Why is the WoW influence a bad thing?

[GSHamster]

But in D&D you are not playing precomposed music; you are playing in a jam band that is making it up as you go along.

Exactly! I just don't think playing in a jam band is automatically better than playing in an orchestra. I don't think it's worse, either. It's just two different experiences, both of which are worthwhile.

WoW does "orchestra" better. D&D does "jam band" better.

 

[Aldarc]

Exactly! I just don't think playing in a jam band is automatically better than playing in an orchestra. I don't think it's worse, either. It's just two different experiences, both of which are worthwhile.

WoW does "orchestra" better. D&D does "jam band" better.

I am not saying that one is better than the other, but that people who talk of their fear of D&D becoming more like WoW are afraid that the Grateful Dead will now have to start doing rehearsals for Bach and Pachabel recitals.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Isn't the party running out of steam part of the challenge of these types of adventures.

Depends. Ideally, the party runs out of steam right when they hit the end of the adventure. In practice, that's rather hard to pull off.

 

[EATherrian]

Odd. I thought that PCs always expected treasure. I don't know where you're getting this sudden cropping.

Hell, I thought that was the point of adventuring. Go dungeoncrawling to get loot.

I always did the adventuring to see what was out there, how it was written, to enjoy the content. In my games the loot was generally very light anyway, and that's how I intend to run it no matter the rules.

 

[bobacus]

What I dont like (and can be compared to WOW and video game rpgs too) they are taking the imagination out of the game. It seems to me they are REALLY doing that in 4E. They are basically creating AIs for monsters, setting up pre pathed abilities for players and telling everyone how there characters fit in a party. I play D&D to flex my imagination muscles. Not collect "phat" loots or out crit someone. I play to get immersed into a world I or someone else has created in there imaginations. You just dont get that feeling ina pre generated video game. The rules should NEVER tell you how to form your imagination. They should only help you unleash it.

 

[Rechan]

What I dont like (and can be compared to WOW and video game rpgs too) they are taking the imagination out of the game. It seems to me they are REALLY doing that in 4E. They are basically creating AIs for monsters, setting up pre pathed abilities for players and telling everyone how there characters fit in a party. I play D&D to flex my imagination muscles. Not collect "phat" loots or out crit someone. I play to get immersed into a world I or someone else has created in there imaginations. You just dont get that feeling ina pre generated video game. The rules should NEVER tell you how to form your imagination. They should only help you unleash it.

The rules all ready tell you to do it. The point is that in 3e monsters fill roles and so do parties; the Designers are just being more up front about it.

Monte Cook in one of his articles said that when they were designing 3e, they were taking cues from Magic: The Gathering. That is, they designed the system so that an experienced person looked at it and understood that Some THings were Better than Others. I.e. that if you look at the Toughness feat, you know it sucks. Or that if you have had enough experience in fights, you know that Whirlwind attack isn't that great.

I think with 4e what they are doing is being up front. Everybody knows that an Ogre is a big dumb ftr that charges and hits people with a club. And 9 times out of 10, the ogre your DM runs is not going to sneak attack you. So why is it such a crime for the game to say "Ogres: Big dumb brutes in a fight"? The same with an Illithid - they are masterminds, they stand in the back behind some bodyguards and zap you - they don't whip out a sword and charge you. Stating that fact, and designing the Illithid to represent that, is not reducing it to a videogame, but designing it around its strengths.

As it stands, the monsters and classes are just handed to you and WotC says "Figure it out for yourselves". In this instance they're making everything fit a little bit more cohesively and showing you how it fits. You can still have an Ogre rogue or an Illithid fighter, but they're geared towards what they are naturally, the same way that Wizards are geared towards blowing crap up and Fighters are geared towards using weapons to do damage.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

Its bad because of the mentality most of the MMO people ive met have when playing a tabel top.
They want to kill, kill, kill. Nothing else! and they act like table top is a video game too, asking for save points (Im serious! its happened to me several times) and what not. I dont want MMORPG mentality at my table.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

... MMOs don't have save points.

 

[Testament]

More complex combat? More intricate encounters? That doesn't gibe well with your "Infinite content/Imagination-based" statement. Either PnP is more open-ended or it can't be as intricate or complex; you can't have both. Personally I'm going with PnP is more open-ended

I'm sorry, but go to www.wowwiki.com and look up (lessee) C'Thun, The Four Horsemen, Vaelestrasz the Corrupt, Nefarian, The Twin Emperors and sod it, I'll throw in Lady Vashj and the Reliquary of Souls for good measure. If I or any GM I've ever met was to try and run an encounter in D&D as complex as any of those fights are, the sounds of our heads exploding could be heard in Oslo. To say nothing of the logistics of trying to run a PnP for 10 people at once, let alone 25 or 40, which is the standard size for a WoW Raid.

Faster pace? Again, a boss fight in WoW can take 10+ minutes. A boss fight in D&D generally takes 1 minute or less (of "game time" at least). Seems to me that D&D is much faster paced.

Game time means nothing here. How long does it take you at the table? I'd wager that its a hell of a lot longer than 10 minutes.

 

[Rechan]

Its bad because of the mentality most of the MMO people ive met have when playing a tabel top.
They want to kill, kill, kill. Nothing else!

Those types have existed before video games. It's called a heavy hack'n'slash game.

That's pretty much the essence of Hackmaster, among other things. Had "kill kill kill and take its stuff" not been a niche among gamers, it wouldn't have been made, much less sold or played.