/salute

[dodgerfn]

Mist of Panderia (sp).... The next WOW expansion.

And the final death of WOW....I hope...

[Lucious]

And the final death of WOW....I hope...

actually all the current players are really excited about the expansion. Not only are they getting the new race (Pandarans - which were actually introduced in the warcraft universe well before WoW came along) they are getting new content a new class and the graphics are being pumped up.

Everyone I know is going for it and they are thrilled. There will, no doubt, be an influx of younger players due to the "cuteness" (unintentional - yeah right! - ties to Kung-Fu Panda) factor. Also a buddy of mine said they have redone the art on the pandarans so they dont look like the kung-fu panda version so much any longer.

[clamus68]

World of Warcraft was NEVER hard. It was and remains an exercise in tedium. I was in a top end a raid guild from Tiers 1-9. Raiding took nothing but time. PVE is nothing more than a time sink. You WILL beat every Raid if you apply the time to get the gear and coordination down. The reason I left WoW was faction grinding. Gear grinds are already an integral part of any mmo, but now I got to grind reputation with podunk PITA wannabes or walrus people or people fighting fire elementals. Yeah, no thanks.

Talent trees have been ridiculously easy since Elitist Jerks put up thier website and theorycrafted every class spec to death back in mid vanilla. All you have to do is follow the optimum spec and gear up and you are set. The changes in MoP are not simplifying things as it is just making it where there is some flavor in each class. In time all will be theorycrafted and again you will rinse and repeat cookie cutter specs.

Pandaren are cool. Pet fights are not. Asian theme cool. Lack of central baddie is not. Updated graphics very cool. Dated graphics engine not. Overall MoP wouldn't bring me back as WoW as a whole offers nothing to me. I applaud anyone willing to play an antiquated game that enjoys it. I just can't. Best of luck.

[Schismatist]

I think EVE online and SWG pre CU were awfully challenging. More so than WoW or SWTOR for me.

Comparing EVE to other MMO is brutally unfair to both. The player skills in EVE do not translate out and MMO skills do not translate in.

As for SWG, may sony rot forever, they wrecked Star Wars.

[clamus68]

Sandbox games are truly different. I never cared for either EVE or SWG and I played both enough to base my dislike of them on real time played. But the point above is spot on.

[Sutek]

Totally agree that Sony absolutely destroyed that game. After CU came out it was all over for me. Still haven't bought anything that says Sony on it because of that game.

As for EVE, while the skills don't directly translate, the concepts are similar. Regardless, eve is a much harder game to learn, play and manage. While it will never be my favorite game, they have been one of the only mmos to break the EQ / WoW mold.

[furnineSpubre]

Vorrei realizzare un impianto fotovoltaico da 3.5kW sul mio tetto. Avete un'idea su dove posso comprare i pannelli solari? Quale è la migliore azienda? Ogni consiglio è ben accettato. Grazie

[dodgerfn]

actually all the current players are really excited about the expansion. Not only are they getting the new race (Pandarans - which were actually introduced in the warcraft universe well before WoW came along) they are getting new content a new class and the graphics are being pumped up.

Everyone I know is going for it and they are thrilled. There will, no doubt, be an influx of younger players due to the "cuteness" (unintentional - yeah right! - ties to Kung-Fu Panda) factor. Also a buddy of mine said they have redone the art on the pandarans so they dont look like the kung-fu panda version so much any longer.

I know WOW will never die...to many hard core fans. I played it for 3 years, and never even looked at another MMO..that was the one and only for me. But the news of the Panda's coming out spelled the end for me. It does sound like they made it less 'caroony' though, which is good for them.

[Jetsu]

I know WOW will never die...to many hard core fans. I played it for 3 years, and never even looked at another MMO..that was the one and only for me. But the news of the Panda's coming out spelled the end for me. It does sound like they made it less 'caroony' though, which is good for them.

WoW has the fortune of being the "really big deal" when a lot of new players were coming to the genre. It's hard for a new game to convince people to stick it out much past launch when they have neither the content nor polish WoW has developed over billions of dollars and all that time. I don't think it's so much the "hard-core" factor as it is that by most standards it's still the "best" game out there.

