Frankly, I don't need a plot in a good shooter, I need atmosphere and good controls. The atmosphere can come from a good plot, but it can equally well come from mindless shooting (Painkiller), stupid comments (Duke) or whatever the designer is thinking of.
But back to WoW. I've tried it a while back when my friends played it, but in my opinion it gets too much of the basic stuff wrong to be considered a good game at all, no matter the genre. The animations looked crappy, the environments boring, the controls were strange and the mix of direct and indirect interaction during battles drove me crazy. The tasks were repetitive and not properly linked. Everything feels reusable and not properly tuned to your character. No atmosphere of any kind.
Heck, I'm having trouble justifying the use of the word "game" to describe it. More like "work". You do something (that I can't imagine anybody enjoying) and get virtual money (or stats or whatever) in return.
I've currently no interest in WoW and in MMORPGs in general. That could change if the game is based around something I'm very interested in (Star Trek Online for example, and possibly Stargate Worlds).
(Star Trek Online for example, and possibly Stargate Worlds).
Stargate Worlds is in a bit of a financial pickle, with developers that haven't been paid for months and many more that have outright quit. The developer may lose the rights to the Stargate license altogether, as Lionsgate reserves that right fairly soon.
Stargate Worlds is in a bit of a financial pickle, with developers that haven't been paid for months and many more that have outright quit. The developer may lose the rights to the Stargate license altogether, as Lionsgate reserves that right fairly soon.
It's certainly an iffy prospect at best.
Does that qualify as a pickle? I'd sooner call it a disaster. And it's a shame since the screenshots looked quite nice even though I don't like the Stargate universe through the TV shows.
And, ShaggE, your point is very valid and you've got no reason to defend yourself. To go way back to my last post, I still think that this is a place where people discuss with adventure games in mind, not other genres and that is why I think the discussion is a bit misplaced. It has transformed into a rather fun thread, though...!
Stargate Worlds is in a bit of a financial pickle, with developers that haven't been paid for months and many more that have outright quit. The developer may lose the rights to the Stargate license altogether, as Lionsgate reserves that right fairly soon.
It's certainly an iffy prospect at best.
I figured something like that had happened as I've not heard much about it for a while, which is why I put possibly before the title. Similar things happened with Stargate Alliance and the first Star Trek MMO project.
I think he's referring more to MMO forums than anything else, and he's pretty much right.
MMOs tend to draw the biggest jerks from all around into one community. You know, the kind of people who take time out of their day to go run around in low level areas killing players who can't defend themselves just because they feel like getting someone angry, or the kind who will stand there and watch something kill you rather than help you, because they want the loot it drops.
In any game where you put 2 players into competition with one another, you're bound to get a different temperament out of them, they tend to be more combative.
I don't believe all MMO forums are this way, but I believe the popularity of the game has a lot to say for the people who post. The more people, the more chance of folks who come to start fights.
Some of the most intelligent and funny posts I've seen on a game forum came from the WoW forums. It might be a different balance, but it's also a much larger scale than most forums. You remember Penny Arcade's Internet Theory!
As for addiction, I've played WoW for 6 years and I'm not going into withdrawals for the time I'm away. But this is no time for a soapbox.
Beh, I'm cringing at my last few posts in this thread, and I want to apologize. I was being an ass for no reason. I've been in a terrible mood this past week or so, and I, ironically enough, brought it to the very forum that I constantly praise for it's lack of flame wars.
I could have easily just said "Good point, but that's one or two in a sea of thousands", and kept it civilized.
So... yeah. Apologies to roberttitus, Ray, and Bill Pullman.
Beh, I'm cringing at my last few posts in this thread, and I want to apologize. I was being an ass for no reason. I've been in a terrible mood this past week or so, and I, ironically enough, brought it to the very forum that I constantly praise for it's lack of flame wars.
I could have easily just said "Good point, but that's one or two in a sea of thousands", and kept it civilized.
So... yeah. Apologies to roberttitus, Ray, and Bill Pullman.
We all have our bad days... Believe me... I know this better than anybody
Mmo's do have their fair share of idiots, but it's only the same as real life, in countries you get a fair share of idiots too. If you look deeper into the place, then you will find some really amazing people. However I will say, in WoW, from experience I've found the majority of the population playing to be annoying. I won't forget the days of grinding for my PvP gear. Going in solo as a Holy Paladin into battlefields is the most aggrovating thing you can do. Never seen such an unorgansied mess in my life. I mean you do get the occasional people who will listen and speak, allowing you to discuss a strategy to win the match, that however is rare. The Horde always managed to be much more organised though, perhaps I chose the wrong side. >.< That could of just been my realm though, maybe other places were different, who knows.
