What is the basis for WoW?

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XvMMvX

[H]ard|Gawd
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What is it all about?

I LOVED (still play) Diablo 2....getting some friends together and doing MF runs was just fun to me.....the never ending quest for better gear in a MP environment. Looking forward to Diablo 3 and Torchlight 2 for these reasons.

My question is what do you do when you play WoW? Is it focused on story and end game, or do you just do raids in search for the better gear? In Diablo is was all a gamble on what would drop (actually I got frustrated because the odds that Blizzard put in there were outlandish, you had a better chance of getting struck by lightning then actually findings what you needed in that game)....is this how WoW works? Or, do you know what each raid will drop you you just repeat until everybody in your Guild/Friends has all they need (like Leroy Jenkins need some shoulders that it sounded like they knew would drop).

Just curious because I have always been intrigued by WoW, but have stayed away for fear of being sucked in.
 
It really depends on where you want to take it. You can make new friends, become even more of a hermit, or whatever really.

Theres a ton to read in the game as far as "story" goes. So, you'd definitely get a decent outlook on the lore of the game. I was planning on reading everything while playing it but eventually grew tired of it and just auto-accept/turn in quests without reading anything. Can't wait for TOR so I can sit back and enjoy the story while being lazy and not having to read everything.

I would say end game raids are a huge part of the game. I haven't gotten there yet but raids along with battlegrounds seem to be a big player throughout the game. There's an addon that tells you exactly which boss drops what so its mostly down to farming the ones that drop the things you want/need.
 
At it's core it's story based, each instance or group of instances has a story behind it but in the end you end up just going and doing different encounters in the quest for better gear.

Generally harder bosses will drop better gear and for the most part drop rates are reasonable. I would say on average each boss drops 1 piece of loot for ever 5 people in the group. For the most part all the gear will be roughly the same quality pending on the difficulty of the instance. While you can still be unlucky, for the most part after a couple of tries you will see the piece of gear you are looking for. In the last couple expansions blizzard has implemented additional measures to make sure things like set armor are available without having to wait for ridiculous drop rates. Every couple months between expansions blizzard will introduce a new set of raids that are harder with better gear available. With rare exception I would say most gear has a better then 10% drop rate from boss the boss that drops it.

The best gear is recieved through raiding which can be done with either 10 or 25 players. Generally most guilds do these and with the ability to do 10man raids now it is easy to for a raiding group with friends. I have also made some good ingame friends through guilds and raiding. Prior to raiding you will get your gear through 5man dungeons of which there is a very good system for finding groups if your friends arn't on or via questing.

Another option for gear aquisition is PvP. PvP gear and Raid gear have different goals though. PVP gear will be better for PVP while Raid gear is better for killing monsters and npcs.

If you enjoyed playing diablo with your friends I would say there is a high probability that you would enjoy playing wow.
 
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As a fellow Diablo lover, make no mistake WoW is an mmo, and not a dungeon crawl. It is focused on end-game raids in search of better gear and bigger raid bosses, but each boss has a set loot table instead of completely random based on a maximum item level like Diablo. So say you kill Lich King in WoW, he has a set table of say 20-30 items and drops say 2-3 at a time, so eventually everyone should get what they need given the amount of times he has been killed. In theory this is true but remember that random is still random, so even though it's a set table, it may never drop based purely on the random outcome.
 
What I miss the most in WoW, at least vanilla WoW is the randomness of loot, and the difficulty that came with getting it. Ya you knew what bosses dropped what, but it took 40 coordinated people, every boss had something to drop for you at very low percentage and even if it dropped there was still chance someone else could win it.

Vanilla server firsts, completing Teir 1 sets, and acquiring the best gear possible to own everyone in PvP, were probably the best moments I have ever had in the history of the game. Those moments can be compared to D2 and time I put into my characters, my lvl 90 Hammerdin with 44k hammers, my MF sorc or rabies druid. They had the best gear in the game, that I farmed for tirelessly and I owned people in clusterfuck that was called D2 PVP.

For a long while I felt that WoW was much like D2 but on an a much higher level due to the fact that you had to sue coordination and cooperation on massive social scale to achieve the same level of epicness that you could do by soloing everything in D2.

Alas WoW is barely like it used to be in vanilla. I still play and every time I buy a piece of epic armor from a vendor I die inside a little.
 
I downloaded the trial once, and played it a couple hours. All I could really do was walk around and kill little animals. I was assuming this was the beginning of some type of "leveling" process. I honestly don't enjoy that kind of thing. I also won't play a game that I have to pay a monthly fee for. So those two things killed it for me. Most of the other Blizzard games, I have liked.
 