Don't take that the wrong way. I don't like the general principles that have always guided WoW. Rush to the max level and grind your butt off on low drop-rate items until finally you get to try a small piece of new content that becomes the next grind. They just have a lot of amazing systems and polish (minigames, refined abilities, holiday events, etc...) you're not going to get on any other game in the genre (since none of them have gotten similar support). I also happen to like the look and feel of the Pandas!

Hopefully F2P will bring in a lot of new players for TOR and we can get enough cash flowing to make it "worth expanding" in EA's eyes. This game has a much more fun foundation (to me at least) and I'd love to see what it could become with even half the support WoW enjoyed during it's run.

[dodgerfn]

I will say this about WOW, IMO they had the coolest thing I have seen in a MMO, and as far as I know no other has it....flying mounts. When I bought the CATA expansion it had a making of DVD and they talked about how huge of a undertaking it was to do that. Guess that's why no other has it lol. I do miss that as it was so cool.

[clamus68]

I know WOW will never die...to many hard core fans. I played it for 3 years, and never even looked at another MMO..that was the one and only for me. But the news of the Panda's coming out spelled the end for me. It does sound like they made it less 'caroony' though, which is good for them.

WoW has the fortune of being the "really big deal" when a lot of new players were coming to the genre. It's hard for a new game to convince people to stick it out much past launch when they have neither the content nor polish WoW has developed over billions of dollars and all that time. I don't think it's so much the "hard-core" factor as it is that by most standards it's still the "best" game out there.

Don't take that the wrong way. I don't like the general principles that have always guided WoW. Rush to the max level and grind your butt off on low drop-rate items until finally you get to try a small piece of new content that becomes the next grind. They just have a lot of amazing systems and polish (minigames, refined abilities, holiday events, etc...) you're not going to get on any other game in the genre (since none of them have gotten similar support). I also happen to like the look and feel of the Pandas!

Hopefully F2P will bring in a lot of new players for TOR and we can get enough cash flowing to make it "worth expanding" in EA's eyes. This game has a much more fun foundation (to me at least) and I'd love to see what it could become with even half the support WoW enjoyed during it's run.

I think people will stick it out if the game delivers on its promises. EA promised alot of content updates and hasn't really delivered. EA promised ranked pvp with patch 1.2 but it was delayed coming off of the debacle of Ilum. They overpromised and undelivered.

As to the gear grind, is it any different in SWTOR? I am grinding HM FP's, Black Hole Dailies, Rakghoul HM FP's and other things just to get gear. Same story different game. I was chasing Rakata Off Hand and Main Hand for weeks. Crummy drop rates. Same story different game.

As to hoping F2P bringing people back, have you not noticed the dwindling populations on the servers that have been occurring since the F2P announcement? EA needs to start delivering on its promises or this game will be shelved. Sad indeed given what could have been.

As to WoW, its not the polish of the game, its Blizzards commitment to delivering new content that has kept WoW going, its also why WoW lost subscribers during WotLK as it was so long between ToC and ICC. I dislike faction grinding in the utmost thus I dislike WoW. Thankfully for all BW copied from WoW, faction grinding wasn't one of them.

[Jetsu]

I think people will stick it out if the game delivers on its promises. EA promised alot of content updates and hasn't really delivered. EA promised ranked pvp with patch 1.2 but it was delayed coming off of the debacle of Ilum. They overpromised and undelivered.

They delivered their first major update (RotR) a month after release. Their second was less than three months later and they were already advertising that people should "come back to try it out" because people had already left. It would have been even faster if they weren't squeezing things like UI customization in there and other things people said would "save TOR" before it was added and they left anyway.

I won't deny they have failed to deliver on their promise of frequent content updates and a few of the things they tried didn't work out as they'd hoped (like that's never happened in any other game), but it's clear from what we HAVE been getting that their focus was on trying to stop the subscriptions from dropping and not the comfortable position of pressing on with their original plans.

