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[Lord Snow]

With the new expansion coming up, i was thinking of finally giving this game a chance.

I've pretty much been hating it since 2005, where it made half my Lineage 2 Clan quit and jump ship. It has aweful graphic quality, it's designed in a comic look appealing to kids, it has no pvp content worth mentioning compared to EVE, Lineage, UO and other games based on continuous open world with limited ressource availability to fight over.

But it's still alive, whereas Lineage and UO are not. I'm playing EVE, but it's pve content is aweful and farming doesn't feel gratifying to me without a 0.00046% chance of getting a great drop to be excited about.


While i could not find a thread (tbh i did not bother to scroll through all 16 pages the search found for "World of Warcraft"), i'm certain people here must have played it or are still playing it.
Should i get it? Can i get into it, starting now? I read there's a level 90 boost in the new expansion, but i'd rather start from scratch and experience it all. Will there be people to run those instance with, or whatever the main pve content was?

[Flying Carcass]

I played WoW off and on between classic and mid Cataclysm (also recently returned briefly during a free week offer they had) and enjoyed it. While I mostly played a paladin for most of my time playing WoW, towards the end of Wrath of the Lich King and during Cataclysm I leveled up a bunch of alts so I've got a paladin, hunter, rogue, mage, warrior, and warlock at 85 and a priest at 80 (feel free to ask about any of those classes).

The main difference between WoW and a MMORPG like EVE (another MMO I enjoy) is that WoW's content is more linear than "sandbox" MMOs. That could be good or bad depending on one's outlook; the "themepark" design may feel more confining, but on the other hand there's always something one can do.

Grouping normally occurs in "instances", i.e. dungeons, raids, scenarios (some newfangled thing added in Mists of Pandaria), battlegrounds, and arenas. Pick up groups are normally formed through the instance finder located in the UI; for dungeons and raids it'll automatically pair folks up based on their specialization (tank/damage/healer) and on a first-come-first-serve basis while for battlegrounds it's just first-come. For damage-dealers running dungeons and anyone doing a battleground the queue is normally a few minutes while tanks and healers running dungeons often have near-instant queues (I haven't used it for finding raids so can't comment on the queue times). There are plenty of players in the instance finder at all levels looking to do dungeons and battlegrounds (one gets access to battlegrounds at 10 and dungeons at 15); just note that many folks in dungeons are experienced players looking to quickly level alts and want to run through the dungeon very quickly.

It's my understanding that dungeon finder raids are at the easiest difficulty so max level folks looking for more of a challenge often join raiding guilds to form pre-made groups to run raids at a harder level.

I'd agree that boosting to 90 as a new player would be a mistake; leveling not only allows one to experience most of the game's content, but also allows one to learn the game's nuances and maybe even level up one's crafting skills as one levels (just be are that buying crafting materials (or anything really) off the auction house tends to be ludicrously expensive, so maybe it'd be best for a new player to stick to gathering professions (i.e. mining/skinning/herbalism/fishing); my characters always have one gathering and one crafting profession).

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Honestly. Boosting to 90 as a new level may not be a terrible idea. As more expansions get added people play the old ones less and less. In fact, if you don't boost to 90 for AT LEAST the first 70-80 levels youll be having people run you through missions and at least one of the expansions. its almost like a history of WOW expansions and events, as you go from ahn'qiraj, to outland, to northrend, to post-cataclysm zones, and finally pandaria. All of these have interesting story lines, but what seems to be very few players playing through them as either most people are low-levelled or at the end game. And mentioning Cataclysm, you'll never get to see the pre-cata world, which was pretty fucking cool I think. Of course post-cata is cool too, but you don't get the  fully history. If you can find a large group to go through the entirety of the game with then do it, because it its actually pretty epic. Otherwise, boost and just do stuff retroactively, there are a lot of dungeons and raids that have been rejiggered for levels 80-90.

[nenjin]

I started before Burning Crusade, and quit sometime in WotLK. In truth I went casual before WotLK even released.

Played Rogue as primary. Was part of several weekly raiding groups, was eventually running some of them. I quit the day our group cleared Black Temple, the last piece of BC raiding content out at the time. I enjoyed my time raiding, and harder group dungeons. But I always felt leveling and exploring the new zones was balls. My favorite not-raiding activity was sneaking into high level dungeons solo and trying to take out bosses. Spent A LOT of time skulking around Blackrock Depths at a Lvl 70, seeing which bosses and events I could solo. Did most dungeons beneath that solo as well, although that's not quite such an accomplishment at 70.

