World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
by Loral on January 28, 2007
I don't typically review games other than Everquest here at Mobhunter, but it would be foolish to ignore the release of the Burning Crusade, the most popular expansion for any game ever released. Study of the strengths and weaknesses of the Burning Crusade and how it changes World of Warcraft can help us scope our thoughts around the future of Everquest.
I must add one last disclaimer before we continue. The Burning Crusade is huge and I have barely scratched the surface of all of the new zones, encounters, and quests it contains. This article also will not attempt to either sell or steer people away from the Burning Crusade. With 2.4 million sales world wide within the first 24 hours of release, most people who want it have purchased it already. This article will focus on what I have seen, so far, and what I have heard about some of Blizzard's new philosophies towards massive online gaming. Let's begin.
The release of the Burning Crusade was one of the few times I purchased an expansion, installed it, patched it, and began playing it on the day of release. There weren't any noticeable follow-up patches. There wasn't any major downtime. Only a large player queue on Doomhammer kept me from jumping right in at level 60.
World of Warcraft has always had the best new-character experience I've seen in a massive online game. It's easy to get into it, it scales character complexity well, it shows new players how WoW quests work, and it gets people right into the core beauty of WoW's artwork. The blood elf newbie game is no different. There are tons of quests that help players understand who the blood elves are and why they're different than the other races. The newbie lands are beautiful and packed with low-level monsters that break free of the typical rat, bat, and spiders found in most low-level areas. The blood elf lands transform from the serene low-level newbie yard to the dark and ominous Ghostland where blood elves can level from 11 to 20 before heading to the older zones for the rest of their trip to level 60.
Spending ten hours or so in the blood elf lands almost makes you forget that over 80% of this expansion is focused around level 60+ characters. When the queues died down, I brought in my level 60 night elf hunter, Glave and headed into the Outland.
Never have I seen such an ominous portrayal of the lower planes than my initial exploration into the Outland. You fly on griffin back over the front lines between the armies of Azeroth and the demonic armies of the Outland. Then the full scope of the army becomes apparent. Huge six-armed female demons walk with blades in hands. Massive winged and horned commanders lead legions of fel-beasts across the broken wasteland. Looking up one sees the alien skies and the rings of dark magics let loose. The griffin takes you to the broken keep of Honor's Hold, a fortress of stone protecting a small attack force of Azeroth from the fiendish wastelands surrounding it. At the fortress your mission becomes clear when you talk to your first taskmaster:
"Collect seven fel-boar snouts"
Yes, we're back into World of Warcraft, where the storyline rarely strays far from your collection of eight to twenty snouts, tails, eggs, horns, teeth, gears, crates, runes, and other random items.
There are thousands of new quests in The Burning Crusade that can take new characters from level 1 to 20 and older characters from level 60 to 70. Those quests, however, are not often more than very simplistic "kill X beasts", "collect X drops", "kill boss X", or "talk to X NPC". There is no in-game differentiation between the most boring "help me make an omelet from demonic bird eggs" and the most interesting "help us battle the demonic minions of the Outland" quests. There is no identification of quest chains until you actually finish them.
Small, quick, and uninteresting quests are certainly better than no quests at all. I haven't spent any time at all worried about earning experience from each mob - only whether that mob helps me in my eternal task to empty my quest book. Massive mechanized Fel Reavers wandering through the solo grounds of Hellfire Peninsula helps make things interesting as well.
There is a lot of room for improvement in Warcraft's quest system. Blizzard would do well to consider the following improvements:
- Clearly define quest chains. I'm not likely to get through every quest I'm ever given before moving on, but I shouldn't be forced to check ThottBott just to find out if that boring egg-omelet quest is part of some chain of epic proportions.
- Add group quests associated to instances. The one instance I tried in the Burning Crusade, the Hellfire Ramparts instance, didn't need much in the way of a quest to get us from beginning to end, but a little bit of a story and an overall group quest that led us through it helps more than just zoning in and killing whatever happens to be around. Sharing solo quests helps but most of the quests in World of Warcraft cannot be shared - leading to wasted minutes of confusion on "Can you share any quests? Where did you get the quest? Let me go get it. Oh, I don't have the faction yet. Oh, that was part of a chain I missed."
