Yes I'm ranting. Sue me.

I've been playing this for a good month or so and have come to the conclusion that it is equal parts crap game design and insidious deliberate money grabbing.

The drop rates for loot are so low as to be laughable (kill 10 satyrs to get a single horn which they ALL have).

The game respawns mobs while youre standing there fighting the next lot!

The difficulty levels of quests are so disparate as to be impossible to read.

The draw-in rate is so slow that you will aggro stuff before you see it.

Dying in the game is handled appallingly in every conceivable way; I for one cannot for the life of me understand what the point of resurrection sickness actually is in a non-competitive game.

I just cannot continue with the sheer amount of crap in this game.

I'm so glad I didn't shill the cash to play it, then.

and yet here I am still struggling with the stupid thing.

It really is poor though.

MMORPGs don't do simulation. For various reasons, it just doesn't work out. The artificial intelligence of most games are laughable by Wizardry I standards. WoW is designed in a way that most people can grab almost all concepts, thus understanding the game almost like a tabletop RPG or strategy game.

Experiencing a believable world all alone? Doesn't pay.

believable isn't what I'm looking for. Sensible is.

There are also other issues that spring to mind: the targetting system which doesn't work, the mob density that means just getting back tobase to turn in a quest becomes a nightmare and fraught journey into tedium and conflict, and the sheer boredom of traipsing around with directions that would make Alain Quartermain scratch his head.

Ah, you don't care about the details. Nevermind, from the short time I tried to enjoy that, I've learned one thing: WoW is the modern from of the anarcho-syndicalist farmers from Holy Grail: Every designer gets his shot for a few weeks between patches. Log in, and all you've known might've changed...

(Honestly, that's just bad design. Or the total lack thereof)

It's not that i don't care about the details per se, I just think they've made some startlingly silly and insidious choices.

Have ya tried Lord of the Rings? I'm an Ex-WoWer who made the switch. I like it better, especially if you're more interested in a casual and social experience, neither of which exists in the l33t ub3r kiddeez world of WoW.

Which is rather interesting. LotR is basically a carbon-copy of WoW, especially compared to other possible inspirations like EverQuest, Asheron's Call etc.
The classes are done a bit differently, but all the basic roles are there. Even the rest of the mechanics is eerily close to the market leader.
But for some kind of reason, gameplay is a bit more mature and yes, actual role-playing is bound to occur. This probably comes from the background, and the fact that the kiddies stay at WoW doesn't really hurt either.
The quests are as crappy as the ones done in the world of Azeroth, but due to better descriptions and better scenarios, you don't mind as much.

But let my inner Cato just say this: Hobbits still suck.

Yes, well, to each their own.

Yes, there are alot of similarities to Wow, but they're mechanical. The look and feel is nothing like it, and yes, it does attract the more "mature" crowd. My Kinship (Guild) is majorty 30+, with some in the 40s and 50s. Lots of families play - husband/wife/kids, boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. Everyone helpful and not afraid to ask for help when they need it, and shares materials and loot freely. People stay in the Prancing Pony for hours on end just chatting and RPing. Its a good gig! Not as funas SWG was back when crafting was a true PROFESSION (I played that game for days at a time without drawing a weapon once), but it'll do until something better comes along.

That's the interesting part, I think. Take almost the same engine, but just change the look-and-feel, add some merchandise, and you've got a much more mature game.

Wonder how that will work out for the upcoming Conan game...

Don't know a thing about Conan (the game) but I keep hearing it mentioned. What's so special about it aside from the setting?

Well, the lessons of LotR vs. WoW certainly would apply to Conan. The Hyborian Age is a rather evocative setting, I'd say. No chance of mile-wide shoulder pads and purple buildings there. We'll get dark cults, cities full of debauchery and backstabbing harlots.

On the other hand, they're trying to introduce some new mechanics. This will either make this fail or the best thing since E criticals. There's full collision detection, i.e. characters who won't run through each other and swords that actually hurt the part they're hitting. Formation combat, players founding villages and having sieges, tavern brawls (level-independent PvP) and even some decent thievery going on. And if I remember correctly, you're doing your first 10 or 20 levels on your own, so you'll enter the game with some basic knowledge how to play. Worked fine for LotR.

High hopes, with the definite possibility of a big let-down, if they come up with buggy and/or easily exploitable mechanisms.

Eh, I'm about two months in and still enjoying WoW.  I was a huge fan of the Warcraft series, though, so the look doesn't bug me.  And for the most part I just don't bother with "collect x body parts" quests - they're exercises in frustration.  "Kill X of Y" is about as much as I'll do - at least then a kill's a kill, and you don't have the "My God, these Murlocs exist without heads!" syndrome.

Depends, though.  If I'm going to be in a given area for a while and there'll be incidental kills, collect-body-parts-or-whatever quests aren't quite so bad.

I've also had remarkably good experiences with roleplaying in WoW, though I've played on RP servers (not that that makes MUCH of a difference).  And Hordeside seems better than Alliance for RP'ing, for whatever reason.

Quote from: ErstwhileEh, I'm about two months in and still enjoying WoW.  I was a huge fan of the Warcraft series, though, so the look doesn't bug me.  And for the most part I just don't bother with "collect x body parts" quests - they're exercises in frustration.  "Kill X of Y" is about as much as I'll do - at least then a kill's a kill, and you don't have the "My God, these Murlocs exist without heads!" syndrome.

Depends, though.  If I'm going to be in a given area for a while and there'll be incidental kills, collect-body-parts-or-whatever quests aren't quite so bad.

I've also had remarkably good experiences with roleplaying in WoW, though I've played on RP servers (not that that makes MUCH of a difference).  And Hordeside seems better than Alliance for RP'ing, for whatever reason.

If youre going to ignore the collect x drops from y kills then you are going to be on a slow grind my friend! Not that I blame you, the drop rate is so low it could win limbo contests in flatland.

I've come to the conclusion that the game is a mixture of achievement and tedium. Both in extremis.