World of Warcraft

[Skorpion9x]

<rant>

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really starting to hate the achievement system. All it is is a super fucking time sink, and a way for Blizzard to lazily add more "content." As a raider, it only leads me to burnout and makes me very bitter about raiding and the game in general. In the past, when a new raid zone was released, you would go there and learn all the bosses, which would take a bit of time for most raid guilds since they were actually somewhat challenging naturally. And then you would farm the instance and have some days off so you can enjoy a break from the game and raiding for most of the week, because you were only taking one or two days to clear everything. Then a new instance would come out and you'd do it all over again. Those were good days.

Now we have WotLK, where they tried to make raiding more accessible for the casuals. First of all, the only real new raid content we got is two single boss encounters (three if you cound Archavon). And then we got Naxx, a completely dumbed down to retardation version of its original glory. I swear, raiding the original Naxx in a 40 man level 70 raid group was more challenging than the mind-numbing garbage it is today. But it's okay, because Ulduar is already in the works, to be released nearly half a freaking year later! Plenty of time to farm Naxx, right? But instead of just farming it, since they made normal (10 man) and heroic (25 man), we get to farm it TWICE a week. As if raiding it at 60 and 70 wasn't enough already. But wait, there's more... instead of just farming it and getting it over with, we have these fucking achievements now. So you don't just go in and kill shit and have the week off. You have to bang your fucking head against the wall for these stupid fucking achievements all the time.

Lately, I found myself logging on only on Tuesday and Wednesday to clear shit, and I'd log off right after raids ended to avoid being asked to do a 10 man raid. This only lasted about two weeks until I logged onto my guild forum and found a post from the GM about raid performance and attendance. One line read, "Tanks. You are needed for 10 man content as well as 25 man. Maybe you have everything you need, but if you cannot make yourselves available to help others - what's the point in keeping you here?" So now my position in this guild is in jeopardy because I don't want to do 10 man (read: casual) raids in my 25 man progression raid guild. I honestly almost don't care at all. On one hand, I want to stick around and see the upcoming raid zones, but on the other, I know that it's going to be full of even more achievement-ridden garbage that will have me clearing everything twice a week pounding out achievements that I don't care about. I'm seriously considering cancelling my subscription at this point, or maybe just going casual or something.

</rant>

[Kulli]

^this

I miss BC.

And Naxx really is piss easy, I swear Kara was harder than this

[Kulli]

double post because I want to

HOLY SHIT I MISS OWNING BGs BACK PRE-WRATH

I want 2.4 back goddamn it

[Skorpion9x]

double post because I want to

HOLY SHIT I MISS OWNING BGs BACK PRE-WRATH

I want 2.4 back goddamn it

I miss owning the crossroads pre-BGs. I actually went there tonight out of boredom and stirred up some action. It was a great time, I killed a bunch of NPCs to get people to show up. Most at first were 70 or in the mid 70s, but there was an 80 hunter early on, and an 80 DK. Later they were gone, but an 80 elemental shaman showed up, and some 70 hunters, and a 70 holy paladin. I would sit up in the tower and wait for them to come to me, then pop berserk with them all in the little room up there and just mow them all down haha. If I fought them outside where they could all spread out, they could kill me. They got me a few times by death gripping me from the tower down to them. In the end, it was me against an 80 warrior, 80 DK, the 80 shaman, 76 DK and some other lower levels (70 paladin, 60 mage, etc). That was a little bit too much for me. Just a little .

[Sneaky]

This seems to happen with every good MMO, it just takes time.. Seeing all the people that have played it since day one/earlier than most, looking at the new expansions and updates as nerfing and dumbing-down of the game. Example most strongly as Star wars galaxies.. now look at it, no one plays it haha. I doubt that will happen to WoW seeing as how many people actually pay to play this huge ass game. Plus, blizzard should know what it's doing by now, and hopefully won't piss off it's long-time most-loyal customers.

[Kulli]

I miss owning the crossroads pre-BGs. I actually went there tonight out of boredom and stirred up some action. It was a great time, I killed a bunch of NPCs to get people to show up. Most at first were 70 or in the mid 70s, but there was an 80 hunter early on, and an 80 DK. Later they were gone, but an 80 elemental shaman showed up, and some 70 hunters, and a 70 holy paladin. I would sit up in the tower and wait for them to come to me, then pop berserk with them all in the little room up there and just mow them all down haha. If I fought them outside where they could all spread out, they could kill me. They got me a few times by death gripping me from the tower down to them. In the end, it was me against an 80 warrior, 80 DK, the 80 shaman, 76 DK and some other lower levels (70 paladin, 60 mage, etc). That was a little bit too much for me. Just a little .

I wasn't around pre-BGs (I started during patch 2.0) so my preferences are limited to Jan 07 on.

I even put on my old S2 gear in SW because of nostalgia.

WTS my account, has epix

[Korremar]

There's always other games, Skor.

[Kulli]

There's always other games, Skor.

HOLY SHIT WHAT GAME COULD YOU MEAN

[Korremar]

HOLY SHIT WHAT GAME COULD YOU MEAN

EVERQUEST, CLEARLY

[Spectere]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm really starting to hate the achievement system. All it is is a super fucking time sink, and a way for Blizzard to lazily add more "content." As a raider, it only leads me to burnout and makes me very bitter about raiding and the game in general.

wha.  How does the achievement system lead to any sort of burnout?  If you don't like it, just ignore it.

Re: Dumbing down the game

Can't say I've experienced that (yet) but...yeah.  I was amazed at how much 2.3/2.4 dumbed quests down (i.e. enemies that were previously elite were made non-elite, etc).

