I Ruined World of WarCraft

Sean Sands

Optimistic Cynic
Sep 14, 2006
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I Ruined World of WarCraft

World of WarCraft is made for casual players like Sean Sands, and he's really, really, disappointed about that.

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Abedeus

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Sep 14, 2008
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I'm a casual player MMO player. I don't like investing more than 1-3 hours a day into a MMOPUGER.

WoW couldn't keep me playing for more than 10 hours during all the time it was there.
 

Dudemeister

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Feb 24, 2008
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I was similarly disappointed when the Wilderness was removed from Runescape.
Then I realized that it sucked anyway.
So it's all good.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Sean, I have to say that I disagree with this piece. I think that you're confusing "easier" with "more accessible."

Oh sure, there are definitely things that are easier, and much less tedious. For instance, if I wanted to grind exalted with the Frostsaber Trainers in Winterspring, it'd take me about a week of solid grinding TOPS, compared to the months it would have taken pre-BC. Getting exalted with factions is also much simpler with Championing and daily quests (as opposed to just the repeatable turnins you saw pre-BC).

But as far as the endgame PvE content goes, I think you're dead wrong. Sure, I loved Molten Core back in the day, but really, when you look back at it? The fights were simple. The hard part was getting 39 other people to do it with. The arguably "hardest" fight before Majordomo Executus/Ragnaros, Baron Geddon, was: "Melee run out when he starts doing the fire thing. Dispel the mana drain. If you have the bomb, run away."

Compare that to, say, Sartharion, the easiest raid encounter in WotLK. Dodge lava waves, make sure that all the fire adds don't get caught in them or else they get much stronger, dodge the volcano blasts, etc. Also pretty simple, but more complex than most of the stuff we saw in Classic. Then you have all the optional stuff, like trying it with the three Drakes up - that's pretty damn tough.

You'd be right that Naxxramas is a shade of its former self, and I doubt we'll see anything THAT difficult until Icecrown Citadel (the Naxx/Sunwell of this expansion). But the actual content is far more complex and - for a 25 man group - more challenging than anything pre-BC. I have a hunch that Ulduar will be a definite step up.

I agree that there's very little RISK involved, though.
 

51gunner

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Jun 12, 2008
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I disagree with your article. Like CantFaketheFunk said, the hardest part of Molten Core or Onyxia was simply assembling forty goddamn people to do it. Additional problems came up when you had to find up to five or six dedicated tanks, plus a couple healers to glue to them. It was a far bigger logistical nightmare than an in-game nightmare. I remember being in a guild that had a ton of players ready: just not everyone at the same time.

Sure, there were challenges like Naxxaramas right at the end of Vanilla WoW, but there's comparable in at least as recent as TBC: Very few finished or even entered Sunwell. The biggest difference is that a LOT more could see the inside of mid-level raiding.

Sure, Wrath of the Lich King opens things up even more with a lot of ten-man content, but are we mixing up difficulty in-game with difficulty out-of-game?

Yes, there's a few things lost in the translation. I grinded out the ENTIRE 'upgraded' tier .5 set, and recieved praise even from 40-man raiders for my tenacity on that, but by and large it's a now a change for the better. Sure, little bits like my purple paladin suit are gone, but it's a worthy price to pay.
 

SonofSeth

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Dec 16, 2007
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You are also forgetting one key thing, if you actually remember the times of T1 and T2 raids you are playing WoW waaaaaay too long to actually be challenged by it.
 

KungFuMaster

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Aug 14, 2008
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A bit off to left field here, as I play LOTRO, but the reason for playing is still the same, it's a simple, immersing experience that lets you blow off steam for a bit, and part of the that is a challenge; I think it's the same as any game, yes, it is nice to finally become all big and swollen and god like and be able to kill everything by looking at it cross-eyed, but the FUN wears thin real quick. Perfect example being Force Unleashed, yes, it was a short game and very predictable, but the story was good and so was the game play, but if you have a second go at it with the cheat codes, well, bathing a room with double handed force lighting is cool, but there's no enjoyment after, oh, say, half a level?

