The state of wow, getting back to wow.

I played until 24th December last year, I enjoyed levelling in Cataclysm and I enjoyed healing but after playing for 3 years it was just more of the same.

Every dungeon still involved healing the tank and idiot players and avoid whatever AOE ability hits the floor.

The last thing I raided was the Lich King and as much as I enjoyed raiding I couldnt stick to the schedule so it was nearly impossible to find a guild willing to accomodate me.

I was in the same guild for 3 years and that disbanding meant i had to venture out into WoW and find new people to play with and it was just not a good experience.

The game is pretty good and if you have never played it i recommend it but for me i had seen and done it all and everything just felt like more of the same, the sense of wonder was gone and thats a big part of MMOs for me.

 

Well it's more of the same and will always be the same. To be honest I think most people are just waiting until Diablo 3 at this point.

 

If you haven't played for very long, or have been gone quite awhile, WoW will feel pretty good. However if you've been around since vanilla, it's gotten quite redundant and boring.

Redoing the entire 1-60 experience was certainly a good idea, but for the vast majority of folks, they'll never see it. I just leveled a priest through bg's and instances (healing) and I don't think I completed more than 50 quests total. Most people that have played for awhile that want another toon end up with the heirlooms and guild xp bonus, it all flies by so fast you wonder why you're leveling at all.

The story from LK I thought was pretty good really. However Cata just seems like a complete afterthought. The main antagonist is the love-child of Sartharion and Jay Leno (I just giggle at his chin every time wow starts lol). The whole story just doesn't "grip" me like LK did when it released.

As for liking the warlock changes, I don't play one but it seems you're in a very small minority (of the now least played class at that). The changing of all the talent trees to 31pt caps was a much needed change though. And once you're 85 those short LFD queues will stretch to 30-45 min or so (tanking is instant, healing is 3-5 min usually).

If I sound a little jaded, I am. After playing for 6 years I'm burnt out on the same thing over and over again. However if you're new(er) to the game I'm sure it is a blast to play (which is what most of this xpac's changes were catered for).

It'll be interesting to see what happens in a few months when SW:TOR and Diablo3 are both out.

As long as your enjoying it, who cares? Just play and have fun.

 

Nothing i just think bordering on 4 years was too long for me.

I will be playing Star Wars when it comes out, its a sci fi setting and i dont know the entire game world like the back of my hand.

WoW was starting to feel like a job rather than a fun world to spend my time in.

I would love to still enjoy it but having played it for 4 years it was just too much! I will still recommend it to other people though it is a fantastic game!

 

The longest I have played any game is WoW, 2 times for a total of 2.5 years. Planetside 1.5 years and Oblivion 1 year. Usually a year is about as long as I can manage. I love WoW's environment but the routine is been there done that.

 

I actually just started two weekends ago with the free trial they've given to people to play until they hit level 20.

To be honest I like it but don't love it. Is it because I'm not in a guild or playing with other people?

Was always more of a Diablo II person...

 

If you find a good guild of people you get on with the game is just waaay better. I started playing WoW because I had quit SWG and Matrix Online. One of my real life friends told me to play but i didnt want to because it was a fantasy game and i thought i was too cool to play fantasy games.

Anyway, fast forward 4 years, I was in that guild with him for 4 years ish, he left after 1 year. None of the people in that guild play WoW anymore but we all still keep in touch and hopefully next time im in London I will be visiting a couple of the people. Had a great time playing with them over the years, the game was made more fun because of it, we had great chats and banter.

 

I quit WoW roughly 4 years ago (before WOTLK) but man I miss it.

I remember Vanilla WoW very well. It was truly more addicting than any drug available. Why was it so good? Partly because it was hard as **** and people actually worked together to achieve anything. It was competitive and very few people made it up there. Leveling was torture, but once you made it to 60 you knew your class well. Leveling guides weren't available yet, so many people took months, even years, to get to 60. Epics, and even many blues, were worth more gold than dollars, and the pride was even beyond that.

40 man Onyxia, Molten Core, and Blackwing Lair raids were epic. Wipe after wipe after wipe. Failing dozens of times was demoralizing, but believe me, once a guild of 40 raiders downed a boss, the ecstasy was unbelievable. People flocked the forums to show screenshots, receive praise, gloat in the glory.

Obviously, for the casual player, this was not. But for everyone else, the game was better than anything.

The Burning Crusade continued some of the hardships of Vanilla, but it wasn't really the same. It was much easier, much more accessible (Karazhan was only a 10 man), and geared more for casual players. It was a good business decision, no doubt, but for players like me, it was horrifying.

2 years ago, just for ***** and giggles, I tried WOTLK on a private server. It was even easier than BC. I'm sure Cataclysm is more of the same thing. From what I hear, leveling is a breeze now. Epics are easily crafted and farmed at battlegrounds. This is not the WoW I miss and love.

Thankfully, I moved on to better things. But if you asked me if I regret playing Vanilla WoW for all those hours, I would say hell no. My guild was almost like a family. I looked forward to those grueling 4-6 hour raids. It was something special that new players will never understand.

