[Hesher]

I know a few people ended up with this past weekends beta invite for SWTOR. I'd have to say one of the things that really annoyed me was how you had to run...Fucking...Everywhere... Coruscant took probably 10-15 hours alone because of all the running, and I ended up getting sprint half way through. I spent like 26 hours playing it from 8 Sat night to 10 Sunday night, and I only ended up getting to like level 19. From what I've heard though, it takes something like 300+ hours to get to the level cap of 50. The major upside to all of that though is the quests all intertwine and aren't stupid random stories from different people. What were yalls thoughts if you ended up playing it.

[diablorojo]

Stranger, on 28 November 2011 - 09:26 AM, said:

I know a few people ended up with this past weekends beta invite for SWTOR. I'd have to say one of the things that really annoyed me was how you had to run...Fucking...Everywhere... Coruscant took probably 10-15 hours alone because of all the running, and I ended up getting sprint half way through. I spent like 26 hours playing it from 8 Sat night to 10 Sunday night, and I only ended up getting to like level 19. From what I've heard though, it takes something like 300+ hours to get to the level cap of 50. The major upside to all of that though is the quests all intertwine and aren't stupid random stories from different people. What were yalls thoughts if you ended up playing it.

I played for a few hours on Saturday, the server i was on had some serious lag issues, so if that is any forecast of things to come i wouldn't be recommending that game to anyone. Also i found the fact that all the quests having a "movie mode cut seen" to be VERY annoying. It was cool at first but........

[Hesher]

Ya it without a doubt slows the pace of the game by a lot with all the cut scenes. I will say the intro videos gave me fucking chills though, especially the intro to the game one. But ya I bet though all the hours I played, probably an hour of it is watching people talk and giving responses.

[Sobeyet]

I played on an east coast server and never had any lag, though I played from ~10 pm EST to ~2 am last night so it probably wasn't that packed (think it was around 400 people on). Less laggy than Drenden, though the server's located in the West Coast so who knows. This weekend was supposed to be the high-capacity testing so if you were on during peak hours I wouldn't be surprised if it was laggy. I wouldn't make any determinations on lag based on the beta though, it'd be like trying to gauge WoW's stability on the PTR.

The cutscenes can get tedious, though I'm a bit picky on that. I like voice acting for the sense of immersion, but on something like Mass Effect / KOTOR games I generally listen to the first few seconds while I read the subtitle and skip as soon as I finish reading. From a storytelling perspective it's a lot more effective than a wall of text no one ever bothers to read. I think if they included subtitles and let you skip line by line (instead of skipping the entire cutscene) it would be fine. Could just be a beta thing, I was able to see subtitles for the last line of dialogue but not anything earlier.

In terms of the game itself, questing definitely has that Mass Effect / KOTOR feel (which I like). Overall production value it's higher than the other MMOs I've played. I think it's a marked improvement over Rift/Aion, though part of it is that there's an established story I can easily latch on to - I didn't get that far in Rift/Aion, but they never really hooked me in with the story.

In terms of questing I'd say it's even better than WoW - though WoW quests are just a means to an end for me nowadays. I don't really expect to be engrossed by a WoW quest any more, it's more like "let me finish so I can get my 150 rep / token / etc." SWTOR does have the "new" factor going for it, but objectively speaking it seems like 1-50 in SWTOR is much better done than 1-85 in WoW. But I only got up to level 11 on my sith marauder in the 4 hours I played so can't say what the mid-to-late game leveling experience is like.

From my time with the game I probably will be picking it up if nothing else for the leveling experience, but probably not until January/February when I finish up all the other games I want to play. Still not really sure if the end-game is viable for the long run, but I think the PvE stuff to get there is worth the investment for me - it's like a giant version of KOTOR. Ironically the "playing with other people" part of MMOs is probably the weakest draw for me - most people are morons and they suck at the game, why would I want to depend on these people for my ass-kicking adventures?

