I started playing World of Warcraft again when the most recent patch 4.3 went live on the servers and the game is still pretty fun even after all these years. Graphics wise, the game is not competitive anymore with newer games such as Skyrim and the upcoming Guild Wars 2, but WoW still has the gameplay that those other games fail to surpass. What many people don’t realize about World of Warcraft is that the game is not focused on the leveling a new player would spend their first few months doing, but what you spend your time on after hitting the level cap. Raids and Player vs. Player (PvP) are the primary ways of spending time on the game after hitting the level cap.
With the release of 4.3, raids are now available to more casual players. You no longer need to make WoW a job by dedicating 8pm-12pm 4 nights a week to progression raids. The way this was accomplished was by making an alternative version of the current raid tier available for a queue (much like one would queue for a battleground). The queue would take the person into a raid with 25 other players, and together they fight to clear a toned down version of the raid. The raid difficulty is called LFR (looking for raid) and provides gear slightly better than what one could obtain through heroics, including a scaled down version of the currently available tier. This type of gear was not always fully available to players in previous content.
PvP hasn’t changed all that much recently, but it still holds entertainment value. However, I think PvP more than anything exemplifies a lot of the problems WoW faces with class balance, as certain classes hold a distinct advantage over others in a majority of PvP content. Blizzard is slowly but surely addressing these imbalances, but probably slower than one would like if their main focus in the game was PvP. The argument Blizzard uses against adjusting class abilities for PvP is that there would be consequences for the same classes people use in raid environments. That said, players playing ranged classes have had a distinct advantage over melee (most of the time) for some time now in both PvE and PvP so it remains unclear why Blizzard has waited so long (and continues to wait) to tweak things out a bit better.
Despite it’s popularity, convincing someone to play World of Warcraft has been seemingly impossible to me. It can consume a lot of time if played compulsively, but the same can hold true for any game. Lately, I find myself playing it not only for the content but for the social aspect as well. Sometimes it’s nice to go on and communicate with some friends in a non-IM environment.
So it seems the next expansion in the game of World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria has been announced:
The level cap is being increased to 90 and many mechanics of the game are getting a well needed overhaul. The developers are hoping to revitalize the game and make it more dynamic, both of which were things not really present in the latest expansion, Cataclysm.
The Pandaren will be the new race of the expansion and can join either faction, which is something Blizzard has never tinkered with before.
Expansions are an opportunity to make the game feel “new” to the players and I’m hoping that Blizzard can achieve this without breaking it in the process. For now all we can do is wait and read until some sort of Beta comes out.
It seems as though lately good MMO computer games are hard to come by, despite the fact that many people are longing for a game to take over the World of Warcraft monopoly. Even though Rift is still new, it’s apparent now that it will not be the WoW-killer everyone has been waiting for, though that’s not really a surprise. So what’s new on the horizon? I’m sure there’s many, but Guild Wars 2 has caught my attention. Take a look at this YouTube video made about reasons to be interested in the game:
I encourage you to watch the video before continuing, as most of the rest you will read is going to be a response to the points made in the video. For these points, I will paraphrase the video in bold and then follow up with my response to it in red.
Production Quality – The argument here is that much like WoW, Guild Wars 2 looks polished. Production quality includes the UI, controls, graphics, and gameplay – they “feel right.”
I will wholeheartedly agree that in order to “beat” World of Warcraft, it’s replacement needs to have a high level of production quality. If a game is done correctly, the user interface will be functional and easy to use, while at the same time configurable to be highly versatile. It can’t be clunky or confusing or the player will be turned off from the game. Controls are the same way – they have to “work.”Graphics are not important in a realism sense, but they do need to flow and not look broken (ie. glitched textures). Gameplay is the most important of these however, as the player should have control over the situation they are in, and the decisions they make should ultimately affect the outcome of their situation. They shouldn’t just be a passenger along for the ride.
Music – Epic music draws the player in, makes them feel involved, and creates nostalgia.
