World of Warcraft - Page 3

Like a hungry child crying in the background while you're playing?

Little bastard can feed his own damn self!

So much money. The damn thing sold 2.8 million copies in a day. Damn that is alot of money.

Worse. Girlfriend going apeshit about a dress for the company Christmas party.

Haven't had much time to play, so my druid is still stuck at 70. Doesn't look like I have time for DK either.

I only started 5 months ago or so... maybe 6. I played one of the first betas in Nov or Dec 2004.. or was it 03? Anyways I took a hunter up to the 20 cap and realized if i bought the game it would take over my life.

But unfortunately at this job there are wow addicts everywhere, 2 of which are my best friends. I held off from Jan until about July... then I caved and everyone reactivated, now we have a 40-character guild of all friends, friends of friends and alts.

Anyways, I just got my first character to Outland, and it's kind of awesome. Looking forward to Northrend as I hear it's like 10 times better... The only problem I have is that for some reason when my friends started this guild they put it on a PvE server which I think is incredibly lame... but 2 friends have their 70+ mains on another PvP server, so if I can I'm starting a Death Knight and transferring it over there once I get near 80 with my main.

Oh, and epic mount bought today!

Erudite
60 blood elf rogue
Runetotem

I know more than a few folks at 80 already, but for myself I am still level 72 (trying not to get too far away from my son's level).

That said, the most perverse socially maladjusted thing I saw was a level 80 Death Knight last Sunday afternoon, a mere three and a half days after launch.

My guild cleared 10 man Naxx last night, one shotting every boss. I sadly barely hit 75, and probably won't be 80 until Monday sometime.

My guild did have server first hunter, death knight, mage, enchanter, and blacksmith though. Kind of sad, but hey, it's why we're head and shoulders above the other guilds on the server.

A bunch of guys in my guild have hit 80, and I'm only at 73 with my mage and 65 with my DK. I just don't have enough time to play.

I'm the same as Cordo. Not enough time. But WoW is one of those games that (for me) is better in small doses anyways, so really that's a good thing.

My poor level 71 hunter sits at the inn in Valiance Keep while I'm leveling my Death Knight. He's 62 now and chewing through the Outland content harder than Pacino chewed through The Devil's Advocate.

Well my guild went in and got 3 server firsts. Sarithon (sp?) on 10 man, 25 man, and did the 25 man with the iron man achievement since we only brought 16 people to the fight. Yes, it's that ridiculously easy. Got the "Obsidian Slayer" title for that effort. We then went into Naxx 25 man, grabbed one more healer and killed Anub Rekun with 17. Tonight we are planning on taking 21 people to Naxx and try to clear the Spider Wing for another server first, and iron man achievement.

I have to say, Heroics are a lot tougher than the raids so far. Naxx is an absolute joke on 10 man, and you can figure out the 25 man bosses in a couple attempts.

How much of a joke are we talking here? Are pugs ripping through this shit?

On our server they are.

I don't know what to make of this statement. Are you being sarcastic? Is the irony so thick that I could cut it with a knife? Or am I just unfamiliar with WoW, and levels 73 and 65, as opposed to 80, really do take significantly less time?

After the expansion, especially with the Death Knight, it's insanely easy to level. To get from 60 to 70 with a DK (you start at 55 and get a mount at the beginning) it roughly took the same time that levels 1-15 took on my original characters.

And that 73 mage is the character that I've had since I first got the game, so he was already 70 when the expansion came out.

Of course the raids are easy. They're the first tier raids of the expansion, and after learning their lesson with Gruul and Mags, Blizzard's making sure that raids are tuned to be appropriate for their tier. I'm betting Ulduar ramps up raiding difficulty in the same way that tier 5 instances did.

If anything the apparent emphasis on the difficulty of Heroics is a step in the right direction. Nothing screams "classic RPG" like small-scale group content, and I'd rather not feel like I'm missing out on a challenge because I don't have the drive to raid.

Here was our 25 man Naxx run (which was our first 25 man Naxx run).

Trash pack, AOE down, trash pack, AOE down, boss, repeat. We took down each boss on the first or second attempt all the way to Patchwork, which is a gear check for your tanks. Our tanks aren't high enough in health yet to get us through Patch so 2 and 3/4 of the wings are cleared.

