What Exactly Is Wrong With World Of Warcraft?

[Catalyst6]

I hate it because it made me unnaturally pale. But I still play it. I hate myself.

Now that you mention it, there has been a direct correlation between my skin tone and WoW playing. I've always been white as a racist snowman but now I am a ghost.

For some reason I've become incredibly popular with goths and 14 year old girls, though...

 

[likalaruku]

I have some shallow reasons & one reasonable one.

1)I hate the design of everything, from the enviromnets to the way the Elves look, especially the male elves.

2)Overpopulated. I'm not a social gamer, so the less people who cross my path, the better.

3)I've been told it punishes you for being a soloer.

4)I'm an unemployed housekeeper & to my knowlegde, Wow isn't free to play.

 

[haruvister]

It's a colossal rip-off and swarming with gold-farmers, but other than that there's nothing wrong with WoW. Except it's hugely popular - that seems to be a problem for some!

 

[WitherVoice]

(snip)
The total lack of a decent storyline doesn't help either.

What's wrong with the storyline? There's tonnes of storylines in all shapes and sizes, both from the world-defining stuff to the more mundane. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say you don't actually read your quests, and thus lose out on the storylines. If you missed something, there are plenty of online resources where you can have a look and find out what. In fact, I've yet to see an MMO do storylines with as much success as WoW does, and I've been looking, since storylines are my main reason for playing most any game.

Have hopes for Bioware's KotOR MMO, but only as a diversion. I don't believe they will create something with lasting appeal... cynical as though that may be.

It's the lack of any consistant storyline. It's easy enough to say "Well, your quests have storylines", because anyone can come up with a half-arsed plot behind collected five hundrerd wolf pelts.

See at that point, what you've pretty much done is put bold and underline on my assumption that you don't read the quests or have never actually done them, beyond maybe the level 10 mark.

 

[Demons_Bane]

Personally when i played it, I found nothing wrong with it.Just not my type of game i suppose and yes i played a trial.

 

[Sparrow]

(snip)
The total lack of a decent storyline doesn't help either.

What's wrong with the storyline? There's tonnes of storylines in all shapes and sizes, both from the world-defining stuff to the more mundane. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say you don't actually read your quests, and thus lose out on the storylines. If you missed something, there are plenty of online resources where you can have a look and find out what. In fact, I've yet to see an MMO do storylines with as much success as WoW does, and I've been looking, since storylines are my main reason for playing most any game.

Have hopes for Bioware's KotOR MMO, but only as a diversion. I don't believe they will create something with lasting appeal... cynical as though that may be.

It's the lack of any consistant storyline. It's easy enough to say "Well, your quests have storylines", because anyone can come up with a half-arsed plot behind collected five hundrerd wolf pelts.

See at that point, what you've pretty much done is put bold and underline on my assumption that you don't read the quests or have never actually done them, beyond maybe the level 10 mark.

You probally want to read the rest of the stuff I said to the other guy. He was funny.

USER WAS BANNED AT OWN REQUEST - MOD

 

[Prince Regent]

What Is Wrong With World Of Warcraft?

Nice alliteration.

 

[Sven und EIN HUND]

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.

Wow, this thread was over from the first reply.

 

[MetalMonkey74]

Activision

Shooting for the most ignorant post of the day, are we? I'll give you a hint: Activision does not own Blizzard, google that.

1) Too expensive
2) the graphics, even for the day of the release were horrible, the art design is not good.
3) The quests are really boring and there arent any markers to where you need to go, only tells you the area and then you have to search the whole area for 1 little thing.
4) So many people are turned into zombies by it, all they ever do is play warcraft. To be honest I was scared to try it, didnt want to get sucked in, but when my friend gave me a trial version I really didnt like it, even though I gave it a chance.

