Everytime Blizzard tries to add something dynamic about the world it seems to be a huge flop. Remember all the stuff they added in Vanilla and TBC to add open world PVP that was a total bust.


The towers in EPL and the Towers in Hellfire. I remember in TBC, we did alot to secure the towers in Hellfire, and by the time we moved out of there, we all realized it was pointless and never bothered to do the PVP zone objectives.


I think this is why they have gone to the forced quest lines and phasing. It gives the idea that your having an effect on the world but doesnt allow people to avoid it. Because you know almost everybody would skip it if they could the 2nd time through.


Also, my server has had queues. Its gotten smaller each night. Last night when I logged on around 7 PM EST, it was like a 15 person queue and I was in the game in like 5 minutes.

 

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I have yet to encounter a 'huge flop' in Cata.

 

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But WoW became the juggernaut of MMOs by going slightly against what you describe, focusing on the "game" aspects over the "world" aspects. Part of the problem is that virtual worlds sound more appealing than they really end up being in practice.

I can't understand why anyone is surprised. We already knew from beta that this xpac is literally nothing but recycle.

All they did was take northrend building/lanscape tiles and place them in azeroth to claim that azeroth is now "new".


Now everything just looks like northrend.

 

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I don't think that had much to do with it at all. I said it before WoW was released and its still just as true now - Blizzard could have released almost anything, as long as it was casual friendly, and results would have been much the same.

 

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I typically hit about a 750 queue on Argent Dawn when I get home from work around 6ish.

Perhaps, and this is purely hypothetical...

The more linear direction is to keep people from missing something critical, that we don't know about yet...

Like keying for dungeons...how many people wanted to run (whatever),way back when, only to realize you had to go do some chain of quests just to get "keyed"..??


I dunno, just seems like eventually, we might realize there is "method to the madness", but right now we cannot see it.

Just throwing the idea out there..

 

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Well, yeah, but "casual friendly" is not just a label that you attach to any game; the game must be designed and built in a way that attracts and retains casual players. I would say the handholding, the constant feeling of progress, and the amount of focus on easy and quick single-player content are absolutely essential to WoW's casual-friendliness and success.


Perhaps there were/are other ways to make a casual-friendly, successful MMO, ways that include making a world rather than a theme park, but I don't know what they are.

Anybody who thinks that this xpac is "casual friendly" has yet to step foot into a heroic dungeon. Nearly all of the heroic 5 man encounters that I've done so far are so tightly tuned that you have to play near flawlessly or it's a wipe. Healers' mana is really limited and heals aren't any larger than they were in WotLK so you absolutely have to avoid all avoidable damage. If things stay as they are right now the days of casuals (or anyone else for that matter) doing random heroics via the LFG tool is over.

Wouldn't be surprised to see a nerf to heroics or a buff to healers soon because casuals are going to hit a major wall when they start to hit 85 and queue for heroics.

Doubt they buff healers...

Ghostcrawler wants it that way.

 

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