I never did any of the PvE stuff, so maybe some of it was okay. The public quests were really cool! The problem, again, was the way they implemented them. They quickly turned into ghost towns because most would out level them or they were too out of the way to care about. Most couldn’t be soloed either. There were so many good ideas in WAR, like the Tome of Knowledge, but it felt like they didn’t quite think everything through or had any kind of game plan going forward. And sadly it only got worse as time went on and EA bought them out.
A fair bit of their design ran into one of the core problems with MMOs: MMO players. People did only the things that hit the exact sweet spot between time taken, difficulty, and reward and ignored everything else, a mentality that I have always found hugely frustrating as someone who is mostly interested in the experience rather than extrinsic rewards.
Yeah, and the classes weren’t mirrored between the two realms, either. There were bright wizards and something else on the other side, and the bright wizards were substantially better than their counterparts in PvP.
A lot of the ideas were good but you can’t really test a lot of those kinds of ideas in beta very well. Tanks that can physically block and impede movement. Cool. Great idea to try out. Lots of keeps to defend and attack. Sounds like a lot of fun. But you need the masses playing for a few months to see how it sorts out. Players don’t really give MMOs that much time anymore. Mythic got away with it in DAoC (which launched with sparse content and a broken endgame) because back then the MMO world was UO, EQ, and AC. Slow leveling was the norm so most players took a few months to even get to the level cap if they even did that quickly.
And now when a big name MMO launches the servers get flooded at launch and players play for a month or two and go back to WoW. Servers can be ghost towns in 60 days.
Even with all the problems the game might have fared a lot better had it simply had three sides like DAoC.
That’s a good point but I think it’s endemic in the basic design, which is reward-driven. You dangle rewards (gaining levels, gear, talent points, etc.) and players will chase them. Players are smart and find the shortest path. The developers by design encourage players to find the sweet spot between time, difficulty, and reward. It’s not the fault of the players.
The free WAR stuff - the 1-10 game - was quite fun when I played it, but I can see how it wouldn’t scale.
3xodus
2029
The 1-10 stuff was awesome because it was simple, well polished, and fun to play. The problem was there were huge gaps in content quality and major balance issues once you got out of that bracket. I remember getting to the 30’s (40 was the cap IIRC) and I hated every second of it. I would make new characters and play in the battlegrounds because it was just way more enjoyable than playing a higher level character. If they had maintained the quality of the 1-10 content throughout the rest of the game then I think it could have been a hit.
It looks like 5.4 might hit next week. I was looking at the warlock changes, and it looks like the current methods for getting the green fire quest done will no longer work. It basically relied on fast gate cooldowns and good mobility, both of which are being pulled back in 5.4.
I put some time into the final fight when it first came out (and my gear level was like 478 vs. my current 510) but realized it was going to take too long to do with my available time. With 5.4 changes there might be new strategies to accomplish the quest, but if not, it might be a long time before I can get another crack at it. It’s something that would be neat to do, but this has been a really busy year, and WoW is pretty strictly casual-only for me.
Jag
2031
They typically make these things easier to do, I can’t imagine it will get harder.
Wait, green fire?? Really?!? Man, that’s almost enough to get me back into WoW. Almost.
I used to love the warlock quests back in the day. Okay, you got a free horse at Level 40 (back when that was the normal mount), but then that Level 60 quest fir the epic mount was fantastic! Really gave you something to shoot for. So much fun. And then later, it became, “Here’s your epic mount! Have fun!” Kind of took the wonder out of the world.
Mouzone
2033
I wouldn’t worry too much about the lock changes. The gateway thing is kindof a buff in the fight since you will now not be targeted for chaos bolts for 1min after using gateway rather than 15s. The loss of cast while moving is the bigger nerf. But with the increased ilvl gear available should make the fight alot easier.
5.4 coming on Sept 10th.
World of Warcraft @Warcraft 4m
World of Warcraft Patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar arrives September 10! pic.twitter.com/PexbgSfqlt
Huh. Later than expected.
And as to Green Fire - I think you’ll find the ilevel boost from Timeless Isle will offset that.
Trelane
2036
Every expansion, Blizzard says they aim to produce content faster. And every time it still takes them 6 months to produce a new Raid patch.
Looks like they have given up on trying. Now they just throw out filler patches in between to create the perception of more frequent content updates.
Though to be fair, quality of raid content is very high and I have yet to see any MMO match the Wow raiding experience.
Daagar
2037
A delay of 5.4 now is potentially a good thing. It is going to be a long dry spell between 5.4 and 6.0. Shortening that gap, even by two weeks, might be in their favor even though it means a delay now.
I started on the whole Battlefield Barrens thing late, so this gives me time to get that 3rd Gazrooki or whatever battlepet. Yay OCD!
This is something I’ve spent some time talking about with a family member that games while both of us keep considering swearing off MMOs. And, I think I disagree with your conclusion. Yes, the design is to dangle extrinsic rewards that are to be chased. However, as a player is our goal could be “to be rewarded” but sometimes it isn’t. If the player is one who a hyper type-A, unable to relax, then sure, their only goal is “to be rewarded”. So 1000 monkeys finding the perfect speedrun with the perfect gear set and group composition it is! Exploit early, exploit often. I don’t blame these players.
But it is the player that sets the goal. So if the player picks up a game “to have fun”, “to be entertained”, “to relax and blow off steam after work”, “to pwn noobs” or any of a host of other goals reasonably expected goals of players in MMOs and then the only thing they these players end up doing is chase to the extrinsic reward loop then I’d say something is wrong. And I do think something is wrong here, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. It does seem that a lot of players say their goal like one of the ones in this second paragraph and then all they do is chase the cheevos, level treadmill, gear grind until “done with that”. And that’s an odd thing for a player to do with those as stated goals, so I will blame some of these players.
I forget where I read it, so you’ll have to forgive me, but I read that they’re talking about having another content patch between 5.4 and the pre-expansion patch. I’ll see if I can find it.
Gedd
2040
They’ve definitely said another patch with some content, but no new raid tiers between now and then. A lot of people (see Trelane’s post) think any content patches that don’t have new raids aren’t really significant.
I was able to get a druid up to 90 the other day. i quickly bought a few 450 pvp blues to get the ilevel up a little, got the 502 shoes from the Seer, and almost have the battlefield barrens gathering quest done for the week. I also run a regular scenario most days. Normally I would look to factions for gear-ups at this stage, since I don’t really want to run more heroics, but I’m not about to tackle those rep grinds again. Any good ways to gear up (even at a moderate pace is fine) without heroics? I’m at about 440 now. I think 1st tier raid required 460, then 480 for Throne. I’m not looking to go regular raiding with this toon, just want to gear it up for other stuff out in the world.
450PvP, Arena of Annihilation 450 weapon…Do you mind doing the farm every day? Rep there. Heroic scenario gear…
Gedd
2043
And if you can wait, 5.4 is built for quick gearing up on the Timeless Isle. There’s some info here about gearing up in 5.4:
