WOW Questions

[nobbie]

I've applied for the European WOW Beta and will hopefully get an account soon, so that I can try out the game myself. I have nevertheless some questions for those of you who have been on the U.S. WOW Beta for a longer time now.

1.) What would be the average _minimum_ time investment to play the game? Are, for example, 2 hours per day enough to justify the costs for the game?

2.) What is your overall impression of the game so far? I know that it is quite different from an action RPG like Diablo II, but are its concepts similarly interesting and appealing?

[--Pete]

Hi,

What would be the average _minimum_ time investment to play the game?

That varies a lot. It is entirely possible to hop on the server for as little as half an hour and get some enjoyment out of it. There are some things that require a few hours of uninterrupted play. You could skip those, but then you'd be missing out on some of the better parts of the game.

Are, for example, 2 hours per day enough to justify the costs for the game?

This is an even harder question. Partially it depends on the cost of the game which, AFAIK, has not been announced. Partially it depends on how much enjoyment you get out of it. And, or course, a lot of it depends on how complete the game is when it ships. But overall, I'd say a strong "probably, yes".

What is your overall impression of the game so far?

Confused :) Even at the low settings I play at, it is a beautiful game. It spite of its many flaws, it is an addictive game. And I would have to admit that it is often quite a bit of fun. Of course, it is in beta and thus incomplete. So there is the perennial hope that many of the arghs will be fixed before it ships. There's already a lot of "good" in it. OTOH, there's a lot of bad, and some of it will probably stay. However enumerating it would only bring out the supporters and lead to another pointless argument.

The one thing that all can probably agree with is that there will be no true innovation. There will be no more (or less) reason to play WoW than there is to play any of the other MMOG out there. So the first question is whether you want to play any MMOG at all, and only if that answer is "yes" does the consideration of WoW over the others come into play. There are a few free trials, etc., and each person will have to answer both of these questions for him/herself. And a lot will depend, as always, on where your friends go.

I know that it is quite different from an action RPG like Diablo II, . . .

Actually, no. It is very very similar to D2. With just some name and graphics changes it could just as easily have been WoD. If Buzzard had been the main company and Blizzard the subsidiary, it probably would have been. And the backstory might even have been better. But, ultimately:
1) You pick a character. The selection is a little bit broader than in D2, but if you extrapolate the D1 to D2 progression, WoW has about the right number of classes. It adds races, but so would a WoD have done.
2) You go out and kill things, sometimes as part of a "quest" to get gear, money, and experience. While there are a lot more of them and the world is a lot bigger, most of the WoW quests are just as banal as the D2 quests.
3) You build up your character by tweaking with his/her attributes and selecting new gear. OK, we have the concepts of "training" which weren't in D2 and of trade skills (of which cube recipes were sort of an inkling).
4) Mostly the game consist of killing monsters so that you can get more powerful so that you can go to new areas so that you can kill more monsters. Sound familiar?

. . . but are its concepts similarly interesting and appealing?

"Concepts"? The only "concepts" are artistic. It is a "bubble gum" game, pure and simple. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad about a bubble gum game as long as it is done well and is fun. Most of the games most gamers play are bubble gum games. And Blizzard is the champion par excellence of bubble gum games. But if you are looking for anything deeper, such as a tactical or strategic challenge, or a chance to apply your intellect, don't look here. Blizzard does not take itself seriously (look at the out of context in game jokes), so don't make the mistake of taking *them* seriously.

Much like sausage, WoW can best be enjoyed if you don't think about it too much :)

--Pete

[nobbie]

Thanks for the report. I'll hopefully get a chance to try out the "bubble gum" game SOON™ in the European Beta :)

[TaiDaishar]

Thanks for the report. I'll hopefully get a chance to try out the "bubble gum" game SOON™ in the European Beta :)

From your mouth to the offices of Blizzard ;)

[Bolty]

Are we halfway through the beta process? Could be, could not be. But we've been at this now for quite a few months - since March! (Where does the time go?) Forget alpha stages - even in beta, the changes in flow and feel to the game have changed significantly. I was thinking earlier today about how in phase 1, nobody even had hearthstones. If you weren't a mage player, and you got halfway in to a Van Cleef instance and suddenly had to leave, you really had no choice but to die and take the experience hit. Things have changed a ton since those days.

There are lots of things that WoW does very, very well. And although I haven't played any other MMORPGs, I know from things I've heard that are so annoying about the genre that WoW avoids almost all of them.

1) Grinding isn't required. There are SO many quests, *SOOOO* many quests, that you will never NOT have anything to do quest-wise. If you feel like you can't find any quests, you're not looking in the right place, and it's time to explore. As a result...

2) The feeling of being on a "treadmill" just isn't there. Sure, you ARE on a leveling treadmill, but it's "hidden" from you by the sheer number of quests and activities you can undertake. While many quests are of the "kill x number of x and come back" variety, there are enough other quests with good plotlines or actions to take that you wonder what they'll come up with next. Some (not all) of the quests I've enjoyed the most:

a) the "Ghostbusters" quests of both sides, which are mage-specific
B) The Stalvan line of quests in Duskwood, which have you play semi-investigator, tracking down clues to discover the identity of a killer
c) The Defias Brotherhood line of quests, leading up to the assassination of Edwin Van Cleef
d) The Absent Minded Prospector quests - protecting and aiding a bunch of brilliant but REALLY obtuse scientists
e) Gnomeregan quests, due to humor value all over the instance

3) Instanced dungeons, which no longer require a guild to camp a spawn for days to get a high level kill - and also let you and your buddies game in more difficult areas without others coming in and screwing it up.

4) The ability to jump on the server, play for 30 minutes, and feel you actually did something.

5) The fact that every class in the game can solo effectively. It's not the most efficient way to play, but it's entirely possible and I do it all the time. From my experiences, I believe the best way to play WoW is in a 2-player group of different classes at all times, if you're into efficiency at all cost (i.e. fastest levelling).

6) A casual gamer can play 5 hours a week and not take over a year to get a good character. This game is much more "Diablo-ish" than other MMORPGs, but don't ever mistake it for the action-fest that is Diablo. Much of the strategy interest in the game is the setup BEFORE the fight (75%) compared to the actions taken during the fight (25%). As an example, our Van Cleef fight yesterday took less time than the discussion of the proper execution of the fight we had beforehand. When we engaged, we carried out our plan of attack with precision and it was extremely easy due to everyone knowing and then following their role.


There are also some things that WoW is doing wrong, and might or might not fix yet (keep in mind, the beta is far, far from over):

1) Instances are a blessing, but they're also a curse. Because the uber-bosses spawn infinitely, the items and loot they drop ALSO spawns infinitely. As a result, the economy tends to get wrecked by "instance farming," where players who are sufficiently high in level can just wade through an instance over and over to get the phat lewt inside. There have been a number of suggestions flying left and right on the Blizzard forums about how to fix this problem.

One might argue that the economy doesn't matter to them, but they're thinking in terms of Diablo II. In a MMORPG, the economy affects all players, as things can become devalued so quickly that even a player at the level cap is using things considered to be "junk" and are untradeable. It all trickles down.

2) Requiring players to log out at an inn to build up rest state. While everyone here knows I like the rest state system, I don't like how it requires a gamer to come to an inn to log out in order to be able to rebuild their rest state significantly enough to matter. This reduces the ability for you to jump on the server and game for a few short minutes, as you may under certain circumstances be forced to run back to the inn.

3) If you're in a rested state, you're technically only building up skill points at half the speed of someone playing in a normal state. Skill points are accumulated from experience gained by killing monsters, and are counted against the experience gained from the kill, NOT the rest state bonus. A level 20 player who has always played in a rested state will have far fewer skill points than a level 20 player who has always played in a normal state. Hopefully Blizzard will correct this later and it was just an oversight. Currently, casual gamers are punished somewhat by this, especially players who need to use skill points to equip weapons (i.e. Warriors).

4) PvP has a bunch of issues, including the discrepancy between the Horde and the Alliance in terms of development. Blizzard has said that much of their attention is now shifting to the Horde zones since the Alliance (especially human) lands are just about locked-in polished. It's quite evident, too, as you play - the Human lands of the Alliance (Elywnn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains, Duskwood) have the best overall design, polish, quests, layout, etc. As they bring the other lands up to speed, this game is going to ROCK in terms of its replayability for all the races.

5) The huge number of quests are a blessing, but they're also a curse. Due to the fact that you're always questing in this game, groups tend to be very short. You do not develop the comraderie that you may in other MMORPGs, because groups form, do one or two quests, and then disband. There's always another quest to do, and everyone in the group winds up having *different* quests to do. This is a large fundamental design problem in the game, and there's no simple solution. Being in a guild like the one we have in beta really helps, since there's enough of us to be able to find groups fairly easily if you really want to. But solo players won't have that luxury, and will find themselves moving from pickup group to pickup group. Finding friends to play with is thus difficult.

6) With no information about the "Hero class" released yet, it remains to be seen what will keep us all playing once we hit the level cap. And players will hit the level cap much faster than they do in other MMORPGs, as you level up at a good pace in WoW.

7) A point of worry is server stress. The servers do not seem like they can handle extreme load yet, but that IS what a stress test will be for later on.

If the game were released RIGHT NOW, would I buy it? Of course not, it's woefully unfinished, and I'm not dumb enough to pay a company so I can beta test a "live" game (cough, Star Wars: Galaxies). Ask me again in 4-5 months. This game has a *lot* of potential.

