Its Time To Welcome The WOW Players
Yeh that’s right that is me saying that and I still have the hate, a hate relationship with everything about the game. Blizzard may have done a great deal right yet this is no excuse for doing other things that are so wrong.
Leveling is a grind with little to no fun to be had until you reach the end-game. Gear being junked after every expansion and all your hard work gaining those items washed-out from one day to the next.
Dumbing down of content so anyone playing 3 hours per week can have epics when you slogged you guts out getting them.
Then there is the other side, the side of the players. We on the outside only really see the bad points. Constant bitching in the forums and in-game. QQing about things being to hard which force Blizzard to dumb down yet more content. And when someone has a different opinion than those of the masses they get shot down as if there is only one view and flame anyone that sees the world in a different way.
Above all I hate anyone who has only every played WOW and thinks everything WOW has to offer was invented by Blizzard.
All this aside, I do have something in common with WOW players now. This is the seeing the game we love getting screwed over in an unprecedented way.
Yet when I encountered this it was with SWG back then it was the New Game Enhancements (NGE). SOE like Blizzard, did not address the concerns of their core gamers and went in a totally different direction. WOW has had balance issues almost from day one and nothing Blizzard has done has come close to solving this problem, this made the cookie-cutter-builds happen.
When someone does this to your game its time to panic –
Unless you’ve been on the dark-side of the moon you are well aware of the turmoil that WOW players are now facing.
Blizzard doesn’t hide the fact that they ripoff features from other games (even thought some players think otherwise) but really Pokemon and Kung Fu Panders ?
I know some fan-boys will think the Pandaria was part of Warcraft 3 lore, I’ll accept this in the same token as the Star Wars Christmas special is part of Star Wars lore. Some things just can’t be un-done we will never get away from them no matter how hard we try.
So instead of fixing the unbalance issues, they decided to completely change the skill tree system and start afresh. I guess Blizzard is hoping that they can have another 6 years at trying to balance this system too. For when bitching starts to come (and it will) about classes being unbalanced they can turn around and just say its a new way of doing things give us more time.
I feel for the players I really do. Nothing is more disheartening that seeing your game get screwed and there is nothing you can do about it. Some of my friends have been in and out of WOW over many years. Just to keep up on gear in the hope the game will once again rekindle that flame the once used to have.
All it does for them now is provide the most expensive Vent chat system in the world where good friends still hangout with all eyes looking for the next mmo.
Hoping is that it will hold a candle to the once good old glory days of old, with so many been burnt in the past and they have reconciled themselves to staying with what they know.
Its “Better the devil you know” as the saying goes.
But now TOR looks like it will be the first real competition WOW has faced. Blizzard has been forced to do a promotion of Diablo 3 beta and a free copy of the game with some trinket in-game items at the cost of a year sub to the now failing game.
Being tied to WOW for a year would make a lot of players stay away from TOR as an extra sub every month may be a little too costly. So paying what you normally would per-year of $180 with a free game, items and beta invite seems a good deal.
I wonder how good a deal it will look 3 months into the new patch when the content gets dumbed down again and once more you are just in-game, to chat with your fellow guild members. Blizzard has said before it welcomes TOR as it will bring new player to the mmo market.
Yet this is the first time Blizzard has looked so panicked about a new mmo. As if they knew what the outcome would be.
I’m not trying to say TOR will bring down the king, what it will do it take followers of that once great game and this will cost them greatly. Pinning your gamers to a full year is a good move but for many they do not play for more than 4 months out of a year.
As in this time you can level and gain all the gear you need and still take in everything the new patch has to offer.
For all those that have had the last nail coffin when it comes to WOW. I hope TOR will be what you are looking for and I’m sorry you are going thought the same progress of what SWG did so many years ago.
I thought I would never see this type of thing again where a company would take everything about a game you love and change it just to chase the cash cow down the street.
Well good luck to you all where ever you may end up.
Until next time, MrWarlock signing off.
12 Responses to “Its Time To Welcome The WOW Players”
I’ve played a few other MMO’s, but the only one I’ve played seriously was WoW, and that has been since 6 months after Vanilla release. While I can’t comment on what other MMO’s have, I can tell you that WoW, over the last two expansions has made me hate it. The dumbing down of content, the welfare epics, the constant catering to the kids who were screaming for such. Most of all, and I know TOR will have the same, is the people that this culture breeds. Obnoxious little kids and pricks who scream at everyone else. Chicks that announce every five minutes that they are, in fact, female for attention. So while I am a former WoW player, I won’t be welcoming those WoW players. Thankfully I’ll be in an adult-only guild and I’ll be able to avoid most of this wasted semen.
