Well played, sir.

so what happened with the 6 million accounts

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That dip is when China had WoW shut off.

Anyone else get stuck with the Latin America/Mexico servers in their group? It's extra super fun to get into a random group and have no one but one other guy speak a lick of english and roll need on every single item that drops.

No idea why they though this would be ok. It's like FFXI all over again but w/out even a crappy translator to work with.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

How did I not hear about this. Why did that happen, and why was it turned back on?

Blizzard can't do business directly in China, due to Chinese law, so they licensed the game to a third party.

That company lost their license via some government debacle, and china lost their native WoW port until blizzard worked out licensing with another company, and that company got approval from the government to start it up.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

a lot of those accounts are also people who created recruit a friend accounts for the mounts and achievements. By far this isnt the best game out there, problem is games like eq2 or lotro does not have the community i find to keep raiders raiding unless they get lucky enough to get into a good guild.

I know when i played eq2 i was loving it. Problem is the class i played was not a heavily recruited or wanted class in end game guilds so i gave up on it.

Id say alot of folks playing wow are just doing it while they wait and hope for someone to make something to break the wow mold and keep our interest in it.

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I dunno, WoW is pretty great. It just hits a wall if you don't care about mounts, achieves, and pets. Around raid time there's not much to do besides that.

I've taken up LOTRO and am enjoying it a lot. I think EQ2 I just got bored with because I was playing the wrong class. Never got around to giving it another shot.

I played a free trial of LOTRO and it felt... low end. Unresponsive, bad graphics, and looked like a long road to get to max level. does it get better?

Bad Graphics? LOTRO has the best graphics of any MMORPG out there.

It must be the starter areas. I may give it a shot again and see how long it takes to do stuff.

Did you download the hi resolution pack or the standard pack?

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

WoW really does have a near-endless supply of little things to do and goals to set. It's quite impressive how much is crammed into the game.

A lot of people have one thing they like doing and that's it, though...I can see how they'd get bored eventually.

Before anyone points out that Aion or Final Fantasy is prettier than LOTRO, I don't think those games deserve to be in conversations about MMORPGs.

If you want to play LOTRO 'fast', you really will miss out on much of what makes it a very good game. The lore adherence is nearly impeccable, read the 'Fellowship' book and then play LOTRO and follow the epic quest line and you'll see many familiar names along the way (not just the protagonists). Also good 'pre-study' are the appendices of ROTK (where much of the other quests/zones draw from).

Basically its the lore and graphics that set it apart from other MMORGs (Moria is amazing once you get there), if you are just there to max level and raid, its not much different then other games, with less to do then most.

The problem is that those "little things" and "goals to set" primarily consists of vanity stuff that doesn't have any impact on gameplay or character progression. For RPG players that enjoy focusing on one of the main things these days that tends to distinguish between all the genre-bending going on(that is, character progression and gameplay), it's a real letdown when you realize that once you hit 80 you may as well roll an alt if you want to feel like your character is going anywhere in a meaningful way in terms of his/her power. We've been through the arguments about gear mudflation so I won't rehash it, but needless to say it's still a point that ends up being a big negative for players that enjoy character progression. Achievements are really the epitome of the issue here - Completely and utterly irrelevant to any aspect of the gameplay.

Now, I'm not saying this isn't smart for Blizzard to do(although, to be honest, in the long run I'd argue it might not be... but I'll save that for a different post). I will say that it seems like it appeals to the lowest common denominator of folks(or generally, just the masses), and many people are quite content with doing their little OCD-point achievements, getting a polygon pet/mount, or a piece of text in front of their name. It's obviously a successful model, but it's disappointing for people who want a little meat in their game that's associated with gameplay. I don't even have much time to play these days, but I STILL want games to be harder. I still want them to be harder. I still want it take me months to level out a character(these days it's going to take me a year though, heh). I just don't understand the casual mindset where everyone wants stuff handed to them, and no one gives a damn about the core mechanics of the game.

My impression from Sarissa's posts about WoW was that he did a variety of different things in the game - might be reading too much into a few phrases here and there, but that's my guesstimate(he posted once that he did arena, etc on top of raiding I believe). I know I tried a little of everything - I even dabbled in doing a few achievements just to try and understand what all the excitement was about. I did plenty of PVP, arenas, battlegrounds, 5-man groups, quested all over the place, tradeskilled, and raided. I'd hardly consider myself a one-trick monkey when it came to playing the game. It's hardly surprising that someone would try a broad spectrum of the game's content and come out disappointed when it came to meaningful things/content to do.

I'm not sure what "vanity" things have to do with the casual "gimmee" mindset or the difficulty of the game.



Honestly, if you're ONLY playing WoW to make your stat pixels bigger, you're probably going to be disappointed. People play for a lot of reasons and with a lot of different viewpoints and assuming that making your E-Peen bigger is the only "real" way to play is a mistake.

I actually enjoy almost everything about WoW except pvp. This includes achievement hunting, vanity pet hunting, mount collecting, jousting and running dungeons for fun and profit.

pvp just makes me want to claw my eyes out.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

That portion was more of a sidepoint to what I was addressing, but I do actually believe that vanity items/titles/pets are an *extension* of the casual mindset that Blizzard is trying to appeal to first and foremost. At least from what I've seen, casual WoW players who don't want high difficulty levels also seem to enjoy any content that is more aesthetic in nature rather than some of the more deliberate "purposeful" goals and tougher challenges in the game. That's not true across the board, and I know some people in my guild who are both hardcore raiders and hardcore pvpers, but also are all over the achievements. I do think it's true in general, though.



I'd define it as "Playing a game primarily for the sake of its gameplay and pushing its mechanics to their limits." E-peen doesn't really need to factor into wanting to improve your character. I mean, there are plenty of single-player games where that's possible and there's not much of an outlet for bragging rights other than posting videos on youtube, which probably doesn't appeal to the majority else we'd see around 1000x the videos.

It's more a question of what constitutes role-playing in terms of game mechanics, and I believe the answer is character progression first and foremost. Bioware and other companies have expanded on the idea in some ways, and even Blizzard has produced methods to improve your character without leveling or increasing stats directly. The problem is that there really isn't that much to do once you hit a certain point. There is a MASSIVE wall of exponential decay, and it's far beyond what almost every other MMORPG has to offer in that respect. It obviously works to an extent because casuals like the idea of everyone being equal at the top end regardless of how much you work at it. People that are amused with trivialities and shallow subquests that you will find in any average puzzle game may be content with it, but that doesn't make it an enjoyable game at this stage.

I guess I'm just wondering why they aren't playing Professor Layton for the DS instead, because really there you'd probably find more quality content(even some achievements IIRC!). Rub your belly while doing 10 jumping jacks constitutes the same principles of gameplay.

As I said though, I played the game and explored many of its aspects. I pretty much did it all, and I still found it to be a letdown. Sure, I'll admit I mostly focus on character progression and that's a huge selling point for me, but even the simplistic mini-games and sidequests just seemed entirely dull to me without a lot of real thought behind them. Filler content, pretty much. But really I do think character progression plays a major role in any MMORPG. For some, it's not as important - but I would argue for those that it's NOT important for, they may as well be playing any other genre, or even a social/casual MMO.

At this point, it's like having a racing game where you have a huge open-world track with massive multiplayer content and interactivity, but the racing blows. You can point out that there's TONS of little cookies and easter eggs scattered throughout, but at the end of the day the racing game just doesn't live up to its title as a racing game.

I'm not sure where people get this thing about "everyone being equal". Wrath encounters and content - at the top end - are some of the most challenging and engaging encounters in WoW's history. The idea that somehow a casual who doesn't work at anything gets all the same stuff as a skilled, hardcore gamer is just silly because that hasn't been true since like Naxxramas.

