mmorpg chart

[<ankh>]

For most people playing wow the quest grind from 1-60 was the most enjoyable thing they ever did. There are literally 20 threads each day saying how much fun this was.

With 6.5mil users, 20+ posts per day isnt really alot
Exping can be quite fun in daoc too, but once you hit lvl 50 you don't really wanna get another 10 levels - and Im pretty sure its the same thing with any mmorpg. And imo WoW didnt really feel different from daoc when it comes to exping (I did play it for abit for a couple a weeks ago)

/Ankh

[<ankh>]

I think theyre also adding on gem crafting

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningc ... fting.html

Just found this info incase you wanted to read it.

/Ankh

[Xest]

Your taste is just different to other people's though and a huge part of wow's playerbase and that's something you are forgetting.

For most people playing wow the quest grind from 1-60 was the most enjoyable thing they ever did. There are literally 20 threads each day saying how much fun this was. Leveling was a great experience for most in wow and they do want to redo it with new content. It was fun for them because a) they could do it solo whenever they wanted which gave them a sense of achievement and b) because if you actually read the quests and were interested in the wow universe it was actually fun. Most people who didn't like it came from other mmo's and either grinded to 60 or paid no attention to the quests, thinking they were just fluff and that something else awaited them at 60. They weren't fluff, they were the content itself at that time.

Also, pvp players are really a minority, the raid and pve crowd is really huge compared to the pvp'ers. There are like 5-6 regular pvp teams in my server (with ~15-20 people each) while there are 30 raid guilds/communities doing the 40 man dungeons (with ~60 members minimum each) and propably a lot more doing 20 man dungeons. In daoc NP was considered a top guild for gaining rp's and being top in pvp, in wow Death and Taxes are the top guild and that's because they have killed the most bosses. Noone even knows any pvp guild, everyone knows D&T. Really few care about the grind, most enjoy and play to do the grind. The whole point of wow is making each grind enjoyable and exciting and not just a timesink that gets you to your actual goal. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

As for the original topic, finally shows what a flop ddo was in numbers. Other than that, it's more or less what i expected.

As for the prices, they charge whatever they think people will pay and since that works best for them, they are not a charity service to change it

And you have to take into account wow has 155 servers in europe only, which is a lot compared to most mmo's.

Actually I've followed Warcraft since Warcraft one, Warcraft III is one of my all time favourite games in terms of storyline all the way through. However, that doesn't change the fact WoW quests were the same as in any other MMOG - repetitive cases of "run here, talk to him", "kill 20 of these", "deliver x to y" - that has nothing to do with taste at all, it's just a generic quest engine like any other MMOG.

I wasn't attacking WoW as such either, I was merely pointing out that Ovi's comparison of MLs and extra levels is a bad comparison which it is, they're very different with the only similarity being that they're time sinks, they have very different effects on game balance.

WoW is certainly a success and I think Blizzard is one of the few companies that deserves success having been so innovative through the years however WoW just wasn't for me, it really was just "another MMOG", really nothing special, it didn't do anything new at least. Blizzards success was in making the first mass market MMOG, and with their already existing massive fan base this allowed them to create a brilliant MMOG for first time MMOG players - which is what the absolute vast majority of their playerbase is.

PvE MMOs have always been the most successful because to many people an MMO is just a more interactive chat room, even EQ was immensly successful compared to UO and such, despite UO having good PvP. The problem for players like me is that we're a minority, we've seen a billion quests, we've seen a billion levels, we don't want more of that - we want to play against other players, or we want challenging content ala Khaldun puzzle chests in UO, or doing MLs in DAoC with a fg. Essentially "dumb" features seem to be what attracts the majority, you can even see it in DAoC, zerging is so mindless yet it still attracts so many, likewise PvE raids in DAoC/WoW/Whatever draw people in.

