I've noticed nothing but hate and massive crying about how World of Warcraft is too easy and casual. I've been playing since 2005 and Blizzard's continuing support for the king of MMOs has kept me playing ever since, so I'm at a loss for why people would seek to bash the game for not giving players enough or making the experience too easy.
The main argument is that you see too many people running around with epics these days due to how easy the dungeons are. Yeah, okay, the difficulty has been axed quite a bit since the vanilla WoW days of C'Thun and Ragnaros. But Blizzard's new philosophy is to make the dungeons beatable for casuals while giving us encounters that can be tackled if we want that extra challenge. Based on all these complaints, it's as if people are playing a game on easy mode only, and then complaining that the developer didn't add any challenge.
Heard of Yogg+0? It's Yogg-Saron, the final boss of Ulduar, with all of his watcher adds. According to Stars, the Chinese guild that was the first in the world to do this encounter, Yogg+0 is the hardest raid in WoW's history right now. In an interview with MMO-Champion, they said, "Definitely, this one is harder than any other bosses in the history of WoW, the Sunwell is not even comparable with it. Algalon too is considered to be incredibly difficult - Blizzard christened him "Algalon the Raid Destroyer".
So you see that while the base of WoW's raids are basically accomplishable, there's significant challenge for those that want it. I think it's great that high-level content and gear isn't there for the hardcore WoW nerds anymore, and that everyone has a chance at getting it.
princeofshapeir
Blizzard's support? What? They have been making millions/billions of dollars off of it, how would supporting a game that has been popular since it's start make them unselfish and non-evil?
Blizzard is milking it completely (and hence are not really supporting it at all). They release WOTLK with zero new endgame content and the only new encounters they did pull out of their behinds all used older models and old mechanics. Of course that isn't giving players enough, it didn't even give bad players enough.
The new philososy is just a bad reason to skip out on content they should have given with the release.
Did anyone else get the email from Blizzard that they had changed their 'philosophy' and were making the game dumbarse easy with no new content? Because I sure didn't! No, I had to wait till after I brought WOTLK to see this new area they were taking the game. Last time I checked even Nintendo released information on their new direction, specifically noting that they were aiming for different audiences.
But no, Blizzard couldn't tell me that, 'oh btw we are making WoW into a social networking and mini-games game and moving away from the MMORPG genre while leaving it in ruins because everyone just wants to copy us now anyway'.
Because jumping in tanks and shooting people is what I do in Mario Kart, I don't play MMORPGs for that.
Yer, I've heard of Yogg+0, I've heard how only Chinese who have no lives can beat it. Hell, even Ensidia and EJ forums had NO idea how to beat it without exploits.
And remember how I noted, 'moving away from MMORPGs'. That is included in this, removing a certain element and saying, 'OKAY, try our easy-arse, badly designed encounter NOW' is not content. Nor is having ONE hard element in the game, that has no real effect on gear (only real effect is epeen points that don't even matter) is not in the nature of MMORPGs. Having 90% solo content is not in the nature of a MMORPG, and another 9% on content where you don't even need friends, you just need to team up with random people. THAT is why people are asking, "why isn't WoW fun anymore? Why aren't I making friends like I used to?" Because the core of what makes a MMORPG game is gone, a MMORPG is meant to be a world outside a world.
* Where you can turn a corner and find something different instead of linear hallways of small instances that were meant to be whole zones (Azjol-Nerub)
* You actually have to team up with people you don't know to get things done (most zones in wotlk are completely soloable and dead of any activaty
* Progression required long hard work that took you on epic questlines and journeys to get (BTW, I was a casual in Vanilla, so you can't throw this "oh it doesnt count for you because you are hardcore and DON'T UNDERSTAND)
* The world actually felt like a world because it attracted you back there rather then going afk on your mount in dalaran
Sorry, but making an encounter near-impossible doesn't make it a solidly built boss. Either way, millions of people that still have turn on D and A will still be having Yoggy for his important epics anyway.
Raiding is easy because you can step in and get epic loots, the game ceases to be a journey, one where you have to make friends, one that is a world in itself, and one with a community.
Also: World of Warcraft got a 9.6 from GameSpot, 2004's GOTY, and its expansions have all been AAA (BC - 9.2, WOTLK - 9.0). Also, WOTLK was the fastest-selling PC title of all time at launch, breaking a record previously set by Burning Crusade. It's very impressive to say the least that WoW has enjoyed such critical acclaim and popularity for five years. princeofshapeir
You cannot at all trust normal gaming sites for MMORPG reviews.
WoW has enjoyed acclaim and popularity for many reasons, many of which aren't at all because of the current state of Blizzard.
* Its players. People spread the word about WoW, and it got out. WoW was far from polish when it first began. I was there, through the lagfests, through the hours and days at which it was offline.
* No other MMORPGs at the time. WoW came at an important time in history. There was nothing else to support gamers, Everquest was too old, so was UO and no other MMORPG was good enough. WC3 players also took it on.
* The Internet. We all know of the massive hits on youtube, stuff like Leeroy Jenkins, that stuff then got into the main media. Again this has to do with players, people who loved the game made stuff from it and for it and it grew from there.
* Other MMORPGs. WoW is nothing original. It polished what other games had already done and made it more accessible to more gamers.
And yes, it was 2004 GOTY,
in 2004
if you knew anything about the genre (since you obviously don't, you have no idea to why WoW is considered bad and you have no idea how MMORPG reviews work) you'd know that a MMORPG game changes... just like WoW has. 2004 WoW isn't the 2009 WoW, and you know this yet still bring up GOTY awards from 2004 to try and justify a bad game.
btw, I have much more where this post came from, so feel free to try and argue against me.
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