Is WOW fucked long term?

[Harrison]

I did awhile ago. I want challenge from my games and it wasn't in WoW.

I've been playing http://www.wintersroar.com and ro.psiblade.net

Both are infinitely more challenging and better community. They have infinitely better up-time for the servers as well.

[Tikker]

Last night for a test, I let my son play WoW for me for about 15 minutes


He died 3 times, but managed to kill a mob that gave me xp


I thought that was pretty fucking impressive for a dude that'll turn 4 next week


And by 4, I mean 4 months old, not years

[Langston]

I'm baffled by people who whine about the lack of difficulty in WoW, but who I know for a fact used to sit in places like BoT or PoM killing the same 6-8 MOBs over and over and over and over for hours. Yes - that was very challenging I'm sure.

[Harrison]

And WoW has a larger variety in the camps/instances people run through?

Same shit different day

[Tikker]

I'm baffled by people who whine about the lack of difficulty in WoW, but who I know for a fact used to sit in places like BoT or PoM killing the same 6-8 MOBs over and over and over and over for hours. Yes - that was very challenging I'm sure.

think of the old world Ugz

Think of how nasty mobs were the 1st time you hit SolA

Think about the festering hags in Unrest

Think about those frikkin wizard frogs near Frenzy in Guk

If you didn't handle it right, you were toast

outside of maybe 4 instance boss mobs from lvls 1-55+ there has been 0 challenge in the game

[Harrison]

You're arguing with a brick wall of ignorance Tikker.

He flames for the sake of it, he makes no sense and knows nothing.

[Langston]

If you knew then what you know now - with all of the online resources and general gaming know-how, how difficult would it have been?

EQ, when it was released, was a new genre. People didn't KNOW what to expect. Remember coming out of Freeport for the first time... and you zoned into North Ro... and you were like "HOLY SHIT - there's SPIDERS and ZOMBIES and shit!" That innocence and lack of knowledge is gone in the MMO games today.

You can't really compare EQ at release to WoW at release... the players are much wiser to the deal. Maybe you should compare EQ Velious era to WoW release. By that point in EQ's run, people were getting very wise to the mechanics and there weren't as many slap-you-in-the-face surprises to the game any more. There were new encounters that had to be learned, maybe some shock value MOBs (visually speaking), but the naivete was gone by that point.

Was Velious era EQ more difficult than WoW? Yeah, I think it was, but not nearly as difficult as EQ release for the reasons I've cited above.

I think also you're dealing with a general gaming population that has the console game mindset. They don't expect to NOT beat a game in less than a week. Granted, an MMO can't be done that way - so instead of a week, it takes the average player 3 or 4 months to max level. Even then, though, you're not "done"... not unless you're above the curve and have already done Scholo and Strat.

I'm not arguing that WoW isn't an easy game to play - I'm arguing that you can't say that it's any less difficult that anything else on the market. Even EQ2 isn't more *difficult* - they just made it take longer and have instituted more penalties for mishaps along the road (this is based on what people have said - not first hand knowledge). Punitive penalties for the failures of others, most noticeably: death penalties, is an idiotic concept - it doesn't make the game more challenging it just makes it more tedious.

So, anyway... I'm not one to say that WoW is for everyone. It's not. I am only saying that you're judging apples and oranges with the same measuring stick.

[10sun]

Non-elites are for farming.
Elites are for solo'ing.
Instance elites are for grouping.

I for one, had a hard time solo'ing even level elites as a warrior until I learned to hone my own skills a bit further. It is not effective, so I farm even level non-elites for exp & drops with minimal downtime.

This is not EQ. I do not want to solo one mob and wait 3-5 minutes before going out and killing another.

The only reason EQ has staying power at this point is due to AAs of sorted varieties.

I see WoW making a comparable jump with hero classes and possibly allowing level 60 heroes to be able to purchase more talent points in the end game. In addition to that, there are challenging encounters at the end game with more content being added every patch.

Personally, I enjoy running through the sorted instances and refining my skills to be better capable of leading those who cannot memorize zones / spawns / instances like I can. That is my challenge. I fulfill a niche within my guild and on my server.

[Tikker]

The big thing I miss is the community

When I finally hit lvl 60 in EQ, I knew pretty much all of the other 60's that played in the same time zone

I've found in WoW, that I rarely see the same person more than 3 or 4 times, unless they're the AH whores

[10sun]

I know a lot of my own community aside from the hardcore raider types that don't have time to dick around.