So I had Friday off and decided to install Wrath and give it a go. My impressions so far are limited but positive. I started in the Borean Tundra, and wow. What a difference between stepping out of the Hold and stepping through the portal into Hellfire.

The Hold captures what Hellfire failed to capture, which is the sense of "the fight" being at one's door. Much of WoW's questing/lore hinges on a sense of urgency that "the enemy" is right there, ready to strike, yet that's never really captured successfully because, let's face it, the enemy is a two/three-minute ride North East over some rocks and across a lake. But this time, the battle is literally right outside the Hold, and it took me a moment to really take it all in and figure out that, shit, there are a fucking lot of bad guys running around. That's smart design. It makes the game world feel more alive and less plotted out.

Once finished with cleaning up the Hold, I rode around looking at all the detail placed into the rest of the zone. The amount of variation is stunning without feeling like patchwork, which could well have been the effect of a zone filled with so much differing geography.

The questing is easy and efficient. The way that the hubs are laid out makes sense and there's a logical progression from one part of the continent to the next. I never felt like I was being rushed to go quest up in the North when I still had stuff to do in the South. This is another important point-- pacing. Sure, in the end you are always playing at your own pace, but design has the potential to make you feel like you're lagging behind. Borean Tundra''s quests never once push you to leave for a new part of the zone just because X NPC tells you to, and part of this has to do with the sheer amount of questing available all over the map-- you could go to the hubs up North, or you could just hang out with the Walrus Dudes in the South some more. The game feels a lot more relaxed.

I did quest enough that I wound up getting taken to Dragonblight, which I felt obliged to look at because hey, why not. Dragonblight similarly feels very well laid out, though I think the sheer distance between the two major quest hubs is slightly more daunting. I have one major peeve and that's that Alliance quest hubs are really, really poorly marked, so I had the misfortune of running through the one near Angmar's Hammer and nearly dying. What can I say? It's good to be a Druid.

That's about as much as I have to say about Dragonblight because I barely scratched the surface there, but I did have a friend smuggle me into Dalaran, and again, I can only say wow. Just as the Hold is what Hellfire should have been, Dalarn is what Shattrath should have been. The city feels alive, and I again spent a good deal of time just sort of running around on my Bear mount (what, getting ported into Dalaran just to buy a Bear isn't important?) and taking in the design. It looks very, very handsome, and there's a lot of stuff to interact with, which I appreciate.

Overall, my impression of the game is that everything is relaxed, which makes sense. With the overhaul of raid content (e.g. 10-man versions of each 25-man zone) to cater to the needs of the casual player base, it naturally follows that the rest of the game is going to feel equally relaxed. I dig this; I like my WoW time to be short and sweet, and the "YOU HAVE DO THIS NOW!" philosophy of older installments of the game really made me hate it. It's why I froze my account for a while. I don't play video games to be pressured into chaining myself to my keyboard/controller. I feel like Wrath lets play go at the pace the player chooses, as opposed to the game choosing the pace for the player.

I also feel like there's a lot to do (a lot that I can choose to do), which is always true when leveling. That said there are way more quests and way more options this go-round, and from what I understand this is just as true at 80 as it is in the levels leading up to the cap.

Summing up to filter out the nerd-gushing-- great expansion, this is what WoW should have been at release, and I can finally feel okay with saying I occasionally play WoW.

Anyone playing a rogue at 80? My guild recently asked if I would level my rogue due to the high number of Death Knight, and we only have one rogue that is apparently a big pain in the ass to the officers.

I'm considering making the change, but I am really in love with my DK. I just can't see the rogue being fun at all outside of raiding. Just the thought of doing the rep grinding and dailies on the rogue depresses me, because of how loltastic they have been on my DK.

Glad you liked Borean agracru, but I would go back and knock out Howling Fjord before you doing Dragonblight. You'll end up with 2 whole zones to make money from at 80, plus you'll have a level or two ahead of the curve, making leveling that much easier.

My plan was to take out the really easy early Dragonblight quests near Angmar's Hammer, then take a trip over to Howling Fjord.

Seems to me rogues are pretty much obsolete anywhere except raids.

