Jumping the Shark
Posted October 8th, 2008 by Isobelle
I've been out of the loop with WoW, caught up in Warhammer, but I
logged into it the other day to chat on vent with a few friends on an old PvP
server I left behind long ago. They asked me to bring a toon back, but
the only one I could bother moving was locked away on a PvE server.
Much to my surprise, they told me that Blizzard has opened the floodgates from PvE ->
PvP server transfers.Coming from their numerous adamant threads that they're 'strongly opposed' to it (forum topics decay, and I couldn't find the "never gonna happen" ones that I remember from the past), I was surprised to hear them flip a 180 on the topic.
The community is obviously split on the topic, those having leveled on PvP servers upset, while those leveling in STV with no threat of gankage are thrilled to finally 'get their PvP on' and go gank noobs in Hillsbrad now that they're safely at the level cap. It's silly, because STV and Hillsbrad will have no significance for anyone that leveled there while /wink-ing and /flirt-ing with the opposing faction.
Things like this only further seem to water down the whole WoW
experience (triple XP for refer-a-friend, bind on account items that
level with you, xbox 360 style achievements). I feel like they're
jumping the shark as boldly and ridiculously as they can, just to make
way for the 'next big thing'... like they WANT people to roll their
eyes at WoW, so when WoW2 launches, no one is left wondering if they
should stick with WoW1 (a la EQ and EQ2). My friends that still play
WoW offered to get me an account and 'powerlevel me to 70 on multiple
toons for the coming of wrath', but the whole conversation just felt wrong... so many people from the old guild had just quit WoW
altogether, and here was the few remaining diehards, running around in circles on the bank roof in Ogrimmar as we chatted on vent, eager to
drag me back in full force.
I intend to look back into WoW with WotLK,
just to see what's changed, but I can't see shifting WoW
back into the 'main playtime slot'. I still feel WoW is techically
superior to Warhammer in many ways, but it's just been run into the
ground. Plus, with a newborn in the house, grabbing an hour or two of playtime when I can means leveling in Warhammer's numerous BGs is a more viable option than scheduling a 6 hour raid slot 3 or 4 nights a week. WoW had it's time, and that time is past. I recognize my leaving WoW doesn't mean the game is suddenly not popular, but the notion of finally caving in on PvE to PvP transfers just makes it feel like the devs feel the window closing, too,
and are just pulling out every stop before the game begins to finally
wind down. I'm sure Diablo 3 isn't the only project they have in the pipe, and I'm intereseted to see what it is, but WoW's all but done, at least for me personally.
I know exactly how you feel, but you are wrong.
I do not want to come across as that pretentious prick saying "I have inside information" but I do. That's a fact and I only ask that you take me on my word.
On the 14th of October when 3.0 is released, put Warhammer aside for a while and get involved in the build up to the expansion. I am not going to write a shitty bullet point list of all the reasons that you are wrong, so I'll keep it short.
- Wrath is the best thing Blizzard have ever done.
The full package (and I mean the full package, not just the data-mined, fragmented beta information), starting with the patch next week, is the single greatest thing Blizzard have ever done. Period.
I read your Snorehammer article, and it clicked with me because you nailed each and every thing that I find important when playing a game like this. Everything. I could be wrong, but I read here regularly and I think we are on a similar kind of wavelength in what we're looking for in an MMO.
Is Warhammer now a much better game than it was when you wrote that? Absolutely. Is Warhammer a better game than WoW stagnating at the end of an expansion cycle? Debatable, but WAR has the edge.
Is Warhammer better than Wrath?
Fuck no.
Jesus fucking christ. No.
If you are not writing an article here after the 14th of November about how you have remembered exactly why WoW is the best game of its type on the market, I will come back here and apologise for hyping it up. Scouts honor.
Also, as far as I can tell Warhammer is doing very well. But at the same time, WoW has not even taken a dent in its fender. I thought it would have affected WoWs numbers, but thats how it has worked out. Go figure.
