Too Much WoW Hate?

[Lance Icarus]

God, I just hate WoW because I was literally losing friends to it. People dropped out of contact for nearly a year and a half before I finally got their new cell phone number because they canceled their previous plan. "I just didn't need one at the time." Geez, I wonder why you grind goblin. Heaven forbid there are people outside your monitor.

But yeah, I hate most MMOs for this reason, but WoW was the only one that actually caused people to drop out of contact with me.

I hate World of Warcraft.

 

[DrmChsr0]

WoW is a truly terrible game,but a highly successful moneyfarming operation.

My brother played it for 2 hours, declared it teh suck, and never played it again. He played the terrible Maple Story for at least a year before dropping out of the game.

If WoW could not hook my brother who was playing Maple Story (which is a terrible MMO, btw) before playing the game, it could never hook me.

I'd suggest The Kingdom of Loathing over this. It's amusing to the point of hilarity.

 

[The Madman]

World of Warcraft is a big target so naturally every 'e-thug' or interenet elitist is going to target it for points or whatever. Why these people feel the urge to bash games is beyond me! I don't much like Oblivion or any of the recent Final Fantasy games, and yet I'm not about to enter topics about those games to tell the people in there discussing the game my loudmouthed oppinion. It's common decency! If someone enjoys a product, that's their right and who am I to tell them whether or not they can or can't enjoy it? After all, if everyone agreed on everything this would be one helluva boring world methinks.

Ah Well, I'm hardly in the mood for a long elaborate rant at the moment, but I will point out a fun link. Not about WOW, but it still applies here: http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/821/821859p1.html

It's hip to hate!

 

[DrmChsr0]

There's never too much WoW hate, not until some nutter like Jack Thompson steps in.

Then it'll be too much WoW hate

 

[TSED]

I find it hilarious that wow addicts dismiss "The game is boring and uncaptivating" as "you never really tried it" without actually seeing if they tried it or not.


*Gasp* your opinion of 'fun' isn't the same as every one else's!


@ The Madman: Actually, if every one had the same tastes the world would be way more awesome. There'd be no wars or such (any more), any book would be awesome to read, any game awesome to play. "The world would be boring if we got along" is one of the worst fallacies I've ever heard in my life.

 

[The Madman]

@ The Madman: Actually, if every one had the same tastes the world would be way more awesome. There'd be no wars or such (any more), any book would be awesome to read, any game awesome to play. "The world would be boring if we got along" is one of the worst fallacies I've ever heard in my life.

Diversity is the spice of life my friend. Perhaps you like it when everyone agrees with you, but myself; I love a good debate, to meet new people, see new things and try different foods and the like. If everyone had the same architectual tastes, then the buildings would all be alike. Often beautiful, but boring and repeditive. The food would all taste the same, often delicious but non-stop, always the same. There'd be no exploration for new ideas, no books written about controversial ideals or radical movies that explore different ideals.

In a world without conflict we never would have discovered space flight or nuclear energy. Idealists like Gandhi or Martin Luther would never have stood out against the crowd, set an example for future generations. There would be no grand poems or epic tales of long-ago lands, triumps over evils and cruel men punished.

It would all be... pleasant, but dull. Boring. Repeditive.

Perhaps that's your ideal world, but not mine! I LOVE diversity and am more than willing to accept the good as well as the bad that it brings.

 

[danimal1384]

i have noticed that they tide as far as MMO's goes one of two ways. either a person enjoys it enough to log hundreds of hours on it, or they find it to be the bane of all existence and would rather have rabid wolverines attached to their privates. there really isn't anyone who looks at an MMO, WoW in particular, and says "eh". so i'm proud to be the first one to say "eh". i just bought WoW almost a month ago, and have two characters. a lv. 24 troll shaman, and a level 8 undead rouge. i can easily see why alot of people don't like it. but i can also see why some would molest it if it were a physical being. i'm the kind of gamer who will not stop if i care at all about a game until i've done everything in it possible. i've logged over 100 hours in every final fantasy game i've ever played. though the "glimmer", if there is any, to rpg's and mmo's has been receeding into darkness for me over the last couple years. i am finding them less enjoyable, but i will still bitterly slog on til the end if i started it. but there really isn't alot of middle lined opinions on this subject. i guess you groups shall be mortal enemies until the end of time.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

IMO, Yahtzee hit it right on the head- WoW is the best MMORPG out right now, and may well be the best that ever WILL appear... but that still doesn't mean it's captivating enough for me to play it.

