World of Warcraft Comments by Oli Welsh

Never got into WOW. More of a FPS online person. But have several friends who are hooked. It will be a game that holds prominence in MMO land for years I think.

Agree totally. No game has had such an effect on the MMO scene since the early days of Ultima Online and Everquest. WoW is the definitive MMO of our time whether some people like it or not!

It was a good update for the lower level players. The next 2.4 patch will probably do the same for the high level players that are stuck in Kara of before giving them reasonably easy access to T5 gear via badges.

That being said... I really enjoy raiding in ZA ;)

I think the only WoW i've ever seen is in the Leeroy Jenkins video and the South Park episode... I intend on keeping it that way ;)

Unless you're willing to invest a lot of personal time into it, the game rapidly becomes a chore. Did my 1.5 year stint and said adios. Still keep going back, every once in a while, but the inevitable virtual-brick wall soon pops back up.

I think the article hit the nail on the head about hitting the level cap. To lose that progression really affects the game. Blizz has to give capped, non-raid, non-arena, players a way to continue improving themselves beyond mindless daily quest grinds for rep. This is where, IMO, EQ got it right with AA points. It meant that XP still had meaning at capped level and gave players a method of casual play that still contributed to improving their character.

wtf?

I recently tried to start playing this again (played briefly upon release when it was like crack to me). Gave up after a week as I found everyone at my level to be either non-existant or pretty unfriendly. Playing on your own is just dull :(

What the hell..? Didn't expect this review at all.

Nice re-review!

I know I'd absolutely love this, but just don't have the time to play it and do it justice, therefore - with regret - I'm staying well clear.

Now Starcraft II on the other hand... I'm there!

Gave up WOW a while back. Trying to get back into it feels like taking up smoking again.

No mention here of the very little kids (under 10 years!) that are often rampant on the servers. They act like kids (not their fault) but it ruins the experience for anyone over 16 while they call each other names and ask for free gold. I was happy to leave WOW after being in a big well-run guild. The guild started recruiting the little kids and that was it for me.

Whilst I agree that the joy of WoW is primarily in the journey (rather than in the monotony of end game), I think you've neglected quite a lot of the low points to come out of WoW post-TBC.

The devaluation of epics, everyone has them, gone are the days where characters with epics were looked up to.
It hasn't seen any real end game content in 9 months since BT was cleared
It has tagged on, un-RPGish PvP (arena) with false pretenses to eSports and competitive gaming.
Flying mounts (along with the above) killed world PvP.

I could go on and on but why bother, that's your job.

http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_po...

He's a fan then lol

I think Oli Welsh and wow should climb a tree together and begin kissing, then the rest of us could sing a little ditty about it.

I would actually have liked to seen more comparisons with other games here. Having spent 2 years on WoW and left just over a couple of months ago (after a bit of a break) I have become rather disinfranchised with the WoW experience, and no matter have much quicker it might be to level now it can't escape the fact that the reputation grinding- be that for faction rep points or pvp honour- is just a tedious chore at any level. Kill X million critters to do this? Egh, not again, thanks. And when the best content in the game lies through these methods, its pretty time consuming and boredom inducing.

Same goes for the high-end raid quests, where essentially all you do is repeat the same dungeons on the off chance that some boss *might* drop the shiny new shoulderpads you want.

I have to confess, I left WoW for LOTRO, and never looked back.

I had fun on it for about a month around Xmas time, but found once you get to the higher levels you need to start teaming up with other players a lot to go through instances and that's when the game lost me. Not because of the instances, but because of the attitude of a lot of the players. People who sit on the thing 24/7 and refuse to team up with new players and throw hissy fits when you use the wrong spells or mess up.

If I wanted to get screamed at by 12 year olds because I cast the wrong healing spell or didn't have the right thing eqipped I'd go play Halo 3. It's no doubt a beautifully designed game, but unless you have a bunch of good friends that play the game, you'll find it's really hard to enter the game so late. The community seems to be very hostile to 'n00bs' one you hit level 45+

Yeah, for those wishing to try out World Of Warcraft for the first time (or those wishing to join fellow Eurogamers) please have a read here

I left for LOTRO. Found that incredibly dull,went back, then left again for Tabula Rasa, which made LOTRO look exciting. I'm now firmly back on WoW and looking forward to the next expansion. Nobody has even come close yet. (Although I will be having a crack at Conan).

And I haven't come across any problems with the community on my server. Always someone willing to lend a hand.

Technically it looks shit. looks a bit like a PS2 game, or maybe fable for the xbox. when
will they release a new version i wonder? updated graphics etc.

