WOW is a failure

Originally from http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=5119


It WAS good. They ruined it. I figure it's probably a decision from the VU Marketing dept. higher up than anyone working at Blizzard which caused them to implement the new changes. It now plays almost exactly like Everquest did during its pre-SOE days.

Some people even prefer it now, probably due to some misplaced nostalgia, but the majority of beta testers, especially those casual gamers and people like me who can generally tell the difference between 'fucking tedious' and 'enjoyably stimulating' refuse to touch the game anymore. It was good for awhile, seeing how Blizzard would actually be the first MMORPG to tap into the casual gaming market with their previously easy-to-play title, but it looks like VU (or someone at Blizzard) decided to play it safe by going down the same route that EQ went 5 years ago.

At this point, it's likely that EQ2 and Guild Wars will be going down a different route: the route WOW was going down originally, because unlike whoever made the idiotic decision to 'beef up' WOW, they probably realize how fed up the market is of EQ-likes. WOW's original designers realized this, so it's quite sad to see them making all the wrong decisions.

As for the game being in Beta, it won't be in Beta for too long. It's scheduled for gold mastering come late October for an early November release, according to VU's president in a recent press announcement. It looks like VU just wants to cash in on their investment. It's quite dissapointing, too, because half the features that were supposed to make it into WOW aren't even in yet, or balanced properly, for that matter.

Half the classes don't even have their talents yet: Paladin, Shaman, Hunter, Warlock - and the Hunter was only just released in an extremely buggy, unbalanced state. The Warlock's been the weakest most underpowered class for the past two betas and nothing has been done to fix it, though, Geoff Frazier aka Nebu aka Shlonglor, the non-developer 'Assistant Web Producer' insists that Blizzard will implement it correctly, in time. I doubt that.

Heck, the Endgame hasn't even been made yet, nor have the higher level dungeons been completed (some of the bosses are <NYI> and features such as housing, Hero Classes, Raid Zones, Battlegrounds (large scale PVP), boats/zeppelins, and a lot more have yet to see the light of day, all currently being 'promised' to be released and tested 'sometime before retail'.

They've got only a month and a half left, and it took them 3 weeks to release a buggy, untested patch that completely 'rebalanced' the mathematical calculations of the game, adding a HIDEOUS amount of crash bugs, server crash bugs, imbalanced skills, dysfunctional talents, seriously unneeded nerfs to certain classes, dysfunctional armor, HP/MP regen, and plenty of others. All of thise was, according to their Lead Designer, "internally tested". By whom? Indians?

He's thus far refused to acknowledge these GREVIOUS oversights as bugs and is, thus far, 'looking into them', though 'to his knowledge', 'no such bugs exist based on our internal testing, nor were nerfs intended'. Which is why armor is completely dysfunctional, Elite monsters hit for 3 times more than they used to (and they already hit really hard), and the statistics in the game are completely out of whack. Here's an example of how it's SUPPOSED to work:
Quote:

Base stats = x
Bonus stats from items/abilities = y
Total = z
z = x + y


Now here's how it works in the game:

Quote:

Base stats = x
Bonus stats from items/abilities = y
Total = z
z = x + y*2 + what the fuck - %y

Again, what the fuck. No one seems to have any idea what's going on with the calculations but how the hell could the QA miss this? It's probably because they're all underpaid at 8 dollars an hour, working 16 hour days AND living in the OC. That's got to hurt.

Also, because of the changes - certain instances are undoable/uncompleteable without having more than a single group inside. These instances were originally balanced for a single group only. A group consists of 5 people. When you have an instance that's meant for 5 people but only completeable by 10 or more people, most of whom cannot enter without the aid of a summoning Warlock, you've got a problem. How Blizzard's 'internal testers' managed to miss this, I have no clue. According to the Lead Designer, their internal testers had 'no difficulty in overcoming the instances'. They must have been on some level 60 characters that nobody else has access to, I suppose. Either that, somebody's fibbing.

On top of that, the game has become so much more item dependant due to the inflation of stat calculation in the recent patch. Tigole's response has been twofold in this issue:

"You are not adequately equipped for your level." in addressing a complaint about the game being too difficult.

and

"The game has not been made more item dependant, to my knowledge."

So, which is it?

