How can others video games even compete?
>>329783845
By having fun gameplay that involves more than watching a cooldown.
>>329783891
Got it in one. Fuck MMO's.
>>329783845
>WoW
>ever good
ebin
Fuck off blizzard shills
>>329783891
Gotta love "balance". Instead of simply adjusting numbers in an already existing rotation, they add annoying mechanics to gimp entire classes.
I was in from closed stress test and onward for 5 years or so, quit, resubbed, quit, resubbed and then quit again. lol..
Unbelievable experience. Digital crack
It was fucking magical, best game I have ever played.
Owned me and my friends, owned professional friends owned everyone.
>mmo
>any warcraft past 3
>playing a single vidya
>>329783845
Vanilla was shit.
Horrible grinding, bosses with 2-3 mechanics, and it literally created the term 'FOTM' with rotating class patches making one of them overpowered every couple of months.
Either you never played vanilla or need to take off your nostalgia goggles. TBC and WotLK were both massive improvements.
>>329783979
it's good now though
>>329784047
>Owned me and my friends, owned professional friends owned everyone.
How did a game own you? Did Blizzard own you? How does one become the owner of a professional friend? How does one even become a professional friend? It sounds like a great job.
Starting out in Dun Morogh, Teldrassil, or Tirisfal Glades put you in the middle of the vast World of WarCraft, with a seemingly infinite amount of possibilities for your future. I'd even argue that starting a few months after release gave the most impact, as when you finally reached the capital cities, you would see several high level players in glowing, intricate gear running around, giving you a sense of what your character could one day become. The sense of progression in the lower levels was still substantial, as many people had just picked up the game and did not view the lower level dungeons or equipment as worthless, or a mere stepping stone towards the endgame. Everyone else playing the game was experiencing it along with you for the first time, and early adopters filled a mentor role than made the world feel like a real, living, breathing place. Those RPG tutorials where a badass older character shows you the ropes? They were made completely organic by early WoW, as that particular "character" was a real human being who had been through the steps to greatness before you. It was an amazing feeling, being a fish in a lake, with the promise of becoming something much, much greater than what you were at the moment.
>>329784153
>MMO
>good
Nah, senpai.
nice meme op!
The world itself was an immense treat, as well, especially to fans of the WC series, and even more so to those who wanted a conclusion to WCIII and The Frozen Throne. Seeing the fallen city of Lordaeron in a manner that was relatively to scale, seeing what the Night Elves had done following the third war, seeing how the Humans had relocated to a rebuilt Stormwind only to find themselves combating a group of thugs in the Defias Brotherhood - it all felt like legitimate sequel material, completely unlike the hamfisted writing you see from Blizzard post-Cataclysm. Being a part of the world of WarCraft was a huge portion of the game's appeal, and that initial sense of wonder garnered from exploring the world in a much grander scale and scope has yet to be matched.
>>329784048
>discussing philosophy in public
I played WoW at launch, but my favourite MMO experience was Star Wars Galaxies before "the patch". Simply impossible to ever recreate, personally.
>>329784185
roll
>>329784185
woah
>>329784185
roll (am I on a list now)
>>329784308
high five
>>329784158
Not him, but before Activision came into the picture, Blizzard was seen as the savior of videogames. The developers kept quiet and only released content. Yet at the same time, DPS meters and gearscore didn't exist.
>>329784180
It's fun
>>329784185
why is this girl so sweaty?
Every gamer should experience an MMO once in a deep way (many months of play). It's a really amazing gaming experience.
WoW will probably always be my fondest gaming memory.
>>329784185
rawlin'
>>329784048
Exposing any digital device at a park or busstop. Fast way to lose a device.
>>329784268
>>329784308
>>329784369
>>329784398
All these 8's and a 69, this chick is a slut.
Your gaming life will never truly be complete if you missed those early days of barrens chat.
>>329784367
I think you misunderstand. I was making light of anon's usage of a dated and nearly forgotten slang term, "owned."
Vanilla WoW is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had
The PvP community between factions before cross-server BG's were introduced.
Tarren Mill vs SS ALL DAY LONG
Gates of Ahn'Qiraj mass hysteria
Luring Kazzak into Stormwind and Ironforge
Hakkar Disease
Being in the server 2nd guild to kill C'thun - my personal favourite raid moment
Naxxramas GOAT raid
Seeing Ragnaros for the first time
Barrens chat
Getting to Rank 13 and being well known by the PVP community on the server. Doing organised PvP with a consistent group of great friends.
