Will you get the new World of Warcraft expansion?(Cataclysm)

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Is fizzelopeguss butthurt that not everybody seems to think this popamole expansion was such a godsend afterall? Go to fucking redridge and tell me the writing in those quests isn't eye gouging fucking terrible. So not only now you have to try to avoid all the wow kiddies, now even the fucking NPCs talk like them.

I find you funny because you're so predictable, you already had your mind made up before you went into it.

That's classic burnout bro, time to just say fuck it and quit for 4 or 5 months, play something else. Play the backlog of all those singleplayer games you might have missed out on. We've all been there, new content/expansion...it's irrelevant, because at the end of the day it's a whole 'nother treadmill to climb.

When you begin to talk about a game like it's a fucking career choice. time to just back away from the keyboard. It's not worth becoming bitter.

You've pooped one too many socks soldier.

You see all this talk of me being a fanboy is fucking bullshit, i last raided seriously in vanilla. dabbled in the expansions and am now getting back into the game because i've exhausted all my singleplayer RPGs. New content, slight changes to the talents, moved the world forward...i'm fucking loving it. 6 months from now i'll loathe this game again.

Want a video that sums up the codex?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpYEJx7PkWE

I've always defended Blizzard against a lot of unwarranted criticism but after the unmitigated disaster that was Starcraft 2 i'm just not that tolerant anymore.

The thing that gets me about the rewrite of those areas is just how half assed they are compared to either the Worgen or the Goblin starting area. Even the writing isn't as shitty there. That's pretty fucking sloppy if you ask me.

Here's another thing i just noticed to further compound my rage to all this popamole shit. Why is the breath bar so god damn long? How fucking cheesy is that? Its things like this that really piss me off. Now they just made every water breathing item or ability redundant. I remember how cool it was when my warrior made his first deep dive helmet. Right now there's not even a point too hunt for the recipe. Its things like this that are ruining the game for me.

It's just sad that you're loving the gameplay in WoW when there's more dynamic content on the way (GW2), actual good writing already existing without retardo pace (LOTRO), and great player-based gameplay for those who don't need to be spoonfed content (Eve). We bring up pace again and again because incidentally I agree with you on one major point - the journey from 1 to level cap is good and the best part of WoW. However, by making the pace retardedly fast, the journey is over retardedly fast, and now I'm stuck with gameplay I really hate (raiding) or gameplay that the game is not designed for (PVP).

Ok i'm gonna step back and not be a dick.

i dusted off a lvl 30 BE pally and levelled through lordaeron/eastern kingdoms.

Hillbsbrad's been taken over by forsaken, arathi is being worked on. in

western plaguelands andorhal is the quest hub/battleground and there's a conclusion to it. In the east there's a nice little chain and theme where you're escorting two aspirant paladins/argent crusaders. With a little filler and the battle of darrowshire.

Badlands is the usual dig site/titan fare. with an attack by the black dragonflight on the horde camp. There's also a meme quest you've probably already heard of.

Searing gorge you're working with the thorium brotherhood.

Burning steppes you're thwarting an attack on redridge by the black rock clan.

The swamp of sorrows is now a battleground for the alliance and horde and i've already mentioned how much i enjoyed blasted lands.

Every quest line i saw in the old world was more or less a massive improvement on vanilla, a night and day difference in polish and quality.

I've always believed WoW has the best PVE and encounter design. I've tried Lotro and WAR and EQ2 extensively...i mean it's not even close.

The pvp is alright i guess in a battlefield sort of way, it's no EvE, but i don't have time nor the patience to get into that game. I'm glad it exists for those that do though.

GW2 ain't out yet, (and i've already said it's gonna be the biggest rival wow has seen, a massive game the size of annie carslsons milky tits.)

Well, yes, mechanically I'd agree WoW is much better balanced and polished and that makes playing a lot smoother and entertaining than other games. However, mechanics are not everything, especially in an MMO because you play so much that the refreshing mechanics turn into rote repetition. In that case the writing and the quests have to motivate the player into continuing to play, and while WoW has definitely improved in Cata, it's still not on the level of LOTRO, which has overarching storylines that draw the player in (well, not to mention a much better community). In other words, when I play WoW, I'm questing mainly to gain experience. In LOTRO, a lot of the time (not all of the time, I admit) I am either doing the quest because I want to advance the storyline, or because I want to level so I can play a later, interesting storyline.

It's kinda like the difference between KOTOR1 and KOTOR2. KOTOR1 is much more polished, with better balanced encounters. But the plot and themes in KOTOR2 support it just as well.

