To WoW or not to WoW...

[OtherAlex]

I work for Game (The UK version of Gamestop for the transcontinental) and as such, I have learned alot about Cataclysm. In short, I am intrigued. I have always avoided WoW and have never really been too interested by it. I don't hate it, nor am I against it, I was just never that fussed, until recently.

My boss has been playing WoW, literally since day one and he sells it very well, obviously.

So I put it to you my fellow escapists, is it worth (or even wise) to get involved with World of Warcraft?

Having spent the last six years on the outside, is it (forgive the pun) too late in the game to join?

 

[zfactor]

I don't know... I don't have $15 leftover every month to spend on a game so I'll just stick to saving up for a new one every few months. I'm not really interested in subscription based games because to get the most value you have to play it and only it. I tend to game jump, playing a new game for a few weeks then playing another and another and another then another... You get the idea...

 

[OtherAlex]

I'm the same to be honest and I agree.

 

[Macheteswordgun]

If you played wow its gonna be a whole new world literally. I know people are like its just a re-skinning blah blah blah but no its going back to vanillia or BC wow not with WoLK crap you have to have skill when it comes. Everythings changed new quests area's all the low lvl stuff to entice old players to come back and see the changes or interesting things for the new play. As an example for paying. I would say before i started playing about 3 months ago i would buy 3-6 games a year. Say if each of those were new 60 bucks thats 180-360 a year. Wows about 180 if you buy each month one at a time but they have package deals that will save you some money to, so to me A it takes up a lot of time and is interesting BUT you need friends it really helps and B. im saving money since i buy the deals and dont have to spend to much on say xboxlive or games etc since i have one that keeps my attention. Just my $.02

 

[ThePirateMan]

It's definately not too late to join and I still enjoy the hell out of the game myself. The fact that I'm playing on a RP server with friends may add to this.

I'd recommend giving the 10 (or however long it is) day trial a try atleast.

Altho some of the stuff that is epic to me as a Warcraft lore nerd and pre-cataclysm player may not be as epic to you.

 

[AfterAscon]

Nows a pretty good time to get into it because they're selling all the packs cheaply on WoW EU site and the shattering has made it much more enjoyable/less painful to level up. However, I would play the free trial first.

 

[Rofl-Mayo]

I enjoy WoW but you should try the 10 day trial first to see if you would like it.

 

[pretentiousname01]

[img src="http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/files/2009/10/ackbar.jpg" /img]

Working in a game store I also imagine you've heard some of the horror stories. Be sure to keep them at the forefront of your mind when you make this decision.

 

[Atmos Duality]

If you want to throw your spare time and money away, there are few things in this world as effective as World of Warcraft.
The only way you can possibly justify the biblical amounts of grind is having friends to suffer with you (and indeed, Blizzard expects you to guild and party up when you aren't doing your dailies).

 

[oplinger]

If you want to throw your spare time and money away, there are few things in this world as effective as World of Warcraft.
The only way you can possibly justify the biblical amounts of grind is having friends to suffer with you (and indeed, Blizzard expects you to guild and party up when you aren't doing your dailies).

....not since BC. You can solo everything now. except heroics, and that group is done for you.

So really they just expect you to guild to raid. ...everything else you don't even need to talk to people for.

 

[IamQ]

I'd say yes. This is the perfect time to start WoW. They're redoing it all, essentially making this an entirely new game.

 

[Veldaroth]

Try this first http://allods.gpotato.com/
It's a lot like WoW except it is free. Granted there are less races etc, but it has a similar feel and the controls are the same.
I personally wasn't all that impressed with WoW so I am not willing to spend money I don't have to play it, so I don't mind cheep ripoffs.
Also, a lot of people talk about getting addicted and all that, but if you've never gotten obsessed about an online game before, this one won't be any different. I don't know why people always assume that everyone who so much as tries it out will immediately become hooked and unable to stop.

 

[Atmos Duality]

If you want to throw your spare time and money away, there are few things in this world as effective as World of Warcraft.
The only way you can possibly justify the biblical amounts of grind is having friends to suffer with you (and indeed, Blizzard expects you to guild and party up when you aren't doing your dailies).

....not since BC. You can solo everything now. except heroics, and that group is done for you.

So really they just expect you to guild to raid. ...everything else you don't even need to talk to people for.

Oh cool.
Now you have even less of a reason to play, unless you enjoy boring, flowchart grind by yourself!

Though you do have a point; from what I've seen, the goal of most players today is to rush to the level cap and start grinding for specific epics (Trinkets for pvp).
So in practice, you skip 90% of the content just so you can grind the current gear.

That doesn't sound like fun; it sounds like a corporate pyramid scheme.

 

[AcidLillies]

If you want to throw your spare time and money away, there are few things in this world as effective as World of Warcraft.
The only way you can possibly justify the biblical amounts of grind is having friends to suffer with you (and indeed, Blizzard expects you to guild and party up when you aren't doing your dailies).

