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WoW: Lets do this right.
November 6th 2004, 01:25 CET by Matt Perkins You have been informed. Also, I prefer alliance, but to each their own and all that jazz. (Dwarven Paladin here I come!) |
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Topic: WoW: Lets do this right.
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mcgrew used to hang around here and post every once in a while. Thing is, when he posted he replied to nearly everyone before him. With lengthy replies. All in one post. Hence, extremely long posts have become known as mcgrew posts. Would you like to supersize or... BURN FOR ETERNITY?
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Gaggle, I'm glad you're enjoying WoW. The game is not one of those things where if you like it, I consider you to be insane, possibly evil. I've complained in more or less detail, but I'll try to condense it into a short simple list: 1. I don't like the way the characters look. Faithful as it may be to Warcraft, the way my character looks is critical to my enjoyment of an RPG type game. The art style for characters in WoW bugs me. I had a great deal of difficulty making a character I liked. There isn't enough customization, people's heads strike me as too small, and for whatever reason, the facial expressions all strike me as retarded or vapid. 2. I find the quests tedious. I finished every quest in the Night Elf newbie area, and of all of them I found perhaps 2 to be kind of fun or cute. When I left the newbie island and got to the mainland, I found I couldn't bring myself to start the quests here. I'd read the descriptions and just get bummed out. The idea of quests is cool, and perhaps at higher levels they get cool, but I can't get behind a game that promises to get cool eventually, after the first 10 or 15 or 20 levels. 3. Movement is maddeningly slow. (which plugs into what I'll say a little lower down) 4. The mapping system is IMO, horrible. The combination of 2, 3, and 4 together mean that I'm not only on a boring quest, I waste a lot of time simply trying to figure out where I'm going, and then more time getting there and back. 5. The UI isn't terrible, but it does have some disappointments. Unless I'm missing it (and it's entirely possible I just missed it) there's no way to move UI elements around. After playing a few MMOG's that allow me a lot of UI customization, the limited options in WoW are a bit of a disappointment. 6. The game has certain minor quirks that annoy me. They're not dealbreakers by any means, but they just bug. For example, bags. You start the game with a backpack, which you can hold items in. Your ability to hold quest items, crafting ingedients, and general "phat lewt" is limited by the size of this backpack. However, you can purchase bags, which afford you additional carrying space. This is useful. The problem is, Blizzard has reflected the usefulness of this by making bags very expensive. Why do I care? Because even though I recognize the value of the things, at the end of the day, I'm paying more money for an empty cloth sack than I'm paying for an entire suit of armor. In terms of worldbuilding logic that just irritatingly immersion breaking. 7. I hate the crafting system. It feels arbitrarily restrictive, and it's a tremendous money sink. I can't turn a little profit on boring crafted items, and I can't make cool crafted items, even at a loss at all. (again, maybe it gets cooler later, but as I said earlier, I can't support games that force me to do unfun stuff for hours or days or weeks with the promise that eventually it'll be fun). I play CoH with a regular group of friends. After running around WoW for three days, I logged into CoH just to do the regular Sunday night gig, there was no comparative agenda, just a desire to keep my appointment. But dear lord. CoH is so much faster and the combat is so much more interesting and the UI is so much slicker and the map is so much more useful. Now, CoH is a much simpler game in some ways, no crafting system at all for example. But boy, I was really floored by how much more fun I was having. My suspicion is that WoW gets cool...sometime. Level 20? Level 30? I don't know. But levels 1-12 just didn't do it for me. Blizzard got their shot and didn't grab me. It may be that I'm simply not suited to enjoying EQ-style MMOG's (of which WoW is clearly simply a refinement, in that classic Blizzard "refinement not revolution" kind of way). Dunno. |
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I find myself agreeing with Hugin, as usual. no, No, NO!
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I hadn't even been able to get myself past the character creation page. Totally seeing where Hugin is coming from... the female variants almost seem like an after-thought. The coolest thing was the Tauren, everything else looks so silly to me - and that neon-mustached dwarve is an abomination. Fabricated like the word absurditive
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If you have to reach level 20 or 30 before the game gets interesting, forget it. Sounds like Everquest to me. Mac OSX--UNIX For Girls (tm)
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High teens was when the game started to get more entertaining, for me. Of course, I'm sure they patched that out as an 'exploit' or something. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-SO-LONG-FUCKER!
