Tobold's Blog
Saturday, January 05, 2008
 
Touching a nerve

I was a bit surprised by the reactions to my post yesterday on what to do next in WoW, it seems I touched a nerve there. Either the post came out totally wrong, or the commenters were overreacting, and projecting their own fears into words I didn't really say.

As you know I recently completed a big project in WoW, getting the money for my second flying epic mount together. I think it is only natural after completing one big project to stop and pause to think what your next big project should be. I tried to list all the options, but maybe I felt more need to explain why I don't like the options I dislike than to explain what options I like and why. In any case I don't see why some people interpreted that as me being totally fed up with WoW and ready to jump off a cliff. That is totally not true. And the next guy calling me "emo" gets his comment deleted! ;)

I believe World of Warcraft is the best game out there, and believe me, I spent 7 months last year to look for a better option and there wasn't one. While I'm certainly interested in trying the next new games, I believe on WAR has the potential to keep me playing for more than a few months, and I don't believe that WAR will come out in the first half of 2008. I'd like to be wrong in that, but only if the resulting early release isn't *too* early, wouldn't want WAR to pull a Vanguard.

I do enjoy playing in 5-man groups in WoW, and even in raids. But when listing my options of course I have to mention that organizing groups or raids has some difficulties. Not saying that it is impossible or that I think I'll never be able to get into a group or raid. But I can't just overlook the obvious problems of quality of PUGs, the current relative unpopularity of PvE due to high PvP rewards, being on a low-population server, or my personal timing problems with raids. Problems that I might be able to overcome or work around somehow. I also enjoy leveling my mage alt, but again I must be allowed to at least mention that I already did most of the quests between his current level and the level cap, and repeating old content is of course not quite as interesting as new content.

As always when somebody says something relatively neutral about a MMORPG, I got responses of the "WoW is perfect and you are emo" kind, and "WoW is boring and you should quit". My thanks goes to those commenters who kept cool and helped me listing and reevaluating options instead of overreacting and calling me names. The others should take a minute to consider why they reacted so strongly, and whether their own feelings towards WoW are still rational.
Comments:
I can absolutely feel what you mean, and I went through the same.

My advice would be, to forget aiming at completing a certain "project" for a while and just do what the game has to offer. It even offers you the possibility to take a break for some days, a week or two or a month, if you feel like it.

As a tank it should be pretty easy to find 5-man groups, seriously. If a group turns out to be not so good, it was for me very often possible to turn it into a quality one, by taking the helm myself and explaining, giving clear "orders" and guiding the group through the instance. Not a guarantee that it works out fine, but it will also help you to develop your skills further.

You can build up a nice friends list and within 3 weeks, I promise, you will have enough decent players to form your own Karazhan run once in a while, or do whatever you like because there's always someone on you know, and someone they know and so on.

If there is nothing to do, level your alt. You will also make new friends by that, if you are open to build a group by yourself. Since you like the contact with other players, you will find your way.

Btw., playing any game is always "emo"tional, because it is always driven by emotions and feelings and individual preferences, IMHO.
 
My reply was rational. You've gone over this before, and we were just reminding you.

You suffered burnout and quit and went back too soon. If you do that often enough, you'll eventually hate the game and never want to play again.

Quit WoW cold turkey and don't go back until the next expansion.
 
Well..this sounds like a nice little experiment. Every day at least one PUG for the daily heroic. I'd like to hear how many good groups you found, how many could be turned into good groups by leading them, how many were totally hopeless and finally: How many new friends you found which are both nice and good players.
I once thought about doing something like that myself, but I was never cruel enough to punish me like that ;)
 
You need to put that previous post in context with other previous posts about WoW you've made lately...

The question you asked is a legit one, and I know as I've had a char get to 70 in the last couple months only to think "now what?" precisely because of my limited play time...

But there was this "complaining" style writing that you've had on previous posts that made it feel like one of those typical whining posts on the bliz boards...