Mmo's do have their fair share of idiots, but it's only the same as real life, in countries you get a fair share of idiots too. If you look deeper into the place, then you will find some really amazing people. However I will say, in WoW, from experience I've found the majority of the population playing to be annoying. I won't forget the days of grinding for my PvP gear. Going in solo as a Holy Paladin into battlefields is the most aggrovating thing you can do. Never seen such an unorgansied mess in my life. I mean you do get the occasional people who will listen and speak, allowing you to discuss a strategy to win the match, that however is rare. The Horde always managed to be much more organised though, perhaps I chose the wrong side. >.< That could of just been my realm though, maybe other places were different, who knows.
Heh, I was horde, and on my realm, we couldn't win any battleground except Alterac Valley. It was pathetic.
It depends on the era of players, from my experience, and the game HAS gone through a lot of those. Overpowered AV games! to Cross Server Mayhem! to Server Transfer City! and on and on...
I'd say the ratio of wins on my server is pretty comfortable, but I do miss the days of rolling the Alliance into the ground anywhere we found them. Alliance was busy doing PvE at the time. We mocked them, but a Thunderfury retorted.
I think that was pretty much what was with my server. The majority of the good Alliance players were raiders. Myself included. Consequently most of the time that we did log on WoW was spent raiding. Leaving the other players, the ones who dont listen, to go PvPing. Consequently on the occasion you don't raid, and you try going PvP, it's full of those players who won't listen, and just run off by themselves.
I think that was pretty much what was with my server. The majority of the good Alliance players were raiders. Myself included. Consequently most of the time that we did log on WoW was spent raiding. Leaving the other players, the ones who dont listen, to go PvPing. Consequently on the occasion you don't raid, and you try going PvP, it's full of those players who won't listen, and just run off by themselves.
Never tried WoW myself, but a classmate of mine from uni became addicted to it over the summer break and told us how he was trying to fight it. About two months later he was able to stop playing completely, but I got the impression it was agony for him trying to quit at the time! Guess he did really well to quit completely!
Wow, they have me on PvE. The Easily Distracted Healer. Although, I never caused a wipe because of it.... Probably because when I'm distracted I do still heal. I hate my short attention span. >.>
Wow, they have me on PvE. The Easily Distracted Healer. Although, I never caused a wipe because of it.... Probably because when I'm distracted I do still heal. I hate my short attention span. >.>
I just refuse to play a game where you have to pay monthly in order to keep playing it. When you buy a game you should be able to play it whenever you damn well please without having to put anymore money on the table.
(Apologies for my Gone With the Wind level profanity. Sometimes I just cannot contain the beast within )
I just refuse to play a game where you have to pay monthly in order to keep playing it. When you buy a game you should be able to play it whenever you damn well please without having to put anymore money on the table.
(Apologies for my Gone With the Wind level profanity. Sometimes I just cannot contain the beast within )
That's why I play Champions Online and Lord of the Rings Online, $200 lifetime subscription and I never pay again
Yeah but your still paying $200 which you could spent on literelly atleast 5 games. That doesn't include the retail box which you have to buy either. Boosting the price up to $240 I presume(Not sure how much the retail box is in America).
Hehe. Champons Online seemed alright though. Tried the Beta yesterday. My PC cant play it on full video settings, which sucks. I'm sick of grinding in games though, so I won't be buying the full game of it. No matter what the MMO is, you'll always have grinding.
Yeah but your still paying $200 which you could spent on literelly atleast 5 games. That doesn't include the retail box which you have to buy either. Boosting the price up to $240 I presume(Not sure how much the retail box is in America).
Hehe. Champons Online seemed alright though. Tried the Beta yesterday. My PC cant play it on full video settings, which sucks. I'm sick of grinding in games though, so I won't be buying the full game of it. No matter what the MMO is, you'll always have grinding.
I spend more time in an mmo than I would spend on any other 5 games though, so it pays for itself really.
I suppose. Waste of money for me anymore. Now i've played one to death, they all seem the same endless grind to me. Damn my short attention span.
I just like having a game where I can load it up and go do a couple quests now and then, I don't really spend like 60 hours a week on them anymore like I used to.
I'll be honest, I hate these threads because it usually turns into a whole bunch of "herp a derp everyone is addicted to WoW herp derp I hate WoW". Honestly, there are some people who will never take things in moderation. Some of those things have just become more socially acceptable - like television. It's become almost the norm if someone gets pedantic about missing thier favourite TV show, or if they sit down and watch 2-3 hours of television in the evening, but if I treat WoW the same way (and thusly give up TV, spending that $40/month for cable on $15/month for WoW) I'm an addict? Sheesh.
