No, not gonna do the copy-paste thing. Just pointing out the link, and recommending that you watch the WOW LFG Documentary. WOW's community, for all the shit, is still one of the best around.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;797460No, not gonna do the copy-paste thing. Just pointing out the link, and recommending that you watch the WOW LFG Documentary. WOW's community, for all the shit, is still one of the best around.

Egads, I hope not.

Maybe it's just me, but even the (increasingly rare) good PUGs feel like a gang of 12- to 15-year-olds hopped up on energy drinks and Ritalin. I don't get the chance to explore or even watch the damn cutscenes/dialogue. I got turned off tanking (Guardian Druid, then Protection Warrior) because people couldn't wait a few seconds for me to build aggro, and I regularly got blamed for the ensuing wipes. And when I did everything right, some healers would complain that I was taking damage too fast (huh?).

I switched to DPS builds and even then I got shit for being undergeared, cranking out low DPS, not knowing boss fight mechanics by heart (remember, I'm talking non-Heroic LFG) or whatever.

I want to do group PvE content but it's so goddamn frustrating.

This is why GW2 with the scripted group events out in the open world, and the lack of "holy trinity" roles, has been so much fun (even with the underwhelming storyline and uncanny valey graphics). And even there I'm still leery of doing dungeons.

I'll look into the documentary, though.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;797460No, not gonna do the copy-paste thing. Just pointing out the link, and recommending that you watch the WOW LFG Documentary. WOW's community, for all the shit, is still one of the best around.

Given how bad Trade Chat is, that's kind of a scary thought.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;797645Given how bad Trade Chat is, that's kind of a scary thought.

The community is much larger than /2 or the official forums. With Twitch, and now Hitbox, the WOW community embraced streaming (and YouTube videos) like you would not believe. Podcasts specifically for WOW, done by and for the community, are growing like weeds. (I follow three: Convert To Raid, Final Boss, and The Edge.) Hell, there are podcasts specifically for a specific guild (The Converted) and a general community-interest show (Tauren Think Tank).

Cosplayers, fan-artists, lore nerds (Nobbel the Nobel, out of Denmark, makes being a lore nerd sexy; he's getting his own fangirls now- and we already have Red Shirt Guy), the surprising intersection of Dudes and WOW (Swifty and Bajeera, both of which are actually decent guys), and plenty of women doing it because they're both into it and good at it. (I mod for such a streamer.) All of this is in the WOW community now, and far more visible due to streaming and videos. Hell, we've got good music parody artists (Silver Letomi is the current top-act of this set, followed by Sharm; Nyhm's out of the game.), and so many of the parody videos and movie guys are still around (Crendor) that they've inspired their own fans to do collaborations (This Frozen parody is far better than it should be.)- which, in turn, gets Blizzard's attention and has led to getting hired.

There is NOTHING in the tabletop world like it. Hell, there is nothing in the videogame world like it- and as many WOW players are Blizzard loyalists, a certain degree of overlap (especially with Hearthstone) occurs. No other company routinely runs its own two-day convention, which is also a live PPV event, and gets away with it being as much a beloved fan/game con as SDCC or Dreamhack (or, for us, GenCon). Being in the WOW community is where is action is, and I am a very proud warrior for the Horde. (Yeah, I cheered when Method won this year's live raid race, again. FOR THE HORDE!) Unlike WOTC's screwups, the Warcraft movie is entirely made by competent fans FOR THE FANS. (And yes, the movie panels were good enough to get that across; they care, as Petey does with Middle-Earth, and it does show.)

To get this anywhere else, you have do the Comic Con circuit and hope the big fan orgs turn out in strength or hit the dedicated local general fan cons (like CONvergence here in Minneapolis) and hope for the same from local fan orgs.

And here I was thinking "the community" meant the people actually playing the game. Silly me.

It's great to see people sharing their enthusissm for WoW — it just turned 10, some kids grew up with it — but all the enlightened and loving fandom on Earth doesn't mean jack if people are still dicks to each other on PUGs.

Quote from: The Butcher;797763And here I was thinking "the community" meant the people actually playing the game. Silly me.

It's great to see people sharing their enthusiasm for WoW — it just turned 10, some kids grew up with it — but all the enlightened and loving fandom on Earth doesn't mean jack if people are still dicks to each other on PUGs.

This is where you're getting it wrong. The community is no longer confined to just playing the game.

And I do mean "just". The community now has the means to remain engaged with World of Warcraft, in ways that they--not Blizzard--control, other than being logged into the game and playing it as Blizzard intends. Blizzard, to their credit, saw that this was an excellent way to generate positive public relations and brand engagement and embraced this on the community's terms; the sheer number of community figures welcomed by Blizzard over the past few years, and again this past weekend at BlizzCon, astounds me- WotC would never do this, and Paizo won't either.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;797659The community is much larger than /2 or the official forums. With Twitch, and now Hitbox, the WOW community embraced streaming (and YouTube videos) like you would not believe. Podcasts specifically for WOW, done by and for the community, are growing like weeds. (I follow three: Convert To Raid, Final Boss, and The Edge.) Hell, there are podcasts specifically for a specific guild (The Converted) and a general community-interest show (Tauren Think Tank).