-Bolty

[Roane]

2) Requiring players to log out at an inn to build up rest state.  While everyone here knows I like the rest state system, I don't like how it requires a gamer to come to an inn to log out in order to be able to rebuild their rest state significantly enough to matter.  This reduces the ability for you to jump on the server and game for a few short minutes, as you may under certain circumstances be forced to run back to the inn.

You know, this point never bothered me until recently. I always figured it wasn't much trouble to Hearthstone home to an inn, or in Zaira's case, even teleport somewhere restable.

Much more often lately (especially with places like Stranglethorn Vale and the Badlands), I'm finding that I'm logging in when I only have a short time to play, and that running to the place I want to quest is going to take most of that time. And that's just not much fun.

[TheDragoon]

Much more often lately (especially with places like Stranglethorn Vale and the Badlands), I'm finding that I'm logging in when I only have a short time to play, and that running to the place I want to quest is going to take most of that time. And that's just not much fun.

Well, it's not like it's really THAT big a bonus assuming you'll be able to log in within the next day or two. Sometimes I just don't even bother since there's just a couple bubbles difference and it can be a pain to find an inn, sometimes. :)

[nobbie]

If the game were released RIGHT NOW, would I buy it?  Of course not, it's woefully unfinished, and I'm not dumb enough to pay a company so I can beta test a "live" game (cough, Star Wars: Galaxies).  Ask me again in 4-5 months.  This game has a *lot* of potential.

Thanks for the report, Bolty. I hope that Blizzard is able to unleash WOW's "potential" then :) Do you expect WOW to be in shops at Christmas this year? Seems to be very unlikely according to your report ..

[--Pete]

Hi,

Of course this is just blowing smoke -- but from what I've seen this may be the case.

WoW is nowhere near finished. If all the content, all the features, all the basics were in place, then four months of tweaking would be about right, and it would take about that long to fix the argghs, to balance the game for both PvE and PvP for each of forty some race/class combinations, etc. Or, in other words, if the game were "finished" now, it would take that long to "polish" it.

But the game is far from finished now. One class (hunters) hasn't even been roughly implemented. All but two classes have no talents, and nobody has had much of a chance to build characters to see how the talents work, not just as a final set up, but in leveling to that set up. Many areas are still just roughed out and many more are incomplete. And even the finished areas still need some work to balance things like kills needed for quests versus spawn rate versus population. The need for high level characters to farm low level areas for trade items should be addressed. The auction system is very broken. Etc., etc.

So, if Blizzard follows its "we'll release it when it is done" policy, there is no way WoW is going to be out by Christmas. However, that policy seems to be cracking. Has been for some time. D2 was rushed out the door (or does anyone believe that that much abbreviated act 4 was intentional. Not to mention arenas and guild houses). I've barely touched it, but from the reports of others, WC3 was not really finished when it shipped, too. So, "when it is done" might be more of a remembrance of Blizzard's glory days than a policy implemented in the present.

On the other side, Vivendi is in trouble -- has been for quite some time. Now Blizzard may be gamers working for gamers, but Vivendi is strictly button counters working for the bottom line. And, as anyone who does not live in a vault knows, Vivendi owns Blizzard (ask Roper and the Shaffer's what that means). Now, Vivendi has announced a November ship date for WoW. The first time Vivendi ever announced a ship date for any of the game products, as far as I know. Failure to perform might have disastrous consequences -- look at Sierra.

Bottom line? Bottom line is "I don't know". WoW may thud out the door in time for Christmas to resounding failure and bring Blizzard down. It may not make it on time and Vivendi might decide to cut its losses. Or there might still be enough clout in Blizzard to buy it some time with Vivendi to make a more complete game.

Or Mikey might buy Blizzard, and then all bets are off ;)

--Pete

[nobbie]

I too have the feeling that the game will be released unfinished in December due to the pressure of the management. The question is: Should one buy the game in quasi "beta" state and trust in Blizzard's quick support, or not ..

[Assur]

Blizzards quick support?

[--Pete]

Hi,

The question is: Should one buy the game in quasi "beta" state and trust in Blizzard's quick support, or not ..

Not! As long as customers are willing to buy crap in the hopes that it will eventually be fixed, so long will the software industry continue to produce crap. And, on each cycle, the industry will try to get away with even more.

This goes double for games, which, since they aren't "serious" software shouldn't be expected to be well made. After all, they are just toys, aren't they?

Unfortunately, most software is bought by ignorant people who don't even know what quality is. And most games are bought by, well, gamers. Who are so hungry for anything new, they will plunk down their cash *before* the game is released.

--Pete

[Swiss Mercenary]

Who are so hungry for anything new, they will plunk down their cash *before* the game is released.

Speaking of that and Sierra, how long have they been taking returns for pre-orders of Half-Life 2? :D