1) Not even close to being as expensive as, say, gathering trading cards (if that's what they're called), playing the Warhammer table top game, or even going to a bowling club twice a month. And before you try comparing it to other games, let's just say where other games count playtime by the hours, WoW does it by weeks and months.
2) They weren't horrible during release, they're improving over time (think every expansion and some major patches), although not in every direction (case in point, original races looking twice as bad as the ones introduced in Burning Crusade, and Northrend looking 5 times better than the original Azeroth). The preference of art style is entirely subjective. I happen to love it.
3) I have to agree for the most part, but then again, the quest log is vastly more helpful than what almost every other MMO has, because it did one thing right ever since launch, and that's being short, to the point, and clear about the objective(-s). Not to mention some quest texts can teach you something about the lore and maybe even crack a joke or two. About the actual markers, this is something that some people might think ruins the game a little because it singlehandedly removes most of the reason for players to want to explore the landscape. In any case, recently the quest log was upgraded to have them, and players can now blindly go from quest giver to quest area without looking around a single bit.
4) Obviously, the people you're around were not exposed to the crack known as Counter Strike or Lineage 2. Those are known to have ludicrous amounts of players (and I mean fanatics) while being average or below average as a product. At any rate, it's all a question of willpower - if one does not possess it, one might aswell die from exhaustion while playing a game. Same can happen with alcohol, drugs or gambling, it's just a different thing to lose yourself in.


There are a few things I can mention as a former WoW player, however, that just piss me off;
- Too much catering to the whiny casuals. They're not the ones who got this game off the ground, and there's no reason for them to feel so entitled to absolutely-horrifyingly-dumbed-down-gameplay.
- Complete butchering of the Lich King storyline. Honestly, after I saw what they did about the death of Arthas, I said 'I don't fucking believe it' out loud, even after the fact that he wasn't doing anything except scratching his ass in Icecrown for over a year.
- Realm firsts. 'Nuff said.

massive snip

Quote for absolute and undeniable truth.

No, Acvtivision does not OWN Blizzard, but we all know what Bobby Kotick sees when he "merges" with another company. I'm a former WoW player as well, and in my opinion, all this tailoring to the masses, Starcraft being split in 3 episodes, Microtransactions to buy pets and mounts in game.... thats all Activision.

I've been gaming a long time, and i can see the changes that have happened to Blizz since the merge. Its all about cashing in as much as possible. Blizz cannot come out with iterations of WoW every year, they can barely come out with an expansion every year (not to say that its a bad thing) but activision want their developers to do just that. We all know how CoD is being turned into everything from farmville to snakes and ladders coz Activision want to cash in.

So in my opinion, yes, Activision is what is wrong with WoW.

 

[Kragg]

-snip-

WoW is not complex?

Alright, then, if it is not complex, then tell me the optimal rotation for generating the maximum amount of threat as a paladin tank, and why it is that way. What is Exorcism's role in that, and with your rotation, what is the best sort of weapon to use, a slow or fast weapon? And why?

WoW is simple to learn, but it's a lot more complex than you give it credit for. And it's not 'easy mode' when you're trying to dodge all manor of environmental effects, adjust position of the mobs for maximum output of damage and minimum input of damage, while making sure all your basic cooldown abilities are being used in a timely manner (i.e. every global cooldown.)

Of course, this is without considering the fact that complex and good are not the same word. Rolemaster is a complex roleplaying game. It is also terrible for most players. Most 'complex' MMOs are needlessly complex, confusing things like 'corpse runs' and 'grinding for days for a level' and 'You lose xp for dying' and 'useless abilities that are traps for the player' with 'difficulty.'

Difficulty implies that some sort of skill is involved.