I enjoyed my time playing WoW, but it eventually broke me of my love of organized MMO playing. When I was younger and unemployed, it was a great way to kill time. But now I can't even imagine dedicating that much time a week to just one game, let alone week night raids.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I played WoW for years, albeit in a very lite way when you look at how people were basically chained to their PCs till ~2007. I did enjoy it for what it was, an MMO with no shame about what it's going for. The lore is alright, the gameplay is ~good~ [dated now that I think of it, though] and the games been getting more graphic updates so it doesn't look bad anymore. I myself couldn't play it again, except maybe nostalgia to grind to 45 and enjoy the actual game world itself then get bored as I have to grind to whatever arbitrary level cap there was when I was around.

Crazy enough, there's been very few MMOs of the quality and longevity of WoW, and that goes double for anything made past when it was released. except the occassional Korean knockoff. I was thinking of this the other day, WoW still makes millions of dollars monthly because there's been no real alternative to the classic MMO formula they went with. It's a *classic* MMO along the likes of Everquest and UO in my opinion, don't scream at me for that as it's true. The staying power is testament enough to that, so WoW obviously got some things right for a large amount of people.

If you don't mind grinding and can get some good friends and a guild that isn't juvenile it can be a great time. Otherwise the fun tends to peter out around the 'grind to the level cap in order to instance [aka playing the actual late game]' time. Instances and events tend to be awesome, but I think the days past of epic invasions of giants and what-have-you have passed.

And no, I haven't seen post-Cataclysm WoW so I can't comment on that.

[itisnotlogical]

Basically what Nenjin said. It was a great way to kill time when I had no commitments, but now I really don't have the time.

WoW's levelling is actually a bit nonlinear; you just have to ignore the quest chain you're on and go where you want (only really feasible when you have a flying mount, level 60 iirc). I'd frequently get bored with zones and just fly to another area that had roughly the same level requirement as the one I was in.

To be honest, I didn't really mind that it's casual and shallow. It's fun to just tune out and click on shit to gain levels, sort of like the feeling I get playing Pokemon or Final Fantasy.

If you're out of practice, starting at level 90 might do you more harm than good. Each class has like 8-12 core abilities that are introduced in a sequence, and they're only really helpful if you know how to use them all. That's the experience I got with the Death Knight (a hero class which starts at level 60), anyway; maybe I'm just too lazy to git gud.

I don't see what's wrong with the "comic look appealing to kids". I thought the game looked great pre-WLoD.

[nenjin]

I actually wouldn't play WoW when it first came out, based solely on the look. Tried the initial demo and started as a Night Elf, and hated the aesthetic so much I uninstalled right there. I only started later because friends drew me in with tales of Zul'Garub, ect....I've never liked Blizzard's art style from WC3 on and WoW basically standardized that look. "Blizzard Color Theory" and all that. Even in the darkest areas like the Ruins of Lordaeron still had a cartoony look too, and it never ceased to bug me until the day I quit.

[Cthulhu]

I started before Burning Crusade, and quit sometime in WotLK. In truth I went casual before WotLK even released.

Played Rogue as primary. Was part of several weekly raiding groups, was eventually running some of them. I quit the day our group cleared Black Temple, the last piece of BC raiding content out at the time. I enjoyed my time raiding, and harder group dungeons. But I always felt leveling and exploring the new zones was balls. My favorite not-raiding activity was sneaking into high level dungeons solo and trying to take out bosses. Spent A LOT of time skulking around Blackrock Depths at a Lvl 70, seeing which bosses and events I could solo. Did most dungeons beneath that solo as well, although that's not quite such an accomplishment at 70.

I enjoyed my time playing WoW, but it eventually broke me of my love of organized MMO playing. When I was younger and unemployed, it was a great way to kill time. But now I can't even imagine dedicating that much time a week to just one game, let alone week night raids.

For real.  On one hand it's a huge time sink.  On the other hand once you're max level it stops being a huge time sink because you have a few things to do (Get whatever dailies you want to do, get your conquest points for the week, do your crafting and AH shit) and you can accomplish all that with maybe an hour a day.

And then it stops being a giant time sink and starts being a shitty four hour a week job you pay to have.

And that's worse.

I also liked soloing bosses.  It's not as cool when stat inflation means Ragnaros is weaker than a level 90 world mob, but there's still some good ones.  I soloed the tank boss in 25-man Uldum and the chess match in Karazhan, both widely considered impossible at the time (I think they've since changed the Uldum boss though)

ALso, I heard they squished stats down to Wrath levels, is that true?

