WoW--What's all the hype about?

[Felon]

I'm hearing everyone and his brother whipping themselves into a frenzy about WoW like it's the next evolution of the MMORPG. And not a lick of explanation for it. I've gone to the website, read the FAQ, read about the classes, looked at the screenshots, downloaded the vids...and I still have yet to find one revolutionary concept, or even a real step forward.

I gave some friends who were on the beta for a couple of weeks and loving every second of it a little questionaire in order to get some specifics about what all the hubbub is about. They answered frankly enough, and the answers really didn't sell the game that well. I'm going to post the questions below in the hopes that some of you beta folks are interested in answering. I'll share my friends' answers too if anyone's interested.

1. Is the grind starting to set in? Does the gameplay seem at all repetitive yet?

2. How much content is geared towards solo players? How necessary is it to group up?

3. How much is there to do outside of running around in the wilderness ganking random spawns that are just standing around minding their own business? Supposedly, WoW is very quest-driven, so do you have to hunt at all?

4. Is there a lot of instanced content ("instanced" meaning that dungeons and such are only accessable by yourself and your allies)?

5. Does WoW force players to go on "hell runs" out into the middle of nowhere? You know what I mean: you get a mission appropriate for your level, but the locale you're sent to in order to complete it is some remote spot. It takes you 45 minutes to run to but it only takes 8 minutes to complete the task, and the spawns that you have to avoid on the way make anything you encounter at the actual mission look like a cakewalk by comparison.

6. Do the classes each do interesting and unique stuff? Does every class have a distinct role? Is every shaman or warrior the same as every other shaman or warrior in terms of abilities? What do characters strive to gain as they advance? There are no advanced classes IIRC, so what's left? Phat l3wt?

7. How interesting is combat? Do you have to change tactics, or does a class use the same chain of attacks in every fight like DAoC? Is it like CoH where [one of my friends] set up a macro where he'd just sit at his station mashing one key repeatedly for hours at a stretch?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'll answer your stuff point by point, but first, I'm going to be lazy, lazy, lazy and link to two very long write-ups I've already done on this. (Note that they're for MMORPG vets, so excuse a bit of jargon in the first one.)

http://www.graffe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15526
http://wow.crgaming.com/editorials/vieweditorial.asp?Id=143

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

1. Is the grind starting to set in? Does the gameplay seem at all repetitive yet?

No. I played the game a full year (from human push in alpha through the last day of closed beta), and due to races being locked in alpha and new ones being introduced for testing, probably have done the first thirty levels of the game nine or ten times. It still isn't boring.

2. How much content is geared towards solo players? How necessary is it to group up?

You can solo from 1-60 without any problem. Now, having said that, the game is totally geared around quests. You will NOT be able to do every quest in the game solo, and certainly not the elite quests at a level where they still give you experience -- those are intended for groups. Having said that, if you have no interest in groups, you can still have a lot of fun and experience the vast majority of the content slower. The groupers will do it a few levels before you, and might have better overall gear, but you won't be having any less fun.

3. How much is there to do outside of running around in the wilderness ganking random spawns that are just standing around minding their own business? Supposedly, WoW is very quest-driven, so do you have to hunt at all?

WoW is nearly 100 percent quest-driven, and the quests give enormous experience point rewards. Having said that, it's still the World of WARcraft, so very few of these quests involve quilting bees. A fair number of them, especially at the lowest levels, involve "go kill me X number of whoozles" or "bring me Y number of whatsit body parts." But you absolutely NEVER have to sit on your tuchus and kill 10,000 rats just to get to the next level. If you find yourself doing that, you're missing out on some quests to do. (Quest givers have big yellow exclamation points over their heads, Warcraft III style, so they're hard to miss.)

4. Is there a lot of instanced content ("instanced" meaning that dungeons and such are only accessable by yourself and your allies)?

There are roughly a dozen dungeons in the game like this now (more, probably) and more are on the way, as well as special PVP and raid instances.