Of course, we've had this discussion before, and some people apparently think that ICC-25 Normal is actually "progression content" and they're mad that casuals can do it, too. Or that Hard Mode Lower Citadel bosses with 30% buff in effect is "progression content".

On a not so related topic, one of the cool things that I read in some of the press was how they want loot in Cataclysm to be more easily tied (name/looks) to the boss it dropped off.

I may be in the minority, but the sheer volume of loot that existed in WotLK raids really turned me off.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

That and the "huge upgrade" item was like....2 points more than the old item.

I just miss the eq style of loot and raiding where you'd see folks in a myriad of gear styles and that rare stuff that made you like "OMG WHERE IS THAT FROM?!"

What I wanna know is if they did/ or ever are going to go and revamp the old fucking character models. Dranei and Blood elf look sharp pixelwise. All the old races are coarse looking. When the mounts and vanity pets look sharper than the character model...something is wrong.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Yeah I miss those days too. Rare loots

The only area I could see this even being noticeable is if you compared, say, a rusted proto drake with a naked human. But it's not the case if you look at original race models in current gear. It all looks exactly the same as new models.

Revamping player models is dicey. To this day I hate the "new" EQ models they rolled out in Luclin, wasn't it? Horrible.

eeeh. the models from luclin weren't terrible in and of themselves. they were, however, animated very poorly, which left a sour taste in a bunch of mouths about them (myself included)

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

The animation was the big thing. Even tho they were blocky, the old models moved much more fluid than the Luclin version. Luclin ones were way too jerky and moved way too fast while animating.

EQ is also the only game to get a troll model right.

I don't see a problem with WoW models. Maybe allow for more animation so its not the same old sword swing then finisher sequence. Also armor and weapon graphics have been ugly for the most part since Tier 6.

Oh yes. EQ Trolls were awesome. =D Just about the only race I'd play.

after this patch all i have to say is a huge fuck you blizzard.

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What changed / happened?

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Hunter dps went down. =P

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Quite a few classes took a hit on dps a day or two after the patch. I know my little 66 mage was doing dmg that was simply outrageous for his level, as were the other casters I'd LFG'd with.

We were clearing entire instances in like 10 minutes with no mana breaks, no heals etc lol...

I could solo kill 4 or 5 things at once before they could reach me in instances.

Was quite entertaining while it lasted.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

A little. More aptly put, all casters went up, some dramatically, all melee went down (except DK), some dramatically, and hunter dps went down a tad. Mostly because some abilities need to be tuned.

Balance is one thing. I care more about some of the huge bugs that are in game right now.

Lots of huge bugs in AQ.

I know that before the nerf, hunters were raping everything that moved in bgs.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

BM is fun as all Hell again...basically it's a freaking Pokemon Master. It also helps to be 'wanted' in raids now if a shaman isn't around. I carry around 4 (5th pet isn't available until 85) pets and each has it's own utility.

Core Hound for Bloodlust, Spirit Beast (or Cat) for Str/Agi buff similar to Strength of Earth/Horn of Winter, Devilsaur for 5% Crit, Silithid for Sta buff.

I've done 2 raids thus far and it pretty much boils down to switching pets when the buff is needed. Last night for example I started with the Core Hound, hit Bloodlust, then switched to the Devilsaur for the 5% Crit for the rest of the fight.

Yeah, overall DPS did go down but I was still #3 overall for the night in ICC10...I got wrecked by a Moonkin and an Unholy DK with Shadowmourne.

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I think I spent 10 minutes using the move to command and making my pet bear go to sleep next to tirion in the lich king room.. Over, and over. It's not all bad with the patch.

I like the switch to focus. I keep hearing rumors that they broke the normalization on ranged items, so it's hard to get too serious about theory crafting my hunter until I know the bugs are ironed out.

So is there actually any new content yet or if we're done with heroic LK on 10 and 25-man we're pretty much still done with the game?

