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Buchalter
Joined: 23 Jun 2004
Posts: 257
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 Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:44 pm Post subject: WoW - two months later... |
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Well, it's been two months since I left the world of Norrath for the World of Azeroth. A few people have asked me if it's still all it's cracked up to be... and my short answer is, Yes. I started to type a long drawn out explanation of the game, but I figure if you want that you can get it at any other website a million times over.
So... if you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
Like any other game, WoW has it's good and bad points. I'm sure you've heard the bad points, and I can confirm them. Yes, server stability is a BIG problem for Blizzard right now. That extremely ironic, since EQ2 Beta was plagued by instabilty which they seemed to do an excellent job of correcting upon release. WoW on the other hand had a very stable Beta, but since release the servers have been crashing like a lead balloon.
And honestly I don't buy the "We didn't expect this many people" excuse. I call Bullsh!t on that one. Blizzard should just admit - this is our first venture into a game of this magnatude and we are learning as we go. There's no shame in that. Sony had to learn too, and I'm sure EQ had it's share of problems early on. If the servers are still having these problems in 4 or 6 more months... then I'll start to get impatient. But for now I'm dealing with it. Besides... my server, Alleria, has been one of the more stable ones - so I've not lost hardly any play time! /knockonwood
I was asked if the game is "dumbed down" as much as people say. My answer to that would be - no more than EQ2. Is it as mind-numbingly frustrating as EQ1? Absolutely not. If that means it's dumbed down then I say "Dumb it down some more!" I can honestly say I DO NOT miss sitting in one spot for hours (sometimes days) waiting for a named MOB that's part of a quest to spawn just so some jack@ss can gank it from me. In WoW most named MOBs spawn on the same timetables as every other MOB in the zone - most within 10 to 15 minutes. And they Always drop the quest item. None of this "Kill the named five times and still it doesn't drop what you need..." Plus, if there are four people in the group doing the quest, it drops four quest items. You don't have to camp it four times to make sure everyone gets their item.
Anyone who says they would rather sit in Plane of Hate for three weeks camping for the last piece of the Ranger epic is either a masochist, or a damn dirty liar. Sorry - I have more important things to do with my life. Staring at a computer screen for dozens of hours waiting for one MOB to show up isn't my idea of being "hardcore". (Yeah - that used to be me... I cannot even imagine what possessed me to do that?!?  )
Anyway... the game is fun. I think the genre in general is headed in a healthy direction. (that includes EQ2 as well as WoW) If Sigil wants to create Vanguard in the "old EQ" tradition, more power to them. I'm sure they will find their customer base - but it surely won't be me.
Loving WoW and wishing you were all there with me! I would be lying if I didn't say that the urge to reactivate the EQ2 account doesn't come over me from time to time. I miss gaming with you guys. It was some of the most fun I've ever had in a game. I'm making new friends, but I still think about my old ES Buds! Take Care. Enjoy Norrath!
~ a Ranger formerly known as Buch...
now a damn, dirty Pally named Rogar |
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Mandaar
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| Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 7:37 am Post subject: ! |
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Buchalter you seeleeeee rangah!
Glad to hear you're having fun. I'm still back in the old game and still loving it. Yes, I'm probably sick in the head. But, I can't give up the challenge. We're inches from Txevu and poking away at the old hotkeys.
I have a 49 rogue in Razor's Edge on your server oddly enough. But, I couldn't escape the original - its too late for me young ranger
=P
Aaaanyways, we've missed you and I'm sad you're gone from MY home, but I'm happy that you're still out there creating corpse piles. Have fun! |
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Kaerai
Guild Officer
Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 502
Location: UTAH
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| Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 9:02 am Post subject: |
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EQ2 is going great for me. There is not a moment that I find myself utterly bored even if it's killing gray mobs to finishe some dinky book quest I am addicted to! I really enjoy the game and I am just baffled at how much content there is and how even if I created 4 alts that I would still not experience the majority of things there are to do. It's funny seeing all the people who had to level up to 50 so fast wandering around looking at all the stuff they missed. We are taking our time and enjoying everything the game has to offer half of us haven't even reached 30 yet and it isnt from lack of playing! It's great.
