World of Warcraft For Sirian?

[Sirian]

My webhost is playing WoW. He knows his way around good games -- been hosting my game stuff since forever. He recommends the game, says it's one of the more polished and better balanced games that he's seen.

With Guild Wars disappointing me in this department, I'm open to the idea of trying either WoW or Evercrack Too. I'm not in any particular hurry, still going to be tied up two nights a week with Rogue Revival for a while. (The notion that we'll pop into Hell Difficulty "real quick" to grab our third dot has recently come into some question among the team members. There has been some pats on the head for me, accompanied by "Yeah, sure, Sirian. Real quick.")

Among those who are playing WoW, does anybody (other than Cy in regard to the combat) have anything critical to say about it? What are the best things that you can say about it? In terms of fun hours vs unfun hours, where is it stacking up for you?

Thanks in advance.


- Sirian

[Cyrene]

Just a note.

If I had unlimited funds, and no Rogue Team, I would play EQ2 about 4 nights a week and WoW 2 nights. I just had to make a choice, and went with EQ2. I wouldn't be astonished if I dropped EQ2 in February and swapped to WoW for a month or two.

It has some good points. And there is something about wandering around as a giant cow (I had the name "Flossie" in beta on my server) that is almost endlessly amusing in and of itself. 'tis a hoot (dang, no viking-horned-helmet smiley here).

EQ2 assumes that it is at least 25% of my life, I spend 2 hours a day reading forums and boards, that I have an extensive background in MMORPG's and in their style of team play, and plan to peg my identity as a person to my identity in-game. WoW assumes I am an idiot who wandered in somehow from AOL or D2 or a dumpster, but, if they give me enough help, I might survive long enough to have an iota of fun, but if anything requires thought ,I will leave. Well, I am in between these extremes. Sigh.

EQ2 has content out the ass. Too much, actually, a lot of the time. More than you can process. You always know you are missing out on something. Based on a month's play, they have also eliminated griefing, down time, and grinding (mostly). At least in newbie, first-month areas. A VERY polished game, but just a hair, erm, scripted? Requires a bit more commitment to have good immersion than I gave to a few girlfriends.

WoW is low-stress fun and games. Kind of a pickup 8-player gogogogo ni hao -- zu -- jia you d2 game but with more backstory and funky graphics (which, from screenshots, I thought I would hate, but work very well) and 200 folks at once. Bad monster placement, bad monster AI, shallow quests. It assumes you can't remember who gave you a quest. Ok. I confess. A lot of the time I CAN'T remember who gave me a quest. A journal entry ("return to chief assmunch in cowtown and tell him his granny was eaten by wolves while you tried to figure out the interface") would be sufficient--I don't really need a honkin' enormous yellow punctuation mark over chief assmunch's head, thank you very much. Just in case, you know, I can't read or something, because, like, reading is HARD, and makes my ears and eyes bleed. Grrrr.

I feel myself heading towards a full-fledged rant (involving both games), so here is a good place to stop.

--Cy

[Sirian]

No, don't stop, you were on a roll! In fact, you may be halfway to persuading me as to which game would be better for me. Seriously.

Thanks for the info.


- Sirian

[Mavfin]

If I wasn't already playing/paying for my own MMO(not RPG) game, I'd be playing WoW.

I fly WWII planes, blow up things with bombs/guns/rockets, shoot down other planes, get shot down by other human pilots, and pay monthly to do it, to the tune of 400 sorties/2 wks, about 100 kills, and I'm in the top 5 in the arena in blowing things up.

[Cyrene]

Update and closure (for now).



I cancelled my EQ2 subscription last week. No more Kitty Troubadour with whips. I miss her (them, actually). Sigh. May Chanteuse Diva (good) and Chanson Diva (evil) rest in peace.



There were two reasons, really. One large, which made cancellation inevitable in a couple of months, and one tiny, which pissed me off so badly I just logged out that night, killed my subscription, and am not going back.



Probably.



Sigh.



The glitch that caused my hissy fit first. The death penalty in EQ2 is mildish. Your equipment takes a durability hit, which will eventually lead to a repair bill, but the amount of $$ is pretty insignificant, at least through the mid-20’s. Chump change. If you are partied, an appropriate class can rez you on the spot. If solo (or no rez class), you rez in a designated spot in the zone. You rez with all equipment intact. However…



Until you return to the spot of your death and click on a representation of your corpse, you have a stat penalty and a substantial experience penalty. After recovery, the stats are re-instated and the experience penalty is greatly reduced. Stat and EXP penalties stack for multiple deaths (but the stat penalty goes away regardless after 72 RL hours and the EXP penalties burn off when logged out at the rate of 1/2% per hour—so even if you hose things up completely all you have to do is stay offline for 3 days and things will right themselves). Ok?



