The Glade 4.0

That's the very reason why I like them so much.

I like getting immersed in a game. Real people always tend to shatter that illusion for me.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Instanced zones are not a huge improvement to MMOs, especially when overused.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Blizzard games are hugely overrated.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I'd say that with Diablo.

Honestly (though I don't play right now), I do believe WoW is the best MMO I have played. Sure, it never quite had the wonderous adventure feel EQ did for the first few months, but I attribute that to being an MMO virgin at the time. Everything was new and wonderful for the first few months while I stayed in character and explored this massive world. Once that was gone, the only substance EQ had left was the people I played with, and i realized pretty quickly, there was precious few of those that I actually could ever like. Thing is, I don't like people. It's the exceptional person that overcomes this and makes me like them despite my mysanthropic worldview. There were some of those exceptional people playing, but not nearly enough.

WoW overcomes this by allowing you to play without really socializing. I know, someone listed it as a negative above, but I LIKE the lack of community in the game...or rather, I like that that community is not necessary. I like that other people are there, but not really needed for the most part, and when you do need them, you can often get together with any random group of 25 of them and kill big stuff. I'd go without a guild if I could.

In the end, though, it's still an MMO treadmill, and one that I'm off for the time being, although those insidious bastards offered me 7 days of free play time to "try out the changes." **** blizzard, trying to get my money again.

As for their other games, the Warcraft and Starcraft RTS franchises have always been better than anything anybody else made, although I only play these games single player anyway. (Surprise.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

This just gave me an awesome idea...blizzard should make this, it would be so easy as most of the game is already there:

Imagine WoW as a single player RPG...complete with all its current content. In addition to whatever you started off with, you could acquire a "guild" of NPCs to assist you, and take up to four of them in your party at any given time, equip them as you need them, etc. You'd have to retune the raid encounters for NPC players, removing coordination fights, and tuning for a maximum party of five, but other than that, leave the game identical to now.

I'd play that forever.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Put it in the Starcraft world. I'm *sick* of fantasy.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Lots more work, but that'd be nice, too.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah I'm not a people person either. My gaming time is my "alone time" so I tend to not want to really do a lot of socializing in game. When I do, it's usually me forcing myself to do it.

Although, I don't think a single player WoW would be as fun as a healing classl. NPCs don't react to near death situations with "Oh ****!" nor can they bask in your gloriousness when you've single handedly stopped a possible-wipe situation. Even tanking would probably not be as fun in a single player WoW. No, it's probably more for the dpser types.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Incidentally, I felt Final Fantasy 12 very much succeeded in playing like an MMO, single player style. You could set up AI for characters that was as complex (i.e. plays itself) or as minimal (i.e. does nothing at all until you tell them to) as your tastes prefer. It had plenty of challenging battles, too. You only had 3 people in your party however, with a 4th NPC that you had no control over for probably 50% of the game or so, so that limits the comparison a bit.

I have a feeling that is an unpopular gaming opinion, though, since it really came across as pretty revolutionary to me as far as gameplay goes. Yet I never hear anyone else talk about it, even if they are discussing things they liked about the game.

I thought FFXII was fantastic, and one of the best installments since 7.

Another opinion (not sure if popular or not): The lack of true game manuals has made games a ton less immersive. Create a backstory (1+ pages please) and put it in the damn book. Even better are the old Forgotten Realms games that had journals that were basically a story in and of themselves.

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Yeah, you'll get no argument here. FF12 is the best Final Fantasy made, if you ask me. Running it at 1080p in an emulator makes the graphics better than some 360 games I've played.

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The Dude abides.

Oh yeah, I miss game manuals. I loved sitting down with the manual while the game is installing and reading from cover to cover.

The greatest game manual in the history of gaming? The original TIE Fighter's manual. It had an awesome short story in it called The Chronicles of Steele that had to have been at least half a dozen pages. Though my memory of it's length may be fuzzy. It was certainly an awesome read that was not pertinent to the game's story or mechanics at all.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

That pales in comparison to the F-19 Stealth Fighter manual. Extensive explainations of of RCS works, flight dynamics, and every aircraft, weapon, surface to air missile, surface target, and enemy and friendly aircraft in the game and quite a few others you never saw.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

BG1/2 are totally outclassed by NWN which is in turn outclassed by NWN2.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The only thing Shadow of the Colossus had going for it was pretty pretty graphics. The game itself sucked.

I liked it, but I thought the actual gameplay left something to be desired. It didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the game and the story, but that's all the more glowing recommendation I'll give it. I don't want to write a computer program just to play a video game. That kept me from enjoying Dragon Age as much as the rest of you seemed to as well.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Coincidentally someone posted this on reddit. Manual!

I have that game. It's hard as hell.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Came here to post that. Simply an awesome game!

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Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

As much as I've been against playing Wow for the past couple years, I think this is a fantastic idea. I'd love to have a single-player version to play through, scaled down obviously. If it hasn't been announced, you can count on it taking at least 5-10 years though for Blizzard. It takes them 1-2 to put out already planned expansions. A completely new, unplanned game would take them ages to release. Considering their current workload, along with their record for taking about five times as long as their customers would like, and it just doesn't seem likely.

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