WoW, that was boring.

[Maxentius]

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.

Holy christ, I've run into the same shit as this at times, myself. I was my old-old Guild's Rogue Leader (yeah, I had fun with that title, trust me) when BWL was end-game; before AQ40 and Naxx. I received loads of flak for my loot policy, which pretty much boiled down to I do not care what your DKP is. My intentions is to boost the raid's median DPS, not pander to your fucking obsessive drive to scoop up every purple in the instance.

Obviously, DKP bidding happened as normal with the global loot table, but with Bloodfang drops and other, obviously-Rogue/Feral Druid (I kind of moonlighted as the Main Assist/Melee DPS lead, too) items, I always gave it to the person to whom it was the largest upgrade for. I had this one Rogue who was an excellent player, took orders well, was friendly and humble, but was still using the Electrified Dagger (AV Blue) on Vaelastrasz. When the Dragonfang Blade dropped from our Red friend, I made sure he got it. Endless shit ensued from this other Rogue that was using a PB/Alcor's Sunrazor OH combo.

You are correct, though - Class Leaders and officers get horrendously preferential treatment. I'm currently in a raiding guild that's cleared BT and progressing into SWP, and the guild leader is a good friend of mine from High School. I won't call it a 'clique', but he, his girlfriend (also a good friend of mine) and I pretty much run the guild. Our word is gospel. I pretty much get first crack at epic two-handers, and I'm a Retnub. I'm not complaining, but it is pretty skewed.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I quit the game once because it got too tedious to start from scratch again. The only reason why I returned was because a friend of mine started playing. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered.

[White Haven]

To be fair, a 'retnub' is incredibly helpful for boosting melee DPS on Brutallus. That fight is an iron-clad asshole, and ret/shadow/enh/balance are actually good to have. Not that there's any time where Shadow is bad to have. Ever.

[starfury]

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

I thought Blizzard Delibertely made it relatively easy and fun to level compared to other MMORPGs, if you hated WOW, then most of the others are even less fun, since they made to be even less casual-friendly I think.

[Resinence]

Blah

Um, read the thread? It was sarcasm, that's what the smiley was there for. I've already said I raided, that imply's I played for a decent length of time. From release infact, I quit a few months after TBC came out (Armory Link), don't ask why the character still exists, I guess after all the time I poured into it I couldn't delete it.

[General Zod]

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.

Clearly I'm supposed to somehow want to spend months playing a game with boring mechanics and tedious missions just so I can get to the "good" parts.

[Rahvin]

I've been playing WoW for about 3 years now, and I have always hated leveling solo.

I despise it. It's painful, it's slow, it's not fun. It took me well over a year to get anything up to 60 because I didn't know what I was doing half the time, I started on a PvP server, and my friend had far more playtime than I did so I had to solo and PUG everything. I nearly quit.

Then my friend and I decided to roll up some alts and just play in the lvl 29 battlegrounds. We still didn't have 60s and so we couldn't do the real twinking, but we min/maxed for PvP as best we could, and rolled on a PvE server so that the leveling process to 29 wouldn't be so painful.

Playing with another person consistently is fucking awesome.

After we got bored of PvP (many months) we wound up finally getting to 60. The gear and play strategies I learned in low-bracket PvP made the rest of teh game a breeze, and it was actually fun when playing with someone else and not worrying about being ganked while leveling all the damned time.

Then I joined a 40-man raiding guild, and life sucked again. DKP is stupid, period. I know why it's used, I get the whole "rewarding effort" rationale, but it's fucking dumb. It puts off new members, and you tend to wind up with a few individuals who have no life outside of WoW accumulating so many points that it takes months of raiding for those people to complete their sets (with DKP to spare!) so that other people can finally get some sort of reward for all of their effort. It creates an unhealthy division in a guild with something like a high-DKP aristocracy being supported by a mass of semi-persistant plebes who put forth time and effort like everyone else and receive no reward. The raids themselves are fun, but when you are guaranteed at the outset to never receive a drop for at least a few months because a select few have an overwhelming DKP balance, it sucks all of the fun right out of it.