Anyway, my bad kitty was doing an access quest to get me access to a zone I would need for some very important quests at a later (but rapidly approaching) time. The final step was designed for a small party (more on that later), but I could find NO ONE working that part as the players that started when the game released had clogged that server (one of only 2 roleplay servers) and moved on, and no newbs joined as the server was almost full. Bummer. The final step is an instanced dungeon created just for you/your party, accessed by talking to a NPC. I tried to find a group, for a while. An hour a night I would stand by the entrance (for 3 nights). I would also broadcst in the zone. No one ever did the quest. I tried once solo, died, talked to NPC again, went back in, got my body, and leveled up 3 levels to try again solo. When the time came, I talked to the NPC, went down, crushed the opposition, and completed the quest. But the boss dropped a chest. Being a scout class, I used my disarm trap skill, but the roll failed. 99 times out of 100, this results in a health hit of negligible damage to 75% damage. THIS time, I got an Uber hit (like some Diablo 1 chests of doom) that hit for over 520 damage, which is more than a poor bard has at that level. Wham. Chanson, meet floor. Floor, meet a dead kitty. Bummer. Oh well, at least I finished the quest. Being solo, I rez’d, with only one choice, out in the zone the quest NPC was in. I go back to the NPC to go down and get my body, but all I get is my quest reward (I completed the quest) and then the NPC won’t talk to me since I have done the quest. Hmmm. Catch 22 eh? No way to recover my body, and a 72 hour stat penalty as the result, as well as a substantial EXP penalty. The death is just bad luck, but because I can’t get my body back I either have to take 3 days off the game or toil for hours to recover something that, though it was my fault I died in the first place, is a game mechanic issue that I can’t recover normally.



I was not the first person with this sort of problem, and I had read lots about it on the boards. They had already made a patch to stop it (hah!) by allowing you to click on a doorway of an individual instanced dungeon to recover your shard in just such a circumstance. Unfortunately, this particular instance was gated by an NPC.



So I filed an appeal with Customer Service. The online form had a specific prepared category for “unable to recover body (actually, shard in EQ2-speak).” So I mess around, crafting and waiting for CS to get to me. One and a half hours later, I get a response. The CSR does not speak English. He/she is talking gibberish. The words are spelled right, but the order and choice are nonsensical. It is like a Korean Yoda. “Group make you and all things be harmony.”



“The NPC won’t let me into the instance as solo or leader, group or no group. Are you saying that if I join a group with a leader who hasn’t done the quest my shard will be in their instance?”



“I fix. Right make group. All things pleasant then.”



“There is no way to even test this. There aren’t any groups working this quest.”



…………..



“Hello?”



…………………………



My ticket was marked resolved.



Look, I would have /bugged it and complained on the boards, but I would have been perfectly happy with customer service if I had gotten this answer “OOO, I’m sorry. We know this is an issue, but there is nothing I can do about it. Please /bug this and we are sorry about the hassle.”



I understand a world economy. When I call my corporate help desk (fortune 500 computer services company) I am talking to San Paolo, Brazil. But even if they are incompetent, they speak English. Poorly sometimes, but they speak English. In North America, you kinda expect Customer Service to handle English, Spanish, and, for our northern oddballs, French 8-). (tabernac!). For $20 a month, if you can’t speak English for North American customer service, good by.

Sigh.


Now on to the real issue.



EQ2 is a GREAT game. Really.



The amount of work, backstory, depth, (you name it), that went into this game, is so far over the top it is amazing. Overkill, really. WAAAAAY more depth than can ever be enjoyed.



But….



All the following is from a scout/bard/troub perspective.



Solo combat starts out the bomb.



Well, actually, it starts out awkward, because you are a newb. In EQ2, you have normal attacks, which, unless you are a he-man type, are pathetic. As you level, you gain combat arts, which are magical attacks, which do decent damage. But the way to kill a mob is a HO (Heroic Opportunity). Like an ‘80’s pinball machine, you get a devastating bonus for staging combat art attacks in a proscribed order for a multiball combo bonus! Erm, for extra damage. Even more cool, in a party, you have incredibly complex ones that are advanced in turn by specific party members that would rain down death and destruction on the MOBS if they weren’t more complex than the tax code (but I digress).