Not much to respond to this with other than to disagree. Most competitive players have their sound turned off so they can listen to their own music or talk on ventrilo or some other voice communication program. The only thing music is good for is creating a good first impression, as it will ultimately become repetitive to listen to all the time while progressing through the game.
Content Scaling – Fantastic players should have the ability to tackle hard content, while new players should have the ability to do easy content if they so desire.
I’m on the fence with this one. I guess I don’t see it as being imperative to a game’s success, as most games have content relative to the skill level of the player playing. They might not be able to go back to the starting zones and play through them at the hardest level, but I guess it’s a feature that isn’t terribly important to me.
Dynamic Events – Quests can pop up at any time. This keeps the game entertaining because you never know what to expect
Again, I’m not sure if something like this is essential for a successful game. However, with this I suppose it would depend on how the random events were executed and if they were involved. Now that I’ve done all this work, do I feel like the experience has been rewarding? That’s what I’d be asking myself. It’s not really something I can form an opinion on until I’ve actually seen it in action.
Dynamic Combat – Dodging, blocking, using skills, positioning. No “automatic” abilities means players will have to think more about what they are choosing to do in order to be successful. This is a pet peeve of mine about most first person shooters; players have the ability to shoot multitudes of guns and other weapons, but have little ability to avoid these attacks other than to bunny hop or move erratically. Unreal Tournament had the ability to “dodge” which was one of the underlying things that made the game successful because it gave the player the ability to control where they were more. If they saw a projectile headed their way, they had the ability to avoid it by dodging in a certain direction. And though Guild Wars 2 isn’t a FPS, I think the same concept would have made something like World of Warcraft a much better game, thus I believe it will be a major plus if Guild Wars 2 emphasizes it.
No Monthly Fees – self explanatory.
Clearly this is one of the reasons why a lot of people don’t play World of Warcraft. Monthly fees can be overwhelming and dropping $15/month just to play a game just isn’t that appealing to everyone. It wouldn’t be a deciding factor for me, but I think a free to play game may increase the player-base a bit. My only concern is the same concern presented in the video; will free to play mean a reduction of quality in some way? I hope not.
The rest of the video discusses some points that I don’t really feel are terribly important such as graphics (well yeah, it does matter if the game is pretty or not – that’s obvious), PvP, and support classes (which is a lot of information that won’t be verifiable until the game comes out). Still, the game has the potential to be a WoW-killer and hopefully it succeeds in being one. It’s 2011 and a game from late 2004 is still the king of MMOs – that needs to change.
I’ll leave you with a picture of the game (it may be concept art, but they’re largely accepted to be nearly one in the same):
This zone is completely underwater and utilizes a lot of vehicle-based quests and quite a bit of phasing as well. Because of this there doesn’t seem to be a lot of opportunities for world PVP here, but it’s still a fantastic zone. The quests were a lot of fun, and the voice acting and cinematics were superb. Because it’s underwater, most of it does look pretty much the same so I included what it looks like above the surface, underneath, and an image from Throne of the Tides, which is a 5-man instance:
Mount Hyjal (80-82)
In my opinion, this is the best zone in Cataclysm. The developers put so much effort into the quests here, with most of the major characters having original voice actors. It’s difficult to emphasize how delightful it is to click on a NPC (non-player character) and instead of hearing the generic voice response to their race, you hear something unique. The quests are involved, and I rarely felt bored doing all the Hyjal quests even though I was already level 85. Graphically, this zone is also probably the best in the game currently. The following screenshots are all from random questing areas in the zone:
Deepholm (82-83)
As aforementioned, it seems that Deepholm is the zone meant to bridge Hyjal and Vash’jir to Uldum or the Twilight Highlands. The entire zone is underground and most of the NPCs you will be interacting with are basically rock giant elementals, and shamans. It’s about as well made as an underground cave type zone can get. In these screenshots, the first is the quest that leads you to Deepholm, and the rest are just random questing areas:
The Twilight Highlands (83-85)
In this zone the Alliance and Horde are separated in non-shared questing hubs, which in my opinion were overly abundant in the other zones, with most of the quests coming from neutral factions. The quests here are great, and like the previously mentioned zones, the area has original voice actors on a lot of the NPCs. If you’ve played WoW before, this area looks a lot like Loch Modan, Wetlands, and the Arathi Highlands, and while it’s been done before there are still some unique-looking places around the zone:
Uldum (83-85)
Uldum is the biggest disappointment to me in Cataclysm. The entire new race introduced with the area (Ramkahen) comes without any voice acting whatsoever. All of the important quest givers in the area are also without any voice acting. The area isn’t a complete failure because it’s visually stunning, the disappointment lies in the fact that there was so much potential to make this area great and Blizzard decided to be half-ass with it. If you click on a NPC in this zone, unless they’re from one of the existing races, you hear nothing whatsoever, just silence. On a positive note, the area does have three 5-man instances to enjoy. The first three pictures are random areas around Uldum, the fourth is from the Halls of Origination:
The screenshots I’ve taken are just a sample of what’s out there. I’d have to take several dozen pictures of each zone just to adequately cover all the new areas.