I joined a far more casual guild that limited itself to 20-man content (ZG and AQ20), had a more fair "spend-all" system that both ensured that large point balances could never accumulate and so even new people could get gear and was rarely used anyway in favor of just figuring out who needed a given drop more than anyone else. Basically, these guys didn't act like a bunch of douches, and the game was fucking fun again - imagine that.

When TBC came out, my friend and I leveled together almost exclusively. The Outland content (as well as the new-race newbie zones) is vastly superior to the original game content in terms of fun, quest creativity, art, and leveling speed.

I refused to roll another alt during this time because it simply was not fun - I understand compeltely why someone would quit after only a few levels solo (especially after rolling a fucking Warrior - seriously, you had to choose one of the lamest classes to level? Try a Warlock, you'll feel plenty powerful then right from the start).

Then, a few months ago, my girlfriend graduated from college and joined me in WoW (she had refused because she knew she'd become addicted and wanted to give her full energy to school). I rolled a Paladin alt with her (a Paladin of all things, possibly even worse than a Warrior for leveling!), and it turned everything I thought I knew about leveling a character in WoW upside down. We were Blood Elves and so started in teh new TBC beginner zone, and basically I leveled as an AoE tank, while she (a Warlock, like my first character) used her AoE damage spells to kill everything. We leveled exclusively with each other, doing every quest together and almost never playing the characters separately. It was one of teh most fun gaming experiences I've ever had instead of the long, painful grind to 60 I first experienced in WoW. Nothing is quite like taking on 10 monsters at the same time, watching them bash themselves to death on your shield, while your girlfriend sitting next to you cackles with murderous glee as she rains fire over them.

Now, she's gotten it in her head to roll a Rogue (because as a Warlock she hates Rogues). I resisted at first because I now have 2 70s that I very much enjoy, and I have in those 2 characters basically melee and caster DPS, a tank, and a healer, leaving no more roles for an additional character to fill. She finally got me to roll a Druid, and our initial playtime together has so far been just as fun as the first time.

Yeah, the game is repetitive, and I feel like I've done some of this stuff over and over a thousand times - but it's not the content that makes me have fun, it's the multiplayer aspect that makes the game so enjoyable and addictive. I have a guild comprised entirely of adults (most of us couples, even), and we mostly just run Heroics and regular 5-man instances together with the occasional excursion into Kara - and we have a ton of fun doing it, because we always have cool people to play with.

If you want to give WoW a real try, find someone willing to play with you. That's where the game really shines. It's an MMO for fuck's sake - don't try to play it like a solo game.

And for fuck's sake don't make your first character a Warrior!

My mains, btw, are Matarra/Varra on the Azjol-Nerub server. If any SD.net people are on that realm, look me up!

[Civil War Man]

Which server you are on can also change your experience with the game. I play on Tanaris. My guild considered having a Horde and Alliance chapter, but the Horde economy was just so fucked up that it was a pain in the ass trying to play Horde characters. And I don't know about other servers, but on Tanaris, I refer to the Neutral Auction House as "The Green Hills of Stranglethorn Book Depository"

For the record, according to the latest WoW census of the server, the total Alliance/Horde breakdown is about 47/53. For 70s, it's 54/46. Activity ratio (active Alliance players versus active Horde players) is almost 2:1. And 40% of Horde characters there are Blood Elves, while less than 20% of Alliance characters are Draenei, so it was probably even worse before Burning Crusade.

So on a server like that, playing as an Alliance character can be a radically different experience than playing as a Horde character.

[Minischoles]

DKP works, and it does reward attendance and working for the guild. You know why certain people get a lot of DKP like the class leaders and guild officers? Its because they're there every single night raiding for hours, working to keep the guild together, making sure people sign up, recruiting new people for raids, learning bosses, spending extra hours discussing in officer chat and on their forums about how to down a boss, spending more time researching these bosses, learning them back to front so the guild can take down a boss.

I've been Druid CL and raid leader of my guild for quite a few months now, and i've collected a lot of DKP, because i'm there every single raid, guiding 24 other people through an instance to get loot.