Glad WoW is going great for you. I actually like the fact it takes more effort to complete a quest than to just get what you need time after time. Makes it all the more exciting when you do finish the quest. See WoW to me seems like its spoon fed. You don't have the quest...NO PROBLEM let someone else do the quest getting and you can leech off their quest journal. Need a named mob? No problem every 15 minutes he'll pop and always drop what you need.  Just too dumbed down for me. I love the complexity of EQ2 quests. There is no waiting for days for the named to spawn like in EQ1. Sometimes you have to kill PH's for about 2 hours, but it will spawn. I have yet to see a named that doesn't give you quest credit upon the first kill. Only common mobs do the random reward. Some quests do suck (like kill 10 deathly scarabs and you don't even get a hug for finishing it), but for the most part all of them are well thought out and have fun story lines to follow. However, I am not saying that I wouldnt have fun with WoW if I gave it a shot. I am sure I'd have fun with it hands down, but I just find EQ2 to be more appealing use of my time  . And iIf you ever want to come back to EQ2 I have a level 3 alt evil waiting for a friend! 
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Buchalter
Joined: 23 Jun 2004
Posts: 257
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| Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:19 am Post subject: |
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| Kaerai wrote: | | See WoW to me seems like its spoon fed. You don't have the quest...NO PROBLEM let someone else do the quest getting and you can leech off their quest journal. Need a named mob? No problem every 15 minutes he'll pop and always drop what you need. Just too dumbed down for me. I love the complexity of EQ2 quests... |
Make no mistake - just because you don't have to camp named MOBs for hours on end, does NOT mean that the quests are not complex. As a matter of fact, I have quests that have been in my log for weeks because they keep on going and going.
The way most WoW quests work is, you start with a real easy task - the quest giver might send you to another town to talk to another NPC. Once you talk to that guy he furthers the quest along to the next step... maybe you have to go kill 15 of something, or collect 10 gadgets, or whatever. Then you come back and he asks you to take what you collected to another guy in another zone. Then that guy tells you to go kill the named MOB and bring back his head. So you do that and they he send you to the first guy to tell him that it's all done...
You get the idea. So even tho, yeah, I don't have to wait two hours for the named, you still invest a lot of time in the quests. And especially when you don't know where you're going or where to find the MOBs... you spend a lot of time just exploring and looking for what you need. (IF you don't cheat and look things up on a spoiler site - which I can honestly say I have not done once.)
As for sharing quests... you really very rarely do that. Because if I'm on the thrid or fourth step in a quest I can no longer share it with you because you haven't done the first parts. The only time you can share a quest is if it's a one-step deal (which are either really low level or really rare) or if you are still on the first step of a multi-step quest.
Plus, the time I save not camping for quest MOBs, I get to spend doing... MORE QUESTS!  |
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Buchalter
Joined: 23 Jun 2004
Posts: 257
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| Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:26 am Post subject: Re: ! |
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| Mandaar wrote: | Buchalter you seeleeeee rangah!
Glad to hear you're having fun. I'm still back in the old game and still loving it. Yes, I'm probably sick in the head. But, I can't give up the challenge. We're inches from Txevu and poking away at the old hotkeys.
I have a 49 rogue in Razor's Edge on your server oddly enough. But, I couldn't escape the original - its too late for me young ranger
=P
Aaaanyways, we've missed you and I'm sad you're gone from MY home, but I'm happy that you're still out there creating corpse piles. Have fun! |
/wave Mandaar !!!
Glad to hear EQ1 is still going well for you guys. It's nice to see that AD is still going strong under Fobas - do me a favor and go AFK just to piss him off and tell him it's from Buchalter!
Funny thing - I quit playing on the Silver Hand server shortly after I joined Demon Knights - which is the Horde side of Razor's Edge. I was a Tauren Shaman. It turned out a bunch of my real-life friends were playing WoW and they were all on the Alleria server playing Alliance. So I rerolled a Human Pally there and that's where I've been playing ever since.
Say "Hi" to all the old AD gang for me, and /lick Nerple if you get a chance... just be sure to rince your mouth out afterward... you don't know where that Nerple's been!!!