Though SWTOR doesn't need "raiding" to be a profitable game - WoW's raiding gets a lot of press but a very small percentage of the 10 million subs raid at all, and even fewer raid the current content. I can see WoW losing a lot of non-raiders (at least temporarily) since SWTOR serves them better. The question is what can BioWare do to keep them around after they hit max level - if they come up with something better than the dailies/random heroic system then they should be in good shape.

That's the evil of subscription-based games really, the developer's incentive is to keep you playing for as long as possible, not to offer you the most "fun" game experience. Does it really make sense that we kill Ragnaros every week from a gaming standpoint? No, but it keeps people running on the treadmill every week. Same thing with the running around that Hesher mentioned - does every spaceport really need to be to exact scale? Yeah it may make the world feel "bigger" if the landing pad is two football fields long, but it's not good game design - I don't play games to replicate the tedium of riding an elevator, I play to go around doing awesome shit I can't do IRL since I'm not rich or white enough to get away with it. There's certainly profit to be had with such a system, but I think the next big innovation in MMOs has to be something that takes the repetition out of it.

[Hesher]

I thought the combat was pretty shit, and through the couple in "flashpoints" I only had one tank able to hold threat without the healer or myself getting thrashed. Which makes me wonder how the raiding would work out with having a bunch of ranged. Also it seemed the healing was pretty shitty from the numbers I was seeing which means a lot of it is based off of how well the tanks use cooldowns and mitigate damage with their gear. I didn't really get a chance to check out the PvP much, but from the few that I did do I kinda though it was neat that they scale you based off the people in the group. Was pretty interesting to hit a guy for 2.5k at level 10.

[Sobeyet]

Stranger, on 28 November 2011 - 04:01 PM, said:

I thought the combat was pretty shit, and through the couple in "flashpoints" I only had one tank able to hold threat without the healer or myself getting thrashed. Which makes me wonder how the raiding would work out with having a bunch of ranged. Also it seemed the healing was pretty shitty from the numbers I was seeing which means a lot of it is based off of how well the tanks use cooldowns and mitigate damage with their gear. I didn't really get a chance to check out the PvP much, but from the few that I did do I kinda though it was neat that they scale you based off the people in the group. Was pretty interesting to hit a guy for 2.5k at level 10.

Yeah I haven't gotten very deep into the class mechanics, so not sure exactly how tanking is going to work. Since there's no auto-attack I'd expect melee to be global intensive though, I can see a lot of new players struggling to keep aggro on seasoned mashers. As far as the combat goes, my marauder basically played like a rogue/warrior hybrid, nothing groundbreaking but then again I just got my talent tree; I'm assuming it'll be more refined at max level. It wasn't that long ago that hunters in WoW didn't even get a pet until level 10, meleeing those scorpions in durotar was annoying.

[Hesher]

Ya at level 21 I have a shit load of abilities that I'm using which gets pretty frustrating at times cause I have to sit there spamming different cooldowns at random times cause I don't have enough focus at times. It's like playing a ret pally plus a warrior with just spamming whatever's off cooldown and filler being focus builders and focus dumps.

[Googleme]

Release right around the corner! Any idea what server the Heresiarch gang is planning on playing on or if there is a group planning on starting a SWTOR version of the guild? finally got best buy to get me my damn pre-order code JEEZ that was a pain

[Sobeyet]

Googleme, on 11 December 2011 - 10:14 PM, said:

Release right around the corner! Any idea what server the Heresiarch gang is planning on playing on or if there is a group planning on starting a SWTOR version of the guild? finally got best buy to get me my damn pre-order code JEEZ that was a pain

Not sure, depends on how many people play and how long they plan on playing I guess. We didn't pre-form a guild or anything like that. I haven't decided if I want to devote any more time than just leveling and seeing everything. Raiding's too much of a hassle to do it on two separate games.

[Wrathblood]

I hadn't really planned on picking it up, but with the volume of positive word of mouth I'm hearing I may have to go try it.

