Auenwing posted:

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Mithan, were you part of Beta? (I can't keep track now). How much have you seen so far? I hear what you're saying about purpose.

Do you think they have the balance of directed gameplay right? I think there's a lot to be said for storylines unfolding via phases, some folks love it and others (like my husband) are irritated by the "constant" phasing.

I'm not trying to start arguments out here, just wondering if Blizz swung the pendulum too far with the latest "whizzy" technology and genuinely curious about how folks are feeling about the game so far.

And Syrus, I think you have a point. I know it's too early for me to tell, I'll reserve judgement for 4-5 alts in.

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Auenwing posted:

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Do you think Blizzard heard all the comments about how wonderful the DK starter zone was and misconstrued that as the players wanted linear questing, phases and an inability to leave the zone until all quests are done?

Totally missing the fact that what made the DK starter zone so amazing was the epic feel of the quests because it was filling in the lore on the backstory of the DKs? That when you walked out, the story line continued in your major city until you talked to either Thrall or the King of SW?


What are your thoughts?

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Sprawl-zero1eye- posted:

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I want a mix. I like how LotrO does it with epic storylines in every area, and side quests to pass the time. There is a balance.

Of course LotrO has other problems, but that is neither here or there.

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Sprawl-zero1eye- posted:

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They also need to put activity in areas that are not "phased in". I should not be able to fly ahead in a zone, and see no npcs or enemies. Then when I return after completing a quest, the whole thing is populated. Sometimes this fits, but most of the time, it does not.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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For those who don't like this, and I like it, you won't like SW:TOR either...

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Auenwing posted:

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Mithan, were you part of Beta? (I can't keep track now). How much have you seen so far? I hear what you're saying about purpose.

Do you think they have the balance of directed gameplay right? I think there's a lot to be said for storylines unfolding via phases, some folks love it and others (like my husband) are irritated by the "constant" phasing.

I'm not trying to start arguments out here, just wondering if Blizz swung the pendulum too far with the latest "whizzy" technology and genuinely curious about how folks are feeling about the game so far.

And Syrus, I think you have a point. I know it's too early for me to tell, I'll reserve judgement for 4-5 alts in.

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Auenwing posted:

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Mithan, thanks for responding. I understand your viewpoint and agree that "CHOICE" feels like the thing that's needed.

Having a dynamic quest line that affects you later by the choices made earlier would be wonderful from a story-telling/RPG character growth perspective. And somehow I can't see Blizzard adding that without issues. They seem to be focused on end-game. You never know though. If it's successful in other games, we could see it incorporated.

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--Syrus-- posted:

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It would be cool as you say if it was a little bit more like a choose your own adventure novel

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Shenron_ posted:

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i HATE it. i don't like being forced to do long boring quest chains just to enter or leave a zone. i want to be able to go and come as i please. its so stupid the way it is now.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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One interesting and nice side effect of the phasing is that it's very inefficient to mine/herb in an area you haven't completed yet, completely screwing the gold farmers. I love that side effect. The more we screw those account thieves, the happier I am.

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--Syrus-- posted:

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Shenron_ posted:

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i HATE it. i don't like being forced to do long boring quest chains just to enter or leave a zone. i want to be able to go and come as i please. its so stupid the way it is now.

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Well you don't HAVE to do the quests..

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Gidgiddoni posted:

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I have two major problems with this new "system" Blizzard is using.

1. It's very easy to get off-track in a quest chain and not realize you missed something. I was running my first toon through Mount Hyjal and one guy sends me to another and on and on and I finally get to a spot where ... there is no other quest indicated. I look at achievements and I am on something like 76 of 115 (or however many quests there are). WTF?

So I start backtracking, and I notice there is an achievement for bouncing on the trampoline. I had seen this just by happenstance when mining in the area. I go back there and see a guy lit up with a quest to save the bears in the trees. And that sets me on another line. But there was NO quest telling you to go to this guy ... he is just tucked up in a corner and if you don't start when he offers you dead end.

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Shenron_ posted:

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--Syrus-- posted:

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Shenron_ posted:

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i HATE it. i don't like being forced to do long boring quest chains just to enter or leave a zone. i want to be able to go and come as i please. its so stupid the way it is now.

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Well you don't HAVE to do the quests..

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i mean like how you can't enter deepholm/tol borad without doing quests....can't leave dk starter zone, worgen/goblin zones, etc. without doing a ton of quests...things like the water mount in vashjir being almost a necessity to even navigate that zone, but gotta do all those quests to get it...all the dumb cutscenes and scenes you can't skip during quests

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The_Korrigan posted:

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An example... in Hyjal, you are driven along a path you aren't forced to follow. You can do any of the shrines in any order you want. The quest givers just give you one path so idiots who can't read or explore are able to find their way.