This is one area where Everquest's mission system really shines through. I know exactly what our group's goals are in an Everquest mission. I know what the story is. Our group works towards a common goal, not the individual accomplishments of five different quests.
Blizzard took a somewhat new approach towards single-group instances. Each of the larger instance sets contains smaller one-hour focused dungeons tuned for characters of a certain level and certain power. My attempts at the Hellfire Ramparts confirmed that these instances take about an hour to get through, in either victory or defeat. While we hear about much longer dungeon durations in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the one-hour dungeons in Burning Crusade fit well into the rest of our lives. My days of spending 12 hours a day, three days over a weekend raiding the Plane of Sky are over. I want to get in, have some fun, and get on with my life.
The change to meeting stones was also a great change. Instead of meeting stones helping artificially build dungeon groups, meeting stones now let two players in a group summon the other three to the beginning of a dungeon. This, mixed with the new but somewhat uninspired "Looking for Group" tool, helps players get together quickly and get into a dungeon.
Unfortunately, the Burning Crusade lacks any new instances for characters below level 60.
Blizzard also took a new strategy towards raiding. All of the raids in Burning Crusade take no more than 25 people - down from the 40 person raids in the original game. While many high-end raiding guilds hated the decision, the smaller number of players means that more high-end guilds will exist and more people will have access to these high-end raids.
It creates a clear difference between Everquest and World of Warcraft. It is unlikely SOE will ever stray away from the 54 person raids currently contained within Everquest and its expansions. Between that and the group focus of the missions found in the upcoming Buried Sea expansion, SOE has clearly defined the difference between Everquest and Warcraft.
One last major shift found in the Burning Crusade also had high-end raiders reeling. The shift in power between old-world equipment and equipment found in the Burning Crusade is huge. With my 60 hunter I found upgrades to my blue instance-awarded gear for every slot with 20% overall power increases from the green rewards of solo quests. Even basic 60+ solo quest rewards have made the rewards of most of the level 60 dungeons in the old world obsolete. Some condemn this change as the ultimate in mudflation. I know I've had a lot of fun working towards a new set of equipment that I'd been wearing for months.
I was very much looking forward to the Burning Crusade. Most of my time after hitting level 60 in Warcraft was spent leveling up alternate characters or wandering aimlessly through Ironforge and getting stomped into the ground in Battlegrounds. Burning Crusade breathed new life into my high-level characters and helped inspire me create a new low-level one. I've barely scratched the surface of this huge expansion and I'm looking forward to spreading the rest of it over the next year or two. Quips aside, the Burning Crusade is the most exciting expansion I've ever played.
Loral Ciriclight
28 January 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: Aethn on January 29, 2007 11:45 AM
>> My days of spending 12 hours a day, three days over a weekend raiding the Plane of Sky are over. I want to get in, have some fun, and get on with my life. <<
And this my friends is the biggest reason World Of Warcraft is the most successful game worldwide in the history of mankind ... You dont need to give up your real life to play a game and make progress.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on January 29, 2007 02:19 PM
I've actually been impressed so far with how many interesting quests there are. Griffon bombing runs, the exorcism of Colenel Jules, liberating the Broken from the Illidari, fun stuff. Of course there are plenty of the boring ones too. I presume it takes Blizzard about a half hour to create one of those, so they just churned out a ton of them. I look at them as "guided grinding" and feel free to skip them if I'm not in the mood. Better to have them in the game than not though. As usual those who want a challenge need to run instances rather than soloing.
Marking quests that are part of a chain wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't matter much unless they gave you enough information to decide if the chain is worth doing or not. At a minimum they'd need to tell you all the rewards and whether the chain ever required a group, a dungeon run, or a raid.