[Hecatus]

Early invite starts tomorrow! Yayyyy

[Sobeyet]

Hecatus, on 12 December 2011 - 11:30 AM, said:

Early invite starts tomorrow! Yayyyy

I'm playing on whatever server Hec is not playing on.

[Shardik]

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

I hadn't really planned on picking it up, but with the volume of positive word of mouth I'm hearing I may have to go try it.

I can't wait for it to come out. Hoping to get into early invites either Tuesday or Wednesday. As far as the people who had issues with it, not sure what to say. Played over two weekends during their stress tests and I have never had a better experience playing any other game. Lag wasn't and issue regardless of the time I played, wasn't kicked off the game or dropped for any reason. In the 5 years (or 6 years) that I played WoW I have never experienced a smoother weekend of stress testing than I did while playing SWToR.

The end game raiding is still to be seen. I do enjoy the idea of 8 man raids. K.I.S.S (Keep It Stupid Simple), best way to maximize your fun while still obtaining that epic feel. Having to watch the video cut scenes over and over again did get kind of annoying but the good thing is you can fast forward through them by hitting space bar. True you have to wait for the others in your group to do it as well but since one of the parts of the game requires your interactions in groups (social points) it only makes sense that you would have to go through the dialogue each time. An MMO isn't a game that you try and hurry up through and if you do try and "beat" the game why? What is the point in pushing through so you can be 50 first these games are meant to take time and not designed to be "won" in a week.

All in all I see this game giving WoW a decent run for its money. Again my opinion is based off the beta so who knows what horrible things could go wrong once the game goes live. It is my belief that WoW is dying (WTF Pandas as an expansion?!?!) and SWToR could be a beacon for those that are tired of WoW and still enjoy MMOs.

[Wrathblood]

Shardik, on 12 December 2011 - 02:15 PM, said:

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

I hadn't really planned on picking it up, but with the volume of positive word of mouth I'm hearing I may have to go try it.

The end game raiding is still to be seen. I do enjoy the idea of 8 man raids. K.I.S.S (Keep It Stupid Simple), best way to maximize your fun while still obtaining that epic feel. Having to watch the video cut scenes over and over again did get kind of annoying but the good thing is you can fast forward through them by hitting space bar. True you have to wait for the others in your group to do it as well but since one of the parts of the game requires your interactions in groups (social points) it only makes sense that you would have to go through the dialogue each time. An MMO isn't a game that you try and hurry up through and if you do try and "beat" the game why? What is the point in pushing through so you can be 50 first these games are meant to take time and not designed to be "won" in a week.

All in all I see this game giving WoW a decent run for its money. Again my opinion is based off the beta so who knows what horrible things could go wrong once the game goes live. It is my belief that WoW is dying (WTF Pandas as an expansion?!?!) and SWToR could be a beacon for those that are tired of WoW and still enjoy MMOs.

Eh, DDO had 12-man raiding (dungeon parties were 6-man, and a raid was 2 parties) and that worked out fine, but I also enjoyed the massive scale of 40-man raiding back in Vanilla. A game that's able to deliver both in some fashion > a game that doesn't imo.

As for zooming through MMOs... oh, come now. That's nice in theory, but MMOs are MADE for epeen. If you want to take your time, you play Skyrim and go for walks. You certainly CAN play an MMO casually and enjoy the ride, especially solo, but that attitude will be gone within weeks of groups hitting whatever the regular dungeons are as people start looking towards the endgame and view the leveling steps as gearing up. To be fair, WoW really WAS a different world in Vanilla. The community, the farting around, etc. made it a very different place than it is today. But I think part of that was the newness of MMOs in general. People have a much more evolved perception of them. Sure, plenty of folks will sorta want to smell the flowers as they come through (especially before the raiding/end game community/guilds/whatever get build up and the game starts to revolve around them), but after they've done it once, they'll just want to crank their hamster wheels as fast as possible.