Otherwise, if you really don't like the direction of the game... there are other crappy MMORPGs to play beside this good one, help yourself

EDIT: I also 200% agree with both Stonemane2 and also Mithan.

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Gidgiddoni posted:

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I have two major problems with this new "system" Blizzard is using.

1. It's very easy to get off-track in a quest chain and not realize you missed something. I was running my first toon through Mount Hyjal and one guy sends me to another and on and on and I finally get to a spot where ... there is no other quest indicated. I look at achievements and I am on something like 76 of 115 (or however many quests there are). WTF?

So I start backtracking, and I notice there is an achievement for bouncing on the trampoline. I had seen this just by happenstance when mining in the area. I go back there and see a guy lit up with a quest to save the bears in the trees. And that sets me on another line. But there was NO quest telling you to go to this guy ... he is just tucked up in a corner and if you don't start when he offers you dead end.
2. The lack of much in the way of random choices means this is going to get boring fast if you like ALTs.

By comparison ... I was working on my 58ish warrior just before the expansion hit. At 60 I took him to Outlands. As you go from 60-62 there are tons of different options for quests ... Zangarmarsh, or Terrokar Forest ... and you only need to do a small portion of the quests and you level out and move on. Just a whole lot of options.

In Cataclysm there just don't seem to be that many options, and many of the options are hidden by phases.

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PallyDog posted:

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I like it. I always enjoyed the questlines that had a story to them better than "go kill 10 troggs and get some cheesy gloves that aren't as good as that one pair that dropped off the 5th trogg"

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--Syrus-- posted:

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If Ghostcrawler posted here, which poster would you accuse first of being him?

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Sociop posted:

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Ghostcrawler is, whats the word I am looking for, arrogant, pompous, perhaps egotistical in the way he comes across when he posts on the official forum that he would stick out like a sore thumb.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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An example... in Hyjal, you are driven along a path you aren't forced to follow. You can do any of the shrines in any order you want. The quest givers just give you one path so idiots who can't read or explore are able to find their way.

Otherwise, if you really don't like the direction of the game... there are other crappy MMORPGs to play beside this good one, help yourself

EDIT: I also 200% agree with both Stonemane2 and also Mithan.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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I think the fact mmorpgs are devolving to "choose your own adventure", considering the wide range of rpg and crpg they actually have access to, is the most revealing thing at all.

And people actually think this is a good thing. Do they even LIKE rpgs?

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GutterSludge posted:

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While I enjoyed the DK staring quests, they served a purpose...

That purpose was to gear your character, and give you your talent points appropriate for your level, rather than just turn you loose scott free with a "noob" level 58 ish toon.

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st0rmie posted:

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Well in pen & paper RPGs, if the GM designed and planned something, then by god, it was going to be used. If MMOs want to follow this route they just need to be as good as human GMs at hiding the inevitability of the linear storyline.

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Auenwing posted:

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Yes, I didn't join WoW to play someone else's story. I sound like a broken record saying I want the open-world feel back.

However

it occurred to me, in a game that has so much diversity of playstyle, that promoted itself that way has now (apparently) devolved down to basically one path through the game which feels restrictive. If you solo, have always solo'd the new changes (storyline cattle chute aside) are wonderful. It's laid out linear, you know what to do. You go on your merry way.

Trying to group up with guildmates has some irritating obstacles.

So it looks like:

Solo through directed questpaths (for the most part)
Join PuG for Dungeons
Endgame

And you can say it was that way through most of LK, but it wasn't. Until hitting parts of Ice Crown, I could come out with a character and group up with my guildmates easily. I could walk into a lowbie zone and help out with a slightly higher character. I could go back with a character that had done all the quests in any zone (those few IC ones aside) and team up with a guildmate who had not done them. Now I have one character that I've halted playing because I don't want to get out of sync with guildmate. I can't group up with another in Westfall until they go through the quests. Another guildmate wants to come out and join us as well but he is in another phase.


-Still trying to adjust

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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The players made the story in UO, too. And EVE. Two sandbox mmorpgs that no one has tried to replicate because it's too hard, not enough devs up for the challenge. Easy examples.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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The players made the story in UO, too. And EVE. Two sandbox mmorpgs that no one has tried to replicate because it's too hard, not enough devs up for the challenge. Easy examples.

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Replicating UO has nothing to do with difficulty. If anything, it's easier to replicate UO than WoW, way less resources needed.
Why nobody replicated it is simply because the EQ clone model works better financially.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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In your opinion, if the management of a company about to make a MMORPG is presented with two choices:
1) "we can make the game sandbox oriented, like UO"
2) "we can make the game level/class/quest based, like EQ"
"Be warned that model 2 will most likely produce at least 4 or 5 times more income than model 1, as it has in the past".
What choice will be made by the money people?
Obvious...

