08-18-2006, 09:17 AM
Just a small comment first. I am not advocating solo play or complaining you can't solo in the game. Far from it. Sure, I play solo from time to time, but I also team up with others, random strangers as well as guild people on Terenas (and before when playing alliance on Stormrage). When I claim that it is all instances and not much outdoor, that does not mean they should add more solo content. Far from it. Outdoor or non instnace does NOT equal solo play, although it seems many get that feeling, including Blizzard. There are great possible content to do outdoor that you do as groups (even non elite outdoor areas which seems to be Blizzard's solution to make it challenging).
The problem I have with instances is more of an organizational part (not the how to organizr 5 people, that is a piece of cake, we organize 40 people in our raid). Even if one do have prepared and set up friday for some instances, typicall one end up being 3 or 4 people that eventually decide on an instance, takes an hour or so to have people preprae, pick up the quests for that particular instance, trying to get that other friend to also play, wait for the other to eat his dinner. One start out the instance and the last person can join, get delayed and when he joins someone else drops. After 4 hours one is still only half way through it. Even if one do get all 5 up at once, picking up quests, going there and then playing thorugh (at proper level) do take some time, it isn't done in one hour. If one want to be anywere close to social, one talk, chat and so and that also takes time. Typically, even in the well organized parts, after 3 hours one have to decide, should I stay to the end despite that I should instead go to bed, they said it should take only 3 hours which is all I had? Or should I stay another two so the person who was desperate to finnish it can do that? I am not the person who likes to say, my 3 hours is up right before one hit the last room.
Typical outdoor content is much quicker, one move from one part to the other more randomly, if someone leaves, one switch to anothe rquest or part of the map for a while and so on. You can stop playing when you feel like it, no "must do the last 2 hours or we have to restart from scratch" and there is no "ooops we wiped because someone pressed the wrong button, all the last 4 hours was pointless". This is what I want more of, no problem that it should require some groups.
See you missed my complain completely. It was mostly about how item and item creation works, how tradeskills are pretty much useless and how once you hit level 50 or above, there is only gameplay in instances and raids and no casual play that doesn't require planning and setting aside many hours on each playing occation. That has nothing to do with solo or group play. I had some other complains too (such as bad polishing and deserted maps at level 50+), but those were the major ones.
That is not a proper way to divide the game. Non instance does not mean solo (and instances can actually be fun soloing also, despite that there is no loot or experience since you must be far above your level. I would love instances were you have non elite monsters though but that is another story. There is a LOT of content outisde instances that are great for groups and require groups. HOwever, much of it stops existing when you get close to level 60 I would say.
The problem is not know were to get a particular item. The problem is that such a thing exist to start with. That is that items has one specific source only.
My comment on silithus being good was that the town/hub was goodin that it had content, lots of different people, traders and such. That doesn't mean the area in itself is any good.
Exactly, just go up to Ashzara (spelling?). It is mostly one big museum of interesting places, buildings, structures and so on, with no content at all. There is even a pointless wreck surviving crew in one place were you have NPC with no interaction and when you finally find a quest and hopes for all sort of fun activity to start, it turns out it is not finnished. Heck, I would not even call it initiated. It is not like they are working on it, it has existed for I don't know how many patches. Blizzard would have done better to remove it completely until finnished.
My level values should be taken with a grain of salt, I just pulled them as approximate ones from memory. Could have been at 250, 260 or 210 that I started to feel it pointless and basically impossible to advance in any satisfactionary way.:)
Agree. The thing is that here you actually get a big incentive. There is at least two turn in items that start up quests that has such a drop rate that you get them both after killing like 5 monsters. Of course, you need to level up at least 2 or 3 levels in reputation for them to talk to you so that you can turn in the items. I hanged on to those items, and grinded my rep (I allready had gone thorugh the cave by simply dieing two times, so that in itself was no goal). I was hoping and suspecting that they would start up at least two new quest series related to the furbolgs, perhaps sending me to their friends in Ashzeara and be fun. Perhaps it would also make additional items purchaseble and so on. What a fiasco. You got a few exp for finnishing the quest and aminimum ammout of extra rep. That was it, no continuation at all. What a looser make up such two pointless quests with no continuation? Turns out for being able to buy anything special I need to grind another 6000 or 12000 more rep.