Punishing a player for actually bothering to try to play and learn your game is making the game difficult to like, not difficult to play. Critically speaking, unlikeability is a bad trait for a game.

well this just proves that its as complex as riding a bike really? you learn it once and never look back, i suppose patches change things up once in a while. its basic "dont stand in the fire" gameplay and rotation combat

And what is more complex than that out there, that does so without sacrificing available and enjoyable game play?

i guess they are connected no? what some find mindnumbing others find "easy to pick up" personally i liked the age of conan combat alot better. its personal taste aswell

but easy does not mean good, some people like xp loss on death, some people play diablo 2 on hardcore mode, one death and you lose 3 weeks of gameplay, and enjoy it. nowadays easy DOES mean appealing to the masses. But i can counter that and say Zynga games

now ive heard the warcraft "hard to master thing before" but really, take a week out of your life and you can learn everything there is to know about a specific class in a specific role. it used to be true, but now there are sooooo many resources with movies and rotations math and explanations that it doesnt take that much effort at all anymore

 

[Veleste]

When you simplify WoW it is essentially msn and minesweeper all rolled into one pretty package.
The game is designed to give players something to do while talking to their friends. It's the biggest con in the history of man kind as it's popularity is based off it's players and it's players are attracted by the popularity. A genius, self perpetuating circle

Anything that is this popular will have haters.

 

[DracoSuave]

]

i guess they are connected no? what some find mindnumbing others find "easy to pick up" personally i liked the age of conan combat alot better. its personal taste aswell

but easy does not mean good, some people like xp loss on death, some people play diablo 2 on hardcore mode, one death and you lose 3 weeks of gameplay, and enjoy it. nowadays easy DOES mean appealing to the masses. But i can counter that and say Zynga games

Easy does not mean good, I do agree. But 'XP loss' doesn't mean 'hard'. It means 'punishing.' The gameplay leading you to that point does not change in complexity OR difficulty, only the stakes for failure.

Another way of putting it:

Let's say you have a math exam, and you studied for it. If you pass the exam, you get to graduate. If, instead, you get a million dollars, the exam does not magically become easier. The consequences of success/failure becoming more favorable doesn't actually change the difficulty.

Hardcore mode doesn't make Diablo 2 harder... it makes the stakes higher. That's a different sort of deal. And it's strictly voluntary... if you do not enjoy the consequences, you are free to ignore that selection.

In WoW, the equivalent would be to delete your character if you ever saw the spirit guide.

Most gamers want challenge, not punishment. Learning the difference between the two will go a long way as to understanding why WoW is on top. Yes, Everquest got really popular with punishing game mechanics, and when a high-profile game came out that removed the punishment, Everquest completely ceased to be relevant.

Good MMOs are about reward-cycles, not punishment-avoidance. The punishment for failure should be failure, not 'redo the last day of effort'

now ive heard the warcraft "hard to master thing before" but really, take a week out of your life and you can learn everything there is to know about a specific class in a specific role. it used to be true, but now there are sooooo many resources with movies and rotations math and explanations that it doesnt take that much effort at all anymore

That's actually a statement that the analysis is so in depth. That's not the fault of the game, in fact, that's an indication that it IS that deep.

Look at a discussion on what stats are most important for which builds, and you'll see that it's -extremely- complex.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

I like an mmo game where my character can be unique, where there are a billion variables that I can change and none of them will affect me in any perticular way.
I like it when people are like "so we should get zenfox3/funnydoody/noble/legend3/tenn/Ryan to join us, he has high attack and is fun to play with."
with WoW, its pretty much "pick this or that or we wont let you be part of our group"
and that makes me sad.
I like to be me in games, not "the tank" or "the healer", I like to play as I play, and not have to learn spell rotations so I can be like one of the other 10billion people who all picked the same class.

Definitely. As a WoW player, I can absolutely agree with this. It's disgraceful. The WoW community is what's wrong with WoW, as far as I'm concerned. The end-game community has sucked the customization out of it. Talents were supposed to be about customization but now if you ask for advice from some other players they'll merely point you in the direction of the class forums where everyone there will order you to re-spec to one of four or five specific talent builds crafted by Elitist Jerks or whatever. According to them, if you don't do this, you are bad and should quit the game. I hate these people.

