Burning Crusade: WoW or WTF?
PC Games Features
By Todd Leveen Jan 15, 2007, 14:01 GMT
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Great article, but speaking of economics and the whole issue of 'working' in MMO's, I'd like to point out that as of yet there still hasn't been any addressing of this issue of players actually having rights to their in game possesions.
These 'games' are creating a mindsucking vortex that just employs people to work for endless upon endless hours to accomplish attainment of status and property, only to shell out their own money to do so.
When will these games realize that by promoting incentive to play by offering monetary rewards through painstaking virtual labor, that these 'economies' can finally stabilize.
I'm sure by issuing a tax they can keep their income steady and possibly increase it, but I'm not sure what the legal ramifications of this would be.
I guess Second Life is on the right track, but as far as putting in an 80 hour work week just to obtain items that I can never benefit any investment from,
count me out.
I am continually disappointed by the fact that Bliz fails to understand the needs of the lone player. More and larger instances, and the associated need to spend unrealistic amounts of time to achieve goals does have a limiting effect on ones overall enjoyment of the game and any possible chance of encountering end game content.
Perhaps they should consider introducing other forms of questing that induce/leverage skills other than the brute force of 25-50-70 characters. Having a mix of questing approaches should only add to the viability of the in game culture and environment.
Additionally, thay really should think about introducing a full-on supply and demand economy. Perhaps even a 'stock market' based on the wide range of coods and services available in the world.
I think Bliz is in need of some new brain power.
Sincerly, a typical bored level 60...
'Consider what the insurmountable number of Chinese farmers are going to do to affect future game play. You may have seen the constant in-game advertisements touting cash for gold schemes.'
i find that comment a little offensive and although this was somewhat pleasing to read,I find it a little immature and sounds like a high school student wrote it.
sure a majority of the 'farmers' in the game are Chinese but by calling them 'Chinese Farmers' you completely alienate the race, and it's entirety, like they're something to avoid.
Just my opinion.
The burning question (pun intended) is will those who have truly worked hard (as members of a team working toward a communal goal) to achieved what they have at 60, be so offended by how fast the standard greedy noob matches/passes them in gear that they quit the game out of anger.
- Drey
First the gold drops and experience gained in the beta was increased by at least 2 fold to speed up testing. As for guilds reforming your right, and I'm glad. I'm in a big guild and I love asking for help and receiving silence with 50+ members on. I'd rather be in a smaller closer guild that's formed because we like playing together not so we can run BWL and MC. The biggest improvement is to small groups of players with the duel system. 1v1 2v2 3v3 and 5v5. I personally hate instanced dungeons past the fourth run. 30+ Baron runs for a stupid shaman skirt c'mon. Again I ask WTF your smoking?
Its unfortunate that nay saying gets this much credit.
I did like the comment in the article on the haves and have nots. That matches to my experience of RL groups of people as well. I don't know why people expect blizzard to make up for issues that will form in groups of people naturally.
But I think this article focuses on conjecture without fact. There is very little information in the article and a lot of conjecture.
Having withdrawn from the WoW universe some years ago I can look back and realise the amount of time I spent in that game farming to improve my skills was so boring! Days and days spent building up each skill with mind-numbing repetition. All of it coming to the realisation that I couldn't really get anywhere in the game unless I was a part of a guild which, at the time, were in completely different time zones!
My character was a selfless one. Helping others climb the ranks wherever I felt like being at the time. This didn't prevent people from having 1v1 matches and ambushing me in an attempt to improve their rankings (I once had to take on 2 equally leveled players at once..and won - oddly enough).
I hope WoW does not take over your life. There's no way you can be sucked into the world of Azeroth (Lawnmower Man style).
I would also like to see more benefits for the solo player. I am on a PVE server because I enjoy exploring the world and questing. I do battlegrounds but not raids or instances I can't solo.
Amazing anyone still plays after South Park so accurately portrayed the WoW endgame and players. Yea, I admit I played my warlock to 60 but realized after that the game had nothing more to offer.
lol written like a true n00b. All i hear in this article is crying. Its not that hard to work your way into a professional end game raiding guild. I lmao when i meet guys like you who brag about your 'raiding guild' that does ubrs. The whole part about how the revenge is going to taste so sweet when you have better items than others who always outgeared you is wishful thinking at best. The majority of the people that play wow are not intelligent enough to get into a decent guild or prove themselves as a skillful player in order to be invited to end game content. It sickens me that Blizzard is nerfing elitest aspects of the game so n00bs will keep paying their monthly subscription. Take the pvp nerf for ie, it was a hard sock in the stomach to anyone that had worked so hard for their gear and the sense of accomplishment was destroyed by watching artards like you run around in greens and 2 pieces of FM gear. I hope you delete any characters you have and have fun getting pwnt in RL.