 

I'll chime in with Fugue here.

I've been playing off and on since patch 1.7. And I feel that the game has gone mostly downhill since vanilla. I felt the 40 man raids (MC, BWL, AQ, Naxx) were the height of the game for me, but I understand why changes were made.

Blizzard took complaints from vanilla that questing was confusing and that people wanted to see the story but couldn't get into the 40 man guilds as easily as they wanted, so in BC blizzard cleaned up the questing (which was a boon for the game) and made raids more accessible by shrinking sizes to 10 and 25 man from 20 and 40 man.

This is, I believe, the start of the problems. The 40 man guilds were unable to stay together and raid as they had been leading to an immediate deterioration of the community as squabbles broke out about who was A team or B team or not even sticking around. But, content was more accessible and so was gear.

When LK came out there was some further deterioration and gear was made even more accessible which lead some to question why they should put in the effort to maintain the strong guild ties they held before when they could drop in on the weekends solo some stuff or queue for instances and get the same gear.

Cata tried to correct this issue to some extent, but the damage had already been done. By tuning the difficulty down they had basically established new standards for subscribers in BC and LK, and people just weren't happy with the new system when the loot wasn't as freely available and they had no guilds strong enough for the content. So now we're almost back to the LK system of easy raids and endless heroics for tokens to buy gear.

As I said, I understand that Blizzard made the changes they did to appeal to a broader audience, which was better for their bottom line. However, in the process, they forced the community to splinter and deteriorate.

If you can find a fun guild, then wow still has some of the magic it held in the beginning (through hard mode raiding, or rated battlegrounds). However, for most I'd say the game is simply a shell of its former self and slowly gliding closer to the rest of the games on the market.

 

I played WoW on and off until the few months after BC came out. I used to play it constantly for 2 or 3 months, then never touch it so cancelled.

I came back to it a couple of months ago and have been enjoying more than ever. A lot of people think that Cataclysm ruined it, but I don't think so. I'm not a hardcore player or anything, so maybe that's why. I can see me playing until The Old Republic is released.
It is ridiculously fast to level up now, even at higher levels, especially if you do instances with rested XP.

I've tried a lot of MMO's, but WoW is the only one I've come back to, which says something. Like I said, I'm far from a hardcore player and my highest character is only 78, but when I checked the other day I'd played that one character almost 19 days (456 hrs)!
I know you're paying every month, but I don't think I've played any game anywhere near that much. Rock Band would be second, but even then I would say it's nowhere near that.

Also, I think it looks great with all the settings on max, much better than last time I played.

 

wow is constantly changing and the community is always revolving. I had a good time when the game was first released so i played a couple years. left for a few years. when i came back i had no guild i made it to the level cap but all the raids were asking for people with specific gear. Since i had no raid gear no one wanted me. After dealing with it a few weeks i just quit again. it was pointless. there have been several patches expansions ect since then and i think gear now is less of an issue. same as leveling. maybe i will try again but i doubt it. i already tossed out all my account info and i dont for see myself starting from the beginning a third time

 

Think its boring and redundant. Its a never-ending hamster wheel with goalposts that keep shifting slightly. Not worth the time sink.

 

I played WOW on and off since release but ended up quitting for good a few months after Cataclysm.

The draw for me was PVP but at every level cap the gear and what I needed to do to get the gear got even more and more ridiculous.

5 Creepy Ways Video Games are trying to get you addicted - nice breakdown of WOW and games like Farmville

 

After killing the lich king and leveling to 85 my whole guild quit, and I've come back to the game because I miss it... but after 6 years I can't level another toon, it's just too boring. If I can find another guild I might play for a while, but I'm really just waiting for a different experience, hopefully guild wars 2, star wars, or maybe Planetside 2. The questing in WoW is just to old. If you're new to it, though, it's better than ever, give it a try.

 

I tried 3 times since vanilla WoW release to get into the game and my best go at it was when I had a RL friend who was high level help get through more of the mundane lower level stuff. But then she moved to another country so I lost interest in it.

I work with a guy who loves Guild Wars so when GW2 comes out I might give that a shot. I REALLY wanted to go at SWTOR but without a native Mac client right now I won't be getting it. Maybe eventually the temptation will be too much and I'll use BootCamp

 

Guild Wars is not available on mac either.

 

I just started playing a bit again (I tried out vanilla + the two expansion, but only got up to sub-lvl60 characters), and I'm quite bored..

The Cataclysm additions to the starting areas are boring, repetetive, and worse than the original settings. I don't like it.

And I especially don't like that I ding every 5 minutes of gameplay.. Whats up with enjoying the game pre-endgame like I do?

 

Basically there's no more pre-endgame. You can go from 1 to 85 just using random skills while doing something else.

 

Sad to hear that, but also the impression that I got. No wonder I dont find it is near as much fun now as I did a few years ago.

 

We can take it for what it is; not for what it was.

IMO Blizzard is simply catering to an existing user base and players who who will join in the near future. I don't have access to Blizz's marketing research but I highly doubt they are much concerned to regain players who enjoyed vanilla WoW and are unlikely to return.