We've hashed this out before, but I still don't see the point of "group" quests. When my group enters an instance, the group quest is clear: kill the bosses and get phat lewts! I suppose official group quests would give the group more of an incentive to stick together for the whole duration, but given that the duration is short it's not much of an issue as it is.
I think describing the LFG interface as "somewhat uninspired" is actually very generous. The most glaring failure in my mind: while it's easy to mark what you want to do, it's quite difficult to simply browse around and see what other people want to do. If the people who designed it actually relied on pickup groups they'd know that most groups wouldn't get off the ground if everyone insisted on only doing their top three choices. Restricting what you can look at based on your level is especially egregious, as it blocks you from even knowing about groups your other characters might want to join. After waiting nearly two years, getting something markedly inferior to EQ's LFG system was a big disappointment.
But what's really striking about this expansion is that it generates responses like "cool" and "exciting." I'm not sure what does it. There is a lot of eye candy. All the NPC activity is probably more important: NPCs chatting, soldiers training, battles in progress. Then there's the story line, including a lot more connection to main Warcraft characters. But it's a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. I agree with Loral: definitely the most exciting expansion I've ever played.
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 29, 2007 04:26 PM
"I look at them as "guided grinding" and feel free to skip them if I'm not in the mood."
The problem is that I don't know if that boring grind quest will lead to a chain of very fun and very rewarding quests later. I know people will do all the quests regardless of whether they suck or not just because they don't know if it will lead to something.
If Blizzard is already making quests a lot easier to discover (!), a lot easier to complete (?), and already telling us what the reward is, why not create separate chains of single-shot quests and longer quest chains?
Comment Posted by: Naladini on January 29, 2007 11:04 PM
"the most popular expansion for any game ever released. "
Not to nitpick, but shouldn't that be MMO? ;)
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on January 29, 2007 11:49 PM
Honestly, with one zone for every 2 levels why would you skip any "guided grinding" quests? How else are you going to get the exp? Blindly grind? Instance run? Dance naked in Ironforge for powerleveling? Now that they tell you if a quest is going to involve killing a higher level or elite mob suggesting a Group and even saying a group of 2 or 3 players or whatever they're holding our hands even more.
About the LFG tool, I agree completely. It is trash but still better than what they had. I just don't understand how they can add in such great features as the meeting stone summoning and then have it blocked off by a narrow level range. My Paladin friend wanted some help doing scholo and strat for his epic mount and I was in the middle of Zangarmarsh and he was going to summon me but discovered that I was too high level. These improvements were meant to increase the fun had in the game but finding out that I have to teleport to Moonglade and fly to Auberdine and take the boat to Menethil and fly from there to Light's Hope Chapel is NOT FUN. It's definatly fun to run from Southshore to the Plaguelands for the first time but having to drop everything you're doing and cross the world to help a buddy out isn't and they realized that... But why is it okay to help at level 60 but not at 63?
Meh that's my rant.. Anyway Blizzard should just buy the LFG interface from City of Heroes and just use that. Greatest LFG feature ever.
Comment Posted by: pointy on January 30, 2007 07:32 AM
"Not to nitpick, but shouldn't that be MMO? ;)"
no, "game" is the right word.
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 30, 2007 09:22 AM
It was the most popular expansion to any game ever.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on January 30, 2007 11:31 AM
"Honestly, with one zone for every 2 levels why would you skip any "guided grinding" quests? How else are you going to get the exp? Blindly grind? Instance run?"
Yep, instance run. Leveling to 60 I spent most of my time in instances, as I'd rather run the same instance ten times than spend the same amount of time grinding any day--quest or no quest. I'd cherrypick the fun quests and the ones that were prereqs for instances when I didn't have time for an instance run. Yes, that involved a lot of visits to Allakhazam. Most of my characters didn't even reach honored with all the alliance factions before 60, just because I hadn't done enough quests.
(Of course that changed when our second son was born. Right now I'm doing a fair bit of soloing, because, unless my wife agrees to stay on baby duty despite have been on it all day, I could get interrupted at any time. But he should be sleeping through the night before long, and the short BC instances are perfect for parents like me.)