So you think Blizz has finally taken a bigger bite than they can chew and will actually release a game before it's 'done'?

Yeah. Those days are completely over. Blizzard might just as well rename itself "VU Games - MMORPG Department". It's the main reason for the falling out between Bill Roper and Blizzard, too.

On top of all those problems I listed, Blizzard has just recently decided to go with single-class functionality.

If you don't know what this means, it means that no class other than a rogue can lockpick chests whereas previously anyone could train the lockpick skill from a trainer, and any mage could learn a magical spell that allowed them to unlock chests with a Key reagent. Anyone who trained Engineering could also blow up the lock with a Seaforium (C4) charge, and Blacksmiths were planned to be able to craft one-use Skeleton Keys for this very purpose. It made the game feel a whole lot more well-rounded and put everyone on an even standing.

Nowadays, you can't have a party in an Instanced Dungeon without a rogue along, or you won't be able to open certain doors and chests. This, I think, is to promote forced grouping. What party would want to go to a dungeon without a rogue if they had to face a locked door or an unopenable treasure chest?

Also, Warriors have had their tactical and combat abilities severely reduced in order to force them to take a specific role in a party - that of a damage soaker who pulls all of the monsters aggression towards him. The warrior has 3 Talent trees, which work very much like the ones in Diablo II. This allows for much diversity, or specialization in one of the talent trees. A Protection warrior would benefit from an improved Taunting ability, added shield block rate, added defense, and so forth. This would give him an advantage over other warriors in terms of defense. A warrior who chose to go with the Fury line on the other hand could be proficient in dual-weapons fighting, the building of his Rage (his type of mana, which builds up from attacking, and thus allows you to use more abilities) and so forth. An Arms warrior would be proficient in the use of weapons, damage, and special attacks.

Now, in theory, all of this was well and good. In practice, it was decent, but certain skills, such as Dual Wielding (Whcih Fury depended on), were severely bugged - and always have been, because they seem to have the problem of missing a lot. However, Blizzard, like the professionals that they are, seldom test their implements and simply decided that the Fury line was 'too powerful' on paper, so they nerfed it to 25% of its former power. Needless to say, it's fucking useless now.

On top of that, they've nerfed the Warrior's basic non-talent abilities/skills to a point where he REQUIRES those talents in order to return to his former power. Taunt and Shield Block were probably hit the hardest. A warrior can't tank or pull agro at all in a party unless he spends all of his talent points in the Protection tree. Taunt is useless without it and Shield block only blocks 20% of what it used to ,so he needs to take Improved Shield block in order to make up for this deficiency. What this does is pigeonhole every single warrior into the Protection talent line or he'll be completely useless in a party. On top of that, Improved Taunt still isn't as powerful as the original un-talented Taunt ability was. The problem being that it uses way too much rage, and the Defensive stance warrior cannot generate any rage whatsoever.

This is 'balance', according to the Lead Designer.

Every single class (well, 3 out of 9) have a role in a party. The game is going down the same road EQ went with single class functionality. Every party -must- consist of the so-called "holy trinity" of the Warrior, Mage and Priest. Warrior to tank, Mage to throw out damage, and Priest to heal. Anything else is an extra. This simply makes playing a lot of the other classes undesireable if you intend to reach the Endgame. But why bother, it isn't as if they're going to make it anytime soon. After all, they've only had 3 years to do so.

WAAAAAAAAMBULANCE!!!!!!!

Hey, stop stealing my material. Not that it's mine - but I'm pretty sure I was the first to use it here.

Waaaa! Waaaa!

Serious responses, please. Jeez. Keep the trolling to a minimum ( and on the CounterStrike forums)

When 90% of your beta testers are coming onto your forum just to voice their opinion, "The game is just not fun anymore", that should give you some hint as to the direction you're taking your game, and should allow you to cast doubt upon the decisions you're making. It should, in all logical sense, cause you to pause and to ask yourself if there is any reason to pursue your current "vision".

Blizzard never should have gotten in to MMORPGs in the first place. No MMORPG is released problem free. In fact, they're probably one of the harder types of games to release problem free due to server loading alone. They also never release all the content with the betatest, either, so there's always something buggy going on at the release that's never been given a decent test.