[Flying Carcass]

The stat squish is a bit wonky, imo. During my free week I found myself choosing Burning Crusade crafted greens over WoTLK dungeon blues and even some Hyjal quest greens because either the stats were flat out better or the item set bonus made keeping the old items much better than replacing them.

[nenjin]

The stat squish is a bit wonky, imo. During my free week I found myself choosing Burning Crusade crafted greens over WoTLK dungeon blues and even some Hyjal quest greens because either the stats were flat out better or the item set bonus made keeping the old items much better than replacing them.

That was Blizzard's way of fighting power inflation. Basically, your level is a coefficient on top of your item buffs. So as you level, you need progressively bigger bonuses to get to the same level of performance because the leveling coefficient becomes more and more penalizing. (Imagine, at 60, you get 100% of your crit/hit/attack rating. At 61, you get 95%. At 62, 85%. At 63, 70%. Ect...(not actual values)) Otherwise people would become ungodly OP. Everyone complained in BC about this issue, but to no avail. The stat distribution on items also blew until like....midway through BC dungeons. So you'd get greens with one stat weighted ridiculously high, and none of the other stats you needed to stay balanced.

And this is AFTER Blizzard went from straight stats (Your ACTUAL Crit Chance, your ACTUAL Hit Chance) to Crit and Hit Rating, as yet another coefficient between gear and the absolute stat value you got from.

I don't necessarily blame them as a game going that long is guaranteed to outstrip its original design and require changes. But the way Blizzard did it still never sat right with me. It was a set of giant nerfs to everyone across the board in order to reign in their own power inflation.

[Flying Carcass]

The stat squish is a bit wonky, imo. During my free week I found myself choosing Burning Crusade crafted greens over WoTLK dungeon blues and even some Hyjal quest greens because either the stats were flat out better or the item set bonus made keeping the old items much better than replacing them.

That was Blizzard's way of fighting power inflation. Basically, your level is a coefficient on top of your item buffs. So as you level, you need progressively bigger bonuses to get to the same level of performance because the leveling coefficient becomes more and more penalizing. (Imagine, at 60, you get 100% of your crit/hit/attack rating. At 61, you get 95%. At 62, 85%. At 63, 70%. Ect...(not actual values)) Otherwise people would become ungodly OP. Everyone complained in BC about this issue, but to no avail. The stat distribution on items also blew until like....midway through BC dungeons. So you'd get greens with one stat weighted ridiculously high, and none of the other stats you needed to stay balanced.

And this is AFTER Blizzard went from straight stats (Your ACTUAL Crit Chance, your ACTUAL Hit Chance) to Crit and Hit Rating, as yet another coefficient between gear and the absolute stat value you got from.

I don't necessarily blame as a game going that long is guaranteed to outstrip its original design and require changes. But the way Blizzard did it still never sat right with me. It was a set of giant nerfs to everyone across the board in order to reign in their own power inflation.

I remember what you're describing and you're 100% correct, however Cthulu was referring to a recent change (as of the latest patch, I believe) where Blizzard sought to deflate all numbers across the board, so instead of an attack doing 10,000 damage one would do 1,000 while a boss may go from 1,000,000 HP to 100,000 HP. However, it seems Blizz deflated stats on various stuff by varying percentages, so some higher iLvl items wound up worse than some lower iLvl items, at least in my experience.


On a side note, I discovered one change to the game that was the greatest addition Blizz ever made to the game: The reagent bank. It's a special bank tab the size of one's regular bank (not counting additional bag slots) wherein one can dump all those reagents one collects and hoards in the event that one day one of those things will come in useful or until one gets around to crafting stuff. Huge QoL improvement, IMO.

[Bluerobin]

I think they did something similar to the Death Knight experience with the boost to level 90 thing, in that I think they drip feed the important abilities in the order you'd get them so you have some sort of ability to wrap your ahead around them. That was the plan the last time I looked into it at least, although that was a long time ago.

I've been sitting here at work all day just waiting to go home and play the expansion. With a bunch of quality of life changes (the reagent bank; a Collections tab for all the fun, random, mostly cosmetic items that used to clutter up my inventory; the stat squish; updating/removing abilities to get rid of clutter), updated character models for most of the races (which have been in for a few weeks, but I haven't played much since I was a bit tired of the last expansion's content by now), and all the new story/zones/quests plus the garrisons (neat little towns you build up as you level) I just want to finally play it.