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Kaerai
Guild Officer
Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 502
Location: UTAH
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| Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Ahhh okay I get it. See I thought that the quest sharing was automatic. For instance if you had the quest regardless of step then the person automatically got the quest in their journal. |
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Nerple
Joined: 28 Jun 2004
Posts: 38
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 10:32 am Post subject: |
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Buchalter, I have been everywhere!!!!
Including playing on Silverhand, I have 2 main characters on Silver Hand. Nerple (60 Hunter) and Aachen (36 Pally).
But lately I have gone back to EQ1 as well. WOW is fun, but once you get to 60 not a hell of a lot to do.
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The Ling Slayer - The Licker
Appotus Dominus - Vazaelle
Nerple - Silver Hand |
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Buchalter
Joined: 23 Jun 2004
Posts: 257
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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NERPLE!
Yeah, I started on Silver Hand with the old Razor's Edge folks, but I soon moved to Alleria because a group of Real Life friends were playing there. Lately I have been playing on the Kargoth server because Alleria has been having a lot of stability issues. So when Alleria goes down I play on Kargoth.
My main is a 48 Human Pally, and I've got a 19 Tauren Hunter that I like a lot too. But I've played tons of alts of every race/class combo you can think of!
If you're ever bored log on Alleria and look for Rogar on the Alliance side or Nugent on the Horde! |
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Sathak
Joined: 24 Jun 2004
Posts: 65
Location: NYC
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| Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:27 am Post subject: |
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| Kaerai wrote: | | Glad WoW is going great for you. I actually like the fact it takes more effort to complete a quest than to just get what you need time after time. Makes it all the more exciting when you do finish the quest. See WoW to me seems like its spoon fed. |
Keep in mind that time-consuming doesn't equate to challenging for a lot of people. It just makes me think of stuff like the cleric epic. The early steps were simple, yet might require many hours of clearing easy mobs in the hopes of getting the mob you were after to spawn. For three or six or thirty hours, you weren't really enjoying the game at all. Bleh, spare me from that sort of 'challenge' ever again!
I would agree that WoW can be described as 'easy', in that you can 'beat' it pretty quick and it doesn't have very many roadblocks to progression. As much as I enjoyed EQ and was willing to live with the timesinks because the game was fun, nowadays I'm glad there are games like WoW that allow you to progress at a pretty fast pace. For those of us who don't want to spend lots of hours grinding away, it's perfect.
Tradeskills are very nicely done and can generate decent cash. Quests are pretty straightforward for the most part and many of them provide very good rewards aside from the exp boost they usually give. It is not unusual to get an honest-to-goodness upgrade from a quest! And instanced missions provide lots of drops for a group. No more having to farm Raid_Mob_01 for weeks on end in order to gear up your guild. Heck, two of us (levels 32 and 33) were walking a level 17 friend through a level 18 instanced dungeon, and we all came out of it with upgrades, even the level 30s!
Fights are short and intense, and there are some named mobs in instances that do some hysterical things, like turning you into a little lamb!
I think the only downside is that the game caters too well to soloers. You don't develop the sense of community you did with EQ. Players will run up and demand groups so you can all complete a short quest (which becomes utterly trivial with three or four people), then disband and disappear once you're done, ten minutes later. Very little chat or interaction. But being as I usually join these games to play with friends that hasn't affected me. We can plow through quests and move on to tougher ones earlier, so the challenge is still there and the fun of grouping is as well.
All in all it's like City of Heroes. It isn't meant to be played like original EQ was, and you get people who charge through the levels and then look up and wonder what to do next. They suddenly realize that these games are designed so that leveling isn't a grind and it isn't just a means to an end-- it's the main part of the game itself. I no longer feel as if I'm missing out because I didn't spend hour after hour grinding away in some corner of the game world. While I still don't see myself as a long-term MMO player, I'm hopeful that this is the future of online RPGs.
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Formerly Lizarde/Miltorrus of <Epic Shadows> in EQ
Now wasting my time in WOW
Running the guild <Hugs> on Stormrage US |
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