Jutsu said:
Alas WoW is barely like it used to be in vanilla. I still play and every time I buy a piece of epic armor from a vendor I die inside a little.
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Yeah I feel the same way in terms of *how* gear is acquired these days. I don't mind so much that it's relatively easier than before, but the vendor system was a killer lore-wise and feel. Instead of having the most illustrious and coveted sets of gear discovered in large scary dungeons with menacing bosses, they're all in the storeroom behind an NPC of your own capital city.

I'd love to see gear acquired via the Silithus style of questing, but a little less intense. One thing I missed in the older WoW is that I can jump in and go crazy with what I was working on (gear, rep grinds, etc.). Now that we're a couple months into Cata, I've gone all-out with the things I could do personally, and now I'm just stuck with daily Heroics.

EDIT: As for the OP, WoW is much different then D2 in many respects. Dungeons and bosses aren't things you blaze through nonstop. There's a trinity of a Tank, Healer and Damage (DPS) that have to coordinate on some level. For example, tank goes in first to take most of the hits, and any class should use abilities to keep enemies from attacking (crowd control) to lighten up the load of enemies. There aren't really any swarms of enemies to butcher down. Raids require more people and much more coordination. It also requires one to know the mechanics of their class very well, like knowing how much hit rating they need on their gear to stop missing attacks, how many potions and flasks they need to maximize damage, etc.
 
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I haven't even played the game and I agree that if all the gear can be attained by shopping then what is the fun in that?

The drop rates seem very reasonable. In Diablo 2 a Boss could drop ANY item in the game, and to get the leet gear it was like .0000000007% chance to drop or somthing. That is pointless.

They even changed them in 1.13 and frankly it is still ridiculous. Is it anything like this is WoW?

157d8ol.png


If the odds ran perfect you would have to kill 5000+ Zod rune qualifying bosses to get ONE, and some things require MULTIPLEs of these runes.
 
Lyquist said:
I downloaded the trial once, and played it a couple hours. All I could really do was walk around and kill little animals. I was assuming this was the beginning of some type of "leveling" process. I honestly don't enjoy that kind of thing. I also won't play a game that I have to pay a monthly fee for. So those two things killed it for me. Most of the other Blizzard games, I have liked.
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Not a fan of RPG games at all then i guess?
 
XvMMvX said:
I haven't even played the game and I agree that if all the gear can be attained by shopping then what is the fun in that?
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Not all the gear, but most of the major pieces. Mechanically speaking, it's the same as it used to be (the currency you need to buy the items can only be obtained by running dungeons or raiding). The vendors just made things a little more deterministic. There are still random drops based on a pre-determined loot table per boss, but you're guaranteed to get *something* via this currency system if bosses drop nothing useful for you.
 
XvMMvX said:
What is it all about?

Just curious because I have always been intrigued by WoW, but have stayed away for fear of being sucked in.
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Depends on the person. WoW has a number of different things you can do. A big one is getting gear. Once you have hit the maximum level, which doesn't take all that long, gear is a big goal. You can do instances (meaning 5 man groups of players in specific dungeons) to get gear and also raids (10 or 25 man groups in larger, more complex dungeons). For many people that is the big thing. Raid to get better gear, which lets you do higher end raids and so on.

PvP is another facet some people are really in to. That has gear as well, which you purchase with rewards form doing PvP, but is mostly about just beating other players as is true of any PvP game. There are small 2v2 to 5v5 matches called arenas which are just little tactical battles of premade groups, and there are larger battlegrounds that are form 10-40 players on a side that are large strategic combat of various kinds (capture the flag, control points, etc).

Leveling can also be something people like. You can make quite a few characters of different kinds and level them up. Some people are very in to that and make and level new characters. The quests you do to level can be a good deal of fun.

There are also various solo/grinding sorts of activities. Killing monsters for gold, or for reputation with factions, gathering items/materials for professions, etc.

Really kinda depends on what you want to do. Different people play the game in different ways.
 
Wow is different than Diablo in the fact that Wow is a fully realized world. It would literally take you several hours just to walk around the continents of Kalimdore, Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend. The sheer amount of land mass is staggering.

I'd break Wow up into 2 games. The first game is when you level your character from 1-85. This is very well done and is almost like a single player RPG. You can level from 1-85 solo if you like and the experience is completely quest driven. Meaning that you'll always have several quests to do at every step, so there is a lot of lore and story behind your actions. Some of the quests and cinematics are epic and have broad implications on the lore.

The second game starts when you reach 85. At this point you can no longer improve your character through levels so progression is achieved through gear. To Blizzard's credit there is a multitude of ways to get good gear. You can Pvp for gear, i.e. they have several battlegrounds and arenas to earn gear from. Or you can PvE for gear, there are several 5 man dungeons and raid zones where you can get gear.

You can also get gear by having high reputation with certain factions, there are daily quests you can do to improve you faction standing. You can also craft gear with certain tradeskills.