Reserve judgement. Avoid spoilers. It's fucking amazing.
you're actually right, and i know it. I've said myself on many occasions that i'm all for what many consider to be the 'dumbing down of WoW'. when raids were cut from 40 to 25, it was a good thing. when kara was the single most played instance in BC, i knew why. organizing 10 people is even easier than 25. having 10 man equivalents of every raid is going to be huge, but there's still a time commitment that i PERSONALLY can't cling to anymore.
Warhammer compared to WoW is a silly comparison to make, because there isn't one. WoW blows it out of the water without breaking a sweat. I actually find myself wishing that Warhammer was just a WoW mod... that it used the same engine, but just had different locations and playstyle variations.
I think being distanced from it a bit, by having my main account that i actually gave a shit about the toons on banned, means i can not log in and really "miss it". I have a 70 warlock that was given to me, and will dive into wrath at the helm of that, but i don't ever see myself leveling another toon from scratch again. I've just 'been there and done that' so many times over it's silly.
I still think the ONLY thing that will ever 'dethrone' WoW will be WoW2, but recently it almost seems like the devs have surrendered on several fronts, and are just wringing it out at this point.
i'm jaded. horrendously so... so take it all with some salt.
I totally dig being jaded. I also get the levelling thing. Everyone is going through the same thing, including me. Reading back over my post I must sound like an awful fanboy. Wrath will not cure cancer or make your candidate win the election.
What I think you'll notice most of all is the ambition. Yeah of course the engine is getting a bit clunky, but when you see what they've managed to squeeze out of it you'll be stunned. Yes there are some generic WoW quests. But there's a lot of creativity, and again, abmition. Some really epic stuff (and funny stuff too as you'd expect).
In that sense I think waiting around for WoW2 is a pipe dream. The one thing I strongly disagree with you on is that WoW is winding down. It really isn't. Yes, Blizzard will milk it for everything it's worth, but they're doing so by throwing as much work at it as possible, not just rehashing stuff. I'm not going to talk about any details, but the company are scaling up for Wrath, not down.
If some of these things work out (in a technical sense) it's just a platform for even more awesome stuff in expansion 3. I honestly thought BC was the limit of what they could get out of the engine and they keep surprising me.
The comments about the Death Knight instancing thing in another article, not 100% accurate. What they're doing is a bit more sophisitcated than just different instances, and it's something you'll see being used quite often in the open world.
If you dig the story/lore, you're in for a fucking riot of a time. The old world feel alone will just throw you back to those first few levels running around Brill or whatever. The music is typically top drawer. Dalaran? Words don't do justice.
I'm starting to sound like a salesman again but what I'm trying to say is that they're working harder than ever on WoW. Even now at what may very well be its peak.
The part of the Snorehammer article that really stuck out was the "tightness". There will always be people that are cynical, or who don't appreciate the asthetics and "feel" of a game. But anyone who thought WoW was a special game 15 minutes into their first character... those people wont be disappointed.
One last thing. If you never completed the Death Knight zone fully, or did so a few months ago, don't go near it until live. Don't read about it, don't think about it. The full chain as it stands now is completely unique in Warcraft.
Isobelle, have you considered leveling a Death Knight? From what I hear, when you finish questing in Ebon Hold, you are set for Outland. Outland is a breeze to level and I hear Northrend will be the same in that regard.
Someone Unimportant, you talk as if you know something that is not in the Beta. Am I correct or are you reffering to all we know about WotLK?
EDIT: Gah, I register right when the paragraph issue is fixed. :X
As know the DK chain will dump you at level 58. As the Outland XP nerf stands right now, you will probably be hitting 70 around the crossover from Nagrand to Blade's Edge? I'm really not sure but other than those extra quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon you don't have any specific advantage in Northrend.
If you are levelling a character this week, don't bother with Outland. Do it after the patch, especially if you can heal all those DK pugs that will be ripping through it.
As for my previous posts, I'm intentionally being as vague as possible, and I've said all I'm going to. Take it as you will.