IMO the PVP in WoW is just mediocre. I can't say it's terrible, because it is well maintained. But like I said, it's not designed for PVP. There is no strategic or tactical layer such as in DAOC. There are no interesting mechanics that promote group coordination like there are in WAR. It's just a bunch of people zerging each other for honor and loot.

i disagree on the Cata pve not being on par with lotro (massively), i completely agree with you on the pvp and community. Even if lotro is filled with dyke Erotic roleplayers.

My WAR pvp experience was either worldmap zergs, inferior balanced BGs or server crashes at fort attempts. The tank + Healer dynamics were pretty sweet though.

Well, like I said, maybe you can live off the polished mechanics and encounter design in WoW. I can't. The overarching storylines in LOTRO motivate me to play when I tire of the repetitive MMO mechanics.

Yeah, I agree 100%. The class mechanics are amazing (disregarding all the balance problems), and it's a damn shame the rest of the game wasn't done well.

So tongue-in-cheek silliness is bad? I prefer it to grimdark that's for sure. Even if it isn't comedic genius, WoW has a light-hearted atmosphere, suggesting that it's all just for fun, that most modern games are sorely missing.

didn't play WoW much but it seemed to me that it suffers from the suicidal wildlife syndrome much more than lotro.

Tongue-in-cheek my ass. Its in your face blatant, Bethesda style. And its all the more disappointing considering Blizzard have always been very good at subtle, tongue-in-cheek humor, so obviously grimdark has nothing to do with it. The style is not the problem, its the writing that's fucking shit.

I think he's being a little 1eyedking by getting all hung up on a few quests he didn't like.

There was nothing tongue in cheek about Vanilla SVT, tanaris, un'goro and shimmering flats amirite?

Lyric suite, are you playing a female character? those male night elves look dorky as fuck.

Tongue in cheek might not be the right term, but the point is that it's intentionally goofy and silly. Even if it doesn't illicit many belly laughs, WoW still keeps a smile stuck on my face because it's so completely non-serious and clearly all just for fun. Games these days have no sense of humor whatsoever, and a game that's willing to say "Yeah, this whole gaming thing really is ridiculous so let's just have a good time" is one that I'm going to like.

Yes, the new quests are quite well-done, though I have to say that they really went over the top with the cutscenes, especially in Uldum, when almost every bit of Harrison Jones chain had a cutscene. It wouldn't be bad solo, I suppose, but I wasn't actually doing it solo, and the cutscenes did bug up for us like three times.

The big issue I'm having with the quests is the fact that they're all inter-connected. I guess it's a good thing that you get sent to the next hub, but why not be sent to the next hub, the quests of which you could pick up anyway, without advancing the chain that far? I do value the better effort on quests, but I also value the ability to skip a bunch of quests I didn't like - like Vanilla (and BC and WotLK?) and LotRO quest/world design permitted. The sort of "drop in/drop out" stuff with mixing and matching quests.

Thing is, there was a bug in the beta that wasn't permitting completion of one quest in Redridge, and as a result, not only did the rest of Redridge become unavailable to quest in, for the most part, it also prevented players from picking up in another, higher-level zone. This is where I call the inter-connectedness to be over-the-top.


And yes, PvE-wise, WoW is definitely the most polished game out there, which is the reason why I went back from LotRO to WoW (that, and the stupid, stupid class changes and the unaddressed problems in LotRO that started in Moria). Also, while I might be disliking the overall open world changes, I do enjoy the new instancing for the most part, it's actually somewhat engaging. Too bad they pushed it out of the door for Christmas, that really caused a ton of cut content and some unpolished features here and there, not to mention that a pre-Christmas launch is probably the worst timing of the year.

The industry seems to disagree with your assertion.

Anyway, I remember reading something that quests would now auto complete when you finish the objectives, without the need to return to an npc. Did that make it in?

I don't mean from commercial standpoint, commerce-wise, Q4 pre-Christmas is where money's at, yes. Player-wise, though, there's no fucking way to get on with levelling, gearing and raiding in December-January period, our raid alliance that would regularly have up to 12 multi-managed raids a week going barely scrapes one together right now for the second week - and pretty much everyone I know has been agreeing that the timing was shit. All other exps were published at times before pre-Christmas, or after, which actually made for convenient play.

So yeah, commerce-wise, good, player-wise, shit time.

Also, bear in mind that most MMOs/MMO addons are not launched in December as far as I know. Single-player is different, but MMO is "social" and "competitive", and so, the only people that actually do well in such a period are either people not celebrating the Christmas stuff, or people with no life/relatives/work/studies, since December is basically the month when the end-year work rush hits, when students turn in their essays and do exams, when relatives come visiting and when you go shopping for presents. Ergo - shit time for MMO launches as it fucks your already fucked schedules with a massive unicorn dong. Especially MMOs with dungeon revamps that take up to 3 hours to complete on first/second visits.