5. Does WoW force players to go on "hell runs" out into the middle of nowhere? You know what I mean: you get a mission appropriate for your level, but the locale you're sent to in order to complete it is some remote spot. It takes you 45 minutes to run to but it only takes 8 minutes to complete the task, and the spawns that you have to avoid on the way make anything you encounter at the actual mission look like a cakewalk by comparison.

There are maybe a handful of such runs, at best. And WoW has a much more user-friendly travel system. Once an hour, every player can teleport back to the inn they're bound to. And they can also pay an NPC to catch a ride on a griffon, hippogryph, giant bat or wyvern. Flight routes connect nearly every town and capital city. So if there is a long "hell run," it's a quick hop back. (Honestly, all I can think of are a few Horde quests to the Hinterlands. This really hasn't been an issue in WoW. You could, in theory, choose not to do any of the quests at the destination you run to, but the point of those quests are pretty much to lead you to more quests -- they're called "breadcrumbs" in-house.)

6. Do the classes each do interesting and unique stuff? Does every class have a distinct role? Is every shaman or warrior the same as every other shaman or warrior in terms of abilities? What do characters strive to gain as they advance? There are no advanced classes IIRC, so what's left? Phat l3wt?

First, there are relatively few classes (for an MMORPG), only nine. This means that, say, mages aren't just damage, they also do crowd control, can summon, can teleport, etc. Every class has a variety of things they can do.

Atop that, starting at level 10, they can pick up talents. These aren't as impressive as D&D feats -- they're closer to Alternate Advancement abilities in EQ. They let you specialize in something your class already can do (there are three talent trees per class). They won't make your priest into a whole new class, but a priest with maxed-out shadow magic talent tree looks and plays fairly differently than one who maxed-ou the discipline tree.

And advanced classes are coming: At level 60, characters can begin work on their "hero classes," which turn them into Warcraft III heroes through the mechanism of an race/class-specific talent tree.

7. How interesting is combat? Do you have to change tactics, or does a class use the same chain of attacks in every fight like DAoC? Is it like CoH where [one of my friends] set up a macro where he'd just sit at his station mashing one key repeatedly for hours at a stretch?

It's similiar to CoH in that abilities have a cooldown timer (or, rather, CoH is similar to the Warcraft series in that regard), but mashing the same abilities over and over would be counterproductive at best. Each class works slightly differently, but let's say you're a rogue.

Rogues develop "combo points" based on successful opening attacks, and can gain up to five of them. At any time, they can use a "finishing move" to cash in all their combo points. The more they've got, the more powerful the attack. But all of this also requires energy, which decreases with each attack. And, of course, there's the issue of what sort of weapon you're using for what attack, where you are relative to your foe, etc.

While the rogue is unique in how it's set up, this sort of combat management is an issue for most classes, one way or another.

 

[Thanee]

Having played in the Open Beta, I like it very much.

I don't think WoW is the ultimate revolution in MMORPG and certainly the hype about it is a bit much (hey, it's Blizzard, what do you expect, all their games are hyped to no end and pretty much all of them are great games with a huge long-time motivation), but it is one very well rounded game and promises a lot of fun and diversity, especially if you like the Warcraft world (if not, I can see that being a huge hindrance there, then maybe EQ2 might be a better buy). I do think, that WoW is one of the best MMORPGs out there so far, with EQ2 probably sharing that position. Both have been developed to specifically address many issues with MMORPGs in the past, and it looks like they both succeeded on that behalf.

As for your specific concerns:

About 1.) Well, havn't played that long, so no, quite the opposite. Can't really say about the future, but so far it looks like there is so much left to do and to explore (the world is huge), that it will be a while before that happens (it will set in eventually, of course, as with every game, unless new content is added, which - considering the great success the game is already before it even really started - is quite certain to be done).

About 2.) While the game is obviously meant to be played in groups, there is no lack of solo content, as you can do pretty much everything (except for very few group specific things, which simply make no sense for solo players, like large raids and battles) alone.

