The World of Warcraft hate thread.

[Ganbare Gincun]

I'll probably go back to WoW for a while whenever they release Cataclysm. I've always wanted to make a Goblin Hunter. I'll level to 85, and then quit. The endgame for WoW is terrible - I'd much rather play a new and different game then dedicating 20 hours a week to grinding mobs like a stripper and collecting badges like a Boy Scout. And who wants to deal doing shit with a Guild? Most of the people I've met on WoW have either been children or the severely retarded. I don't want to talk to them, much less rely on them to help take down a boss. That's a good way to waste 6 hours of your life.

Ultimately, the best way to play WoW is as if you were playing Endless Ocean. You show up, you see the sights, you do the quests, you take the full tour, and - unlike Endless Ocean - you get the fuck out before everything goes to crazytown and people start acting like crack heads.

[Ganbare Gincun]

My aunt and three of her kids (all grown, all living in different houses) play the Star Wars Galaxies MMO and it seems like it has a few things going for it. It looks like the player economy is pretty strong. You can't grind up artifact-level gear by doing the same dungeons over and over again--you have to go through a player who can improve weapons and armor.

Did they clear out all of the ghost towns left over from when their players left the game en masse after Sony overreacted and started banning people left and right for allegedly "duping credits"?

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I was looking over the changes in Cataclysm, and I'll hand it to Blizzard for changing things up a bit. And I'm glad the Gnomes and Trolls finally got their homes back (although I don't understand why some of the level 60+ trolls in Orgrimmar couldn't take out the level 5 mobs on Echo Isles a long time ago ) Still, that's more change than I've seen in an MMO ever.

[Crissa]

Well, technically there were some other Elite Trolls that would have kicked the Horde-aligned trolls if they actually moved against the trolls in the Echo Isles.

And Gnomerigan was poisoned, not just overrun. No good to go home just to get turned into a crazy-ass gnome, is it?

-Crissa

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Oh, I get Gnomeregan just fine, it was irradiated.

I wasn't entirely aware of the Echo Island trolls being aligned with some other group, I thought they were just a group of level 4-6 douchebags that the newbies hunted for quests.

[Ganbare Gincun]

My main issue with WoW was the fact that none of my friends IRL wanted to actually play the damned game. They all made Rogues and Ret Pallies and ran around killing other people instead of actually running instances or completing quests. Kind of hard to get to the endgame if everyone's just running around like a fool ganking newbies.

Needless to say, I have no desire to ever play WoW on a PvP server.

[Cielingcat]

PvP is part of the (end)-game, but ganking people is like taking candy from babies when the baby's parents don't care if you do it.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

On a BG, it's every toon for themself.

If I'm in a zone and someone walks by with their flag up, I'll at least take a swipe at them.

But I generally didn't really do any ganking. Except the time I went to the night elf newbie zone and started blasting quest NPCs when lowbie NE's walked up to do turnins.

I had a whole group cheering when the big tree thing wandering around stomped me into the dirt.

I then portaled out after 10 minutes. I don't have the patience for griefing.

Then again, I would emote /flirt to the night elves and they'd flirt back even after I nuked their quest NPC, so maybe I didn't spend enough time to do it. That was something I did, I walked around alliance zones and emoted at people.

[Crissa]

I had a whole group cheering when the big tree thing wandering around stomped me into the dirt.

Bwahahahaha. He's a sweetie.

Technically, it was the ancient trolls around the world, remember, they're high-level instances and stuff? So yeah, every troll tribe from Zandalar to whatsawhoosit were supposed to kick the Horde trolls' arses if they took back their isle.

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

I was looking over the changes in Cataclysm, and I'll hand it to Blizzard for changing things up a bit. And I'm glad the Gnomes and Trolls finally got their homes back (although I don't understand why some of the level 60+ trolls in Orgrimmar couldn't take out the level 5 mobs on Echo Isles a long time ago ) Still, that's more change than I've seen in an MMO ever.

I'm gonna restart for Cat because they sound like they're making good changes. Plus I know people who play, the game is only fun if its social.

---

I have to admit that I'm skeptical of future MMOs letting the players make big changes. I figure that'd be ass because the only people who would be doing that would be the no life crew. Unless you play all the damn time you just won't have the same impact on the game world.