So I got around to trying out World of Warcraft: Cataclysm a couple weeks ago and it’s been a blast. The most striking thing about it is that the difficulty of things has been increased, especially in 5-man instances which if you are not familiar with, is essentially 5 player co-op (raids are 10 and 25 players). After playing two years of mostly easy content, all I can say to that is it’s about damn time. In games like this there should be things to separate the good players from the bad, so thank you for that.
Blizzard has definitely put a lot of time into the graphical appearance of the new zones (screenshots in pt. 2), and the quests you’ll be going through to level up come [mostly] complete with cinematics, epic music, and even voice acting!
The cinematics play periodically when you complete a quest and there’s been at least one in a 5-man instance. It really is a nice change to actually watch an event unfold in a movie than to just read it and use your imagination. I believe the future of gaming is going to utilize this to make the player feel more involved in the content, so hopefully we’ll see more of it. Voice acting is tied into the effectiveness of cinematics, as it is thoroughly lacking in Uldum for some reason and all you see are movies without sound or talking. Where it is used, the voice acting is another great change to the game which we haven’t seen for the most part (save for 1 or 2 exceptions in Wrath), and I was particularly pleased with all the different voice actors used in Mount Hyjal.
There’s probably a lot of things I’m going to forget to discuss, but one other thing I found noteworthy is that questing has been improved significantly. The maps clearly show where you need to go to complete your quest objectives, even by shading in entire regions where you can find a certain item. In addition, they’ve also introduced a new mechanic where a quest will automatically start when you walk into a certain area or kill something specific. Once you’ve completed the objective, wherever you are standing you can click the button on your screen and turn it in. There’s no running around to find the person you started the quest from, which is a very cool and thought out way to make questing more enjoyable.
There are two starting zones in cataclysm called, The Sunken City of Vash’jir and Mount Hyjal, designed for levels 80 to 82. Deepholm is the follow-up for Vash’jir (I’m going to assume Hyjal sends you here, too), for level 82 to 83. The Twilight Highlands and Uldum are the level 83 to 85 zones. You should only need to complete three of these zones (ie. Vash’jir -> Deepholm -> Twilight Highlands is what I did) to advance to level 85. Quests in each zone give reputation for their respective factions, therefore you want to quest in every zone to get your reputation as high as possible in all of the zones to collect some rewards at level 85. Since I had only three of the five zones completed when I hit 85, I ended up going back to do Hyjal and Uldum (to collect the reputation, but also to see the content).
In terms of fun, I would suggest doing Mount Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Twilight Highlands, though if the level 85 rewards are important to you then you may want to tweak that according to this list.
Will have more for you in a few days, including the screenshots.
a couple weeks ago and it’s been a blast. The most striking thing about it is that the difficulty of things has been increased, especially in 5-man instances which if you are not familiar with, is essentially 5 player co-op (raids are 10 and 25 players). After playing two years of mostly easy content, all I can say to that is it’s about damn time. In games like this there should be things to separate the good players from the bad, so thank you for that.