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Hugin, unless they changed the way it worked from a few months ago, you are able to customize the UI, albeit via scripting and such. こんにちは
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I completely disgree with Hugin if you take his complaints vs other MMORPGs. I agree that a lot of the limitations he posted wouldn't cut it in a regular PC game, but vs other MMORPGs, WoW is WAY ahead in most things... The art isn't the best ever, I'll agree. I'll say I like the style, but after having played CoH, the character customization is very weak. I laugh at quests being tedious... Which other MMORPG doesn't have tedious quests? And compared to DAOC where I have to guess everything about the quest to complete it (or more likely, look the solution up online), or CoH where ever quest is run here, kill 5 guys of this type / talk to this person, or EQ whose quests...well, I don't really call them quests. I haven't play SWG to compare. If you pay attention to the text of the quest, use your radar and map, both of which I like (though the radar in GW is much better), you can find every single quest I've done so far without help. Also... I never go out and kill for experience in WoW. I ALWAYS have something to do. I'm never going, "well, I could go hunt here or there...and that's about it.". I'm always doing something. Sure, it's often go kill x of y and come back, but at least I'm not killing infiniti of y or until I decide to stop. And I love crafting... know why? Because I don't go sit somewhere and craft, for most of it. As a Blacksmith, you have to find a forge to craft things, but other than that, I just mine as I'm adventuring... or adventure as I'm mining. And with Alchemy (the only other crafting system I've tried), I just collect things as I'm going, make my own healing potions and I'm off. It's part of the game, not something you stop to do. Overall, I'm much in love with WoW. Unless they make some really drastic changes, I'll be purchasing the full version and having much fun with it. My wife and I are playing in the beta and having a blast. And I agree with Charles, the higher teens are a lot more fun, because your character can do more. And that being said, getting to higher teens doesn't really take that long in this game. Not long at all. "She told me to tell you to quit being such an anal-retentive pussy."- Ergo
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I have yet to find the correct beasties "south of yonder tower" no matter where I look. Bleh to it. no, No, NO!
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I hate when people say "What do you mean X is bad? Y is worse!" I'm sorry, but that does not make X good. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-SO-LONG-FUCKER!
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#196 Charles I hate when people say "What do you mean X is bad? Y is worse!" I'm sorry, but that does not make X good. That's exactly what I thought when I read Matt's post. "Yeah, it still sucks, but not as much as the other games." Mac OSX--UNIX For Girls (tm)
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I found out that one reason why the directions for one quest were so wonky was because the person who gives you the quest moves around. If she's standing in one place, her directions actually match the quest. But if she's moved to another position when you encounter her, her directions are simply incorrect. Not good. |
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I agree with the vs. other argument isn't great... at the same time, I'm just comparing it other games in the genre. Overall none of this discussion matters. I like it, I'll buy it if I can somehow afford it and that's just peachy with me. "She told me to tell you to quit being such an anal-retentive pussy."- Ergo
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Where does one get the game and play? |
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It's too late cheesy, they stopped handing out the open beta test accounts a couple of days ago. You could try going to www.worldofwarcraft.com and downloading the game, but I'm not sure it'll let you register a new account. If you get to the point where it asks for a key, try this: BLIZRD-BETA-ONLINE-OPEN-PUBLIC PS. the account registration is on the website, so you might want to try that before you download the 2+ gig install file. I kid cause I care.