[Username17]

You could do it democratically rather than per hour grinding. That is, changes occur after X different people kill at least one of the ogre baron's bodyguards, rather than when X total bodyguards of the ogre baron are slain. That way the no life crew doesn't have a disproportionate impact on the game unless they decide to send you a lot of money by running multiple different accounts.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Yeah, they locked down how often the no life crew can impact, but it's still difficult. They had it locked to once a week, but that made lots of whining, as many people would get stuck with a half-way done marker and they were unable to find a way to find other matching half markers.

So they limited the no life crew to one a day. But that still means the no life crew hits seven to fourteen times as often as a casual or the majority of the playerbase.

Blizzard does track ownership of alts and accounts. It's now possible for you to pass some good loot between characters you own, so you can get good hand-me-downs from yourself.

-Crissa

[Cielingcat]

They also have a phasing system, where different parts of the game can appear different to different players. So the game is different for you depending on which quests they complete. I believe they have said they're going to make much greater use of phasing in Cataclysm.

[Crissa]

Yeah, the phasing in the last expansion worked and is awesome. It's not a new invention by any means, but it is seriously tough to implement on a wide scale like they did. Northrend literally changes for you as you finish quests.. Cities burn and are razed depending upon where you are in the quest.

-Crissa

PS posting on a smartphone is a pain.

[Judging__Eagle]

Currently, I still play 'casually' on an RP server. Aguila on Thorium Brotherhood.

The funny thing is that with no guild, playing 3 or so times a weeks, and not really doing any raids; aside from a few pick up raids (yes, PuG raids, they're hilarious if you think about them compared to what raids used to take, and they do work), I've been able to march my little double caster character's gear from blues-greens (ilvl 187-200), to the mid and higher-end purples (ilvl 232-264).

Not having to do anything except for a 10-man weekly raid, and a daily quest is all most people have to do to "progress" their gear. Raiding every night, or full-clearing a raid is nice, but not necessary. Faster perhaps, but it's not like you can't upgrade your gear, if you don't raid-whore.

[Roy]

Item level 232-264? Wtf, isn't the cap like 80?

[Cielingcat]

Item levels are different than character levels.

EDIT: To elaborate, an item's level and its slot sets its budget, which determines how many stat points it can have. Items at level 80 range from 200, which is heroic/Naxxramas gear, to 277, which is hardmode Icecrown Citadel gear. The Lich King drops 284 weapons on hard mode, too, but those are the only 284 items in the game now.

[Roy]

Item levels are different than character levels.

Ok. So how do item levels work?

[Falgund]

Initially, Item levels were in sync with character level (+1 cLevel = +1 iLevel). But when the max character level was reached, WoW had to include "better loot", which meant Item levels continued to grow with content difficulty (Up to ~90 while character level was still limited at 60).
When the character level limit was raised to 70, in order to force people with the previous highest level of items to farm the new content, the item levels started to increase more rapidly than character level, and with a gap for people that didn't go to the highest difficulty raids (+3 iLevel for every character level, from iLevel 83 for level 61 to iLevel 110 for level 70 characters). And then it continued to increase with higher content difficulty for this character limit (Up to ~160).
And when character level limit was raised to 80, there was another gap and a higher multiplier to force a new gear reset (+4 iLevel for every character level, from iLevel 138 at level 71 to 174 at level 80), and another gap (to iLevel 200) for the begining "high level" content.


tl;dr: When at character level cap, Item levels continue to increase with content difficulty. (In order to continue to have gear progression)

[Judging__Eagle]

Cieling and Falgund summed it up.

Bigger levels needs 'bigger' numbers, to justify effort.

The thing is, once you've got 64's; the 77's and 84's aren't a really large upgrade; since they're only a 20 item level upgrade. The upgrades are more noticable when the change is larger. A 64 point upgrade, or a 50 point upgrade. Those will have visible effect in your character's performance.

Up until that point, a player can seriously PuG and Solo their way to getting full non-shitty purples for their character; and not need a guild.

I've specifically kept my character out of a guild this entire time; chatting with RL friends who I know via chat/OOC and RP channels, to keep myself in contact with people.

Granted, I'm playing a resto/balance druid during this time; and people needs them their caster droods, for some reason.

Also, I don't commonly let people die when I'm healing (players need to actively running out of range, or not doing basic things, like checking LoS to other party members, or allowing the Tank to get aggro; before they actually die), and I've been able to achieve higher DPS than people with higher end gear than my character. Apparently, a hunter in full ICC (277 gear) was raking in under 2k DPS; while in Balance, I 'start' at 2.5k, and ramp up to 4.5-5k, depending on buffs; without a single piece of ICC gear (my average ilvl is 235 or so).

