World Of Warcraft Discussion Thread

[Clarste]

Not sure anyone cares anymore, but my guild finally beat Sarth 3D last night. Apparently we had been having positioning problems with the healers that we fixed, so it should be repeatable. Yeah, I know, we're months late, but it's still an achievement. Now I can move on to 3.1 with (less) regret.

[Ithekro]

3.1 content appear to be downlaoding today. It is pretty big. Not sure if that means it goes live today yet, or it it is just the warmup.

[RWBladewing]

It's not out today. They've said early April but it could be even longer than that.

[Ending]

Finally I got my character a full tier-7.25 set. Check it out here.

PvP still as bad as ever and I'm still thinking of trying out Warhammer or Eve Online. Eve also has a free trial, so it could be interesting. Anyone played it?

[RWBladewing]

I haven't played EVE but everything I have heard indicates it's extremely unfriendly to new players. Also supposedly completely different from WoW, though you sound like you'd enjoy a change of pace. Warhammer, I have heard so many conflicting and in many cases completely opposite opinions (e.g. Someone says PvP is so much more balanced than WoW and then someone else says that the bright wizard class is massively overpowered and everyone rolls it) that I really have no idea what to think of it.

[Telmah]

One of my friends plays Eve--basically there's huge amounts of time spent training--you can do it while you are offline, but it takes time to get your skills up to passable levels--huge time investments, like months at an end. You might catch up in piloting a particular ship, but it shows if you are new or old school. Apparently, my friend was saying the economy is so realistic that some colleges use the economy as part of their classes.

Warhammer is a mixed game, I played it for a few months after release. Some things are done really well (bumping characters min level up in battle grounds, having collision system, not being balanced around 1 vs 1, etc), but I quit because once you got to a decent pvp rank, most people give you no renown (honor)--ie I was 50, if I killed a 40, I get 1 renown, if he killed me, he got 1,000. The only way to go able getting my rank up was to do world objectives which were basically pve events--the best way to build rank was to simply trade them with the enemy and not fight--kinda a messed up system, in my opinion because I wasn't that much more dangerous than a 40. At least at the time I played, casters had massive "punts", so it was virtually impossible to stay in melee with them--you were constantly being punted away or pushed back--the engineers and magus had an aoe pull in--they'd team up with brightwizards and sorcerers and basically round you up and aoe you. Couple that with 24 hour and 3 day lock outs on the pve, a crappy pve ward system that required you do to that content on the long cooldowns, fights requiring 2-3 healers in a six man group and, a mere two trade skills (with like 4 gathering)--it pushed me to quit. There wasn't much to do but endless achievements for titles--I think I had a 100 titles--even the GM events required the other faction to do them--when one side started losing, they'd all vacate and then no one could get them done. I really do miss the public quest system (like zone wide GM events that give loot and reset every so often). I think the pve was vastly inferior to say EQ2.

I've returned to WoW myself simply because a few of my friends are playing, and despite the warts, it is a pretty well thought out game overall, especially with addons.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

I haven't played EVE for ages but I will say It is unlike any other MMO out there in terms of setting and how it is played. It's not to hard to pick up the basics but it is fairly difficult to master and remember everything, the economy is just insane. I'd almost describe the game as an economic simulator with a space theme. I did have a lot of fun and it is fairly immersive, I loved cruising through a system looking at the planets and local star with the background nebulas listening to the game music. My best memory is when I just started playing and I went on a 20 system jump on a mission and one of the systems I went through was just massive, Jita comes to mind but I thought it began with a U.

[Ithekro]

Sort of reminder me of Earth and Beyond from that description, mixed with X2 I guess.

My only problem with space MMOs is the fly controls. If I can fly around, I want to be able to use a joystick...it is traditional, and provides for quicker reflexes than keys. Assuming they didn't finally get the mouse movement to work correctly.

[krisslanza]

Movement in EVE is just a point and click ordeal. Well point in the direction you want to go anyway. A joystick wouldn't make sense too much since beyond like a select few Frigates all the ships are far too large to turn on a dime (especially Titans. I'll give you a size comparison in a moment).

On the flipside of EVE is you don't have to be actively playing to be getting skills trained. It's nice that even if I don't have the time to play it religiously that at least I can still be catching up.