That having been said, I'll grant that MMOs tend to be VERY different places in their early days than they are later once they mature. The initial rush where EVERYONE is new and there's no WoWhead equivalent and people are running around with horrible specs and doing things that end up being basically pointless but having great fun doing it is pretty awesome.

I try to be realistic about this stuff, and one of the things I like about WoW is its size and relative permanence. WoW may be dying (I'm not willing to grant that its dying, but I'll grant that it MIGHT be) but even if it is, its got a GIGANTIC amount of inertia and even the best case scenario, in which SWTOR is transcendentally good and WoW completely falls apart, SWOTR will probably never even get up to 1/4 of WoW's subscriber base. I thought Rift had a chance to dent WoW, but its dying now and I know some folks who quit WoW to play it who are coming back now. It'll probably stick around for years to come, but I doubt its subscriber base will ever get over 200k. You basically have to go to its most populated server to get into the ballpark of Drenden's population. I like community, and that's a tough hurdle for any new MMO to get over.

[Shardik]

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

Shardik, on 12 December 2011 - 02:15 PM, said:

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 11:26 AM, said:

I hadn't really planned on picking it up, but with the volume of positive word of mouth I'm hearing I may have to go try it.

The end game raiding is still to be seen. I do enjoy the idea of 8 man raids. K.I.S.S (Keep It Stupid Simple), best way to maximize your fun while still obtaining that epic feel. Having to watch the video cut scenes over and over again did get kind of annoying but the good thing is you can fast forward through them by hitting space bar. True you have to wait for the others in your group to do it as well but since one of the parts of the game requires your interactions in groups (social points) it only makes sense that you would have to go through the dialogue each time. An MMO isn't a game that you try and hurry up through and if you do try and "beat" the game why? What is the point in pushing through so you can be 50 first these games are meant to take time and not designed to be "won" in a week.

All in all I see this game giving WoW a decent run for its money. Again my opinion is based off the beta so who knows what horrible things could go wrong once the game goes live. It is my belief that WoW is dying (WTF Pandas as an expansion?!?!) and SWToR could be a beacon for those that are tired of WoW and still enjoy MMOs.

Eh, DDO had 12-man raiding (dungeon parties were 6-man, and a raid was 2 parties) and that worked out fine, but I also enjoyed the massive scale of 40-man raiding back in Vanilla. A game that's able to deliver both in some fashion > a game that doesn't imo.

As for zooming through MMOs... oh, come now. That's nice in theory, but MMOs are MADE for epeen. If you want to take your time, you play Skyrim and go for walks. You certainly CAN play an MMO casually and enjoy the ride, especially solo, but that attitude will be gone within weeks of groups hitting whatever the regular dungeons are as people start looking towards the endgame and view the leveling steps as gearing up. To be fair, WoW really WAS a different world in Vanilla. The community, the farting around, etc. made it a very different place than it is today. But I think part of that was the newness of MMOs in general. People have a much more evolved perception of them. Sure, plenty of folks will sorta want to smell the flowers as they come through (especially before the raiding/end game community/guilds/whatever get build up and the game starts to revolve around them), but after they've done it once, they'll just want to crank their hamster wheels as fast as possible.

That having been said, I'll grant that MMOs tend to be VERY different places in their early days than they are later once they mature. The initial rush where EVERYONE is new and there's no WoWhead equivalent and people are running around with horrible specs and doing things that end up being basically pointless but having great fun doing it is pretty awesome.

I try to be realistic about this stuff, and one of the things I like about WoW is its size and relative permanence. WoW may be dying (I'm not willing to grant that its dying, but I'll grant that it MIGHT be) but even if it is, its got a GIGANTIC amount of inertia and even the best case scenario, in which SWTOR is transcendentally good and WoW completely falls apart, SWOTR will probably never even get up to 1/4 of WoW's subscriber base. I thought Rift had a chance to dent WoW, but its dying now and I know some folks who quit WoW to play it who are coming back now. It'll probably stick around for years to come, but I doubt its subscriber base will ever get over 200k. You basically have to go to its most populated server to get into the ballpark of Drenden's population. I like community, and that's a tough hurdle for any new MMO to get over.