About 3.) Of course random monsters are standing (or walking, patrolling) around in the wilderness, but in general they are nicely integrated into the world (some even attack other NPC) creatures, like wolves attacking sheep, if they find any. It doesn't really seem that random, often they are spread around some kind of base, a camp or an occupied mine, etc. And there is no need to kill a single random monster, I think, at least as far as I have played, you can just do one quest after the other and will always have more to do. In some cases, you can even do multiple quests at the same time, if for example you need to kill certain baddies and collect something they have. Also with NPCs running around everywhere, the world seems very alife. In the cities there are a lot of NPCs which have no direct purpose (as in giving quests, selling equipment and so on), other than making the world feel more complete.

About 4.) I guess there will be enough, but in the beginning I found it unnecessary as most often there were plenty of monsters around, even in areas, where characters were stepping on each others toes all the time. Respawn times are short, so there isn't really a huge "camping / killstealing" problem (which is, what instances are meant to fight), at least from my experience so far. Also, if you start attacking a monster and do not stop for too long, it locks on you and you will get the kill regardless of who helps you defeat it.

About 5.) The first few dozen quests (don't know beyond that) are structured in a way, that they work well along a reasonable travel route (read: short travel time) and they lead you through the area step-by-step. Some send you into a new (neighboring) territory and very few send you to remote places, but they are even worded in a way, that "if you happen to come along that place, please check with ... and tell him ..." or something like that. There is no need to fulfill them immediately. And yeah, there are travel "shortcuts", but they are integrated into the world in a very cool way and also there are quests to lead you to them and let you learn how to utilize them. Basically the quests have a tutorial like character without being a tutorial themselves, just when there is something new to discover, you will most certainly stumble upon a quest to make you use or discover that something. And meanwhile, the story unfolds...

About 6.) I think there are advanced classes, hero classes or something. And each class has a huge number of abilities (in the hundreds, where some are just higher ranks of previous abilities, however), and then you also gain talents, which improve your abilities in some ways, and which you cannot learn all, because of the limited amount of talent points, so you have to pick some to specialize in, which will lead to more diversity. In the beginning all the members of on class are very similar, but later on, these differences will be showing.

About 7.) Just clicking on the enemy and waiting for your hero to finish is the best way to get you killed in combat, I suppose, unless you fight sub par enemies. Also the monsters are different and thus different techniques are needed against many of them. Different protections, different combinations of attacks. There surely are some very powerful combinations, which you will find yourself using a lot, but I'm pretty certain, that you can't just use them all the time, especially since you learn new abilities all the time to expand your repertoire. And of course, there are also mixed groups of monsters...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pielorinho]

Felon, for me it's hard to say why the game is so much fun. I very rarely felt like I was grinding; there wsa always stuff to do. Abilities come often enough, and quests are easy enough to complete, that I had real trouble stopping playing the game: always within 10 minutes it felt like I could reach another milestone, whether it was finishing a quest or increasing my alchemy enough that I could learn a new recipe or discovering a new waypoint or leveling up or whatever.

Blizzard doesn't make revolutionary games. They take existing concepts, tweak them with minor improvements, polish the bejebus about of the whole deal, and make everything superfun. That's been their model for success for over a decade.

Daniel

 

[Felon]

Thanks for the info, guys. I hope others find it as useful as I did. I am installing WoW as I write this. On disk 2 of 4 (3.1 GB before patching! Yowza!).

 

[Felon]

OK, having played WoW for 4 days now, I think I'll provide answers to my own questions, based on initial impressions.

1. Is the grind starting to set in? Does the gameplay seem at all repetitive yet?

As an 11th-level orc warlock, I'm still getting the hang of playing my class. I don't suspect the honeymoon will be over for at least another week.

2. How much content is geared towards solo players? How necessary is it to group up?

Now this is a real point of contention. I've been able to solo fairly well, but upon hitting 10th level, I am supposed to be able to attain a new pet. However, to get the pet, I actually have to go through a dungeon and defeat a number of other warlocks of equal level who already have that pet. Moreover, both those warlocks and their pets are immune to the fear spell that gives me breathing room and allows my DoT's (a warlock's primary attack form) to take effect. Think 1e D&D, where monks couldn't advance past a certain level except by defeating another monk of that level....this is like that, but you have to defeat a dozen or so of them.