Yes, I tried it. My start in Mulgore seemed promising because I liked being a Tauren and was new to most of the game's quest mechanics (only other MMORPG I've really gotten into is City of Heroes). You level up, get nicer loot, upgrade your spells so they actually work decently on high-level NPCs that are a slightly different color and name from the ones in the last area... the exact same strategy for 40 Levels until I got bored and quit (though I was pleased not to have to put up with too much of the oft-maligned 'Barrens Chat' when I did that area).

Some folks I've talked to claim the game really starts at Level 60/70 and you get to do Epic Raids. Any game that requires a MINIMUM of 120 hours invested before it STARTS has a problem. If they wanted to do that they should have cut leveling time down by half at least, resulting in more frequent new techniques.

On the other hand, I agree that a great deal of the hatred it attracts stems from the simple fact that it's popular (read: CGW Commentator/Down's Syndrome Guy Robert Coffey's Scorched Earth on the pundit backlash that hit Doom 3 after it's release). It being the highest-profile MMORPG by far, every stereotype can and will be applied to it with some degree of truth ('Make Love, Not Warcraft'). I guess you can say WoW turned me off MMORPGs for good, but that's MY fault, not it's. I say live and let live- I don't bash folks for playing WoW, and no one tries to get me back on board (successfully, that is)... until they mention a Shotokan Monk class.

 

[Melty Blood]

i have noticed that they tide as far as MMO's goes one of two ways. either a person enjoys it enough to log hundreds of hours on it, or they find it to be the bane of all existence and would rather have rabid wolverines attached to their privates. there really isn't anyone who looks at an MMO, WoW in particular, and says "eh". so i'm proud to be the first one to say "eh". i just bought WoW almost a month ago, and have two characters. a lv. 24 troll shaman, and a level 8 undead rouge. i can easily see why alot of people don't like it. but i can also see why some would molest it if it were a physical being. i'm the kind of gamer who will not stop if i care at all about a game until i've done everything in it possible. i've logged over 100 hours in every final fantasy game i've ever played. though the "glimmer", if there is any, to rpg's and mmo's has been receeding into darkness for me over the last couple years. i am finding them less enjoyable, but i will still bitterly slog on til the end if i started it. but there really isn't alot of middle lined opinions on this subject. i guess you groups shall be mortal enemies until the end of time.

MMOGs have the potential to become very good games, but all of these companies are basically making the same games, over and over again, each with a different sort of gimmick to innovation, and anything that tries something in a different direction dies out (an earlier example being the early demise of "Tales of Eternia online", but that's probably because I'm such a huge junky for the console games.). Good Mumorpagers can be done, and there are a few efforts that have been done well (In my oh-so-humble opinion), but only when the broke off from the silly point and click method to do something more original.

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

I wouldn't say I hate WoW, but I find its runaway success frustrating. Back when UO came out I was extremely excised about the possibilities of a game shared by so many people, but now the genre is a big stinky pile of slog. Now WoW has taken everything I dislike about MMOS, and polished it to a mirror shine, and become incredibly successful, which makes it a title emulated by other developers, which in turn holds back innovation in a genre that could desperately use a kick in the pants.

I'm an ex-WoW player myself so my dislike for the game is at least founded on experience, but there do seem to be a lot of people who hate WoW, and MMOs on general principle.

 

[TSED]

@ The Madman: Actually, if every one had the same tastes the world would be way more awesome. There'd be no wars or such (any more), any book would be awesome to read, any game awesome to play. "The world would be boring if we got along" is one of the worst fallacies I've ever heard in my life.