But then again, I am one of the few Weaponsmiths on my server that doesn't charge to do combines and I do make my own weapons and sell them at reasonable prices.

I am also always willing to give away shit like mithril spurs and make shield spikes for free to whomever asks. Commodities that lots of people need, thus they learn my name and ask.

The only thing I really don't much is do instance runs with people not within my guild. I am very cautious about that because it wastes my time and money more often than not.

-Adam

[xaoshaen]

think of the old world Ugz

Think of how nasty mobs were the 1st time you hit SolA

Think about the festering hags in Unrest

Think about those frikkin wizard frogs near Frenzy in Guk

If you didn't handle it right, you were toast

outside of maybe 4 instance boss mobs from lvls 1-55+ there has been 0 challenge in the game

You mean the Sol A mobs I soloed for exp? The wizard frogs that necros soloed for exp? It wasn't all that difficult grinding away on bats and bugs in Sol B.

The challenge in a MMOG is what you make of it. It's funny, but most of the people I see complaining about how easy WoW are the same people that refuse to do instances when the mobs are equal-leveled or above. many of them insist that it would be impossible to do RFK with 3 level 27s and two level 29s, for instance, so to speak. This isn't directed at you Tikker, since I've never played with you in WoW, just a generalization about the people I've seen bitch about the ease of play. The fact is, in either EQ or WoW you could bottom-feed off blue (yellow) mobs with ease. The only two things I saw in EQ that made it more difficult were the death penalty and the downtime. Frankly, fuck downtime in its ass. Sitting around and waiting is not the essence of good gameplay. I wouldn't mind seeing an exp-based penalty for death in WoW though.

[Captain Insano]

WoW tried to take the good parts of EQ, DAoC, UO and make them into 1 cohesive game


the problem is kind of that old good-evil balance

without evil, there cannot be good

With a complete lack of penalty for playing poorly, you don't get a sense of accomplishment when you finally beat a dungeon, or 1 of the 5 or 6 tough mobs in the game (non raid mobs, as I think the raiding stuff is not too bad)


you take away the chatter in /ooc, the random dinks wandering past with trains, KS"ers, etc etc and you expect to have a better experience

but now that you're left alone wtih just the game, you realize more and more that the game isn't perfect, and nit pick shit you wouldn't nit pick in a game like EQ (cause beating mechanics wasn't important, it was the beating of that asshole to the spawn that was!)


so yeah, long term i don't see WoW being successful EQ/UO style
I would have moved on already, but i'm a bit masochist, and I'm waiting on the promised hunter pet upgrade, wuwu

I agree whole heartedly. They need to shitcan the user friendly crap like all the instancing in this game. They need to have /ooc /auction /shout channels and most definitely need to allow the two factions to talk. You can't make a good enemy if you don't have a way to tell him to fuck off, not to mention you are forcing a divide between all the other former MMOG players from other games. There needs to be a real death penalty and also some sort of way to even out the gross population difference between the horde and alliance; I like how planetside gives exp bonuses to the smaller population alliance and would be a good idea for WoW.

Lastly they need some highly contested UBER end game content NON instanced that you can access as often as you want... Make people fight and have drama and you might have a game that will be worth a shit in a year.

[Drem]

Or that "camel" is one letter different from "rope"?

Gamal(L pronounced very softly) = Camel
Hevel = Rope

Seems more like only letter L is same between 2 words

Behura = virgin
Betura ceira = young girl
I've seen many claims that thats where mistake in bible comes from

Tzemukim = raisin

So i have no idea where you got white raisin = virgin thing

Wrong, and I'll call you on two points here as 1) Greek is the language in which it is most commonly believed that the gospels were written, though some say Aramaic is the original language. 2) Even if it were Aramaic, you're still wrong. =)

I'll start with Aramaic.

The Aramaic word for Camel, in biblical times, is Gamla, not Gamal (maybe it changed to Gamal as the language evolved). This word can mean Camel, a beam, or a rope. The meaning as a rope is confirmed in the Mar Bahlul's work, a 10th century lexiconographer of the Aramaic language who gives the definition "a large rope used to bind ships". The definition is confirmed again in George Lamsa's work who lists the root word as Gmla (the post-biblical Hebrew word Gmlh most likely comes from this word.)

Where I say it's "one letter different" is in the Greek bible. The Greek word for rope is "kamilos" and the word for camel is "kamelos" (both words obviously borrowed from "gmla". As I said, scribes often didn't know more than the alphabet for the language they were scribing. Sometimes they'd break words at the end of a line and not space the words on the page, resulting in a page of total letters with no spacing. It might sound ridiculous, but it's proven fact. To mistake one letter over thousands of years of scribing the Greek bible is highly believable to me. And anyway, the way the Greek saying goes is "rope through the eye of the needle".