DKP rewards the people that put in that level of effort. Why bother putting in that effort if some noob you recruited 2 days ago has the same chance of getting loot as you do, and you've spent the past 2 months downing that same boss again and again and again waiting for that loot to drop. DKP keeps those people in who keep the guild and raids running. People who complain about DKP are those who guild hop a lot and end up with very little DKP in new guilds because of it.

It means they get the preference for loot yes, but thats the way rewards work. Others can still get loot. They can ask the person to pass, and in my experience most people will pass if its an item thats really needed by that person. I myself have passed loot to others because i was close to getting an upgrade elsewhere, or it was only a tiny upgrade and for the other person it was a massive one.

[Stark]

Clearly I'm supposed to somehow want to spend months playing a game with boring mechanics and tedious missions just so I can get to the "good" parts.

Don't be a fuckass. He got to LEVEL TWO. He played for AN HOUR. He cums all over fucking Arcanum, and the first few hours of Arcanum fucking suck shit. It's hypocrisy combined with 'lololol WoW sucks'. WoW does indeed suck, but saying 'the noob zone was too easy' it hardly a great criticism. THAT'S WHAT IT'S FOR. Dare I point out that the first hour a new person plays Diablo is also a) easy and b) boring? No, that would demand consistency.

Thanks for the black and white fallacy, though. I played half the forced tutorial in Baldurs Gate and it sucked - ZOMG WHOLE GAME WORTHLESS AND BAD! Frankly, expecting an MMO (a multiplayer game) to be fun with no multiplayer elements (because he doesn't know anyone, isn't teaming, isn't doing anything in groups or working in a guild, whatever) right at the start is just bullshit. EVE is boring as fuck and is a collection of spreadsheets where even the combat is boring, but it's a good MMO because of the huge metagame. Following the OP, this would simply mean 'I played the tutorial and before I learnt how to trade/work in a corp/fight huge battles I gave up because it was boring' - which is 100% sensible, but in no way reflects the actual qualities of the game which this player has NEVER EXPERIENCED.

In my experience any MMO can be fun if you play it with mates, and NONE of them are fun if you don't because they're by nature spreadsheet simulators.

[Rahvin]

DKP works, and it does reward attendance and working for the guild. You know why certain people get a lot of DKP like the class leaders and guild officers? Its because they're there every single night raiding for hours, working to keep the guild together, making sure people sign up, recruiting new people for raids, learning bosses, spending extra hours discussing in officer chat and on their forums about how to down a boss, spending more time researching these bosses, learning them back to front so the guild can take down a boss.

I've been Druid CL and raid leader of my guild for quite a few months now, and i've collected a lot of DKP, because i'm there every single raid, guiding 24 other people through an instance to get loot.

DKP rewards the people that put in that level of effort. Why bother putting in that effort if some noob you recruited 2 days ago has the same chance of getting loot as you do, and you've spent the past 2 months downing that same boss again and again and again waiting for that loot to drop. DKP keeps those people in who keep the guild and raids running. People who complain about DKP are those who guild hop a lot and end up with very little DKP in new guilds because of it.

It means they get the preference for loot yes, but thats the way rewards work. Others can still get loot. They can ask the person to pass, and in my experience most people will pass if its an item thats really needed by that person. I myself have passed loot to others because i was close to getting an upgrade elsewhere, or it was only a tiny upgrade and for the other person it was a massive one.

Like I said, I understand why people use DKP. I comprehend the desire to reward people for their time and effort.

But it's fucking stupid for a couple of reasons. First, it means you no longer consider the raid fun, you consider it a fucking job that you do to get "paid" with loot. Second, the people who attend the raid get DKP, true, but this is a massive hole for exploitation. When there are more people interested in raiding than slots in the raid, and a small group get preferencial treatment for raid spots, they are going to accumulate a disproportionate amount of DKP.