Diversity is the spice of life my friend. Perhaps you like it when everyone agrees with you, but myself; I love a good debate, to meet new people, see new things and try different foods and the like. If everyone had the same architectual tastes, then the buildings would all be alike. Often beautiful, but boring and repeditive. The food would all taste the same, often delicious but non-stop, always the same. There'd be no exploration for new ideas, no books written about controversial ideals or radical movies that explore different ideals.

In a world without conflict we never would have discovered space flight or nuclear energy. Idealists like Gandhi or Martin Luther would never have stood out against the crowd, set an example for future generations. There would be no grand poems or epic tales of long-ago lands, triumps over evils and cruel men punished.

It would all be... pleasant, but dull. Boring. Repeditive.

Perhaps that's your ideal world, but not mine! I LOVE diversity and am more than willing to accept the good as well as the bad that it brings.

Au contraire! You are assuming that similar tastes = single taste.

Just because people have similar tastes doesn't mean they can't argue.

Nor does it mean that foods would be repetitive.

It'd be a broad, agreeable spectrum. "Agreeable" does not mean "immune to argument".

Furthermore, 'controversial ideas' could still exist readily. All it would take is for something to be either silly on the surface but effective deeper in, or vice versa. This means that people who are well versed with it would argue with those who aren't.

There would be just as many epic tales, and they would all be just as good.


Similarity doesn't imply boredom and singularity, otherwise people wouldn't get married.

 

[The Madman]

Au contraire! You are assuming that similar tastes = single taste.

Just because people have similar tastes doesn't mean they can't argue.

Nor does it mean that foods would be repetitive.

It'd be a broad, agreeable spectrum. "Agreeable" does not mean "immune to argument".

Furthermore, 'controversial ideas' could still exist readily. All it would take is for something to be either silly on the surface but effective deeper in, or vice versa. This means that people who are well versed with it would argue with those who aren't.

There would be just as many epic tales, and they would all be just as good.


Similarity doesn't imply boredom and singularity, otherwise people wouldn't get married.

So the only controversy and debate would be ignorance vs. intelligence, informed vs. uninformed? Everyone would be happy and content with butterflies and rainbows for all the joyful creatures of the earth? How dull! I see what you're saying and I never meant to make it sound like clones in my other post, but nevertheless it just sounds so boring and tame. Conflict, real conflict between people who just can't get along and ideals that dont mesh can produce good things and happy results made all the better by the trials that led up to them.

You sound like the Stepford Wives to me and no matter how pleasant it may write I can't help but dislike it. Diversity dammit, diversity! But then again, if your world ever came about we'd all be different people conforming to different ideals anyway so undoubtedly I'd be rather content in that rainbow brite-light world, I just wouldn't be the same.

Anyway, lets try not to completely derail the main topic, so... err, WOW is fun? It may not be the Mona Lisa of games or tread any new ground that hadn't been tread before, but it's still a fun game for the simple reason everything is so well put together and polished. Hell, that's practically Blizzard moto: We don't do anything new but what we make sure is shiny and plays smooth, don't it? So why's everyone always so angry about WOW? Just because it's successful? That sounds a little like jealousy to me, trying to take something down a peg just because it's doing well for itself.

 

[tobyornottoby]

I don't like it, because some people really can't talk about anything else anymore. Really like crackheads, mumbling nonsense all day, about epic mounts or whatever

 

[ComradeJim270]

I played WoW on a friend's account for a while (he was a very busy person, so there was a lot of time where I could get on and he couldn't) and found that playing WoW made me sleepy. I shit you not. I nearly fell asleep every time I played it... like... it somehow paradoxically kept me enthralled before my screen while simultaneously boring me to sleep.

Don't ask me to explain why this occured, because I have no clue.

 

[ChrisP.Lettuce]

I played WoW on a friend's account for a while (he was a very busy person, so there was a lot of time where I could get on and he couldn't) and found that playing WoW made me sleepy. I shit you not. I nearly fell asleep every time I played it... like... it somehow paradoxically kept me enthralled before my screen while simultaneously boring me to sleep.

