World of Warcraft, What????

[werk]

Never played a MMORPG have you?

That was my comment. This is par for the course.

I used to think exactly the same way as the OP. I had friends that lost thier lives due to EQ, so I stayed clear of MMORPG until I got star wars galaxies as a christmas present. Two years and three jedi later, you forget all about the monthly fee.

I would suggest buying the game used or just getting someone's account off of them when they quit. Your coworker may be able to steer you in the direction of a forum or web site that may help you save a little $.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Guild Wars is the first one that tries to go that route, I think. No monthly fee, that is.

No, it isn't.

Guild Wars isn't an MMORPG. It is a new version of Diablo II or Dungeon Siege. It's a peer-to-peer matching service, which means it has almost none of the overhead of an MMORPG, which I outlined above.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I realize the cost involved in running Battle.Net servers, and that wasn't my point.....My point was buying a $60 game that (according to my friend) couldn't be played without spending another $15.....

World of Warcraft is not run on Battle.net. Battle.net is a peer to peer matching service. The actual program when you play Diablo or Warcraft or Starcraft or Dungeon Siege or Guild Wars is ON YOUR COMPUTER.

The actual program for World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies or the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons Online resides on THE SERVERS.

It's simply not the same thing. If someone could run an MMORPG for free, they would, if only to steal the business away from their rivals.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I find it sad that the MMORPG genre has steered away from its original goal of creating a virtual world and is now largely stuck in creating constantly improving Diablo clones.

Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest II and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes are all world sims first, kick-down-the-door games second.

City of Heroes and World of Warcraft are not the entire genre.

 

[Blue_Kryptonite]

Just to reiterate, and clarify: The monthly fee is not just access. You also routinely get more game fairly regularly as part of it. Its as if you bought D&D 3.5, and subscribed to Dragon and Dungeon. More stuff just shows up every month or so for the money.

 

[Vigilance]

So how does WoW compare to EQ?

I tried EQ for a couple of months and loved being able to tromp around and explore, as well as the player to player economics of the low level guys finding the spell components needed by higher level spell casters.

But I *hated* endlessly working on skills (just what I need a job I hate in game) and I *hated* camping the same monsters endlessly.

It wasnt even a question of wanting to "power level". There were basically 5-6 monsters you could kill at low levels in EQ and you killed them endlessly for weeks (real time) if you wanted to level.

I like the idea of an MMORPG but want a less repetitive experience.

How does WoW compare?

 

[Dark Jezter]

So how does WoW compare to EQ?

I tried EQ for a couple of months and loved being able to tromp around and explore, as well as the player to player economics of the low level guys finding the spell components needed by higher level spell casters.

But I *hated* endlessly working on skills (just what I need a job I hate in game) and I *hated* camping the same monsters endlessly.

It wasnt even a question of wanting to "power level". There were basically 5-6 monsters you could kill at low levels in EQ and you killed them endlessly for weeks (real time) if you wanted to level.

I like the idea of an MMORPG but want a less repetitive experience.

How does WoW compare?

Leveling in WoW is much faster than leveling in EQ. In WoW, you can reach level 10 in just a few hours after starting a new character. Naturally, the time to gain levels steadily increases as you get more powerful, but even a casual player who only plays a few times a week will eventually reach maximum level if they keep playing (unlike EQ, where pretty much the only people who will reach max level are the hardcore players).

Also, in WoW most of your experience will come from completing quests instead of grinding. Turning in quests gives you a nice amount of quest reward XP in addition to money or item rewards. You can grind if you want to gain levels, but it's an inefficent way to level compared to questing; the time it takes to reach a grinder to reach level 60 is higher than the time it takes somebody who does quests to reach max level.

 

[KenM]

In WoW, in order to keep up money wise, your character MUST take a couple of secondary professions to make and sell stuff. (Alecemy, mining) If you don't you miss out on cash. Thats the only thing I don't really like about WoW, I don't want to spend my time picking herbs or mining, I want to go out and kill monsters.

 

[Vigilance]

In WoW, in order to keep up money wise, your character MUST take a couple of secondary professions to make and sell stuff. (Alecemy, mining) If you don't you miss out on cash. Thats the only thing I don't really like about WoW, I don't want to spend my time picking herbs or mining, I want to go out and kill monsters.

I dont mind learning skills to make cash. But in EQ you had to make like 1000 bandages from silk.

I like the idea of quests generating more XP than monster slaying, (sounds a lot like Fallout 2 in that respect which is a good thing) in fact thats most of what I spent my time doing in EQ as well, but there didnt seem to be many quests you could do at low levels.

 

[Pants]

In WoW, in order to keep up money wise, your character MUST take a couple of secondary professions to make and sell stuff. (Alecemy, mining) If you don't you miss out on cash. Thats the only thing I don't really like about WoW, I don't want to spend my time picking herbs or mining, I want to go out and kill monsters.

Actually, I really enjoy that part of the game.
I like going out, mining or picking flowers and then making items that either I or someone else can use. The fact that your skills level up rather quickly is also part of it too.

In Dark Age of Camelot, I remember that I had to make lots and lots of crap before I could even make ANYTHING remotely good. It seemed as if my skills went up so slowly that it didn't even matter.