They didn't even crap out a filler instance or another sort of Isle of Quel'Danas...pretty much because they don't have to. People will continue to log in. Bitch a lot perhaps, but continue paying. Same reason we've not gotten player/guild housing while pretty much every game besides WoW has/had it.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

My guess is lots of people will spend these last weeks running the same old instances (ZG!!!!) over and over and over and over and over and over, hoping to get the mounts that are going to be taken out of the game.

The other reason could be that pretty much no one actually gives a shit about it. =)

Actually...you'd be surprised at the number of people who want 'fluff' shit added to the game.

Player/Guild Housing, Appearance Armor or Armor Dyes, etc etc...there are overwhelming numbers of suggestions posts about them, the questions get asked at Blizz-Con every year without fail, yet Blizzard takes the stance of "We know people want them, but we don't think they're important now so we won't add them".

You add player housing, you give me a place to put all that Holiday crap which is either rotting in my bank or I deleted to make room for more important shit. You give me a place to display things I'm proud of, like my original Hunter Epic or (if I had one) the Legendary Bow...etc etc etc. Give me a place to store or display shit I earn from achievements and maybe I'll go out of my way to do more of them.

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Blizzard always bitches about how they hate having their cities empty. This is why they do not want player housing. I think it's fucking stupid, personally. Say what you want about it, but I enjoyed the player housing in EQ2. In fact.. let me copy/paste a post I made about it the other day...

This is the newest housing addition to EQ2. This is only available to 7 year veterans.



At first, the idea of housing may seem a bit cheese dickish, but in practice, it's pretty cool. For a game like WoW, where vanity pets and mounts have become such a big deal, I am really shocked that they don't have something like this already. Throw in a new Carpentry tradeskill and the possibilities become endless. Carpenters could make furniture, Alchemists could make light fixtures and paints for walls, Tailors could make rugs/carpets, Engineers could make clocks and other oddities, Herbalists could grow trees/flowers, etc. etc. etc...

I just cannot see any reason why they keep putting off player housing. And now that Blizzard has started selling things for real cash, they could do what Sony does and have some special high-end furniture that they could sell for $10 and make even more money hand-over-fist. It just doesn't make sense to not have it since it adds a whole new element to the carrot-on-the-stick.

Yea, housing is the one "vanity" thing that I'd be interested in(especially if it was non-instanced) just because it affects the game's interactivity/immersiveness, and also because it has the potential to affect the game's gameplay as well if implemented correctly. I'll never understand how someone can be thrilled about a new mount that effectively serves as a pixelization of 100 percent increased run speed, and not be even remotely excited about having an entire 3d interactive representation of their efforts to utilize. WoW is truly the McDonald's of MMORPGs.

The whole "empty cities piss us off" thing is such a piss poor excuse. EQ2 is proof that people hang out in cities even if the house is 'in' the city. On my characters on EQ2, I hang out in Qeynos because that's where my house was...I didn't hang out INSIDE the house all the time, that would've been rather pointless.

As for guild halls, people hang out in guild halls to...craft and socialize. OH NOES BLIZZARD WE CAN'T HAVE THAT!

Look at Cata Beta, every Tom/Dick/Harry is standing in the middle of Orgrimmar where the old bank used to be and the new Keep is and its a clusterfuck mess. It'll be vastly worse on live mark my fucking words. People aren't going to go in flocks to hang out in the other cities either because Orgrimmar has the portal to Deepholme is and centrally located to Hyjal...and of course Uldum is just a flightpath away as well.

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It's called being lazy lol Blizzard does not want to work any harder than they need too.

the whole hunter thing is before 4.0 i was able to get up to 16k on some of the HM icc 25 bosses. Now im barely holding 12k. If i have to switch targets it drops due to the focus cost/ damage coeficients of our shots now. Our signature shots hit for shit now and besides for some mechanical need (MM using chimera to refresh serpent sting) its better to not use them all together.

