Yep. WoW thread.

Garamoth
Sargeras US

Picked up my first copy of the collector's edition tonight. 2nd copy should be here tomorrow afternoon.

I always buy two so I can sell one to a schmuck later for a hundred dollars more than I paid for it.

The whole selling it for a hundred dollars more thing might not work this time, what with pre-purchasing online...

But:

Mikamue (80 mage)
Palliedan (80 paladin duh)

Dragonmaw (server)

I'm awake waiting for the launch in 15 minutes...

meh, never got into wow, and i am currently playing (not realy, mostly cause I have been busy with classes for the past few months, and other games) FFXI and FFXIV.

annd. I'm sitting here trying to get logged in.

can't connect to the login server.

Join the club.

Snakespark
Icecrown US

Science Tech Division

wooo. Got in.

Isn't there an MMO thread in the gaming subforum?

I just bought WotLK :3

Ðøøm, 80 Rogue on Dunemaul EU. I was one of the first people to get back on when the servers went down last night. There were about 4 other people questing in the new underwater zone with me Got to 60% to 81 in about an hour before I had to go to bed.

Tanked new dungeon Throne of the Tides..

It's nice playing a dungeon you haven't done a million times already.. and one that's actually somewhat challenging.

But leave it to Blizzard to introduce flying mounts in Azeroth, then make all the quests happen underwater. Gay.

/tells self not to get sucked back into WoW

I miss Gonk.

So when are they going to make the game look like it wasn't developed in 2004? They keep adding stuff, but all it does is make the old stuff look more awful.

Also, alpha1: FF14?! How in the world can you play that ****?! It's like they took FF11, removed everything good about it, added a bunch of stuff that belongs only in a single player Final Fantasy game, and then added a horrible gameplay experience on top of it! Shopping is a nightmare, MP no longer regens, classes are now weapon-based, there's almost zero reward for leveling, the UI is somehow more awful than before, shortcuts are outright missing... the list goes on.

CM, no one who plays WoW is really overly concerned about the graphics... That said, some of the landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful, cartoonish-looking or not.

I beg to differ. Everyone I know who plays WoW complains about the graphics, especially the character models (which, I swear, can't possibly be using more than a couple hundred polygons total).

as of 2006? FYI

ps. supposedly the Human Male model has 3179 vertices? This is just stuff I've found via google on random forums re: character modeling.

Uh is that a joke, 19k polys on a player model that looks like crap?

18500 of those in the boobs

Pfft, the whole Cataclysm idea is just a ripoff of Asheron's Call 2 anyway.

or gameplay. If WoW didn't have a 3D skin I'd probably be more into it, but the fact that I have to walk from chatroom to chatroom gets really boring. I haven't tried one of those MMOs where there is actual 3D gameplay yet.

That made absolutely no sense whatsoever, kirby.

I'm talking about how irrelevant your location on the map and your animations are. The game could be a Final Fantasy/Pokemon bench style text game that fed the next enemy in the instance to the players instead of requiring they walk around on the map. It'd save a lot of boring time.

Things like Conan actually require you move around and aim, from what I understand. I'm not saying I want a twitchy MMO, I just don't like having to do something like walk around when it only serves to cover the distance between the gameplay and nothing else. I loved the idea of Eve, but when half of the experience is traveling, it quickly becomes obvious that networks aren't capable of handling all of the locations of individual players and instead just crunches a bunch of static numbers. Not a lot of raw skill involved, and has more to do with skill trees and item selection.

That still made absolutely no sense whatsoever Kirby. Perhaps you should play an MMO first?

I have tried several games. I know end game content can be more involved and strategic, and I'm not really criticizing what gameplay there actually is in MMOs.

I don't like walking from gameplay to gameplay experience. I want all of that **** to be a menu instead. I don't like combat having nothing to do with movement or locations of players, but still requiring you move around with your group. I would rather play a text based MMO where all of my team is chatting in a window because we clicked "join dungeon," a new enemy appears and then all of the button mashing can happen without the boring middle parts where you're walking around. Then I want to sell my items by clicking on the store button instead of walking back to town. Then instead of hauling back and forth between dungeon and quest area, I can just pick up quests as they become available.

Basically, I hate traveling in MMOs.