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I have an extra beta account. I am in the open warcraft beta. I play swgs/jtl regularly. Now for the info. I have been playing wow quite alot because I am home trying not to die. It's much more fun to pretend your somewhere else. Death penalty, at the current time you get a 10% degrade on all items on death and one experiance bar(very tiny) IF IF IF , you choose to run for the corpse. It gives you this handy little arrow to find your corpse, and you are immune to just about anything wile getting it. You also do not have to be "on top" of your corpse to ressurect.. a few feet away is sufficient and can accually save your next life. Grind and sillyness, I think that if the game was any easier it would be boring as hell. At this time I have made it to lvl 10 after remaking something like 6 charecters. I love the undead but i cannot stand that music!! Further, the game does have some serious limiting factors to your progress. If you are not in a noobized zone you get toasted pretty fast unless your of a "reasonable" level . In this game it doesnt seem to really open for you untill your level 15 or so. I am right now going to shout, cover your ears. BLIZ GAVE US ROLE PLAY SERVERS!!! THEY ARE AWSOME>>THEY ARE GRAND>> I AM IN FUCKING TEARS THEY ARE JUST DANDY PANDY! alright listening may resume. AS for swgs. They did not develop a game that would be easy for anyone to understand. If you are able to make it past that horrible design flaw, the game gets better with age. JTL really is tie fighter with some nifty extra stuff and anouther faction all together. You want decent folks, Eclipse isnt bad. The ratio of idiot to normal is pretty good as that is where intelligent europeans hide. I just preordered WOW, and I am not canceling swgs. I think that will do it for my mmorpg needs. Frankly they are different games. SWGS requires you to be social , to get in groups if only to up the level of your kills(they have that dead on the test servers now). WOW encourages you to explore and solo, with meeting random groups when needful. I get my fairy wow special effects in WOW. I get my serious I give a shite about my compatriots in swgs. The biggest problem with both games is rather simple. I cannot play anything else. Sims .. gone. Rollercoaster tycoon-- thought about it. Locomotion.. wish i had time. Children of the nile.. makes me cry but no time. So on. I have 3 lives now, and only one accually pays bills. See you in never never land. Rys Someone get the chlorine, We have food fuckers amongst us! THE POOL WILL BE CLEANED!
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Wow, I actually understood everything she said. Pity I don't play GIPs. |
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#202 Ryslin THEY ARE AWSOME>>THEY ARE GRAND>> I AM IN FUCKING TEARS THEY ARE JUST DANDY PANDY! I'm confused. Is this the line about Ryslin's gargantuan-sized breasts? |
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Thanks for the info TrunkDr. I tried that key, but you're right, it doesn't work anymore. |
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I had downloaded the beta to check it out. I have never really played an MMOG besides a few rounds of some horrible anime-deluge called Ragnarok mentioned here ages ago. I used to play some Diablo2, but that was a boring treadmill with a random-drop reward system. My girlfriend got in a horrible car accident the other day. Miraculously, she made it out with only a few scratches and bruises. Her car was absolutely totaled, rolled after going into a ditch. Any way, she's off work and school for a couple days so I thought I'd show her this demo seeing as how as Ryslin put it: it's better to be able to feel like you're somewhere else when you're sick / bedded. I was really suprised how much she got into it. She picked her character based on how cool it looked, then based on the description. She went with the female warlock cause she liked the outfit and the basic evil sorcerer idea. She wasn't really in to the whole 'leveling' thing untill she understood the rewards of it. As soon as she was figuring out loot = cash, cash = goods and services, she was really motivated to kill more things and get training from the Warlock in the graveyard. She's currently working towards getting a demon-imp pet by fetching the book out of the vineyard. She just got up to level enough to fend herself in that area, as there are people that attack you without you targeting them first. In that regard, I can see Ryslins comments ring true. She had to kill a lot of wolves and kodo workers/vermin before she was able to not get pounded as soon as she went into a hostile area. She's got an understanding of the tradeoff now though, so she's mechanically a little more sound. She absolutely loves the artwork and likes to immolate targets just to watch the fireworks. Fabricated like the word absurditive
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She wasn't really in to the whole 'leveling' thing untill she understood the rewards of it. Levels != rewards. Levels == grind. So you basically ruined her. BAD PROSTYLE! Nihil nequeo.
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Don't worry, I'm sure she'll realize how pointless it all is once she gets off the painkillers. It's probably the only thing keeping her interested :) Fabricated like the word absurditive
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She had to kill a lot of wolves and kodo workers/vermin before she was able to not get pounded as soon as she went into a hostile area. Ehh... I don't have any interest in doing this kind of exercise, even for a minute of my time. I much prefered the Guild Wars system of being able to get out there and kick ass straight away. Are there any other MMOGs that do it that way? |
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Levels != rewards. Levels == grind. So you basically ruined her. BAD PROSTYLE! Uh, actually, Levels = (grind * Rewards)-Wasted Time There IS rewards for leveling, it's just enough or not enough depending on who you are. When LP says he's bringing Armageddon, he brings fucking Armageddon. - Caryn, 6/01/2004
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She's currently working towards getting a demon-imp pet by fetching the book out of the vineyard. So she's level 3 and played about an hour's worth? I kid cause I care.