Look, there are many ways guilds use DKP. Maybe there's a method I'm not used to that's less retarded. The method my old raiding guild used was a simple accumulation of points for attendance, time spent in-raid, and number of bosses downed. Items were assigned a point value, and the person with the most points could spend that value to pick up whatever item dropped. This means that after a few months where certain people (mostly the officers) where always given raid spots while the rest of the guild showed up but only a select few were chosen to fill slots, the officers had many points while the rest of the guild had relatively few. It had nothing to do with dedication or effort, it had everything to do with an "old boys club" mentality where the officers ensured that they would get raid slots over anyone else. You could show up for 10 raids and get maybe 3 invites, while the officers got in on every run - their DKP soared while the remainder of the guild was spread out at a much lower level. So, when we engaged in new content, the officers had accumulated enough points that there was no reason whatsoever for the non-officers to run, becasue it would literally take months of drops just to drain the officer's DKP enough for anyone else to be able to buy items.

I've seen a more intelligent way, and it involved a "spend all" system; most points wins, but you're reduced to zero after you take the item, meaning massive accumulation was easily taken care of. Sure, the person with a ton of points gets first pick, but he can't compeltely own all of his class drops for months on end until his set is full and the rest of the class is still in teh same gear. It worked much better. I didn't mind this system nearly as much, but I simply don't find it necessary with the changes Blizzard has made combined with being in a more mature, close-knit and friendly guild.

But the best system I've experienced is the one my current guild uses, and what Blizzard seems to be encouraging between badges and larger number of drops per boss and fewer members in the raid. We simply /roll on whatever drops, and talk about relative upgrades in a mature and friendly manner so that someone who would get a huge bonus from a particular piece is typically just given the drop even if a better-geared memberwon the roll. We approach it like a bunch of friends working for mutual success rather than a bunch of gear-obsessed retards masturbating over point totals. The other system drove the fun compeltely out of raiding for me, and now I actually enjoy it again.

My approach is that I'm paying $15 a month for this fucking game, and if I'm not going to have fun I'm not going to do it. That means I wont raid with retards, I wont play with people who think they're "better" than me because they have more purple items, and I'm sure as hell not going to help a small clique of players through content over and over just so that they can take all of the loot for months while my effort doesn't even have a chance of being rewarded. I don't need any of that shit. That's what it was like in my first raiding guild, and I'm never going to participate in a retarded system like that again. The officers in my old guild used to talk about their raid attendance and all the effort it took on their part, too, but they were doing nothing more than rationalizing a justification for manipulating the system to their own advantage.

That's why I'm extremely happy that Blizzard is leaning new content towards smaller raid size, increasing the number of drops from each boss, using token drops for tier sets, and adding the Badge of Justice mechanic so that DKP systems are no longer necessary. The Badge rewards in some cases are on the level with T6 gear, and you can get it from doing just Heroics if you're persistant enough. When a given item drops, you don't have 5-10 people who all want to roll on it any more; instead, three items drop from the boss, and you might have 1-3 people rolling for each depending on their current gear. Even in the 25-mans, you tend to get several tier tokens, a handful of gems (including very nice new epic gems), at least one non-tier epic item, and multiple Bades of Justice. Who the fuck needs DKP for that?!

When I raid, I do it to make a whole fucking lot of things die, and steal their shit, with a bunch of my friends, becasue that's fun. I don't do it to make a number on some retard's spreadsheet bigger, or to obsess over what's "fair." You know what? If someone helps kill a fucking boss, they helped kill that boss just as much as I did even if I've done it 20 more times than they have, and they deseve a chance at taking the stuff their kill dropped just as much as I do. Fuck DKP. More pewpew, less QQ.

[Lancer]

Unless you're asleep at the keyboard, getting to level two takes all of two minutes, not even one hour. Getting to level five won't even take you an hours worth of playtime, counting from when you first started.

[Lord Pounder]

Unless you're asleep at the keyboard, getting to level two takes all of two minutes, not even one hour. Getting to level five won't even take you an hours worth of playtime, counting from when you first started.

The first mission is all it takes to get to level 1 IIRC, by the time you kill X amount of whatever you generally do a level to a level and a half.

I played WoW from the day it came out but I really don't think Ando even tried to give it a chance. In all the chars I've played on all the different types of server it really does take until to notice the sameness.