As a gamer who still enjoys what this game does have I wish they'd stop chasing the malcontents and get back to their plans, but they expected (wrongly as far as I can tell of the MMO community) to actually KEEP a lot of subscribers for more than a couple months.

As to the gear grind, is it any different in SWTOR? I am grinding HM FP's, Black Hole Dailies, Rakghoul HM FP's and other things just to get gear. Same story different game. I was chasing Rakata Off Hand and Main Hand for weeks. Crummy drop rates. Same story different game.

The drop rates are made significantly better by the fact that drops are tailored to your group. Instead of running for 2-3 weeks for the points/commendations for a piece you get one every week or so just from doing a single run a day. I suppose if you focus on a specific upgrade it may seem to take "a while" though in WoW you'd probably have NEVER gotten it.

That said, you can mostly just do everything once or twice and be geared enough for "the next step" so farming a specific piece is more for the sake of min/maxing than necessity. That's because the next tier is usually a single new stat or increase of a specific stat instead of increasing every stat over the previous piece by a massive amount.

Not to mention they upgraded the drops in HM flashpoints so people actually sometimes WANT drops off more than the last boss...

Overall, if you're farming SWTOR it's either because you want to or because you're trying to get the best stuff doing the easiest possible content you can do to get the upgrades. If you push yourself you rarely have to repeat much of anything.

As to hoping F2P bringing people back, have you not noticed the dwindling populations on the servers that have been occurring since the F2P announcement?

I have. A lot of people said they were leaving *because* of the F2P announcement since they don't trust BioWare to avoid the Pay to Win model. I'm not so sure they will myself, but I can hope. Still more left because their 6 month ran out and they figured they'd just wait until it's free and see which model saves them more for what they do. Finally, a bunch of people left last weekend when the "next big thing" (which people are already claiming sucks on most of their fan forums even though it's a perfectly fine game) released.

None of that excludes the possibility of the F2P model bringing in a lot of players when it goes live. There will be the ones who have been "meaning to check it out" for a while, those that left but intended to try it again later when more stuff was added, and those who don't like paying much for games but may be interested now that it's so cheap. All of them are more likely to try now that it's just a small box fee (or nothing if they had played it at launch).

EA needs to start delivering on its promises or this game will be shelved. Sad indeed given what could have been.

I think it's BioWare that really needs to deliver. We're all going a bit crazy and while they feel it's important to focus on implimenting the F2P model (and it may be) the people who are paying for the game NOW want more than a new market strategy. Based on what we've seen them demoing at conferences and discussing (along with the tentative timelines we've been given) it at least sounds like they're finally back on track.

I guess we'll see in the next couple months with the possible release of a new warzone, operation, difficulty settings on old operations, etc...

As to WoW, its not the polish of the game, its Blizzards commitment to delivering new content that has kept WoW going, its also why WoW lost subscribers during WotLK as it was so long between ToC and ICC. I dislike faction grinding in the utmost thus I dislike WoW. Thankfully for all BW copied from WoW, faction grinding wasn't one of them.

If you look at their patch release dates they launch, on average, more slowly than BioWare (mostly because of the first few months of SWTOR being so active). It's the lack of grind that makes it seem otherwise. Most people never notice they've been farming the same raid (or even the same boss) for months to get geared enough to do the next one.

Just look at the BC release schedule (since that was widely considered the "best time" for WoW). BT was added 4 months after launch. 4 months after that we got ZA (which to BT raiders wasn't even a next step except to do timed runs). 4 months after that SWP was added and finished that expansion.

Timeline (World of Warcraft) - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

The reason people didn't get antsy about more content was because they were still grinding out the old almost 3 months after it was released. I did all but SWP at level during that time. The only thing difficult about the mechanics was getting *those* guildies to stop standing in things. Most of it was just doing the same boss long enough that enough people got the necessary drops to do the next one, and often times a team would farm the same bosses for over a month before moving on to the next *one* boss.