On the down it's a massive timesink. The newest update pretty much gimped newbies into having to spend at least a month or two skill training just to be where they used to start skill-wise.

And here's your size comparison of a Titan to a Battlecruiser.

Spoiler for Size comparison!:

[Last Sinner]

Saw this on WorldofRaids. Seems China may never see Lich King at all. At the very least, they won't ever get to use Death Knights.


While many of us are churning through the content of Wrath of the Lich King, anxiously awaiting Ulduar and everything else that patch 3.1 has to offer, a fair portion of the global playerbase hasn't even touched the expansion yet. They haven't been able to experience the starting area for Death Knights -- and probably never will -- and now the company that publishes World of Warcraft in China -- The9 -- is facing bankruptcy.

You see, the Chinese government instituted policies to forbid negative content in video games and on the internet. And, well, the entire basis for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is something China has forced alteration of in the past -- the undead and the Scourge. What this means for The9 is that they secured a license to publish the expansion, and thus far have failed to get it approved twice, including the most recent version that doesn't even have the Death Knight Hero class. What's going to happen to The9 and Wrath of the Lich King in China is still up in the air, but one thing's for certain -- this will likely be a long process of iterating, if it's even worth it for Blizzard to go through the process.

[krisslanza]

Wasn't China the one that had all the Undead reskinned to well... Not look undead?

[Ithekro]

That sound rather difficult to get around...since the undead are pretty much the entire plot of the expansion to one extent or another. And Icecrown is full of them...big ones too.

Add to this other things that could be called "negative content"...yeah, it is doomed without some sort of waiver.

Bright side...maybe this will remove the "Chinese gold farmers" from the system.

[Xacual]

Yeah you can probably find a picture of the chinese forsaken model. They look the same but no bones or rot showing basically.

[Ithekro]

Whatever this content patch is is either huge or being run off a low loader. I started about 11 hours ago and it isn't even 25% done. It says it is 555MB of data.

[Jazzrat]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Sort of reminder me of Earth and Beyond from that description, mixed with X2 I guess.

My only problem with space MMOs is the fly controls. If I can fly around, I want to be able to use a joystick...it is traditional, and provides for quicker reflexes than keys. Assuming they didn't finally get the mouse movement to work correctly.

Would suggest you wait for Jumpgate Evolution. EVE plays like a giant spreadsheet :P of course, there some twitch involved in corp skirmish but getting there takes quite a fair bit of commitment of time and money since you can only "skill" up at a certain pace. There's skill and enhancements that speeds it up a fair bit but you ll still need to sink 1 month of training to get those up before you start training other skills.

Good if you want a sci fi mmo to commit to, bad if u just want a quick romp in space with some dogfight action. It's a good game but i do find that it's not for everyone.

[Sephi]

Don't think the patch will come today, perhaps next week. Logged on, and didn't saw a direct patch download, only the background downloader. Hope it will be soon. Walking around with a crap green quiver is meh >.<

Got a question about JC.
I got my JC at lvl 420 now. I can make some Meta. But what should i make to earn money with? I'm propsecting all the thorium and cobalt ore i find. So not earning anything with my mining. And what other options do i have to earn/grind money? I don't have a epic flying mount. So i can only travel at 60% in air or 100% on ground. Need 4 more for epic flying mount ^^

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by RWBladewing

I haven't played EVE but everything I have heard indicates it's extremely unfriendly to new players. Also supposedly completely different from WoW, though you sound like you'd enjoy a change of pace.

It's ironic that your second statement happens to be the explanation for the first. EVE is not unfriendly to new players, it's just an entirely different ordeal then most MMO's. If you charge into EVE with a WoW mindset, then yes you will inevitably be completely lost. The first thing you need to burn into your mind is that you're not playing WoW. After that, you'll slowly learn to familiarize yourself with the game through its tutorials and helpful playerbase.

Also, EVE allows arguably the largest amount of freedom ever seen in an MMO. There are no restrictions to anything. You rolled a race, but like the ships of another race better? Just learn the skills to fly it. You don't like your race and want to switch factions? Just do it. You don't want to follow the law at all and be a pirate? Nobody's stopping you. You want to be the one who stops the players who enjoy pirating? There's a bounty on their heads, go collect it.

