World of Warcraft

[nobler]

I gave the beta a go a few weeks back and although the new talent system is actually very good; the ability to be able to swap around various abilities on the go for certain fights and occasions and the removal of the cookie cutter spec is definitely a welcome one, but the game just feels so, so tired. I went into the new zones: same old, kill this, pick up that, nothing really changes, boring environments and i just felt, why on earth am I still doing this?

I did a dungeon too, with no add ons and in crappy cataclysm blue gear and completed it in less than 10 minutes, not having to learn any boss strategy or anything, there was just an incredible lack of depth. Of course, keeping an eight year old game fresh must be an incredibly difficult task, but I really don't think they help themselves at times, with consistently bizarre decisions over the direction of the game over the last three or four years.

The community has gone to pot too, It's just not a nice place to be.

[Designer1]

GW2 will give it a good run for it's money, the beta has been excellent and the no subscription fee will no doubt be a pull.

I still play WoW from time to time though, and will definitely be picking up Mists and getting at least one of my many 85's to 90.

[Davkaus]

I can't see myself even bothering with this, due to feeling similar to Nobler.

It's obviously going to feel old by this point, as it is, but it's becoming more and more noticable. This time a couple of years ago I'd booked a couple of weeks off work for the Cata launch, the build up to that was pretty exciting, with them redoing the entire world, and letting us fight one of the biggest and baddest villains in the Warcraft lore. This time....the big feature is another new race, and **** Pokemon.

I don't necessarily want WoW to die, if people still enjoy it then great, I just wish other MMOs would stop trying to clone it so we can have some more good games.

The community has gone to pot too, It's just not a nice place to be.

Blizzard communities have been pretty toxic for a long time. Diablo is also awful, SC2 has some good elements, as its suffered less crossover with the WoW audience. I think there are only two communities worse than WoW:

1) Youtube

2) Every DoTA-like game ever.

[Designer1]

The best MMO community i've ever played with is LOTRO, by an absolute mile.

[villarule123]

I still play LOTRO, the community is amazing (genuinely haven't come across any clearings in the woods on it) and it's a better game than WoW these days, IMO of course.

I might level to 90 just for the hell of it, but there's no chance I'll stick around. It has a knob community of about 95% and is ja game for the elitists. Expansions are fun at the beginning though, I'll give it that.

[The_Rev]

The best MMO community i've ever played with is LOTRO, by an absolute mile.

[Risso]

The best MMO community i've ever played with is LOTRO, by an absolute mile.

The MMO slag. I feel used.

[Designer1]

The best MMO community i've ever played with is LOTRO, by an absolute mile.

The MMO slag. I feel used.

[Gillz]

Really glad i got out of WoW when i did (halfway through wrath of the Lich King) slightly annoyed with myself cause i completed the Colosseum 25 man raid but left the game before they realese ICC. Had been playing since just before the start of TBC. I really enjoyed The Burning Crusades and the raids / end game although never got to fight Illidan, only got up to the big guy by the tree( can't remember his name). Looking back i had great fun throughout and made alot of friends who i miss talking to and raiding with etc however when i look at the game now i hardly recognise it. shit community, weird expansions and seemingly uneventful raids and dungeons and unbalanced pvp (so ive been told) Despite all this thought i always feel tempted to replay it and see whats new.

[Designer1]

Patch 5.0.4 is out

Bit of a sod having to respec all 6 of my toons, but I do like how the new talents work so I suppose it has to be done.

[nobler]

I recommend logging in and checking out the new abilities, some of them are insane Fair play to Blizz they've gone a bit nuts with this expansion and they're clearly having fun with the classes as opposed to being ultra serious.

The glyph system is more or less utility and gimmicks now, instead of dps buffs and stuff and it seems quite good. i.e. a hunter can unleash a stampede, which releases your entire stable of pets on a target. You can engulf a target in a crow attack and an ability to set loose a random giant version of any beast in Azeroth. All classes seem to have crazy gimmicks in the lesser glyph slots.

Rogues have an ability to pickpocket a target, which then duplicates yourself as your pickpocketed target. At the moment there are raid size nagas running around the major cities.

From a shaman healer point of view, some interesting stuff. They seem to have made totems more useful in the fact that they no longer offer buffs that everyone else has. They offer short term buffs to groups, which buff raids with lightning attacks and stuff like that.

But yeah, a pretty funny period at the moment.

[Designer1]

I've been on and checked out the new talents. Need to spend a bit of time playing around with them, but I agree about Blizz having fun with it. I also like the idea that the talents are more geared towards individual play style rather than the cookie cutter builds of old.

[limpid]

So they've previously removed class specialities and now build specialities. Might as well have all the characters the same and all the fight actions do random animations. I suppose they can go for the console market now they've dumbed it down so it's not only rogues with a single button. Pity.