So high end gameplay might include logging in to complete a few daily quests for gold and faction. Working on your tradeskills. Playing a few games of Pvp. Doing a dungeon or two for loot. Maybe joining a raid for uber loot.
 
FranklyShankly said:
Not a fan of RPG games at all then i guess?
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Actually, I have played a couple that I have liked quite a bit. Like Suikoden for the Playstation:) Something for the Dreamcast that I can't remember, Diablo 2, and a couple others that I don't remember. To be honest, my #1 problem with WoW is the fact that there is a monthly bill to play it. I just won't do that. I also played System Shock 2 and learned just how incredible gaming can be, and have yet to see anything come near it...even though Bioshock was a "little" like it.

I am not putting people down with play WoW...just not my thing. I am a little older now and am just not into games as much. I really WANT to be into games, it is just that everything I played after System Shock 2 is quite the letdown.
 
I do understand some people are not interested in paying monthly bills to Blizzard. IMHO though, add up that monthly bill for 2 months (for example), you still don't have enough money for most new games (15$/month = 30$, which is still lower than 50-60$ for new games). In strictly financial terms, paying 15$/month is still profitable if you *would* pay for single games (1 per month or 2 months). And for 15$, you get the incredibly vast WoW world/quests/PvP/raidgame, which is still more content than a lot of games (I'm thinking 10-12 hours FPS, even though the genre is completely different).

If you don't buy games much, 15$/month is still more money than you would spend anyway. My two cents.
 
I played from vanilla right around launch through BC and basically skipped Wrath but came back for Cataclysm (that's a bit over a year break). I came back to play with some RL friends and because I enjoy the experience the game provides. My rationale for the monthly fee is this: I can easily 10 hours of entertainment out of WoW per month... for $15 I consider that a reasonable price given that I'll spend that much going out to a movie for 2 hours.

With regard to Diablo<->WoW... It's hard to say. Honestly, if you don't have any friends that play it might be harder to get into. That being said, you're bound to make some if you stick with it anyway. There's a number of trial offers out there that anyone that plays can send you. If you're interested, PM me and I'll send one your way. In the interest of full disclosure, any of these trials are basically refferals and do provide a benefit one way or another if you do end up becoming a paying subscriber.
 
Theres a game out there, and the stakes are high and the guy who runs it figures the averages all day long and all night. Once in a while he lets you steal a few, But once you've stayed in the game long enough you've got to lose and once you've lost theres no way back, no way at all.
 
XvMMvX said:
I haven't even played the game and I agree that if all the gear can be attained by shopping then what is the fun in that?

The drop rates seem very reasonable. In Diablo 2 a Boss could drop ANY item in the game, and to get the leet gear it was like .0000000007% chance to drop or somthing. That is pointless.

They even changed them in 1.13 and frankly it is still ridiculous. Is it anything like this is WoW?

157d8ol.png


If the odds ran perfect you would have to kill 5000+ Zod rune qualifying bosses to get ONE, and some things require MULTIPLEs of these runes.
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It was Blizzards attempt at making a character development driven pseudo-MMO. The runes are so rare to offset the number of people playing so as to make them very valuable. Also, bosses couldn't drop any item in the game. Every monster and boss has an mlvl which determines what TC (and therefore which item) it can drop. That's why you'd never find a Grandfather or Windforce from Mephisto no matter what difficulty you tried it on - his mlvl was too low. Hell Baal on the other hand has the appropriate mlvl to qualify for a chance to drop those items. Also, i've been lucky enough to find BER and OHM before, so they're not entirely impossible to find on their own, and with duping and outside currency like d2jsp it's quite trivial to get the best stuff pretty fast.
 
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Johnked6 said:
Wow is different than Diablo in the fact that Wow is a fully realized world. It would literally take you several hours just to walk around the continents of Kalimdore, Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend. The sheer amount of land mass is staggering.

I'd break Wow up into 2 games. The first game is when you level your character from 1-85. This is very well done and is almost like a single player RPG. You can level from 1-85 solo if you like and the experience is completely quest driven. Meaning that you'll always have several quests to do at every step, so there is a lot of lore and story behind your actions. Some of the quests and cinematics are epic and have broad implications on the lore.

The second game starts when you reach 85. At this point you can no longer improve your character through levels so progression is achieved through gear. To Blizzard's credit there is a multitude of ways to get good gear. You can Pvp for gear, i.e. they have several battlegrounds and arenas to earn gear from. Or you can PvE for gear, there are several 5 man dungeons and raid zones where you can get gear.

You can also get gear by having high reputation with certain factions, there are daily quests you can do to improve you faction standing. You can also craft gear with certain tradeskills.