Going to mess around on my lock and see how i like the changes there. If i just cant get into it im going to cancel my account before the next billing cycle and dick around in eq2 while i was for starwars to come out. sigh

Blizzard dropped the ball on hunter balance for this patch.

PS yeah i know hunters were kinda bad ass in pvp if they got the jump on you and were able to keep away. i myself just started to run BGs and could 2-3 shot some folks before 4.0. BUT i have had mages, Palys, and warriors do that to me so the whole OMG pvp thing arguement is meh at best.

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I hate to be the bearer of the obvious, but complaining about numbers and talking about quitting over them after a major overhaul of every class and just about every ability Pre-Expansion (and they are still in the process of tweaking) is kinda silly.

You realize this exactly the same situation as when BC came out, and Wotlk right? It's balanced for the expansions max level. Things will play out come 85.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Agreed. I think you'd have a few of the tunnel-vision folks that are purely function over form abandon the cities, but I doubt it would turn major cities into ghost towns. More importantly, if it did - so what?

Either way, you can split stuff up and keep some reasoning for houses. Tradeskill stuff/storage in the houses, more portals in the towns, etc etc.

you do realize that you are wrong right? I played since vanilla and was there for both xpac starts so telling me that this is the same as the start of both of those tells me that you have no idea what you are talking about. I remember pretty much ever class seeing a pretty nice scale up in power just before the xpac hit, never seeing them scale down. Played a lock in vanilla and went demon soon as 2.0 talents hit and that was after the beta nerfs to the fg and was pulling stupid numbers in nax and aq40. Hell i remember downing Illidan in what 3 minutes after 3.0 hit? KJ in about 6? I dont put a lot of faith in ghostcrawlers napkin math when it comes down to anything.

Also i dont need a good reason to decide to quit or give this game up. I just so happend to chose the fact that the only class i enjoy to play (odd huh) is a bit broken beyond what i consider acceptable to keep me interested in the game.

Ive been thinking of giving it up instead of dealing with the same idiots day in and day out for a while now, this just gave me the xtra push to get it done.

also to you 3 who say that this is the way it was for the other 2 xpac you must of been guilded with people whos skill was too low to utilize the abilities available to you at the release of the new talents at the time.

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Actually yes, it was exactly this way for both patch 2.0 and patch 3.0, except in those patches hunters became overpowered.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Someone is angry, nay Outraged!

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Did some raid testing...First 2 screenshots (The Omnitron Defense System in Blackwing Descent) I was Marksman, the other Hunter Survival...

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/1074 ... 185240.jpg

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/9704 ... 185223.jpg

These 2 (taken after Halfus Wyrmbreaker in Bastion of Twilight), I was BM and he stayed Survival...

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/5616 ... 165429.jpg

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/3834 ... 165425.jpg

Survival in the exact same gear set up is doing far more damage than either of the other two specs. Problem with Bm however is that No Beast Type mob in the Beta which is level 85 is tamable, so you have to deal with a level 82 pet. I'm going to level my stable of pets before retrying the bosses again tomorrow.

Also, look at that loot.

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Apparently they felt the need to nerf the cinematic movie for Cataclysm as well. Easily the worst one to date.

That's because the HP on every mob in TBC was nerfed ~30% in 3.0, not because you suddenly became awesome.

And yes, it was this way for every other expansion. Some classes abilities didn't work or scale so well and got buffed while others went totally berserk and got the smackdown.



Well, I ride on a mount all the time and it looks rather nice if you get one that you like. If you're the type that likes to show off, it can be a nice trophy as well, depending on which one you get. No matter where I go or what I'm doing, I have my mounts.

A house? I'd have to go in and just sit in it. Just go there and sit there and look around and say, "Ok, well, time to go do something."

I mean, it would be cool and all, but...eh, I dunno.

Yeah I just watched it. Bleh. The original WoW cinematic is still amazing. They put some real effort into that one.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Oh yes.

http://cata.wowhead.com/blog=171255#mod ... ;96806:9+0