The list goes on and on
>>329784584
What is the appeal of MMO pvp as opposed to actual competitive pvp-oriented games? Serious question.
>>329784425
Well, I live in a first world country, so no.
I really wish MMOs were still comfortable just setting you loose as a big fish in a little pond. I was never important or famous back in the day, but it still felt special to be a fly on the wall, seeing the sights and carving out a little place for myself in the world.
It was truly a unique experience, and there are times when I still crave Vanilla WoW to this day.
>>329784584
none of these were good.
The best way to put it was that I felt like a speck of dust in a world so massive and so beyond what I had experienced before it was never ending. There was a world. It lived. There were dangers. There were thrills. And you know what? No one ever quite knew how far or what was quite possible. People were discovering things, there were still so many unknowns. Hey there were even these mods that could help things out, how about that. Freaky. They did cool stuff too.
So many choices. So many options and back then the battlers were tougher, enemies had more health and hit harder. You, not so much. Take on too much and you were easily dead. If lucky you found flight paths that helped to speed you from one place to another, if not, you ran. And ran. And ran. And ran. And you better have prayed that you didn't get a massive amount of mobs on your ass or they'd likely kill you, there was no mercy if you ran across an area with higher level mobs. They wanted to get you. They need your blood and it always felt like they were getting closer and closer and closer and were going to get you and then suddenly after the longest time would turn and scurry back leaving you feeling relieved you escaped death from a man eating crocodile or spider or bear or some other thing that could at the time put fear into you until you got to that level too.
>>329784163
>>329784217
>>329784784
Shut the fuck up.
The world went on and on and on. Things took more time to do, it wasn't easy, only the dedicated progressed and by that I mean leveling up! Raiding? Those were fabled words of another world of play. And the first time you saw a player from another side...HOLY SHIT. What are they going to do. What are YOU going to do. Wait...are they attacking? Who is attacking them?! Why are they attacking me?! Can I kill them?! They're killing guards and players at a village?! What madness is this?!?!?!?! Yeah it felt real, it felt huge, they were true player events and you never knew what you might get. Some times you even found someone you couldn't talk with helping you randomly, some times you'd do the same. And then you'd rage when that stinking *race here* killed your escort mission guy so one day you likely returned the favor to those damn *scummy race name here*.
There was no right way or wrong to play. You just played. Everything was in motion, it didn't wait for you and you wanted to see what was going to come next. Slowly but surely you leveled up and then one day you hit level 40 and that meant you could buy a mount! A MOUNT. Holy shit. Depending on what race you were that meant only that races mount most of the time, but it was a huge thing. Now I said you could buy a mount.........not that you could afford one. It cost a lot of money, for the time. Many people went forever before being able to get one. Into the 50's even or possibly later. As time went on you learned to make money and it got easier to get but many people first got loaned from guild mates to help with that first mount and you damn well better believe you paid it back, it was a sacred trust. They trusted you, so you returned that if you could. After all you got a mount!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not like you were going anywhere now right.
WoW is the best game to ever be made no contest. I first bought the game in November 2004 after playing WC3 and TFT and that lead to an almost 10 year run with the game.
I miss it so much but the experience just cannot be repeated, both the game and me have grown up.
>>329784047
>>329784584
>>329784726
>>329785390
Disgusting samefagging. This thread is awful, even by fucking WoW thread standards.
>>329784048
He's right, but for the wrong reasons. Full disclosure, I've been an MMO developer for almost 8 years, so I'm slightly biased in this opinion because I've been arguing this point for almost a decade and losing to upper management who refuse to do anything but emulate the WoW post-Wrath formula.
Convenience is the antithesis of fun. All of the additions that Blizzard, and other competing game companies, have introduced in the last 6 or 7 years has been to make the game, in fact the entire genre, more convenient to play - chasing larger and larger subscription numbers by removing barriers to entry for literally everything from raiding to PvP to crafting to mega-servers. And every single one of those additions objectively made the game less fun.
But wait? How can you say that things like Dungeon Finder and Mega-Servers objectively make a game less fun?
Because the fun in playing an MMO isn't necessarily in the mechanics. It isn't necessarily in the content. It isn't in any back-of-the-box feature that makes a good marketing blurb. It isn't in raiding or PvP or soloing. The fun in playing an MMO has, in general, actually very little to do with anything the development team creates implicitly for the player. The fun in an MMO ... is it's COMMUNITY. Think back for a few moments to your fondest memories playing any MMO ... go ahead, actually think about it. What is the common denominator amongst probably all of your best memories? The other people playing the game. Your guild. Your friends. Your rivals. People doing dumb things. People doing crazy things. People doing nice things, mean things ... people doing things. Together.