Apparently "skill" is still important (albeit, it's really a game of timing and whack-a-mole), even at the very high end play, and even if you are the highest DPS class, with the best gear, a lower rated class, with lower end gear, can embarrass you.

Honestly, the only explanation I can find to weird stuff like that is:

1) players using each other's characters to get their Frost Badges; and not knowing their friend's class, at all

2) players who bought a level 80 character, and have no idea how to play their character, nor have bothered to learn their character's abilities.

[mean_liar]

I maintained a crazy DPS in City of Heroes by timing the animations, recharge times and damages to create optimal combo chains. They can make a large difference, at least in CoH.

[Crissa]

I got bored most of the way through the quests series and actually never finished the Northrend quests. It was too easy to just jump into Heroics and get gear that actually helped me rather than follow the quest line, which had been challenging and fun until I leveled out of it. Then I wasn't going to be able to improve my character, and none of it was really a challenge anymore.

I really like things to be a challenge. I soloed instances as a sixty, I was big on grinding elites at level cap... But in Northrend things were just designed to be impossible by large numbers so you ought to follow the quest chain. Which I relentlessly forgot where I was because there were about twenty chains!

-Crissa

[Judging__Eagle]

Stick to one quest zone at a time, and use the in-game Quest Helper.

Sites like WoWhead help clear up problems, like finding the entrance to a dungeon, which isn't marked on the map via the QH.

[Cielingcat]

There are also a number (in my opinion, this number is one) of very good addons that help with questing. Carbonite is the one I prefer, and I've found it vastly superior to Quest Helper. They make the process of finding where to go and keeping track of quest objectives much easier, and can save you a lot of frustration, because the basic Blizzard ui is honestly not that great.


And J_E, a lot of the people who don't know what to do in WoW are just people who don't care enough to learn, or have never bothered to. A number of my friends are like this, though a couple of them are also unwilling to learn better. A comparison would be, say, someone who picks up D&D and doesn't know how the system works, and ends up playing a Fighter with horrible feats, vs a person who's played the game for years but hates those evil min/maxers who ruin his game and just wants to play his half elf bard/fighter/rogue with Skill Focus (Underwater Basketweaving).

It always amuses me, though, when people say "WoW is easy, it's just pressing buttons in the right order!" when they themselves are completely incapable of doing that. Like people who have never in their lives hit 1800 in arenas saying that people at 2600 are skill-less. A lot of it comes down to simply knowing what to do, but there are real and noticeable differences between someone who knows everything he should do, and someone who is the best at doing that. Some people have hit over 2600 ratings in ilevel 200 blues, while most people who even reach that only do it with top of the line gear (at the time that person did that, the top of the line was 232, iirc).

As an example of what I think J_E has been saying, a lot of the content in the game has been beaten by exceptional people who had, at that time, far less gear than people have now. Normal mode Lich King was down within a week or two by people whose gear was a tier lower than modern gear, but people who have full 264 gear still struggle to even get to that fight now, even though they get +15% to damage, healing, and health from being inside the instance!*

*Every month Blizzard gives a stacking 5% buff to those stats in Icecrown Citadel, to help people who aren't on the cutting edge see all the game's content. Hard mode Lich King wasn't downed until the 10% buff came out, but most people still haven't downed normal mode Lich King with a 15% buff, and probably still won't do it even with +30% at the end of the expansion. And the hard mode fight has something like twice the health of the normal mode one, and much stricter requirements on absolutely everything.

[Crissa]

I mapped 90% of Northrend before I leveled past 70. I have done all the quests in the ground-bound areas.

It just got boring. The quests were about wasting time, not about doing anything puzzling. The got rid of the idea of multiple spawns or higher level of the same creature dropping more or whatnot. So it was just figure out what the badly written quest wants you to do (and Northrend has alot more of them you-don't-know if you're supposed to kill it, talk to it, search around its feet, etc) There were literally dozens of quests I failed because I didn't kill enough or the right named guards because the quest assumed I'd slaughter everything in the village.

That just got me so annoyed. I don't like quest helpers - I did most of them before they were even coded anyhow. And looking up cheats to find out where the item is... I shouldn't need to do that.

People who have high ratings in Arena are: A) Not Druids. B) Have way too much time on their hands. C) Better computer/connection than I do. D) Better gear than I do. E) Who knows if they have more skill than I do, because their gear and computer pre-arena was still tons better than mine.

I bet if you put out a map of the arena winners and their IP ranges you'd find they correspond to low number of hops.

-Crissa