Hi,
I had high hopes for WoW. My guild and I were looking forward to finally saying goodbye to Ultima Online and making our mark on a new, promising game. But having played WoW for a few days now, I'm started to feel a sense of dread. Blizzard have rushed this game. There is no denying it. At best it's incomplete, at worst it's half-assed. Here are the problems I've noticed in just a few days play:
1) The many quests are just a thinly veiled attempt at disguising the grind that is present. Granted, the grind isn't as bad as in some MMORPG's, but it's still there. After the 50th kill x creature and collect x amount of x item, it really starts to get tedious.
2) Most spawns are overcamped to the point where a ten minute quest ends up taking an hour. For some reason most people are unwilling to group up to make the whole process a lot easier on everybody involved. It's just not fun waiting for creatures to spawn, trying to attack them before anybody else can, and hoping you've done enough damage to get credit for the kill.
3) It seems as if getting the first hit on a monster takes precedence over the amount of damage you actually do to it. This results in long ranged attackers running around getting the first hit on a monster and then letting other people kill it.. and the initial attackers end up getting the lion's share of the credit.
4) The party system is, in a word, terrible. The design of the various quests promotes grouping. And yet, you only get half the xp you normally would from killing monsters solo. It means that a party that does quests together ends up quickly falling behind the curve and having to grind their way through non-quest related monsters.
5) PvP is utterly, utterly pointless. If you win, you gain nothing. If you lose, you lose nothing. There's no sense of danger or excitement. There's no adrenaline rush or a sense of achievement. It's just, "Ok, we managed to wipe that group out, so what?" The Honour system that Blizzard proposed seem reasonable: for every honourable kill you make, you gain honour, which can translate to titles, special clothing or items, even special abilities. What happened to it? It was the only thing that gave PvP meaning. For somebody like me, who is first and foremost a PvP player, it was essential to the overall experience. I've never been a big PvM fan, but I was prepared to do it if it lead to something better, like a fun PvP experience. Except it doesn't. So where's the motivation? What's the point?
6) WoW Launch is shaping up to be the same fiasco that the D2 Realms were on launch. I tried for half an hour to log onto East 4 today.. until I finally gave up and started a new character on another server. Overcrowded and laggy, it makes me wonder if Blizzard have severely underestimated the demand they would experience. And while I am fully aware that this is a Stress Test, and that supposedly the purpose of it is to identify these kinds of issues.. that didn't work for Diablo 2, what has changed that is going to make it work now? I think those of us who remember the Realms in the early days shudder at the thought of living through a similar experience again.
7) There are macro bots and speedhacks already. I can't say I'm surprised. Blizzard have never been well known for the integrity of their servers. But it does not bode well for release if people have been able to achieve it so quickly. Are we going to see a repeat of the Realms, with their various cheats, hacks and dupes?
The scary part of all this is that Blizzard only has eighteen days until release to fix or at least attempt to fix these issues and many others. Are we all going to be paying to play a beta ala Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies? Blizzard once claimed that they wanted to do a MMORPG right, and while WoW is probably a lot better than most MMORPG's on the market right now, it still has a long way to go. There's meant to be a big patch on the way, and while I'm hopeful it will resolve all or some of the issues, at this point I'm not feeling very optimistic at all.
Sigh.
I had high hopes for WoW. My guild and I were looking forward to finally saying goodbye to Ultima Online and making our mark on a new, promising game. But having played WoW for a few days now, I'm started to feel a sense of dread. Blizzard have rushed this game. There is no denying it. At best it's incomplete, at worst it's half-assed. Here are the problems I've noticed in just a few days play:
1) The many quests are just a thinly veiled attempt at disguising the grind that is present. Granted, the grind isn't as bad as in some MMORPG's, but it's still there. After the 50th kill x creature and collect x amount of x item, it really starts to get tedious.
2) Most spawns are overcamped to the point where a ten minute quest ends up taking an hour. For some reason most people are unwilling to group up to make the whole process a lot easier on everybody involved. It's just not fun waiting for creatures to spawn, trying to attack them before anybody else can, and hoping you've done enough damage to get credit for the kill.
3) It seems as if getting the first hit on a monster takes precedence over the amount of damage you actually do to it. This results in long ranged attackers running around getting the first hit on a monster and then letting other people kill it.. and the initial attackers end up getting the lion's share of the credit.
4) The party system is, in a word, terrible. The design of the various quests promotes grouping. And yet, you only get half the xp you normally would from killing monsters solo. It means that a party that does quests together ends up quickly falling behind the curve and having to grind their way through non-quest related monsters.
5) PvP is utterly, utterly pointless. If you win, you gain nothing. If you lose, you lose nothing. There's no sense of danger or excitement. There's no adrenaline rush or a sense of achievement. It's just, "Ok, we managed to wipe that group out, so what?" The Honour system that Blizzard proposed seem reasonable: for every honourable kill you make, you gain honour, which can translate to titles, special clothing or items, even special abilities. What happened to it? It was the only thing that gave PvP meaning. For somebody like me, who is first and foremost a PvP player, it was essential to the overall experience. I've never been a big PvM fan, but I was prepared to do it if it lead to something better, like a fun PvP experience. Except it doesn't. So where's the motivation? What's the point?
6) WoW Launch is shaping up to be the same fiasco that the D2 Realms were on launch. I tried for half an hour to log onto East 4 today.. until I finally gave up and started a new character on another server. Overcrowded and laggy, it makes me wonder if Blizzard have severely underestimated the demand they would experience. And while I am fully aware that this is a Stress Test, and that supposedly the purpose of it is to identify these kinds of issues.. that didn't work for Diablo 2, what has changed that is going to make it work now? I think those of us who remember the Realms in the early days shudder at the thought of living through a similar experience again.
7) There are macro bots and speedhacks already. I can't say I'm surprised. Blizzard have never been well known for the integrity of their servers. But it does not bode well for release if people have been able to achieve it so quickly. Are we going to see a repeat of the Realms, with their various cheats, hacks and dupes?
The scary part of all this is that Blizzard only has eighteen days until release to fix or at least attempt to fix these issues and many others. Are we all going to be paying to play a beta ala Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies? Blizzard once claimed that they wanted to do a MMORPG right, and while WoW is probably a lot better than most MMORPG's on the market right now, it still has a long way to go. There's meant to be a big patch on the way, and while I'm hopeful it will resolve all or some of the issues, at this point I'm not feeling very optimistic at all.
Sigh.