I hated playing a rogue. 40 is as high as I've ever gotten with that class.

Really? I like it a lot, I'm just not a fan of other classes getting insane buffs and the rogue just kind of gets the same old thing. And even that gets nerfed in short order, ie shadow dance.

I tried a hunter and a druid, didn't really like either all that much.

That's how I feel about the rogue. Everyone else has the cool new toys, and rogues just get a buff to what they already have. And it's not like I could use my DK for everthing except raiding, because of the copious amounts of rep grinding I would have to do with the rogue from the jump at 80. Closer and closer to leaving this guild, which is a shame because it's an awesome guild, just due to the amount of effort (and jesus, about 12k in gold at least) I've spent on my DK.

In the days before Wrath was released I took my mid 30s rogue out of retirement to see how he fared post patch 3.0. Considering that I almost quit playing WOW because of how frustrated I became with how rogues were treated with the constant tweaking during the stunlock period, the experience now was pretty nice.

I played rogue as a main through 70. I haven't bought the xpac and haven't played WoW in a few months. The only really painful part is being so dependent on guild mates to get you in to heroic runs and the like. It didn't matter if I could out-DPS any other choices for a run, rogues having so little utility made them a liability in 5 man runs. So trying to pile up rep or needing a single drop from heroic Magisters was a gigantic pain in the ass.

Regular grinding and questing is simple with a rogue. Simpler than most people realize (you go ahead and kill those 10 mobs standing between you and what you're trying to get to, I'll just sneak over there and grab it). If I was to pick up the xpac and play again I'd think really seriously about rolling a new class. I just got to hating feeling so dependent on others all the time, and feeling like you needed the help of your guild for virtually everything.

If you're comfortable with your guild and think they'll help get you to 80 and support you there it's very fun to play. Blizzard finally made Mutilate a viable option and to be perfectly honest playing a Mutilate build was the most fun I've ever had as a rogue. Of course, as a raiding rogue I quickly had to give that up in TBC for Combat but it seems like they're serious now about letting Mutilate keep up. Give it a try.

As a casual, predominantly solo with the eventual PUG player, Northrend is a fucking paradise. The quest grouping, the difficulty curve, the design of the zones and the sheer variety of the objectives is superb. WOW is fast going in my mind from the best designed MMORPG ever to the best designed game period. Although they remain fundamentaly the same the designers have managed to incorporate such twists in the gameplay mechanics that you forget you have probably done the same thing a thousand times before. It's not "Go into the village and save ten villagers from the zombies" it's "Fly around on a griffon , swoop in and pick up the villagers and then fly them to safety". There's probably a million more examples like that. And as a sort of lore geek I love how much backstory is in the quests now.

Blizzard's next MMO can't come soon enough. If they continue to improve themselves in such a rate it will be glorious.

Northrend is, indeed, a casual player's paradise, unless you're in Howling Fjord. That place is hell. Hell. It takes infinitely too much time to quest there, and you get the feeling as you ride through the zone, confined to the ground, that everything would be a lot simpler if you could fucking fly. Too much time is spent running back and forth between a hub and the map, doing two to three quests at a time. This is pretty harsh for people who don't have a lot of time to dedicate to playing the game each week, and the effect is a huge slowdown in experience gain. Not fun. The pirate/Kalu'ak hub isn't bad, but it still requires a lot of footwork.

Howling Fjord is so obviously, in the most painful way, the first design they did in Northrend. It's atrocious, but I did every single quest there. If they just fixed the quest hubs it would be so much more fun, as the zone itself is really beautifully designed from an aesthetic standpoint.

Anyone else running a DK main? I've finally started to collect a few raid epics (lot of plate DPS to compete with) and my numbers are fairly ridiculous. Doing dailies I was chaining together 4-6K crits non-stop. So much fun.

I've been stuck in Fjord for a while. I can see where you guys are coming from.

It's not the best designed part of Northrend but I can't bring myself to hate any place where one of the means of trasportation is surfing on a giant, flaming harpoon.

Just curious, are the new Lich King zones designed solely for high level players? In other words, is buying it a waste of time unless you're at 50 or higher?

68 or higher.