[nobler]

I'm not sure what you mean, Limpid. You still pick which of the three specializations of each class you want to be but instead of having the old talent tree (where let's face it, everyone chose the same spec) you can now choose one of three talents, in each tier. Usually there will be a pvpish one, then the other two will be pve utility. It's more flexible imo, and you'll find yourself speccing differently for certain encounters, i.e you could have set your talents to raid heal, then swap over during a different phase of the raid to tank heal. I agree some might not like that, as they might think that if you choose to be a raid healer, you should stay that way, but that can still happen, it just offers more choice.

I'm not particularly defending Blizz, because i also believe they have made strange decisions in the past, but this is a genuine move forward i believe from the outdated system which saw everyone running around with the same spec. I can only really talk from a healer point of view as I only raid with healers but each three that I play, feel completely varied and very unique, probably more so than they ever have done, from the days of one button shaman chain healing or pally flash of light spamming.

[limpid]

It's not offering more choice though, it's avoiding having to make choices. As I read what's written above it's making all the characters able to do everything. You used to have to specialise and if you wanted to play in different ways, you had to level another character. It's all easy mode now. Perhaps I'm not understanding the game, but I stopped playing when they started diluting the classes. A cloth wearer heals OR does damage. An armour wearer tanks. A rogue presses his button. I remember the arguments when the guild used to try and make Sam heal when he was specced as a shadow priest.

Nays posted a video ages back showing him tanking with his warlock, that was when I realised I wouldn't be going back.

[nobler]

It all boils down to opinions and personal play style. There are many things wrong with WoW, PVP is horrible, difficultly settings for raids for Pug groups to easily defeat bosses and earn the same rewards as dedicated top guilds, flying mounts destroying skirmishes in open worlds, all sorts of overly casual events and freebie epics.

I just can't see the problems with the new specilization/speccing and class identity though, I really believe it's as a good as ever, if not better. They've condensed a lot of things and I agree it's a lot easier to 'pick up and play' and easier for the casual, however they did remove useless stats, that just clogged things up. Again, that's my personal opinion. The newer additions of mastery/haste balancing, stuff like that made the parsing even more complex, so the sciences of maximising dps and stuff like that are still just as complex and a good player will always still out do an average one.

I don't really know too much about the warlock tanking. A cloth wearer can't tank a raid, or even a five man dungeon, it's simply not possible. The vid was possibly a glitch of some sort. That said, even back in the vanilla days there were certain Warlock tanking occasions in raids, when you'd use locks to tank the spell damage from a boss as they had higher hp and damage reducing abilities, compared to other dps.

Anyway, I dunno why i'm defending this game, I hate the way its gone too in all honesty. There's absolutely no doubt that it's an almost completely different game now compared to what it was 6 years ago.

[Risso]

It's not offering more choice though, it's avoiding having to make choices. As I read what's written above it's making all the characters able to do everything. You used to have to specialise and if you wanted to play in different ways, you had to level another character. It's all easy mode now. Perhaps I'm not understanding the game, but I stopped playing when they started diluting the classes. A cloth wearer heals OR does damage. An armour wearer tanks. A rogue presses his button. I remember the arguments when the guild used to try and make Sam heal when he was specced as a shadow priest.

Nays posted a video ages back showing him tanking with his warlock, that was when I realised I wouldn't be going back.

I've been saying that for years Simon, and made the same point about it heading towards the console market!

Oh well, at least we played it when it was genuinely fresh and challenging. I liked the fact that as a healer, I could do all of the top end raids with a guild, but that if I wanted to do an easier 5 man I could use my DPS gear and do an OK job. All of the characters and races had their strengths and weaknesses, and good players learned how to form a good team as we did when we finished BWL.

Oh, and have the freakin' Pandas made an appearance yet?

[The_Rev]

A demonology Warlock could tank pretty much any 5 man if he specced for it. You would do **** all in the way of damage (siphon life and drain life spam) and it would take you longer to get aggro than a proper tank, but it was certainly possible.

Havent looked at the new talents at all, I really liked what Blizzard did with Cataclysm though. I presume they are now going for the type of thing they did with Diablo 3?

[maqroll]

Really glad i got out of WoW when i did (halfway through wrath of the Lich King) slightly annoyed with myself cause i completed the Colosseum 25 man raid but left the game before they realese ICC. Had been playing since just before the start of TBC. I really enjoyed The Burning Crusades and the raids / end game although never got to fight Illidan, only got up to the big guy by the tree( can't remember his name). Looking back i had great fun throughout and made alot of friends who i miss talking to and raiding with etc however when i look at the game now i hardly recognise it. shit community, weird expansions and seemingly uneventful raids and dungeons and unbalanced pvp (so ive been told) Despite all this thought i always feel tempted to replay it and see whats new.

I played from just after the BC release through Cataclysm...got fed up with all the assholes, and the impending Kung Fu Panda expansion, which I just cannot take seriously...the game was sooo immersive, and for a while, I was really having great fun, had some good pals on there.

I guess I just burned out. But I do miss Azeroth sometimes, TBH...But I'm finished with it.

[Risso]

I did like the fact that you could get pugs from other servers, I'd have loved that back in the day when it was impossible to get a spot in a 5 man as DPS unless you were a rogue or mage.