I'm still not convinced, even after this raving endorsement (again). Like every other MMO it has one big flaw: you're playing with other people. Most would consider this the greatest strength of this type of game, but i don't. Being clubbed to death by someone called "steaming_pile_of_dung" or "XgBgT56GG78JJ" doesn't really put me in the spirit of things... and now there's kids playing too? hmm... maybe if the price comes down...

@Maledictus010

Try picking an RP server. You don't have to actually RP, but you tend to find a slightly more civilised (read: older) player base. Of course there is still a generous smattering of tards on RP servers, but they tend to hang around in battlegrounds most of the time.

For the six months I played World of Warcraft some two years ago (jesus, was it really that long ago?), this was the best PC game ever in terms of atmosphere and immersiveness. I simply could not stop playing it, I was well and truly hooked in this slick and polished game world. Then I did stop playing it for some Xbox 360 game or other and when I returned to the game some months later I found most of the buzz and excitement had gone although I did play it for a few weeks. Shame really but I think it's safe for me to say that this is the finest, more compulsive PC game I've ever played such that nothing else has managed to live up to it on that platform, not even (the hitchy) Lord of the Rings Online. Oblivion came pretty damn close but it's a different kind of game experience.

a fine example of tldr
please write a summary

"The devaluation of epics, everyone has them, gone are the days where characters with epics were looked up to. "

Oh please.. you one of those?

Play a Korean MMO game if you want to feel special and show off your work-epix.

"Technically it looks shit. looks a bit like a PS2 game, or maybe fable for the xbox. when
will they release a new version i wonder? updated graphics etc. "

* Blizzard wants this to run on medium machines (hence 8 million players)
* The game has shitloads of assets that need to be displayed (all that armor and those weapons cost a lot of memory for a client machine). Hence the rather simple, yet nicely done, textures and reduced geometry.

BTW a PS2 game would have the same resolution as my guild logo ingame.

The review left me surprised. Finally somebody that sees the game as I've saw. Everybody up there is raving about the endgame, but I found the journey to lvl 70 much more enjoyable than the endgame. I loved every minute in the outlands, but since my usual game session is less than one hour long, this means that the endgame for me is accessible only once in every two weeks, more or less, given the time needed to do an instance (a difficult one, too, given that I've just dinged).

I've recently reverted to LOTRO, and while its not as polished as WoW, it is still a great game that has got a great, great journey. And, yes, I'm loving this more than instancing again and again in WoW...

Maybe I'm just too much a solo player, maybe I've just dinged 70 too late to enjoy instancing with my guildmates... maybe I just need more time to enjoy it properly, but recently I've found many other activities to substitute my WoW addiction that are, in the end, more rewarding than playing 2 hours for the possibility of getting one good item. That will be thrown away when the next expansion comes...

"Almost everyone is polite and capable, almost everyone knows the game inside out, and almost everyone seems engaged in a ruthlessly efficient race to the finish line."

Good lord, which server is that?!

@ j.c. graphics arent the reason to play WOW - personally I dont think it's aged that badly - plus the relatively low system specs needed to play have contibuted to its success by allowing more people to get the game without having to upgrade

@Riggers

Exactly what I was thinking - can I come play on that server? Mine's full of spam, idiots begging for gold and ninja-looters. Somebody asked me to give them "enough gold for a mount" yesterday in Stormwind.

That said, with a decent group running an instance is excellent fun and there are a lot of good, polite players as well.

Is this guy on the Blizzard payroll?

I'm an on off player of WoW, i have a few level 70's, and i enjoy the game in doses, but if you spend even a casual amount of time iwth it over a few years (i'm not a hardcore raider, seen Kara a few times, and thats about it), you will find the game is HORRIBLY empty, and soulless. This game could NOT be more by the numbers, business like and efficent.

Theres no humour, no personality. Its like being with your perfect partner, but finding out that after a while, theres NOTHING to talk about.

The game is very good at hooking you in for short periods of time, but it simply does nothing to sustain your interest.

I guess there comes a point when being TOO slick is a negative

Never played this mmo.....didnt like the graphics, and heard its kids all over it

"Crucially, The Gods of Zul'Aman increased the speed at which characters level up between levels 20 and 60."

Alright, so I'm one of those guys who got bored and fell off at around L35. What does this mean for me? I'm confused by the whole expansion thing. To benefit from this improvement I would have to buy and install an additional product, and then play in certain areas that would otherwise be inaccessible?

@darc

No, when you log on you'll just spend a few hours downloading a couple of gigabytes of free patches that will add all the new content. You only need the expansion to play as one of the new races or to level past 60.

I just hit 40 (Paladin), the leveling is definitely much faster than before the patch: I got bored at level 20 back then.

Thanks Zelos. So this increased leveling speed is in effect all over the world (of warcraft lol), for all quests, all beasties, etc?