The problem is that WoW, and pretty much every MMO since then, has forgotten that's the main 'fun' that players get out of the game. They forget that while Mega-servers make it easier to get groups for content - it removed the need to form meaningful interactions with people on your server. I don't need to maintain a community presence. I don't need to make friends with people on my server, people I will definitely see again, and again, and again. I don't even really need a guild. And my guild doesn't really need to work together.
>>329784784
>those feels will never come back
>>329784045
There's no class that is gimped right now. You're just a salty casual shitter who doesn't know what he's talking about.
The game has had a profound impact on my life. It's at least as important as going to college in terms of impact. It's that important to me.
The social aspect of the game will never be topped. But it is still there if you can find the 15 hours a week you need to play it. I work full time and sometimes still go back. My best experience with the game ever was actually Warlords.
It's still there, my friends. The game wasn't fun because of the gameplay, the 40 mans, or the world. The game was fun because of the people you played it with.
>>329784673
WoW arena is unlike anything else.
>>329784185
sure
>>329784217
This. Old WoW was amazing for those who grew up playing warcraft.
World of Starcraft when?
>>329786576
>World of Starcraft
stop
>>329786576
>World of Starcraft when?
normally I'd tell you to fuck off for wanting starcraft to be dragged through the mud like warcraft did
but honestly, they already fucked it when they made the story for the expansions
so yeah, sure, why not at this point
>>329786931
*tip fedora*
>>329784185
Now that's a spicy meme!
WoW's first decade of existence (but particularly up through Wrath) is something I'm really glad to have experienced. It gave me some of my fondest gaming memories and I don't look back on my time played with the game after all these years as a wasted experienced. In fact, I would go so far as to say that World of Warcraft from 2004-2009 is probably my favorite game of all time.
I've been playing video games for 20 years, and nothing has ever topped the feeling of shear joy and excitement of killing a raid boss for the first time with my old guild in Molten Core - particularly Baron Geddon, who my non-hardcore raiding guild had been struggling with for nearly two weeks. He wasn't even a terribly difficult fight for a competent team, but man...that shared sense of accomplishment with (at the time) 39 other people when that bastard finally went down was just unbelievable. You would have thought we'd straight-up beaten World of Warcraft. Nothing before or since in all of gaming has come remotely close to bringing me that same feeling.
I'm not one of those veteran players who hates Blizzard or their direction of the game since vanilla, they've always aimed to make as accessible for new players as possible. Plus I'm firmly in the camp that feels as though a lot of players tend to ignore some of the more shitty aspects of the game when remembering vanilla's greatness (such as how useless Paladins, Shamans and Druids were outside of being healbots and cleansebots for raids). The folks that made WoW great back in those early days have long-since moved on to other projects or companies. Do I agree with all of Blizzard's changes to make the game more casual-friendly these last few years? Nope. Do I miss that sense of wonder and exploration? Absolutely. But man, I can only shake my fist at Blizzard so much because of all the great memories the game provided me with.
convenience Is what killed WOW
The numbers don't lie they've been losing subs since wrath. Yea the game is old, but blizzard doesn't care for it anymore. They're invested in hots or hearthstone or over watch
I bet there's less than 4.5 million subs and will only drop until legion
GW1 was the best gaming experience of my life. And to think that I bought it on release day without even knowing anything "just" to finally have a coop game again to play with my best friend. Now imagine how intense, exciting, refreshing it turned out. The early days when local chat was filled with people asking, seeking help, sharing excitement, looking for groups, materials for the Ascalon armour. 99,99% of the chat was all about exploring this new world with its wonders, terrors and mechanics.
Do you remember how many PUGs suffered during the pre nerf Altheas Ashes quest? Man, people really were terrified about it but also intensely invested. I could write pages about it. Good thing i'm on mobile right now. I remember when the first snow fell when going towards the shiverpeaks.....
Or when we marched to Droknar from Beacon's Perch before the Droknar run came to be. Took us hours, so many deaths. The PUG never gave up. Sometime in the morning we finally made it. Unforgettable..
Or exploring the world for symbols, ruins, hidden passages or even entries for future expansions.
I guess such experiences are only happening once in a lifetime. Kinda makes me sad.
From time to time i play through a few missions with characters that never progressed (i had far too many, even two accounts back then). After 4 years recently again. Of course the servers are empty, all places like ghost towns. And the beautiful music of Jeremy Soule carries me back for a short while. I have so many fond memories.