Once upon a time, I played GuildWars:Factions. I was already playing WoW at the time and had read something about GW "fixing" some of WoW's flaws. But, having been spoiled by WoW and it's good implementation of many things, I found GW kind of boring. Sure, it "fixed" some of the flaws in WoW, but it was so lacking in other departments that I simply couldn't play it anymore and got back to WoW as I wasn't having fun in GW and that's what a game is for...

Maybe what's happening with you is that you've been playing other games before returning to WoW, and now you're more aware of some flaws in WoW that other games have fixed in one way or another and tend to focus more on those flaws, hence giving your posts about WoW a more negative connotation...

Maybe some people over-reacted to that overall negative trend of yours, while some others answered the question. I know I did a bit of both to play it safe! :)
 
Not playing a MMORPG & blogging about MMORPGs sounds a little hypocritical doesn't it!? Is that what you are afraid of Tobold?

Maybe it's time to drop the MMORPG blog tag for a gaming one instead?
 
first of all grats on your blog !

some ideas, hope it helps :)

based on what i read you really like to pve. and to pve with a "important" role. you have two of the most difficult to get classes for a 5 man insta.
choose your toon based on whats missing. if you see a good tank on, send him a tell, say you are the healer. try to get dps friends (cc preferably) and get the rest pug's. (just send random tells). if he is a good player (emotional, gamer, etc) add him to friends with a note of his strong / weak points.
eventually you will have a friends list of ppl that aren't really your friends, but have a common purpose. (this means longevity i guess)

on a raiding note, why dont you talk to your guild, get a friend that will replace you when you have to go away (same raid funcion, etc) and raid sometimes, everyone will understand if you cant stay untill 2am because you have to go to work at 6.30.

bye, and hope it helps,
G
 
Unnecessary strong reactions and harsh tone there was. Typically of webforums communication often gets really 'loud' when it becomes emotional for the posters.
And Tobold, you often touch on subjects that are emotional for us MMORPG affectionados... that's why I keep coming back. It's got meat. Kudos ;-)

I reckon, I belong to the "WoW is boring and you should quit" camp. And I know you asked what to do IN WoW - and not instead of.

I quit before ever reaching endgame in TBC, so can't really conjure any constructive solutions to your current ingame situation.

What I CAN do is focus on the underlying reasons why we play games: to simply have fun while achieving something (progression). And reading your post kind of gave the feeling you were doing neither.

Therefore I think it's valid to tentatively counter your question with a:
'Are you really spending your time right, mister? Or just doing it for the sake of it?'

Heck, just trying to help, in my own humble and ackward way :)
 
Perhaps using the term 'emo' was out of place. However, it is also silly to think that people don't run small groups any more. Lots of people will be running small groups.

Your mage shouldn't have any problems getting groups for 5-man instances, for one very simple reason:

It takes many, many hours spread out over at least 1-2 days (usually many more) to acquire even a single piece of honor gear. It takes roughly 1-2 hours (at most) to tackle a 5-man instance. The time investment is much different, so you should be fine.

It isn't as easy as it was when *everyone* was running 5-man instances all the time pre-expansion, but it's still not difficult to do.

Finding a group may take a little longer than it used to, but still shouldn't feel like a daunting task, esp. if you are a tank.

--Rawr
 
I think I was fairly reasonable with my comment. I don't think you were "emo" at all. But I think we can all hear in your writing the boredom of playing WoW...seems like you are asking us for a reason to keep logging in.

I'd say, just take a break for a little while. You don't have to shard your toon's gear, delete them, and drop your account. Just take a few days off, and don't login until you really want to. Sometimes I go a few days without playing, and sometimes I'll go a week.

And of course try a different genre. I know you never liked the twitchy FPS games b/c of motion sickness, but I'm sure there are ways around it. Try something totally different.
 
