Wow, That?s Complicated

[Vrach]

What you said was very interesting. Now where's my free eyedrops.

Here you go, one prescription for free eyedrops. They're only reclaimable in Serbia though, I hope you won't have trouble finding it on the map and coming here for them!

Actually, I've never played WoW before, except for those 5 minutes I spent playing it at a friends place, after which I vowed never to buy it, so half the time I had absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Too many acronyms, most probably. I actually read the "TBC model" as the "To Be Continued model", and ploughed on hoping it would make sense further on. I eventually vaguely remembered something about some kind of crusade that was on fire or something, and assumed it was that.

My apologies for the acronyms. Playing WoW instills a lot of shorthand typing (I don't succumb to "u" "r" etc. aside from the satirical use, but acronyms for places and stuff like that are common enough to use) in ya and what I wrote was a big enough wall of text without spelling out every word (plus was kinda aimed a lot at Shamus as a rebuttal from a hardcore player who likes to think his head's not buried too far up his own arse), yeah, as you remembered, The Burning Crusade was an expansion and it's developer model is what I was referring to.

If you wanna get into an MMO and are into the Star Wars, I'd say wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic, it's looking pretty promising and if you enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic (and a gamer who didn't enjoy KOTOR is a heathen and must burn in righteous flame! ) the concept of their MMO isn't too different from that game - combat in KOTOR was "queue up attacks", inventory and loot was done similarly, they even had stats and crafting, the camera was sort of what you'd get if you forced an MMO into a 3rd person view (which you could theoretically do in an MMO), quests were somewhat similarly designed as what they're aiming for with The Old Republic, although probably better, what with the new technology and all.

 

[InvisibleMilk]

Mr. Young, give me one good reason you rolled a Gnome, Wow's equivalent of a small child.

 

[Vrach]

Mr. Young, give me one good reason you rolled a Gnome, Wow's equivalent of a small child.

5% Intellect for his mage? That was my reason anyway (was ages ago though), I was into the RPG thing of "roll whatever gives most benefit to the class". Also, once you played WoW for a while, you realise noams are awesome.

Frankly what I don't see is a reason to ever roll a human in that game. You have so many different, interesting and not horrendously ugly player models that aren't even too different from a human for it to be a valid excuse, yet a lot of people still roll them.

 

[wasalp]

-snip-

I believe it was actually closer to patch 2.2 or 2.3

 

[mythgraven]

God dammit... another WoW article?


Put. That. Cookie. Down!!!!


Dont get me wrong. Played for 3 years. Loved it. Excellent game. Revolutionized ********, changed the face of *******, Most popular ******* in *******, blah fucking blah blah.

Think about it this way. If I wrote an article about Pepsi, or Coca Cola, or hey, even the Simpsons, at least once a month, every month, for 5 years, wouldnt you all be sick of reading about it?

Its. A. Good. Game. It doesnt need slavish devotion.


Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

 

[mythgraven]

Its. A. Good. Game. It doesnt need slavish devotion.

Yes it does!


(There, I flamed me for you. You may move along now.)


Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

 

[Bongo Bill]

If people are getting frustrated or confused before they get to the fun parts, then they will walk away and never learn what they're missing.

That was me five years ago, though not because of the interface density. Rather, it was because they frontloaded the game with all the most boring fetch-me-X-of-Y quests.

I don't know, nor do I particularly care to find out, if they've fixed that in the intervening years.

 

[kementari]

Nice 'stache. Jealous of Steve a little, are we? ^_^

 

[The Furbinator]

I never found it hard to play, you raise a lot of terminology and points but learning all of that is learnt over the 480+ hours (not exaggerating) it takes a new player to raise their character to level 80. Personally I realised how easy and coddling the game was when my cousin hit level 80 just after his tenth birthday and started raiding successfully. He now does that lich king dungeon 25 man, if that is not casual accessibility then I don't know what is.

Edit: When I used to play I did arena and that shit is full on once you get higher up with the keybinding, ridiculous UI etc. and I admit it is not accessible for the majority of players, but the percentage of people that play that type of PvP instead of "I wanna 40v40 in the tanks and splosions!" is very limited.