Don't ask me to explain why this occured, because I have no clue.

This is exactly what I experience, even when addicted.

 

[Magnus Of Weelilplace]

I'll have to pop in here as a person that would be called a "WoW Hater".

I've never supported the "Pay-To-Play" MMO's and have always been a huge fan of Guild Wars. A game that (not including the cost of the CD's/CD key) is free to play.

WoW is hated, or more precisely disliked, by so many people because there isn't any reason to get stronger. (or that is my opinion at least)

Yes, you get new skills, armor, weapons, bigger/badder/more insane bosses to fight...but why? So that you can show off to the local noobs? *spins index finger in air* woohoo!

If MMO's had more compelling stories *cough* Guild Wars *cough* they would be more popular. There is a reason to get stronger, because you cant woop that boss's ass until you hit level 20 *****! Now wutchyoo gunna do about it?


*btw*

I'm tooting Guild Wars' horn here because I'm a long time fan, and it's leveling system is built around questing with friends/random pickups in town. Not wailing on Evil Infected Bunny #493.

 

[Duck Sandwich]

I played WoW on a friend's account for a while (he was a very busy person, so there was a lot of time where I could get on and he couldn't) and found that playing WoW made me sleepy. I shit you not. I nearly fell asleep every time I played it... like... it somehow paradoxically kept me enthralled before my screen while simultaneously boring me to sleep.

Don't ask me to explain why this occured, because I have no clue.

I had the same experience when playing WoW. I think it's because of the whole "it's gonna get better once I level up" thing, as if maybe by getting through monotonous crap, we'll end up having fun afterwards. It's like I was convincing myself that by digging through a mountain of turd, I'd eventually find a speck of gold.

However, that's a load of crap, especially with RF's insane grinding. I remember playing another Mumorpuger, RF Online for 2 hours (felt like 3 or 4) before I finally said "fuck this," and deleting it from my computer.

 

[Eudaemonian]

I'll have to pop in here as a person that would be called a "WoW Hater".

I've never supported the "Pay-To-Play" MMO's and have always been a huge fan of Guild Wars. A game that (not including the cost of the CD's/CD key) is free to play.

WoW is hated, or more precisely disliked, by so many people because there isn't any reason to get stronger. (or that is my opinion at least)

Yes, you get new skills, armor, weapons, bigger/badder/more insane bosses to fight...but why? So that you can show off to the local noobs? *spins index finger in air* woohoo!

If MMO's had more compelling stories *cough* Guild Wars *cough* they would be more popular. There is a reason to get stronger, because you cant woop that boss's ass until you hit level 20 *****! Now wutchyoo gunna do about it?


*btw*

I'm tooting Guild Wars' horn here because I'm a long time fan, and it's leveling system is built around questing with friends/random pickups in town. Not wailing on Evil Infected Bunny #493.

I really enjoy taking quotes apart to discuss them, but since that is specifically discouraged here, I'll have to make due.

Guild Wars & Compelling Story : It has more of a story than most games, but having a good story that is able to be played by a few million people over and over again is a serious problem. Is X dead or is X not dead? Guild Wars has a somewhat innovative way of doing it, but the fact that people can exist before and after given events simultaneously, etc, will always be a problem.

Reason To Level : For many people, leveling will always be its own reward. I myself love seeing a bar go up. I don't care what the bar represents, I want it full. If it empties once it's full, I'll fill it again. Beyond that, however, I'd say that your explanation of "Why to level" in Guild Wars is far from unique to that game. You can't beat X boss until 20? Well, you can't do X instance until you're Y level and you can't raid until 70, and you can't raid SSC until you've got Kara/Heroic Gear and you can't do Hyjal and BT until you have SSC/TK gear. And so on and so on. It's a profound misunderstanding to think otherwise. "Why finish level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. man? Then you just have to do level 1-2." Progress has innate virtue in a game. The further you go, the more there is.