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Anyway, this discussion is irrelevant when we talk about WoW, which is based on the EQ Clone model since day one. It would have been almost impossible to turn it into a more sandbox oriented game, both technically since the game is not meant for that, and also commercially, since it would have alienated a big part of the player base who play WoW to have more WoW, and not to have the game changed into something radically different.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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The choice of phasing is therefore great to be able to tell a story and make the player feel he changes the world in the very rigid EQ Clone model, allowing everybody to be "the hero".

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The_Korrigan posted:

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And Blizzard thanks you for your monthly subscription and keep on going forward with its model that doesn't need any proof of working anymore since it's still the most successful MMORPG, making new record sales with its new expansion.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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By the way, if you want a sandbox MMORPG so hard, why don't you play Darkfall, or Mortal Online, or hell, Eve? How comes those first two games failed too?

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some review website posted:

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Now the model files for the characters aren’t bad, but I didn’t really understand why there was a need to add fully detailed genitalia. Was an anus really necessary? Seriously? In result, a lot of gamers run around, buck naked, killing newbies.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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And the failures of non-WoW games have nothing to do with the EQ Clone model being bad

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The_Korrigan posted:

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- it's due to those games sucking bad, making design mistakes WoW didn't make, or just being a steaming pile of bug ridden crap. A bad imitation will always lose against the model.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Games like e.g. Vanguard could have easily taken a big portion of WoW's market if the technical realization of the game hadn't been so bad.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Now don't get me wrong. I'd LOVE to see a successful, or at least a good game, that's doesn't follow the EQ/WOW clone model, but manages to make an "UO2" instead. That's why I'm following games like dawntide. The game doesn't have to get 12M players, it just has to be good enough so that enough player, notably oldtimers who enjoyed UO, join and stay, making the game viable financially. But I'm also realistic, and don't expect any major game studio to make such a game. If such a game ever comes, it will be a smaller independent studio which will take that "risk", not a major, which reduces even more the chance that such a game ever makes it to a playable state good enough to be sold, and more important, to be bought and played on long term.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Games like e.g. Vanguard could have easily taken a big portion of WoW's market if the technical realization of the game hadn't been so bad.

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But I don't agree with that. I don't think it ever could have.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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The best it could have done would have been to take the lion's share of the veteran EQ population (with those few who actually preferred DAoC's shift to PvE raiding), but that is only a minority of WoW's playerbase (a minority of even just its western playerbase, as EQ had almost no eastern presence at all). Vanguard's audience wasn't the casual player that makes up the huge majority of WoW.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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On top of that, I don't think Vanguard would have succeeded even if it HAD worked its technical issues out. There were philosophical and directive problems at the very top there. Elements like their diplomacy system spoke loudly of compartmentalized development without the central "brain" to keep it under control and tie it together in a coherent package - the game was going to be a Frankenstein mess even if it hadn't had its technical issues.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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The smaller guys can do great things. CCP is a small company based in Iceland of all places and it has made by far the best space-based mmorpg in the world, not to mention their dev blogs show a depth of understanding of issues that I have not seen anywhere else. But it takes a big guy, I think, to push it to that next step, and be the WoW version of UO.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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You let your emotions and your personal desires (aka "I want a sandbox MMORPG") precede hard facts once again, that's why all this little anti-wow anti-blizzard speech you repeat all the time doesn't hold water and makes no sense.



And the failures of non-WoW games have nothing to do with the EQ Clone model being bad - it's due to those games sucking bad, making design mistakes WoW didn't make, or just being a steaming pile of bug ridden crap.

Now don't get me wrong. I'd LOVE to see a successful, or at least a good game, that's doesn't follow the EQ/WOW clone model, but manages to make an "UO2" instead.

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-Mithan- posted:

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My thoughts?  I like where they went with this.  It adds purpose to the game and it makes you feel like you are actually doing something.  Plus, I find the quests far more interesting. 

I hated the old scatter gun approach.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Games like e.g. Vanguard could have easily taken a big portion of WoW's market if the technical realization of the game hadn't been so bad.

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But I don't agree with that. I don't think it ever could have.

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Opinions are like buttholes.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Bold part is assumption again

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Foojo posted:

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If you are replicating UO, make sure that are plenty of trees to bump into and get caught on.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Let's take two sentences out of a post and ignore the annoying arguments.

But whatever - resume your trolling and making yourself ridiculous with your doomsday theories

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Blisteringballs posted:

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I think their use of the phasing tech to tell a specific narrative to many different players at their own pace is a major leap forward for MMOs.

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Blisteringballs posted:

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I think their use of the phasing tech to tell a specific narrative to many different players at their own pace is a major leap forward for MMOs.

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Blisteringballs posted:

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It would be different in that you wouldn't see the other players who are also in your current phase, nor would you be able to interact or party with them. What would you change specifically? I get the gist of your statement, but I can't think of away they could change it, in the manner I think you're suggesting, and still preserve the content for new players. They want to get some life out of the content, after all.

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