Guild Wars 2

[crazyroosterman]

But the grind is so mind-numbing that I basically have to run YouTube/Netflix/Hulu on the other monitor to keep interested in the game. I know for some on here, *cough* Managarmr *cough* that's nothing special but I don't do that

Hey now! It's not my fault my brain is overactive and 90% of all games don't manage to keep me interested or engaged enough.

personally I just like listening to things in the back ground when I play games unless I really dig the games soundtrack then ill just listen to that in the background instead.

[Misery]

I'm glad that I never played WoW. It does not seem like a good MMo but everyone pretends it is.
I like the comple combart from Mabinogi but I don't know if it is similiar to WoW (i doubt it).
Generally it is a Rock-Paper-Scissor System. Diffeent abilities negate other abilities. Autoattack beats Smash, Smah, a slower but stronger version of the standard attack, beats defense, Defense beats the normal attack. Counterattack beats both normal attack and smash, windmill beats counterattack. And Normal attack beats windmill. And don't get me started on the non-standard attacks.

I do however think that int he last years Mabinogi kind of suffered from the typical MMO illness, that it tries to copy other stuff. it ran multiple Anime-crossovers which certainly don't fit the game or its lore. And they launched a new "class", the ninja, which is more like the Nauroto interpretaion of ninjas.
There were also the dual gunners along the way, who are no brainers to use compared to the complex arhers that existed before. I hink Mabinogi tried to make the game more intuitive and engaging for newer players that complained the system was hard to learn because it wasn't like other MMOs.

Honestly, WoW never even reaches the depth of "rock, paper, scissors".   Just think about that statement for a moment, and you understand just how bad the combat is. 

What you do in WoW is figure out which string of abilities, fired in a row, kills things fastest.  In *every* normal battle, you just repeat this string over and over again.  Every.  Single.  Time.  In raids, you do things a bit different... by having different strings to use.  It's the same boring, and it's SUCH a complete freaking mess that most people drown their screen in meters and stat displays because it's impossible to tell what's going on in the writhing heap of violent colors that is the "fight".  Seriously, it's freaking terrible.  Oh, and dont forget auto-attack.  WoW loves that, for your basic attack.  The only actual ACTIONS you take are to use abilities.  You dont even move otherwise, because there's no reason to.

This is why I miss City of Heroes so much.  You had no auto attack.  You had abilities only, up to 10, and if you tried to just string them together the same every time, you'd find yourself flat on your ass over and over again.  Different enemies actually did entirely different things, and understanding how to deal with each one mattered.  And different enemies coming together in a group (and enemies were ALWAYS, and I really do mean ALWAYS, encountered in *groups*, never one at a time) changed the dynamic of a fight because you'd have to figure out the right order to attack them in, but also watch for what abilities exactly they were using.  AND, you tended to have to move around alot.  None of that "stand in the heap of jerks and hit buttons" crap.  In other words, you had to actually think and react to things.  It took actual skill to get somewhere.  And as an added bonus the game pulled off it's "feel like a superhero" thing very well, because of the fact that even while soloing, you fought entire groups of foes; sometimes you could build your character around the concept of attacking the whole group at once constantly, provided you kept your positioning and other stuff in check.  The enemy groups simply got dramatically bigger when you were in a party with other players.  And that's not even going into the game's "inspiration" mechanic (which I loved) or the mechanic that *completely* replaced the idea of equipment, which was ability slotting (which I *really* loved, no other game has done this that well), where you stuffed these things into different abilities to completely change how they work.

But something like WoW?  It doesnt do any of that.  No creative mechanics, no real thinking, no exciting battles, no unique and interesting enemies to fight.  You generally get a cookie-cutter build going, repeat your damn strings of abilities on every single reskinned foe you came across, and you went after loot (very, very slowly).  It's bloody mindless.

Right now, MMOs that actually make you have to think and use real skill are very, very rare.

[Wingflier]

Someone once told me that "With WoW, the REAL fun begins at level 60!!!!111", since the devs went totally overboard with the blasted raid stuff.  And so other games now do that sort of thing too.  Where the entire game may as well JUST be raids, because that's all the devs actually care about.  So every other part of the game... mindless grinding.   See, I'd rather have a game where the real fun begins at level 1... maybe I'm just crazy.  And when you DO raids, you cant even see what's going on!  You just watch arbitrary little meters and occaisionally hit buttons.  Ugh.   I dont know if GW2 had that issue, I never got particularly far in it.

