whats wrong with wow?

[OJtheLIONKing]

WoW's not so bad. I, like many of the people in this thread and that remain on this forum, was a FFXI player who swore off WoW for years. I tried it a bit after BC came out and quite enjoyed myself for a bit, but only got to lvl30 before I went back to FFXI. I got bored with FFXI a year or two later and came back to WoW, and this time leveled all the way to 80 in WoTLK, and the endgame was what I found much more satisfying than the grind to level. Incidentally, this also made my already weary attitude towards FFXI's grind turn into a complete refusal to put up with hours of boring tedium anymore.

I think what a lot of FFXI players do is confuse tedium with difficulty, and they are far from the same thing. Yes, it's quicker to level in WoW, but that means you get to the beefy endgame sooner. It's more satisfying than guild war's near-nonexistant leveling curve but much more forgiving than FFXI's until recently, or FFXIV's post-20 curve. Yeah, it takes forever to get anything done in FFXI's endgame, but it often isn't really hard, it just takes forever. Yeah, you get gear more easily in WoW, but by the same token you don't spend weeks or months doing endgame and have very little to show for it. This helps motivate you to stay engaged. Aside from this, I've had to put up with much less drama due to the need vs greed lotting rules, it's much easier to put together a group for large scale pve stuff, the gui is great and heavily customizable, you have better methods of travel with flying mounts, and you have a legitimate sense of power after you get geared.

It's not perfect. The graphics will make you want to pull your eyes out if you're used to FFXIV, people can be quite annoying (but they are in any online game), people think gear>skill even more than FFXI, and until recently there wasn't much of a unifying storyline for the quests you were doing.

Still, despite what grouchy people on this and other MMO forums may be, WoW has controlled more than half the market singlehandedly for 6 years for a reason, and the reason isn't that the players are all "stupid sheep." Blizzard often takes the best ideas from other games and their mod community and implements them into their game. Some call it "stealing" but MMOs borrow from each other all the time. The trick, I think, is to learn the lessons from WoW and other MMOs and put an FF twist on them. And we, as a community, need to stop rejecting ideas from other MMOs simply because they're not FFXI and embrace good ideas when they show themselves. I think Yoshi-P understands this concept, but he may be swayed by a vocal minority on this forum, and that'd be bad for the game.

[weeble]

meh hardest part for wow games for me is keyboard moving instead of controller lol. on top there casual players, any of u with key skills might as well be playing computers over half the player base. it probably the main(not only obviously) thing that will separate skilled players.

also wow is like letting me sleep with all your girlfriends and u just jump to your wife. ffxi and ffxiv will have a long path to get to the gear you want and that feeling of joy.

[Abriael]

FFXI has bad apples too, it just didnt seems THAT many because FFXI didnt have THAT many players compare to WoW.

The "wow has more players, so it has more bad players" is a commonly used excuse, but a flawed one. Ststistically, having more players will increase the absolute number of bad players, but it shouldn't increase their percentage.
The problem is that the percentage of "bad apples" in wow is much, much higher than in any other MMORPG (or online community at that) I've ever been part of.

I could write an essay on the reason for this (it's actually a quite interesting marketing related study case), since there are multiple, and all conspire to create a quite complex scenario that leads to the horrible community everyone can see. Some come directly from the gameplay, some from the marketing behind it.

1: WoW inherited directly a large part of the old battlenet from Diablo and Warcraft. One of the worst dens of cheaters, exploiters and generally immature players to ever taint the net

2: wow's art direction, graphics style and environment seem to be made on purpose to appease the lower end of the age spectrum. Walt Disney wouldn't have designed Azeroth any different. The horde has so many mitigating factors to their savagery and malice (more often than not reduced to comedic relief) that they could easily be renamed "the fruity horde", and so forth. The Masters of the Universe had a more grim and realistic backstory than WoW. And that says it all.