[clamus68]

They delivered their first major update (RotR) a month after release. Their second was less than three months later and they were already advertising that people should "come back to try it out" because people had already left. It would have been even faster if they weren't squeezing things like UI customization in there and other things people said would "save TOR" before it was added and they left anyway.

Lets stop right there. Lets go to the WoW timeline page you referred to. Lets look YEAR 1. THis game doesn't have the breadth of content of WoW circa BC.

2001

September 2 - World of Warcraft announced^[1]
2004

The original login screen. This was the longest-running login screen, being the login for two years and one month.Early in the year - World of Warcraft Beta testing
November 23 - World of Warcraft launches in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

• Starting level cap is 60
• Only Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor available at launch.
• Starting races:
  
  • Alliance: Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome
  • Horde: Orc, Troll, Undead, Tauren

November 24 - WoWWiki Launched^[2]
December 18 - Patch 1.2.0

• Maraudon added

2005

The first ever legendary item drop. What is World of Warcraft?.February 11 - World of Warcraft launches in Europe
March 7 - Patch 1.3.0

• Dire Maul added

March 23 - The first legendary item ever to appear to players in the game drops, [Talisman of Binding Shard]. It is immediately hotfixed out of the game.
April 8 - Patch 1.4.0

• PvP Honor System

May - The Leeroy Jenkins video becomes popular^[3]
June 7 - Patch 1.5.0

• Battlegrounds introduced
  
  • Warsong Gulch
  • Alterac Valley

July 12 - Patch 1.6.0

• Blackwing Lair added
• Darkmoon Faire added

September 13 - Patch 1.7.0

• Zul'Gurub added
• Arathi Basin battleground added
• Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza
• Corrupted Blood begins as the result of a glitch in Zul'Gurub^[4]

October 28–29 - BlizzCon

• Burning Crusade announced

October 10 - Patch 1.8.0

• Corrupted Blood fixed

MEaning that TWO WEEKS after launch Blizzard dropped a Four Wing Instance (Maraudon), each its own seperate part and unique so if you ran all 4 back to back you could actually have a new game experience, story driven no less and for MID levels. Rise of the Rakghouls came out in January. About a month after launch and it was for capped toons. Look above as I copied at what Blizzard added at the three month mark, oh yeah Dire Maul, another massive story driven Instance that was also a four winged job. This game has FAILED to deliver content. I included almost a full year and you see that Blizzard was indeed busy. They wrote the book on what MMO's would look like because back in 2K1 when it went into development they had a sterling example in EQ. They knew what to copy and what not to copy. EA/BW copied WoW circa 2k4 not circa 2K6 when it went into development. AS you see above World PvP and the PvP Honor System were in place already as were the BG's. This is where EA/BW failed at. By the time 2K6 was headed out the door and before BC plopped onto the World, Blizzard had added so much content that it was scary. I do not expect SWTOR to have added as much content after only 7 months, though BLizzard added a ton by that point. I expect when starting at ground zero that you incorporate features that are prevelant within the market place already. You can not forecast the future accurately all the time but you can build a good foundation based off what's out there already.

We do not know what thier original plans were, they maybe releasing content at the pace originally intended despite what they may have said publically. We do not know for sure. But if you listen to your Community enough you can find out WHY your game is failing. There has been enough hew and cry about the general issues with the game since the beginning. Many of the points legitimate, bug rants aside, that had EA/BW been paying attention then the game might not be bleeding subscriptions.

As a gamer who still enjoys what this game does have I wish they'd stop chasing the malcontents and get back to their plans, but they expected (wrongly as far as I can tell of the MMO community) to actually KEEP a lot of subscribers for more than a couple months.

If they had done what the Malcontents asked for like fixing Soa bugs, falling through solid objects bug, like the Infinite Checkerboard when trying to get into an OP and many others then we might have more subscribers. Maybe if they had INCLUDED ranked PvP and not had the Ilum debacle and several QoL add ins that WoW had by 2K6 then we would have more subscribers. There are ALOT of things that could have changed the state of the game. Their plans are scrapped. They are working under a new reality that is the game now.

