The WoW Killer has finally arrived

[White_Lama]

A few things that are wrong with this thread.

1) Cross Realm Zones only interact with the same type of realm. A RP realm is only crossed with other RP realms, while PvP realms are crossed with fellow PvP realms. Same with PvE and other types of realms. PvE crossing with PvP does not happen. Blizzard made it clear that only same type realms will cross with each other.

2) Cross Realm Zoning is only for low population areas. Northern Barrens has maybe six, seven people in the entire zone? You'll soon be seeing people from other realms then whenever you reach a town area.

3) The only real problem with CRZ is that you'll end up fighting over mineral nodes once in a while.

While CRZing is interesting in concept and implementation, there are too many realms and too many high leveled people for it to ultimately work like Blizzard wants. Alts are nice and all, but a lot of players like sticking to one, maybe two, characters.

Well, seeing as all I had to say is said right here I'll just go ahead and say that I think the CRZ is a good thing because I like RP realms and now I don't have to be all alone while questing anymore, which is fun.

Plus a friend told me that you could pet battle crossrealms (don't know if thats true or not) but if that's true then that makes it easier to find a fight.

 

[Bat Vader]

Yeah, thanks for reminding me it's not just Blizzard that ruined WoW, but also the rotten community.

Because God forbid you have to interact with other players in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game! (don't get me started on how meaningless the RPG part has become too) In the last 10 years MMOs have went from player-run persistent worlds to a series of 5 to 25-man instances, and looking at the CRZ backlash, I shudder to think where they're headed next.

Also this isn't fucking Highlander, games don't kill each other. They sink or swim on their own merits. It's embarrassing how this bullshit perception keeps being spread every year by gaming journalists no less.

I didn't find the community to be that bad. It has been about two years since I played WoW though so the community could have gotten worse too. I never really socialized when I played WoW or when I play Guild Wars 2. I mainly just stick to myself and solo quests. I do like how Guild Wars 2 lets players participate in events without actually having to be in a group.

 

[EbonBehelit]

(remember how pokemon would level up but the stat gains were random?)

Point of fact: Pokemon stat gains on level up are NOT random. If you know a Pokemon's IVs, EVs, Nature, and Base Stats, you can predict exactly how a Pokemon's stats will change when it levels up.

You probably should have said Fire Emblem, where each stat has a random chance of going up for each level changed.

Beat me to it. You sir get a cookie.

On topic: I've seen a lot of QQ on the forums about CRZ, but people on the wow forums whine about EVERYTHING so it's hard to take seriously.
I personally think it's one of the best things Blizzard's ever introduced into the game - especially since all my IRL mates play on different servers, and we can now group up and be put on a single server at will.

 

[Loop Stricken]

... does not mean I'm going to like supporting having lag city and infinite mob spawns because my already High pop server suddenly has 5 others competing for quest targets and mining veins.

If your server has such a high population, players from other servers won't phase in. Simple.
And if I recall correctly the same technology is, or at least can be, used to split areas of high density.

 

[Vegosiux]

World of Warcraft is not only popular, it's destroyed everyone else it has ever had to compete with and left them a broken husk.

I suppose we have very different definitions on what counts as "destroyed" then. Rift is still there. SW: TOR is still there. Tera is still there. Hell, Guild Wars 1 is still there. And so on and so forth. DDO, Runes of Magic (a complete P2W travesty, I might add), they're all still there.

None of them were "destroyed", or "left for a broken husk". So no, you're still not making an argument here. Especially since I don't think the guys over at Blizzard design WoW with "crushing others" in mind.

This is the point where popularity can translate to quality.

First of all, I'll point out that even you seem to lack the confidence to use "does" in place of "can", so there's that.

Second, how does popularity "translate" to quality in the first place?

 

[phreakdb]

Ok. I am of course, the Originator of this thread. There has been conversation back and forth along the lines of 'Prove It' or people sticking their heads in the sand. So, I give you Exhibit A:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6679517893

That, is the Second Thread. The first thread got locked once it reached capacity. I didn't go hunting for it.

As for the walkout during Incarna? There were thousands of people that unsubscribed and exponentially more that shut down the trade hubs until certain demands were met (no gold ammo, no play to win item shop). Yes. Inferno is doing much better. Funny enough, I love Eve as CCP incrementally smooths the slope of the steep staircase to draw more people in.