Yep. Personally, I find it rather stupid that they want to 'save' the content for retail. With VU's hire&fire policy and 8 dollar an hour QA testers to do the testing it's no wonder the game's in such a pathetic state.

VU's insistence on an MMORPG is also probably the reason why Bill Roper, the Schaeffer Brothers and Brevik left in the first place, and the ArenaNet guys who wrote the initial documents and designed templates for WOW probably left because VU's 'EQ-centric' vision of MMORPGs didn't agree with their idea of what a good game could be.

MMORPGs in the vein of EQ don't constitute good games. The reason? They're not fun, and there's so many fucking timesinks just to keep people paying their monthly fees.

i dont know why you are surprised, Exitium.

Blizzard is famous for making idiotic design decitions and heavy unnecesary nerfing on balanced things while ignoring other badly balanced stuff.
They also specially love to ignore suggestions.

I never had any hope in WoW anyway, i wonder what would happen to blizzard if WoW fails like sims online

Starcraft and the Diablo games turned out pretty well, though. Warcraft 3's probably one of the most balanced RTS's out there, too. But that was with the direction of guys like the Schaefer brothers, and Peter Hu (he was the sole developer of the 1.10 patch for D2).

The current crew doesn't have a single fucking clue.

I also put some blame on a portion of the forum-whiners and powergamers, who complained incessantly that WoW wasn't enough like EQ.

We'll probably give WoW a try if it has an open beta. They might manage to turn it around a bit, but we've been more excited about Guild Wars for a while now. Most of our Real Life friends are more interested in joining us in a game that has easy leveling, little downtime, and no monthly fee. Fancy that!

Well, I did at one point have high hopes for it the way ex was pumping it. But now, I don't know. Ex, is it possible they might fix these problems?

Thanks for the update Exitium, I always wondered why everyone was so hyped about WoW, it's feature list seemed very basic.

Didn't the talented Blizzard core group leave and start their own thing? Aren't they doing Guild Wars; it played very well with balanced and interesting PvP and with no monthly fees it would be the smartest move.

I'm waiting to see if City of Villians pans out with City of Heroes, that was great fun and atmostsphere but still a treadmill, PvP and base command can add a lot.

Exitium said:

Starcraft and the Diablo games turned out pretty well

Click to expand...

they manage to balance Starcraft almost perfectly UNTIL they made the expansion, the expansion completely trashed the game and gave the protoss the advantage over any game that doesnt end in the first 10 minutes.

Diablo1's balance sucked ass, 90% of your power came from your (random) items, and for the other 10% the mage ruled if you could find enough books, the warrior was close second and the Rogue's main advantage was nerfed by the small sight range.

Diablo2's balance always sucked ass, just take the fact you can easly end up with a bad char build by lvl30 if you didnt plan it perfectly, plus initially they made the (BIG) mistake of only testing the first 3 skill levels and first "area" in the open beta so the 5 chars were pretty much well balanced UNTIL you got to the 4th level skills, same goes for the areas, area 1 was balanced and didnt have that many bugs, but the other areas were crawling with them, THEN they released patches that added even more bugs like the deadly "invisible lighting enchanted" bug, of course though the 600 patches they released they nerfed some skills so bad they ruined countless working chars.
They also screwed up the items, they wanted to make the character's power less related to items so much they completely ruined the regular magic items, they also made getting good rare items a pain in the ass because of the countless usesless prefixes/subfixes, they could have fixed it somehow with a item creation system but they just went with an improvised "cube" crafting idea that doesnt really work well.
Its true the last patch made the game a lot better, but with the high cost of totally rebalancing the game.

Exitium said:

Warcraft 3's probably one of the most balanced RTS's out there, too.

Click to expand...

Actually no, its not balanced, but nobody notices the balancing issues because since the game encorauges rushing matches end way before the balance breaks up.