Don't even get me started on World of Warcraft.

That game is the bane of my blasted existence.

What's worse, so many of my friends have played it over the years, and begged me to join them, that I've lost count. It's like I'm cursed somehow, to be that guy that everyone wants to play World of Warcraft for some reason, even though I'd rather chew on ball bearings or watch paint dry than play it.

When I tell them this, I always get the same response you received, "It gets really fun once you hit level 60!". Then why can't I just start out at level 60! Jesus. That's one of the things I really enjoyed about Guild Wars. You could just start a max level character, skip all the grind, and get right into the action. Sure, the character couldn't PvE, but who cares! It's better than grinding your life away for countless hours so that "the real fun can begin". And that's if you can even call any aspect of WoW "fun".

To prove my point, here's an image of a guy who is attempting to level his WoW character to 100 using only a dance pad. If you can do that in an MMO, the game sucks.

Well anyway, I could go on forever like you addressing all my complaints with the game but why bother? I grew up playing Everquest and that game was actually challenging. Sure, it had a lot of problems but it was the first of its kind so they were forgivable. WoW didn't really improve the formula at all in my view, and it's sad that so many games have attempted to replicate its "success", including GW2. I really expected more after the innovative and inspiring gem that was GW1.

Oh by the way Misery, Starship Rubicon (a game that's been on my Steam wishlist) went on sale today and when I went to check the reviews, I was surprised to see yours at the top! It was very helpful. I'll probably end up getting it.

[Misery]

Ugh, Everquest!

And I dont mean "ugh" like "it was bad", I mean "ugh" in terms of what WoW essentially did to it. 

I loved Everquest.  It had issues... my biggest one being the LOOOOOOOOONG travel times through some zones (I still remember one particular zone that took THIRTY FREAKING MINUTES to pass through, while being helpfully covered in skeletons just to make your trek more aggravating).  And of course the infamous and dreaded "corpse runs" that were the bane of... absolutely every player.  But it was interesting.  There was alot going on with the game, and it really was very challenging, and it punished the funky hell out of you whenever you died.  There was alot of good there.

WoW though?  It's a clone of Everquest.  I still remember trying WoW the first time, and I tried the Warrior class, and as I'm playing it I'm thinking... something is a bit off here.  I spent some time looking at the class ability tree, and then looked at the Warrior tree from Everquest, and found that WoW's version of that class was almost an *exact* copy.  The same abilities, in the same order, at nearly the same levels.  I knew the game seemed to be a bit of a clone, but that was what really sealed the idea for me.  And then it just got stupider from there.  It did everything Everquest did (except corpse runs), but dumbed it down.  That's IT.  That's WoW:  dumbed down Everquest. 

I think that's right about when my hatred for the AAA side of the industry started to bloom, because more and more games were getting dumbed down for lazy players that get all bothered and insulted if their incredible mighty "skillz" arent instantly good enough to triumph over every game they played.  And WoW was just the king of that particular hill.  And still is.

And since then.... Everquest, which I've always loved, has been nowhere NEAR as relevant as it used to be.  Everquest 2 is pretty good... it doesnt have corpse runs but it can sure be freaking cruel.... but it never got the attention it really deserved.  The playerbase isnt anywhere NEAR what it could and should be, entirely because of it's cookie-cutter clone that's out there, sucking up all of it's success.  I'm really, really hoping that Everquest Next actually does get real attention.  That could be the thing that revives my interest in this genre.

[chemical_art]

To be a bit contrarian I enjoyed WoW a while back, because the hardest thing about MMO is finding others who enjoy it to begin with. Even with it simplified it is hard enough to find a group with similar enough values that one gets along with. MMO's already bring about a host of unsavory behaviors. The more intense ones just bring out a lot more negatives while adding few positives.

I'd rather play dumbed downed as opposed to evercamp. Also known as the massively miserly roleplaying.

[Misery]

EQ's camping issues got fixed alot later on.  But it sure took awhile!

I give it a pass on that though, since when the original EQ was a major thing, *all* MMOs did that.  Camping was the thing to do, when you wanted certain loot. It was a LONG time before that changed.  Of course, everyone sure was glad when it did finally become the norm to NOT have to do that so much. 