The drop rates are made significantly better by the fact that drops are tailored to your group. Instead of running for 2-3 weeks for the points/commendations for a piece you get one every week or so just from doing a single run a day. I suppose if you focus on a specific upgrade it may seem to take "a while" though in WoW you'd probably have NEVER gotten it.

I have seen that to be so blatantly off the mark it was not funny. The PUBLIC statement is that drops are supposed to be tailored to your group and I have still run into the "Wow, all Bouunty Hunter stuff dropped for this HM even though we have no Bounty Hunters." Or how on my last HM Kaon, it was all Agent drops even though I was the only Agent, who was ridiculously outgeared for Kaon, in the run. It still can take you time to get geared. The shared 8man/16 man Op lockouts are also crap as that stops people from gearing up. WoW has been guilty of this and then changed and then changed back, odd. The drop rates for min/maxxers has ALWAYS been bad. In WoW, despite my hatred of them, you can grind Faction Rep and get some very nice gear that is close to top end. You could in WoW always get gear without having to Raid. So the drop rates weren't ever THAT bad. No worse or better than SWTOR.

That said, you can mostly just do everything once or twice and be geared enough for "the next step" so farming a specific piece is more for the sake of min/maxing than necessity. That's because the next tier is usually a single new stat or increase of a specific stat instead of increasing every stat over the previous piece by a massive amount.

True of WoW as well. You can gear for the next step easily. The issue is that in WoW the community became so hyper focused on gear that they wouldn't let you raid until this item level or that gear score. Thats on the community not the game.

Overall, if you're farming SWTOR it's either because you want to or because you're trying to get the best stuff doing the easiest possible content you can do to get the upgrades. If you push yourself you rarely have to repeat much of anything.

I had to repeat EV/KP HM for a month straight to get my MH upgrade and another month to get my OH Upgrade. Hmm, you're right I am min maxxing when I just want my Rakata Weapon Upgrades since I can not ez mode those and get them with BH comms.

I have. A lot of people said they were leaving *because* of the F2P announcement since they don't trust BioWare to avoid the Pay to Win model. I'm not so sure they will myself, but I can hope. Still more left because their 6 month ran out and they figured they'd just wait until it's free and see which model saves them more for what they do. Finally, a bunch of people left last weekend when the "next big thing" (which people are already claiming sucks on most of their fan forums even though it's a perfectly fine game) released.

For some reason I trust them in the No Pay to Win deal. Don't know why but I think they see that as the last point of failure. The line they do not want to cross unless they intend to shelve the game shortly after.

None of that excludes the possibility of the F2P model bringing in a lot of players when it goes live. There will be the ones who have been "meaning to check it out" for a while, those that left but intended to try it again later when more stuff was added, and those who don't like paying much for games but may be interested now that it's so cheap. All of them are more likely to try now that it's just a small box fee (or nothing if they had played it at launch).

RoR brought in an influx of players and they left. The 1.3 patch brought in a bunch of players and they left. Transfers brought back some players but they left. In WoW they are not feeling the GW2 pinch nearly so hard as this game. F2P will not likely generate new players as it will bring back old players. I also expect them to leave shortly thereafter if BW doesn't live up to its new content faster mantra.

Just look at the BC release schedule (since that was widely considered the "best time" for WoW). BT was added 4 months after launch. 4 months after that we got ZA (which to BT raiders wasn't even a next step except to do timed runs). 4 months after that SWP was added and finished that expansion.

Timeline (World of Warcraft) - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Again, this game can not remotely compare to WoW during the BC expansion. Poor comparison. Look at Year 1 to Year 1, which I included above. Blizzard was cranking out new content from the get go. EA/BW not so much. In the BC era which is what BW SHOULD have emulated Blizzard already had a TON of content which SWTOR can not even REMOTELY BEGIN to match. You had by BC-MC, ZG, BWL, Naxx (come and gone), Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon, SSC and The Eye in terms of Raids. You had more than 30 Instances at that point. Not even a remotely valid comparison. SWTOR ends up looking MUCH worse for ware if you want to pull up those Oranges to compare to WoW's BC era Apples. I am not even including the CoT Raid or Black Temple as Tier 6 wasn't complete at release.