 

[133794m3r]

no, just no. WoW is immensely simple. I came into wow without ever playing any mmos sans regnum online and even then i barely played it. It is IMMENSELY simpler than learning how to program a language completely. WoW is extreme easy mode, go to Elitist Jerks look up a build like you want, follow their guides and you're now raiding like a "pro". I left the game after two months since constantly grinding for the same gear over and over then waiting for a new expansion pack and get new gear that's slightly better sounds very very boring to me. "getting into wow" was by far the easiest thing i've ever seen. I read the manual that came with the battle chest, and i got in. I listened to what people said, and i used common sense and i got by just fine. I think you're overexaggerating how simple wow truly is. All of it's concepts are very simple to get used to. I went from single player games to wow and it was very simple to get in to.

If anyone truly has a great deal of issues with getting into wow then they clearly didn't read the manual, and didn't even try the game. Read the manual, and try to play teh game and bam you'll be able to do very wel inside of it all.

 

[GamerLuck]

NO WONDER the updates to Spoiler Warning over at shamus's site were so late both days this week. No one can get anything done when theyve gotta que for three more randoms and get their rep up with whatever city before lunch time.

 

[mattaui]

WoW is at least a little difficult to play at the start for the huge number of people that were pulled into it who had literally no experience with RPGs. I know guys who did nothing but play Madden and Halo and decided to 'try out the WoW thing' and they're hard core raiders to this day, five years later.

Blizzard's genius was making a game so immediately accessible yet possessed of at least some complexity and difficulty when you reached the end game, and they actually wanted everyone to reach the end game, if not always be able to complete it.

I've been on a WoW hiatus for the last few months and likely will be until Cataclysm launches, and even then, I'm sure my raiding days are behind me.

 

[hellsop]

Yay, reference to my C++ book!

And it's gotten me to at least open a tab for that book as well. The Cunning Plan worked!

 

[Thick]

One of the major design themes in Cataclysm is the redesign of questing and learning things, especially in the starting zones. They've increased Health and Mana regen rates at low levels to minimize downtime. There are quests that teach you things like target switching, where to learn new abilities, etc. They are switching around at what levels you learn what spells in an attempt to ease players into a good endgame rotation, also helped somewhat by the already implemented Dungeon LFG thing, which makes it easier for people to learn about different roles in instances earlier and get more practice at it. They are also adjusting zone levels so it's more intuitive to move from one zone to the next while leveling.

I am pretty much a WoW addict, though I canceled my subscription for unimportant reasons, and have been cold turkey without playing for months. It will be months more yet because I don't intend to return before 4.0.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

If you're one of those players who thinks that "newbie" is a synonym for "stupid", then you're excused from the rest of this. I know MMO interfaces are "so simple" to you. That's because you're so much smarter than new players who haven't learned to play yet. Just like babies are all morons because they can't read. Really. You're awesome. Don't ever change.

Now go back to trolling the forums with your level 1 sock puppets, because it's time for the grownups to talk.

Shamus, you are awesome.

 

[ZombiGenisis]

I love the "I've reached X number of words boss, am I done now?" sound of this article, welcome to warcrack.

Although you chose the wrong side! Horde ftw

 

[SnwMan]

Wow can be difficult for beginners i suppose, but after i stopped playing, i noticed that blizzard has started to dump it down alot, removing alot of the complex stat management. Not to say thats a bad thing, will help alot of newer players get into the game i suppose.

 

[TheBaron87]

Just thought I should clear something up on the whole "newbie" = "stupid" thing.

"Newbie" is a new player that doesn't know the game YET, but is perfectly willing and capable of doing everything any logical gamer understands should be done when playing a game for the first time:

- Checking key bindings/control settings.
- Studying the UI
- Making use of documentation (tutorials and manuals).
- Applying logical solutions to problems they encounter BEFORE relying on others.
- USING GOOGLE.

"Noob" is someone that does not do these things, much to the detriment of their own ability as gamers and the annoyance of those around them.

Many WoW players will use chat to ask what buttons do what, where to glean some information that's clearly visible or logically organized, what to do for a quest that explicitly states the answer, expect others to hold their hands through problems grade schoolers could easily work out with a few seconds of thought, or about any countless number of things that have been discussed in numerous detailed wiki or forum posts. The worst is when people ask what the "best" class or spec is. There is no best, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF A BALANCED GAME. Besides, you make your intentions painfully obvious and show a complete lack of creativity when you try to imitate the most successful build instead of whatever is personally appealing to you.

People like that are noobs, and deserve every ounce of derision they receive.