Anyway, by the mid-teens, solo combat is a very exciting and (emotionally) rewarding task. There is the MOB! What does it con? What is my opening? Ranged with bow to pull it followed by AOE while it closes? Go invisible and sneak up behind and backstrike? Is it agro? If not, I can also walk up beside and flank attack. When do I start a HO? Which one? What order with the combat arts so the timers cycle out right? It is a very cool combat system, and a lot of fun to manipulate and play with.



Then they kill it. Because, you know, you are having solo fun, and MMORPG are all about grouping. So you can have your solo fun early, but we will make sure you have to group later. Because we know better. You are not actually having fun—you are being anti-social. Jerk! Group! Become one with the Borg! Want access to this zone? You must be in a group. Want to complete this quest? Impossible unless you are in a group. Want to hunt at higher levels? What? You aren’t in a guild yet? Go pull the wings off flys, you miscreant!



Yeah, even *I* enjoy the socialization better than the gameplay once the shine of a game wears off. Group dynamics drives a lot of games. But, somehow, the same devs who made such a wonderful solo scenario are responsible for one of the most boring group combat formats imaginable.



Must have tank. Tank keep hate. Monster no see any other player because tank so ugly. Tank scratch ass.



Must have healer. Healer heal tank. Only thing worse than being tank is being tank’s bitch. Especially when Tank’s hand smells like ass.



Everyone else actually fights. Except it isn’t really a “fight” if the MOB ignores you, is it? It is about as exciting as beating up a shrub in your front yard with a badminton racket. Yawn. I have been in the middle of a big group fight, gotten up to answer the phone, gotten a beer, wandered back to the computer, and NO ONE NOTICED I WAS AFK. I was in the DPS slot! Oh yeah, *I* am a vital part of this team. Yawn.



As crappy of a game as LineageII is (in a lot of ways), if I had gone AFK without a LOT of advance warning, we would have had a party wipe that would have cost every single member of the group an hour or two or three of hard grinding exp. You MATTERED in that game.



In EQ2, the system matters, not the individual.



Farewell my singing cats 8-).



--Cy

[Sirian]

You MATTERED in that game.

You matter in Guild Wars, but there were two combat situations.

A. You can divide the AI like in Diablo 1, by awakening a few at a time. They still come in small groups, like Diablo 2, so it's not ONE at a time, but still, easy to handle one small pack at a time. Too easy. Boring, even, at the pace at which it occurs.

B. You cannot divide the AI. You wake one and they wake all nearby groups, and you get rained down on by a pack too large for your group to handle, and you die. (There is no running, unless you are near a gateway to another play area).

I felt like Goldilocks quite a bit. Papa Bear's bed was too hard, and Mama's was too soft. I looked for Baby's bed, but I spent a lot of time looking and never managed to do any finding. *shrug*

That, and the IMPOSSIBILITY of running leaves "maneuvering" on the cutting room floor, which turns combat into a very boring slog of "engage, then win and go on or die and go home." Not being able to retreat from combat with any degree of reliability means that ANY time you aren't cruising through a cakewalk, you are going to slip up and die. Period.

*yawn*


Sounds like you had good fun in EQ2 solo. Would it be fun enough to play one char, go to where you HAVE to group, then start over with another char?

And what about WoW? Does it suffer from similar problems? Have you played it enough to find out? I might still give WoW a shot if I grow confident that it won't just be spending $80+ for a chance to quit in disgust as you have with EQ2.


- Sirian

[Zed-F]

It is possible to run from mobs in Guild Wars if you have a skill which allows you to do so in your selection. Generally this means a skill which lets you move faster for a few seconds. Mobs can chase you as fast as you can run normally, attacking as you go, but if you can get a bit of a lead on them, they will forget about you.

[Sirian]

Yes. I tried that. I only found it useful for dividing mobs, which leads back to Method A, which grows boring. Oh sure, I survived a few times when my compatriots could not escape, and then I dillied around until I could resurrect them. But this is not very useful for battlefield maneuvering and even then it doesn't always work. After all, there's that ubiquitous skill timer which gives you permission as to when you can and cannot use a skill.

I hated the timers in Diablo 2, but they seem a lot less offensive to me now, relatively speaking. Of all the possible gameplay elements they might have built a game around, why pick that one?


- Sirian

[Cyrene]

That, and the IMPOSSIBILITY of running leaves "maneuvering" on the cutting room floor, which turns combat into a very boring slog of "engage, then win and go on or die and go home." Not being able to retreat from combat with any degree of reliability means that ANY time you aren't cruising through a cakewalk, you are going to slip up and die. Period.