As it is, while I dislike WoW, I don't really begrudge the people who play it their fun. I was merely attempting to report what appears to be news. While the Title was mainly for a grabber (got people in here, didn't it?) it would seem that the sentiment is to either refuse the inevitable (Blizzard will be the one to kill WoW with idiotic game design decisions) or it has been agreed that WoW will kill itself by being a rather stagnant game by any designer's yardstick.

 

[Savryc]

Ahh WoW. I was against it from the start because fuck subscription fees for something I've already bought. Shame really, I wanna know what happens after Frozen Throne but I'm not playing it and just reading what happens isn't the same as experiencing it. Ahh well, guess I'll never know.

More power to those that like it though, it's still just a game after all, have fun.

There's what happened after Frozen Throne.

That's how Arthas goes out? Captain Icicle Badass that could go toe-to-toe with Illidan dies with a whimper instead of a bang then random crispy dude becomes the new Lich King? I knew Arthas had to be defeated but come on. Hope the actual fight was good at least

Eh, maybe you needed all the other back story elements from WoW to fully appreciate it.

 

[excalipoor]

Incidentally, for the 'named' quest mobs, this seems to be in full-force now. None of this waiting around to tag your own version of the mob - Even if it's attacking somepony else, you can give it a few twats to the head and get kill credit.

This just might be the best news I've heard all week... About time too!

It's always a paladin. Always.

Unless it's a druid with their goddamn flightform gathering.

Reminds my of another beef I have with ArenaNet: they can't think ahead. At all. They seem to believe that if they give players the choice to exploit something, they'll be nice and not do it. Then they complain when the players try to break the game. But instead of nerfing certain skill combinations, they just add a new mob that's immune to these exploits that will wreck everyone's shit.

It would be like Blizzard "fixing" druids being able to gather nodes without landing by giving all mobs a ranged attack that takes you off your flying mount/form.

Yeah, gonna call you out on that lie. I've played both (WoW much less so, but all the same, I've tried both) and it's way easier to level in GW2. In fact, playing relatively casually, I've already got a max level character with full world completion in about a month's worth of play time, and I've also got four other characters with several levels on them as well. And I was playing pretty slow and casually, to be honest. It's just stupidly easy to level if you know what you're doing. I actually hit max level WAY before I was even close to full world completion, too, so yeah. GW2 has a flatter leveling curve and more ways to gain XP than WoW, it's nowhere near as difficult to level. >_>

That said, WoW is still nowhere near as bad as a typical Korean MMO, so I get the point you were trying to make. Even if it was wrong.

And I'll call you out on yours. A month of casual playing in WoW will easily get you to 85 at least. Hell, I'll do it in a week. Yeah, WoW has steeper XP curves than GW2, but it affects you in no way until you get to 80+. Experience received follows the same curve. It really is stupidly easy to level if you know what you're doing.

I'll give you that it's nice of GW2 to reward exploration like it does, but at later levels you get a crapton of XP for exploration in WoW too. Of course, in GW2 you can level by doing tradeskills...but how is that anything but doing the same thing over and over again?

Then you get to the level cap. Both games will have you grinding for your endgame gear, except WoW actually has things to do in said gear.

All that said, I don't feel either game is grindy at all before the "endgame" (with the possible exception of Outland). I like leveling. Just saying that GW2 isn't any better on that regard.

Ok. I am of course, the Originator of this thread. There has been conversation back and forth along the lines of 'Prove It' or people sticking their heads in the sand. So, I give you Exhibit A:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6679517893

WoW forums are always angry. Nothing new under the sun.

 

[madster11]

So Guild Wars 2 comes out and Blizzard fuck everything up?

Oh, please, please die WoW. Subscription-based MMOs need to die and WoW has damaged the gaming (especially PC) community so badly.

 

[Nieroshai]

Oh no, not this thread again.

WoW has survived itself and competitors since its inception. No other game has been able to remain popular and retain subscribers, for reasons other than PVP.

 

[skywolfblue]

So the people on the WoW forums talk the talk, but can they walk the walk? How many will actually unsubcribe over it?

My bet is on "Not many".

From what I've heard World PvP is more alive then ever, which is what people were asking for right? Ah WoW forums thou art filled with two faced people.

 

[tofulove]

move along, nothing to see here. wow died when burning crusade came out. than it died a 1000 more times.