Cosplayers, fan-artists, lore nerds (Nobbel the Nobel, out of Denmark, makes being a lore nerd sexy; he's getting his own fangirls now- and we already have Red Shirt Guy), the surprising intersection of Dudes and WOW (Swifty and Bajeera, both of which are actually decent guys), and plenty of women doing it because they're both into it and good at it. (I mod for such a streamer.) All of this is in the WOW community now, and far more visible due to streaming and videos. Hell, we've got good music parody artists (Silver Letomi is the current top-act of this set, followed by Sharm; Nyhm's out of the game.), and so many of the parody videos and movie guys are still around (Crendor) that they've inspired their own fans to do collaborations (This Frozen parody is far better than it should be.)- which, in turn, gets Blizzard's attention and has led to getting hired.

There is NOTHING in the tabletop world like it. Hell, there is nothing in the videogame world like it- and as many WOW players are Blizzard loyalists, a certain degree of overlap (especially with Hearthstone) occurs. No other company routinely runs its own two-day convention, which is also a live PPV event, and gets away with it being as much a beloved fan/game con as SDCC or Dreamhack (or, for us, GenCon). Being in the WOW community is where is action is, and I am a very proud warrior for the Horde. (Yeah, I cheered when Method won this year's live raid race, again. FOR THE HORDE!) Unlike WOTC's screwups, the Warcraft movie is entirely made by competent fans FOR THE FANS. (And yes, the movie panels were good enough to get that across; they care, as Petey does with Middle-Earth, and it does show.)

To get this anywhere else, you have do the Comic Con circuit and hope the big fan orgs turn out in strength or hit the dedicated local general fan cons (like CONvergence here in Minneapolis) and hope for the same from local fan orgs.

I played WoW for 5 years, and just stopped a few months ago.  I was a member of a couple of great guilds.  I'm still plugged into (and a member of) the MMO blogosphere, so I know what you're talking about.  I know several people who went to BlizzCon, and more people who subbed to the livestream.

But.

WoW is not an Up With People game. I've seen some nice things happen in game, but more and more frequently I've seen some really shitty things done by some really shitty people with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.  I can think of at least three MMOs offhand whose players on average behave better in game than WoW.  (LOTRO, SWTOR, and GW2.)  It took me two years to run into a rage quitter when pugging SWTOR flashpoints; it took me three weeks in WoW, and that was back in the day before the LFG tool, when supposedly people were more willing to stick out an instance because they assembled them via chat channels.

There's a reason why Wowcrendor's YouTube videos on PUGs and BGs are so popular: everybody knows that guy, the stereotypical idiot that you run into throughout the game.  The problem is that he's no longer just an outlier, but more of a common sight.  I quit running Heroic instances in Cata because I got tired of all the drama, and I gave up PVE group content entirely in Mists when the jerks moved on to LFR.  (That, and the little issue that Blizz decided to start de-emphasizing instances in favor of a combination of LFR and Scenarios.)

The Butcher is right; all of this outside-of-game stuff matters little if people are jerks in-game.  Blizzard needs bodies subscribing or they won't make new content, and Blizzard's seeming inability to police the idiots in-game makes their job of keeping subs up that much more difficult.

The people who attend BlizzCon are the hardest of the hard core fanboys/fangirls.  Of the millions who have played Blizzard games, only 20k or so go to BlizzCon.  I expect Blizzard to cater to them and make the con about them, because they can't risk alienating these fans.  But at the same time, Blizzard has on occasion listened to these fans too much, which resulted in Cataclysm (and to a lesser extent, Mists).

Cataclysm was Blizzard's 4e, although some would also argue Diablo 3 as well.  WoW was at it's height at the beginning of Cata, and the renewed emphasis on making things "more hardcore" and streamlining the questing and revamping the Old World backfired.*  Blizz listened to the complaints of a few hardcore fans, tailored the game to suit them, and lost a good portion of their subscriber base.  The difference is that Cata's code isn't something you can simply ignore like WotC can by releasing 5e; the best Blizz can do is provide you an instant L90 (and the paid service to level up to L90) so you can bypass all of the Cata and Mists zones.  

And the Warcraft movie?  Peter Jackson's LOTR was a labor of love, but so were the Dungeons and Dragons movies.  Plot and dialogue aren't exactly Blizzard's strong points, and I've got this bad feeling that Warcraft's dialogue is going to make The Phantom Menace look like King Lear.



