First and foremost, I will revisit WoW off and on for as long as it is still active….especially with each expansion. My opinion (…please repeat that word to yourself…heh…) is that you cannot intelligently comment on MMOs unless you’ve played or are playing WoW. Like or not, it is the yardstick and will continue to be so until we all agree that something else is the yardstick.I'll go one further. World of Warcraft is the best game I've ever played. I don't think you can intelligently comment on the modern gaming market without having played WoW. There are NO other games even close to World of Warcraft in terms of gaming, cultural, and online impact. For jumping sake, Leo Laporte, even plays World of Warcraft. If you haven't played it, and you're opining on the gaming market, your opinion is going to be short-sighted.
Why is World of Warcraft the best game I've ever played? Simple. I sat down to play WoW and it was immediately apparent that the game was a pleasure to play and I couldn't explain for a split second why. Every other game that I've ever played has had some sort of adjustment period or some sort of immersion breaker. I could explain to you how the game could be made better the first time I sat down to play it. I was lost for comment with WoW. The initial game is perfect in my book.
Now, even the best things in life break down at some point (chocolate melts, Star Wars has prequels, etc). WoW eventually turns out to be just another MMOG, but god damn does it hide it well.
I resisted WoW for a full five years before finally trying it this June. Playing it now and loving it.
ReplyDeleteOddly, the only point at which I really disliked WoW was the very first hour. It was stomach-churningly garish, all the text was LOUD and SHOUTY, everything was moving way too fast... after less than 20 minutes I had a headache and after an hour I had to stop and lie down.
I persisted, however; changed my desktop color settigns, reduced the size of all the fonts/windows/UI elements to the smallest permitted, fiddled with the sound, turned off many, many of the default options. Basically I quietened the whole thing down a lot. From then on it's been great.
I quite liked being a dedicated MMO player who'd never played WoW. I had nothing against it, but I only play MMOs, apart from that I am not a gamer in any way, so I had never played any previous Blizzard game or barely even heard of them before WoW.
I was in EQ2 beta when WoW was just about to launch, and even though I was very unhappy with that, Mrs Bhagpuss and I were (and are) committed Norrathians, so we went with EQ2 when it launched pre-emptively early before WoW. Also a friend of ours jumped ship to WoW then but came back in about six weeks saying WoW was ok but nothing special, and as we know and share much of his taste in MMOs we took that as a solid review.
In retrospect, I rather wish we'd tried WoW earlier. It takes a real effort of memory to realise that much of the familiarity of systems in WoW actually comes from our having played the copies of those systems that other MMOs we played have imported.
I would disagree that it's the best MMO ever though. Most polished, yes, certainly. Personally, I would say EQ circa Velious was "better" in some ways. A lot of it depends on what you "grow up" with, though.
You did not just say EQ was better. EQ is a skidmark in MMOG history and can die in a fire :P
ReplyDeleteHighly addictive for sure. I played it for about 2yrs then left for a brief period. Got forced back by a bunch of friends and its been a blast ever since. The additions in patch 3.2 make the game even more easy, but more enjoyable as well in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteMy first experience in WoW was playing as a warrior. The rage meter encouraged me to move from one fight to another with little pause, before I'd even healed fully, so I could use the rage I'd built up in one battle for the next. It was genius.
ReplyDeleteI still think WoW's relatively fast pace is one of its key advantages over other MMOs. That and the fact that I could probably still play it and it would look fine on my 6+ years-old PC.