Allow me to devastate your fragile understanding of MMOs:

1. Many MMOs (such as WoW) do offer menus to join dungeon instances immediately. No walking required to get there, you are warped back and forth freely.
2. Properly designed MMOs will have most shops placed at locations that are not too distant to be annoying, and also have faster methods of travel (mounts, warps, etc). But not too freely, since it's a limitation created to control the amount of farming possible.
3. Combat often does have to do with the movement and locations of players. Monsters may have area effect/line of sight attacks, requiring players to move out the way or get blasted. Most MMOs require you actually face your target to successfully attack. Some monster attacks hit nearby players (like bouncing from one to the other), requiring players to be aware of their positions to eachother. There's also environmental hazards.

I'm willing to bet you never played past the introductory zones of any major MMO

Yeah, I was aware of all that, but most of that seems tedious more than engaging or fun. When combat still boils down to which skill is currently repeating over and over again, I feel like a 2D environment with those kinds of things as binary would be more streamlined. I still have to walk back and forth between the town and the "collect 25 pelts" monsters. And no, besides WoW I haven't played past many introductory zones. Aren't those supposed to be kind of fun on their own anyway?

I just don't think MMOs are for me.

Of course combat boils down to the same skill repeating when you never leave the introductory zones. You don't have any skills. It's called progression.

Yeah, Kirbs, you're basically WAAAY off. CM already put it well, so I'll leave it at that, but the way you see things is not even close to accurate. (Hell there's even a lot of specific applications in WoW that require aiming with the mouse, similar to a FPS.)

To put the nail in the coffin on "repeating the same skill" my paladin has two rotations as a tank. Single target is a 939 where I'm alternating a different nine second cooldown with a 3 second cooldown "anchor" move.. My keys are mapped to my numpad for tanking, so I press the following pattern for a single boss mob.

8 4 8 7 8 5 8 4 8 9 8 5 and repeat.

Mind you, it's still a repetitious system, but there are abilities that give me the ability to switch it up a bit by eliminating specific cooldowns on powerful abilities.

Add to that the work that goes into perfecting your build and talents to optimize the trait you're most wanting to emphasize (in my case, survivability [health] and threat [pissing off the mob]) and things can get very complicated and personalized.

My AOE (area of effect) rotation for handling multiple mobs at once is a giant cluster eff right now that pretty much consists of pressing whatever multi-target spell I currently have available when it's up. That will change after I reach the cap again.

That said, I hate questing. MMOs are boring up until the end-game for me, so I binge play to reach that point and then enjoy the content from the top.

Well, I think I'm finally going to join this whole WoW thing. I'm a little late to the party, but it looks fun! And I definitely need a game that keeps my attention. Until TF2 goes MMO anyway.

Nothing you guys just said sounds encouraging at all. I think that, if I'm not having any fun in the opening area, I'm not going to have fun when I have to button mash after 70+ levels of that.

You do understand what the opening area is for, right? It's to teach. It's little more than a lengthy tutorial. Experienced players spend all of ten minutes in those areas. Newbies grind it out because it is trying to slowly ease you into the game without dropping you into the middle of a dungeon while your buddies are yelling at you for failing to heal and getting them all killed.

You're being unrealistic.

lightside, if you need someone to help you get into it, PM me. I like to take new players under my wing, and train them up in the intricacies of the game.

(I'll also start you out with some bags and a fair bit of money)

oh and kirbs, I think I get what you're saying. In fact, the main reason I DIDN'T like LotRO was that I felt like the whole combat system was:
1) click on the target.
2) run over and stand near him.
3) watch numbers flash on the screen.
4) you win if the numbers you make are bigger than the numbers he makes.

It was boring and unrealistic. But WoW is completely different, especially if you get into PvP. Good PvPers move around with their characters as much as any FPS player, moving in and out of range of attackers in order to strike without being struck, freezing opponents in place and jumping away, strafing around behind their target, so their enemies can't hit them cause they're facing the wrong way.. etc. etc. the style changes significantly, depending on which class you're playing.

On the other hand, PvE can potentially fall into the trap that you're describing, mainly because the enemies don't really move much, other than to run over to where they can see you and are in range of you, before they start blasting away with whatever pre-determined spell or attack they have, but I think Blizzard recognizes this and have taken steps to try and make it a bit more interesting. (for example, there are enemies who will snare players then run back and start using ranged attacks, there are enemies who will switch targets at random, or there are enemies who wlll drop ground effect spells where you're standing, forcing you to move. I could keep going all day with examples of how Blizzard breaks up the monotony, but you get the idea.) I think that's why WoW is one of the most successful MMO's of all time, actually.

Like anyone would want a scrub teaching them.