The biggest thing that kills me about WotLK are the stability issues and general problems.  3.0.8 basically broke the game for me.  For whatever reason it broke the install when I used my downloaded WoW/BC and WotLK DVD, forcing me to download 6.5 fucking gigabytes of content so that I could get a relatively bug-free installation (as in, not crashing all over Northrend).  As far as I know, the Barrens still crashes on my computer (and, apparently, it's my computer's fault).

*sigh*

[Skorpion9x]

How do achievements lead to burnout? I thought I explained it in my post. Anyway, before achievements, a raid guild would go into a new instance and bang their heads against the walls to learn the encounters. Once an encounter was learned and consistently killable without trouble, it was on farm status. Once you had the current raid content on farm, you would be in and out really fast, just clearing it without trouble, and have the rest of the week off to relax.

Since the achievement system is put into place, now you go into a new raid and bang your head against the wall learning it. Once you can do a fight well, there's probably at least one or two achievements that involve gimping yourself somehow for that same encounter, so you have to continue banging your head against the wall for that same encounter that you would otherwise just be farming.

Take Malygos for example. There's the fight itself, and then two achievements that require you to gimp or stack the raid group - the 20 man achievement "A Poke in the Eye," and the 6 minute kill "You don't have an eternity." First you learn the fight in a 25 man raid group. Once you do that, you farm it for some time until people are good at it and well geared. Then you probably do the 20 man next, which isn't that hard, but is still kinda tough. Especially if there are people in the raid with sub-par dps or who suck at using the drakes in phase 3. You would probably wipe at least a few times on this unless you're in a really good guild (which sadly isn't the case for my guild anymore... most of the good people left just before WotLK). Once you do that... two or three times so you can get the people who were left out the achievement in subsequent raids, then you get to work on the 6 minute kill, which is a bit tougher. So basically on this one boss, you go through three phases of learning and relearning the encounter. It gets annoying after a while wiping to something that should be on farm status. Now imagine doing all of that on 10 man raids as well as 25 man. And from what I've read about Ulduar, a lot of bosses in there will have Hard Modes. Plus the obligatory 20 man clear of the whole zone. Yay.

Also, sorry to hear about your installation problems (I hope you tried the repair thing before completely reinstalling). I used to have problems in the past with installing the game. I had to reinstall it after nearly every patch long ago (long before tbc). Hell, even my very first installation of the game was screwed up somehow. Though I suppose I'm lucky since I haven't really had to do that at all since TBC. I can't imagine having to reinstall the game, two expansions, and all the freaking patches. That must've really sucked .

[Bobbias]

See, all that wouldn't be a problem if people could stop being so damned obsessed about 100% complete on everything. Christ, if you don't want to participate in some gimped out ridiculous run on something, you shouldn't have to. If my guild told me they'd drop me if I didn't do more, I'd tell them to stop being so damned obsessed about some stupid fucking raid and quit acting like a bunch of asshats.

Seriously, if something is no longer making the game fun any more, and you have the option to ignore it and do things how you want, why the fuck should someone be able to force you into doing it when it's no longer fun? That is just ridiculous.

[NewF]

73 UD strat runs later.....I finally got it! w0000000t.

[Kulli]

you are a male human

how I chortle

[Spectere]

See, all that wouldn't be a problem if people could stop being so damned obsessed about 100% complete on everything.

Yeah, pretty much this.  I generally go after achievements either when they're fairly easy, not too out of the way, cheap, or I'm just bored with playing normally.  Some of them (exploration, for example) I started doing for fun with 2.4.  Just ignore them if you don't like them.  If the people you normally raid are obsessed with achievements and it's annoying you, find someone else to play with.  I know that wouldn't necessarily be easy to find a solid group for 25 man and heroics, but if you're not having fun because of a few obsessive personalities then what's the point?

Also, sorry to hear about your installation problems (I hope you tried the repair thing before completely reinstalling). I used to have problems in the past with installing the game. I had to reinstall it after nearly every patch long ago (long before tbc). Hell, even my very first installation of the game was screwed up somehow. Though I suppose I'm lucky since I haven't really had to do that at all since TBC. I can't imagine having to reinstall the game, two expansions, and all the freaking patches. That must've really sucked .

Oh yeah, I've tried the repair tool numerous times.  I've pretty much came to the conclusion that it doesn't do jack shit.  Ever.  Even when there was obvious file corruption (to the point that the patches wouldn't install) it didn't pick it up.  As far as its other features go, I can do that from Windows Explorer.

Oh, the install was even more fun than that.  After installing WoW, then BC, then WotLK, I tried applying the 3.0.2 patch only to find that something got borked.  I don't know if I was "lucky" enough to get a screwy WotLK DVD or if that particular installation attempt committed harakiri for whatever reason, but Northrend was completely fucked.  Many people on the WoW forums had the same issue -- epic file corruption all throughout Northrend.  Joy.

That wasted about an hour.  After that, I uninstalled and looked for a digital download for WotLK.  Unfortunately, Blizz doesn't seem to offer it separately.  The only way to get that would be to download the entire game again.  Fully patched.  6.5GB.  Unfortunately, that had to come about right before we ordered the higher speed DSL, so it took six freaking hours.  Then I had to get it patched, which took another half hour or so.  Argh.  At least it works now.  Now I just need to find a dual layer DVD to burn what amounts to the only truly working copy of the game onto. </frustration> </annoyance> </RAEG>

Oh, I played around a bit without addons after reinstalling the game just to make sure that everything was a-okay before I copied my WTF and Interface directories over.  It's amazing, it's almost painful for me to play like that now. :s