Many things have changed and improved within the game between Vanilla, BC & Wrath. Which change that Blizzard released, made a fundamental difference to your gaming experience?Grumble and I first started MMOs on Everquest. I was AutumnWynd, a Woodelf Druid, and Grumble was Feeg, an Ogre Warrior. We played from 2000-2005. It was amazing being gamers all our lives and going from GERDS to console games and then a major leap to actually playing with others online. We had a lot of fun playing with friends and raiding up to Planes of Power. One thing we didnt like was the fact that you couldnt really play Planes of Power zones without a group.
If you wanted to play in areas equivalent to Icecrown or Stormpeaks you needed a group like how WoW players have groups for instances. Farming mats or Platnium, EQs top currancy, ment you were a good solo class or you had to go with others.
Being a Druid I could charm kite, mind controling an animal to be my tank, or "root rotting", rooting the target and DoTing them to death, was easy to do in Plane of Storms or Plane of Nightmare. I loved to kite and became really good at it. The key was mobs never hit me but if they did I was dead in 2-3 hits.
Feeg on the other hand, being a Warrior, could not do much damage and it took so long to kill mobs that he needed a healer. Many times mobs would hit so hard that it was like a tank and healer duoing one of WoWs WOTLK instances.
Once we got into Omens of War content it was even worse. Trying to level up I didnt have the greatest gear. I would get in zone groups with guildies and it felt like I was raid healing. Think of a non geared upper 70 trying to heal ToC. All the fun was taken out of the game for us. We didnt want to stand around in PoK yelling for groups all night.
After we quit EQ we bounced around Shards of Dalaya and Morrowind but we werent really that happy. When playing SoD other players were talking about WoW and saying how solo friendly it was. They said you could level from 1-60 without ever grouping up with people. They also said Hunters were the best class to solo with. We had a problem with WoW because when it was first released many people left EQ, including a good chunk of our friends. We viewed WoW as the game that killed our favorite game. Finally Grumble tried out Warcraft and we were hooked. After he installed the game I went out the next day to get my copy.
I have to say the best thing that Warcraft did to our gaming experience is that it came out in the first place. Blizz looked at the faults of MMOs already released and made a game that had a better engine, soloing friendly, profession friendly, and used instances for raids so everyone could raid and it wasnt a race against other guilds for boss respawns. When people say WoW is a grind and grinding mats, rep, and gear sucks I just have to laugh. EQ was a grind!
When leveling professions, if it wasnt a recipe that was long trivial you would fail and you wouldnt make the item and would lose all mats. Leveling took forever. Progressing took forever because there was no instances. Say you go to raid Onyxia and your guild kills her. She wont respawn for 3 days on the server. Thats right, noone had a chance to kill her again until she respawned. Guilds would have scouts sent out that had inviz and tracking like druids or FD like monks and necromancers to search for bosses that were still up to kill.
Yeah WoW becomes easier and easier but I would rather have a chance at progressing my character without a headache than to deal with the "lets see what we can do to piss off the players" mentality of EQ.
BTW WOW GM wait times are very short. The longest I have had to wait for a GM response is a little over a day. EQ if you tried to talk to a GM about an issue it would take weeks or months to hear anything from them.
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2 comments:
WoW is my first MMO, but from what people say, it does seem like Blizzard studied what was wrong with other games and did the opposite.
Even new MMOs that try to one up WoW seem to fail miserable. A few former guildies of mine decided they were sick of WoW and hit up Aion. For a few days, all I heard were praises for Aion sung from the rooftops. Two weeks, TWO WEEKS later, they were back to playing WoW all the time. From what I'm reading across the blogosphere, my old guildies weren't the only ones to do that.
I can't say I mind WoW getting easier. It changes my endgame focus a bit, but convenience makes the overall game more fun.
I am hearing the same thing about Aion and other random games. People think they are great at first but keep coming back to WoW.
Some of the big things Blizz did was make a really good game engine so there isnt really any lag. Think of Dalaron lag at 7pm and that was how most of the gameplay on Everquest was. Also with the Instances and Phased areas they made it so more people can enjoy an area without having to fight other groups for mobs.
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