My problem with Blizzard...

[RJ 17]

Snip.

I don't think we will, not for $60 expansion packs.
We'll just have to wait and see if Blizzard is really that stupid, or worse, that the gaming masses are that stupid and fork over another $60, twice.

As for the Terran campaign being 1/3 of a campaign, I feel the SC2 missions are superior to the original missions in SC1, because there's more variety in the objectives now. Not mere skirmishes against the AI, just with unit types disabled.
Maybe the 3 SC1 campaigns did take a bit longer to complete (I don't recall exactly anymore), but for each race it was unit tutorial missions all over until the end and a couple base interior missions.

I never cared much for the story itself, it's bad and so was SC1's writing, but here atleast alot more work went into the presentation. The content in Wings of Liberty cannot honestly be considered any less complete than previous Blizzard titles.

I do wonder if Blizzard will be able to come up with anything resembling a story for the zerg campaign though. The only zerg with any kind of personality was Kerrigan. The upcoming expansion is where I expect to find the deepest lows in the series.

Big Snip

More Snippage

I just hope they have the sense to price it at about 40$, blizzard did say that HotS would be priced as an expansion, not a full game, so they MUST mean lower than 60$, right? I honestly don't think they would charge full price for HotS, and I am totally willing to eat these words if they do.

EDIT: oh btw, you play as Kerrigan in HotS just thought you should know.

To you both: I have heard numerous times that "Oh Blizzard said they'll be pricing the next installments of SC II at "expansion prices", so it won't be full priced." Maybe you're right, unfortunatey past evidence says that Blizzard making such a statement is absolutely meaningless. I'll give the WoW expansions a pass at being full price because of the nature of MMO's and the fact that they add so much content with free content expansions down the line for each expansion. However as far as the RTS games are concerned, Brood Wars and Frozen Throne were expansions, and both of them cost full-game price.

Good lord man, you actually quoted my entire OP?

I was there for some of that too. But mostly, I was the opposite of you, realised immediately the unimportance of gear/item obtaining and instead, ONLY WANTED TO EXPERIENCE THE CONTENT THAT WAS SO EASILY GIVEN IN WC1,2 AND 3.. but so hard to see in WoW. I wanted to see the rest of the story and was neither willing nor able to provide the time, WORK or socializing REQUIRED to play the 'end-game' 'content'.

If you noticed, I capitalized the words required and work, not to emphasize yelling, but the words themselves.

GAMES SHOULDN'T HAVE REQUIRED ELEMENTS, AND THEY SHOULD BE FUN, NOT WORK.

I am waiting for WoW, and MMORPGs to come around and stop being about loot. Someday we'll have good MMOs again. That is my hope.

I caps'd the parts of your statement that I specifically wanted to address, because that's exactly how it was for me: I had originally got WoW because damn it I wanted to know what happens next! Frozen Throne ends with Arthas taking his place as the all-power Lich King, and I was REALLY hoping that's where it would pick up...but instead the original WoW, while still fun, gave us nothing but a buncha dungeons and stories that had absolutely nothing to do with the events at the end of Frozen Throne...in fact we had to wait for 2 expansions before we could get any closure on the Arthas saga.

And yeah, that was one of the major points I've been talking about all along: the game began to feel more like a job or a chore, but instead of getting paid to do said job/chore, I was having to pay in order to do it. I did have fun for the first few years, but just couldn't convince myself it was worth continuing to pay for.

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I'm currently on hiatus from WOW while I play SWTOR. I finally got tired of the hamster wheel of raiding. New raid tier, go grind it! New raid tier, go grind it! It's gotten to the point where even the bosses are formulaic. Here's the DPS check boss, here's the add fight, here's the gimmick encounter, oh and on hard mode all of them gain an ability that annoys everyone.

Which brings me to my #1 complaint with the game in it's current state: hard modes. Who the FUCK thought replacing new content with an extra boss ability and 20% more health was a good idea? I mean, come the fuck on. Seriously? You can't make 10 unique bosses per tier instead of making 6 with hard modes? Don't give me the "it's like a brand new boss" bullshit either, it isn't. It's the same damn boss with an extra mechanic tacked on that no one finds enjoyable.

Ask ANY hardcore player from vanilla/BC what they think of hard modes. I bet you 95% of them say they hate them with a passion, but they do them anyways because "they feel obligated to their guild". At least that's how I felt when I still raided 5 nights a week.

 

[RJ 17]

I'm currently on hiatus from WOW while I play SWTOR. I finally got tired of the hamster wheel of raiding. New raid tier, go grind it! New raid tier, go grind it! It's gotten to the point where even the bosses are formulaic. Here's the DPS check boss, here's the add fight, here's the gimmick encounter, oh and on hard mode all of them gain an ability that annoys everyone.

Which brings me to my #1 complaint with the game in it's current state: hard modes. Who the FUCK thought replacing new content with an extra boss ability and 20% more health was a good idea? I mean, come the fuck on. Seriously? You can't make 10 unique bosses per tier instead of making 6 with hard modes? Don't give me the "it's like a brand new boss" bullshit either, it isn't. It's the same damn boss with an extra mechanic tacked on that no one finds enjoyable.