WoW is making a mountain of money, and the end game exclusively focuses on raids and battlegrounds. I detest both, so I wish this wasn't the case, but I'm not going to deny the obvious. My only two choices are to play the game and accept that my play style (PVE) is given the least amount of development time or not to play at all. I choose not to play at all, but notice I didn't include a third option of complaining while still playing, because that's counterproductive.

What angers me about this is that Blizzard doesn't care about the complaints as long as they get your CC number. The only message that will wake them up is canceled accounts. If every current player who hated hamster wheels simply canceled their account Monday morning, that singular event would help more than a ten thousand blogs all pointing out the obvious - that WoW is being guided by developers who prefer to raid and are in a position to add content specifically for their own taste.

All that needs to be said about the current state of Blizzard is the change to exp - they just don't get it. To them, PVE is something to be rushed though to get to the "fun stuff". As long as that's their policy, they won't get my money. Not that Blizzard cares about "my money". They probably use roles of new hundred dollar bills for toilet paper.

Blizzard needs to add some new low level content period. Dustwallow Marsh shouldn't be the exception - it should be the rule. Blizzard has the resources to revamp old zones by tweaking old quest and adding new ones, but why should they bother, since people are going to play regardless of whether Blizzard addresses their concerns.
 
I'm not posting this for a link because I've read your ToS, but this was my reaction to your original post.

If you reread it with objective eyes, I'm sure you'll understand why it caused such a fuss and made you out to be bored and annoyed with WoW. We don't know what you don't write, so that's why people reacted as such...

Anyway, here's my blog reaction: http://thegreenskin.com/2008/01/04/a-casual-gamers-despair-addiction/
 
I quit wow last march and am loving it lol. I'll check it out in the next expansion and be equal to all those that spent $200 to keep playing. Sounds like a good plan to me.
 
=##='s second post should be considered mantra and advertised everywhere. Seriously.
 
WOW's raid only endgame and gear only does it to me. i quit WOW and moved to LOTRO. best decision i ever made.

TURBINE's dev update cycle is faster than Blizz dev's update cycle. with more money and time , blizzard should be able to do more to WOW but i dont think they are putting back WOW's profit to betterment of the game.
 

but i dont think they are putting back WOW's profit to betterment of the game.


Yeah, based on the time between content updates - you'd think WoW only had a couple hundred thousand subscribers.
 
Tobold,

If there are a few things you like doing in WoW, but that does not fill up all your game time, do something else than WoW in that other time. That may be other MMOGs, other games or something completely different.

You have played the game long enough to know yourself what it is there that you might like.

You don't have to play any other MMOG for many months or years - if a game may be interesting to play for 2 months, so be it. That is still 2 months that may be more fun than just spending time with uninspired button-clicking.

If you can plan the quality time in WoW, do so and do something else the rest of the time. If you can not plan it and you may end up wasting a lot of time waiting for the fun parts to happen - just stop entirely and find something different anf go back at a later time.
 
Tobold,

First of all, so far for me, "emo" ain't some kind of insult but an adjective to describe someone in a particular case. I have found this word enough appropriate to explain what all your last posts about WoW were. Summarize my whole point into that phrase perfect isn't a positive attitude. Either telling that I am a "fanboi". I'm not feeling that I'm the one who overeact at all.

As always when somebody says something relatively neutral about a MMORPG

For us - Looking at the comment I wasn't the only one thinking that way - you weren't neutral at all. Sorry to have misunderstood your point, but by reading all your previous posts, I really don't see how we could have think something else.

I have to said that i'm really sad about this situation. Two years that I'm reading and appreciate your blog, linking it on my own website, telling my friend how great you are. And for my first "real" comment, being categorized as an "insulting fanboi" for such bad reasons is kinda dissapointing.

t's not like I have just posted "you hateboilolol go quit". Despite what you said, I have tried to provide you solutions, ideas to improve your wow experience. It's also why I asked you some questions in order to reply more efficiently to your "problem".

To conclude my point about your situation...