And Doc, about Titan Grip warriors, yes, they are insane. My guild's TG warrior is a fucking hoss. Makes me almost want to level my warrior up, but then I remember how OP Death Knight is.

So if my highest level character is 20-something, there's no real point in me buying it? That seems a little narrow.

The thing is that it's well-designed in terms of look and feel. The terrain is beautiful, and like the Tundra the geographical variation comes off feeling very natural and logical. It's also chock full of neat little NPC interactions-- for example, if two Shovetusks come near each other, they charge and start fighting. That's cool.

It's just not a great questing zone. Longer traveling times coupled with lower quests-per-hub means significantly lower experience gain per time played. I imagine the zone would be among my favorites if I could use Swift Flight Form.

It introduces a new character class that starts at level 58 or something.

People complained about this when TBC came out as well, but it's not that narrow. The game has been out for 4 years now, and the vast majority are going to be 50+ (55 being when you can make a death knight). For new players, they get the benefit of new professions, better character customization, and the changes to the games basic interface.

Blizzard has said it since TBC, there's no real benefit to going back and adding to the old world when almost everyone is playing in the new world. No one would see it, and the content would be wasted. It's the same philosophy behind the raiding in WOTLK, make it so more people enjoy the content that they put the work into.

EDIT: Also, with the leveling on steroids that Blizz implemented for the old world and Outlands, going from 20-68 would take about 2-3 weeks of even the most casual playing. Going from 55-68 on my Death Knight took less than 40 hours played.

But you have to be at least level 50 to get a Death Knight, right? I just thought there were additions for those who weren't that high level yet, like the new races and starting zones in Burning Crusade.

Wrath is unfortunately aimed towards people who are at higher levels, unlike Burning Crusade.

At this point it makes sense for Blizzard to cater to the higher level population, but it does kinda suck for those who haven't leveled to 55.

Or those who are looking to get back into the game, or just starting out.

But Blizzard has catered to lower level character by boosting the leveling speed exponentially. When the game first came out 12-15 days played to get to level 60 was a pretty fast leveling speed, now it can be done in 1/3 the time. That's definitely catering to lower levels.

Catering to low levels by incresing the xp gain so they miss half the low level areas seems odd. Some players actually like to do the quests and read the story that was written for them to experience and the faster level gaining makes that kind of tough as they level past quests prretty quick. Why not just start out everyone at 40 and be done with the low levels if all they are going to do is add high level content?

The new areas for the game are designed for people with level 70 characters. You can start a Death Knight character as long as you have another character in that server at level 55. You may only have one Death Knight character per server.

For people trying to start out or get back into the game, the leveling has been quickened enough that to get to 70 won't take more than two or three weeks of casual gaming. Getting to 55 is even less than that. Frankly the Lich King content is the best in any MMO I've ever played by a fairly large divide. It really is something special, and completely worth leveling to at least 55.

Lack of massive additional content for low level characters is completely understandable when contrasted against how long it takes to get to those levels on WoW and BC content. If the size of the content between BC and the original games massive world can't service you until then 55, you simply wont get into this game at this point. There's more to do than any game I can think of.

You already said why not to start people at 40, some people actually like to do the quests and read the story. The faster levels don't make that tougher at all. They even added a low level quest tracker so people can go back and find any quests they might have missed. And you don't miss half the low level zones, now you actually have a choice of low/mid level zones. How many of us were FORCED into STV for 8 levels? Now a character can choose any number of places to level...which is another way of catering to lower level characters, making lower end leveling (gasp) FUN.

On top of that, people need to start at level 1 so they can learn to play the game. Starting someone halfway through the game with all their abilities they have at 40 and then they quit because they become overwhelmed...plus it adds to the already substantial population of people not knowing shit about their class.

At what level does the DeathKnight, an entirely new class, start?

You have to have a level 55 to start a level 55 Death Knight. You still need the first 55 levels to learn how to play doofus.

The Death Knight for someone who played until level 55 can figure out what it's about fairly quickly.

Exactly, you know the mechanics of the game, and how it operates. You've run the tutorials. And Blizzard even gives you 3 levels of pure Death Knight tutorial to go with it. Without that you're the hunter running around with a Hellreaver on, and there's still plenty that still do that.