Though, frankly, I'll take that over WoW's raids any day; (which I dont think are any better, since you STILL have to do them over and over and over again with the added benefit of each individual time taking DRAMATICALLY longer than a camped boss fight... it ends up evening out, in my view).  Or, well... any raids, really.  At least when camping a normal boss, you typically dont then fight it with 20 squillion other players at the exact same time, and can thusly see what's happening.  Not so in a raid.  It does occur to me that I've NEVER, not once, seen a game that does raid bosses right and in a non-insane, non-stupid way.... except for City of Heroes, which did get it right, since.... it didn't do raids at all.

In case it's not apparent to everyone, I seriously hate raid content in all MMOs.  *ALL* of them.


Also you're right that finding a group is hard alot of the time.  I honestly ended up just finding MMOs that let me solo easily.  Everquest really was the one and only exception to that (well, the FIRST game anyway; in the second, you can definitely solo if you want to without trouble).  If an MMO promises to FORCE me into groups in order to progress (like Final Fantasy 11 did, you could NOT solo at all in that game), I just didn't play it, because I dont want to HAVE to deal with groups of morons when I didn't want to.  didn't want to have my play time with the game limited by "can I find a group of NON-idiots today, or cant I?"  I prefer to be able to keep playing regardless of the answer.

Sadly though that does lead to the fact that I ended up soloing in these games WAY more than I ended up grouping.  But as I'm autistic and thus about as social as a brick to begin with, this worked out well enough.  In particular, it also meant less of the "waiting for a million years while someone in the party VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY SLOWLY types something".   Which was like my number one pet peeve with that genre.  Learn to type, people!

[Wingflier]

To be honest I wouldn't play Everquest either in the year 2016, but it came out in 1999, so its very dated. It was the birth of a genre, what else would you expect? It set the tone for what became the most profitable gaming market of all time, and for that reason alone it was a masterpiece, even with all its bugs and design problems.

Aside from that, Everquest had very different goals as a game than modern MMOs do. It was much more about being part of a fantasy world, enjoying the scenery, and having a life outside of your own life than pointless achievements, leveling up, dungeon crawling, gear seeking, and high-level raiding. EVERYBODY role-played. There was no such thing as roleplay servers, people just knew that's what you did. My step-brother played a sexy rogue character and all the guys would shower his female character with gifts and levels just to win her favor. My dad made this giant ugly Ogre called "mesexy" (or something to that effect) who went around the world speaking in Ogre, coming on to anybody he met.

Goal-based gaming is what WoW turned the MMO genre into, that's not what it originally was.

So if you are looking for a co-op questing experience, or have a group of max-level characters (because you and all your friends have spent 10 billion dollars purchasing WoW and all its expansions), then dungeon raids or loot-hoarding would be not all that different than your typical ARPG co-op experience.

But that wasn't what Everquest was originally about. It would be more like you and a group of friends traveling the world together, meeting new people, and getting into hilarious situations just for the hell of it, not because you had any specific goal in mind. Leveling up and doing quests would just be a bonus.

[Misery]

To be honest I wouldn't play Everquest either in the year 2016, but it came out in 1999, so its very dated. It was the birth of a genre, what else would you expect? It set the tone for what became the most profitable gaming market of all time, and for that reason alone it was a masterpiece, even with all its bugs and design problems.

Aside from that, Everquest had very different goals as a game than modern MMOs do. It was much more about being part of a fantasy world, enjoying the scenery, and having a life outside of your own life than pointless achievements, leveling up, dungeon crawling, gear seeking, and high-level raiding. EVERYBODY role-played. There was no such thing as roleplay servers, people just knew that's what you did. My step-brother played a sexy rogue character and all the guys would shower his female character with gifts and levels just to win her favor. My dad made this giant ugly Ogre called "mesexy" (or something to that effect) who went around the world speaking in Ogre, coming on to anybody he met.

Goal-based gaming is what WoW turned the MMO genre into, that's not what it originally was.

So if you are looking for a co-op questing experience, or have a group of max-level characters (because you and all your friends have spent 10 billion dollars purchasing WoW and all its expansions), then dungeon raids or loot-hoarding would be not all that different than your typical ARPG co-op experience.