I'm all in favor of marking which quests are part of a chain, but I don't expect it to put Allakhazam out of business. There are plenty of chains where you get "Now that you've killed 15 little mobs, go kill 15 slightly bigger mobs. And when you're done with that, you can kill 15 even bigger mobs!" They'd also have to define "chain" very broadly. "Boss mob you kill for quest A drops an item that starts quest B" would have to be included, for example.
I was somewhat disturbed to discover last night that at 62 I can't look for a group in any of the original end-game dungeons (using the LFG tool). But I can't be summoned to one either? That's just a waste. No one will be going there to gear up--you can get better gear doing solo quests in Outland starting at 58. There are a few special quests like the paladin and warlock epic mounts people will still want to do, but nothing to motivate an entire group. Thus the only realistic way for people to ever get into those dungeons is to gather some friends, most of whom will be 61+. Making it a royal pain for them to get there just makes it that much less likely that those groups will happen--and that much more likely that those (excellent) dungeons will go completely to waste.
(Wouldn't it have been faster to to fly to Shattrath, use the portal there to go to IF and then fly from there though? Anything to avoid a boat ride.)
Comment Posted by: jkhj on January 30, 2007 01:29 PM
"There are thousands of new quests in The Burning Crusade that can take new characters from level 1 to 20 and older characters from level 60 to 70. Those quests, however, are not often more than very simplistic "kill X beasts", "collect X drops", "kill boss X", or "talk to X NPC". There is no in-game differentiation between the most boring "help me make an omelet from demonic bird eggs" and the most interesting "help us battle the demonic minions of the Outland" quests. There is no identification of quest chains until you actually finish them."
You obviously didn't spend much time in Outland. Any WoW player at all that got at least to lvl 61 or 62 will disagree with you. Outland brings more quest diversity than WoW ever had. Just the bombing runs are something no other MMO ever had something close to.
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on January 30, 2007 04:26 PM
I uh, haven't explored Shattrath yet. jkhj you said exactly what I was thinking but forgot to right, Loral hasn't even scratched the surface if he hasn't encounted the bombing runs or the exorcism or the spirit quest at the Draenei temple or any of the other incredible new things that were added.
And to Teremar, we're completely opposite then, I love going out and hunting on my own and dungeons are fun but they get boring. Though I guess you're one of the players that would spec restoration over feral or enhancement.
Comment Posted by: chitlenz on January 30, 2007 05:51 PM
As an ex-EQ raid player (and Now Raid WOW player), I have to say the expansion feels about right, but the main reason I think it will be the only game in town (again) is price and accessibility. ANYONE can play WOW. My 70 year old mom can play wow. My 10 year old can play wow. It's more fun than eq, especially when you aren't raiding. THE CHARACTER MODELS LOOK RIGHT (HINT: Sony stop being greedy and do something original). I would MUCH rather buy a huge expansion every 2 years than a small one every 6 months for the same price (again: Sony sucks).
And Sony doesn't learn anything as they go along. Want to see EQ rise from the dead? Charge 5$ a month and give away the client. Duh. The pS3, Vanguard, in fact just about everything Sony touches they try to overexploit and screw up.
Let's remember not too long ago down the road when Walkman was the king of music, and Apple just made computers...
The iPod is not better or easier or anything than a walkman, it was just marketed well and it represented an obvious better alternative to Sony. Duh.
BC is the shit, not just because WoW is a better game (it is), or because Blizzard flats out OWNS Sony at marketing (they do), but also because unlike Sony, Blizzard actually tries to be cool to its players.
Want one more example? Anyone here willing to pay almost 25$ a month for Vanguard? Let's see where THAT mess sits in 6 months while Wow continues steaming along.
Again, I was not a blizzard fan, I just turned to wow from being fed up with Sony, and I have to say it was the best move I ever made (with the plus of getting my life back).
