Too Much WoW Hate?

[sapient]

First of all, I'll admit it - I'm an ex-WoW player. I made it to 60 before The Burning Crusade and raided through BWL and AQ40. I came back for the Burning Crusade and played to 70, and raided through Gruul, SSC, TK and Hyjal. I was never addicted, however, due to the amount of people in my guild that saw fit to suck my balls and give me free stuff if I tanked for them. And honestly, I see that the majority of WoW hate is coming from people who have never actually played the game, or looked past the grind.

I admit that World of Warcraft is no longer a fun game, even at the best of times. Instead of having a fantasy MMO where you run around in vast beautifully rendered landscapes fighting enemies, players and all, we now have this boring place called Outland, where you have to do quests for some idiots who have to build a space rocket, fight giant robots and fly around in helicopters and rockets (engineering skill needed: 370). I can understand why so many people hate it.

But the problem is, if you've never gone in depth to the game, you simply can't sit there judging it. I loved pre-BC WoW. Simply loved it. It was entertaining, fun, less grind-y and raids involved skill, teamwork and coordination. Yes, all the misinformed pricks are going to run in saying "NO YOU HAVE TO GRIND +FR AND BUY POTS" but come on, people, this didn't take more than an hour on a good day and two hours on a bad day - and I was a warrior specced Protection, grinding alone.

With The Burning Crusade, Blizzard took a step in the right direction, but after it's release, took several steps in the wrong direction. Class balance was broken after the Rage Normalization patch, and turned upside down and fondled so badly it gained a mental problem after the fixing of MS Warriors. You could win a battle in 2-3 hits. Raids stopped being entertaining and started being frustrating with the horribly uninspired fights (Prince Malchezzar? Gruul? Void Reaver? Archimonde? Jesus, those fights were terrible). Now, to get exalted with every clan in the game, you need roughly 40 different grinds from neutral to exalted. 40x40000 rep = 1.6million rep. This is simply way too much grinding.

Yes, WoW has gone downhill and now I've quit, considering the cesspool of idiots who play it and the sheer easiness of the game (playing 2 hours a week for 10 weeks straight can get you Black Temple standard epics, the best in the game - S3 Arena). But it wasn't all bad, and it hasn't always been the spawn of Satan. I'd just like haters to think, maybe even play before they start judging and hating the game because they just want to be apart from the crowd.

 

[Melty Blood]

I'd just like haters to think, maybe even play before they start judging and hating the game because they just want to be apart from the crowd.

Oh yes, complete's ignoring the fact that some people might not like Halo *Ahem*, I mean, World of warcraft, and some are bringing up some valid points, oh no, they're all hating for the sake of hating. By the way, I say I'm an agnostic, but I know deep down there really is a god, I just don't want to admit it.

Maybe people don't see the logic of paying money to grind. I'll admit I like to dabble in MMOs, if only to see if any game had decided to throw out the concept and to take the game beyond a grind (Why was tales of eternia online closed down, WHY?),but never for long. WoW is generally regarded as the kingpin, always the one to be pointed out, as it is one of the biggest. It's always regarded poorly by those who disagree with the entire ideology associated with the game.

Furthermore, telling me to try a game that consists of something I don't like to do is kind of... futile...

 

[broadband]

well i played it for a time until 40 and something, th storyline ofwarcraft 3 and that was that called my attention into that game, but the storyline of warcraft was destroyed, having main chars and all that dumbed down to dugeon bosses, like archimonde and illidan

 

[Duck Sandwich]

I've played it to some extent at a friend's house. Played as an Undead Mage and leveled up to around 5. Sure, there's the "it gets better the more you play and the stronger your character is" thing, but I don't feel like my character's improving at all.

Say you do random monotonous grinding for an hour and reach level 4. Your character is stronger and has better equipment. Surely, fighting will be a lot more interesting, right? And then all of that goes down the shitter when you realize that in order to get experience quickly enough so that you don't fall asleep in your chair, you have to fight level 4 monsters now, and killing them takes just as long (or longer) as the level 1 monsters. The cycle begins anew.

Also, when video games throw that whole "skill" thing out the window, they are not fun. It's like painting a wall at the same time as a friend and then having a competition to see whose paint dries the fastest.

And the whole constantly paying money thing really doesn't help either, especially seeing as how you can use the money get a new game every 3-4 months instead.