I fully believe WoW is dying and I say this as someone looking from the outside in. Hello my name is Ryan and I haven't played WoW in at least 6 months if not longer (Cue "Hi Ryan"). Looking at the new "expansion" that Blizzard is pumping out 2013 or whenever, to me, spells out how bad WoW is doing. What is the new content that is being put out in this expansion? A new race of drunken Pandas? Oh cool so everyone likes the Brewmaster in the old games, I mean sure who doesn't. However, are you willing to shell out 50.00 to play as a Panda? I mean is that really what you signed on for when you started playing WoW? I believe that Blizzard knows that they have a HUGE lead on any MMO that comes out and because of this you are going to start seeing sub par expansions being released that they know people will buy and play just long enough to pump out the next expansion. At this point you are probably saying "But I have been waiting for Pandas since release!". Cool beans dude, to that I would suggest you take a look at the new 1 year subscription plan as evidence that WoW is hurting. So for signing up for a 1 year subscription you get the following:

An in game mount (Estimated value 25.00 Based off past in game mounts you could purchase)
FULL EDITION of Diablo III (Estimated value at 50.00)
Guaranteed Entry into the next expansion Beta (No real value can be added however, it is worth noting that you could get in during the final weekend of the Beta and they wouldn't have violated any promise they made)

Total amount for a 1 year subscription = 180.00

Total estimated value of extra stuff = 75.00

Adjusted Total Amount for 1 year sub = 105.00 or 8.75 per month (Go math skills!)

What does this have anything to do with WoW dying? I believe everything. While this won't impact most of you, since I am sure the majority of you plan on sticking around, the main goal of this is to snag those players who would leave the game for other MMOs by offering them massive deals and incentives to continue to pour their money into WoW for one more year. Would a game that is thriving and not worried about subscriptions do this?

Anyways, that was mainly meant for Wrath in response to the WoW dying statement I made. Back to SWToR!

Its going to be awesome! Will it have problems like WoW? Of course! Is it better than WoW? Who knows! Will any game achieve what WoW achieved? Doubtful! Bottom line? Play SWToR!

Also I would like to point out that Sobie put it best. SWToR has a very strong Mass Effect feel to it while at the same time having a distinct MMO feel as well. It feels as if you have an individual part within the MMO (especially since the main point of questing is to complete your class quests) while at the same moment you are apart of something bigger. That is a very refreshing feel to it that I don't believe WoW offers at least for me towards the end WoW felt as if it was all about raiding. Questing was just something you had to do because it was the most effective way to gain the levels needed to raid.

I also believe that there is a sweet spot that can be reached in an MMO to where you don't have to dump a massive amount of time into the game in order to achieve your goals. For example: How fun is it to farm all those fish just to get 80 more spell power!!!! RIGHT!? RIGHT?? What if you didn't have to spend money on regents or wait on a mage to craft you some food/drink? It is the little things that help make the game a tad more enjoyable. The little things that allow you to enjoy the...dare I say it...GAME and not all the silly things you have to do to fully enjoy the game.

[Sobeyet]

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

As for zooming through MMOs... oh, come now. That's nice in theory, but MMOs are MADE for epeen. If you want to take your time, you play Skyrim and go for walks. You certainly CAN play an MMO casually and enjoy the ride, especially solo, but that attitude will be gone within weeks of groups hitting whatever the regular dungeons are as people start looking towards the endgame and view the leveling steps as gearing up. To be fair, WoW really WAS a different world in Vanilla. The community, the farting around, etc. made it a very different place than it is today. But I think part of that was the newness of MMOs in general. People have a much more evolved perception of them. Sure, plenty of folks will sorta want to smell the flowers as they come through (especially before the raiding/end game community/guilds/whatever get build up and the game starts to revolve around them), but after they've done it once, they'll just want to crank their hamster wheels as fast as possible.

