WoW, that was boring.

[weemadando]

So, I finally tried World of Warcraft. It came free on a PCPP coverdisc with a 14 day trial, so I really had no excuse now, not even the $2 barrier to entry that is the WoW disc available at the counter of every store in the world. Over the weekend I decided that I would have to at least try this game that nearly everyone in the gaming world has devloped a fetishistic obsession with.

I made it to level 2 before quitting. That pretty much sums up my experience. Now, before I get any hate from the people who'll just click "reply" and say:

You have no idea what the game is like! Get to level 30 and you'll see!

I can address this with a simple response: I already have a job.

Now, I started playing as a Tauren Warrior. Nothing too adventurous, I just wanted to get the feel for it. And after the really quite intriguing intro fly-by I arrive in a camp and walk to the guy with the big yellow exclamation mark over his head. All the while marvelling at just how good the game looks, even running on what is a very low powered laptop.

Conceded point no.1 - I love the art. It's simple, but beautiful. In fact, it's fantastic. If only more games just went: "how about we spend time on art design, rather than just applying yet another level of normal mapping to that plank on a wall".

First quest. It's a "Kill X of Y to get A of B and bring B back to me"-type quest. Sure, simple enough and that's all you really expect for an early quest in any RPG. So I head out and kill about 15 ostrich thingies and bring back the feathers or meat, or whatever he was after. With the amount of guys crowding around him, he must have enough feathers to make a hundred thousand luxurious doonas.

Second quest. Find grandma. Aka - introduction to the map and direction finding. Also introduction to inventory management. Again, fairly straight forward and during it I get challenged to a dual by another newbie. So we have at it while some 30th level guys stand around and watch the uneventful smiting.

It's about this point that I realise that I'm not actually enjoying this game. "I'll try another quest, see what happens." So I wander back to the town, deposit an urn of water and pick up a new quest. "Kill X of Y to get A of B and bring B back to me."

Fuck this. I spend about 3 minutes trying to find a way to quit, before realising that I just have to quit the game and it spends 30 seconds or whatever logging you out.

Back to an earlier point: I already have a job. I don't want a game to become a job for me. If I'm sitting down to play a game after a day at work, and an evening at home doing the daily chores of life I don't want to log in and play a game where my only option for advancement is to go forth and do more make-work and chores.

The Sims gets around this particular little niggle by allowing me to cheat and go hogwild on building a monstrous non-Euclidean home which would drive Escher mad and dropping in a mass of Sims, each carefully engineered to provoke rage-virus type symptoms from their other housemates.

Various other RPGs get around it by making me feel special right from the word "Go!". Sure, I might be doing yet another FedEx mission, but I'm assured that this mission is vital to the continued survival of the realm and I get a chance to develop my own character and learn more about various NPCs along the way.

Any which way I try to spin it, WoW just feels like work to me. Especially when people crack out the afore-mentioned line about having to get to some ridiculous level before it becomes fun. Perhaps they have a better work ethic than me. Perhaps they just have a lot more spare time than I do. Perhaps they feel that grinding through hours upon hours of shitty gameplay to reach something exciting is worth it.

But I don't feel that way. And I refer you all to Diablo. I don't really view it as a game. More as a click-fest grinding simulator. But I play it none-the-less because it has an addictive quality. And after playing WoW, which should have had the same effect - but didn't, I think I can finally pin point what it is. It made you feel special. Every quest was important. Every creature you faced was actually a challenge, not some semi-domesticated prey-animal who's there just to give people XP.

WoW, by virtue of it's MMORPG design seems to lack that feeling of empowerment that most games give. After all, who plays games not to escape, but to just to continue feeling like a goddamn wage-slave?

Perhaps I'll still be lambasted by the WoW-loving hordes for "just not getting it". But frankly, I couldn't see what there really is to get. Which is why after about an hour of play, I decided to quit and then uninstall it. Thus ends my time with WoW.

PS - Point Conceded 2: Maybe at level 20 or 30 or 40 or whatever, it actually does get interesting, what with instances, raids and the big team-work aspect. And from what half my friends say, this would appear to be the case But the fact is, that I can get that experience in many other games from the first hour of play, so sorry, but no sale.