Elitists rule the game now, because everyone wants to go farther faster. If it's not number crunched on EJ to work, it will be looked down upon. :/

To be fair, I just checked out the EJ site. This guy seems to be on the level.

http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/binkenstein/260-what_does_your_guild_mean_you.html
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/binkenstein/310-best_slot_concept.html

Spoiler: Excerpt

If there aren't any really definite best in slot lists possible, why is there a demand for them? The answer is quite simple, the average player doesn't want to think to hard about what he (or she) needs to do their job, they just want a simple shopping list of items to go on. Unfortunately, gearing around requirements is more of a puzzle than a clearly defined list, and when you master this "gearing puzzle", you'll be a better player because of it.

This "shopping list" remark of his strikes a cord in me, so to speak. This is due to the fact that upon reaching 80 on my Mage, I was made to go look at the Mage forums and, look what I found, there's a Sticky thread up top entitled "So you've just reached level 80... now what?". And it happens to contain an exact shopping list of gear I need to do hours and hours of heroic dungeons for just so I can get the emblems needed to buy them. There also happens to be a list of "heavily recommended talent builds". I then looked in the Warlock forums and saw the word "simcraft" being thrown around far too often. There was also, lo and behold, yet another list of five or so "optimal talent builds, simcraft-approved" for fresh 80 Warlocks to re-spec to. For fuck's sake (excuse the language).

As an 80 Mage, I now sit there in boss fights in heroic dungeons doing nothing but a specific Arcane spell rotation because if I don't, people will start talking.

I'm not sitting back and taking it though. I've edited the Talents section in WoWwiki to help others realize the truth - that there's no such thing as a bad spec.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Talent#Advice_on_picking_your_talents
I'll be saying this to anyone who asks about talent specs on the forums as well, because they need to hear something other than the inevitable "lol get dis spec and u wont be a terribad" from some moron who takes the game far too seriously.

Yup, Arcane Mages have it easy nowadays, but it's so cookie cutter and everyone does it now. I remember in 2.4 Arcane was just coming out from the dump & now it's the best when Wreath was released and even now. That's why when I started playing again, I went for priest, because every mage I see is Arcane. :/

Aye. Every Mage I see posting in the Mage forums is Arcane. Bloody hell.

The only reason I'm currently Arcane is that I'm trying it out for myself. One of my specs is an Arcane "proper raiding spec" designed by EJ freaks. That's to keep them off my back. The other spec is a PvP spec I'm currently trying out, Arcane and Fire. I'm at that stage where I'm trying out specs for myself and creating my own talent builds. At one point I had all 71 points put into Arcane and it was good because it gave me suitable PvE viability while giving me that much-needed PvP boost to help defend myself if I ever got jumped on by an Alliance player looking for a fight. But people called me bad for it. I /spit on them. They're beneath me as players and as people.

Oh, on that note, the only other bad thing about WoW (and this is my opinion) is that Game Masters should probably (key word: probably) do away with some of the bureaucratic methods of getting rid of problem players. Catch a player extorting other players and making it difficult for them for no reason other than trolling? Investigate fully, and temporary ban along with a nice message to go with it, something along the lines of "quit acting like a ***** and you won't get banned". If he repeats his offences, longer ban. If he does it again, third strike. Permaban. "We don't want you in our game, fuck off" message optional. "You've been warned. Don't come crying to our forums because we won't care. Have a nice day!"

Players acting incredibly stupid in Random Dungeon Finder groups? Take a quick look at their party chat log and see if those one or two members are truly griefing, and when they get to the last boss, either freeze them right before they initiate combat or let them fight the boss but don't let the resultant badges or loot rewards fall into their inventories. And don't let them roll on loot.

IMO GMs need to start knocking some discipline into the game world. But sadly, GMs are taught to be overly sensitive, disturbingly polite when it's not warranted (i.e. when a player they're servicing is rude) and "professional" at the cost of dignity. Yes, there are players who respect GMs but the offending players who act like idiots need to be taught - forcefully if need be - to respect the GMs they so easily abuse. If they don't respect their GMs, they should at least fear them.

