Comments on: This just in! Hard modes are Hard

By: Spooner

Spooner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:36:49 +0000

yeah I have yet to find a way in wordpress for users to be able to edit their comments

By: mike

mike — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:21:34 +0000

correction, I checked and 4 guild have now done Yogg+0 (i dont know how to edit a post)

By: Spooner

Spooner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:15:22 +0000

the baby boomers of WoW. that right there is full of pure WIN mike, and whats more… its completely true.

By: Spooner

Spooner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:12:59 +0000

he’s OUR generation, not say… my cousin’s

By: mike

mike — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:06:48 +0000

Well, while I agree with some points, I think this discussion has been going on for some time now and its driving players crazy. “Why is the game that I love, that I have played for four years even! Payed at LEAST $800 to play over those years suddenly seem like just anyone can do it?!?!?!1″
Well, there is a little more to it than that. While I will 100% agree it is much faster and easier to level grind, I also agree that only one guild I know of has finished the content with a Yogg+0 kill. This means that the game literally caters to every single person, where in the past maybe it did not do that so much.
Now on to the real point. Remember the people complaining, like myself in some ways, have been playing for 4 years. We are generally really good at this game. Best example I can give it watching people suck at Safety Dance in Naxx, or fail at Flash Freeze on Hodir. Very simple concept…people still fail at it. But when you have played a game for 4 years how is it suppost to still remain a crazy challenge. We are the Baby Boomers of World of Warcraft. Can you remember your grandfather saying “back in my day yada yada snow and walking to school and whatever”….well now here we sit the grandfathers….the beta testers of WOW saying “back when I was just a lvl 5…” I hope this is comming together. The game is old, we are older, there is sooo many things to do in it now when before it was just raid or play with a happy fun rock.
To sum this up, I agree 100% we need something new…that new kick WoW has been looking for. But we also need to understand that the little game that was WoW is now the biggest MMO that I care to mention. They have a business job to do. If we want to complain about it being easy then we need to mind our own “old orginal WoW players” business and go try a Yogg+0. That will give us plenty of challenge.

p.s. remember when WE first raided it was 40 man and you only needed 20 paying attention to be sucessful. The other 20 got carried. Yea WoW is old but we still won’t quit.

By: Nessaja

Nessaja — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:03:02 +0000

WILLIAM SHATNER is not an old cult celebrity. SHATNER IS GOD.

By: Spooner

Spooner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:39:59 +0000

“WoW isn’t an entry-level game, and I can’t think of a single person who plays it who wasn’t a gamer BEFORE they tried WoW.”

My mother and father in law as well as my wife were not gamers before they got into WoW via my brother in law. My wife’s parents have multiple 70+ characters both Horde and Alliance and my mother in law specifically has at least 3 Lv 80s with over 60k gold on any given day of the week. They’re also both over 50.

I have to disagree that the media is going to be a major factor against new players joining the game as in my experiences, there are people that are simply closed to the prospect of playing MMORPGs. The game isn’t exactly targeting non-gamers, but it most definitely an entry level game in every respect to the MMORPG genre. Just look around you:

WoW comic books, WoW manga, WoW clothing in HotTopic, WoW commercials in TV using old cult celebrities pandering to a very broad audience, WoW iPhone applications, WoW webcomics, lots of novels, action figures, etc. The marketing with this game universe covers an amazing range and the way changes keep flowing in this game it is becoming dramatically separated from the classic WoW some of us played back in 2004 and early 2005.

Now these changes may or may not be good for the game at large, I’m in no place to make that decision. I no doubt think that WoW is a great game, hell I’ve been playing it for half a decade, own more fan merchandise than most people, and have had somewhere around 5 accounts at one point between me and my wife. Ultimately though, this game can be played by the most novice of gamers that have never stepped foot in an MMO. It’s the MMO to get you started playing MMOs. The fact that you can pretty much get to the max level cap by yourself with little hindrance in a relatively short period of time is proof enough that this game reserves its “challenge” to the end game.

I’m not asking outright for things to be an uphill battle from the start or for the game to be punishing and hard. Here’s an analogy for how I feel this game is going:

A bartender is mixing drinks for both heavy drinkers and lightweights. Because he’s lazy, or rushed, he waters down EVERYTHING no matter who orders. That way the lightweights are happy because they think they’re hot shit, and the heavy drinkers are too stuck in their addiction to realize they’re drinking something weak. Some will figure it out and cry foul, those guys typically leave while they wait 4 months for the bartender comes around to take their order.

By: Spooner

Spooner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:16:54 +0000

Don’t tell me it wasn’t appropriate.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:41:52 +0000

Morhaime left WoW development? I know Kaplan did.

By: Telle

Telle — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:18:48 +0000

Wow. I can’t say I agree. WoW has definitely evolved, and gotten easier, but I think it’s rather elitist to say that the game isn’t targeted towards “gamers.” WoW isn’t an entry-level game, and I can’t think of a single person who plays it who wasn’t a gamer BEFORE they tried WoW. For the portion of society that doesn’t videogame, it is very unlikely that they’ll begin with WoW — both because of the monthly fee, and because WoW (like many MMO’s) is demonized by the media as being addictive.

Furthermore, I see WoW getting simpler as a progression to reflect what these gamers want. Do I raid four nights a week? No. But I pay the same amount of money for my time card as everyone else, I put thought into my gaming, no matter what I do, and I love WoW for its co-op aspect. When something becomes so difficult that its a trial, then it’s no longer a game, so I don’t condemn Blizz for attempting to make this game more fun for its gamers, whom you refer to as the “mainstream audience.” Sorry for the rant, but my thesis topic is videogames, so this is kind of a personal subject for me.