--chitlenz
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on January 30, 2007 06:37 PM
"Anyone here willing to pay almost 25$ a month for Vanguard?"
What?
Comment Posted by: Saylah aka Lauren on January 30, 2007 10:36 PM
I've been on the fence about WOW. Just plain burned out. I got BC because how could I not take a peak after playing so long. Blizzard is king for a reason and this expansion shows it plainly.
It's an amazing achievement in content expansion - the 60+ zones are packed with quests and I'm not a quest-doer. I'll grind before I run all over god's earth for 2 silver and some XP. But they've made them all so accessible this time, it's just easier do them. There is some versatility too. Of course you have the kill 10 rats and find this or that, but the bombing and having to kite the Collassi into the city if you want help soloing them, was A-mazing.
And dont get me started on the new starter cities. I can already see a new time sink in the form of another alt that I dont need.
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on January 31, 2007 12:10 AM
Oh, I actually do have one huge complaint about the expansion. Shattrath City portals? The Nexus anyone? Plane of Knowlege? The flight to Hellfire from anywhere in Outland isn't much further than the one to Shattrath and you can just run through the Dark Portal and fly out from the Blasted Lands. We've all taken the long trip to Winterspring or Un'Goro or Silithus or the Plaguelands to level up from 50-60... Why are we now babied back to the old cities for 60-70? Sure Mages can port there but Wizards and Druids could port. I just hope that we never see a big portal zone that leads to every which corner of the universe. There is no need to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on January 31, 2007 12:50 AM
"And to Teremar, we're completely opposite then"
I think you may be right.
"Though I guess you're one of the players that would spec restoration over feral or enhancement."
I've never played a druid or shaman seriously, but my main is a protection warrior. So, yeah.
"Oh, I actually do have one huge complaint about the expansion. Shattrath City portals?"
Further evidence: put me firmly in the "By the third time I travel to somewhere it's boring, so make it take as little time as possible" camp.
But what about:
"...finding out that I have to teleport to Moonglade and fly to Auberdine and take the boat to Menethil and fly from there to Light's Hope Chapel is NOT FUN."
Here we completely agree!
Comment Posted by: chitlenz on January 31, 2007 12:33 PM
In response to the poster above, yes Vanguard is set to release with a 24.99$/ month subscription. Just wow.
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on January 31, 2007 03:35 PM
Wow... Does that subscription come with an oil change and inspection? Rediculous.
Comment Posted by: Tuppet on January 31, 2007 03:50 PM
I've held on to EQ for so long but I'm sorry to say that this is the end of the road for my subscription.
I don't think EQ has the resources to keep up with what it 'wants' to do. By resources I mean: money + manpower + technology. It seems to be growing too fast (2 expansions /year) for its own good, IMHO. The game seems diluted. There's just a disconnect after a certain point, where you aren't IN the game anymore, you are just PLAYING the game.
It's just not as fun, to me, anymore. I loved the game immensely before hitting level 55 (the highest level I ever leveled an alt). After that, it tapered off. Before I joined a raid guild: upper-PoP was out of the question. LDoN was a huge boon, GoD was a waste of money (I was so bitter at the time). After I started raiding, PoP opened up and GoD and Omens became staples (quite good at that).
For me it peaked around Omens with a little DoN. DoDH wasn't too bad. but PoR and TSS were 'lacking' =(
I would love to just let me subscription renew, as it doesn't cost 'that' much. But as a consumer, I have to vote with my dollar. After the last two expansions, I have to say no to SOE.
Comment Posted by: Horzek on January 31, 2007 03:50 PM
I would like to take a small issue with Loral concerning the quest chains. To me going out to Thottbot or Alakazam is like reading the last pages in a book before deciding whether or not it's worth reading. You already know the end.