 

[General Ma Chao]

Also, keep in mind that people like to hate on WoW because it's the current big thing. I played it up until Level 60 with an Undead Rogue. I had never played MMOs majorly before WoW, so it all felt new and original. I get a little nostalgic just thinking about it. The world truly felt like a big huge world for me to explore. I was one of those few crazy people who liked Mulgore and the Barrens for their big size. I left the game after that for the same reason as others. Epic content was too huge a time sink for too little reward.

 

[slyder35]

This is why I played Guild Wars alot to be honest (I hate PvP though so didn't do that in the game) - all the gear/equipment is capped at the very low level cap of 20, and the game then turns into a big SKILLS based exercise - you bring 8 out of 150 skills into the environment and use them to outwit and outsmart your enemy. Does not feel like a grind at all, and there is a real storyline to follow as well. No fees either. It's as old as WoW though so I think when GW2 is released it will be an awesome thing to experience.

Send me some money now NCSoft. Mkay. Thanks.

 

[REDPill357]

And the whole constantly paying money thing really doesn't help either, especially seeing as how you can use the money get a new game every 3-4 months instead.

My friend keeps trying to get me to play WoW, but this is my main argument against it. Why spend $15 a month to kill things? I got the OB for 3 months' worth of WoW payments, and I find it highly entertaining. Why pay 4x that each year for the same old grind?

 

[_daxter_]

At first I simply did not care for the game. I never had a reason to pick it up and play. Then my brother started playing. He told me nearly everything I need to know about the game, but still I did not want to play. He spent enormous amounts of time playing it... Now I am starting to hate this game, just because of the bad image the games community is getting from this whole addiction thing and the bad news surrounding the game. Might be coincidence though, I dont know.

As I said in another post. As long as Miyamoto does not design an MMO there is probably no way to get me to play one. So long I am fine staying clear of this kind of game. Try Mario or Zelda for a change and meet with real people. That is probably more fun all in all.

Cheers.

 

[Vigormortis]

to much hate for WoW? never. I hate the game because, quite simply, it's not fun. It NEVER was fun. Add to that the fact you have to PAY to play such a game? yeah, snow-balls chance in hell i'd want to play it more than i already had (at the insistant request of 1 friend). i've played a few mmo's before. only one i ever really enjoyed was Earth and Beyond. it at least had variety and was actually "fun". unless i'm mistaken, games were designed to be fun, not a chore. also, when the hell did people decide they were willing to sit through hours and hours of boring, down-right annoying gameplay that's more a chore (and paying to do it), just so they can reach the "fun" part of the game? And the fun part isn't even that different. lol

 

[_daxter_]

This is why I played Guild Wars alot to be honest (I hate PvP though so didn't do that in the game) - all the gear/equipment is capped at the very low level cap of 20, and the game then turns into a big SKILLS based exercise - you bring 8 out of 150 skills into the environment and use them to outwit and outsmart your enemy. Does not feel like a grind at all, and there is a real storyline to follow as well. No fees either. It's as old as WoW though so I think when GW2 is released it will be an awesome thing to experience.

Send me some money now NCSoft. Mkay. Thanks.

Just for your info: NCSoft are the most arrogant b**t***s in game development. Think about who you give your money to.

 

[slyder35]

This is why I played Guild Wars alot to be honest (I hate PvP though so didn't do that in the game) - all the gear/equipment is capped at the very low level cap of 20, and the game then turns into a big SKILLS based exercise - you bring 8 out of 150 skills into the environment and use them to outwit and outsmart your enemy. Does not feel like a grind at all, and there is a real storyline to follow as well. No fees either. It's as old as WoW though so I think when GW2 is released it will be an awesome thing to experience.

Send me some money now NCSoft. Mkay. Thanks.

Just for your info: NCSoft are the most arrogant b**t***s in game development. Think about who you give your money to.

Since when do you play or not play a game based on your impression of the developers? If we all acted on this opinion we would all be using Linux as who doesn't hate Microsoft?

Take the game for what it is.

 

[goodpoltergeist]

I just hate BC.

 

[PurpleRain]

I see that the majority of WoW hate is coming from people who have never actually played the game, or looked past the grind.

Some people hate grind, myself included. I played a few hours on a friends computer and was so dreadfully bored. Kill x amount of this type of animal. "Fuck you! I want to go off and explore and do stuff!" Since I wasn't even ranked up people were just generally rude to me. I didn't want to have to grind my way up to level 30 just to do a few fun quests. Boredom overtook me and a stopped playing.