[Cthulhu]

Yes, I heard they were going to, with the new expansion, do something to bring actual stat numbers down to Wrath levels. 

It's like, when BC came out anything less than Naxxramas tier sets was worse than the quest greens you got in the first zone, so you went in like 20 minutes from looking like a god of war to looking like a level 30 dumbass.

Then it happened again in Wrath but to a lesser extent as I remember.  Also the gear looked better in Wrath, as I remember the quest gear started conforming more closely to the "sets" that random world drops used, so your guy looked more coherent.

I never played Cata but things got really out of control after that point.  By Panda the progression system pre-85 had fallen apart completely, the dungeons they worked so hard to redo in Cata could be done by two or three people (I remember our tank soloed one of the bosses in Scarlet Monastery when he activated him before we got there and got us locked out), and all those zones they remade were mostly ignored because it was faster to just spam dungeons full tilt.

And Pandaland characters had millions of HP and could hit for three or four hundred thousand damage and the numbers were just such a mess. 

It also broke PvP since stats were so inflated a character needed to be able to more than his own HP per second, so they added in resilience and power but since (when I played) the best PvP gear was like 520 and the best raid gear was over 600, and everyone had automatic PvP resilience even if they never played PvP, a few guys in raid gear could easily kill dozens of fully-kitted dedicated PvP players in world PvP (It was better in battlegrounds because battlegrounds forced gear down to 520 ilvl without giving them the PvP power they'd have with 520 pvp gear but battlegrounds were very much their own disaster in and of themselves)

I haven't seen the Horde win Alterac Valley since Burning Crusade.  That and Isle of Conquest the alliance basically always wins, probably because they're not actually PvP, just mindless races to kill a PvE boss, and also because 90% of Horde players on those maps are bots.  An organized group of just 5-10 dudes can easily win AV by themselves by defending Galvangar, like I said the BG is just a mindless zerg, they have no coordination and if you put up a fight they just give up.

But we have a consolation in that the Horde never loses any of the other BGs except Kotmogu.  Strand of the Ancients and Silvershard Mines in particular the alliance almost never wins.

[Lightning4]

The stat squish is a bit wonky, imo. During my free week I found myself choosing Burning Crusade crafted greens over WoTLK dungeon blues and even some Hyjal quest greens because either the stats were flat out better or the item set bonus made keeping the old items much better than replacing them.

The stat squish is neat, but I feel like Blizzard went kind of... weird on it. It feels like Blizzard put all that work in filling that hole, then they came back with a backhoe and dug it even deeper. It's not so much the values we're at now, it's just how dramatic the changes coming are.

2h weapon dps starts at ~330 dps for epics, vs Mists' 170s. Practically double, but I guess that's okay...
It goes up to a whopping 550 dps. It's dangerously close to double a weapon from the very same expansion. And we're nowhere even close to the final content yet.

In fact, it seems like most stats, not just dps, raise just as dramatically.

There has never been a doubling like this in the middle of any prior expansion, let alone such a rapid one.

I'm not sure this is going to be a good thing.

[Vendayn]

Server issues aside and the resulting, typical cries of nerdy foreseen anger from every MMO and expansion or non-MMO game launch.

And keep in mind, I don't tend to praise WoW...I played it for a long time. Loved BC, Lich King expansion was my favorite for lore reasons. Greatly disliked cataclysm, panderia was even worse and I just skipped that entirely...won't even level ANY character in panderia NO THANKS

WoD has to be my #1 favorite expansion for WoW...overtaking even that of Lich King. It feels so much like Warcraft. The first 30-45 min are kinda linear, and its annoyingly CoD like where they teleport you off the map. But, it does set it up and is kinda epic the first time (maybe twice, not really after that). However, get past that...its rather open-world like. Pretty free to go wherever in a given zone and do quests in whatever order you please. Draenor looks amazing too, they did amazing job on the art there. People complain its too easy, but on my fresh non-boosted 90, its really challenging. Probably overgeared from raids.

I personally like the outpost too. Its kinda pre-placement stuff, but I think its a nice feature that can be expanded on. Gives it that warcraft feel (again).

In honesty, from everything I've seen thus far...its obvious they tried to re-create the Warcraft experience into the MMO. They haven't REALLY done that before in my eyes. And thats why I'm loving the expansion thus far. We'll see how it goes when I'm 100 on my 3 main characters...but 90-100 is by far an amazing experience.

I'm guessing they had a fresh team or new vision or something that liked the old ways more.