In addition, reading up a bit to see if there actually was ANY noce reward or quest serie opening up. It turns out that one should never ever turn in the reputation items one get as drops. See, at a certian reputation level, there is no more rep for killing monsters, only for turning those items in, so turning them in before is very inefficient. Yay, way to go Blizzard!!!
WHich is were I called the bull. Actually, there is no need for an NPC to check anything at all. It is the players that need to check the NPC for available quest and quest status. That is allready done for ALL players and ALL NPC since otherwise the game can't put an exclamationmark on the NPC that has a new quest for you. This is done for ALL available quests, not just the ones you have on your character for that area. Considering the way the game allready trust the client in various ways, the actual question mark and indication can be all client side, the server just send quests for NPCs and the client sort out possible quest status (if there is a yellow or white ? needed). IF you actually talk, the server will of course decide if you get a response, as today, that is NO extra strain.
As I said, the possible server stratin would be in killing monsters which upon death has to check through all the players quests that might make special quest drops to occur. That is hardly intensive in work load. Neither is to up the kill count for that particular monster by checking all quests. We are not talking players running arround with hundrads or thousands quests here, it would be a need to go from 20 to, say 50 (or whatevver similar or higher value you like). Since quests can be tied to areas, or monsters, which are tied to areas, one can simply sort possible quests to check for when one enters an area. NO point ever looking through the quests which require you to talk to someone on another continent or quests that doesn't require to kill monsters or items from monsters, especially if they don't exist in the area. That right away "disable" most quests from even having to be checked for to start with and such sorting can occur when you move arround at whatever time needed, not at critical combat were you want to not have lag.
The problem I have with instances is more of an organizational part (not the how to organizr 5 people, that is a piece of cake, we organize 40 people in our raid). Even if one do have prepared and set up friday for some instances, typicall one end up being 3 or 4 people that eventually decide on an instance, takes an hour or so to have people preprae, pick up the quests for that particular instance, trying to get that other friend to also play, wait for the other to eat his dinner. One start out the instance and the last person can join, get delayed and when he joins someone else drops. After 4 hours one is still only half way through it. Even if one do get all 5 up at once, picking up quests, going there and then playing thorugh (at proper level) do take some time, it isn't done in one hour. If one want to be anywere close to social, one talk, chat and so and that also takes time. Typically, even in the well organized parts, after 3 hours one have to decide, should I stay to the end despite that I should instead go to bed, they said it should take only 3 hours which is all I had? Or should I stay another two so the person who was desperate to finnish it can do that? I am not the person who likes to say, my 3 hours is up right before one hit the last room.
Typical outdoor content is much quicker, one move from one part to the other more randomly, if someone leaves, one switch to anothe rquest or part of the map for a while and so on. You can stop playing when you feel like it, no "must do the last 2 hours or we have to restart from scratch" and there is no "ooops we wiped because someone pressed the wrong button, all the last 4 hours was pointless". This is what I want more of, no problem that it should require some groups.
Quote:I just want to see one poster tell Jarulf that he's a newb for wishing Blizzard would focus on making WoW less relatively gimped for solo play 60+. Maybe someone could make a comment about how "that game wouldn't work" or "WoW needs to be a social-centric game". Come on, make my day.
See you missed my complain completely. It was mostly about how item and item creation works, how tradeskills are pretty much useless and how once you hit level 50 or above, there is only gameplay in instances and raids and no casual play that doesn't require planning and setting aside many hours on each playing occation. That has nothing to do with solo or group play. I had some other complains too (such as bad polishing and deserted maps at level 50+), but those were the major ones.
Quote:Silithus together with Plagulands is the best high level areas for both solo/instances.
That is not a proper way to divide the game. Non instance does not mean solo (and instances can actually be fun soloing also, despite that there is no loot or experience since you must be far above your level. I would love instances were you have non elite monsters though but that is another story. There is a LOT of content outisde instances that are great for groups and require groups. HOwever, much of it stops existing when you get close to level 60 I would say.
Quote:The problem with know what boss drop what, is internet's fault. Without the sites that gives detailed drop what each boss drops. We would never know it before actual visit it, and it would take time before we learned who drop what setpart.