LOTRO just released their own expansion a while back, and one of the features is to progress to level 60 (laughable to you WoW kids, I'm sure.) which actually brought me back into the game. Having maxed out on the old expansion, I had gotten bored because it had become all grind just to level up my skills, and whenever I did have to venture forth out into the world to find things, it was no fun because everything had become *WHACK* "Your mighty blow defeated [insert creature name here]" Now, with another ten levels still to go, there's things out there that I actually run from now, hell, I actually had to call on my Fellowship (read: guild) to come and help for the first time in almost a year; it was actually kind of nice.

I guess what I'm taking forever to say is that without challenge, a game as epic as even WoW can get stale pretty quick, and games aimed at "casual" players don't hold much of a challenge for the "hardcore" set...which is why I'm glad I'm stuck somewhere in the middle.
 

Fordo

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Oct 17, 2007
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Good read. I too am one of those few who look back at classic as the good ole days. I raided MC and BWL religiously and was part of our horde server first kill of Nef.

To those who say PvE has somehow gotten more fun and less tedious, I tend to disagree. PvE at the end of the day is still follow XYZ gameplan and win. A well done group who can work around agro will always blow through content. I do think that the encounters are more thought out, but as a healer...it's still looking at health bars and dispelling random junk as fast as possible. For me, the fun stopped when we started having to do these insane rep grinds to even gain entry into a instance like old-school Naxx, or when content stops being memorable....and for me memorable is something that sucks hours/days/weeks of my life to complete.

I think what it comes down to is you can't have it both ways. Onyxia, for as simple a fight as it was, always felt satisfying to beat even after the 50th time because every time I saw her drop I could still recall the first time it happened. The feeling of accomplishment you got for dropping that firebreathing, earthquake making, super whore. Same can be said for all the content I saw in BWL and MC.

Such a relationship has been burned in my brain from the countless deadmines runs I took in Beta. Hell, I was one of the weird lvl 60's and later, 70's that would venture into alliance territory weekly to randomly clear Deadmines to give that bastard Van Cleefe some payback for all that time in beta he took from me. (rez timers...lawl)

Anyway, yes. When wow was young I found more random people to fight..which is all I was interested in anyway. When I came back to play BC fights were sparse, players outside of arenas were horrid, PvE still had a rep grind feel. (hooray badges).
 

Calamity

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Aug 22, 2008
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You've forgotten the Achievement system has thrown in a whole new slew of challenges that make the same "Casual" friendly fights you're describing into something far more challenging.

Sure Satharon (SP?) is easy, but now take that same "easy" fight and aim for the "Twilight Zone" achievement (Leave the three drakes in his zone alive so they assist him during the battle) and suddenly you get one hell of a challenge reminiscent of hardcore Vanilla raiding.

So while there is a whole new degree of accessibility to WoW, they haven't forgotten the super serious MMO types either.
 

theultimateend

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Nov 1, 2007
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Fordo said:
To those who say PvE has somehow gotten more fun and less tedious, I tend to disagree. PvE at the end of the day is still follow XYZ gameplan and win.
Which makes that ambiguous statement any different from real life how? I mean sure you can add the argument "well you CAN lose in real life" but frankly you can 'lose' in game as well.
 

Fordo

Senior Member
Oct 17, 2007
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theultimateend said:
Fordo said:
To those who say PvE has somehow gotten more fun and less tedious, I tend to disagree. PvE at the end of the day is still follow XYZ gameplan and win.
Which makes that ambiguous statement any different from real life how? I mean sure you can add the argument "well you CAN lose in real life" but frankly you can 'lose' in game as well.
I should have been more clear.

What I was getting at is while I can follow a set gameplan with wow PvE content, PvP was where the real challenge was in my mind. Agro control and coordination/communication ensures a flawless and fast victory in wow PvE. I always got a kick out of PvP because you could not control the fights like you could against wow AI...ofcourse I hear deathknights have changed that slightly =P
 

theultimateend

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Nov 1, 2007
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Fordo said:
theultimateend said:
Fordo said:
To those who say PvE has somehow gotten more fun and less tedious, I tend to disagree. PvE at the end of the day is still follow XYZ gameplan and win.
Which makes that ambiguous statement any different from real life how? I mean sure you can add the argument "well you CAN lose in real life" but frankly you can 'lose' in game as well.
I should have been more clear.