But that wasn't what Everquest was originally about. It would be more like you and a group of friends traveling the world together, meeting new people, and getting into hilarious situations just for the hell of it, not because you had any specific goal in mind. Leveling up and doing quests would just be a bonus.

Aye... there was certainly that, too.

You know, it's been so freaking long since MMOs had anything resembling that in them that I'd nearly forgotten it was ever there.  Thinking about it now certainly brings back some interesting memories.

Granted, the "sandbox" genre.... Minecraft and it's brethren.... are starting to bring that stuff back.  Technically games like that have achievements and such, to satisfy people that cant live without them, but they tend to hand you every single one if you so much as breathe too hard, so in reality they're just meaningless fluff; the real goals of a game like that are whatever the bloody hell you want them to be.  So things like roleplaying, adventuring for the sake of adventuring, or just some good ol' hilarious hijinks (with explosions, of course) actually HAPPEN in games like that.  Which is part of why those appeal to me so much.  Those games also rather prove that, yes, it can be fun to just, well, have some damn fun instead of obsessing over arbitrary goals all the freaking time.  I just wish MMO devs could get that back into their thick skulls.

That goal-obsessed crap bugs me, on that note.  Not just in MMOs.  But even just things like "achievements" irritate the hell out of me.  I hated that concept when it was first introduced (on the original Xbox, was it?) and I continue to utterly loathe it now, since it just stuffs that goal-obsession into everyone's heads that much more.

And people often then keep playing those games, when they're very definitely NOT having a good time, because they just HAVE to get the all-important 100% completion (or whatever).  Gotta get ALL of the best stuff, or what kind of player are you?  You're not HARD CORE if you dont do that.  Incidentally, I make a point of never doing that.

Ugh.  I swear, it's like alot of major developers these days dont remember what "fun" actually is anymore.

I could rant about this all day.

[Wingflier]

I remember there was this place called "Blackburrow". It wasn't far from the human city.

It was a massive cave complex, filled with gnolls. It was a great place to level for lower characters. Individually, the gnolls weren't that dangerous, but if they saw you fighting one of their kin, they would aggro you from miles around. Pretty soon, a fight with one or two could turn into a fight with dozens. As you ran for dear life from the swarm you had created, even more would begin to chase you, until a critical mass of angry monsters was reached, that were affectionately referred to as "A Train".

A Train of monsters would follow you as you attempted to flee for your life. They had no leash range, meaning they would continue chasing you only until you escaped the zone. They attacked any innocent bystanding player in their path, and since there were so many of them, this experience could lead to a near-instantaneous death. A slaughter of unsuspecting players, caught in the unfortunate warpath of a player that had accidentally aggroed too many gnolls.

In chat, when you heard the common cry of "CHOO! CHOO!", you knew it was time to get the hell out of the way, or the hell out of dodge because a sh*tstorm was brewing, and most likely headed your way. Man, those were some hilarious times.

[Mánagarmr]

To be honest I wouldn't play Everquest either in the year 2016, but it came out in 1999, so its very dated. It was the birth of a genre, what else would you expect? It set the tone for what became the most profitable gaming market of all time, and for that reason alone it was a masterpiece, even with all its bugs and design problems.

Aside from that, Everquest had very different goals as a game than modern MMOs do. It was much more about being part of a fantasy world, enjoying the scenery, and having a life outside of your own life than pointless achievements, leveling up, dungeon crawling, gear seeking, and high-level raiding. EVERYBODY role-played. There was no such thing as roleplay servers, people just knew that's what you did. My step-brother played a sexy rogue character and all the guys would shower his female character with gifts and levels just to win her favor. My dad made this giant ugly Ogre called "mesexy" (or something to that effect) who went around the world speaking in Ogre, coming on to anybody he met.

Goal-based gaming is what WoW turned the MMO genre into, that's not what it originally was.

So if you are looking for a co-op questing experience, or have a group of max-level characters (because you and all your friends have spent 10 billion dollars purchasing WoW and all its expansions), then dungeon raids or loot-hoarding would be not all that different than your typical ARPG co-op experience.

But that wasn't what Everquest was originally about. It would be more like you and a group of friends traveling the world together, meeting new people, and getting into hilarious situations just for the hell of it, not because you had any specific goal in mind. Leveling up and doing quests would just be a bonus.