Of course there will always be people who overdo it, but I think people also overlook that what makes WoW (and MMOs in general) addictive and compelling is the social connections that you forge while playing it. It's not just "I have to go kill this monster", it's "I have to go help 9 other of my friends kill this monster, all the while joking with them on ventrilo". The social connections are really why I keep playing the game. Of course, the gameplay's good, too, but even with good single-player games (ex., KOTOR, Fallout 3) I have to have AIM up so I can keep talking to all my friends. My guild leader wrote a letter of recommendation for me for my college applications which, I think, helped me to get where I am; right now my guild's getting together money to send a gift to two of our guildmates who just had their first child. I've met my best friend playing WoW, and my sister's met her future husband by WoW as well (and it's absolutely hilarious to hear them on ventrilo: "Watch out for the dragon, dear!" "Oh of course, darling!").
Are we perhaps an unusual example? Perhaps. But when it gets down to it, what's a guild in any MMO? A group of people, just like a message board or a chatroom is a group of people. It's those connections and friendships that makes MMOs - and, hell, the entire internet - uniquely compelling.
I have a fairly addictive personality, so when I really got into WoW, I spent many hours per day playing. I started very casually, playing on and off for nearly a year and a half, mainly because none of my friends played and it was no fun leveling on my own. Never cleared any end-game content by then; never even got a character to 60 .
Then I met my current boyfriend who also liked MMOs and we started playing together a few months after TBC was released. The experience was completely different and this was the most fun I've ever had in the game. Why? Because we did stupid things just to see if we could and treated it as a game. That was before I got into a guild.
The way I see it, the problem with WoW is this: People take the game TOO seriously. Leveling is great fun when you take it easy. You can explore, try to get into the cities of the opposite faction and live to tell the tale, try all the stupid quests, occasional PvP... the works. And then you get to the level cap. Your choices from there on are two; either keep on doing instances, dailies etc and get bored out of your mind, or enter a guild and try the endgame content.
First time raiding is about a thousand kinds of awesome, but as anyone who was in a 'serious' guild knows, it literally becomes a second job. After I became a class leader the game was no longer fun for me I had to be present for nearly all raids, I had to prepare consumables and farm for repair money (for some reason money was always an issue for me in that game >__> ), and on top of that, keep an eye on every other person of my class (not to mention trial players).
Since I had no other friends who played the game, it was impossible (at least on my server) to find a guild of people who took things easy and just wanted to have fun. Don't get me wrong, there were some great people in my guild, but after the level cap it was all about the content and the responsibilities, and I don't know about you guys, but I play games to relax and have fun :S
I finally quit after a year of hardcore playing when I saw what was in store for WotLK. Same crap, different names. No thanks. Just the idea of leveling enchanting again was torture It's a shame, too, because I had been waiting for an expansion on the scourge and the undead from the first day I made my undead gal.
For me, the game is only fun when you treat it as a game and most people don't.
My story goes as this. Been playing WoW alot since the release of TBC, but got tired of P2P, i felt i was wasting my hard earned money and that i would later regret it. (which ended up being true) My grades nearly made me fail in class and i discovered that the hard way College and WoW its a mixture of failure in my life. I also share the same feeling as a guy who posted to articles i believe in page 2 or 3. After spending 3 to 5 hrs or coming from college to play till 12AM and in special ocassions till 1AM, i felt i regretted a day of my life passing by without hanging out with my friends and girlfriends, playing basketball, going to the beach etc. It made me value that social life its more worth than spending your days in front of a screen playing WoW.
Currently i aint playing WoW but i feel the craving to do so, especially since the publicity machinery of Blizzard is so strong that they manage to capture your attention with new in game content and expansions. I think i became addicted to the game somehow and now im feeling the craving feeling. But when i see my reallity check that the small amount money i got its for college book, and to go out with my girlfriend, i feel better to think its not good investment. I will never ever again play for a P2P game.
Comments
But back to WoW. I've tried it a while back when my friends played it, but in my opinion it gets too much of the basic stuff wrong to be considered a good game at all, no matter the genre. The animations looked crappy, the environments boring, the controls were strange and the mix of direct and indirect interaction during battles drove me crazy. The tasks were repetitive and not properly linked. Everything feels reusable and not properly tuned to your character. No atmosphere of any kind.
Heck, I'm having trouble justifying the use of the word "game" to describe it. More like "work". You do something (that I can't imagine anybody enjoying) and get virtual money (or stats or whatever) in return.
It's certainly an iffy prospect at best.
Does that qualify as a pickle? I'd sooner call it a disaster. And it's a shame since the screenshots looked quite nice even though I don't like the Stargate universe through the TV shows.
And, ShaggE, your point is very valid and you've got no reason to defend yourself. To go way back to my last post, I still think that this is a place where people discuss with adventure games in mind, not other genres and that is why I think the discussion is a bit misplaced. It has transformed into a rather fun thread, though...!
I figured something like that had happened as I've not heard much about it for a while, which is why I put possibly before the title. Similar things happened with Stargate Alliance and the first Star Trek MMO project.