You also cannot argue that "the eye of the needle" refers to that small area not far from the main gate entrance to Jerusalem that were only as tall and wide as a mule, forcing a man to crouch. Why couldn't you argue this? Because there was no term for this in Jesus' time.

Now for the virgin part. This part is a little more subjective as research and new interpretations of the Qur'an are extremely frowned upon and its history is really still quite foggy.

72 virgins are supposedly promised to the man who dies during jihad, right? Well, according to a German expert on Middle Eastern languages, using the pen name Luxenberg, Arabic is not the original language of the Qur'an. He claims it was something closer to Aramaic, and that most learned Arabs spoke this version of Aramaic at the time. He says the Qur'an that's used today is a mistranscription of the original, from Muhammad's era. According to Islamic tradition, the original was destroyed by Osman in the seventh century. Arabic didn't even show up as a written language until 150 years after Muhammad's death.

When translated to Aramaic, the "virgins" mysteriously become "white raisins." And I also don't know where your word from virgin comes from. The word under scrutiny here is: h.oura’u (houris, with big swelling breasts =)

The shi'ite hit the fan. Feel free to discuss further if you want, Ganzo.

[The Kizzy]

Wait Wait Wait, so the reason there are car bombers is because their religion tells them that if they die for their cause they will be given 72 virgins? Wow, that religion really does have some whacked principles when it comes to women.

[Martrae]

Female circumcision didn't convince you of that before?

[Ganzo]

Or that "camel" is one letter different from "rope"?

Gamal(L pronounced very softly) = Camel
Hevel = Rope

Seems more like only letter L is same between 2 words

Behura = virgin
Betura ceira = young girl
I've seen many claims that thats where mistake in bible comes from

Tzemukim = raisin

So i have no idea where you got white raisin = virgin thing

Wrong, and I'll call you on two points here as 1) Greek is the language in which it is most commonly believed that the gospels were written, though some say Aramaic is the original language. 2) Even if it were Aramaic, you're still wrong. =)

I'll start with Aramaic.

The Aramaic word for Camel, in biblical times, is Gamla, not Gamal (maybe it changed to Gamal as the language evolved). This word can mean Camel, a beam, or a rope. The meaning as a rope is confirmed in the Mar Bahlul's work, a 10th century lexiconographer of the Aramaic language who gives the definition "a large rope used to bind ships". The definition is confirmed again in George Lamsa's work who lists the root word as Gmla (the post-biblical Hebrew word Gmlh most likely comes from this word.)

Where I say it's "one letter different" is in the Greek bible. The Greek word for rope is "kamilos" and the word for camel is "kamelos" (both words obviously borrowed from "gmla". As I said, scribes often didn't know more than the alphabet for the language they were scribing. Sometimes they'd break words at the end of a line and not space the words on the page, resulting in a page of total letters with no spacing. It might sound ridiculous, but it's proven fact. To mistake one letter over thousands of years of scribing the Greek bible is highly believable to me. And anyway, the way the Greek saying goes is "

You also cannot argue that "the eye of the needle" refers to that small area not far from the main gate entrance to Jerusalem that were only as tall and wide as a mule, forcing a man to crouch. Why couldn't you argue this? Because there was no term for this in Jesus' time.

Now for the virgin part. This part is a little more subjective as research and new interpretations of the Qur'an are extremely frowned upon and its history is really still quite foggy.

72 virgins are supposedly promised to the man who dies during jihad, right? Well, according to a German expert on Middle Eastern languages, using the pen name Luxenberg, Arabic is not the original language of the Qur'an. He claims it was something closer to Aramaic, and that most learned Arabs spoke this version of Aramaic at the time. He says the Qur'an that's used today is a mistranscription of the original, from Muhammad's era. According to Islamic tradition, the original was destroyed by Osman in the seventh century. Arabic didn't even show up as a written language until 150 years after Muhammad's death.

When translated to Aramaic, the "virgins" mysteriously become "white raisins." And I also don't know where your word from virgin comes from. The word under scrutiny here is: h.oura’u (houris, with big swelling breasts =)

The shi'ite hit the fan. Feel free to discuss further if you want, Ganzo.

Here's what you posted originaly:

Did you know that in the bible's old language, the word for virgins is one letter different from the word for "white raisins"? Or that "camel" is one letter different from "rope"? Did you know that the scribes often didn't know the language they were scribing beyond the basic alphabet?