And that's what got me into WoW. I played on an RP server and had a lot of fun roleplaying, because that was what I enjoyed. When RP more or less died out after Burning Crusade I started trying to actually play. I tried PVP and raiding and while I did enjoy raiding as a tank or healer, DPS was mindboggingly dull. Eventually the casualization of raid content and even worse gear grind got to a point where I just didn't want to bother anymore. So I left for good. Still it was two overall fairly enjoyable years.

[Wingflier]

To be honest I wouldn't play Everquest either in the year 2016, but it came out in 1999, so its very dated. It was the birth of a genre, what else would you expect? It set the tone for what became the most profitable gaming market of all time, and for that reason alone it was a masterpiece, even with all its bugs and design problems.

Aside from that, Everquest had very different goals as a game than modern MMOs do. It was much more about being part of a fantasy world, enjoying the scenery, and having a life outside of your own life than pointless achievements, leveling up, dungeon crawling, gear seeking, and high-level raiding. EVERYBODY role-played. There was no such thing as roleplay servers, people just knew that's what you did. My step-brother played a sexy rogue character and all the guys would shower his female character with gifts and levels just to win her favor. My dad made this giant ugly Ogre called "mesexy" (or something to that effect) who went around the world speaking in Ogre, coming on to anybody he met.

Goal-based gaming is what WoW turned the MMO genre into, that's not what it originally was.

So if you are looking for a co-op questing experience, or have a group of max-level characters (because you and all your friends have spent 10 billion dollars purchasing WoW and all its expansions), then dungeon raids or loot-hoarding would be not all that different than your typical ARPG co-op experience.

But that wasn't what Everquest was originally about. It would be more like you and a group of friends traveling the world together, meeting new people, and getting into hilarious situations just for the hell of it, not because you had any specific goal in mind. Leveling up and doing quests would just be a bonus.

And that's what got me into WoW. I played on an RP server and had a lot of fun roleplaying, because that was what I enjoyed. When RP more or less died out after Burning Crusade I started trying to actually play. I tried PVP and raiding and while I did enjoy raiding as a tank or healer, DPS was mindboggingly dull. Eventually the casualization of raid content and even worse gear grind got to a point where I just didn't want to bother anymore. So I left for good. Still it was two overall fairly enjoyable years.

I still remember, one of the most difficult moments for me one of the few times I played WoW. This was back after Burning Crusade had been released, but perhaps before Wrath, I'm not sure. This was before the mindless grinding matchmaking dungeons you could use to level yourself up all the way to the highest level by drooling on yourself to victory. At that time, I mostly explored the world and did random quests to level up.

There were several cool areas along the way, but the coolest place I had discovered so far, around level 60, was this Arachnid zone called Silithis. It was this huge landscape of giant, gnarly tentacles, hives of dangerous insects, and mountains of bugs flying around that could be seen from miles away. It was a really cool place, and I wanted to discover it more. It was also the home of one of the original game's toughest dungeons, which I was excited to try.

I never got the chance, and the reason why is extremely cringeworthy, I'm warning you now.

You see, when it was just the original game, before any expansions, Silithus had some of the best gear and quest rewards for simply completing quests in that area. That's because it was one of the highest level areas, so it makes sense. But what Blizzard had done, with their expansion of Burning Crusade, was create a massive inflation of power so extreme that there was absolutely no reason to do any of the Kalimdor quests once you reached level 58 and could travel to the Outland. It was absolutely pointless to ever visit Kalimdor again. The weapon and armor rewards you got from completing the most basic, braindead quests, were tiers and tiers better than anything you could get, even in the most dangerous places on Kalimdor. Even if I had attempted to solo the Silithus dungeon ON MY OWN, the rewards I would get would pale in comparison to what I was getting for the most inane and simple quests in the Burning Crusade content.

Blizzard had obviously increased the power of their items astronomically for the BC, probably as an incentive for people to buy the expansion, as their (literally years) of hardwork grinding out the best gear through the hardest bosses would be totally meaningless, and they'd have to buy the expansion in order for their character not to be a uselessly weak scrub. So there was no point for me to do the Silithus content. In fact, there had been no point of me doing anything except reaching level 58 as fast as possible because apparently that's when the real game began.

