What Exactly Is Wrong With World Of Warcraft?

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chozo_hybrid

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.
Jul 15, 2009
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Superbird42 said:
Furburt said:
It's incredibly, incredibly boring.

....not a single thing in it, the community, the mechanics, the art design, or the backstory managed to engage me in the slightest.
The back story? Have you played Warcraft games? [Specifically Warcraft 3] because the story is developed there and I really enjoy it but I've noticed it's badly presented in WoW.
A game as big as WoW should be able to tell the back story and engage you to continue it.

WoW I find boring too, Warcraft III on the other hand I find really fun and the story is done really well.
 

Bigeyez

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Apr 26, 2009
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It seems like a common complaint in this thread is that the game is addictive and people end up playing it too much. Thats like blaming Mc Donalds for making a sandwich so tasty you eat it for every meal and then get fat. The keyword is self-control people. If you have none then MMO's, or videogames in general probably aren't for you.

Don't blame a game company because you (or your friends) can't exercise self-control and put a videogame before your real life.

I have a job, go to school, have a great social life and play WoW in a high end raiding guild. I've never canceled real life plans for the game and I only play in my free time. If you let WoW consume your life thats YOUR fault, not the games.
 

Cody211282

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Apr 25, 2009
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MiracleOfSound said:
I hate it because I never see my buddy anymore since he got it.

It is deliberately designed to be addictive and exploitative of peoples' obsessive, compulsive nature and it sucks peoples souls out through their eyeballs in a way no other game/MMO does.
I had a friend who was a chemical biology major in her 3rd year of college that this happened to, she went from 21 credits a semester to not going to school and only playing wow, so I defantly hate it for that to.

Also I just never found it that fun, and it was sort a time sink with no end.

Edit: I also hate the fact they took the backstory of Warcraft and destroyed it with that game.
 

Jaded Scribe

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Mar 29, 2010
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I'm a WoW fan (and I'm sorry if someone stated these already) but my #1 problem is that it has become too "Lazy Whiner". You can read the full details here [http://jadedscribe.blogspot.com/2010/04/hardecore-vs-casual-bloody-war.html] but basically, they've given in too much to the casuals that demand that the game be changed to meet their play-style.
 

MiracleOfSound

Fight like a Krogan
Jan 3, 2009
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Thyunda said:
MiracleOfSound said:
Thyunda said:
MiracleOfSound said:
I hate it because I never see my buddy anymore since he got it.

It is deliberately designed to be addictive and exploitative of peoples' obsessive, compulsive nature and it sucks peoples souls out through their eyeballs in a way no other game/MMO does.
If you can give me evidence that Blizzard designed the game purposefully to do so, and this isn't just a side effect of entirely innocent gameplay mechanics, then you will have earned the Decepticon you grace your name with.
My friend, I do not have to earn my avatar from anyone.
Avoiding my question? I saw that.
OK then... the way they do it is by perfecting the carrot-on-a-stick levelling/loot technique.

To do certain quests and earn cooler items you must play for longer, i.e. pay more.

It's a more complex and rewarding version of that in COD, which is also hihgly addictive.
 

chozo_hybrid

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.
Jul 15, 2009
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Furburt said:
Superbird42 said:
Furburt said:
It's incredibly, incredibly boring.

....not a single thing in it, the community, the mechanics, the art design, or the backstory managed to engage me in the slightest.
The back story? Have you played Warcraft games? [Specifically Warcraft 3] because the story is developed there and I really enjoy it but I've noticed it's badly presented in WoW.
Yeah, I have played Warcraft III, but I'm referring to WoW specifically.
I agree with you, the game (being WoW) should be able to stand on its own two feet when it comes to that. It shouldn't need other games and books to completely support it in terms of back story.

Jaded Scribe said:
I'm a WoW fan (and I'm sorry if someone stated these already) but my #1 problem is that it has become too "Lazy Whiner". You can read the full details here [http://jadedscribe.blogspot.com/2010/04/hardecore-vs-casual-bloody-war.html] but basically, they've given in too much to the casuals that demand that the game be changed to meet their play-style.
That really sucks! I know it's a weird comparison but this is like what they did with the new Star Trek.
 