 

[TSED]

There's never too much WoW hate.

For a lot of people, WoW was "My First MMO" and it was utterly horrible to those who enjoyed other MMOs first. I played EQ way back, for a couple years, because my family got into it (dad and sister, to be specific). It was fun. Then WoW came out, and a bunch of people left, but EQ was still fun.

However, one of my closest EQ friends, as well as some RL friends, were into WoW now. I was given a paid-for account on WoW because I have a pretty good reputation involving 'not screwing up' by my old EQ friend.

And it was horrible.

Seriously. I tried every class, and couldn't find any of them entertaining. I got my very first character to level 20 on my very first session without PLing because the game was JUST THAT EASY.

I couldn't stand it. Why play WoW? Seriously? It's filled with idiots, it's boring, it's easy, it's hideous. I felt like I was playing one of those 'Ages 4 - 6' games you see on the occasional shelf, with names like "WordQuest".

But it got numbers, and Blizzard became rich. All new MMOs rip off WoW now, and old MMOs dip into WoW's content-style. WoW killed MMOs. It will never know anything but hate from me.

 

[sad_nerd]

So the first WoW charachter i ever made was a druid, which i'm told is virutally the hardest to play? He's now level 66, which i am quite proud of, thought leveling above level 60 is nothing short of annyoing. 12 hours to level on a bad day? sigh.

So anyway, i still like it, but mostly because i have a guild which i really like and i find them fun to play with. Of course the only problem is this when i hit level 60 i left to go to uni to learn how to become not just a nerd, but a drunken nerd. i cam back about three months later (with a month's holiday) and, just to see what was going on, i paid a month's susbscription with my coveted student loan.

it turned out that everyone i was frineds with was not level 70, and in some cases level 70 twice! so they weren't really intersted in playing with me. My whole guild is doing this place called Kara (for amazing drops apparently) and i was reading up on the quest to get into Kara. The jist of it is that i need to play several dongeouns and have help from other powerful charachters, probably taking hours and hours.

the thing about WoW is that you can't really finish it, unless you a) invenst a scary amount of time into it and b) have about 40 well-equipt, well-orginised friends. i just found out to get the best druid staff would take an OBSCENE amount of time and effort, i won't go into details.

So i can't really "complete" it and, say, come back to it in a few months. I don't accually play that much, which is why i suck so much balls at it. It's not a casual game by any means. I alomost get looked down upon for playing it. and i have a love/hate relationship with it. It stops me from writing as much as i want to (yes i'm a writer which is why this is so long winded) and keeps me from doing pretty much anything else. i'm so obbsessed with trying to catch up to my guildmates.

As for the hate? Yes people hate it. but people hate games. I don't play many games, i never buy them becuase they don't hold my interest very long. i have an Xbox and a PS1 ans refuse to shell out for anything else. I haven't been "wowed" by a game for a long time, but WoW keeps my interest, for some reason. i think it's because i want to get very powerful and essentially stomp all over the filthy horde bums, but there's always some greasy nerd that's better than you. see south park Make love not warcraft.

Anyway, people don't understand games. my mum, my sister and various boyfriends think they're a stupid manly penis envy thing, right up there with my dad buying a new powertool every week. They think all gamers are freakish losers who have nothing better to do.

maybe they're right.

that is all.

 

[Keet]

I have tried WoW and it simply wasn't my thing. I never went past the introductory trial period and I don't really believe that I have missed out on anything due to this.

What I hate about it is the fact that I cannot have a normal conversation with two people that are WoW players as it inevitably boils down to the two of them talking about how much time they wasted last night on a raid. Now this wouldn't bother me if there was some kind of plot or reason to the whole story of who did what for how many hours with how many people in Ironforge (or whatever the hell the location of the day is). (It was probably Ironforge anyway though.)

It's like living with Jehovah's witnesses. The game sucks you in if you're actually into it and for all intents and purposes that person is a crackhead who wants everyone to try his new addiction, or if they won't try it, then they have to know every single aspect of the game for their own good anyway.

It's not simply cool to hate World of Warcraft; it seems to leech into every area of the internet and it becomes annoying to even hear the name to those that aren't interested in the first place. Yes Mr. T, we love you, now get off my fucking tv and stop interrupting Scrubs.

God knows I haven't forced Grim Grimoire onto people.