I consider RAF, pvp to pve and 10/25 mans cheapening the game too, but it didnt stop me from buying an account and leveling 2 more character with ease. It didnt stop me from transferring a toon to get all my money off a pve server and it sure didnt stop me from doing kara/za/gruul/tk and ssc.
The reason they are doing it is obvious though, if the game was the same as vanilla wow we would have probably stopped playing it long ago. I know bwl was the favourite part of vanilla wow for me, and I think most other people agree. After that it became a shithole filled with bugs (AQ) and it became more and more apparent everybody needed to farm pots like crazy. I played a shaman and back then nobody expected much of you except a windfury totem, strength of earth and mana tide. Taking pots for me through out the instance didnt seem required, and more over felt pointless, how could my heals compare with a priest anyway. The endboss was a different story, for rag you had to your shitty level 30 resist gear, your fire resist pots and mana pots and juju`s. I think it was pretty much the same for every other class except the tanks, who got the shaft, they had to have every stupid elixir you could get and a flask, I think they had guild bank support for some of the stuff at least, but jesus they had a lot of buffs, I think at one point it was actually a problem that a tank would loose his flask cos of some stupid buff like life stealing or inspiration. I think most other classes just didnt fucking bother, especially rogues and hunters with anything but a health pot.
Anyway, the point is that raiding started out easy due to our stupidity with pots and it seemed balanced that way, then it just went nuts and at some point blizzard hit 10 million subscribers, and someone realised that tigole eq style raiding didnt mean much for the majority who either leveled or did 5mans or the awful bgs of the time. Not to mention the fact that people were burning out like hell in naxx, which some guilds expected people to raid like the previous raids, and spend half as much time again farming pots for it.
Damn, anytime I try to talk about the dumbing down of the game I go off the tracks talking about naxx, but the point is, if tbc was just a photo copy of vanilla wow, would anybody bother playing it ? farming 5 mans for crap blues or spending crazy time on raids. Probably some, but it would be closer in population to eq than it is today.
I really like the introduction of a detailed quest line like the death knight, and I love phasing, finally when you do something major like killing some major npc he isnt just sitting there in 5 minutes time like nothign fucking happed. If they keep up the effort maybe we will see narration like in wc3, even if the core of the game is still farming for your t16 pants off ragnaros after he magically moved moltencore to the maelstorm.
Agreed completely. The "dumbing down" of the game is completely intentional and only applies to some basic mechanics. The experience for the individual is just as good as ever. The attention to detail in Northrend is exactly what you expect and there will be some great surprises. Phasing is a big step forward.
The levelling process is definately being cheapened and it's the one place that appears to really lack a fixed direction. RAF, XP bonus from Seasonal events, account-bound items that boost XP by 10%, PvE-PvP transfers.
They're saying on the one hand "We want you to do old world" but trying to throw you through it as fast as possible. Personally I hate seeing the old world content being skimmed over. I still think places like Maraudon and BRD are superior to BC instances.
At the same time, the levelling process is something most people can only cope with once or twice and it's something I'm immensely bored of. The way levels and experience boosts are being thrown at the player, I would like to think they're softening us up for a way of skipping that for experienced players but they have to do it right.
There will be whine, endless whine, but the huge majority of people will have more fun. That's what is important. All the 'hardcore' want is a niche, and Blizzard will always give them that. 10-man of every raid is the perfect way to accomodate that in my opinion.
I just want to see and do shit in the game. 10-mans give a path of progression that doesn't exist currently. The new BG and Wintergrasp give you some good quick-fix PvP options if that's what you're after. How good they turn out to actually be is a "wait and see". Wintergrasp is hugely ambitious and could go either way.
At the end of the day, all MMO's are essentially the same logic game. Working out the path of least resistance in each situation, and getting from A to B as quicky as possible. In my opinion WoW is the sucess it is because, taking the "feel" and design out of the equation, it provides that balance of fun and progression better than anything else.
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