Bigeyez

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Silva said:
Thyunda said:
Yoshemo said:
#3: too expensive
#3: That doesn't make the game any worse, just less accessible.
I beg to differ. Value should be considered an internal quality of a game. If money is no object in internal quality, then spot the unemployed leech who probably has his parents buying the game for him!
WoW costs $15 a month to play + the cost of the retail box. In a year I pay $180 in subscription fees. Any brand new game cost $60. Now unless you only buy 1 or 2 brand new games every year then how can you say WoW is more expensive then playing normal videogames? I've spent so much less money on console/PC games since I started playing MMO's. In fact at $15 a month you'd be hard pressed to find a hobby thats cheaper then WoW.
 

Johnnyallstar

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Thyunda said:
Johnnyallstar said:
Well, it started with the welfare epics, then the ease of PvP rewards being much better than top tier raiding equipment, then it just went straight downhill into daily quest grinding.
Which, if you do with friends, doesn't seem all that dull. Unless your friends are dull. Then, agreed, it is dull. I can't stand soloing things in any game. I just get so fed up with it, so I don't mind WoW so much as I tend to quest with my pals, and we have a good banter going on.
Quite right, but there's the problem. The GAME itself dull, the people are what keep everyone playing. Other MMOs have trouble keeping high numbers of players because regardless of their gameplay, the community isn't there. I thought Warhammer was a much better GAME, but the community wasn't there. The game was fun but it didn't have the people to support it.
 

spinFX

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Aug 18, 2008
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Weak reasons have been supplied so far. All I see is:

"Too much grinding!" - like all MMOs... without it no one could justify the monthly fee because you'd run out of things to do. I don't like grinding either but really, all MMOs have this and there is a sense of achievment once you grind something out.

"Too expensive!" - God help you if you can't afford $20 a month for a hobby. If you have a job, shut up. If you are paying for this with your pocket money then you are too young to play.

"It's boring" - it's just another MMO. If you think WoW is boring then don't play any other MMOs because I've played them all and they're all about the same in boredom terms (except UO, that was the best MMO I've ever played).

So really these problems you guys (mostly) are listing can be applied to all MMOs, which still doesn't dethrone WoW as the best current MMO. It ain't perfect, but your subjective reasons are not good enough to justify calling it a bad game. I hate lots of games but I can see why others would think they're good. Just get off the "cool guy" express, just hating on things that are popular for superficial reasons. I hate it.

PS: I haven't played WoW in 2 years so I'm basing my knowledge off vanilla WoW and BC which were awesome.
 

timeadept

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I played the game for about 4 years now, off and on. Both times i left it was for the same reasons. The main reason is that WoW puts WAY too much value on what gear you have. So much so that i was once kicked from a group for poor gear right before the first boss of an instance even though, up to that point i had let NO ONE DIE (i was healing). There had been some close calls but they didn't even want to give me the chance to fight the boss. On top of this you need gear to get gear, and i found it impossible to get the gear i needed with pugs because i did not ALREADY HAVE IT. This is while playing on my own terms, i'm sure that if i dedicated my life to the game i would be able to get the gear everyone loves so much and be allowed to participate in raids.

Next issue was that i relay wanted to do more PvP but again i had the gear problem, not to mention there is some poor balancing going on.

Last, there was the fact that you were very very restricted in who you could play with. Only people on your server who are on the same faction as you who are within the same level range as you, or in the case of 2 max lvl players who already fit all these criteria they have to have similar quality gear or one of them is going to be replaying a lot of old content for no challenge or benefit. All these factors made it impossible for me to play with any games i made elsewhere or even recommend the game to friends not already playing.

*edit* i came back to wow because of new expansions and so a new level cap and so a brand new level playing field where i might be able to get on top before so many players pass me that there are not enough people at my level that can work with me to get to the raids.
 

chozo_hybrid

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.
Jul 15, 2009
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Bigeyez said:
Silva said:
Thyunda said:
Yoshemo said:
#3: too expensive
#3: That doesn't make the game any worse, just less accessible.
I beg to differ. Value should be considered an internal quality of a game. If money is no object in internal quality, then spot the unemployed leech who probably has his parents buying the game for him!
WoW costs $15 a month to play + the cost of the retail box. In a year I pay $180 in subscription fees. Any brand new game cost $60. Now unless you only buy 1 or 2 brand new games every year then how can you say WoW is more expensive then playing normal videogames? I've spent so much less money on console/PC games since I started playing MMO's. In fact at $15 a month you'd be hard pressed to find a hobby thats cheaper then WoW.
Yes, that is such an excellent point! I'm not a WoW fan, heck I'm not even on the MMO side of the fence but this is a brilliant post.