Why do Devs do this? EQ2 makes running difficult (but not impossible). Why do they think mindlessly bashing blue/green con mobs=barrels of fun? The fun is trying out the yellows (and oranges )—but that is stupid if you can’t get away when things go badly. I have frequently run into a mindset that kiting=cheesy play, and I just don’t understand it. Kiting is pretty damn technical, and death is just a screwup away. Yet a lot of players feel that if you kill a MOB without being hit, you were cheating in some way—like we OWE it to the MOBs to let them hit us 8-0. This same crew will report you for “perching” if you use a bow to shoot MOBs from a distance and their AI sucks so badly they die before they figure out how to path to you. I had a run-in with a GM in L2 over this one night during beta. I was trying out different characters, and my newbish DE ranger was getting smacked around in an indoor room, when I noticed there was a balcony. I backtracked, found the hallway to the stairs, went up them, out on the balcony, whipped out my bow, and went to town on the MOBs. Soon, I am being warned by a GM that I am “perching” and I will be banned if I am “caught” doing it again. If they didn’t want me on the balcony, why did they put it there? The irony was just oozing when retail hit and I saw the box art—archers, on a rampart, perching .

Sounds like you had good fun in EQ2 solo. Would it be fun enough to play one char, go to where you HAVE to group, then start over with another char?

Well, this certainly extended my enjoyment of the game when I made my bad Kitty on Jaffa’s “home” server. There are some limiting factors, though. The whole game is designed with the idea you are going to play a character for a year or so. A lot of the stuff you do will only really pay off WAAAY down the road. It would be silly to do it on a disposable character. Yet, if you skip all the long-term stuff, there isn’t a full game left. A lot of the early quests are also orientation exercises, which get old fast when you already know the lesson they are trying to teach.

PlanetSide had an interesting take on this. That game was designed so that, with levels, you didn’t gain power, you gained flexibility. And if you trained something you found out you didn’t like, you could UN-train it, and get the skill points back 24 hours later. You didn’t have alts—you WERE your alts. I THINK this would work in a hack ‘n slash MMORPG. Set a skill lvl cap at 20. You start as a tank, say, and get to 20, and are as tankly as you will ever be, so you go see the shaman, and start as a lvl 1 mage, in mage gear, and work on that, etc. Each night, as you started play, you could pull your load-out for what role you wanted to play that night. You should get SOME synergies for knowing other skills (a tank might gain a non-combat self-heal for also being a priest—or maybe even ALL your lowest-level skills would always be available to you regardless of config), but mainly your equip load-out would lock you into a certain role for that session. If friends join and you need to be somebody else, you can recall to your house and change load-outs. I THINK it would work…

And what about WoW? Does it suffer from similar problems? Have you played it enough to find out? I might still give WoW a shot if I grow confident that it won't just be spending $80+ for a chance to quit in disgust as you have with EQ2.

Mind you, I don’t feel cheated by EQ2. It didn’t have legs like D1, D2, or Civ3, but it was certainly a better value than Doom3 or TR2 or TR3. I got about as many hours of fun out of EQ2 than UT2k4 (hmmm, actually, I don’t want to know how many hours I burned on online Onslaught in UT2k4).



I didn’t play WoW long enough to uncover perceived long-term issues. Note that 90% of my enjoyment in the Beta came from being a giant cartoon cow. You just don’t get an option to do that very often. The gameplay itself was pretty boring. I would only play it retail on a PvP server—the AI was hopeless. But the cow—now THAT was fun. A mooooooving experience. I got to be all I cud be. I was lovabull. By all accownts. :hippie:


--Cy

[Sirian]

This same crew will report you for “perching” if you use a bow to shoot MOBs from a distance and their AI sucks so badly they die before they figure out how to path to you.

The down side of being an old hand? I'm sure players exploited stuff like this to no end to level up unfairly, and worse. However, the solution is BETTER GAME DESIGN. Imagine that.

The Epics fusses at people for Right of Passage abuse and other issues. I can sympathize with the mindset. However, fussing at you for using a balcony is over the top. Why is the balcony there if not to be used? Do the targets on the ground or lower level not have a ranged attack to shoot back? If not, why not? Duh.

If the "game masters" threaten you with banning for playing the game, though, that's over the top. I don't know that I will be rushing out to buy a product like that any time soon.

- Sirian