3: Every mechanic up to the endgame in WoW has been honed and refined to a single goal: no matter if you're a fifth grader or a soccer mom whose most complex gaming experience has been waving a wiimote around. You'll still be able to thrive and prosper in the game (this is what people normally refer as catering to the minimum common denominator of the gaming scenario). This means that the community is largely impacted by a wide percentage of people that simply lack the background and preparation to interact with an online social environment. Any possible (very relatively) challenging element that would normally weed out or discourage those categories of people is purposedly concentrated in the endgame, where players have already invested too much time and money on their characters to actually considering quitting without very compelling reasons.

3a: the above point creates a radical divide in the endgame between "core" gamers and casual gamers. The first category tries it's hardest to exclude and ignore the second, and the second reacts by trying their hardest to troll and annoy the first

4: between the fact that any player can easily solo to the endgame, the ease to switch servers and even to change names, players are not nearly encouraged to keep a respectful and friendly attitude towards each other. WoW is probably the MMORPG out there that gives you the most chances to behave like a complete prick with your fellow players, and still be able to get by, or even start anew with a clean slate. This means that the ones with a natural aggressive or rude inclination will not have any eelement discouraging them from letting it run amock, short of actions that would require GM intervention. And there's plenty behaviors that don't go as far as warranting the intervention of a GM, but can still be extremely annoying and disruptive.

There are many more factors, but listing them all would really turn this post in an essay. So I'll stop here. I think the scenario is already grim enough without filling further a glass that's already overflowing.

[Abriael]

wow hardest mode is pvp = not fighting a computer but a human. that's very challenging.

That's not wow's mechanics being hard. It's player vs player competition that's generally harder. It doesn't add to the difficulty of the game.

There's nothing in wow that's harder than the same thing in any other MMORPG.

[viion]

In the end all i see it as is 2 different sports team, they hate each other and both play differently, some more popular than others. In the end they'll always be competition between them and the fans will fight.

As for talking about the game itself both suck, both are good, just games and which one is better is all down to personal choice.

[Sushi]

1: WoW inherited directly a large part of the old battlenet from Diablo and Warcraft. One of the worst dens of cheaters, exploiters and generally immature players to ever taint the net

for me everyone is kid. mature ppl are more mature because they act more mature, but deep in their heart they are still kids. Being mature is just their way to costume themselves.

there are only 2 different kinds of people, conscious ppl and ignorant ppl.

[Sushi]

That's not wow's mechanics being hard. It's player vs player competition that's generally harder. It doesn't add to the difficulty of the game.

There's nothing in wow that's harder than the same thing in any other MMORPG.

ok your hard mode mechanics= boss has lot of HP, long time to kill, and it hits player very hard

my hard mode mechanics = high frequency of brain activities

[Kimowar]

first I hate the term "WoW Clone" when in fact wow copied many of its aspects and features from other mmo's, theres nothing in wow that wasnt done before it, for me wow is a very solid mmo, however, they did what eq, ac, daoc, ao and ffxi were doing and then dumbed it down, this is a big reason for wow's success, anyone could get on and feel like they were kicking butt, it also attracted alot of kids and adults with child mentality, people who would have never succeeded in old everquest, so in closing there isnt anything wrong with playing wow if thats what you want from a game, I just prefer to work on my rpg's

[Zenaku]

It's not the game it's the players if you play long enough you would see what i mean. Doing anything with people is a joke you see hunter lotting on things they don't really need. If you in a fight with someone for winning a item that don't need they pop out with recount showing best dps. So pretty much saying oh i have best dps shut up it's my item. The player base can care less about the bugs in the game it's full of dumbass people.

If you can get pass the fact that the playerbase sucks then it's not a bad game.

[Abriael]

for me everyone is kid. mature ppl are more mature because they act more mature, but deep in their heart they are still kids. Being mature is just their way to costume themselves.

there are only 2 different kinds of people, conscious ppl and ignorant ppl.

While Physical maturity isn't the only factor to mental maturity, it's still a major factor. Denying it's importance or ever existence is quite flawed logic.

ok your hard mode mechanics= boss has lot of HP, long time to kill, and it hits player very hard

my hard mode mechanics = high frequency of brain activities

So you've measured your brain waves while playing wow and other games?

Playing wow doesn't require any more brain activity than playing any other MMO out there.