However, the thing with WoW is, being the one game means it has very limited experiences. It's only got so much in it, I buy quite a few games a year to be able to play different kinds. So I get dozens of different experiences and stories etc. So to me, the $15 to merely keep playing the one game seems a bit pricey to me considering you pay quite a bit for the game and its expansions as well.
 

Jaded Scribe

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spinFX said:
Weak reasons have been supplied so far. All I see is:

"Too much grinding!" - like all MMOs... without it no one could justify the monthly fee because you'd run out of things to do. I don't like grinding either but really, all MMOs have this and there is a sense of achievment once you grind something out.

"Too expensive!" - God help you if you can't afford $20 a month for a hobby. If you have a job, shut up. If you are paying for this with your pocket money then you are too young to play.

"It's boring" - it's just another MMO. If you think WoW is boring then don't play any other MMOs because I've played them all and they're all about the same in boredom terms (except UO, that was the best MMO I've ever played).

So really these problems you guys (mostly) are listing can be applied to all MMOs, which still doesn't dethrone WoW as the best current MMO. It ain't perfect, but your subjective reasons are not good enough to justify calling it a bad game. I hate lots of games but I can see why others would think they're good. Just get off the "cool guy" express, just hating on things that are popular for superficial reasons. I hate it.

PS: I haven't played WoW in 2 years so I'm basing my knowledge off vanilla WoW and BC which were awesome.
If you check the link on my post above, you'll find reasons that are (in my opinion) a bit more substantial.
 

ckriley

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Mar 31, 2010
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The number one thing I dislike about the game is the absolutely TERRIBLE community. And I don't just mean the douches out there. Every game has those. But it's the elitism and things like Gearscore which really ruined it for me.

And I should just point out that I'm not a raider and never have been. I mostly just PvP casually in the Battlegrounds or play alts, so it's not like GS was something that directly impacted my playstyle or anything. It's just that it was a new element that quickly permeated the entire community. And it really highlighted exactly what was wrong with it.

In addition to that, the developers don't really seem to think things through when they implement a new feature. And I don't mean class balance. No MMO out there really has class balance. That's an ongoing thing. But it's game features such as Faction transfers and the addition of Death Knights that had dramatic impacts on the very structure of the game. And not for the better.

Faction transfers especially. When this feature was put in, I don't think Blizzard foresaw how devastating this would be for a lot of servers in the game and how dramatically this affected faction balance. I think they just thought some people would do it here and there, maybe transfer over a few alts, but there wouldn't be a mass exodus to one faction. Yet, that's exactly what has happened.

Entire guilds and large chunks of Alliance populations have all faction transferred to the Horde. There are many servers in the game now where the Horde outnumbers the Alliance by as great as 4:1. People are leaving the Alliance in droves.

There is a general lack of seeing the big picture with the Blizzard developers, like when they admitted adding Arenas was a mistake, and this has adverse consequences to the game. And it frustrates and already horrid community.
 

GameOverGoblin

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I honestly would try it if only it didn't have subscription fees. $15 bucks a month just for a game is a huge waste of money.
 

TheMadTypist

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Thyunda said:
If you don't like that sort of thing, that's fine. My question was more aimed at the people that curse the name of WoW, and to try to avoid it as though it's the plague. I can understand it not being your cup of tea, but I can't understand how it can repulse people the way it seems to do.
People curse the name of WoW more often than not because it is seen as THE MMO. It was the first one to make it big, and while other titles have emerged since with varying degrees of success, WoW still takes the majority of the brunt because it is the only really universally known title of the genre. The other titles you referenced, for instance, only rang distant bells in my head. Every problem that is seen as inherent in the design of MMO's, therefore, is automatically attributed by many to the Monolith that WoW has become. Is it always reasonable? not really. But the problems others have cited here about things like level grinding, the monthly fees, and others are inherent in the MMO design.