But again, this is just my opinion, people. I'm in favour of taking a more pro-active approach to player discipline. We don't need more well-meaning or non-elitist players driven away from the game because of EJ-worshipping, number crunching morons.

 

[Kragg]

Easy does not mean good, I do agree. But 'XP loss' doesn't mean 'hard'. It means 'punishing.' The gameplay leading you to that point does not change in complexity OR difficulty, only the stakes for failure.

Another way of putting it:

Let's say you have a math exam, and you studied for it. If you pass the exam, you get to graduate. If, instead, you get a million dollars, the exam does not magically become easier. The consequences of success/failure becoming more favorable doesn't actually change the difficulty.

Hardcore mode doesn't make Diablo 2 harder... it makes the stakes higher. That's a different sort of deal. And it's strictly voluntary... if you do not enjoy the consequences, you are free to ignore that selection.

In WoW, the equivalent would be to delete your character if you ever saw the spirit guide.

Most gamers want challenge, not punishment. Learning the difference between the two will go a long way as to understanding why WoW is on top. Yes, Everquest got really popular with punishing game mechanics, and when a high-profile game came out that removed the punishment, Everquest completely ceased to be relevant.

Good MMOs are about reward-cycles, not punishment-avoidance. The punishment for failure should be failure, not 'redo the last day of effort'

i dont know really, would have been a good experiment to do, would wow have been as popular if it had permadeath or itemlooting from players? im sure people would have learned how to adapt to it, with flee mechanics and whatnot. but theres no way you can change the game now to see if it would work. the first huge draw to wow wasnt the gameplay at all probably, more the lore/artstyle and RTS players coming over.

That's actually a statement that the analysis is so in depth. That's not the fault of the game, in fact, that's an indication that it IS that deep.

Look at a discussion on what stats are most important for which builds, and you'll see that it's -extremely- complex.

yes it is complex, but the endresult isn't, there are going to be huge topics and discussions with the math to back up why stat a is better than b, when b catches up with a, same for talents, but it ends with, do X then Y till Y is off colldown and use this talentbuild, which is easy

what seems so sad about wow to me is that you can never take a 3 month break without being horribly behind on progression or gear. do a tour in irak and youre stuck till the next gearreset. in 2005-2006 you atleast could get back in the game.

in the end some people like being the hamster in the cage getting pellets franticly ramming the lever to get more. i would probably be the hamster in a nearby cage getting electroshocks every 5 minutes and pitying the other hamster

 

[Thyunda]

When you simplify WoW it is essentially msn and minesweeper all rolled into one pretty package.
The game is designed to give players something to do while talking to their friends. It's the biggest con in the history of man kind as it's popularity is based off it's players and it's players are attracted by the popularity. A genius, self perpetuating circle

Anything that is this popular will have haters.

Basically, it's like a game. But it's also a community. I don't get the con?

 

[DracoSuave]

i dont know really, would have been a good experiment to do, would wow have been as popular if it had permadeath or itemlooting from players? im sure people would have learned how to adapt to it, with flee mechanics and whatnot. but theres no way you can change the game now to see if it would work. the first huge draw to wow wasnt the gameplay at all probably, more the lore/artstyle and RTS players coming over.

The art and the RTS pedigree helped, but a lot of what let it stick past the one month subscription was its ability to steal EQ's players and keep them. Everything people hated about EQ, were simply not done. One of the games selling points was that death's worst effect was to set you back some repairs and a run back to where you died... with boosted speed... if you didn't want to go do some non-fighting content.

EQ was nasty, with XP loss AND Gear loss if you could not -find- your corpse. People disliked it, so as a result, they never took on hard content until they had someone watching their back with a rez.

yes it is complex, but the endresult isn't, there are going to be huge topics and discussions with the math to back up why stat a is better than b, when b catches up with a, same for talents, but it ends with, do X then Y till Y is off colldown and use this talentbuild, which is easy

Except that -always- changes, and there's constant testing and re-testing to see if there's other ways of doing it. Do you -need- that level of complexity to enjoy the game? No. If you DO enjoy that level of complexity, it is there for you.

