08-05-2004, 01:44 PM
I'd like to start a thread that simply deals with how a player who is used to Diablo II can adapt their playstyle to World of Warcraft (and most MMORPGs in general). It's truly a different beast, playing WoW. If you're a D2 player, you'll find yourself frustrated early on trying to adapt to a very different game. I'm going to start a running tally of things a newbie to WoW would need to keep in mind - please add to it with your thoughts! We should keep this thread bumped if new phases let more Lurkers into the beta. Keep things general - specifics won't help someone new to the game until they get the hang of it.
1) Diablo II is about frenetic, fast-pased you-against-the-hordes action. WoW doesn't work this way. Battle in WoW is conducted on a much smaller scale; this scale seems more realistic than the slaughterfests of Diablo II. An enemy the same level as you should be respected, for it has the capability of killing you if it catches you unawares and doesn't get dealt with well. Yes, a single enemy. In Diablo II, a single monster was barely a threat unless it was a special boss. So, when your team of 5 takes on 5-6 monsters of the same level, it's a pitched battle, especially in instances against elite monsters (elite meaning they have lots of extra hit points). Those used to Diablo II may find the pacing of WoW to be slow as a result, and try to "rush" fights too much because they're used to a game where you plow through enemies like they're pinatas.
2) In Diablo II, "aggro" doesn't really exist; the first player to be seen by a monster becomes the target. That whole system seems laughable to me now, for it allows tanks to sit out front and take damage while others just pile it on from the safety of the rear. WoW don't work that way, folks! Monsters are more intelligent than that. If your mage opens up with a giant can-o-whoop, that monster isn't going to just stand there and take it. They're going to come for you hot-and-heavy. Can you blame them? Same goes for healers - why would any monster stand there and fight someone down to 10% of their health only to see them healed to full again over and over and over? No, they're going to turn and ream the healer a new one, just as a human player would. Especially because those high-damage casters and healers have weak armor and few hit points, meaning easier kills!
Learning aggro is the single biggest adjustment a Diablo II player faces. If you don't understand it or refuse to understand it, you won't be very popular in parties. Mages can just nuke, nuke, nuke and then feel like they're "helping" the party. However, when they draw aggro away on each and every fight as a result, forcing the healers and tanks to constantly shift their attention over to protecting them, it'll get old fast. Tanks need to learn to draw aggro from all enemies around so that their healers can protect them without worry of being slaughtered. In general, the classes that do the most damage are the weakest, and the classes that absorb the most damage are the strongest. It's that way for a reason, and in a party, every class has its proper role.
3) Speaking of "role" in parties, variety is greatly lessened in WoW. If you play a Priest, you're expected to play a certain way. Play a Paladin, another way. Unlike in Diablo II's skill system, where a number of different character setups could be effective, there is a clear "best" setup in WoW for each character class. Talents do seem to add a little variety, and may continue to branch characters out a bit as the game heads more to final, so this is subject to change. After all, Blizzard is still kicking around the idea of racial spells/skills, so that a Gnome Warrior does not equal a Human Warrior. We'll see.
4) With a persistent online world, there can be an actual economy. So far, few exploits have been found and they've been squashed quickly. However, it's inevitable that something's going to be exploitable come release and produce a ton of gold for some characters. How Blizzard responds will be interesting. A sudden massive cash import into a few characters that is then closed off will result in a skewing of the economy, especially with auction houses.
5) Quests are not necessary. You can play the entire game without performing a single quest except for those related to your race, needed to unlock abilities or spells. For example, Warlocks have to solve quests to get each of their minions. Other than that, trying to perform every quest in the game is not only almost impossible, but inefficient to boot. Learning the most efficient order/system to the quests results in faster leveling, but they're by no means necessary to advance to the highest level. I've heard of some players who simply never bother questing, preferring the complete freedom to just go anywhere and kill anything they feel like over having missions that "constrict" their play. A Diablo II nut will feel the quest system to be overwhelming, since there are simply far more quests available than you can complete in the course of the game. It's best to try to clear out an area of quests before moving on to a new one and picking up another reamload of quests, if possible, although most areas are designed such that you will do some quests at first and then come back later when you're a higher level.