My experiences with the Hellfire zone have been very indicative of my over all play style. I picked up every quest I could find and did nearly all of them. Sure some were fed-ex quests and yet even these were exciting because of that giant green machine lurking to squish me the moment I neglected to pay attention my surroundings. Foraging a few eggs was something because those ravagers were just as willing to forage me as I was to forage their eggs. Not only did I get to thoroughly scour the zone, I also managed to make a huge boost to my bank balances. My gear was greatly boosted and I was picking up dropped loot from some of the mobs I took out that was very usable to my other characters. It is nice to pick up gear that is actually usable at my current level and not something I have to relegate back to a much lower level character.
I play WoW because I am enjoying the ride. I dont really want to see the end from the beginning because it takes away from the freshness of the adventure. I have rediscovered my druid and my hunter has been a whole lot of fun in his own right too. In my opinion the worst thing about WoW and the BC expansion is that it is making it harder and harder for me to find any desire to log back into EQ for a nightly raid grind.
Comment Posted by: Loral on January 31, 2007 05:52 PM
The US Subscription fee for Vanguard, according to a 30 January press release, will be $14.99. The subscription to Vanguard will also be included in Station Pass.
Source: http://vg.crgaming.com/
Comment Posted by: sigh@sigh.com on February 1, 2007 08:36 PM
the bombing quests mentioned, see you take a gryphon flight, where you then have to use a bomb item, to target specific mobs, taking them out, you get the green targetting circle of aoe spells, you dont control the gryphon, but this is all in the first zone, god knows what stuff they have planned for later on.
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on February 1, 2007 09:20 PM
The pvp objective in Nagrand involves that mechanic. So sweet.
Comment Posted by: Nolrog on February 2, 2007 03:34 PM
>>> And this my friends is the biggest reason World Of Warcraft is the most successful game worldwide in the history of mankind ...
Myst was the most successful game in the history of mankind.
Comment Posted by: Nolrog on February 2, 2007 03:43 PM
>>> I would MUCH rather buy a huge expansion every 2 years than a small one every 6 months for the same price (again: Sony sucks).
Say that again in 2 weeks, when you're max level again, and nothing to do but raid for gear. You'll be clamoring for something new to do by March, April at the latest (and I'm being generous.) Face it, WoW cannot sustain itself with the fact pace it has, and people levelling so quickly, unless they give people meaningful ways to advance their characters at level 70 (read that as AAs, or talent points you XP for.) I have a friend that got so burnt out of raiding for gear, he cancelled his account for a few months. Re-opened it when the expansion came out, but he already said that he won't stick around with nothing to do but raid for gear, like he did last time.
>> BC is the shit, not just because WoW is a better game (it is), or because Blizzard flats out OWNS Sony at marketing (they do), but also because unlike Sony, Blizzard actually tries to be cool to its players.
This I totally agree with. TBC marketing was all over the place. I was in Switzerland this morning, and Every PC magazine there had WoW/BC on the cover with a free preview/demo disc inside. I went into CompUSA last week to pick something up, and they had about 50 copies of the expansion that smacked me in the face as soon as I walked into the door. In the computer section, there were another 10-15 copies. On the day of release, Best Buy, EB World and Game Stop all had WoW on their main pages (one of them had an add that took up like a quarter of the screen.) Yet when SOE released TSS, as a new entry point for people, and a "relaunching" of EQ, I didn't run across any advertising anywhere (WoW, it seems as though I can't avoid it.)
Comment Posted by: Nolrog on February 2, 2007 03:55 PM
>>> And this my friends is the biggest reason World Of Warcraft is the most successful game worldwide in the history of mankind ...
Myst was the most successful game in the history of mankind.
Correction to myself, because it wasn't accurate. Myst was not the best selling PC game in the history of mankind. It ranks 6th, right behind WoW. The best selling PC game of all time is The Simms, with 16 million. And that doesn't count the console games, which have games that sold 10s of millions (Super Mario Brothers, topping the list with some 40 million plus.)