So high end gameplay might include logging in to complete a few daily quests for gold and faction. Working on your tradeskills. Playing a few games of Pvp. Doing a dungeon or two for loot. Maybe joining a raid for uber loot.
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^ this is a good basic explanation of the game - lots of people play both sides too, raiding with their guilds at scheduled times (weekend nights or something) and any other time they'll level an alternate character solo or with a friend or two, or you can always participate in the various PvP battlegrounds or arena matches going on all the time

quite a few options within the game, and even more once you hit level cap of 85

whitewarrior11 said:
I do understand some people are not interested in paying monthly bills to Blizzard. IMHO though, add up that monthly bill for 2 months (for example), you still don't have enough money for most new games (15$/month = 30$, which is still lower than 50-60$ for new games). In strictly financial terms, paying 15$/month is still profitable if you *would* pay for single games (1 per month or 2 months). And for 15$, you get the incredibly vast WoW world/quests/PvP/raidgame, which is still more content than a lot of games (I'm thinking 10-12 hours FPS, even though the genre is completely different).

If you don't buy games much, 15$/month is still more money than you would spend anyway. My two cents.
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This is a good reasoning for the monthly fee as in all reality if you play games daily or every other day, WoW is worth it if you like it.
 
whitewarrior11 said:
I do understand some people are not interested in paying monthly bills to Blizzard. IMHO though, add up that monthly bill for 2 months (for example), you still don't have enough money for most new games (15$/month = 30$, which is still lower than 50-60$ for new games). In strictly financial terms, paying 15$/month is still profitable if you *would* pay for single games (1 per month or 2 months). And for 15$, you get the incredibly vast WoW world/quests/PvP/raidgame, which is still more content than a lot of games (I'm thinking 10-12 hours FPS, even though the genre is completely different).

If you don't buy games much, 15$/month is still more money than you would spend anyway. My two cents.
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In wow though,you still have to buy the games plus the expansion packs plus the month fees.19.99 for the basic game,19.99 for burning crusades,29.99 for wrath of lich king,39.99 for cata.
That's to much IMO.also that game will absorb your life.I played for about a year and for what?
Nothing.
 
I don't know how many games other people play, but I know when I am playing in a MMO, regardless of which one my monthly cost on games is less. Generally I go through about 2 games a month, for new games that is $120 a month, $20-$50 if I buy used. When I play an MMO I pay $15 for the entire month as I get generally more entertainment then from multiple other games I would have purchased.

While I agree it would be nice if they dropped the startup price for wow, I still think I got a good value for my dollar. When I total my time spent versus how much I have spent money wise I have paid less then 10 cents an hour for my entertainment, which is way better then I can say for most games. I am generally happy with games if they give me $2/hour of entertainment.


dirksquarejaw said:
That's to much IMO.also that game will absorb your life.I played for about a year and for what?
Nothing.
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I don't understand this mentality. You get the same thing you get out of any other video game. When you are done with them you have nothing to show for it but a whole bunch time you spent having fun and in my opinion that is worth something. If I wasn't playing MMOs I would just be playing a different video game for which I would have the same thing to show in the end.
 
TheGreySpectre said:
I don't understand this mentality. You get the same thing you get out of any other video game. When you are done with them you have nothing to show for it but a whole bunch time you spent having fun and in my opinion that is worth something. If I wasn't playing MMOs I would just be playing a different video game for which I would have the same thing to show in the end.
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The big difference for people though is when you are done with non-MMO video games its hours/days/maybe weeks later...not years. There isn't the same sense of time suck that you find in WoW. Playing Fallout 3 for example, eventually I will be completely done with everything in the game. I will have seen and conquered the whole damn thing. In WoW, theres always new things being added and more things to be done, you can never "win" all of WoW.
 
I guess I get satisfaction for the individual achievements such as beating an instance, mission, quest chain or becoming master of an organization.

Also you have to ask whether beating something involves getting 100% completion or just finishing the main story line. If you don't consider a game finished until you have 100% completion then yes I suppose it is very hard to beat wow, but then at the same time it is rather difficult and very time consuming to get 100% completion on most games.

I would consider Burning Crusade to be beaten with the defeat of Illidan, Wrath of the litchking to be beaten with the death of Arthas and Burning crusade will be able to be beaten when you kill deathwing.

When I look back at my time playing wow I suppose no I cannot say that I beat wow, but I can say that I ride a dragon, finished my Tier 1,2,3.5,6 and 10 sets and have beaten BWL, AQ40, TK, Hyjal, BT, Kara, Naxx...each one of those gives me as much sense of accomplishment as beating an individual game, but that may be specific to me.

I would also say that Wow has a decent chance of giving you something most other games don't: friends. I have made a number of friends through my time playing wow that I stay in contact with and visit occasionally even though they no longer play.

on a side note it isn't impossible to get 100% completion on wow...just really hard ;)
 
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