If it's your thing, then by all means have fun with it, but you can't expect all of us to like it.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Raids stopped being entertaining and started being frustrating with the horribly uninspired fights (Prince Malchezzar? Gruul? Void Reaver? Archimonde? Jesus, those fights were terrible).

You had to fight jesus?

All jokes aside I have my reasons for hating WoW. If you asked me a couple of months ago I would have replied "I don't really care about WoW" but that changed when a large amount of my friends all simultaneously bought WoW and tried to convert me to it with descriptions such as "best game ever made" and "really fun to play" to play. I would have given it a try if it wasn't for a glazed look in their eyes so I ran home without a look behind me and sat in front of my PC to research the game (the escapist helped). After an hour of research I soon found out that it seems to be very repetitive and that doing missions for NPC's is not my sort of game, even if I can call the odd passerby noob.

But the (in my opinion) poor levels of fun this game has to offer is not my major quarrel with the game. What I dislike about WoW is that a lot of my friends have been hooked to it. One of my Friends who will go nameless played it for 6 days and 20 hours in a 15 day period. Another decided he wanted to play WoW instead of watching the New Year's fireworks because something was going to happen on WoW at midnight (I think they got free beers or something).

In about a week we go back to high school we've been promised a truck load of work to do this year. So I was thinking if they can't be bothered to get off the game to do fun stuff during the holidays how will they get off to do homework?

That's why I hate WoW.

 

[sapient]

Thanks for the replies. I do understand that hating WoW will have some valid points, but what really ticks me off is people that know nothing about the game immediately label it as terrible.
The finer details of the game really stick out. The leveling process isn't all grinding as people like to think (Blizzard has reduced the amount of XP needed to level by 50% from 1-60 and doubled XP given from quests). Outland leveling is sheer easiness, so the grind is no longer really the grind.


I guess we have to go into the finer details to really break WoW apart. I'd say I'm biased towards liking the game because of my pre-BC experience but hating it because of my experiences after TBC came out. I'm not saying you should buy the game, but I'm not saying you shouldn't either. Some people enjoy the grind, and others hate it, but there's much less grind now if you ignore the repgrinding bullshit. Blizzard increased the daily quest limit to 25, so it's even easier to get gold and items.

Grind aside, WoW isn't as "boring and shitty" as everyone thinks it is. The encounters before Burning Crusade are well crafted and designed to be finished by players that can use teamwork and coordination effectively while doing their respective jobs. Post-BC, however, the encounters are uninspired (Magtheridon, Mother Shahraz, Void Reaver to name a few) and either ridiculously easy (Attumen, Curator) or too goddamn hard (Nightbane). They're unoriginal copies of boss fights that have already been used (Heroic Mechanar brings back memories of good ol' days with a mate's character in Naxx).

The geography of the game has changed massively. Kalimdor is characterized by sprawling great deserts, barren lands and a large crater while Eastern Kingdoms ranges from a burning plains-y look to a green, massive highlands. The environments, while not really having an effect on the game, were atmospheric and varied before The Burning Crusade. However, in Outland, three of the seven zones are burnt out demon holes, one is a massive green plain with corrupted burnt out demon holes, one is a purple marsh with burnt out demon holes all over it, one is a forest with burnt out demon holes everywhere, and one is a necro-themed kinda floating-rocks-in-the-sky land, which is just another word for "burnt out demon hole skinned purple."

Gameplay has taken a visible downturn as well - the game pre-BC was challenging, with both solo (EPL, Silithus twilight covenant or whatever they're called) and group (Blackrock Spire, Stratholme) play. These were all quite fun to do, especially UBRS and LBRS because of the teamwork needed. Now, the average instance to get raid epic gear can either be ridiculously easy (Heroic Mechanar) or mind-crushingly difficult and dull (Heroic Botanica, Shadow Labyrinth). These places also seem to have a theme of "purple-blue-ish machinery shop".

I think the signs speak for themselves here that WoW is rapidly going downhill. With every patch comes another ridiculously stupid idea courtesy of Blizzard's developer team (monkeys on typewriters could do a better job) and the introduction of Sunwell (death of Kil'jaeden, Malygos back from the dead) and Magister's Terrace (Kael'thas, end boss of 25-man raid Tempest Keep) will probably ruin the game. But hey, it's already ruined - can't get much worse, can it?
I know it's sounding a bit like a review, but the point I'm really trying to get across here is that WoW was never all bad, and maybe Wrath of the Lich King can fix that.













Bahahaha, sif that's going to happen.