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Death penalty, at the current time you get a 10% degrade on all items on death and one experiance bar(very tiny) IF IF IF , you choose to run for the corpse. Am I reading this right? They added an xp penalty to dying? Holy shit. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-SO-LONG-FUCKER!
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Yep, she had never played even an RPG so she had a steeper learning curve. I'd say she's played about 2 or 3 hours so far. She spent a lot of time running around talking to people and npcs before she got around to asking me what she was supposed to be doing. Fabricated like the word absurditive
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before she got around to asking me what she was supposed to be doing. Game design == failure. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-SO-LONG-FUCKER!
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#210 LPMiller There IS rewards for leveling, it's just enough or not enough depending on who you are. There IS ideas expressed here which I agrees with. |
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I IS agreeing withs boths of you. You could add this to the crooked vagina comic. - Jibble
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#214 by Charles I totally agree. Beyond the intro cinematic (not the CG, but the beginning flyby) there was no information relayed about what you were supposed to be doing or how to play. I had to sit with her for the first thirty minutes orienting her with the various UI elements and what they mean relating to the game. Hell, even I didn't know what half of it meant untill one of the pop-up helpers came up, and then I had to iterate that to her in a way she (a person who's never played an RPG) would understand. Fabricated like the word absurditive
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Virgin gamers are a weird breed and are worth studying for game developers. |
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Well I don't! Down with leveling! Nihil nequeo.
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I totally agree. Beyond the intro cinematic (not the CG, but the beginning flyby) there was no information relayed about what you were supposed to be doing or how to play. That's weird. When I started my character during Beta 3, there were nonstop help prompts about just about everything. One of the few MMOs where I wasn't totally baffled about what to do. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-SO-LONG-FUCKER!
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Really? No, they took that out for some reason Charles. |
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There were a lot of popups like "This is your ___ bar", action, health, backpack, whatever. I thought the main issue was the distinct lack of comprehensive information to keep all of these little tips together in her head. The tips were there, it was just the lack of contextual activities and organization that resulted in confusion. It was like reading an entire assembly manual and then trying to put together the product all at once, instead of reading each step and incrementally building upon the information. Of course this was exacerbated by the fact that she'd never had any experience with the genre. Fabricated like the word absurditive
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Is anyone playing EQ2? Compare contrast to WoW? Equally assrape? www.dailyhowler.com is the single most important website that Americans should read every day.
"The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." |
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At least here in the early game, EQ2 is about a thousand times more appealing than WoW was both times I tried it. no, No, NO!
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Jeet- Don't kill me with details! Geez! Enough already! www.dailyhowler.com is the single most important website that Americans should read every day.
"The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." |
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#209 by Marsh Davies Ehh... I don't have any interest in doing this kind of exercise, even for a minute of my time. I much prefered the Guild Wars system of being able to get out there and kick ass straight away. Are there any other MMOGs that do it that way? It's not too bad it you focus on doing the starter town quest rather then just running around bashing things. Those quests tend to send you off to kill a few of those lower level mobs but you'll level enough in a few minutes to handle the more aggresive start town mobs while doing them. Anyone that's played an rpg before should easly hit level 6 in the first hour or so (some times much less if your starter town doesn't require a lot of running, stupid Night Elves and Tauren). |
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#223 McBain Is anyone playing EQ2? Compare contrast to WoW? Equally assrape? WoW is great. Lot of fun things to do, an engaging world with a lot of charm and hand made feel. EQ2 is sterile and retarded and ugly, and the moment you see the crafting system you will realize that Satan does indeed exist, in loom form. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.