I killed my WoW account after giving TBC a blast and it really wasn't worth it 60 - 70 was more or less same shit but even more shit for half the reward. I really don't know what it is but WoW seems to bring out the cockmunch in even the nicest person. I joined WoW with a guild I'd played several other MMO's with (UO, Horizions, Lineage 2, EQ2 and eventually WoW). These where some of the nicest guys you could meet in Real Life then in the space of 2 months playing WoW it was all about stabbing guildies in the back just to get the Blue or Purple or in my case harassing a dude to play at times that don't suit because they want their Tank.

I'm back to UO, again. It may not be much but at least the people are actually friendly. Within 3 hours f setting up my new UO account I'd been given spare weapons and armor by 5 different strangers, could you see that happening on WoW?

[Darmalus]

I'm back to UO, again. It may not be much but at least the people are actually friendly. Within 3 hours f setting up my new UO account I'd been given spare weapons and armor by 5 different strangers, could you see that happening on WoW?

Uh, no. Because it's impossible to give anyone equipment you have used yourself.

[Stark]

Yeah, the whole concept of 'soulbinding' exists to restrict item trade.

[Block]

DKP works, and it does reward attendance and working for the guild. You know why certain people get a lot of DKP like the class leaders and guild officers? Its because they're there every single night raiding for hours, working to keep the guild together, making sure people sign up, recruiting new people for raids, learning bosses, spending extra hours discussing in officer chat and on their forums about how to down a boss, spending more time researching these bosses, learning them back to front so the guild can take down a boss.

I've been Druid CL and raid leader of my guild for quite a few months now, and i've collected a lot of DKP, because i'm there every single raid, guiding 24 other people through an instance to get loot.

DKP rewards the people that put in that level of effort. Why bother putting in that effort if some noob you recruited 2 days ago has the same chance of getting loot as you do, and you've spent the past 2 months downing that same boss again and again and again waiting for that loot to drop. DKP keeps those people in who keep the guild and raids running. People who complain about DKP are those who guild hop a lot and end up with very little DKP in new guilds because of it.

It means they get the preference for loot yes, but thats the way rewards work. Others can still get loot. They can ask the person to pass, and in my experience most people will pass if its an item thats really needed by that person. I myself have passed loot to others because i was close to getting an upgrade elsewhere, or it was only a tiny upgrade and for the other person it was a massive one.

Like I said, I understand why people use DKP. I comprehend the desire to reward people for their time and effort.

But it's fucking stupid for a couple of reasons. First, it means you no longer consider the raid fun, you consider it a fucking job that you do to get "paid" with loot. Second, the people who attend the raid get DKP, true, but this is a massive hole for exploitation. When there are more people interested in raiding than slots in the raid, and a small group get preferencial treatment for raid spots, they are going to accumulate a disproportionate amount of DKP.

Look, there are many ways guilds use DKP. Maybe there's a method I'm not used to that's less retarded. The method my old raiding guild used was a simple accumulation of points for attendance, time spent in-raid, and number of bosses downed. Items were assigned a point value, and the person with the most points could spend that value to pick up whatever item dropped. This means that after a few months where certain people (mostly the officers) where always given raid spots while the rest of the guild showed up but only a select few were chosen to fill slots, the officers had many points while the rest of the guild had relatively few. It had nothing to do with dedication or effort, it had everything to do with an "old boys club" mentality where the officers ensured that they would get raid slots over anyone else. You could show up for 10 raids and get maybe 3 invites, while the officers got in on every run - their DKP soared while the remainder of the guild was spread out at a much lower level. So, when we engaged in new content, the officers had accumulated enough points that there was no reason whatsoever for the non-officers to run, becasue it would literally take months of drops just to drain the officer's DKP enough for anyone else to be able to buy items.

I've seen a more intelligent way, and it involved a "spend all" system; most points wins, but you're reduced to zero after you take the item, meaning massive accumulation was easily taken care of. Sure, the person with a ton of points gets first pick, but he can't compeltely own all of his class drops for months on end until his set is full and the rest of the class is still in teh same gear. It worked much better. I didn't mind this system nearly as much, but I simply don't find it necessary with the changes Blizzard has made combined with being in a more mature, close-knit and friendly guild.