The problem is not know were to get a particular item. The problem is that such a thing exist to start with. That is that items has one specific source only.
Quote:Silithious, in particular, was just awful. Cobbled together with no rhyme or reason, very little that was interesting to do or see, and set up -- as far as I could tell -- basically to provide a handy staging post for raids and instances.
My comment on silithus being good was that the town/hub was goodin that it had content, lots of different people, traders and such. That doesn't mean the area in itself is any good.
Quote:They could have made the outdoors so much more interesting and fun in so many ways, but they never bothered, or perhaps simply wanted to funnel everyone into raids.
Exactly, just go up to Ashzara (spelling?). It is mostly one big museum of interesting places, buildings, structures and so on, with no content at all. There is even a pointless wreck surviving crew in one place were you have NPC with no interaction and when you finally find a quest and hopes for all sort of fun activity to start, it turns out it is not finnished. Heck, I would not even call it initiated. It is not like they are working on it, it has existed for I don't know how many patches. Blizzard would have done better to remove it completely until finnished.
Quote:I would say you could get quite a bit beyond 230 without too much trouble, but it definitely got slower and slower the higher you went;
My level values should be taken with a grain of salt, I just pulled them as approximate ones from memory. Could have been at 250, 260 or 210 that I started to feel it pointless and basically impossible to advance in any satisfactionary way.:)
Quote:Yup again --- I half-heartedly started working on argent dawn and cenarion reps, but the timbermaw furbolgs had already done me in.
Agree. The thing is that here you actually get a big incentive. There is at least two turn in items that start up quests that has such a drop rate that you get them both after killing like 5 monsters. Of course, you need to level up at least 2 or 3 levels in reputation for them to talk to you so that you can turn in the items. I hanged on to those items, and grinded my rep (I allready had gone thorugh the cave by simply dieing two times, so that in itself was no goal). I was hoping and suspecting that they would start up at least two new quest series related to the furbolgs, perhaps sending me to their friends in Ashzeara and be fun. Perhaps it would also make additional items purchaseble and so on. What a fiasco. You got a few exp for finnishing the quest and aminimum ammout of extra rep. That was it, no continuation at all. What a looser make up such two pointless quests with no continuation? Turns out for being able to buy anything special I need to grind another 6000 or 12000 more rep.
In addition, reading up a bit to see if there actually was ANY noce reward or quest serie opening up. It turns out that one should never ever turn in the reputation items one get as drops. See, at a certian reputation level, there is no more rep for killing monsters, only for turning those items in, so turning them in before is very inefficient. Yay, way to go Blizzard!!!
Quote:Somewhere, I remember someone from Bliz explaining that it would be too computationally intensive for the game to make all the npc's check the quest logs of all the nearby players if they allowed unlimited (or large numbers) of quests. This explanation made no sense to me then, and it makes no sense to me now.
WHich is were I called the bull. Actually, there is no need for an NPC to check anything at all. It is the players that need to check the NPC for available quest and quest status. That is allready done for ALL players and ALL NPC since otherwise the game can't put an exclamationmark on the NPC that has a new quest for you. This is done for ALL available quests, not just the ones you have on your character for that area. Considering the way the game allready trust the client in various ways, the actual question mark and indication can be all client side, the server just send quests for NPCs and the client sort out possible quest status (if there is a yellow or white ? needed). IF you actually talk, the server will of course decide if you get a response, as today, that is NO extra strain.
As I said, the possible server stratin would be in killing monsters which upon death has to check through all the players quests that might make special quest drops to occur. That is hardly intensive in work load. Neither is to up the kill count for that particular monster by checking all quests. We are not talking players running arround with hundrads or thousands quests here, it would be a need to go from 20 to, say 50 (or whatevver similar or higher value you like). Since quests can be tied to areas, or monsters, which are tied to areas, one can simply sort possible quests to check for when one enters an area. NO point ever looking through the quests which require you to talk to someone on another continent or quests that doesn't require to kill monsters or items from monsters, especially if they don't exist in the area. That right away "disable" most quests from even having to be checked for to start with and such sorting can occur when you move arround at whatever time needed, not at critical combat were you want to not have lag.
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