[Molyneux]

If you still want to try an MMO, I recommend looking into LEGO Universe when it comes out. That promises to be interesting.

[weemadando]

I played the shit out of Blockland at LANs and SP. It was awesome. If LEGO Universe offers me half the creativity that Blockland did, I'm there. If it actually lets me build working vehicles etc? Even moreso.

And for trying an MMO, I'm intrigued by Age of Conan which offers the "pretend it's singleplayer until you reach a point where the game stops sucking" angle on the whole thing.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

If you didn't like WoW, you'll more likely than not hate AoC too. Same shit, different graphical style and thematic elements.

[Gandalf]

I played WoW and quit at level 39.

It was just so dull and repetitive. Everything you could possibly do had been "mapped" by other players, and I was sick of being ganked when I tried to do those things.

[General Zod]

I played WoW and quit at level 39.

It was just so dull and repetitive. Everything you could possibly do had been "mapped" by other players, and I was sick of being ganked when I tried to do those things.

You were able to last that long? I couldn't make it past Level 2, and my experience was about the same as weemadando's. At least when I played City of Heroes the character creator and fairly wide range of abilities up front made it interesting enough for me to stick around until the sameness of the missions killed my interest.

[Gandalf]

You were able to last that long? I couldn't make it past Level 2, and my experience was about the same as weemadando's. At least when I played City of Heroes the character creator and fairly wide range of abilities up front made it interesting enough for me to stick around until the sameness of the missions killed my interest.

I had friends who pestered me constantly to get to a high level so they could raid with me. Also, I felt I had to spend some time on it, because they bought me the game.

I played a demo of City of Heroes, and I thought it fun until I reached the same problem as you. It's all so samey.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I played WoW and quit at level 39.

It was just so dull and repetitive. Everything you could possibly do had been "mapped" by other players, and I was sick of being ganked when I tried to do those things.

You were able to last that long? I couldn't make it past Level 2, and my experience was about the same as weemadando's. At least when I played City of Heroes the character creator and fairly wide range of abilities up front made it interesting enough for me to stick around until the sameness of the missions killed my interest.

Bravo, level 16 with a Shaman, 12 with a sorceror was as far as I got. One month subscription down the drain.

At least I got a fair way through my audiobook collection searching for that 30th "big boar pelt". Blah. Booooring!

[bilateralrope]

I see that weemadando managed to last longer in WoW than I did. I didn't even reach the map tutorial quest before giving up because, even after reading the manual that came with the download, the controls just kept annoying me.

No screenshot that I have ever seen of WoW has shown any impressive looking artwork. The landscape shots I've seen have looked especially bland.

On the XoO forums I also recently heard about the system used to distribute the loot from some of the high level instances. The groups are too big to decide who gets it by consensus, the loot is bind on pickup (a mechanic I hate) so the only way to get it is to repeat that instance until you get it (and I'm not even sure if it drops every time) and randomly assigning it to a person is apparently not fair enough for their liking. Instead they use a system called DKP where people are given points for helping the guild, then spending those points to 'buy' the gear when it drops. It took one person 9 posts to explain it and the common variants because he kept hitting the character limit (vBulletin forums, probably running the default limit).

In discussing this system, one person claimed to of seen a mathematical proof that DKP worked better than randomly assigning it (however he had lost the link, so I couldn't see this proof). Another person tried to justify it as an attempt to prevent players jumping guilds when they get the gear they want.

In that discussion we had someone describe hardcore raiding as being more like a professional sport than gaming. Another person disagreed and said that raiding was easy, as long as you install the right mods, read up the various walkthroughs and watch the videos so that you know exactly what to do. And if someone wasn't willing to do that, he should step aside and let a stand in take his place.

[Resinence]

Ex-wow addict/raider here.