I did play everything from T1 - 9 at point of relevance (pre nerf) and while you had to farm the same bosses ad nasuem, the same is true of SWTOR. If you want Campaign gear then you are FARMING Kephess. If you want LESS than Best in Slot then you don't have to do crap. WoW was the same way. If you didn't want to do raids then you could get to a certain level of gear and you were happy. I have done EC HM for a month now on my Sniper and I do not have a set of Campaign gear. I won't likely have it before my second month of EC HM and the new Op is supposed to come out shortly. In the end Gear Grinds are part and parcel of MMO's.

[Jetsu]

You've been running over a month to finish off a mostly complete set in TOR. You'd have been running that long to get your 3rd-4th piece in WoW (and possibly your first or second in classic WoW). It's just the way their drop rates worked but I'll admit it was easier to ignore when you were still moving/looking forward to the next thing (which, as you noticed, didn't work so well when the grind got reduced a bit and people "finished" content faster in WoW either).

If TOR hadn't gone F2P (because as you say, there are pains with switching and we're feeling them right now) and BioWare hadn't worried so much about things like UI customization (not that it's not nice to have) I'd be very surprised if we wouldn't have seen a lot more actual content. I think that content would have pacified players a lot more than the features (which I also think was a "customer's not always right" moment) did, but honestly they were going to lose a huge chunk just because the market is so ADD right now (no, not every game ever launched since WoW was as bad as people would have you believe).

Basically, now that we're sitting on the features everyone feels are "necessary" and they're (hopefully) already well along with the F2P work we should be able to expect more content. It certainly seems that way considering they're already demoing a new warzone and talking about an operation in the next month or so (which would make sense because the world event was sort of the "intro").

The reason WoW looks so good is because they were able to release a "larger than most single player games but no where near what every MMO has today" game and expand on it. Not only did BioWare have to contend with higher expectations on content, they simultaneously were expect to have all the features of a game system that evolved over years. They have fumbled the content a bit in trying to rapidly improve their game system.

There's some of "this is 2012" to it, but speaking as a programmer Blizzard had it SO MUCH EASIER over trying to make something happen with the expectations of today. You may have more ideas to pull from, but ultimately you're still creating systems largely (and sometimes completely) from scratch. Then, for some reason, people expect you also be able to release FASTER than other games out there do now.

It's a bit of a double standard to say the least. I want you to catch up to where the other guys are. I want new stuff on top of it and in less than the standard average 3 months before releases. Oh, and did I mention we're not willing to stick around to fund this. Right now we as a community get BETTER than what we pay for.

[pholkhero]

one thing, i think, BW really dropped the ball on is the lack of ability for 3rd party addons...things like that would've freed up the compnay to focus on content while enterprising players could work with the UI. I think f2p will bring some players back (me for instance) but i can't see myself paying for more ops. You'll have the diehard KOTOR fans come back to finish out what is a really cool single player, class experience ~ if you dont mind the endlessly repetitive non-class quests planet to planet.

realistically, if you look at the state of content now, is the endgame worth the 15 bucks? imo, not at all. taking guildies through EV, and it STILL bugs out on SoA or Gharj at times...like, reallY?!?

paying for additional fps? uhm, no thanks. running the same fp for four levels is a bit much. sure, you get into some of that with WoW but never for four levels...

part of me feels like in order to NOT be WoW, BW deliberately didn't copy from them, which is foolish b/c, at this point, what WoW has, to many players, is teh baseline, and the model to build off of. not being a developer, it can't say for sure, but it seems that it would be *easier* to build a better game having so many models to work off of...this is what wow does well, here's where it sucks; EVE does this really well, but this, not so much...etc. Seeing what people want and like in current games, seems to me, makes it easier to inform your own decisions about where you want your own game to go or not go.

imagine getting a new car, and it only has a cassette player, and roll-up windows ~