If you look at the bartle tests, you'll see the top two are socializers and explorers and this is what MMOGs like WoW cater for, acheivers come in 3rd and killers are neglected in 4th. Personally when I play a game, not just an MMOG I like to thing, whilst a mindless blastfest is fun now and again I enjoy the challenge and this is exactly why WoW for me is dull - it's dumbed down, it's too simple, there's no challenge and hence because of that I find it dull and repetitive, I like to have to think about things (again, ala Khaldun's puzzle chests in UO) rather than mindlessly go here, click him, say this, give him that, kill 3 of those. I guess it boils down to what sort of person you are on the bartle scale as to whether you'll like MMOs like WoW but a perfect MMO to me would cater for everyone, WoW - like a lot of MMO previous, simply doesn't and from the MMOs I've played, UO has probably come the closest to being able to please all, with WoW's development time and budget however it probably SHOULD have been able to please all so whilst WoW is probably Blizzards biggest success, it's also ironically probably their biggest failure in that they missed a chance to pull in an even bigger player base than they actually did, that is, they've catered to the explorers and the socializers but largely ignored the acheivers and the killers whilst not as numerous, they probably still amount to a +30% gain in playerbase.

[Lieva]

Warcraft III is one of my all time favourite games in terms of storyline all the way through..

yea yea you just wanna do the tower

[Argyleyn]

Wow's quests are so so, some are go kill x, some are 'go talk to y then talk to z', some are a bit more complicated and more fun. For example there's the Defias Brotherhood Questline that is totally different from the grinding mentality. Here it is shortly: From going around in one of the 10-20 areas Westfall, you notice lots of bandits called the Defias Brotherhood. The local militia leader sends you off to speak to one of their ex members who lives in another area. He reveals to you the name of the organisation and that they are up to 'something big'. You then roam Westfall looking for one of the defias who carries a message to another group of bandits. Once you find him and kill him, you then are sent to Stormwind, one of the capitals, where some gnome ninja-spies inform you who the Defias really are. Then you return to Westfall and you are supposed to escort one Defias traitor to their secret hideout to uncover its location, while multiple bandits attack you on route. When you finally uncover their hideout you are sent to kill their leader (with a group in an instance this time) and it all ends in a very climatic battle a pirate ship strongly resembling 'Goonies' if you ever seen that.

Meanwhile, there are other quests involving westfall, which are more straightforward, of the 'kill x' variation. The end result is a mix of a variety of activities which is what hooked a lot of people in the game because while you gain levels, you get heavily involved in the world as well. But i guess in a way that depends on your level of immersion. And there are plenty of other quests that follow the same pattern, the onyxia key line comes to mind. In a way you are right, they are still 'give x to y' kind of quest but you feel there's a reason to it and there's a definite continuity (sp?) that gives to it a unique and entertaining feeling. Everyone's using the same engine for quests, but when you 'wrap' the engine with a nice story it becomes fun.

As for pvp, i think in reality it gets old in a way faster than pve. You get to mostly fight the same people all the time which loses its appeal after a while. In every game also, even if there are player opponents the amount of things they can do is actually limited. I mean every group combination that i saw in daoc had a philosophy behind it. Take pbaoe groups for example. The main philosophy was to cc the opponents, bunch them up, form a pbaoe box and kill them. It was not much different than a script in a way. To counter such a group, the safest bet was spamming spells on them to interrupt them. It's all very pre determined, you only have a set number of abilities and it's only efficient to use a small number of them so the 'human random behaviour' really doesn't come into play half as much as people would like to think. What matters in the end is mostly the speed at which you can execute your role mostly and some knowledge of classes. You will rarely if ever get new spells to play with in pvp, while you will get to play with new bosses with new abilities in pve and that's what keeps it fresh. The difficulity will scale with time and experience, if you are the best in pvp you will propably remain there and it will get boring after a while.

As for the type of players, it's obvious blizz doesn't like 'killers' as it has taken every measure to stop people from getting harassed or annoyed by pvp'ers, either by dishonorable kills either by pve servers where you need to flag.