I dunno, I would say it depends on the game. If you want the game to be financially successful it has to cater to the people who don't really give a crap about that stuff. Before LFR, most of the WoW population (+80%) would never clear raid current content, even on normal. You need a way to keep your hooks in the bored housewife, military guy with 2 hours to kill, weirdo shut-ins, etc. I'm sure the leveling grind will get boring once you're on your 8th character or w/e, but the end-game doesn't have to be raiding/pvp/nothing else.

From a personal perspective I'm worn-out of the raiding model in general. I don't feel like farming the same instance week after week waiting 6 months for the hamster wheel to reset. There has to be a better way of keeping people grinding shit out that's cost effective for the developers (I realize that WoW can't sustain the content pace it had in earlier expansions, but Cata in general has just been disappointing). If it doesn't change, I'll probably just resign myself to playing MMOs for the leveling experience then moving on to something else. *There's no indication that TOR can really innovate in this regard either, I'll withhold my judgment until a couple of months down the road.

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

That having been said, I'll grant that MMOs tend to be VERY different places in their early days than they are later once they mature. The initial rush where EVERYONE is new and there's no WoWhead equivalent and people are running around with horrible specs and doing things that end up being basically pointless but having great fun doing it is pretty awesome.

That's one of the more appealing things to me actually. Looking up all the class mechanics, raid encounters, digging through WoL, and even achievement/quest guides gets to be tiresome after +4 years. I'm too competitive/anal not to if the info is available, and there's the general expectation in WoW that you should know everything (especially as a RL). I look forward to running around and figuring shit out. And Blizz has to keep raising the skill cap on raids for the high-end population, so it gets tougher and tougher to keep groups of friends together - if the recruiting standards we have in place nowadays were in place in '07 I probably never would've gotten into Heresiarch since I was a fucking noob that didn't know anything.

At this point in my gaming "experience" I really don't care about getting challenge out of my MMOs. Make it reasonable enough so that it requires basic coordination (kill this first, don't stand in fire, etc.) but I don't really feel like cutting some guy I've played with for 2 years because he can't click the button in the 3 second window and wipes the entire raid.

On a related note, look at the popularity of the LFR tool. It's rather ingenious on Blizz's part - this is probably the best thing they've done to keep subs in all of Cata. I'm not part of the target demographic, but most people don't want to deal with all that hassle either. Wotlk > Cata "killed" organized 25-man raiding; if LFR was expanded to 10-mans it would probably "kill" organized 10-mans as well.

Wrathblood, on 12 December 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

I try to be realistic about this stuff, and one of the things I like about WoW is its size and relative permanence. WoW may be dying (I'm not willing to grant that its dying, but I'll grant that it MIGHT be) but even if it is, its got a GIGANTIC amount of inertia and even the best case scenario, in which SWTOR is transcendentally good and WoW completely falls apart, SWOTR will probably never even get up to 1/4 of WoW's subscriber base. I thought Rift had a chance to dent WoW, but its dying now and I know some folks who quit WoW to play it who are coming back now. It'll probably stick around for years to come, but I doubt its subscriber base will ever get over 200k. You basically have to go to its most populated server to get into the ballpark of Drenden's population. I like community, and that's a tough hurdle for any new MMO to get over.

Eh, depends on how you define dying. Could I see WoW losing 50% of subs (5-6 million) in the next 3-4 years? Sure. Would it still be bigger than TOR, Rift, etc.? Most likely. TOR (got tired of typing the SW) would be a massive success if it could sustain +1 million subs, and even then it'd be a fraction of WoW. But of course all those players have to do something, so WoW will probably remain the largest MMO until Titan comes out and Blizz pulls the plug (which is probably years down the road).