*This is a lesson that apparently the creators of Wildstar failed to learn, too.

God. Wildstar.

Yeah.

I'm currently playing Bayonetta 2. I've currently equipped the titular character with a magic chainsaw on each hand...and one on each foot.

Needless to say, I'm enjoying the hell out of this game.

I wisely decided to skip Sonic Boom and instead got Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.

So far really fun. Nothing formula breaking. The new character powers are a nice little bit of diversity. Level design is really good so far and difficulty is pretty good (I've died a few times trying to get timing right but have never felt absolutly stuck).

Quote from: Alzrius;797938I'm currently playing Bayonetta 2. I've currently equipped the titular character with a magic chainsaw on each hand...and one on each foot.

Needless to say, I'm enjoying the hell out of this game.

Is bayonetta 1 worth it or should I just skip straight to 2?

Quote from: Piestrio;797949Is bayonetta 1 worth it or should I just skip straight to 2?

In terms of comparison between the two games, the original Bayonetta is very much in the same vein as its sequel; in that regard, if you think you'll like the second one, the first one is definitely worth it. Other than the sequel having an online mode (which is for short competition bouts of who can kill more enemies faster), the differences between the two games are just a handful of minor details (e.g. the first game doesn't have magic chainsaws...that I've found yet, at least).

That said, this is likely to be something of a moot point. If you buy Bayonetta 2 as a physical disc for the Wii U, it includes a port of the first game for free (if you buy the game as a download, it comes with a coupon for a download of the port of the first game, though I'm not totally certain how much it's for).

Quote from: Will;797930God. Wildstar.

Yeah.

My beef with Wildstar was that it couldn't decide what it wanted to be: lighthearted, slapstick fun or grimdark good vs. evil.  Regardless, Wildstar's stated goal of being Old School in the hard, grindy, attunements from hell sort of way had very limited appeal.  Those people who kept telling the Wildstar team that they were going to do well helped to create that disaster.

The thing is, Wildstar isn't a bad game.  MMO players, however, are used to the F2P model (or GW2's buy once and play forever model) with maybe having one subscription based MMO in their stable.  Wildstar had to be, well, easier to play if they were going to peel enough players from WoW's subscriber base.

Yeah, Wildstar was glaringly short on a slew of QoL stuff.

You can't invite someone to your guild unless both folks are online. Subscription and micro transactions. Heavy raid focus. Lots of servers. Highly level-banded content. Limited replay. Fighting over nodes.

The classes and visuals and story are great (engineer evil robot in power suit mode? JOY). But ultimately not enough to put up with it.

If it was f2p I would have played long enough to give them some money before hitting high levels and losing interest.
As it was, I played with friend code long enough to figure out the above and spent $0.

Way to go, guys!

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;797784This is where you're getting it wrong. The community is no longer confined to just playing the game.

Like I said, I'm happy that people are getting their WoW geek on, and even happier to see a big corp like Blizzard being actively supportive of their passionate paying public. If we were so dismissive of people as to define them by their fandoms, I don't think I would make the cut as a "WoW geek" even though I've enjoyed quite a few hours of game play, and keeping vaguely up to date the fictional canon ("lore") is an occasional guilty pleasure of mine.

But the fact of the matter remains that the "community" of people debating the finer points of WoW canon, or streaming WoW instance playthroughs, or doing WoW machinima parodies of music videos, are a tiny fraction of the people actually playing WoW, and their efforts, however passionate and heartwarming, do nothing for the casual player who wants to get into WoW.

I'm not 100% sure you get to define what a game's "community" looks and feels like by cherry-picking its most creative and enthusiastic minority, especially when they are clearly not representative, in their openness and enthusiasm, of the average shithead that'll join your PUG and completely drain you of any enthusiasm for the game itself because he or she (and I quote) doesn't "have the fucking time to shepherd you nubz through this instance" because he's "a goal-driven farmer", or "can't believe a fucking mexican is tanking us thru this, this is a serious fight" or the ever-popular "druid tank? lol Im outta here".

Yeah, online gaming can suck anywhere, but WoW nowadays seems to be a particularly fertile breeding ground for this sort of idiocy. I don't get this shit on GW2 (yet).

Quote from: flyerfan1991;797869WoW is not an Up With People game. I've seen some nice things happen in game, but more and more frequently I've seen some really shitty things done by some really shitty people with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.  

(...)

The people who attend BlizzCon are the hardest of the hard core fanboys/fangirls.  Of the millions who have played Blizzard games, only 20k or so go to BlizzCon.  I expect Blizzard to cater to them and make the con about them, because they can't risk alienating these fans.  But at the same time, Blizzard has on occasion listened to these fans too much, which resulted in Cataclysm (and to a lesser extent, Mists).

Yeah, we're pretty much on the same page with all of this.