But the best system I've experienced is the one my current guild uses, and what Blizzard seems to be encouraging between badges and larger number of drops per boss and fewer members in the raid. We simply /roll on whatever drops, and talk about relative upgrades in a mature and friendly manner so that someone who would get a huge bonus from a particular piece is typically just given the drop even if a better-geared memberwon the roll. We approach it like a bunch of friends working for mutual success rather than a bunch of gear-obsessed retards masturbating over point totals. The other system drove the fun compeltely out of raiding for me, and now I actually enjoy it again.

My approach is that I'm paying $15 a month for this fucking game, and if I'm not going to have fun I'm not going to do it. That means I wont raid with retards, I wont play with people who think they're "better" than me because they have more purple items, and I'm sure as hell not going to help a small clique of players through content over and over just so that they can take all of the loot for months while my effort doesn't even have a chance of being rewarded. I don't need any of that shit. That's what it was like in my first raiding guild, and I'm never going to participate in a retarded system like that again. The officers in my old guild used to talk about their raid attendance and all the effort it took on their part, too, but they were doing nothing more than rationalizing a justification for manipulating the system to their own advantage.

That's why I'm extremely happy that Blizzard is leaning new content towards smaller raid size, increasing the number of drops from each boss, using token drops for tier sets, and adding the Badge of Justice mechanic so that DKP systems are no longer necessary. The Badge rewards in some cases are on the level with T6 gear, and you can get it from doing just Heroics if you're persistant enough. When a given item drops, you don't have 5-10 people who all want to roll on it any more; instead, three items drop from the boss, and you might have 1-3 people rolling for each depending on their current gear. Even in the 25-mans, you tend to get several tier tokens, a handful of gems (including very nice new epic gems), at least one non-tier epic item, and multiple Bades of Justice. Who the fuck needs DKP for that?!

When I raid, I do it to make a whole fucking lot of things die, and steal their shit, with a bunch of my friends, becasue that's fun. I don't do it to make a number on some retard's spreadsheet bigger, or to obsess over what's "fair." You know what? If someone helps kill a fucking boss, they helped kill that boss just as much as I did even if I've done it 20 more times than they have, and they deseve a chance at taking the stuff their kill dropped just as much as I do. Fuck DKP. More pewpew, less QQ.

The way to fix this, is that if they're forced to sit because there's too many people, they still get the same dkp, as long as they showed up on time and are ready to be called on at a moment's notice. Like by camping their main outside the zone and logging onto an alt. Also any items that dropped were linked in guild chat and everyone in guild was allowed to bid, again as long as they showed up on time. It's a pretty simple solution to "the ol boys club"

[Broomstick]

I've been playing WoW for about 3 years now, and I have always hated leveling solo.

On the other hand, I enjoy soloing - over the past year or so I've kept odd hours so meeting people on-line has been problematic at best so it's probably just as well.

And I didn't even start the battlegrounds until I was level 70

Which just goes to show there's more than one way to play and enjoy the game.

I agree, however, that the Burning Crusade expansion was better than the original WoW "old world". Yes, I too would like them to go back and tidy up the old world, but Blizzard said it was either a new expansion OR revising the old world, not both, so there you have it.

[Darmalus]

I just wanna see heroic versions of all those old instances. Level 70 Wailing Caverns? Don't mind if I do...

[Civil War Man]

I'm back to UO, again. It may not be much but at least the people are actually friendly. Within 3 hours f setting up my new UO account I'd been given spare weapons and armor by 5 different strangers, could you see that happening on WoW?

No, but as it has been pointed out, soulbinding prevents that.

Of course, if you find yourself in a supportive guild (typically, like in my case, as a result of playing with a group of friends), this can happen to an extent.

I've had times when I sign on to find that one of my guild mates had decided to send me 60 bars of mithril because his bank was filling up and I needed mithril for engineering. Or when I was gathering materials for the Charger quest, I was flat-out given most of the materials. The only expectation is that over time I contribute to the guild bank and help lower level characters, whether alts or mains, when they need help with a quest or profession.