Regarding Ryan's post, I don't think anyone would deny that WoW is on the decline. It lost 2 million subs this year for a reason. Blizz didn't introduce that 1-year deal out of the goodness of their hearts, it was a (shrewd) business move intended to keep people playing. But it's still the "best" overall MMO on the market for now (on the flip side, it has 10 million subs for a reason) and will be huge for years to come. Honestly, even if TOR blows WOW out of the water (way too early to say, given the history of other MMOs probably not) it would still take a good chunk of time for all the people to hop over (and there's no reason some can't play both).

Also, I found the setting that lets me view subtitles AND skip dialogue line-by-line so I r happy.

[Deceax]

Quote

Looking at the new "expansion" that Blizzard is pumping out 2013 or whenever, to me, spells out how bad WoW is doing. What is the new content that is being put out in this expansion? A new race of drunken Pandas? Oh cool so everyone likes the Brewmaster in the old games, I mean sure who doesn't. However, are you willing to shell out 50.00 to play as a Panda?

This is kind of a silly argument. It's like saying are you willing to spend $50 to play as a Goblin because that's all that Cataclysm had to offer. Maybe if the expansion only brought in a new race and didn't have a new class, new raids, new zones, level cap, etc. this would be a valid argument but pretending that the entire expansion is lol pandas is pretty flimsy.

WoW won't "die" in my eyes until I want to stop playing; even if WoW is on the decline like Wrath said there is such an incredible amount of inertia and it's still such a ridiculous cash cow that the servers won't turn off for a while. It is more likely that my interest will die before WoW does.

Quote

From a personal perspective I'm worn-out of the raiding model in general. I don't feel like farming the same instance week after week waiting 6 months for the hamster wheel to reset.

I'm wondering if I will do organized raiding in the next expansion. The time commitment is just too high and honestly once the bosses are dead I'm really not worried too much about pushing over heroic bosses since it's mostly just the same fight with just more frustration. It's satisfying to get a kill after some work, but I'm starting to get to a point where I would rather just see the content.

You have to put up with a lot of fail in LFR, but hell it's not like the same thing doesn't happen in organized raiding. The fail in an organized group is a lot less than LFR but the higher difficulty makes minor fails more costly so whats the difference. It gets frustrating when your personal output doesn't really matter much when one person failing to click a button at the right time can cause the group to fail. I did some LFR and it wasn't as satisfying to get a boss down since I had no attachment to the group and it was faceroll, but spending weeks doing the same bosses is getting old and pushing them over once and calling it a day is looking attractive.

Quote

At this point in my gaming "experience" I really don't care about getting challenge out of my MMOs. Make it reasonable enough so that it requires basic coordination (kill this first, don't stand in fire, etc.) but I don't really feel like cutting some guy I've played with for 2 years because he can't click the button in the 3 second window and wipes the entire raid.

This has been a complaint by some for the model of raiding in Cataclysm. Instead of being about healing/dps/threat output it has become a dexterity challenge. It doesn't matter if you do 10k dps or 30k dps if you fail to click ultraxions "win" button the group dies. A lot of encounters have become a variation of the Heigan dance.

[Sobeyet]

Deceax, on 12 December 2011 - 04:21 PM, said:

This is kind of a silly argument. It's like saying are you willing to spend $50 to play as a Goblin because that's all that Cataclysm had to offer. Maybe if the expansion only brought in a new race and didn't have a new class, new raids, new zones, level cap, etc. this would be a valid argument but pretending that the entire expansion is lol pandas is pretty flimsy.

That's one of the arguments that don't really stand up from the Anti-MoP crowd (not just Ryan, in general). I can see why people would consider pandas a "silly" animal, but really the notion of srsness doesn't belong in a game where cows have been shooting lightning bolts for 7 years. Just because Jack Black ruined pandas for everyone doesn't mean that WoW is Hello Kitty Island Adventure now. I'm sure the general tone of quests/raids will remain similar. For me it's no different than the walrus peeps in Wotlk - walrus are silly as fuck and Blizz didn't help with the voice acting they put in for it - it's not going to be the determining factor in whether I play the game or not. But like I've said before I was going to keep my account active anyway (and 50 bucks is like 3 packs of cigarettes in NYC, I'll survive), we'll see if they keep me raiding.