 

[Innegativeion]

Still of the opinion that wow "dies" when Blizzard finally releases the beta for that new MMO they're supposedly working on.

Wow players have trudged through a lot of shit (I know from experience). You'll be surprised what WoW can live through. 9 million players isn't 11 million... but we're still talking millions here. I don't know what you consider "dead" to be, but Blizz, I doubt, has any intention of shutting down WoW productions anytime soon.

Though I don't play it anymore nor have any intention to, I can see the appeal of MoP, and foresee a good fiscal year for Blizzard.

At least know this; wow forum users will ***** and moan about ANYTHING, and loudly. When something legitimately bad (like this... maybe) happens, it gets ungodly loud for a month or so. Then everyone goes back to farming their bloom in peace [sub](teehee)[/sub].

 

[Ganath]

I havn't even noticed cross realm zoning yet... this feature has been out for a while. If this is supposed to kill WoW as I know it, I'm not convinced. As long as they keep RPers on our realm and don't let anyone else in, I'm fine with everything. Besides, this feature hasn't yanked me off my realm as far as I've been aware.

This must be a low population realm thing. Those suburbian people should move to the big cities anyways. All must be processed in the great machine.

 

[shintakie10]

That this is the 'solution' to the low pop and faction imbalanced realms that they promised would come with MoP doesn't surprise me. All Blizzard care about is avoiding at any cost having to merge servers, despite the facts that the playerbase on half the servers have been begging them to do so for at least a year.

I honestly hope that Mists proves to be an utter catastrophe for Blizzard, because nothing short of their subscriber numbers going into freefall will shake them out of their current arrogance, and so long as they keep their current mindset they'll continue to run this game into the ground.

Wait wut?! If it's a solution only for low pop servers, why in the blue hell is my server (Wyrmrest Accord) getting overflow since it is and has been rated "HIGH" pop ever since Cataclysm dropped?

Its actually a solution to the lack of the first M in MMO. Early zones were dead. Deader than dead. You'd be by yourself or have upwards of 10, sometimes a whole 15. This makes the gameworld feel dead to anyone who joins late or for anyone who rerolls.

A dead MMO like that is a problem. ToR realized that (albeit way too late) and started to consolidate servers so that when you're in a major area you saw more than 5 people on at a time.

Logistically speakin, outside of server economy (which CRZs don't change) there isn't anythin wrong with havin very low amounts of players in lots of areas. However the psychological effect can not be understated.

The node issue was definitely a problem, but they've acknowledged it as such and have made it a high priority to figure somethin out as soon as possible. I'm assumin it'll just make nodes home server specific instead of bein a part of the main zone like it is now.

I must have stuttered; My server is HIGH population and has been for a long time now. Why does it need to merge and make even more? I get and support the notion of doing it for lower populated servers, but why places that had no issue before? (And believe me, my joint has rarely been empty in lowbie areas).

Also, when you do that, sure it makes the lowbie areas more populus, but it turns the end game areas into a New York traffic jam.

Unless theres some horrific bug the end game areas have no CRZ functionality. It goes until the Cataclysm zones and then simply stops. The only time you should see people from other realms on your realm (or however it actually works) in anythin Pandaria related is two (ish?) years from now when the next preexpansion patch comes out.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I rebutt your barley contained seething displeasure with my own response: what?

I serious have no diea what the heck you were saying half the time. It sound like stereotypes and idea that you know that you expect everyone else to know, but I don't. For example, 'facebook game' what does that mean... like farmville? What do you mean by remove challenge. Why did you use CRZ instead of just stating the name since nobody would know what it is. Why do you rant about forum nonsense when it has nothing to do with the game? I don't understand, explain it to someone who isn't following WoW/doesn't know your assumptions and opinions and why!

Anywho, CRZ are a good idea to try and reuse zones that don't get much player activity. Its going to require coordination that Blizzard will need to iron out but its a good idea to help get more people into low population zones.

 

[Aeshi]

People want WoW dead because due to the massive popularity of the game (note: popularity, not quality, it is popularity that defines industry benchmarks, not quality), it set a benchmark for the MMO industry to try and emulate that style of game in order to actually sell copies and this kind of "WoW Cloning" despite being repeatedly proven to not fucking work in most cases, was continually tried to the degree where MMO's have grown incredibly stale and boring. The lion's share of the market it continues to hold is holding back the genre's progression.