Now that you told us the fact that you were on a low pop server and that you have limited schedules to play, I understand more your situation. I mean, it is perhaps the most difficult setup to do something in any kind of MMORPG. Well, as you can't count on your guild, I could only advice you to enter in the hell of Pug, in order to create a new list of instancing-friends with the same situation as yours. It would able you in the near future to have an correct social environment in which you will be able to have fun, again. I think it would be more interesting for you to do it that way than farming something, as you have just come out an Epic-mount grinding, something I have never done myself.
 
I enjoy the same parts of WoW that =##= does, and it's part of why I really liked LOTRO. Turbine seems pretty committed to small group and solo content, and their last patch was really good (adding Goblintown where Bilbo and the dwarves were captured, as well as Tol Bruinen's "fun" quests) but even then, it's only good for as long as it takes to do once or twice, then you're back to nothing to do. I guess that's the problem, it's easy to make grindy reputation, or raids or pvp to do over and over, but small group content is harder because you only do it a few times then need more.

Plus the bugs and quirky issues WoW doesn't have that every other game seems to have. Each time I try a new game I marvel at how "tight" WoW is. That's the only way I can describe it. It really irritates me in other games.

I'm getting back into WoW but only as a way to keep in touch with my IRL friends in another state, and talk to them on vent. But I feel similarly. I am really enjoying single player RPGs though.
 
Finding a group may take a little longer than it used to, but still shouldn't feel like a daunting task, esp. if you are a tank.

--Rawr


Rawr this is a perfectly true statement on a high pop healthy server. On mid to low pop server not true at all for casual players. If you can only log in for an hour or two no groups for you. Its true. I'll never be on a low pop server ever again for that reason.

Now that I'm leveling an alt on hellscream life is pretty good again. No groups like pre bc but even at level 17 I can find a group regularly. Couldn't do that on my low pop nearly dead server.

I think a lot of people who've been on old established servers with healthy populations truly do not understand how bad the low pop servers are.

My advice to anyone thinking of leaving because of Ques. DONT. ques only suck till you log on. Low Pop sucks all the time.
 
I'm glad you touched a nerve T!

Blizzard are complacent in their game design and making foolish moves like welfare epics!

Keep shouting it out bud! You still speak the truth.

I voted with my pocket... who else will too?
 
The point is, there has to be an end-game sooner or later. You can't keep levelling up for ever, doing solo quests for ever.

Blizzard's answer to this is the raid/battlegrounds end-game.
If you don't like it or don't have time to do it, then play another game, it is that simple.
I don't know why people are getting so angry about it. Maybe it is because the solo experience is so fun, and no-one wants it to end.
Yes, I raid, but not that much. I don't have time to be raiding 4 or even 3 days a week, and much as I would like to see Illidan 'downed', I accept the fact that I am not going to experience it in this particular expansion.
At the same time I don't rage at Blizzard for not creating the perfect game that I can plug into for the next x years and live happily ever after.

Play the game, have fun, but once you are bored, go do something else, and don't keep going on about how Blizzard doesn't care about you.
 
I've felt the same way at times in my WoW 'career':
You climb a hill or mountain and look for another.

I think that the transition from leveling to endgame is probably the toughest one. Until then there are milestones, but there's always a that mountaintop of level 70 in the distance. After reaching 70, I've found that the endgame is more like a peak-and-valley run. Instead of the automatic "one more level" incentive, you push for something and hit the mark (attunement / gear / rep / boss / instance / raid / etc), and then have to set a new goal for yourself.

And it's not uncommon to have a bit of a letdown if there is not something already in the queue. Sometimes you just need to knock around a bit and see what captures your interest.

But the bottom line, as always, is whether you're getting your $15/mo. worth of fun out of the game.
 

The point is, there has to be an end-game sooner or later. You can't keep levelling up for ever, doing solo quests for ever.


Make every outdoor non instanced quest solo'able, and casual players can level up new classes - proving there is enough class variety.
 
oh boy doing the same quest lines over and over. What fun! I'd rather eat glass...
 
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