I think they should resign from monetary system at all and shouldn't allow goods exchanging other then water and food. Who get a drop should be randomized because that system is fair enough (game could also check if you have equal or better item before it let you have it). That way appropriate amount of luck would be on everybody side not only those who play the most frequently.
But Blizzard is doing what makes the most of cash not what should be done in ideal world (not that what I've written is anything close to ideal) and it would continue as far as money matters.
I've chosen to play any game not longer then to time when i can get the whole picture of it and in WoW you get the picture when you realize that whole game is about looking same good as top lvls characters. It is as boring as Diablo game after you have finished the game more then 4 times (number of characters to choose).
One day blizzard will make a real game again. WoW can't last forever.
'It sickens me that Blizzard is nerfing elitest aspects of the game so n00bs will keep paying their monthly subscription.'
i have one thing to say for tyhis what were u back when ur first charter was lvl 1-20 and u were just a n00b.
im not arguing with ur statment but n00bs? unless u help to crreat a game u were a n00b when u started. and in Runescape, WoW, halo, and countless other online games i hear the 'you n00b'......wtf n00b... n00b this n00b that... there new as u once were y make it a insult?!
ive left several games over the years.. cause simply asking for advie got me the 'shut up n00b learn the game!'
but anyways i liked the artical but it needs more facts. and yes varth im only a lvl 28 humna warlock... so n00bify me!
I stopped playing Everquest about 3 years ago and I am still amazed how few EQ guilds managed to get a fair DKP system developed. I had expected that since atleast some of the highend guilds in WoW were founded by gamers that originated from Everquest, atleast some of the guilds that had developed fair loot systems would take their experiences with them into WoW and those fair loot systems would be taken to heart by massive amounts WoW players. I was wrong. It seems Wow players and guilds are determined to repeat the mistakes made in Everquest when distributing loot. Creating a fair loot system is NOT that hard.
Loot systems 101:
Traditional DKP/Claim.
Each player earns a fixed number of points per raid depending on difficulty. Items have a fixed cost, which is smaller than total number of points earned per raid. Items goes to player with highest total DKP. Points are subsequently subtracted from his/her total.
Pros: Easy to manage. Supported by many tools.
Cons: Usually inflation in system, which favors old members who accumulate points until they have a substantial reserve they can use monopolize new zones as guild progresses. (This seems to be what you described).
DKP/Bid.
Each player earns a fixed number of points per raid depending on difficulty. Items go to the highest bidder.
Pros: Easy to manage.
Cons: Favors casual gamers who get items cheaper than power gamers, which is unfortunate as it drives away powergamers who are most important to ensure guild progression.
Officer dictate.
Officers determine who gets loot, based on who needs upgrade most, who raids most, who is more important in typical raid.
Pros: Easy to manage.
Cons: Requires trust in officers, requires honest officers, can lead to favortism and elitism.
DKP/Claim revised.
Each player earns a variable amount of points depending on number of participants in raid and determined value of items dropped. Points earned equals value of loot claimed divided among participants in raid. Value is subtracted from point total of player who gets the item. Item goes to player with highest total who wants item.
Pros: Intrinsically fair, points earned = points spent, so zero inflation.
Cons: Difficult to manage as tool support is poor. People have a tendency to quit playing while they are below 0 DKP which may lead to some inflation, the side effects of this inflation is minimal and will not put new members of guild at considderable disadvantage like traditional DKP/Claim.
Chiu must be an idiot, or he doesn't read the news.
I strongly suspect WoW is the first MMORPG the author has played seriously. What he cites as problems are nothing new - anyone who played EQ six years ago and is reading this is probably thinking 'been there, done that.'
Big world with game depth? Two partially-populated continents is not big, and the auction house is not depth. However, growth will come with time and expansions. 8,000,000 subscribers will demand it, and will demand that it happen often. Blizzard is blessed, and cursed, with a great game that has the world's worst playerbase. This first expansion will test Blizzard's ability to deliver, and the early reports are that it's going pretty well.
Personally, I'm an explorer (yes, I went to the Ironforge airport before the path was blocked), so I'm looking forward to seeing zones that are on the map but inaccessible currently. But I'm an optimist - I've been waiting years to see the Dragonscale Hills in Norrath (just outside Ak'Anon) and it hasn't happened yet.
Should just make all armor sets and 1 class specific weapon be able to be obtained via nothing more than reputation with the raid dungeon's respective faction. Bosses should drop rings and necklaces and trinkets and debatable weapons.
Put in the work (time raiding, killing bosses, earning faction) and your rewards are guaranteed and since faction gains can be carried over because they are per character and not a guild thing like DKP or DSP (D*ck S*ck Points i.e. Officer Decision), people can enjoy raiding and not worry about a gkick or gdisband.
Just makes a lot of sense to me since if you don't raid, you can't possibly obtain faction, and can't get your armor, plus you can't just officer award yourself crap because you built the guild in the heyday when you killed Rag and then sluffed off avoiding new content and pvping all day only to come into AQ and take what you want.