Deceax, on 12 December 2011 - 04:21 PM, said:

You have to put up with a lot of fail in LFR, but hell it's not like the same thing doesn't happen in organized raiding. The fail in an organized group is a lot less than LFR but the higher difficulty makes minor fails more costly so whats the difference. It gets frustrating when your personal output doesn't really matter much when one person failing to click a button at the right time can cause the group to fail. I did some LFR and it wasn't as satisfying to get a boss down since I had no attachment to the group and it was faceroll, but spending weeks doing the same bosses is getting old and pushing them over once and calling it a day is looking attractive.

Honestly I'd be just as happy if I could fill the raid with 9 NPCs (better than random tards, not as good as a truly great player) and do the shit on my own. I can socialize while doing other stuff, and most of the people you run into in randoms are annoying anyway.

Deceax, on 12 December 2011 - 04:21 PM, said:

This has been a complaint by some for the model of raiding in Cataclysm. Instead of being about healing/dps/threat output it has become a dexterity challenge. It doesn't matter if you do 10k dps or 30k dps if you fail to click ultraxions "win" button the group dies. A lot of encounters have become a variation of the Heigan dance.

Yep, this is just a personal thing, but I don't like having to depend on other people playing at a relatively high level for me to succeed. If you need me to kick ass, fine I'll figure something out, but I don't have the patience to hand-hold and carry people anymore (whether it's in skill, effort, knowledge, whatever).

(If anything it seems like MMOs aren't really the genre for me any more, at least until the model changes)

[Shardik]

I am sure that the new expansion will offer more than just cute fuzzy Pandas and as I stated I am someone on the outside looking in so my knowledge on the new expansion is limited. I also believe that Cata offered more than just one race right? So comparing apples and oranges and then saying that my point is invalid is a little off. Cata brought to the table the most epic of all epic bosses...Deathwing. The center piece for this new expansion isn't some end game boss or some amazing lore, it is a new Panda race. That is what is being sold. So from the perspective of content, on the surface this new expansion is lacking in the initial content where as every other expansion offered, from the start, a view of the end game boss that the expansion was centered around. Goblins and Worgens were a bonus to Cata where as it seems the new Panda race IS the expansion and the rest is the extra. There is a bit of a difference between the two.

[Sobeyet]

Shardik, on 12 December 2011 - 04:54 PM, said:

I am sure that the new expansion will offer more than just cute fuzzy Pandas and as I stated I am someone on the outside looking in so my knowledge on the new expansion is limited. I also believe that Cata offered more than just one race right? So comparing apples and oranges and then saying that my point is invalid is a little off. Cata brought to the table the most epic of all epic bosses...Deathwing. The center piece for this new expansion isn't some end game boss or some amazing lore, it is a new Panda race. That is what is being sold. So from the perspective of content, on the surface this new expansion is lacking in the initial content where as every other expansion offered, from the start, a view of the end game boss that the expansion was centered around. Goblins and Worgens were a bonus to Cata where as it seems the new Panda race IS the expansion and the rest is the extra. There is a bit of a difference between the two.

Well it's nice to have a big-bad you eventually work up to, but in terms of time investment it doesn't work out that way anyway. Wotlk was probably the best at including Arthas, in Cata Deathwing wasn't really a part of your experience (saw the effects of the cataclysm sure, saw Deathwing? Not so much), and in BC it was unheard of (maybe Magister's Terrace for Kael? /shrug).

Cata's been out for a year, and Deathwing will be dead a few weeks after we see him. The other 11 months were spent chasing around Cho'gall, Nefarian, Ragnaros, etc. So yeah Deathwing is the villain of Cata, but in reality you don't spend that much time fighting him. I'm sure they'll toss in a few familiar names and faces along the way, supposedly Illidan might be making a comeback. At this point I'll settle for good gameplay over name recognition.