For the 'achievers' i don't agree at all. I think wow's endgame is terribly competitive atm at the point where top guilds propably live in it. To be top pvp'er in wow, pretty much 24/7 playtime for a couple of months is required. The guy who reached top rank in my realm last week played from 9 am-3 am every day for 3 weeks when he was almost there. And I mean every single day. But pvp is only a small part of the game and the competition for pve success is way more brutal than pvp. The top pve guilds have playtimes that make the most hardcore rvr guilds in daoc look like casuals. And the amount of coordinated effort required is colossal compared to anything i have seen in other mmo's. I don't agree that wow is too simple at all. I think it follows the logic of 'easy to play, hard to master', at the top pve end the time, skill and dedication required are just unreachable by most. It creates an illusion of being easy while you level, but that's quickly shattered the further in you get into the pve endgame.

Finally, i don't think blizz ever did anything so innovative really, they mostly took existing formulas and tried polishing and perfecting them. It's a bit like Diablo, where they took the existing rpg formula and said 'screw talking to people for 30 minutes, go kill', they just took an existing concept and took out whatever part they thought wasn't fun.

[Xest]

The local militia leader sends you off to speak to one of their ex members who lives in another area. He reveals to you the name of the organisation and that they are up to 'something big'. You then roam Westfall looking for one of the defias who carries a message to another group of bandits. Once you find him and kill him, you then are sent to Stormwind, one of the capitals, where some gnome ninja-spies inform you who the Defias really are. Then you return to Westfall and you are supposed to escort one Defias traitor to their secret hideout to uncover its location, while multiple bandits attack you on route. When you finally uncover their hideout you are sent to kill their leader (with a group in an instance this time) and it all ends in a very climatic battle a pirate ship strongly resembling 'Goonies' if you ever seen that.

Is that not just the same as a "speak to someone", "find someone", "kill so and so" just strapped together though? It's the same in DAoC the DR quests are slightly more interesting like that but at the end of the day it's still just a combination of the basic quest ideas. It's about time MMO companies started investing a little more into their quest engines when they're such a big component in the games. The first and easiest step is removing linearity from the quests, that is make sure there is plenty of different options and paths to follow on a quest such that the quest turns out very differently as you make decisions along the quest - this happens to an extent in modern MMOs but it's so weak and so obvious that it may as well not happen. The second step is to start adding some thought requirements to quests to make them less mindless, a very quick and basic example would be something like have a quest, where you have to duo to fight a massive demon and have one person have to run through a maze of traps that makes the demon vulnerable for a few seconds so that the other player can attack him in this time so that there's proper cooperation needed - it could be made even more in depth if you had a trio or some such. Also again going back to Khaldun's puzzle chests from UO - essentially a puzzle game where you had to use thought to complete it and if you don't you end up setting off traps, all the time whilst trying to avoid very high level mobs wandering round the chests whilst also at the same time it being a PvE dungeon - that took skill, thought and reactions to succede and it was amazing fun.

In every game also, even if there are player opponents the amount of things they can do is actually limited.

Again, this is why I'm one of the few that LIKED artifacts, that LIKED MLs, that LIKED CLs - they added new abilities such that you can almost always improve. A good MMO for PvP is one where you can lose a fight and say "Damn I could've won if I remembered to do x" rather than as you say, the dull old pointless mezz, PBAE, win - that's just pointless. More abilities and such make fights far less linear which is why I'm a big fan of new abilities as long as they're balanced and that's the key point. I feel a LOT more fulfilled playing my minstrel or my sorc than I do my theurg/merc simply because they have so many more abilities there's almost always room for improvement.

As for the type of players, it's obvious blizz doesn't like 'killers' as it has taken every measure to stop people from getting harassed or annoyed by pvp'ers, either by dishonorable kills either by pve servers where you need to flag.