So something that's integral to my toon's development requires a SWAT team to handle. I'm not seeing the point of that. Worse yet, I'm not seeing groups of warlocks gathering at the entrance to form teams. I think most folks who don't have a guild just do without for at least another 3 levels or so.

3. How much is there to do outside of running around in the wilderness ganking random spawns that are just standing around minding their own business? Supposedly, WoW is very quest-driven, so do you have to hunt at all?
[/quest]

I've read and been told by numerous sources that there are just so many quests that I will have a tough time completing one before I get another. Well, my trail of bread crumbs has reached its end. I have an elite quest that I can't do for many many levels, the aforementioned pet quest, and that's it.

4. Is there a lot of instanced content ("instanced" meaning that dungeons and such are only accessable by yourself and your allies)?

Apparently, solo players are not currently intended to access instanced content.

5. Does WoW force players to go on "hell runs" out into the middle of nowhere? You know what I mean: you get a mission appropriate for your level, but the locale you're sent to in order to complete it is some remote spot. It takes you 45 minutes to run to but it only takes 8 minutes to complete the task, and the spawns that you have to avoid on the way make anything you encounter at the actual mission look like a cakewalk by comparison.

There is a lot of pointless walking around to do, but most quests up to this point haven't been much trouble to reach.

6. Do the classes each do interesting and unique stuff? Does every class have a distinct role? Is every shaman or warrior the same as every other shaman or warrior in terms of abilities? What do characters strive to gain as they advance? There are no advanced classes IIRC, so what's left? Phat l3wt?

So far it looks like there's a lot of differentiation between one class and another, but yes, every warlock is pretty much the same as every other warlock. There is no "branching off" onto your own path.

7. How interesting is combat? Do you have to change tactics, or does a class use the same chain of attacks in every fight like DAoC? Is it like CoH where [one of my friends] set up a macro where he'd just sit at his station mashing one key repeatedly for hours at a stretch?

Combat is pretty interesting right now. Chaining together various attacks and spells lead to lots of interesting tactics. Of course, tactics seem to be something of an indulgence, since a player has the option to play a mage and vaporize anything that woiuld require another class of equal level to handle with care. Or play a priest and use buffs and heals to tank just about anything they have any business fighting.

 

[Thanee]

Believe me, the mage has enough troubles in a fight. Vaporizing only works to a degree.

And you're just 11th level, I think differences in the classes only barely start to show there, wait for another 10 levels and I think it should be more diversity thanks to the various talent trees. It's more of a guess tho, havn't played beyond 14th level yet myself.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Angcuru]

Everything has mostly been covered by the above posts, but to wholly simplify:

The whole thing turns every other MMORPG on its head.

'Nuff said.

 

[Pielorinho]

Felon, if you've not finished the warlock quest yet, a word of advice:

Take the Zeppelin to Undead Lands, and visit the warlock trainer in the Undercity.

That trainer will give you an alternate quest to do to gain your pet, and it's incredibly easy, compared to the one in Ogrimmar. I had the same experience as you at tenth level with my beta warlock, and decided to explore undead lands for a bit, where I discovered the supereasy quest.

Other tenth-level quests for other classes are the same way: I couldn't solo my druid 10th-level quest until I was 12-level. I don't see this as a problem, though: either you can choose to group and get your funky power early, or you can choose to solo and get it a little later.

As for your lack of quests, I don't know what to say. Have you ever turned a quest down? Have you visited the Crossroads? I've had the opposite problem: I'm constantly abandoning quests (knowing I can pick them up again later with no penalty) in order to take new ones. Right now, as per normal, I've got 18 or 19 quests in my book, out of a maximum of 20.

If you've finished all the Razor Hill quests, go to Crossroads: there's a buttload of new quests there that should be fine for your level. Or go to Undead lands and go to Brill, the undead equivalent of Razor Hill, and do some undead quests. (Brill is just northwest of the zeppelin tower).

And if you're by any chance on Argent Dawn, send me a whisper--I'm Goroshko--and I can help you out with some spare loot!

Daniel