I totally understand where you are coming from on this article and I am starting to feel the pain for SWTOR as well. With the recent news of the mod system being raped I am starting to see the same old pattern emerge when it comes to crafting systems in “to be released mmo’s”
They are starting to appear that they are dumbing down the system to pander to their biggest userbase the casuals. While I do not mind that they are thinking of this userbase because that is where the money is for them, I just hate it because this to me shows me that it is more important to them to do this than it is to develop a engaging and complex crafting system that I will not be bored of in a few weeks, sigh.
We will see what the future holds for swtor but for now it appears they are falling in line with the norm. :/
“Above all I hate anyone who has only ever played WOW and thinks everything WOW has to offer was invented by Blizzard.”
– Can’t stress that enough.
It is a sad thing what’s happening to WoW. Regardless if we hated it or loved it, it is disappointing to see it going down without grace. There were other MMOs long before WoW, that’s for certain, and WoW hardly invented anything, but Blizzard’s approach paved the way for SWTOR and immensely broadened the target of the genre. The game deserved to submit the crown with dignity… Not being reduced to a caricature of what it was and be laughed at.
“No king rules forever…” – from the Wrath of the Lich King intro.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with most of the points you’ve raised, you should investigate the details of what you’re reporting on Ie. What blizzard has on offer with subs/d3.
As for speculation regarding the fall of wow as a result of this expansion… I’d only suggest taking a deep breath and perhaps reading a draft before posting because this hastily written rant full of mistakes does nothing for your cause. Until then keep fighting the good fight I guess…
Just for the note, my WoW sub is canceled and i do not plan to reactivate it till MoP.
At first i thought, what the fuck are they announcing there?!?
I dont want Pandas and i hate the pokemon battles. But after re-thinking about the rest. I think it will be good. I will try it out.
Until then i will play TOR just because i love Star Wars. And yes, what Milo said.
I finished with WoW when i killed Lich King. True ending of an epic saga which I started with WC3.
To Swtorcrafter
Can we at least let the game launch before we go after them for changing systems that we haven’t even played and even if you are in beta, you don’t necessarily have the final changes.
This was backed up by Georg Zoeller here http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9800817#edit9800817
“Wait, you mean what I see in front of me on the most current authoritative game build in the office is not what it seems to be?
Think what you see outside the office is the most current Modification System? Nope.
Georg “Observer” Zoeller
Principal Lead Combat Designer”
They’ve said many times, this is testing, they are tweaking and watching to decide what works best.
WoW was done for me after Wrath. The welfare epic thing was annoying enough in that expansion, but at least I enjoyed playing my Shadow Priest at the time. Things weren’t balanced, no– especially since they refused to balance the trees separately between PvE and PvP — but at least everything wasn’t nearly identical like it is now in Cataclysm.
Example: Get rid of the Druid’s ability to stay in Tree form as a healer, and give them a new area heal on the ground and what do you get? The same thing a Resto Shaman can do. The same thing a Holy Priest can do. In fact, the rest of Holy’s changes were about the only thing with that whole expansion I agreed with. Oh, tanking is about the bloody same now too. Don’t like how everything is being homogenized. Shadow priests finally have a haste aura for the group? Awesome. Except now a Balance Druid’s crit aura has ALSO become a haste aura. I cannot recall a single buff in that game anymore that is handled exclusively by one class.
And for the record, Blood being the only Death Knight tanking tree was stupid. Make them self-healing with that blood shield on Death Strike use and you have a Druid tank in platemail with a bad attitude. No thank you. Frost was much better.
Enjoy, Milo. And as for your belief that Cataclysm not being the cause of problems…. even the playerbase still over there notes that it’s caused such a drop in subscriptions that all of these crazy things are going on now. Making everything function practically identically in mechanics and buffs. Free to play up till level 20. Say what you will, but this and more didn’t occur— until Cataclysm’s rebalancings and release.
Bring on SWTOR. So long as it isn’t 5 flavours of Grape with your character class options, I’m all for it.
Sorry I should have clarified, I meant speculating on sub drops as a result of Pandaria.
Ahh, I see. In that case, I’d love to know how WoW meets Pokemon is NOT going to result in subs being dropped more than they already have been. If people wanted that they could hit a bloody emulator and not have to pay for it monthly. Or just their GB, but ugh, batteries. Either way, it’s certainly not going to appeal to most of the folks who are beyond the age of 10. Which is most of their playerbase. Let’s be honest, at this point they’re floundering.
Again, bring on the Sith. Blasting people with lightning will trash “Pet battles” any day.
Vanilla Wow was my best time with Wow. Tried every expansion, but stopped every 3 months into the new content. The whole vanilla community is as good as non-existent anymore on my server. RIP Ragnaros (EU).
Agree with Grendizer, vanilla was easily the best time. If I had to pick an expansion it would be Burning Crusade which was really epic, until Blizzard started lowering the reputation required for heroic keys and I think that was really the beginning of the end.