What is important is that you get exactly what you want.

And some class/specs are way more complex than others. Balance Druid for DPS? Pretty non-complicated to play. Feral Druid for DPS? John Madden Shit.

Unholy DK for DPS? Stick to the rotation and hit cooldowns as necessary. Frost DK for DPS? Install some addons so you can see the myriad procs that you need to maximise your effectiveness, because otherwise you simply can't do it.

what seems so sad about wow to me is that you can never take a 3 month break without being horribly behind on progression or gear. do a tour in irak and youre stuck till the next gearreset. in 2005-2006 you atleast could get back in the game.

BS.

Either you're level 80 or you're not. If you're level 80, you can still run heroics and do very well and get caught up quickly. If you're not level 80, you're not behind.

And if you PvP, the above STILL applies.

in the end some people like being the hamster in the cage getting pellets franticly ramming the lever to get more. i would probably be the hamster in a nearby cage getting electroshocks every 5 minutes and pitying the other hamster

That's more a comment on the game genre, no MMO doesn't have that sort of gameplay. People play it for months on end, literal months of time. You can't have that without some sort of way to reward repetition.

 

[Atmos Duality]

What's wrong with World of Warcraft? Oooooohhhhhh....

The fact that you will be playing your character in exactly the same manner for 99% of the game.
PvP? I liked the PvP concept. I played in lieu of my friend who hated PvP and need rep or badges or something. I don't know, I don't play it, but I'm fairly intuitive to it. In order to PvP you need the latest batch of extremely rare epics and chase items.

Most of these items are counters to combos likely to be dropped on you, taking the power firmly out of the role you're playing and placing it entirely at the whim of the harsh RNG. Oh, and the assholes who Need roll everything to ensure you don't get it, because they will be selling it to a vendor for +20 gold after the raid is done. I've seen that happen with alarming regularity.

So, off to grinding you go, asshole! Hope you have 40 hours a week at least to log in order to even QUALIFY for it! Otherwise, your new class role is "doormat".

How about paying 15 bucks a month to relax or amuse yourself by....grinding yourself into boredom.
No, really. This is beyond senseless, and so many people do it because there seems to be some instinctive psychology at play here:

A task that takes longer to accomplish will bring a greater sense of reward. I theorize that this is the core of all MMORPG design.
It's certaintly NOT because the process is FUN.
Worse still, this presents an "illusion of progress" to the player, because you will inevitably be outmoded, and likely soon. This must be so, because the game would die very very quickly if it didn't outmode all of the previous content with new content.

In fact, by doing this, all of the previous "lowbie" levels essentially becomes what I like to call "empty design space". You just kill time trying to reach the status quo.

That's my theory anyway. I cannot understand why so many people put up with this bullshit otherwise, least of all my own friends. I have literally watched entire parties/hang outs go down the toilet because of WoW; and often enough, they have NOTHING to show for their efforts after a raid because their own guild(s) decided that they needed the only spoils more, or someone "failboated" their job tanking, resulting in a huge repair bill.

So, in a sense, the MMORPG is like the anti-game, because it is actively trying to NOT provide entertainment, but rather, entrap the player so s/he continues to dole out that 15 bucks a month going in circles.

That's my opinion. Dis/Agree with it as you will, but WoW ruined a great deal of gaming for me.

 

[Tsunimo]

i the simplest terms available.....
EVERYTHING

 

[UPRC]

WoW itself, as an MMORPG, feels incredibly dated these days. I still play, but I don't really enjoy the game itself a whole lot anymore. I mostly just play it because I met some really cool people through WoW and it's fun to log on and talk to them or maybe do a few quests or instances with them.

If those people quit playing, I know that I would as well in a heartbeat. After all, I'm only still playing because of them.