People who don't play MMO's have a strange perception of grind. WOW (if you're interested in MMO's) has the least bland grind in any MMO, period. Most of the quests nowdays have become a virtually linear set of narrative, with huge amounts of immersion and other gorgeous things that most single player games present. It's not exactly cutting edge single player experiences, but it's still particularly amazing for an MMO. You can now level to 10 in under an hour (1-5 takes 10 minutes), and 10 - 80 in a few days. This isn't mindless 'Go here, kill 10 rats' and return to have no narrative consequences, or a quest a level, this is quests rammed full of story, and they are EVERYWHERE. I actually challenege any of you to run out of quests from 1 - 60 and 70 - 80. 60 - 70 might have holes, but that can be solved in 10 minuts in a Battle Ground.

Now, adding dungeons onto that (with actual gear rewards, might I add) which actually present a challenge in a team (god forbid that happens in an MMO, it's all grind! /sarcasm off), battlegrounds (where you fight other players :O! And actually earn experience for doing so) which have a rather large skill cap, especially at level 80 (i.e. you don't just press 1 button and everything's dead); raids at max level (you'll need a guild to get anywhere, but even a casual guild can progress through a few fights, and that's 2 - 3 hours a week having to be put down) and achievements (time sinks = <3); you will most likely never get bored for a while unless you have the attention span of a gnat and hate anything that requires you to do the same task twice.

Oh, paragraphs. virtual gains.

 

[FalloutJack]

I don't play WoW, but I have been in other MMOs and frankly...they get boring easily to me. WoW gets addictive apparently, but I don't think I wanna get into it. Take from that what you will.

 

[Lawnmooer]

I've played WoW for 4 years (Started back in vanilla WoW, and continued playing until and during WotLK) and I can confidentally say that I'd only recommend it to people who haven't played MMO's before and want to check out that genre.

It was a great game back in vanilla, but each expansion made it feel like it was being dumbed down to increase people buying it. Alot of people I knew in the game only played because their (Ingame)friends kept playing it. So the game is great for getting people started as it has easy controls and you will get to know about quests, talent systems, dungeons, groups, raids, pvp, frustrating random drops that are silly things like multiple legged animal not dropping legs so you have to spend an entire day farming spiders for 8 legs (Which I believe alot of quests like that got watered down into being 100% drop rates in one of their patches near when I stopped playing) and loot and the rolling systems.

If you know about MMO's and still want to play one from a similar genre, I'd say stay away from it. Try to help populate other games (I'd recommend City of Heroes or Anarchy Online)

 

[King Kupofried]

As a big MMORPG fan, WoW is easily one of the most newbie friendly. Considering the popularity there are new people coming and going constantly, so while there will be plenty of veteran plays there will assured be plenty of new players as well. If you know people to play with, or even just to chat with on the same server, that's a good plus too since MMORPGS obviously tend to work better with other people.
It is solo friendly and with the new Dungeon Finder thing they have added, finding parties for instances is a breeze as well. Just like any popular online game though you have to expect to run into a fair share of jerks.

I don't play it anymore myself, but there is a reason why WoW is the most popular MMORPG around. Despite its age it is still one of the easiest and most fun to get into. The only warnings I would really give is that things will be extremely chaotic for the first few weeks of Cataclysm's release since thousands upon thousands of new players will be flooding it along with just as many making new characters.
Also, unless you are really into PVP, avoid PVP Servers, they can make level grinding extremely frustrating.

 

[tehweave]

So I put it to you my fellow escapists, is it worth (or even wise) to get involved with World of Warcraft?

Having spent the last six years on the outside, is it (forgive the pun) too late in the game to join?

I would say yes, but Cataclysm is basically world of warcraft 2. Everyone kind of gets a fresh restart with it. I must reccomend no. But if you really must, go for it. It's fun. (But very easily addictive.)

 

[oplinger]

....not since BC. You can solo everything now. except heroics, and that group is done for you.

So really they just expect you to guild to raid. ...everything else you don't even need to talk to people for.

Oh cool.
Now you have even less of a reason to play, unless you enjoy boring, flowchart grind by yourself!

Though you do have a point; from what I've seen, the goal of most players today is to rush to the level cap and start grinding for specific epics (Trinkets for pvp).
So in practice, you skip 90% of the content just so you can grind the current gear.

That doesn't sound like fun; it sounds like a corporate pyramid scheme.

Yeah, wrath did that. Though raiding had some interesting concepts, WotLK was really just stacking on BC in the beginning, through patches they added quite a few interesting things. Made soloing easier, WoW has a lot of casual players so they get what they want. Cataclysm is expanding the interesting bits to vanilla WoW, so ...Here's hoping the cataclysm content is actually worth it!