I wonder if getting to tinker with my character on level-ups more often would help. Like a few other posters here, I began to find this - and pretty much all MMO's - unbearably repetetive and predictable. But I like leveling as much as anybody. :)

@ darc

No, I don't think so. There were improvements to pre-TBC zones that came with the "Gods of Zul'Aman" patch. Original WOW got "patched" when TBC came out, so any later TBC patches which contain updates for lower level content found in the original game should be open to you without the need to buy TBC. You wouldn't be able to access the new starter areas (Blood Elf and Draenei), level past 60, or reach Outland.

Pretty sure that's accurate.

@darc

Yes, there seem to be a lot more quests around than I remember before, you can generally work on 2 or 3 at once in an area.

The increased speed of getting new abilities definitely makes it more interesting, but getting into a guild or having a group of friends to play with is still a really good idea

This re-review misses the key issue that one's WOW experience extremely and utterly depends on the reasonable-ness and amiability of other human players. For me, there were too many evening when other players (both in and out of the guild) were ruining the fun. That got old.

if you play wow and not in a guild, don't play. I am sure every server got it's share of casual guilds, the ones that are not hell bent on being the best pvp or pve.

I stopped playing around December 2006, is it likely my character is recoverable should I choose to take another look? Like a few others on here I got to around level 50 and was just getting bored; my guildmates all had much more time to play than me and were already hitting the raid dungeons, so opportunities for non-PUG questing (which was dismal on the server I was on) were few and far between.

It's a fantastic experience, and I fell in love with it from the moment I logged into the beta. It got too much like the Matrix for me though, eventually all I could see were numbers and stats instead of the story and characters.

Yeah, yeah. 10/10. A bland, repetitive grind through 70 levels of tedium through out which for all intents and purposes it is practically impossible to lose anything other than a very small amount of time away from the 'fight'. If the first 20 levels are truly indicative of the best of WOW I'm glad that's all I ever bothered with.

It's the gaming equivalent of The Sun newspaper and the amazing art and epic fantasy world you keep banging on about (as far as I could see ripped pretty much wholesale from Games Workshop, a lot like say...StarCraft) are no more than the page three titties, up front and ready to draw you in for another epic bout of time wasting, lowest common denominator, challenge free pap.

It is, in short, a masterpiece

And I don't care about it!
To each his own, I guess.

I think the problem with any review of an MMO is that the experience is entirely different depending on which point you're at. The levelling journey is certainly fun, and if you're someone who raids and hasn't cleared BT yet, then it's fun. If you have cleared BT or you prefer pvp, then I think 10/10 is very generous. This point is not the same as saying that once you've completed Uncharted then doing it again may be less fun, since the gameplay of an MMO supposedly keeps going.

If you have to give WoW a score then the only one you can really give is 10/10, but you have to accept the falsehood inherent in the score.

I saw the trailer of Second Skin. I am afraid to try it now because maybe I'll get addicted, play so much that I ruin my life and then try to commit suicide!!

"The Warlock suffers from the same problem - the Voidwalker is the only viable solo-quest demon in the entire game and after 60 levels, you are sick to fucking death of it. "

Been a while since I played but /facepalm

through out which for all intents and purposes it is practically impossible to lose anything other than a very small amount of time away from the 'fight'.

That's true for pretty much any game, what's your point?

A good 5 man instance run in WoW is as hectic and demanding as any FPS.

The game is utter rubbish. Come on please! Linear 'Quests', the fact that if you buy the expansion, you cant actually use it until you reach level 58. Combat is flawed. Its just a polished turd of a game. People play it because it is easy to get to grips with and will play on any PC - not because its THAT good to score a 10. 7/10 maybe

It deserves a 10 for being addictive. Other than that... not even close to that score. LOTRO has taken most of the good things in WoW and improved upon them. And they've left out most of the annoying stuff. LOTRO isn't perfect, but it's a damn lot better than WoW. It's a slow starter, but once you get going, it's really good. Playing a Guardian (tank) is incredibly boring, though. But Hunter is an incredibly cool class to play.

I am so happy that I didn't get hooked on WOW when I tried it out a few months back. The last thing I need in my life is a crack-cocaine addiction to a computer game, even if it's a "perfect ten".

Yeah, a 10 for this is absurd. I don't care what your angle is -- I've played WoW, and it's in no way, shape, or form worthy of a 10/10 score.

Absurd review, for an increasingly absurd website. We're at IGN levels of crap now... I used to think this website was reliable. >_>

It's an endless grind! I never even reached level 30...

That it's the best MMO out there says everything I need to know about the rest of them.
In short, MMO's is just as boring as sportsmanagement-simulators. At least MMO's have potential.