Killers aren't automatically greifers, standard PvP or PvE can still satisfy killers, DAoC was a poor example for killers in PvE because it was simply a case of if a mob is 10+ levels higher than you or whatever then you can't solo it, again going back to UO as an example you could defeat pretty much anything IF you were good, I used to spend ages kiting and playing with ancient wyrms and balrons, casting the spells I needed to to heal, popping pouches to break free from paralyze spells, drinking pots to cure poison and so on until eventually I'd drop it. Likewise, killing in PvP is enough to satisfy killers if it's engaging enough but I don't think that WoW's PvP really is engaging enough to satisfy killers.

For the 'achievers' i don't agree at all. I think wow's endgame is terribly competitive atm at the point where top guilds propably live in it. To be top pvp'er in wow, pretty much 24/7 playtime for a couple of months is required.

But that's just it, and the same is true for DAoC to a lesser extent - playing for hours on end, isn't imo an acheivement in the slightest, I very rarely get chance to play DAoC nowadays, but if I can play for 2hrs and make 50k I still feel I've acheived far more than the guy who's been on for 12hrs and gained 100k. Again back to my above UO example, I used to know countless overpowered tamers, twinked to hell in the best equipment they could be with 3 pet dragons but could halve of them solo a balron? no. Finally as another example it's what I disliked about DAoC's PvE - it was hard to excel in it, fact is if you had the best equipment possible there was only so much of a level of mob you could defeat, it was a straight out cut off no matter how skilled you were you had 0 chance against monsters of a certain level and WoW seems largely the same, that is your acheivements are heavily limited to that of other players by game mechanics.

I'm certainly interested to see how Warhammer online turns out, on one hand they've got the EA advertising machine, a set of intellectual property that easily outshines Blizzards and the experience of making a very good MMOG previously but on the other hand Blizzard has alread made the MMOG for the masses and is it now too late for someone else to create an MMOG to lure in those socializers and explorers that WoW has already captured? Personally I hope Mythic pay more attention to those of us Blizzard ignored but honestly, first looks it sounds like Mythic is trying to compete directly with Blizzard only.

[Downy]

Tbh i rather grind for quests than grind just for exp,quite rarely you need to actually grind on wow since quests give xp quite nicely,where on daoc they really don't give out much exp (45-50 SI Quests as an expection)

I challenge anyone to level on daoc purely from quests like you can do on WoW.

And daoc really should learn from wow customer service,once i got stuck and got contacted by GM ingame 10 mins later on Saturday. On daoc i would had to wait for monday and hopefully get fixed by then.

'Tis my WoW rant

[Xest]

Tbh i rather grind for quests than grind just for exp,quite rarely you need to actually grind on wow since quests give xp quite nicely,where on daoc they really don't give out much exp (45-50 SI Quests as an expection)

Depends where you start apparently, when I tried levelling an Elf druid there was a hell of a lot of grinding, there just weren't enough doable quests in that area of WoW's gameworld to level up much on quests.

I challenge anyone to level on daoc purely from quests like you can do on WoW.

Hi task dungeons, how r u? Dunno when you last played but there's plenty of quests now, you can easily do it.

And daoc really should learn from wow customer service,once i got stuck and got contacted by GM ingame 10 mins later on Saturday. On daoc i would had to wait for monday and hopefully get fixed by then.

DAoC should or GOA should? Mythic's customer service is top notch tbh, I've had item recoveries handled within 20mins in the past and that involves them checking through logs to confirm you had the item etc.

[pikeh]

Tbh i rather grind for quests than grind just for exp,quite rarely you need to actually grind on wow since quests give xp quite nicely,where on daoc they really don't give out much exp (45-50 SI Quests as an expection)

went from 5-46 in three days on my vamp... just on instances.

[Ovi]

Instances is more a form of farming than questing.

As for Night Elf Druid starting location there are plenty of quests to level on, I have gone through that starting area a few times on various characters without the need to grind.

The thing about WoW quests that makes them better than farming the DAoC instance quests is that you can do 3 or 4 at a time in the same areas, instead of repeating one thing over and over again.