Buying From Blizzard is Quickest Way to Play Cataclysm

[steamweedlegoblin]

I think this is a stupid mistake. They should start up the servers at noon on the day or some reasonable time. Not 3am. Some of us wanted to play for an hour or two that night before getting some sleep and work the next day.

I bet that's exactly why they aren't bringing the servers up at a reasonable time. Millions of people trying to log in at the exact same moment would probably make the servers go poof! Then no one would be logging in, and I'd be a sad panda.

 

[Baldr]

I was living on the west coast for the Wrath launch. I thought it went really smooth. 75% of the population of the US lives on the East Coast. By the time I got login, most people have moved on or went to bed, which made leveling easier those first couple hours.

 

[sogortheogre]

Pay?

Aren't all of EVE Online's expansions free?

Well some of it is proved for free, which is the newly destroyed world and altered quests.

I think the reasoning may be this; in EVE there is no "end-game" content as there is in World of Warcraft. In EVE I kept playing as long as I had a corp to run with, pvp to do, projects and plans to accomplish. In WoW, I got to the end-game content and just got bored with it. Once I finished with most of the higher end dungeons, I just got tired of doing them, even with my guildies, or even with different characters. In EVE there is no endgame content, which could, I think at least, keep players drawn into that world for longer.

Oh, and to anyone who says EVE expansions aren't really expansions: I would have to say that they still release about the same amount of new content, as they will put out 3-5 of these in the time it takes for one WoW etc. expansion to come out... so each one is considerably smaller, but they add up. In my opinion at least.

My two cents,
Sogor

 

[Catalyst6]

Pay?

Aren't all of EVE Online's expansions free?

EVE's "expansions" are really just glorified patches that add very little to the game as a whole. For example, the last one: planetary harvesting, woo hoo! No new areas or content, or real story for that matter, it's just minor things that you couldn't sell for a decent price. Not that EVE's a bad game or anything, but the content and real appeal comes form the community, not the game itself.

 

[Exort]

It's not just bugs, it's also server loads and balance issues that rise as a result of the release of an expansion.

This happened for every major release of WoW.

Balance issue when you are leveling up??...
I understand Raiding balance or such, but leveling up...

 

[ark123]

If anyone here tried to buy SC2 the hour it was released, that person knows damn well how close to "the second it's released" you get to download your game. Servers crash almost immediately, then they start slowly going back up. Hyperlinks turn into infinite loops. The store only sometimes shows the new games. And that's with what, 1.5 million people downloading? I imagine what's going to happen when it's 6-7.

 

[DTWolfwood]

lolol Prepare for a long night of refreshing the DL servers folks. lol this is so gonna crash Blizzards Server farms XD

 

[Flying Dagger]

this would seem to screw over stores who were expecting to make money off this release more then anything else.

 

[tharglet]

It's funny how everyone now blames Activision for things that Blizzard has always done lol ¬¬. Seen a lot of this recently.

Not sure what method I'm gonna use this time. Don't care about day one having the expansion, but might see how the costs compare.

 

[Latman2k]

This simply solidifies that I must have sucked at this game if the time means so much.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

I still say the things from cataclysm could've been presented via a PATCH and that this expansion pack is not worth it.

 

[toapat]

the different between Xpacs to WoW and those to Eve are that the Eve xpacs range from minor hotfixes to major content packs. the ones from WoW are entire game restructures that require entire stockpiles of data to be moved, of which has had millions of dollars pumped into it. Cataclysm is the Fourth edition of World of Warcraft, and the 7th of Blizzard RPGs. and it shows how much Blizzard has learned in the 15 years.

while the idea of the digital Download for WoW is rather good, i personally would prefer to have the real version, partly for ease of installing (you dont need a large pre-download), and partly because those manuals own.

in terms of overall effect, Blizzard is essentially selling us a few square miles of land, a small level cap, and the ability to set our own pace to get from STV to the Eastern Plaguelands, but this comes with access to what is essentially an extention of the endgame of Wrath of the Lich King. What Cat does truely differently from the previous Xpacs is that there is no raiding gap. the people who farm arthas atm will be able to switch directly to defending the world tree from Ragnaros, to assaulting the aquatic fortresses of Nazjatar, to assaulting Earthhome directly.

 

[Deylin]

I did the whole digital download thing for Starcraft 2 and I have to say it was a bit of a mistake. I couldn't start downloading the game until noon after the game came out which kinda bummed me at the time. I don't see how doing this will allow people to play Cata ASAP, per se' the future seems bright with huge download times/queues that will annoy folks. Release days for expansions are headaches of their own, I think this complicates the standard packed servers and crazy lag-fests.

I've got Cata pre-ordered through Gamestop and come the day of the release I'm installing the expansion, then I'm gonna wait a few days. Wrath was horrible, this is gonna be worse.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Well surely if they have any sense at all, they'll start allowing downloading of Cata around a week in advance, just like they do with the larger patches, so all they need to do is effectively send an 'on' signal to activate that data at midnight.

Sure everything's going to be horribly busy, and you won't be able to move for gobbos and furballs in the newbie zones, but that's part of the chaotic fun of a new expansion

 

[DEATHROAD]

Pay?