For some select quests/chains. Surprisingly enough, these weren't over-the-top and are usually even justified by gameplay, say, you run into some foul mobs and kill one and quest starts as you kill it, then you kill X more, and the game just says hey! Click here, quest complete. Makes sense.

Or some other quests where you actually get, say, a magic hat on your head that permits long-distance communication. I expected this to go full-out retard mode, but it was actually done pretty well.

I see. Guess they decided not to deviate from the old formula too much in the end.

"Or some other quests where you actually get, say, a magic hat on your head that permits long-distance communication"

They had that as far back as TBC, where you'd summon that mage as you went around Netherstorm doing his quests. Was pretty cool.

Yeah, it's more or less like that, except you get a large shiny button on screen rather than an NPC being there in person.

What were the class updates in LOTRO, btw? I never heard of any big updates, but I just started again and apparently a lot of things were revamped.

Hm, when did you stop playing it? There's been some fair bit of changes, but only in Moria did they start to get worse.

One of the big new changes now was the supposed increase in responsiveness of combat, so the animations are supposed to be slightly more interruptable/quick.

Actually although I've played before, I think I only played seriously after Moria, and definitely after the combat responsiveness thing. But I only got up to 30 or so, so I'm curious as to what you say is bad or getting worse in LOTRO. I've read very, very little criticism about LOTRO to be honest.

I'd write that off on the somewhat fanatical fanbase. All the criticism ends up shunned - not by the devs or mods, mind you, but by the rabid "everything is fine, we'll learn to live with these nerfs" fan base.

Anyway... The big thing was the obvious transition from Vanilla to Moria. It was mainly the "first expansion" pains, and looking back at BC's first half a year, I'd say it was something similar there - however, with a few significant differences.

You might remember complaints, in BC, about how tanks couldn't hold aggro. You might remember how it was finally addressed - aggro mechanics were adjusted in favour of tanks (of course, DPS could still easily over-aggro, but if they would, it would be their fault and not of mechanics flaws). Not so in LotRO.

At first, things worked alright, but as levels and gear started rolling in, it became apparent that good Champions could steamroll through any instance in DPS stance (Fervour) without any problem, and that tanks (guardians, wardens) weren't needed. Now, instead of addressing mob damage, aggro generation (it was laughably bad on Wardens and in part on Guardians - and it's their primary role!), they decided to nerf the only class that made the transition to Moria without any losses - yep, they nerfed the Champion, by making Fervour, the primary (and only used stance because the rest of stances were useless) stance, useless due to -30% incoming healing and some +% to incoming damage. This was the first major idiocy change, but oh boy, if only it were the only one, I'd tolerate my main being a glass cannon (and having wasted 90g on essentially nothing).

Next up came the overall issues - the farm-centric gameplay where you had to farm several hours a day to keep up, the initially cool and finally nightmareish Relic system (Yeah, try to find a good 2nd/1st age item with good legacies, and then level them... only to find out that the skill gets removed in the next patch off the tables), and the "all over" difficulty levels of instances and raids were some of the things to spoil Moria.

And there were bugs, mainly engine limitations that could easily be fixed if Turbine would bother, like the said aggro issues stemming from an archaic method of aggro calculation. Did Turbine fix them in Moria? Nope.

What they did was very quickly announce a paid patch that became known as a mini-expansion. Yes, the whole current territories of the mini-expansion should have been part of Moria content. Instead they chareged for it, promising to add more stuff for free later. Except no, we're now offered to buy Rohan.

And the funny thing is, the foundation is still shaky, the system needs some major re-working to stabilize the core issues like the said threat mechanics, and in part, healing mechanics. My GF would tell more about those as the healing changes in Moria made her curse quite a bit, I myself can't tell much except that it got partly fixed.

So... Yeah. I really liked Vanilla. It was awesome, even if occasionally flawed. The free updates were great, the support was good, the community was, well, decent, and the game was, while quirky, mostly bug-free. Raiding Balrog was tons of fun. Moria added a lot of nice things, but most of them were ultimately flawed - and in part I blame the lack of massive pre-launch testing of the add-on to find all the issues.

Heh, one guy that I knew got to beta Moria. He spent a whopping 3 hours doing so, and well, given the guy didn't know how to play and would ask questions like "Is this item (caster ring) good for Champion (melee DPS)?", you can see how it may be that Moria didn't quite get the testing it should have.

Hm, I see, thanks. Interestingly, when I think about LOTRO, I don't even think about the endgame. See, this is why I loathe the pace of WoW right now. In LOTRO, it took me about a month to get to 30 before, so I'm not even worried about the criticism you're talking about.

Also, I hate the concept of raiding anyway.