Poll: Do you consider World of Warcraft to be a GOOD game?

[BloatedGuppy]

Snip

Because Justin Bieber is the most obvious example of "popularity", yes? Because quality things are never popular? You're better than that, Silvanus. This is some shameful cherry picking.

If it was sarcasm, then I'll slink off back to my shame-hole. There are those, however, who consider popularity the only real metric, because it's nice and demonstrable-- it's not too out-there that that was a genuinely held position.

I remember having a long and painful argument on this very forum, a while ago, with somebody who believed earnestly that the measure of artistic quality rested in how much money something made.

For the sake of devil's advocacy, "popularity" is at least an observable and quantifiable metric, unlike virtually every other indicator of quality. I don't believe in "It's popular, so it's good", but neither do I believe that popularity isn't admissable in a debate over quality, either. For example, if I was a huge Justin Bieber fan, and offered up "he's popular" as a metric to determine his excellence, and your best reply was "Well, it's Bieber, he sucks", I would be presenting the more cogent argument.

 

[visiblenoise]

Yea, I think so. I don't know about the state of it now, but I was gifted one year of it when it was still on Burning Crusade and loved it. From time to time I still have a yearning to play it, or something like it, but I just don't think any game is worth a subscription fee.

 

[zumbledum]

I thoroughly i enjoyed my time with it , but no i wouldn't say the game play of it is any good at all. it no coincidence MMORPG went to MMO with WOW, they took out the game and its not for rp'ers anymore.

 

[Silvanus]

Because Justin Bieber is the most obvious example of "popularity", yes? Because quality things are never popular? You're better than that, Silvanus. This is some shameful cherry picking.

I'm sorry. It was a joke.

I'd hardly say it was "rare" for something with few or no redeeming qualities to be popular, though.

For the sake of devil's advocacy, "popularity" is at least an observable and quantifiable metric, unlike virtually every other indicator of quality. I don't believe in "It's popular, so it's good", but neither do I believe that popularity isn't admissable in a debate over quality, either. For example, if I was a huge Justin Bieber fan, and offered up "he's popular" as a metric to determine his excellence, and your best reply was "Well, it's Bieber, he sucks", I would be presenting the more cogent argument.

The latter wouldn't be my argument-- I'd appeal to influence within the genre, emotional power, uniqueness, lyrical wordplay, and even technical impressiveness before resorting to that.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

It has good aspects to it, but I found it... lacking, largely. Well, more so I found the world boring and the gameplay, okay, but just not enough to get my interest.

Yet, FF14 does, so whatever. I think the animations and emotes are more enjoyable, as are chocobos, which make it cooler.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

It's good in that it's functional, delivers what it promises, has sold millions of copies and of course it's wildly successful. That being said I wouldn't call it a fun game. I've never played it online with other people so maybe that would make it more entertaining. When I played I soloed and it was enjoyable up until I started paying for it. I just never really cared for the repetitive combat...What really annoys me is how many JRPGs seem to have taken inspiration from it but those are different games.

 

[Nazulu]

Where is the "it used to be" option? I enjoyed it when it came out and it was fairly challenging. After awhile it became too easy with the extra items and then just became a chore. And any game that allows the use of real money to get extra or earlier stuff instantly makes my shit-list. Fuck Blizzard South!

 

[Politrukk]

Whereas most posts have an obligatory xkcd, I feel like this one deserves a Dark Legacy Comic:

I spent 6 years raiding pretty much every night with a guild that was always ranked either number 1 or 2 on our server, and the highs (and lows!) of that time were completely different from any other game I've ever played, before or since. I miss the feeling of some of those epic kills, but I don't miss the grind, or the arguments on teamspeak when we'd had a bad night's raiding. Also everyone I used to be guilded with has become disillusioned and quit (with a few serial relapsers!) so it just wouldn't be the same if I went back to it, even though every new expansion release does make me think about re-subbing. So it was a very good experience for me, and yes I'd definitely call it a good game when I played.

I absolutely forgot about this comic thank you.


On topic, when WoW was released it was undeniably a great game, solid in every regard, it got shoddier per expansion (with the exception of WOTLK).

But Vanilla WoW was an absolutely solid game and I wish they had expanded more inside that world instead of continuously building new ones, the original world was great and if they had discovered phasing sooner I imagine we could have had a very different thing going with expansions.


Lore wise solid
Gameplay wise solid
Communications solid
Updates/patches solid

Heck even public relations and GM's were great back in the day, WoW GM's were highly respected and sort of legendary.
Anyone remember the myth of "GM Island" ?

Now that was service, but sadly all of that has become watered down and drained.

 

[Cryselle]

No matter what you may think of the current state of the game, to argue that it has been an objectively bad game flies completely in the face of it's massive success and popularity.

I'm not about to argue that anything is objectively bad, but I would say that there's only a faint, strained relationship between popularity and actual quality. It's a really bad metric.

Absolutely, I've always said popularity or units shipped is my standard for judging quality.

You must love 50 Shades of Grey, and One Direction.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of 50 shades, One Direction, or Beiber. But ultimately, they (and WoW) all exist to entertain people. Popularity states that they have succeeded at entertaining a lot of people, regardless of the critical opinion of the manner in which they do so. I am not going to say that popularity alone makes something a masterpiece, but 'good' is a fairly low bar to clear, so using the only quantifiable metric that we have seems acceptable in this scenario. It's far from the only metric, and if we were talking 'greatest games ever' I'd say that you'd want something that is high on as many metrics as you can find, but especially when you're talking something that has been going for over 10 years, personal and critical opinions have changed a fair amount over that time. The Warlords of Draenor expansion probably isn't going to get mentioned in any 'best ever' discussions, but WoW as a whole has come up many times in the past.

 

[DementedSheep]

Personally I found it incredibly boring but I guess for what it is it's a decent game.

 

[Tony2077]

well for me its a good game and that's all that matters