The Glade 4.0

WoW may be bleeding subscribers, but it still has a hell of a long way down it can go, and there's still plenty of people to play with.

What Nephyr points to is really the problem... finding a regular crew to play with, especially if you don't want to just raid. WoW **** that right up when it implemented the whole dungeon-finder thing with cross-server and the teleport to and from. There's no player effort or negotiation in finding a group, which means people can act like total asswipes and not even talk to each other, and be shielded by anonymity from the consequnces because you'll likely never see them again. It's compounded by not needing to get yourself to the dungeon, which detaches the instances even more from the game experience.

I hope no other game ever implements that nonsense again.

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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."

This X a bazillion

EQ was a shitty game in light of today's mechanics in basically in almost every facet. It was the gamer equivalent to military boot camp. Everyone has great stories from that time, but no one would voluntarily go back and do it again.

As I think about this and all of the other MMOs I've played (which is a LOT), I think the core of the challenge are two fold.

1. The leveling experience. This is an area that I really enjoy in most games. However, most of the current generation MMOs have the same leveling experience, regardless of what character you play. That is, the quests are basically all the same. The one exception to this recently was SWTOR. Unfortunately, the game mechanics were so much like WoW that I was kinda burned out on it just because of that. Other games, the leveling content is either too easy, too fast or not varied enough to really support having multiple toons or lasting long enough for a a true "main". This is a large part of why I've played so many MMOs, is that I level up a toon, have a great time, then hit a wall at the end game and because there isn't good repeat-ability, I get bored and basically burn out.

2. Group content. Unfortunately these days for me, group content can be a problem. The first challenge I have is that most all of the friends that I'd really like to be playing with all have interested in other games or have odd play times. Back in the day with EQ, there was one game in town, so EVERYONE was there. These days, everyone has their own favorite game and it can be difficult to pull all your old friends into the same game and get them leveled up to do "end game" content. Similarly, most of the current breed of games don't do side kicking or mentoring, so if you don't "keep up with the joneses" you're basically playing alone. Lastly, which is kind of an off shoot of the last point, is that most all of my friends are adults, many with children and all with decent paying jobs and responsibilities. The days of spending ALL DAY Saturday raiding Fear are long gone. Hell, for me personally with my travel schedule and other interests/responsibilities, it's very hard for me to even be able to commit to a planned raid time, much less do it regularly. So while I'd love to do group content, it's almost always hard for me to manage it, so I end up playing alone a lot because I can't commit the time.

In the end, I think the reality is that we're all older now and the magic of the past doesn't really work well in the present. As much as we'd all like it to.

The days of all-day stuff are gone, but I long ago gave up on the idea of trying to keep the same group of friends from game to game, and I don't really have many RL friends that are into MMOs anyhow. I just go looking for new friends in each game. It's worked well, too; I have different friends from EQ, EQ2, EVE, and a few other games. Some, unfortunately, are long-lost but really the game was the only thing keeping us together anyhow.

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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."

Personally I think WoW has stumbled into the perfect model for my current playstyle. I'm not as hardcore of a raider as I used to be, and I doubt I ever will be again. When I was single and in my mid 20s, that was fine. But now I have a lot more responsibilities that take priority.

WoW has been offering content in different ways the last few patches. Sure, everything is a grind. But the trick, which they've learned, is making that grind less painful and giving you multiple choices to do things in varied ways.

As well as Looking For Raid and the upcoming Flex Raids (raids that dynamically scale in difficulty based on how many players join/leave) are ways to give the "casual raiding veterans" who want more than heroic dungeon loot but maybe not quite the same as on par as the top tier raiders. It also allows a person to quickly get into a group to see content that a person with my time table would likely never see (there are some players who abhor this but they're mostly pissed that, in their perception, it devalues their unique special snowflakiness). On top of that, there is enough to do at the highest level that I know many folks who aren't even that interested in raiding or doing dungeons but staying quite busy all the same.

It was Blizzard's goal to give end level players a lot of varied things to do, and they've definitely succeeded there. More so than any other MMO or single player game that I've played. And they are still experimenting and introducing even more things. I'm fairly surprised it's held my interest this long, this late in the expansion. And I'm even more surprised that I have three end level characters enjoying said content since I used to never have more than one toon maxed (purposefully) at any given time.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

My problem with LFR in WoW is that it's a faceroll. With a couple exceptions, the bosses require basically no skill, no knowledge of the encounter and no communication.

LFR actually has made me less interested in raiding, now more.

Now, what I am having an absolute blast doing is duoing 5 man dungeons in Neverwinter. Guardian and Cleric. It takes a while, but so far we've been able to clear every dungeon up to the Lair of the Mad Dragon, which we did tonight. It will be interesting to see if we're able to do that all the way to 60.

That's the thing about WoW is that it is really good at being WoW. For some people and their playstyles, it just fits really well. Other games, however, really shouldn't try to be WoW, at least until WoW shrinks to the point that its just another MMO. Eventually, something else will fill that mass-market low-stress MMO slot with better technology.

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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."