6) The aggravation of playing with an inexperienced/poor gamer is heightened. In Diablo II, if your partner(s) got you in hot water, you could open up a Town Portal and escape in a second (or less!). Not so in WoW - there are no fast escapes whatsoever. It only takes one bad pull, one too-agressive move from one player in a group to wipe out the whole group, and there's not much anyone can do to stop it or get away. In the wide-open non-dungeon areas, you can usually run to try to get away from a monster's range (they only follow you so far), and sometimes escape that way. In a dungeon, you have no option. This is why having 5 players isn't always better than having 4 when going down into an instanced dungeon. That 5th player might do more harm than good and get everyone killed. This could cause a little strife even amongst Lurkers - it's no fun to be playing for 2+ hours in an instance to get to the end boss only to have a member of the party screw up and get everyone plastered. Likewise, if you're the one who makes the mistake, try not to get in a huff if your partymates point out what you had done wrong - instead, learn from it. You WILL make mistakes as you learn the game. However, instances are not good places to try new strategies. :)
7) Travel time. It simply doesn't exist in Diablo II. You can portal to town at any time, and take waypoints to get you around to new areas instantaneously. This doesn't work in a MMORPG, where travel is a necessary evil. You may find the travel time exceedingly dull if you're used to the whiz-bang instant action of Diablo II. The key is to minimize the travel time necessary by sticking in an area to do quests as long as you can, smartly positioning your hearthstones, etc. At first, travel isn't much of an issue - the first 10 or so levels of your character will be spent in the same area. You don't really start to significantly travel around the world until you're 20. By the time you're 40, quests will have you moving all over the world on a regular basis, so managing efficient ways to get around with your quest deliveries and rewards can really minimize the time you're staring at a gryphon/bat/hippogryph/etc's back. At that point, keep your Hearthstones set to a central location - one of the major cities - so that you're never more than 2 flights from anywhere.
That said, there are things in the game that speed travelling. Mages have the extra luxury of being able to teleport to the major cities at any time (after level 20), allowing them to keep their hearthstone pointed to a more remote location. At level 40, they can teleport groups of people to the major cities. Warlocks can summon players to their location from anywhere in the world, provided that there are two other players by them who can assist with the spell. Druids have the travel form to speed running. Tauren have plainsrunning, and other classes have mounts. As the world opens up to you when you gain levels, so too will these alternate methods of getting around faster.
Please add to this as you think of things...
-Bolty
1) Diablo II is about frenetic, fast-pased you-against-the-hordes action. WoW doesn't work this way. Battle in WoW is conducted on a much smaller scale; this scale seems more realistic than the slaughterfests of Diablo II. An enemy the same level as you should be respected, for it has the capability of killing you if it catches you unawares and doesn't get dealt with well. Yes, a single enemy. In Diablo II, a single monster was barely a threat unless it was a special boss. So, when your team of 5 takes on 5-6 monsters of the same level, it's a pitched battle, especially in instances against elite monsters (elite meaning they have lots of extra hit points). Those used to Diablo II may find the pacing of WoW to be slow as a result, and try to "rush" fights too much because they're used to a game where you plow through enemies like they're pinatas.
2) In Diablo II, "aggro" doesn't really exist; the first player to be seen by a monster becomes the target. That whole system seems laughable to me now, for it allows tanks to sit out front and take damage while others just pile it on from the safety of the rear. WoW don't work that way, folks! Monsters are more intelligent than that. If your mage opens up with a giant can-o-whoop, that monster isn't going to just stand there and take it. They're going to come for you hot-and-heavy. Can you blame them? Same goes for healers - why would any monster stand there and fight someone down to 10% of their health only to see them healed to full again over and over and over? No, they're going to turn and ream the healer a new one, just as a human player would. Especially because those high-damage casters and healers have weak armor and few hit points, meaning easier kills!
Learning aggro is the single biggest adjustment a Diablo II player faces. If you don't understand it or refuse to understand it, you won't be very popular in parties. Mages can just nuke, nuke, nuke and then feel like they're "helping" the party. However, when they draw aggro away on each and every fight as a result, forcing the healers and tanks to constantly shift their attention over to protecting them, it'll get old fast. Tanks need to learn to draw aggro from all enemies around so that their healers can protect them without worry of being slaughtered. In general, the classes that do the most damage are the weakest, and the classes that absorb the most damage are the strongest. It's that way for a reason, and in a party, every class has its proper role.