What I was getting at is while I can follow a set gameplan with wow PvE content, PvP was where the real challenge was in my mind. Agro control and coordination/communication ensures a flawless and fast victory in wow PvE. I always got a kick out of PvP because you could not control the fights like you could against wow AI.
Maybe I just PvP'd too long but after a short while I noticed the same tired strategies using basically the same equipment.

It has always felt to me to be the weakest part of WoW which is why I feel its a shame they work so hard to promote it :p.

At any rate thanks for the clarification, I just get annoyed when people say "You have so few options." and then I point to real life "If we use your ambiguous generalizations in real life you find you only have about twice as many options and that's in a world with very few hardware or software limitations ;)."
 

Grand_Poohbah

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Nov 29, 2008
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I quit world of warcraft for that very reason. When I first started the game I was mystified by other characters in full epics talking about their epic boss battles. When I reached that coveted highest level I realized nothing really changed. Enemies were no harder, the loot that had looked so epic wasn't really epic. I got five epic pieces just for idling in battlegrounds. I heard about the glory days of WoW, before the burning crusade. I wished I had joined earlier to witness those days.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Grand_Poohbah said:
I quit world of warcraft for that very reason. When I first started the game I was mystified by other characters in full epics talking about their epic boss battles. When I reached that coveted highest level I realized nothing really changed. Enemies were no harder, the loot that had looked so epic wasn't really epic. I got five epic pieces just for idling in battlegrounds. I heard about the glory days of WoW, before the burning crusade. I wished I had joined earlier to witness those days.
Nostalgia glasses.

Pre-BC WoW was more tedious than current WoW. It also hadn't been nitpicked down to an absolute SCIENCE yet. That's all it really has on the current version.
 

Rhayn

Free of All Weakness
Jul 8, 2008
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I'm going with CantFaketheFunk on this one. Nostaliga is a great thing. There was no challenges in raiding appart from getting 40 people to listen to you. Hell, most of the fights were tank, spank and "stay out of the fire".

Ever wondered where that phrase comes from? Well, there you have it.
 

51gunner

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Jun 12, 2008
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I neglected to mention I haven't played since before Wrath launched. One poster above me here mentioned Achievements: brilliant. It sounds like a great way for elitists to have their elitism while not cutting off almost everyone from content.
 

Aschenkatza

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Jan 14, 2009
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I get what your saying and I do agree to an extent. I miss the effort that was once required for those 40-man fights. I ,personally, only saw limited End-Game back in Pre-BC: MC, AQ20, and I stepped into BWL for a second too; and that's what made it great. Those fights were amazing because 40 people managed to stay focused and got the job done. Imagine what Naxx was like back in Pre-BC. The best of the Best got through Naxx. Imagine 40 people trying to do the safety dance today [That's Heigan the Unclean to those who don't know].

Achievements: What really killed it for me was 2 weeks into the wotlk expansion the server's top guild downed kel'thazad in 25-man. They soon conquered Sath's achievements and Malygos' as well. The server ANNOUNCED the kill to everyone on Horde and Allaince. Getting those achievement's now is all good and whatnot, but whats the point. You don't get anything other than a fancy title and guess what, everyone else can get it too. It's not Special. Achievements are a way for people to show off, and become even bigger jerks than they already were.

Rhayn said:
I'm going with CantFaketheFunk on this one. Nostaliga is a great thing. There was no challenges in raiding appart from getting 40 people to listen to you. Hell, most of the fights were tank, spank and "stay out of the fire".

Ever wondered where that phrase comes from? Well, there you have it.
Did you know about 90% of raiding is 'Stay out of ...'? Now keeping 10 people out of a wad of fire is easy, try keeping 40 people. While those challenges might not seem like enough for you, then you have the challenge of hoping your loot drops!

If I was still playing, I'd be ecstatic for some kind of content patch. Doing Naxx for the rest of out lives isn't challenging.