Of course, I am part of the WoW equivalent of an anarcho-syndicalist commune, and the fact that it hasn't turn to shit just proves that WoW is fantasy.

I just wanna see heroic versions of all those old instances.

Heroic Gnomeregan!

[Oskuro]

I personally got in for the RP, and think that the game, as a game, is excellent, both in graphics and gameplay. Problem is that is is not a solo game, and everyone else ruined it for me.

My 63 Tauren Warrior is sitting idly in a frozen account, waiting for someone to join him for content that, thanks to the expansion, is considered obsolete.
Also, the "hardcore" mentality really turns me down. It'd be great if there was people of all types, willing to play at different paces, but mostly everyone gets absorbed into the hardcore mentality, up to the point that they look down on people who play the game differently.

I'm really hoping for the day something new arrives, and the people that remain in the game are, like in City of Heroes, those that actually like the game. Maybe then it'll be worth playing.

[GuppyShark]

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.

Err, in the Tauren starting zone you're a young brave undergoing his initiation rituals at the behest of his tribe's elders. You're taught the Tauren reverence for nature, etc etc., and told that you show promise and will one day be a mighty defender of the Taurehe.

Did you just skip the dialogue?

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.

A mathematical proof of "Spread out evenly is better than random distribution" doesn't seem necessary.

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.

I used to think the same way, so I can't be too hard on you for this. But a raid really is built on the successes of the previous raids. There's a term for a raid that is treated as a seperate instance. It's called a pickup group.

Raid bosses are rarely killed the first time you encounter them, even if you've read the (probably inaccurate) boss strategies available online.

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.

That'd be a flat 'you show up, get DKP' model, that I don't think is popular. My raid operates by "If someone gets loot, everyone else gets DKP" model. Successful raids thus generate DKP. Wipe nights only generate DKP if the officers feel it's worthwhile to reward people for learning difficult encounters. So far only done for Archimonde.

Wow even has persecuted minorities, feral druids, shadow priests, ret paladins, the list goes on (any non cookie-cutter/non-standard classes).

Your info is a bit out of date here. Those are all viable (even sought after!) raid specs. Pretty much anything other than Holy Priest DPS is good these days. Blizzard overall do a fairly decent job of managing class and talent balance, at least for PvE.

DKP sucks because my officers are pricks.

There's not a system in existance that will fix that. If anything, DKP is making that harder on them.

You don't need to top the DKP to get loot. Lots of gear gets sharded because the dedicated raiders (the ones with lots of DKP) already have gear on the same level. As long as everyone has something to show for their efforts, it doesn't bother most people. Loot is a means to an end (dead bosses).

[Spyder]

Back to an earlier point: I already have a job. I don't want a game to become a job for me.

You probably want to stay away from Eve Online as well. All the concepts behind it are as cool as hell, but at the end of an 8 hour mining session you realise that overall you would have had more fun if you'd just gone to work. You also would have earned real money that you can use to go outside and have actual fun.

Can't remember what level I got up to in WoW, high enough that I could wonder around, see some cool shit, then I cancelled my account.

[bilateralrope]

A mathematical proof of "Spread out evenly is better than random distribution" doesn't seem necessary.

I didn't even get them to define what they meant by working better. Though shouldn't random distribution produce pretty even distribution of loot, while DKP skews it in favor of whoever built up a stash of points before the newer members joined ?

[GuppyShark]

In the long run yes, there's not enough loot for that to take effect. With such a small sample size, /random creates really enormous disparities.

People shouldn't acquire enormous DKP leads. About the only times I've seen it are when the loot for a class simply doesn't drop. In which case it's only fair that the regulars should be prioritised, since they're the ones carrying the new members through content.

The only other explanation I can see is if DKP costs are not balanced against DKP charges, resulting in "DKP inflation" (if I can coin a term).

[bilateralrope]

Yes, that would do it. Though of the variants I saw suggested, I think the best way to run DKP would be to have fixed rewards for specific tasks and when loot drops, open bidding determines who gets it.

Having a fixed cost for buying items is just asking for inflation to wreck the system because even if you balance the costs for your current group, if something changes then your costs become wrong. I say let the costs change over time.