- On the verge of the new expansion, I am compelled to point out that no one will be forced to play World of Warcraft. No one will think less of you for not renewing your subscription. Your paladin and druid won't be moping around Dalaran wishing you would come back and play with them. Blizzard won't be sending the Brute Squad around to collect the non-WoW-ites and put them into Cataclysm Indoctrination Centers.
- I feel like the point needs to be made because people are already defensive about all the WoW talk going on. And by defensive, I mean actively offensive about the game. Whenever talk comes around of WoW, all the usual suspects talk about how dumbed down it is, how real gamers play real games instead of baby games like WoW, and, of course, how they don't like playing on rails.
- Fine. Don't play. My enjoyment of the game is not contingent on your approval. The WoW you enjoyed before is gone, if it ever was the game you remember at all. There are hundreds of other games out there to champion. (Like Champions, for instance, which is my personal underdog.) I'd much rather see you write about the games you love than the games you hate.
- Anyway, you're all just jealous. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
- UPDATE: For a follow-up to this post, check out Random Shots: WoW Versus Everyone Else.
© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
Heh, I have to agree with your sentiment. I really don;t buy the "WoW has been dumbed down" argument. Sure, launch WoW was considerably more challenging than current WoW. However the solo leveling game in Lich King era wow was psychotically easy, certainly no more challenging than the current game. Really, it was damn near impossible to get killed doing content remotely near your level. I don't see how the current game is any easier than that.
ReplyDeleteThe primary difference between modern and Lich King era WoW is that the quest progression in the latter was poorly organized 1-70. For example, you would often get cock blocked in a given zone by hitting a wall of red quests. You'd be forced to go somewhere else and grind out green quests that were utterly boring, because you had nearly out-leveled them and were way overpowered for them. Then when you were strong enough, you could come back and complete your old chains. It broke up story lines, reduced re-playability, artificially inflated time spent traveling, and simply made the game seem grindy to me. To me that's not "challenging," it's tedious and poorly designed.
As for the "dumbing down" of talents, I also don't buy it. The old talent trees had a lot of dumbass useless talents that no-one in their right mind would ever pick save as a pre-req. Key talents were often buried ten or 15 points into a tree. Again, it was no more "challenging" to navigate the old trees than the new ones. It just made the low level game for some classes grindy as hell while they waited to get deep enough into a tree to get those key talents and stop sucking.
I've honestly never felt the pull to go play wow, for various reasons. However the number of bloggers talking about it is near enough to immense peer pressure for me to feel like i'm in junior high some times.
ReplyDeleteI've even heard people say they couldn't respect an mmo player or blogger if they've never played it.
Despite that ridiculous assertion, i still feel no need to play it.
a little off topic but that first bullet point provoked the thought.
I hope all you WoW players burn in HELL!!!
ReplyDeleteJust kidding. But I do hope that there will be lots of posts about peoples adventures in the new content. Myself I think I am done with WoW, maybe for good but who knows.
"No one will think less of you for not renewing your subscription."
ReplyDelete"Anyway, you're all just jealous. Nyah, nyah, nyah."
:(
Such a good post. I take no issue with people criticizing a game as long as it's constructive. I share some of those sentiments about WoW as well, but as long as we're all having fun, I don't see a problem. What grinds my gears is the opposition starts to move beyond attacking the game and start attacking the players for playing it. God help us people actually enjoy WoW!? Whenever I see comments that put down others for their game of choice, I just want to say get over yourself, you're not as "refined" as you think.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem comes in when the hyperbole starts.
ReplyDelete@ Yeebo - Yeah, I don't buy a lot of their arguments either. The game is what it is, not what all those people wish it would be to fit their needs.
ReplyDelete@ Hunter - That does sound a little extreme. I would say that you probably shouldn't comment about WoW if you haven't played it. And I would suggest everyone at least try it so they can see what all of the other developers are reacting to. But it is just a game and it's not for everyone.
@ Jayedub - Ha! We've seen your true colors now. :)
@ Bronte - Aw. Not you, Bronte.
@ MMOGC - Constructive would be awesome. But at this point, WoW is what it is. It can be nudged in various directions, but criticizing the game as a whole is pointless. Criticizing its players doubly so.
@ Blue Kae - I think there is another blog post in this.
When considering the hyperbole, don't forget the slippery slopes. ;)
ReplyDelete@ Tesh - OMG! Were there slippery slopes I missed? I need to look into this further!!! :)
ReplyDelete