From my personal experience with a series of trials with WoW, EVE, and even (uck) runescape, I determined that I didn't like the detached feel of things. I click once, he runs off and keeps hitting things till they die/ship automatically manuvers around target, firing as soon as cooldown is up, leaving things like targeting up to random number generators. It's the same reason I couldn't get into turn based content beyond the shallow reaches of KOTOR's battle system- the sense of detachment between you and your character or army makes it feel as though you're giving someone else instructions of what to do, rather than you actively playing as a character. It is, I admit, a fine line, but one that is critical in the immersion factor of gaming.

Oh, and I don't like monthly fees. But that's really a just me thing. I like variety, which means I often get several lower-cost games a year, which amounts to only about 30-60 dollars less than a WoW subscription, but I'm getting lots of variety for my money, instead of playing the same game all the time.
 

Obrien Xp

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Dull, long, and not worth the cash. It didn't keep my attention or draw me in, I found it lacked depth.
 

Zani

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Furburt said:
It's incredibly, incredibly boring.

I played it non-stop for 3 fucking weeks-
Wait... what?

Personally I don't play it any more, but it's still one of my favourite games.

I guess some people just don't like the 'grindy' part in it, that and it's popular enough to hate on.
 

Silva

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Bigeyez said:
Silva said:
Thyunda said:
Yoshemo said:
#3: too expensive
#3: That doesn't make the game any worse, just less accessible.
I beg to differ. Value should be considered an internal quality of a game. If money is no object in internal quality, then spot the unemployed leech who probably has his parents buying the game for him!
WoW costs $15 a month to play + the cost of the retail box. In a year I pay $180 in subscription fees. Any brand new game cost $60. Now unless you only buy 1 or 2 brand new games every year then how can you say WoW is more expensive then playing normal videogames? I've spent so much less money on console/PC games since I started playing MMO's. In fact at $15 a month you'd be hard pressed to find a hobby thats cheaper then WoW.
That's a fallacious comparison that assumes that people have nothing else to buy, and that they'll immediately stop wanting other games simply because they play WoW. While this is true for the hardcore, it's hardly the only way that owning the game works out for people.
 

garfoldsomeoneelse

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Mar 22, 2009
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I'll tell you what's wrong with it: the same thing that's wrong with Call of Duty, Halo, and Farmville. Can you guess?

It's popular, therefore, hating it is chic. The gaming community is turning into a bunch of hipsters that hold an increasingly popular opinion that can best be summarized by commander Shepard him/herself: "If you've heard of it, it's already too mainstream for me".

The people that will try to rebut the previous statement with facts like "people get addicted" and "it's a money sink" are really only looking for logical-sounding reasons to get on the hatewagon. Why are these idiotic reasons to call it crap? Respectively: WoW does not give people an addiction complex, only people with a predisposition for addiction are trapped, as they would be by anything else that rewards them for use of whatever it may be; if someone chooses to play it instead of doing more important things, that does not make it an addiction any more than if I were to constantly choose to sleep in, as opposed to getting to work on time; it's just bad priorities, so stop acting like everyone who would rather play WoW than hang out with you is "addicted". Secondly, people are willing to pay for entertainment, as evidenced by the people who are willing to pony up far, far more per month for cable/satellite television services. Both are subscribed services, both are unproductive, but nobody really accuses television programming of being a money sink because there are far fewer people that are going to praise you for it or give you any other reason to feel smug.

I used to play it, but I don't anymore. Why? Because I got bored with it, as I do with pretty much everything. I tried most of what it had to offer, generally enjoyed myself, and moved on. That's all there is to it; I'm not some fanboy trying to justify a hobby that is garnering a constantly-increasing If you play it and like it, good for you, you're a fan of it. If you don't play it because you tried it and didn't like it, then congratulations, your dislike is valid. If you've played it, certain things about it completely turned you off of it, and you decide to let people know about this, it's time to pop the champagne, because you're not necessarily a douche.

If you haven't played it, have no plans to play it, and still believe yourself to be entitled to shit all over it (the majority of people who call it crap will admit to fitting in this category, only in terms that make them seem less like a douchebag and more like someone who is more informed and capable of making better decisions than everybody else), then get over yourself, because you're only echoing the opinions of others so you can have an opinion on something you don't know about.

tl;dr "lookit me imma rebel"

I know at least one of you is going to try to defend your hipster-dom by coming up with reasons other than the ones I listed, and/or calling me a fanboy. Don't play that game.