be some sort of twisted reason for people to NOT like WoW...the game of ALL games. (sarcasm)
I wonder how these two polls would turn out?
1) How many present players of WoW previously LEFT LotRO, EQ2, Aion, or EVE to come play WoW?
2) How many players of LotRO, EQ2, Aion, or EVE left WoW to play the game they are presently playing?
Would be very interesting the statistics there, I bet.
(I just chose random other successful games. A poll could be made with assorted games thrown in there, Fallen Earth, Darkfall, FFXI, etc.)
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
WoW brought a plague of people who don't understand how mmos work yet beg for a change to their fancy ,esport kids , bad casual whiners who cry for the game difficulty level to be brought down to them and elitest players who aren't even good nor at the high end of the food chain and sadly those players will be in the mmo scene for a while.
This is mainly why some people hate on WoW
People hate WoW because they wish it's success on an MMO they're interested in that is currently in development. When that MMO fails to succeed in the way they had wished, they go an troll on forums about how much it sucks, stating core game features as flaws.
It is my opinion, that your opinion is incorrect.
I don't know about that Im happy with the success of Eve online.
To be totally honest we could use less people lol.
I couldn't careless about how much money Blizzard makes.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Could care less if people hate WoW. Everyone's entitled to their opinions. But for the sake of argument, please play more then a couple of hours before trashing the game. The stupidest arguments are from those who flat out refuse to play the game, and have never played it. I mean, its on par with "I hate hamburgers" "have you tried a hamburger?" "no, but I know I hate it." Its the sort of conversation I usually have with my 5 year old daughter, not something I expect from an older demographic.
Er... do you honestly believe this? lmao
I'm just stating the main reason people hate it. Many people have other reasons for hating WoW.
It is my opinion, that your opinion is incorrect.
Yes, I do, prove me wrong please.
It is my opinion, that your opinion is incorrect.
I don't hate WoW. Its a good sequel to EQ. I just don't like games that require raiding to advance.
I don't know why others hate on WoW. Its an odd thing. I guess its popular, and the cool emo kids hate popular things. No clue, really.
The majority of the people I know that hate WoW hate it because it changed. THey enjoyed the original version of the game with its ladder pvp system and 40 man raids.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I do not wish WoW's success on Darkfall or Dark Age of Camelot, because that would mean both games have strayed from what makes them great, to appease the mass consumption ADD crowd. The only way WoW retains its 4 million population is because it is mind numbingly easy and simple. I don't want a game that simple, hence I'm not playing WoW.
What I hate WoW for, is for not innovating even the slightest bit, yet still recieving praise from Blizzard fanboys, and many of those fanboys don't even know an MMORPG genre exists. That, and how the MMO market effectively died after WoW came out.
There, I don't agree therefore you're proven wrong.