It follows a similar line of logic that people want an actually quality console shooter to be a "CoD-killer" so that Call of Duty will stop setting the benchmark for the industry and so they'll start producing more worthwhile games rather than just shitting out generic modern military games, so to it that people want companies to stop shitting out generic hot-key MMO's.

And if WoW were to die, "the MMO industry" would all start creating new progressive MMOs with their hitherto-unused originality, would they?

Hate to break it to you, but you can't force people to be original, and if they couldn't be assed to be original when it could make their MMO a Snowflake on a piece of black paper then I highly doubt they'll try to be original when it'll make their MMO a Snowflake in a Snowstorm.

If WoW/CoD dies people will just take the next most popular MMO/FPS and start to endlessly clone that until they're the ones "Holding back progression" instead. Or do you want us to start ritually sacrificing the currently most popular MMO every few months/years just to spite the industry?

 

[Schmeiser]

So they finally revived world pvp and you cry about that? Holy shit world pvp was so dead for the last 2 expansions even though i don't play wow anymore i'd love this feature

 

[Keltrick]

I had heard this was causing a massive shit storm, it sounds like wow is trying to do a similar thing to guild wars 2 with "overflow" servers but hasn't quite got it right.

From what you have said if PVE players are being dumped onto a PVP realm temporarily that is gonna make some people fucking mad lol i mean ganking is irritating anyway but if you don't even know its going to happen as your used to PVE realms? man thats gonna boil yur blood.

As stated in Lord of Insanity's post, that came a little after this one, this does not happen. PvP, PvE, RP, RPPvP, are all only crossed with servers of their own kind

EDIT: Accidentally quoted another post as well, that was unrelated. Removed*. Apologies.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

People want WoW dead because due to the massive popularity of the game (note: popularity, not quality, it is popularity that defines industry benchmarks, not quality), it set a benchmark for the MMO industry to try and emulate that style of game in order to actually sell copies and this kind of "WoW Cloning" despite being repeatedly proven to not fucking work in most cases, was continually tried to the degree where MMO's have grown incredibly stale and boring. The lion's share of the market it continues to hold is holding back the genre's progression.

It follows a similar line of logic that people want an actually quality console shooter to be a "CoD-killer" so that Call of Duty will stop setting the benchmark for the industry and so they'll start producing more worthwhile games rather than just shitting out generic modern military games, so to it that people want companies to stop shitting out generic hot-key MMO's.

And if WoW were to die, "the MMO industry" would all start creating new progressive MMOs with their hitherto-unused originality, would they?

Hate to break it to you, but you can't force people to be original, and if they couldn't be assed to be original when it could make their MMO a Snowflake on a piece of black paper then I highly doubt they'll try to be original when it'll make their MMO a Snowflake in a Snowstorm.

If WoW/CoD dies people will just take the next most popular MMO/FPS and start to endlessly clone that until they're the ones "Holding back progression" instead. Or do you want us to start ritually sacrificing the currently most popular MMO every few months/years just to spite the industry?

I'm aware that even if WoW died, the industry wouldn't start instantly putting out golden games, I'm not that naive. But WoW's stranglehold on the market is kind of stifling to original design, it's not the only factor by any means, but it certainly isn't helping.

And your point about everyone just cloning the next one most popular. The thing about this kind of benchmark setting is that it works for a while, iteration is good and with everyone trying to improve on the formula you can occasionally produce something even better than the original and then people iterate on that and a cycle of improvement occurs, in theory at least.

The problem occurs when one game stays as the benchmark for several years to the point where the market gets saturated, I don't like hot key MMO's but there is nothing inherently wrong with them. What is wrong is the fact there's so many outputted over the course of WoW's dominance and it's stagnating the genre and making it boring for a lot of people. People, however continue to play WoW because they have much invested in the game, friends and time etc. The normal cycle of iteration works fine with ordinary games but with MMO's where people get heavily invested in their MMO's and just can't play two of them at once, it doesn't.

As ludicrous as you seem to think this idea is, this benchmark shit by necessity does need to cycle games every few years and does cycle every few years, people get bored and move on to a new game and the cycle thus continues. Due to the above stated problem where people just don't move on from MMO's as quickly as they would from most other kinds of game, we have a very real problem where one popular game can effectively gum the genre's works for several years at a time and it's a very real and kind of distressing problem for any MMO dev wishing to take a stab at it in any form.