There is no such thing as classes or one-choice professions in EVE. Anything you can think of, you can do. The downside is that this kind of freedom can be quite confusing and off-putting for regular MMO players, who prefer the task-labeling that most MMO's do.

Originally Posted by RWBladewing

Warhammer, I have heard so many conflicting and in many cases completely opposite opinions (e.g. Someone says PvP is so much more balanced than WoW and then someone else says that the bright wizard class is massively overpowered and everyone rolls it) that I really have no idea what to think of it.

I eat Bright Wizard's for breakfast.

*cough* Erm, anyway, as a Warhammer player I can say that PvP is a lot more fun in WAR then it is in WoW. The problem is that aside from PvP, the game doesn't have much to offer. PvE is dull and repetitive, no real end-game instances or dungeons and so on. This can cause many players to get bored with the game quite easily.

On the flipside, if you enjoy PvP in MMO's and see PvE as something that you have to do in order to PvP, you'll be happy to learn that PvP in WAR actually nets you both experience and gear, meaning that if you want to, you don't have to do one single PvE quest (in fact, I know of people who never did).

[Ending]

I'd almost describe the game as an economic simulator with a space theme.

Nice. I'm an economist and I like playing with WoW AH, so... Yeah, I'd like going for those big ships with the cash.

You don't want to follow the law at all and be a pirate? Nobody's stopping you.

I read about this on their board. Some guy was docking his cargo and a pirate sweeped over, succesfully capturing it. Since the owner of that cargo was right next to it, he naturally started shooting the guy and got blasted to smithereens for some reason. Is there some kind of a anti-PvP system in place or something? I.e: guards spawning out of nowhere or the like?

One big problem with Eve, when compared to WoW, is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any game-cards available.

[Keroko]

Depends, there are high-sec zones where the local neutral guard watches over to prevent violence.

Generally, space in EVE is separated into 3 security levels: High-sec, Low-sec and 0-sec.

High-sec is the most 'safe' area. It is paroled by CONCORD, which serves as EVE's neutral guard. In these areas, PvP is countered by CONCORD unless you have a 'kill right' on the person you're targeting. This is to provide new players with a relatively safe area to play. High-sec is any area with a security rating of 1 to 0.5.

Low-sec is a more rough terrain, and CONCORD does not patrol there. There are stationary sentry guns in certain areas -usually stargates- to allow a certain flow in the game, but anywhere in the wild, you're a free target. Caution is advised in these zones. Low-sec is any area with a security rating of 0.4 to 0.1.

0-sec is the roughest terrain. No patrols, no guards, no holds barred. Anything goes, survival of the fittest. Naturally, 0-sec is any area with a security rating of 0.0.

Now, what happened to your friend is most likely that the pirate used a tractor beam to draw the cargo towards him while fleeing the scene, and the owner opened fire. The important detail here is that he didn't actually steal anything yet. Stealing is only marked when you transfer the cargo to your own cargo bay. However, the pirate merely pulled the container away. If the owner opened fire in a High-sec area in this situation, then he would be the one flagged as a pirate, and get dogpiled by CONCORD.

It's a clever strategy on the pirate's part.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Yeah there is, its called CONCORD. They are essentially the galactic police force.

In EVE, space consists of star systems. Each of these is assigned a security rating, from 0.0 (Lawless) to 1.0 (Secure). Many star systems form a constellation, a group of constellations form a region and several regions can constitute an Empire. CONCORD monitors and controls Empire Space security (Amarr, Caldari, Minmatar or Gallente Empires), kill someone in there and they'll be all over your ass basically. The lower the rating the longer it takes for CONCORD to get there or detect it. 1.0 is the rating for all the newbie systems in the core of the Empires, CONCORD won't go into systems 0.5 or lower.

In addition to those large empires, though, there are also Regional Alliances who endeavor to control the untamed systems on the outskirts of known space.. These are run by player controlled corporations (CONCORD has no say as to what goes on out here, the players that control these regions police it), giving them the ability to use the lucrative resources in non-empire space.

No EVE doesn't have the merchandising that WOW does, does have some OK books about it though, the Empyrean Age was a good read.

edit: omg beat me Keroko.