CHIU: I love when people make comments about the questionable maturity level of a blog author, while they have absolutely no grasp on the English language themselves. Yes the remark was a bit risqué but due to context clues, no harm was intended by the author. Fantastic blog by the way; interesting read.
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Sorry this might be a little long :(
I will say that i am a elitest wow player of the pre BC days. To give you an idea (this is just for wow players that can understand this) my priest had full prop, beni, and any high end gears from zg or aq20 (as well as various non set bwl healing gears), my hunter was in full dragonstalkers, and all the bwl cross drops i wanted (DFT, prestors, much debated drops for hunters) and my rogue had full BF, and 5/9 BS, and pretty much anything i wanted up in AQ40. NOT to mention all three had the class books from aq20 before it was trainable (and got the backstab book), epic mounts (the hunter has the zg mount) attuned for all instances, and all had resist gears that could push them to 315 fr, nr or frr.
I was a grunt like everyone else at first but after perfecting zg and aq20 (my guild was able to clear all of zg including jindo and edge within 2 hours or less consistantly, allowing room for 3-4 deadweights to pick up gear) i was made a officer and from what i saw, the guild was 'fair' in terms of loot, we ran a dkp system and although it was not by any means perfect, it was good enough where causal raiders were willing to wait for a raid spot to open up (i remember typically 50 people on at raid times all the way to when raid are called off). Which to me at least shows we had a system that may not guarentee a raid spot to causuals but the chances that a spot might open up to experience end game content in the end was worth the wait.)
That being said TBC was sort of a virtual kick in the.... for me. Like the article said, all pre bc gear was outdated almost straight away. I expected my gear to be outdated, but not to the degree in which lvl 61 greens did. In less then a few hours, i was already replacing my gears. I then looked back and realized all the time working together for those MC,BWL, AQ, NAXX gears was wasted, i even felt more sorry for those players who did the grandmarshal grind, not only was thier remarkable acheivement in the wow world tarished by the fact 1 month before TBC everyone could get a hold of GM gears, but now in TBC, GM-quality gear was THE standard in which lvl 61 greens replaced. Thats when it finally hit me when TBC was the 'great equalizer' the causuals were so happy about.
So ok, i shouldnt be whining, expansion is here, new game, move on and rebuild.
By the time i reached level 70, ran the 5 man instances i found that dps melee weapons (which so happen to all fall at 71.7 dps) healing weapons (+227 healing)and caster (120 spelldamage) were very.... standardized. I found out that gears i could get in steamvaults, i could get almost the exact same in BM, mech, Bot, or SL. The new 5 piece set gears for classes were all also to me at least, seemingly designed for general pve-pvp use. Those sets are not exactly made for pve, but they arent exactly made for pvp either, kinda in the middle, a far outcry from the mindset of raiders before BC who would have a set of gear made for pve, and a set for pvp.
The instances in TBC i find are very poorly designed. Unlike the old strath, scholo, dm, ubrs. etc. etc. TBC instances are very plain and boring. All of them are made to follow a single path, on top of that most of the bosses in those instances act like a mini version of high end bosses pre BC or a mix of several bosses (best example would be the last boss in arcatraz, and last boss in shadow labs, skekham, and rag with a touch of vael anyone?). This i can see being exciting and 'new' to causuals that never could reach to these bosses but to the hardcore raiders the bosses are just one word.. 'meh.'
Moving on, I also noticed some real changes in classes in BC. Hunters took a much bigger hit in terms of usefulness in raids, Rogues, who were once powerhouses in pve if speced and geared properly were now.... not doing so well. Mages and warlocks on the other hand got stronger and in most cases, espically in 5 man raids, i would rather replace a rogue or a hunter for one of them simply because casters dont get hit by massive 4k aoe's, and give a much more reliable crowd control yet maintain a high DPS. I am sure blizzard will make changes but there are also many other balance issues that needs to be addressed (green druid tanks better then prot spec/geared warriors, shadow presit outdoing afflication locks etc. etc. ) because it really feels that TBC was rushed.
Lastly guilds. putting the cap from 40 to 25, and all small instances 5 man with karazhan a 10 man i think was a mistake. I do not think a single guild that raided 40 man instances pre bc has made it into the expansion completely intact. Most have broken to smaller groups usually with a small group of close friends. This is both a blessing and a curse. Im sure some are glad they dont play with that annoying person anymore, but at the same time it limits what a guild can do. One problem before BC was small groups that kinda molded together, BC makes those groups into guilds themselves, which in turn took much of the talents that might be needed for real progression in high end raiding. I cannot say my guild now has the talent to effectivly raid new content and PVE progression was a real drive for me to play wow.
All in all, i have come to the conclusion that TBC was aimed towards causual players. Which is not a bad thing but i feel it does alienate anyone who have worked for a 8/8 set to a degree. I feel that TBC was ment to bring in causal gamers for a monthly fee and have them pay for a long time and play every once in a while.
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