Questing vs Waiting On Mob to Spawn : The game you're thinking to criticize here is Final Fantasy XI, or some other MMOs. WoW is almost never about waiting for a spawn. Most serious grouping is done in instances where you needn't wait for spawns. Very few rare spawns drop any valuable or unique loot, and most things that you need to kill have very fast spawn timers. There were a few exceptions pre-BC: Elemental Invasions, The Four Nightmare Dragons, Etc. But these have largely been done away with in the expansion. In addition, the recent fast-leveling patch put a much greater emphasis on questing. Anyone who's grinding to level now is wasting their time. Completing a single quest gives more experience than an hour or two of hacking away at mobs.


Persistent Fees : I used to agree that pay-to-play was a no-go, but you really see your money at work in production values. As I've said many times before, people are willing to pay upwards of $10 for movies in theaters at certain times and locations, but somehow $15 monthly for far more volume of entertainment is unacceptable. If you want to look at it another way, there has been a fair amount of content added to WoW through patch-expansions. Before the first paid expansion, WoW added a PvP reward system, Battlegrounds, three new instances in Dire Maul, BlackWing Lair, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Quiraj 20/40, Naxxramus, and various holiday and other server-wide events. Not to mention the various re-balancings, talent fixes/additions, and minor tweaks that generally come with a patch. You're getting something for your money, even if you find the idea of a service charge otherwise unacceptable.


Some people will never like WoW or never like MMOs, but that's a personal preference and it's folly to impute it to some inherently negative quality about the game.


EDIT:

Cesspool of Idiots : My only response to this criticism is, what game isn't? The world is a cesspool of idiots if you look at it carefully, and there's really no avoiding that. Honestly, that's why I wish so many games these days weren't MMOs. You need something to get away from that problem. You're just never going to have a game that is popular and not full of idiots. If you're exclusive about who plays it (which is difficult to do without simply being offputting or overly complicated in your game design) it will end up feeling empty. If you're inclusive, you get the aforementioned cesspool. I'll admit that early on WoW struck a better balance. Now that it's wildly popular with all sorts of people, from gibbering Halo fanatics to your mother, there is a greater problem. It's just not something to fault the game for. "Don't blame WoW, blame noobs, or God" to paraphrase Delita.

 

[Gauwin]

First time ever posting something here, so ill try to keep my opinions constructive.


I understand how some people can hate WoW. Leveling a new character is a pain, of course it is, and i can understand how many peoples just get lost in the process of it, questing can get a little boring expecially in middle levels ( 40-60 ). But you really are missing a lot by not reaching Level 70.

Leveling 58-70 in outlands is an enjoyable grind. Yes, i just used the word "grind" and ejoyable together. Why did i do so? The quests are fun, the new type of itemzation that came into Burning crusade is insanely good compared to pre level 60 gear (for example, i picked up a 2h axe at lvl 64 that was better then the 2nd best 2h weapon in game), and the instances are well put together in zones, for example, Hellfire peninsula had 2 level 60+ instances, that were easy to do, rewarded higher group xp, both had 2 quests to get blue rewards from it, and actually didnt take too long to do with a proper group.

At 70, the fun really, really starts. While you can choose your path into PVE or PVP. You are not forced to do either, and you can do both at the same time. Arenas have been really popular, and is probably the most fun you will have in wow if you enjoy pvp, since you can actually see how you are ranked in your battlegroup in all 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, and you get your arena points to buy brand new gear by a formular of your current rating.(You start at 1500, and you go up and down some rating per win / lose, being 15 points for a team at your rating, and winning more agaisnt Higher rated teams, losing more to low rated teams, and vice versa.)

And then you have the battlegrounds, where you can meet your opponent faction for either a Zone tagging game, gaining resources per zone , a Capture the flag game, A mix of to the two, or, my personal favorite, a 40 vs 40 PVP zone that is based on destroying the other faction's Building's, and killing their general.