In any game where you put 2 players into competition with one another, you're bound to get a different temperament out of them, they tend to be more combative.
I don't believe all MMO forums are this way, but I believe the popularity of the game has a lot to say for the people who post. The more people, the more chance of folks who come to start fights.
Some of the most intelligent and funny posts I've seen on a game forum came from the WoW forums. It might be a different balance, but it's also a much larger scale than most forums. You remember Penny Arcade's Internet Theory!
As for addiction, I've played WoW for 6 years and I'm not going into withdrawals for the time I'm away. But this is no time for a soapbox.
I could have easily just said "Good point, but that's one or two in a sea of thousands", and kept it civilized.
So... yeah. Apologies to roberttitus, Ray, and Bill Pullman.
We all have our bad days... Believe me... I know this better than anybody
Heh, I was horde, and on my realm, we couldn't win any battleground except Alterac Valley. It was pathetic.
I'd say the ratio of wins on my server is pretty comfortable, but I do miss the days of rolling the Alliance into the ground anywhere we found them. Alliance was busy doing PvE at the time. We mocked them, but a Thunderfury retorted.
You mean Rambos?
This is worth the time to read. If you haven't yet, enjoy.
http://www.wowwiki.com/People_in_the_Battlegrounds
Also, on the PvE aspect:
http://www.wowwiki.com/People_in_your_Raid
The one that's closest to me is The Backbone.
(Apologies for my Gone With the Wind level profanity. Sometimes I just cannot contain the beast within
That's why I play Champions Online and Lord of the Rings Online, $200 lifetime subscription and I never pay again
Hehe. Champons Online seemed alright though. Tried the Beta yesterday. My PC cant play it on full video settings, which sucks. I'm sick of grinding in games though, so I won't be buying the full game of it. No matter what the MMO is, you'll always have grinding.
I spend more time in an mmo than I would spend on any other 5 games though, so it pays for itself really.
I just like having a game where I can load it up and go do a couple quests now and then, I don't really spend like 60 hours a week on them anymore like I used to.
Of course there will always be people who overdo it, but I think people also overlook that what makes WoW (and MMOs in general) addictive and compelling is the social connections that you forge while playing it. It's not just "I have to go kill this monster", it's "I have to go help 9 other of my friends kill this monster, all the while joking with them on ventrilo". The social connections are really why I keep playing the game. Of course, the gameplay's good, too, but even with good single-player games (ex., KOTOR, Fallout 3) I have to have AIM up so I can keep talking to all my friends. My guild leader wrote a letter of recommendation for me for my college applications which, I think, helped me to get where I am; right now my guild's getting together money to send a gift to two of our guildmates who just had their first child. I've met my best friend playing WoW, and my sister's met her future husband by WoW as well (and it's absolutely hilarious to hear them on ventrilo: "Watch out for the dragon, dear!" "Oh of course, darling!").
Are we perhaps an unusual example? Perhaps. But when it gets down to it, what's a guild in any MMO? A group of people, just like a message board or a chatroom is a group of people. It's those connections and friendships that makes MMOs - and, hell, the entire internet - uniquely compelling.
Then I met my current boyfriend who also liked MMOs and we started playing together a few months after TBC was released. The experience was completely different and this was the most fun I've ever had in the game. Why? Because we did stupid things just to see if we could and treated it as a game. That was before I got into a guild.
The way I see it, the problem with WoW is this: People take the game TOO seriously. Leveling is great fun when you take it easy. You can explore, try to get into the cities of the opposite faction and live to tell the tale, try all the stupid quests, occasional PvP... the works. And then you get to the level cap. Your choices from there on are two; either keep on doing instances, dailies etc and get bored out of your mind, or enter a guild and try the endgame content.
First time raiding is about a thousand kinds of awesome, but as anyone who was in a 'serious' guild knows, it literally becomes a second job. After I became a class leader the game was no longer fun for me
Since I had no other friends who played the game, it was impossible (at least on my server) to find a guild of people who took things easy and just wanted to have fun. Don't get me wrong, there were some great people in my guild, but after the level cap it was all about the content and the responsibilities, and I don't know about you guys, but I play games to relax and have fun :S
I finally quit after a year of hardcore playing when I saw what was in store for WotLK. Same crap, different names. No thanks. Just the idea of leveling enchanting again was torture
For me, the game is only fun when you treat it as a game and most people don't.
Currently i aint playing WoW but i feel the craving to do so, especially since the publicity machinery of Blizzard is so strong that they manage to capture your attention with new in game content and expansions. I think i became addicted to the game somehow and now im feeling the craving feeling. But when i see my reallity check that the small amount money i got its for college book, and to go out with my girlfriend, i feel better to think its not good investment. I will never ever again play for a P2P game.