Food for thought.

When i read "Bible's old language" I naturaly thought you meant Hebrew, so I compared words you posted. How was I to know you were speaking of new testament that is writen in many languages. You weren't clear enough in what you posted.

[Drem]

No problem. I figured talking about stuff in the scriptures was a giveaway =)

And I figured you were talking about Aramaic since you said "Gamal" ...

[Tikker]

what the fuck


how did this end up in the WoW thread, jeje

[Drem]

wait how did a wow thread end up here?

[labbats]

ow

[Zanchief]

Fin, you're clearly showing how fucking stupid you are.

The game is as challenging as you want it to be. Since I know you didn't get to lvl 60, why don't you try and go to BRD and kill the Emp with a group of 55s. That's challenging. How about doing scholo/Strath with a 5 man group? Thats challenging. How about doing DM ogre side without a priest or druid? Thats challenging.

If you keep exping off green crap don't whine about the game, it might just be the player.

As for game mechanics. Do we really want to compare sitting in unrest for 3 hours to actually clearing SFK? How about farming OS compared to completing Scholomance? Personally I would rather run a well designed instance with competive pulls than farm the same 10 spawns for 3 hours hoping some rare mob will spawn and drop an even rarer piece of loot.

WoW is as challenging as you make it, Fin. And you seemed to take the easy road.

[Harrison]

It isn't up to me to make a shitty game challenging.

[Arlos]

I have to agree. Even back in the early days of EQ, very little was actually "challenging" unless you were doing something for the first time. Yes, when there were 10-15 total people on Nameless with an OS key, and we were roaming around the place at will, it was challenging. So was Karnors just after Kunark opened. 2-3 months of playing later, and you had people calling spawn camp locations, and sitting in 1 corner of the room while the puller would go bring 1-2 mobs at a time, group would kill, rinse, repeat. Maybe it was cause I was doing much of that with LOS folks, but I don't remember it being all that challenging. Yeah, some of the pulls took a fair amount of skill to do, but that was an individual monk thing, it still doesn't negate the fact that you'd sit in 1 room for hours doing the same 10-20 mobs over and over again, hoping like hell that named would spawn.

As for challenging, no, nothing outdoors is really challenging, certainly not anything non-elite. Guess what, Dreadlands and LOIO wasn't any more challenging than outdoor zones in WOW. I think that as more people hit the higher levels, even the casual people who never did lower level dungeons will find there's no place else to go if they want to progress, besides the L60 dungeons. As that happens more and more, you'll see a general increase in skill among the L60s, and a better community develop, as people are forced to do more and more dungeon crawling.

BTW, there are now contestible outdoor raid spawns, like in old EQ days, the dragon in Azshara, and the demon in Blasted lands. Already seeing a fair amount of competition between guilds for the two of them, which is healthy, I think. Also, I defy anyone to try Molten Core for the first time and tell me that raids aren't challenging. Same thing with Onyxia. Yes, once people beat them and get strats down, they're doable relatively easily, but that's how it was in EQ as well. Compare how tough it was when we were first learning VP, and dealing with Hoshkar/SW, and how rapidly we romped through there by the end of Kunark. (Phara Dar remained a bitch tho, until velious mudflation)

Anyway, I think they need to put in at least 1-2 more L60 dungeons, preferably ones that are catered towards higher end L60s, cause right now Strath/Scholo are the hardest, and they're not that hard any more. Dire Maul is easier than either one, and I'd like a dungeon or two with more challenge to them. Beyond that, they need to keep expanding the raiding areas, to provide increasing levels of challenge, and they need to add at least some raid zones that fall in the gap between UBRS and MC. Once they get that in there, I think WOW will be good for a long time, especially once they add Hero levels in, and give a method of advancement for the character itself, post-60.

-Arlos

[xaoshaen]

It isn't up to me to make a shitty game challenging.

If you only advanced as far in EQ as you did in WoW, you should have raised the exact same complaint. EQ was no more challenging than WoW unless you made it so. The major skill EQ demanded of you was an ability to herd cats in order to get a raid to follow orders.

[xaoshaen]

Once they get that in there, I think WOW will be good for a long time, especially once they add Hero levels in, and give a method of advancement for the character itself, post-60.

Yep, I think an alternate method of advancement beyond simply levelling is going to be necessary. Being level-capped in EQ prior to Kunark or SoL wasn't much different for me than being level-capped in WoW.