And the grind, at 70? If you are in a pve progressing guild with a sick policy for it, maybe, it can get boring to farm pots for raids, but heck, if you have a casual pve guild, you dont have to play so much. Really.

About the "zone walking" around the place? As soon as you reach 70, that problem is actually gone. The main city has portals to all of your faction's main city, you have flight points to everywhere.

Mylast point before i get bashed and flamed, wich i certanilly will, is that the route from 1-70 is a learning route about the class your playing. While it may seem easy at first, if you wish to suceed in pve/pvp at 70, there is a lot you need to learn about your class, your spec, what setup to use in arena, what do you do in bosses, what addons you should have, and most importantly, you are making your own playstyle, your own keybindings and your own idea of your char, and how to handle it due to gear. And probably the most important of all, you need to have a clue about all the other classes if you wich to make a good group, a good pvp team, or a partner if you are a 2v2only kind of a guy, and specially, if you wish to discuss something beetween classes, so you dont just go (you like wtf did a shadowspell on me and then i coundlt control myself), and also, knowing WHAT your enemy has to attack you, what he has on cds, what can he do with his spec, and knowing how to counter him is something that highly influences your next action. *

P.S: Oh, lacking gold? Just do daily quests. It wont take more then 30-40 minutes of your time, and you will get up to 140g per day, wich is more than you will ever need per day (unless your planning on enchanting/gemming ALL of you gear in one day.)And if you only like to PVP? there is a Battleground PVP daily everyday, 13g reward and 600 extra honor. Also, everyweekend gives 2x more honor from a certain Battleground.

Edit: I forgot to mention, that the gold you get trough leveling, if you pick up a Resource picking up profesion(mining, herbalism etc), and sell what you pick up while leveling, combined with the gold that you get from quests and selling your old gear / gear that you cant use, is Enough to satisfy over 95% of your needs at level 70.

*While having lots to learn about your class and other's, its a easilly accessed game, that gives a feeling of fullfilment when winning a duel, or being able to revenge your earlier loss to a team in arena.

 

[Lampdevil]

I always get a little befuddled at the people that declare how incredibly un-fun WoW is. Hey! I like it! It's a lot of fun! But then I stop and remember that I've got some sort of chemical imbalance that compells me to hit-the-bar-and-get-the-pellet, so I've got little room to talk. For me? WoW provides a comfortable little cage with attractively arranged bars to smack, with the occasional interesting cagemate.

Utterly horrible to those who played other MMOs? What what? I played EQ and Ragnarok Online and City of Heroes and y'know what? I think WoW is better in a lot of ways. Oh no! It's EASY! It's not hard to navigate around, or level, and the quests hold you by the hand when you start, and it's ACCESSIBLE! Gasp and shock, it's a game that's easy for people to get into! It was a goddamned breath of fresh air to play a game that (at least at first) didn't seem determined to do me up the bum with a big spiked dong. Maybe some people get off on that. Kudos to you if you do!

The people who hate on WoW do it for all kinds of different reasons, I've come to understand. And it's not just a matter of hating what's popular. There's the "my significant other plays it too much and now we only get to have sex on Tuesdays" and there's "I got to the level cap and raiding sucks big sweaty moose balls" and there's the related "Something I liked got nerfed" and the also related "This game isn't like X Game I Used To Play, therefore it's horrible" and then we've got "It's too easy and too carebear and I can't gank people and steal their stuff" and who can forget "Why should I pay to run on a treadmill" and I'm pretty sure there's at least one person going "I had a fallout with my guild (okay actually my Night Elf girlfriend turned out to be a man)" and "the art style is ugly and I can't play a bishie looking elf" is my personal favorite, from a friend of mine, and... okay, lots of reasons that it can't meet your needs.

And y'know? That's okay! It's cool. I don't lose sleep at night worrying that someone thinks I'm lame for playing a video game. (If I did? I'd stop playing Pokemon right now.) You go play something you like, I'll go play something that I like, Blizzard keeps making loads of cash, and someday someone will step forward and make a game that's better. Then we can go play that instead! Good times.