Indidentally, Diablo II sold 15 million (but that would be more of a sequel than an expansion.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best_selling_computer_and_video_games#Top_PC_sellers_by_genre
Comment Posted by: aethn on February 2, 2007 11:35 PM
* No personal attacks - Loral *
Comment Posted by: aethn on February 2, 2007 11:39 PM
And just to toss out a crazy thing like putting something into perspective. Sims has been out 7+ years now, 16 million copies, WOW has been out 2+ years now, 8 million copies.
Half the copies of Sims in 1/4 of the time. I still stand my my statement, WOW is the most successful game ever. In 7+ years anyone betting against WOW having sold over 16 million copies is betting on a fool.
Comment Posted by: Nolrog on February 3, 2007 05:24 AM
* Removed since the original post was removed - Loral *
Comment Posted by: Horzek on February 4, 2007 05:12 AM
* No personal attacks - Loral *
Comment Posted by: Nolrog on February 4, 2007 07:20 AM
* Removed since the original attack was removed - Loral *
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on February 4, 2007 12:13 PM
I didn't know I logged onto the WoW class discussion forums...
Comment Posted by: SomeoneNolrogWillNoDoubtFlame on February 4, 2007 04:59 PM
* Removed the personal attack - Loral *
Comment Posted by: aethn on February 4, 2007 05:08 PM
Someone has to market Everquest, SOE certainly does not, Nolrog is just about the only one. I bet SOE could save a bundle if they would just fire the PR staff, hire Nolrog. They would get better results for alot less money.
Comment Posted by: Aethn on February 4, 2007 05:17 PM
I will admit, (its part of the recovery process to admit your mistakes, lol) I was a HUGE VAK (bringing back an old Moorgard-ism, Verant AssKisser). But you know what, you can only "beat the dog with a newspaper for so long until it rips your arm off and runs away for good".
These guys have totally lost touch with the people who made them who they are. They forget that if it wasnt for us taking that "newspaper beating" for so long, they would have falen into oblivion long, long ago.
Fix your bugs, fix your instance coding, fix the simple shit in game that pisses people off. Stop lining your pockets with our cash, there is only so much to go around now. And with so many other quality studios out there making better products then you, you just might soon find the gravy train is about make its last stop at SOE Town.
Expansions number 13 just might ne unlucky 13 for you guys. You dodged the GOD bullet by actually stepping up to the plate and listneing to the players and fixing the game. To bad no one left at SOE understands that concept anymore. Sure you can run this game on a shoestring budget now, but why let it sink so low?
Comment Posted by: Gaereth on February 6, 2007 12:53 PM
The come back in 2 weeks thing is really overblown with WOW. The original release took me about 6 months to get to 60, playing most nights, no alts, just having fun and seeing all the sights, while being grouped for 98% of the time. Some people did it in 2 weeks.
Its been ~2 weeks since TBC released and I am 63, with 18 quests still in HFP, 2 new alts(grumbles at the amazing new newb areas) and I play most nights. I haven't even seen the other zones yet let alone all there is to see in the first zone. Our fastest leveling person is 68 atm and he hasn't gone to many of the instances yet.
For some, the carrot of max level is the ONLY carrot and all others are worthless in comparison. In that persons case, and that person alone, the 2 week comment might seem to be a valid one. Luckily, this game isn't and has never been on their terms, it has always been built for the slower, casual player with some raiding thrown in at the top.
I will freely admit I would have loved to see this expac 6-12 months ago as a casual player but the wait has proved to be worthwhile. I have to agree with Loral that this is the best expansion I have seen with any game. Good to see he is coming around. :P
Comment Posted by: Eviljoe on February 16, 2007 03:51 PM
Nice to see some stuff on WoW. I actually stopped reading Mobhunter a while ago when I stopped playing EQ1. I recently saw yet another expansion released for EQ1. I find it hard to believe that they still get people buying expansions for the game. I've noticed that the progression servers have dwindling numbers on them with people cancelling accounts because unlocked content takes too long to unlock. WoW is the ultimate for the casual gamer such as I.
With the upgrades available too in starting areas in TBC it makes you wonder why type of stuff will drop for endgame content.
/em waves at Teremar in his old form (aka Ryland)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.