3) Speaking of "role" in parties, variety is greatly lessened in WoW. If you play a Priest, you're expected to play a certain way. Play a Paladin, another way. Unlike in Diablo II's skill system, where a number of different character setups could be effective, there is a clear "best" setup in WoW for each character class. Talents do seem to add a little variety, and may continue to branch characters out a bit as the game heads more to final, so this is subject to change. After all, Blizzard is still kicking around the idea of racial spells/skills, so that a Gnome Warrior does not equal a Human Warrior. We'll see.
4) With a persistent online world, there can be an actual economy. So far, few exploits have been found and they've been squashed quickly. However, it's inevitable that something's going to be exploitable come release and produce a ton of gold for some characters. How Blizzard responds will be interesting. A sudden massive cash import into a few characters that is then closed off will result in a skewing of the economy, especially with auction houses.
5) Quests are not necessary. You can play the entire game without performing a single quest except for those related to your race, needed to unlock abilities or spells. For example, Warlocks have to solve quests to get each of their minions. Other than that, trying to perform every quest in the game is not only almost impossible, but inefficient to boot. Learning the most efficient order/system to the quests results in faster leveling, but they're by no means necessary to advance to the highest level. I've heard of some players who simply never bother questing, preferring the complete freedom to just go anywhere and kill anything they feel like over having missions that "constrict" their play. A Diablo II nut will feel the quest system to be overwhelming, since there are simply far more quests available than you can complete in the course of the game. It's best to try to clear out an area of quests before moving on to a new one and picking up another reamload of quests, if possible, although most areas are designed such that you will do some quests at first and then come back later when you're a higher level.
6) The aggravation of playing with an inexperienced/poor gamer is heightened. In Diablo II, if your partner(s) got you in hot water, you could open up a Town Portal and escape in a second (or less!). Not so in WoW - there are no fast escapes whatsoever. It only takes one bad pull, one too-agressive move from one player in a group to wipe out the whole group, and there's not much anyone can do to stop it or get away. In the wide-open non-dungeon areas, you can usually run to try to get away from a monster's range (they only follow you so far), and sometimes escape that way. In a dungeon, you have no option. This is why having 5 players isn't always better than having 4 when going down into an instanced dungeon. That 5th player might do more harm than good and get everyone killed. This could cause a little strife even amongst Lurkers - it's no fun to be playing for 2+ hours in an instance to get to the end boss only to have a member of the party screw up and get everyone plastered. Likewise, if you're the one who makes the mistake, try not to get in a huff if your partymates point out what you had done wrong - instead, learn from it. You WILL make mistakes as you learn the game. However, instances are not good places to try new strategies. :)
7) Travel time. It simply doesn't exist in Diablo II. You can portal to town at any time, and take waypoints to get you around to new areas instantaneously. This doesn't work in a MMORPG, where travel is a necessary evil. You may find the travel time exceedingly dull if you're used to the whiz-bang instant action of Diablo II. The key is to minimize the travel time necessary by sticking in an area to do quests as long as you can, smartly positioning your hearthstones, etc. At first, travel isn't much of an issue - the first 10 or so levels of your character will be spent in the same area. You don't really start to significantly travel around the world until you're 20. By the time you're 40, quests will have you moving all over the world on a regular basis, so managing efficient ways to get around with your quest deliveries and rewards can really minimize the time you're staring at a gryphon/bat/hippogryph/etc's back. At that point, keep your Hearthstones set to a central location - one of the major cities - so that you're never more than 2 flights from anywhere.
That said, there are things in the game that speed travelling. Mages have the extra luxury of being able to teleport to the major cities at any time (after level 20), allowing them to keep their hearthstone pointed to a more remote location. At level 40, they can teleport groups of people to the major cities. Warlocks can summon players to their location from anywhere in the world, provided that there are two other players by them who can assist with the spell. Druids have the travel form to speed running. Tauren have plainsrunning, and other classes have mounts. As the world opens up to you when you gain levels, so too will these alternate methods of getting around faster.
Please add to this as you think of things...
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.