Oh man, it was one of the most disappointing moments of my gaming life. I quit shortly after that.

[crazyroosterman]

To be honest I wouldn't play Everquest either in the year 2016, but it came out in 1999, so its very dated. It was the birth of a genre, what else would you expect? It set the tone for what became the most profitable gaming market of all time, and for that reason alone it was a masterpiece, even with all its bugs and design problems.

Aside from that, Everquest had very different goals as a game than modern MMOs do. It was much more about being part of a fantasy world, enjoying the scenery, and having a life outside of your own life than pointless achievements, leveling up, dungeon crawling, gear seeking, and high-level raiding. EVERYBODY role-played. There was no such thing as roleplay servers, people just knew that's what you did. My step-brother played a sexy rogue character and all the guys would shower his female character with gifts and levels just to win her favor. My dad made this giant ugly Ogre called "mesexy" (or something to that effect) who went around the world speaking in Ogre, coming on to anybody he met.

Goal-based gaming is what WoW turned the MMO genre into, that's not what it originally was.

So if you are looking for a co-op questing experience, or have a group of max-level characters (because you and all your friends have spent 10 billion dollars purchasing WoW and all its expansions), then dungeon raids or loot-hoarding would be not all that different than your typical ARPG co-op experience.

But that wasn't what Everquest was originally about. It would be more like you and a group of friends traveling the world together, meeting new people, and getting into hilarious situations just for the hell of it, not because you had any specific goal in mind. Leveling up and doing quests would just be a bonus.

And that's what got me into WoW. I played on an RP server and had a lot of fun roleplaying, because that was what I enjoyed. When RP more or less died out after Burning Crusade I started trying to actually play. I tried PVP and raiding and while I did enjoy raiding as a tank or healer, DPS was mindboggingly dull. Eventually the casualization of raid content and even worse gear grind got to a point where I just didn't want to bother anymore. So I left for good. Still it was two overall fairly enjoyable years.

I still remember, one of the most difficult moments for me one of the few times I played WoW. This was back after Burning Crusade had been released, but perhaps before Wrath, I'm not sure. This was before the mindless grinding matchmaking dungeons you could use to level yourself up all the way to the highest level by drooling on yourself to victory. At that time, I mostly explored the world and did random quests to level up.

There were several cool areas along the way, but the coolest place I had discovered so far, around level 60, was this Arachnid zone called Silithis. It was this huge landscape of giant, gnarly tentacles, hives of dangerous insects, and mountains of bugs flying around that could be seen from miles away. It was a really cool place, and I wanted to discover it more. It was also the home of one of the original game's toughest dungeons, which I was excited to try.

I never got the chance, and the reason why is extremely cringeworthy, I'm warning you now.

You see, when it was just the original game, before any expansions, Silithus had some of the best gear and quest rewards for simply completing quests in that area. That's because it was one of the highest level areas, so it makes sense. But what Blizzard had done, with their expansion of Burning Crusade, was create a massive inflation of power so extreme that there was absolutely no reason to do any of the Kalimdor quests once you reached level 58 and could travel to the Outland. It was absolutely pointless to ever visit Kalimdor again. The weapon and armor rewards you got from completing the most basic, braindead quests, were tiers and tiers better than anything you could get, even in the most dangerous places on Kalimdor. Even if I had attempted to solo the Silithus dungeon ON MY OWN, the rewards I would get would pale in comparison to what I was getting for the most inane and simple quests in the Burning Crusade content.

Blizzard had obviously increased the power of their items astronomically for the BC, probably as an incentive for people to buy the expansion, as their (literally years) of hardwork grinding out the best gear through the hardest bosses would be totally meaningless, and they'd have to buy the expansion in order for their character not to be a uselessly weak scrub. So there was no point for me to do the Silithus content. In fact, there had been no point of me doing anything except reaching level 58 as fast as possible because apparently that's when the real game began.

Oh man, it was one of the most disappointing moments of my gaming life. I quit shortly after that.

ugg that's awful blizzard really do seem to get away with a lot of bullshit don't they at times? makes me hope they don't screw over watch up.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

My most fond memories of World of Warcraft are from pre and during Burning Crusade. When I'd spend hours just hanging out with new friends I met doing silly things like getting drunk at a tavern or fishing in the Emerald Grove. We eventually did try to raid but it never went anywhere. Unfortunately, WoW was becoming more and more about raiding and less about socializing so my interest dived pretty hard later on and I moved over to Eve Online. Eve-O was....a very interesting experience but I can't return to it because it's just become so cutthroat that I don't want to waste my time on it.