Started out playing casual but the guild slowly became more "hardcore" as time went along, DKP is retarded, heres why: It's used because idiots really do think of raiding as a continuous sport, rather than thinking of each go as a separate instance. So randomly distributing loot among classes would be "unfair" because they did more work (yes, it's a job with work, not fun) to complete the instance. Seems ok yeah? But you get DKP just for going to failed raids, so some guy who has been on 50 failed raids that all wiped out will always get an item over someone who's raids have always been successful, but hasn't done as many. It favours people for time spent, not how good they are at the game. In other words; reinforcing what wow is all about, pouring time into shit. It's practically impossible to get anything done in a fun way on wow, it's either a long pointless grind, a guild complete with savage politiks or playing "casually" and taking 6 months to get a single decent thing. And yet this is the most popular PC game, if not ever. =/

[bilateralrope]

Resinence, from what I've seen on the XoO forums there are various DKP systems. Some only award points when the item drops, some for killing the boss, others reward points for helping people elsewhere (for instance the AoC players in XoO reward points for crafting that helps the guild there).

Then there are other systems that reward points for simply turning up on time

I'm just happy that the only MMO's I've spent any time in are Eve and Guild Wars where you can buy any item you want from other players, except for a few quest reward items in Guild Wars (which you are guaranteed to get for completing the quest once).

[Resinence]

I wish I still had my chat logs and screens so I could show you the kind of backstabbing and political bullshit that goes on behind the scenes of these civilized DKP systems. At least with Eve you can just log in once a week and still have your character progress, since the abilities are leveled up when your offline, but then again it's an economics simulator (a pretty one though ), rather than a program designed around getting people emotionally invested so that they keep giving money like EQ and WoW. Guild Wars has no such incentive since no one pays them anything except for expansions, but I fully expect Age of Conan to be just like WoW, but "upgraded". Warhammer online as well, though I haven't played either, and from what I've heard of them won't either.

By the way, NDKP is the most commonly used DKP system, and it awards points for just turning up. Well, it was the most used a year ago anyway, dunno about now, the last guy I know who played wow moved to Melbourne and disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm sure whatever they use now is even more needlessly complicated and full of exploitable loopholes for officers and guild masters.

[bilateralrope]

Could you give me an example of this backstabbing ?

Since I haven't seen anyone even hint at it in DKP systems, although they did bring it up as a major problem with loot council*. Unless I'm missing something, the only potential I see for political bullshit is when you are deciding how many points each thing gets. Once that's decided and fixed, DKP seems like a system with rules that aren't open to multiple interpretations.

*Have a group of people within the guild who discuss amongst themselves, then decide who gets what items.

[Resinence]

Eh, you have far too much confidence in people following the rules of the system . What I saw often was arbitrary switching of how many of each class are "needed" for whatever raid, so that friends can come along, "encouraging" people to pass on items so that somebody can finish their set (often with hilariously entertaining bitch fights over vent). Another one I saw all the time is when a guild loses their main tank, and a new one is recruited; they often are given priority on loot for a few weeks, but then once they are negative DKP and expected to earn it back they just drop guild and move on. Wow even has persecuted minorities, feral druids, shadow priests, ret paladins, the list goes on (any non cookie-cutter/non-standard classes). Sure, maybe the top 10 raiding guilds follow DKP to the letter, but the vast majority do not at all, and really should be called "clans", since they behave more like tribalistic clans than an organized medieval guild. Infact, anyone studying human behaviour could do well using wow, since people are so emotionally invested it basically is a "life", and there is no central government to keep them in line. Corruption and backstabbing in a "free market" you say? NEVER!

[bilateralrope]

Yes, I can see your problems there. I guess I was just applying my confidence of XoO members to WoW's general population. My bad.

[loomer]

RP server, 56 rogue (third incarnation of the character. Previous levels: 36, 45). I've been playing for like, three years now.

Funnily enough, I've spent 95% of my time RPing rather than levelling. I can't stand that part of the game either.

[Crown]

Could you give me an example of this backstabbing ?

Since I haven't seen anyone even hint at it in DKP systems, although they did bring it up as a major problem with loot council*. Unless I'm missing something, the only potential I see for political bullshit is when you are deciding how many points each thing gets. Once that's decided and fixed, DKP seems like a system with rules that aren't open to multiple interpretations.

*Have a group of people within the guild who discuss amongst themselves, then decide who gets what items.

