WoW, Xmas Gaming sucks...
So the Xmas period is upon us, everyone has got new games for all varieties of systems, and in playing this variety of PS2 RPG's, 360 Shooters, DS throw-away's, and Wii flappers, I got withdrawals. Its buggin me, I quit WoW months ago, but goddamn! It was a good game! Yeah I know, I'm just nostalgic, and possibly rose-tinting the situation. Everything I have been seeing in games recently has been reminding me of WoW and with the Burning Crusade expansion dawning on the horizon, it's on every fucking game site too. So where am I going with this? Bear with me...
I'm worried that WoW has ruined my expectations/outlook on games. WoW was shit, there were hideous people online, gold farmers, 40-man raids, even just parting with Twats... But the world was huge, beautifully rendered and the quests were fun (well later on they were fun once it stopped being, kill 20 X, 15 Y and 10 Z, then return to me) and to be honest the levelling system was all you could want in a game. Only problem was that to achieve anything it meant partying or raiding i.e. teaming up with twats.
As I mentioned before, other games I have been playing have been reminding me of WoW, one such game would be Oblivion... Oblivion is essentially a kind of one player WoW, but it just did not get enough things right.
That guy's list of things Oblivion didn't get quite right:
1. There was not enough variety of armours and weapons, about 10 different sets all together, they all look generic, and most plebs (NPC's) in the world seem to have that armour too.
2. There are no real defined classes, anyone can learn anything e.g. warriors can learn fireballs.
3. The levelling up system is stupid, once you go up 10 points in your "Major Skills" varying from throwing fire balls, to selling items in a shop, you will then go up a level. In theory. IN THEORY, you could level up without killing one bad guy.
4. The world is pretty, however there only seems to be 6-7 tile sets (Well they are not called tile sets nowadays, maybe environments would be better phrasing? Any of you level designers out there know what I'm talking about?)
5. The races, well there's a few of them, Lizards, Lions, about 12 different types of elves, humans and orcs. All of which are pretty much generic, and don't matter either, you'll barely see your characters face.
That guy's list of things Oblivion got right:
1. All the characters speak.
2. Quick Travel, genius.
3. A main plot line, which can be ignored if desired.
My point here is that I think WoW has a great balance of things that are right and I think Blizzard should bite the bullet and make a 1 player WoW version, Essentially it would be a Diablo 3, and the game would be so much better without wankers flapping about too! All hey need to do is add in the latter list and Boom instant Hit! Hell they could even bring out different versions for Alliance or horde, hell they could bring out different versions for each race they would ALL sell. And I'm guessing it would also be easy to do, since well they have a Map (Big one too), Character models, and I suppose they could have some online play a la Diablo 2.
Another thing that was getting me was maybe WoW just had a crappy bunch of online people? I though maybe it would be worth getting Final fantasy XI and giving MMO's a second chance? Then I read a review, and this excerpt made me immediately scrap that idea, "Once you hit level 30 it's impossible to level, grind, collect or quest without a 5-man party". Fuck that.
I also have RF Online sitting in the house, apparently it's a total grind fest and the only player collaboration required is for PvP, Nice, though I still haven't got the bottle to put it in my PC.
There are not enough decent RPG games out there, too many of them are generic, Orcs, Mages, Dwarves etc... Neverwinter nights 2 is supposedly quite good, though this is supposed to be an RPG in the baulders gate sense, which to be honest, I owned, played for a few hours, got a troop together, and then died from a wolf. Sucks.
P.S. Would it be wrong to get burning crusade, start a new character, then hate the game after a few days/weeks/months?
Help me people
I'm worried that WoW has ruined my expectations/outlook on games. WoW was shit, there were hideous people online, gold farmers, 40-man raids, even just parting with Twats... But the world was huge, beautifully rendered and the quests were fun (well later on they were fun once it stopped being, kill 20 X, 15 Y and 10 Z, then return to me) and to be honest the levelling system was all you could want in a game. Only problem was that to achieve anything it meant partying or raiding i.e. teaming up with twats.
As I mentioned before, other games I have been playing have been reminding me of WoW, one such game would be Oblivion... Oblivion is essentially a kind of one player WoW, but it just did not get enough things right.
That guy's list of things Oblivion didn't get quite right:
1. There was not enough variety of armours and weapons, about 10 different sets all together, they all look generic, and most plebs (NPC's) in the world seem to have that armour too.
2. There are no real defined classes, anyone can learn anything e.g. warriors can learn fireballs.
3. The levelling up system is stupid, once you go up 10 points in your "Major Skills" varying from throwing fire balls, to selling items in a shop, you will then go up a level. In theory. IN THEORY, you could level up without killing one bad guy.
4. The world is pretty, however there only seems to be 6-7 tile sets (Well they are not called tile sets nowadays, maybe environments would be better phrasing? Any of you level designers out there know what I'm talking about?)
5. The races, well there's a few of them, Lizards, Lions, about 12 different types of elves, humans and orcs. All of which are pretty much generic, and don't matter either, you'll barely see your characters face.
That guy's list of things Oblivion got right:
1. All the characters speak.
2. Quick Travel, genius.
3. A main plot line, which can be ignored if desired.
My point here is that I think WoW has a great balance of things that are right and I think Blizzard should bite the bullet and make a 1 player WoW version, Essentially it would be a Diablo 3, and the game would be so much better without wankers flapping about too! All hey need to do is add in the latter list and Boom instant Hit! Hell they could even bring out different versions for Alliance or horde, hell they could bring out different versions for each race they would ALL sell. And I'm guessing it would also be easy to do, since well they have a Map (Big one too), Character models, and I suppose they could have some online play a la Diablo 2.
Another thing that was getting me was maybe WoW just had a crappy bunch of online people? I though maybe it would be worth getting Final fantasy XI and giving MMO's a second chance? Then I read a review, and this excerpt made me immediately scrap that idea, "Once you hit level 30 it's impossible to level, grind, collect or quest without a 5-man party". Fuck that.
I also have RF Online sitting in the house, apparently it's a total grind fest and the only player collaboration required is for PvP, Nice, though I still haven't got the bottle to put it in my PC.
There are not enough decent RPG games out there, too many of them are generic, Orcs, Mages, Dwarves etc... Neverwinter nights 2 is supposedly quite good, though this is supposed to be an RPG in the baulders gate sense, which to be honest, I owned, played for a few hours, got a troop together, and then died from a wolf. Sucks.
P.S. Would it be wrong to get burning crusade, start a new character, then hate the game after a few days/weeks/months?
Help me people
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Thanks,
David