And yea, that huge power increase in Burning Crusade was a pretty dumb design decision. One that Blizzard has repeatedly done since and no one ever calls them on it.

[Wingflier]

ugg that's awful blizzard really do seem to get away with a lot of bullshit don't they at times? makes me hope they don't screw over watch up.

It depends on what you mean by "screw it up".

The thing is, Blizzard has no problem making competitive games which require "skill". (And they clearly have no problem making PC games so mindless you can complete them on dance pads)

The issue is, there's no inbetween. It's either hardcore competitive to the point of insanity, or mindless grinding to the point of euthanasia.

Take Starcraft 1/2 for instance. Well Starcraft 1 was just an originally a fun little strategy game that kids played in the '90s together. Originally the game required so much micromanagement not because it was a design decision, but because it was made with a simplistic UI and RTS engine limitations which were common back in 1998. It's not like they were intentionally trying to make the game require high APM, that was more or less an accident. Then it started getting super competitive in South Korea, and Blizzard saw an opportunity for profit and that's where the game (and it's sequel) headed.

Suddenly, Blizzard's philosophy was now designed around requiring players to have a high APM on purpose (*facepalm*). I guess that increased the skill gap...or something. Anyway, as a result of these design decisions, competitive Starcraft players are in their prime during their young adult years and into their early twenties, when their reflexes and eye-hand coordination are at their peak. Once they start hitting their mid-to-late 20's, you can more or less kiss it goodbye. The physical and mental strain Blizzard puts on the player in order to keep the game "competitive" literally causes their biological window to be very short, a time after which they will no longer be able to keep up with all the incoming teenagers appearing on the scene.

So take your pick, either mindless grinding in the form of WoW or Diablo, or APM to the point of often causing carpel tunnel syndrome and hospitalizations in games like Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3.

There's no middle ground.

Oh, there *was* going to be a middle ground, in the form of Overwatch. With its cartoony style and Team Fortress 2 like mechanics, it was the perfect casual shooter with a competitive side for the people who wanted it. That had been the original design goal, and it was announced to be free to play to facilitate that. Everyone could get a group of friends together and have fun in a goofy, intense, and mildly competitive arena setting with tons of different classes and content to keep them busy. But then! Suddenly Blizzard decided that's not what they were going to do anymore. The game needed to be COMPETITIVE, so they removed the free to play and added a $60 price tag over night (I'm not making this up). Now suddenly it's going to be the new COD or Counter-Strike of the cartoony Blizzard world, and only the serious pay for entrance to this grand arena. Anyway, more facepalm from my end. Initially I was very excited but I no longer have an interest in it.

[Misery]

ugg that's awful blizzard really do seem to get away with a lot of bullshit don't they at times? makes me hope they don't screw over watch up.

It depends on what you mean by "screw it up".

The thing is, Blizzard has no problem making competitive games which require "skill". (And they clearly have no problem making PC games so mindless you can complete them on dance pads)

The issue is, there's no inbetween. It's either hardcore competitive to the point of insanity, or mindless grinding to the point of euthanasia.

Take Starcraft 1/2 for instance. Well Starcraft 1 was just an originally a fun little strategy game that kids played in the '90s together. Originally the game required so much micromanagement not because it was a design decision, but because it was made with a simplistic UI and RTS engine limitations which were common back in 1998. It's not like they were intentionally trying to make the game require high APM, that was more or less an accident. Then it started getting super competitive in South Korea, and Blizzard saw an opportunity for profit and that's where the game (and it's sequel) headed.

Suddenly, Blizzard's philosophy was now designed around requiring players to have a high APM on purpose (*facepalm*). I guess that increased the skill gap...or something. Anyway, as a result of these design decisions, competitive Starcraft players are in their prime during their young adult years and into their early twenties, when their reflexes and eye-hand coordination are at their peak. Once they start hitting their mid-to-late 20's, you can more or less kiss it goodbye. The physical and mental strain Blizzard puts on the player in order to keep the game "competitive" literally causes their biological window to be very short, a time after which they will no longer be able to keep up with all the incoming teenagers appearing on the scene.