Ask ANY hardcore player from vanilla/BC what they think of hard modes. I bet you 95% of them say they hate them with a passion, but they do them anyways because "they feel obligated to their guild". At least that's how I felt when I still raided 5 nights a week.

Good lord, man...raiding FIVE nights a week?! Even at my prime when I was still enjoying the game, every guild I was in only raided 2 nights a week...3 if there were enough people for an optional raid on one of the smaller dungeons.

But I do hear you, and you did a good job at summing up my major problem with why I became disinterested in raiding. Every boss is essentially the same as every other: watch your DPS or deal with the adds or know some kind of special manuever/positioning to ensure a raid-wiping attack doesn't go off. Same shit, different packaging.

 

[Torrasque]

I read it all, and you're right.

I've quit WoW a bit after Cata, Blizzard was making everything so easy (to attract new players = more money!). The required skill to become an 'elite' was going away. You just needed to grind dailies over and over again, and in the end you had the best gear there was. This made the game so boring. No wonder they lost a lot of players.

But i am afraid Blizz will just keep on going until nobody wants to play their games anymore.

I agree as well, you hit the nail on the head.
I don't agree with your sentiments about SC2, but WoW died out for me when things got way too easy and felt way too much like wotlk did.
The last time I had fun in WoW, was Ulduar. That was the last challenging raid, the last time my guild played to have fun and not "for progression" and the last time all the people I had fun with, were in my guild. From there, I lost more and more people with each new raid, until Cata came along and I didn't recognize half of my guild =|

I still like Blizzard as a company because Wings of Liberty was absolutely amazing and D3 will be amazing, but I will probably never go back to WoW. They would have to take away the easymode built into the game for me to be even slightly interested.

 

[RedPulse]

I read it all, and you're right.

I've quit WoW a bit after Cata, Blizzard was making everything so easy (to attract new players = more money!). The required skill to become an 'elite' was going away. You just needed to grind dailies over and over again, and in the end you had the best gear there was. This made the game so boring. No wonder they lost a lot of players.

But i am afraid Blizz will just keep on going until nobody wants to play their games anymore.

Being "elite" never required much skill, unless we're talking server first-kills or finishing first in an arena season. All it took was enough free time to get the gear/enchantments/potions/etc, combined with having half a brain.

True, but my point is, since Cataclysm Blizzard just throws everything in your lap, and Blizzard admits it. They are making the game easier, so new people level up faster, and are easier hooked up in end-game content.

 

[Asehujiko]

I've quit WoW a bit after Cata, Blizzard was making everything so easy

Have you considered that maybe you might be a bit better at a game now that you've been playing it for years?

 

[skywolfblue]

I'm currently on hiatus from WOW while I play SWTOR. I finally got tired of the hamster wheel of raiding. New raid tier, go grind it! New raid tier, go grind it! It's gotten to the point where even the bosses are formulaic. Here's the DPS check boss, here's the add fight, here's the gimmick encounter, oh and on hard mode all of them gain an ability that annoys everyone.

Which brings me to my #1 complaint with the game in it's current state: hard modes. Who the FUCK thought replacing new content with an extra boss ability and 20% more health was a good idea? I mean, come the fuck on. Seriously? You can't make 10 unique bosses per tier instead of making 6 with hard modes? Don't give me the "it's like a brand new boss" bullshit either, it isn't. It's the same damn boss with an extra mechanic tacked on that no one finds enjoyable.

Ask ANY hardcore player from vanilla/BC what they think of hard modes. I bet you 95% of them say they hate them with a passion, but they do them anyways because "they feel obligated to their guild". At least that's how I felt when I still raided 5 nights a week.

I rather liked hard modes, especially (I absolutely adored) ulduar style hardmodes that changed the fight up a lot.

The only problem is that, like you pointed out, blizzard decided to use hardmodes as an excuse to not produce anywhere near the same amount of content. TBC was packed to the brim with new fights, LK had Ulduar, ICC and the rest was either re-hashed or dull, and Cata was even worse. (I quit before Cata came out)

 

[RJ 17]

I've quit WoW a bit after Cata, Blizzard was making everything so easy

Have you considered that maybe you might be a bit better at a game now that you've been playing it for years?

What's there to be better at in WoW? You know your class, you know what abilities to use and in what order. All that's left is to go to some forum/website to read each boss fight strat and try with the rest of your guild to execute said strat perfectly until you manage to pull it off and the boss goes down.

My point is that you don't really get "better" in WoW in terms of increasing your skill to a finer degree than other players...the only way you get "better" is by getting better gear.

 

[RedPulse]

I've quit WoW a bit after Cata, Blizzard was making everything so easy

Have you considered that maybe you might be a bit better at a game now that you've been playing it for years?

What's there to be better at in WoW? You know your class, you know what abilities to use and in what order. All that's left is to go to some forum/website to read each boss fight strat and try with the rest of your guild to execute said strat perfectly until you manage to pull it off and the boss goes down.

My point is that you don't really get "better" in WoW in terms of increasing your skill to a finer degree than other players...the only way you get "better" is by getting better gear.

Exactly, and as i said, After Cataclysm(New expansion = Everyone starts from scratch), I guess i had too much of a life to go through all that grinding AGAIN.