On my first Warlock I was a class leader, basically an officer of the guild. As such, the backstabbing usually occured in officer chat where the peons could not see you. To give an example;

TBC just got released, the guild's devoted (and in my case at that point unemployed) 'core', most of which were officers, leveled to 70 at a fast rate (no PuG's = extremely fast leveling, multiple instance runs, and awesome loot with which to level). At 70, we go back and 'boost' our stragglers, and run the attunement quests for end-game instances (at this point Karazhan was end game, don't laugh guys).

Anyway, we start our Kara runs, having enough for 2 groups, and we ofcourse start our DKP system. All the rules were on our guild webpage, as well as a table of every active guild memember and their progress.

Anyway, cut a long story short. On one of our runs, some epic DPS caster's gloves drop. And in officer's chat I basically got into a screaming match with the Mage class leader whether he should get the drop, or another Warlock. My arguement was; DKP were in the class leader's favour (no suprise there, as class leader we basically got deferential treatment, being the first to be invited to a raid and add all the boosting runs for atunement he's DKP's were leaps and bounds ahead of the other candidate), but the class leader had way better gear than the Warlock. He was a Tailor/Enchanter with the Tailoring Epics (easily up to T5 standard, Karazahn is T4), and while the gloves were a slight DPS increase for him, they were a huge DPS increase for the Warlock.

In other words, my arguement was the gloves gave a better DPS increase return on investment for our Warlock (who was Herb/Alchemy), in would raise his DPS by a substantial margin over the green Hellfire Peninsula quest gloves he had on at the time, while only slightly increasing the Mage class leader's DPS. As such it would also help the guild overall by adding yet another strong DPSer to our ranks.

The Mage class leader's argument was basically; it's purple, and I want it. I have the DKP to spend on it, and you can't stop me.

Well, the other officers, said that 'no we couldn't', and 'yes you can' but 'it would be a mistake and waste of your DKP'. Didn't matter. He said he was rolling.

So, myself, the other class leaders who were elligible said we were passing, and we did a /roll between the Mage class leader and the Warlock. The Mage won it, and that was that.

But I could never forget the absolute stupidity in that decision. These weren't the Twin Blades FFS, it was just some non Teir epic gloves, but we had a hissy fit over it. It didn't help the guild as much if one of our less geared players got it, it was just a little bit of e-peen.

The problem is though, DKP (assuming a benevolent guild, or at least an honest one), is probably the best way to distribute end game loot. Even though, at times, it's nowhere as transparent as we pretend it to be.

[Lagmonster]

I played WoW and quit at level 39.

It was just so dull and repetitive. Everything you could possibly do had been "mapped" by other players, and I was sick of being ganked when I tried to do those things.

You were able to last that long? I couldn't make it past Level 2, and my experience was about the same as weemadando's. At least when I played City of Heroes the character creator and fairly wide range of abilities up front made it interesting enough for me to stick around until the sameness of the missions killed my interest.

I tried the WoW free ten-day downloadable trial not long ago, and I believe I uninstalled at level 3 or so - at around the point where I realized that early game was a boring crawl and the supposedly fun points of the game was dominated by people who wanted to play with professionals, not amateurs.

To be fair, I had the same opinion of Guild Wars, which I finished and enjoyed for its decent story and interesting setting. Past a certain point I found nobody would play with you unless you were using a precise build and doing just the right thing in the instances. I got tired of failing to find a group who would play with my for-fun, not-wearing-elite-armour franken-characters that weren't as efficient as a hardcore gamer's due to an unwillingness to grind for hours raising faction points or marching across the wilderness for just the right skills. And I was particularly put off by the excessively nerdy etiquette and formula-and-acronym-laden chatter that dominates post-endgame content, which smacked me on the uncomfortable side of obsession.

Lag's third rule of cooperative gaming: If I have to consult any outside source to figure out what build or technique you're spattering on about absolutely requiring your teammates to use, you can fuck right off. I want a teammate, not a foreman.

[Civil War Man]

I'm not surprised you don't like WoW. Basically, I wouldn't even have started playing if it weren't for the fact that several friends from college play. One thing I noticed with the updates is that Blizzard has pretty much forgotten low level areas in favor of adding new content to endgame. The exception is when they added Draenei and Blood Elves, and hence had to create new beginner areas which frankly I find much cooler than the starting areas of the original races, but once I hit 20 there wasn't anywhere to go but the regular areas if I actually wanted to make any progress. So I pretty much didn't see any of the content from Burning Crusade until 38 levels later when I could go to Outland.