So take your pick, either mindless grinding in the form of WoW or Diablo, or APM to the point of often causing carpel tunnel syndrome and hospitalizations in games like Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3.

There's no middle ground.

Oh, there *was* going to be a middle ground, in the form of Overwatch. With its cartoony style and Team Fortress 2 like mechanics, it was the perfect casual shooter with a competitive side for the people who wanted it. That had been the original design goal, and it was announced to be free to play to facilitate that. Everyone could get a group of friends together and have fun in a goofy, intense, and mildly competitive arena setting with tons of different classes and content to keep them busy. But then! Suddenly Blizzard decided that's not what they were going to do anymore. The game needed to be COMPETITIVE, so they removed the free to play and added a $60 price tag over night (I'm not making this up). Now suddenly it's going to be the new COD or Counter-Strike of the cartoony Blizzard world, and only the serious pay for entrance to this grand arena. Anyway, more facepalm from my end. Initially I was very excited but I no longer have an interest in it.

BLASTED MODIFY BUTTON.

*ahem*

I do agree, it's kinda bad what Blizzard has done to competitive games in some ways.

Starcraft being by far the worse.  I mean, that APM crap... the people who play that obsessively seriously dont realize what that's doing to them, they really dont.   They think there's JUST carpal tunnel syndrome and that as long as they're doing specific exercises and whatnot, and as long as they arent experiencing very specific symptoms, then of COURSE they're okay!  But that's not the case.  There's alot more it could do, and it can REALLY hurt when it does happen.  I should know. 

But wether it's carpal tunnel or something else, there's a reason why there's alot of warnings these days about repetitive motions like constant mouse use and all of that stuff.  It does so much more damage than people realize. 

The bit about coordination and reflexes, I have no idea how exactly those are affected by that.  I know people say that once you get to a certain point it just all goes bad, but that never made sense to me.  I'm 34 myself, and I'm *very* fast, certainly faster than I used to be. Useful in fighters, as most opponents cannot match that. Coordination too really. But then I do this stuff constantly, yet never to the point of great frustration/pain (I'll always stop before I hit either). I dont practice these things like 12 freaking hours a day to the point where it becomes my life. So yeah, I've no idea how any of that works.  But if they're getting super mentally strained, I can see THAT maybe doing some damage of that sort.  But I also dont see the point of playing games to the point of hitting that strain.  If you're at all stressed.... it's time to stop and take a break, really it is.  If you've got pain going, that's another time to stop and take a break.   I suspect, though, that these pro-type players for games like Starcraft just keep bloody well going anyway.  Despite that that sort of way of approaching it will hurt them.

But Blizzard happily APMs the crap out of those people anyway even though, surely, they realize the damage it's going to do.

And to me, this is also stupid from a conceptual point of view.  This is Starcraft.  It is an RTS.  They treat it like it's a damn fighting game, except one where you have to hit the button 1000000 times to move instead of just pushing left/right and holding (why, exactly, does everyone do that in Starcraft anyway?  That seems to be where like 90% of the APM comes from, in the fact that they click 10 squillion move orders to the same spot when you need only click ONCE...).  When a game is about how speedy and twitchy you can be.... I'm sorry, but it's NOT much of a strategy game. 

Now as far as Overwatch.... yeah, I'm not too sure on that one.

On one hand, I kinda like the idea of Blizzard's take on the Team Fortress idea. 

On the other hand, it's an FPS and in my case it might just be WAY too much of a "twitchy" FPS to me.  All of my twitch skill in oother genres means a whole lot of nothing in the FPS genre, which I'm notoriously bad at, because of my bizarre inaccuracy with the computer mouse.    Though to be fair I've said that about other games and ended up doing fine, but still, I assume the worst.

Though that's just me.   In terms of the overall game... I really would like to see more of a combination of the competitive AND the casual.  Not just a hyper focus on one or the other.  Give something to EVERY type of player!  It's not THAT damn hard.  Even the fighting game genre manages THAT.

I think I'm at least going to try the game though when it comes out.   Yes, I"m aware of the cost of it, but in my case that doesnt matter.  I can at least give it a go and then rant about it on the forums here for the benefit and/or annoyance of anyone else that might be interested in it.