Aren't all of EVE Online's expansions free?

Is it new to you that WoW expansions cost money?

Evidently.

Pay?

Aren't all of EVE Online's expansions free?

Isnt EvE Online a glorifide chat room with a chance of losing items with a REAL money value?

Err... No.

Pay?

Aren't all of EVE Online's expansions free?

What the hell does EVE online have to do with World of Warcraft? If you are suggesting that Cataclysm should be free then well-thats stupid.Most expansions for most games are not free. WOW is one of the biggest games in the world and Cataclysm is a huge expansion costing Blizzard millions to produce and market. EVE online is quite literally nothing by comparison. Why would they not charge for it? Plus, players without Cataclysm will still benefit from the overhauled game mechanics and remade world/new low level questing content.

I was assuming that since the update makes massive changes to the game world that it'd probably be required; not to mention that the cost is probably easily covered in subscription fees.

Scrub the sand out of your vagina.

If you are going to make retarded posts then you have to expect some retaliation. The point you made in response to me is completely valid and rational. However, it is not what you said in your initial post. What you said in your initial post was that EVE onlines expansions are free, a point with zero relevance to this topic.

OT: I assumed it would be available at midnight but being able to actually download it before that and play right away is pretty awesome. Not that i will be playing WOW in the small hours of the morning on release day but still...

There's plenty of relevance.

EVE is a smaller MMO yet none of it's (fairly regular) expansions are charged for - so I questioned why it's paid for ("Pay?").

Blizzard are owned by Activision though so I guess it's not too hard to find an answer.

Or maybe they're charged for because they handle 12 million people and not less than a million? Also, these expansions are no doubt larger than eve's.

Yes, but as far as I'm aware they're less regular, and since they're earning roughly 12x as much it makes more sense - from the customer's point of view, obviously a company would consider it best to be able to charge for everything - to not charge for it.

You clearly dont play wow, so why are you even in this thread in the first place? Is it to post about how EVE is better than wow cos of free expansions? As much as your entitled to your opinion, Its simply not true,WoW and EVE are too COMPLEATLY different games, the ONLY thing they have in common is the fact that they are both mmo's, nothing else.

 

[Reveras]

I still say the things from cataclysm could've been presented via a PATCH and that this expansion pack is not worth it.

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about . I've been in the beta and this "expansion" is practically a new game. What you have known about your class doesn't apply that much anymore, especially if you are one of those totally changed ones, which happens to be my case as a hunter.

 

[Computer-Noob]

Pay?

Aren't all of EVE Online's expansions free?

They also have a tenth of the content each WoW expansion has - And thats before all the patches that come after the expansions are released.

 

[Cowabungaa]

There's plenty of relevance.

EVE is a smaller MMO yet none of it's (fairly regular) expansions are charged for - so I questioned why it's paid for ("Pay?").

Blizzard are owned by Activision though so I guess it's not too hard to find an answer.

They made Burning Crusade before they were bought by Activision, as far as I'm aware. Also, they're still pretty much a separate company.

In any case, Blizzard does do with WoW what CCP does with EVE, that is giving away large content patches for free. Blizzard did it a crapload of times with a crapload of new content.

 

[chaosd1]

While I think the offer is a pretty sweet deal, I think I'd much rather stick with my plan of the midnight wait, and the collector's edition.

After all, it's much nicer to have a spellbook-case to display and remind me of those times, rather than an intangible "World-First" achievement which will become irrevocably useless when the game inevitably shuts down in the distant future.

 

[ViralStorm]

I'd just like to thank you two for not replying to me like I'm some sort of moron, and for having the reading ability to understand the relevance of my point.

I'm looking at this from an outsider's point of view (although I've dabbled a little in EVE).

No problem, it was a relevant comment, and I was glad to provide some insight.

As I later appended to my post, I play both WoW and EVE and can somewhat understand the reasoning behind both their methods. It's also the case that both these MMOs are rather different from each other, which leads to differences in how the content is presented.

WoW as a whole is fairly linear, you progress through the levels as you see fit and where you see fit, but for each level range there is a limited number of locations that is appropriate for you to level up in.
This linear progression is mirrored in their expansions, in that they extend the range of your experience (more levels and associated content), but rarely change the breadth of your experience (new ways to level for instance aren't added, new classes are, but the basic mechanics stay the same).

EVE is a massive sandbox, there's very little PvE content (although the wormhole sleeper NPCs added a lot) as such, most of the stories, in-game politics and economy is generated by its players.
As a result its expansions tend to change the breadth of your experience (new ways of earning a living or a name for yourself in EVE for instance, like the fairly recent PI, wormhole and factional warfare content, along with the standard stuff (gear, ships, etc.)), but the length of the experience doesn't really vary that much in EVE, there will be always skills to train and new things to learn. Their path is up to the players themselves after all.
The power play between massive groups of players is what forms EVEs endgame, and there is no fixed route to reaching that.

CCP tends to provide frameworks for player interaction, where Blizzard adds more content to defeat.

That was the most succinct, accurate, and unbiased comparison of those two MMOs I have ever come across on the internet.