I don't think the game is particularly friendly to brand new players at this point, mostly because Wrath of the Lich King is coming out and raising the level cap even further (to 80). I've only been playing for maybe a year, and the only reason I made it this far is because they sped up levelling between 30 and 60 and because I had friends with high-level characters playing who would help me out so I could get up to their level. Also helps that my guild, which consists entirely of these aforementioned friends, is extremely casual (sometimes the group leader will put on free-for-all loot because "we all trust each other") and not big enough to do raiding, which borders on being an entirely different game.

[Broomstick]

WoW: it's not for everyone.

I now have a level 70 I use mostly for raiding, an alt that just hit 50, three alts in the 40's, and 5 lower level alts spread across two servers, mostly horde but some Alliance. And I'm considered a "casual" player. I'm looking forward to Wrath of the Lich King and getting a Death Knight and exploring Northrend.

I'm not in an elite raiding guild, but we do some of the end content and people generally aren't too retarded about loot distribution. My second (Alliance) guild is just casual/sometime players and we tell folks who get heavily interested in raiding to go elsewhere with our blessing rather than stay and get frustrated.

That said, yes, there are some aspects that are like work and some definite flaws in the game. I will not try to argue the OP out of his opinion, nor tell him that "At level X it gets interesting" because what I find interesting and what he finds interesting may well be quite different. If you don't like WoW that's cool - with 10 million+ subscribers Blizzard is in no danger of going out of business if you go elsewhere.

I sincerely hope you find a game more to your liking that you will enjoy playing for hours on end.

[Stark]

Judging an MMO by the early game (hell you can get to level 2 in like 5 minutes) is retarded. Claiming that a game is bad because the metagame doesn't kick in until you're actually useful is retarded.

WoW isn't a good game, but there is serious criticism and there's petulant whining. I mean, the noob zones are there for the express purpose of easing you into the game, they're a forced tutorial. Oh noes, not making me feel special!

[Resinence]

But what's the point of playing a game if your just an average dude? The whole point is to be a nigh-invincible supersoldier with power armour that doesn't need any help from anyone, ever (have actually heard this before)

[Minischoles]

But what's the point of playing a game if your just an average dude? The whole point is to be a nigh-invincible supersoldier with power armour that doesn't need any help from anyone, ever (have actually heard this before)

You sound like you're going into WoW with entirely the wrong mindset. I mean the clue is in the damn genre name MMORPG. Massively Multiplyer. Almost the entirety of endgame exists to get you and 24 other people working together. Hell even the newest sections of the game that are becoming more and more important (Arenas) require you working with at least one other person to do anything.

Personally, i've always liked WoW, and probably always will. It might be because i've been playing it for a while now. The early levels are more a passing annoyance as i power through them, but usually with your first char they're a forced tutorial and you're learning about reading the quest log and your map, finding stuff, learning about your class. But at a certain point, when you've leveled a couple of alts through the same zone you blast through the first 20-30 levels in a day or 2.

[White Haven]

To toss into the loot system discussion, if your guild A) doesn't expect to progress to later instances in raiding, 2) is close-knit (fuzzy point), or Gamma) Isn't much larger than the raid size of what you're doing, then you don't need a loot system. If you''re not planning on progression, gear's largely irrelevant. If you're close-knit, you can solve things with a little negotiation and the occasional /100, ESPECIALLY in a 10-man with most loot minimally-contested. And if you're raiding with a stable group, then loot that doesn't go to you this time will go to you next time, because someone else already has it. I'm perfectly willing to pass a sword to a rogue if I know that that means I'll just pick it up now that that rogue doesn't need it. I'm les willing to do that if it's not 'a rogue' but 'the latest in a procession of faceless rogues that keeps rotating into the raid.'

The wildcard. of course, is the stereotypical corrupt officer. You get one of those, and it doesn't matter what system you have, you're fucked unless the other officers/guildmaster slap him down hard.

[Death from the Sea]

well, this thread now makes me not curious as to "what am I missing by not playing WoW?"

thanks for helping me avoid the waste of $$$ and time.