Well well, I guess Ex your old topic's name "WOW is Diablo 2 on drugs" has a whole new meaning.

starcraft is one of the most balanced rts games the world has ever seen
you just havnt played it enough
its koreas national sport
the one game blizzard nailed was starcraft, nothing ever will match it

btw, the real blizzard guys are at http://www.flagshipstudios.com/
rumor is there working on a rpg similar to diablo (they got the same concept art guy) and the engine was done a while ago in 3d

yeh wow, eq2, and all the other mmo are crap, tis true, there a time sink to keep you paying.
im playing eve atm, and i have all the money and skills i need, i just go around and pvp, and its fun for me, even though theres nothing else to gain but fame anymore, ill be quitting shortly anyway, low on the $$$

i thought korea's national sport was "zerg rush kekekekekeke ^_^"... those games end in the first 10 mins, and like i said, up to the rushing period the game is balanced, the protoss rule can only be noticed in long games, i guess its easier to balance the rushing period than the whole game and thats why they force you to rush in war3

wc3 imo is a step backwards
the original starcraft programmers left blizzard before wc3, and formed there own company, i have no idea what its called

protoss is slight weaker, but skill more than makes up for it
watch some replays of the australian legionnaire, and old replays of garmito and reach to see some true protoss skill

protoss is regarded as weakest race in the long game, you got your wires crossed mate,

im on uswest if you wanna game , brood war only

WEAKER?!, the protoss have the ultimate assassin unit (not only it kills in one shot, at range, but it makes you stronger by giving you a unit, PERMANENTLY, using it for defense (in the base you can replenish the dark archon's shields with the building, and you can even prevent attempts at targenting them first using arbiters or making clones) makes you invulnerable against any attack that doesnt overwhelm your micromanaging abilities, someone is attacking with 12 battle cruisers and you barelly have a defense ? no sweat, transform 4 ~ 6 and theyll (bts+your defenses) take care of the problem, or your can even keep them, for free, and they dont even spend food for your race, still too many enemies ? use stasis over them while you recharge the dark archons to steal those too, the other player cant do anything but watch), they have the ultimate stealth units (both attack and recon ones), they have the ultimate anti ground defense unit that is cheap as hell and you only need one to render a small sized base defenseless (corsair), and they also have the most powerful melee unit that costs mainly gas so in long games with limited resourses they have an edge on that as well (against terrans they can counter with emp, but an archon rush against zergs ? they are pretty much dead if they dont have enough guardians ready or can counter them with spells (hard, considering the lack of resourses))

so for the third time, they might be the weakest but only during they RUSH period, the first 10 minutes, once they can build up a defense they rule (there is a high degree of skill requiered tho, last time i played it online it didnt seem like the community was into strategy but more into mechanized playing, maybe thats why they never tapped into the protoss's strenghts).

sorry but i wont accept your challenge, i havent played in years and im not going to spend hours training again to get the rust off

Major_Blackhart said:

Well, I did at one point have high hopes for it the way ex was pumping it. But now, I don't know. Ex, is it possible they might fix these problems?

Click to expand...

Negatory. Whoever's pulling the strings behind these changes probably isn't anyone at Blizzard. The game was fine (all the way from alpha) before this patch and they knew it.

The problem is, there's so many of these EQ whiners "speaking up" nowadays that it makes it look like the majority of players agrees with the changes even though all of the casual gamers and pretty much everyone who doesn't get caught by these stupid hooks disagrees with them. But I don't think VU or Blizzard (whoever may be responsible) cares about getting casual gamers to buy the game. When those guys from ArenaNet originally conceived WOW, they envisioned it to be friendly to both casual gamers and hardcore gamers by offering staple content for both groups - e.g. soloing and easy microdungeons for casual gamers, and battlegrounds and raid zones for the hardcore gamers.

The majority of the changes which have been made only add time sinks, money sinks and slow down the progress you make through the game.

Another possibility for this change is perhaps to stop players from discovering game content before it is made - which is what WOW is currently suffering from. Basically, Blizzard's got around 6-8 weeks before the game is declared gold, and they don't have the time to implement a lot of the high level material, so when the game goes retail, people will spend 1-2 months grinding at the lower levels before they ever reach the cap, which gives Blizzard some amount of time to design these areas while people grind. It's rather sneaky, if you ask me.


The stupid thing is how half the classes don't even have their talents implemented yet, and talents require a lot of testing. I doubt the game will be released in a polished state, and will likely go through thousands of 'nerfs' and 'rebalances' before everything comes out 'right' (though probably not to my, or any casual gamer's liking). It's like Asheron's Call 2 all over again.

what happened to AC2 exactly ?

I don't know the gist of it, but Microsoft fucked up.