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Really? No, they took that out for some reason Charles. Uh, speaking as someone playing it now, no they didnt'. Those little !!!! still pop up. When LP says he's bringing Armageddon, he brings fucking Armageddon. - Caryn, 6/01/2004
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I have no memory of such things at all LP. Tooltips yes. Gameplay/UI prompts, no. |
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WoW is great. Lot of fun things to do, an engaging world with a lot of charm and hand made feel. EQ2 is sterile and retarded and ugly, and the moment you see the crafting system you will realize that Satan does indeed exist, in loom form. Chalk it up to different tastes, but I'm finding the exact opposite. The world in EQ2 is rich and interesting and fun to explore. There's a quest everywhere, and there's no getting lost or confused about what to do. The crafting system is very detailed, with tons of recipes, lots of components and ingredients, and the process of crafting, with it's almost combat-like approach with skills you activate as you craft, is really a lot more interesting than clicking a "Craft Now" button. Also, the web features EQ2 has are pretty neat. Yeah, they want to charge you .99 cents per feature, when it should be included free, it's still nice. Here's me. All of the info about my character, from my major achievements all the way down to what I have equipped right now is available to look at. The grouping system is straight out of CoH, which is nothign but a good thing. It's fast and easy to find a group, and the total lack of PvP seems to have the same effect it does in CoH - it's keeping the fucktards out. At least, I haven't encountered any yet. The graphics of EQ2, even though I know graphics "don't matter", are exponentially better than WoW both technically and artistically. WoW is just too cartoony for me, and that really goes a long way in keeping me from immersing myself in the game. I'm really, REALLY enjoying EQ2 right now, and I wish some other crappers would give it a try. As you can tell from the link I just posted, I'm playing as a human fighter, aligned with good, on the Highkeep server. If I'd never played an MMORPG before, I would have no reservations about continuing to enjoy playing EQ2 for many months to come. Since I've played so many, though, I'm pretty cynical. Still, right now it's leaps and bounds better than any other MMORPG out there right now with the only possible exception being CoH - but it's hard to compare CoH's streamlined super hero mayhem to a more classic fantasy mmorpg. I'll put it this way: I haven't had this much fun with an mmorpg, or wanted to keep playing as badly, since the early beta days of UO. A quick note on melee combat. It starts off pretty standard. You click to start attacking, and since you don't have any amount of skills learned early on, it appears pretty lackluster. As you learn new skills, it gets much better. Yeah, it's just adding the "click this, then click this" style - until you get up to Heroic Opportunities. Once you start into that, you get into a really fun system of chaining different attacks together to create really powerful combo-effect style attacks. Where this really shines is in a group, as you can trigger some truly spectacular effects, with devastating results, if you have just halfway decent coordination on your team. Cliff's Notes Version Right now, I HIGHLY recommend EQ2. I can't say enough good things about it. The cynic in me is hesitant to come out in such strong support of an mmorpg, especially one bearing the Everquest name. However, EQ2 is nothing at all like EQ1 was, at least not when I played it. It's fun, it's detailed, it's immersive, and very addictive. If you want to hold off your purchase and get my more sober opinion on the game, wait a week or two, when my initial wowness has worn off. That's usually when I start getting fed up with any given mmorpg and stop playing. If I'm still playing and recommending the game this strongly then - especially in light of HL2 coming out next week - then that should convince you to give it a try, if you're at all into the genre. no, No, NO!
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Jeet-- I was given a copy of EQ2 today. Email me some details and I'll try to hook up with you. Mac OSX--UNIX For Girls (tm)
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The email address listed by my name on PC and in OpenCrap is working. Mac OSX--UNIX For Girls (tm)
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The graphics of EQ2, even though I know graphics "don't matter", are exponentially better than WoW both technically and artistically. EQ2 is technically shitty. A programmer that works for Nvidia has told me "they made a lot of REALLY STUPID technical decisions" and I trust his word as well as my own experiences. EQ2 chugs constantly, even on lowish settings on a high end system, and things get blurry and indistinct far too quickly, and there wasn't any way to change the blurry distance in the beta other than by proxy via changing texture settings as a whole. The entire world looked muddy and generic. WoW, on the other hand, runs beautifully even on a mediocre system with hardly any slow down ever. So does City of Heroes. CoH managed to make high quality, gorgeous character models as well as gorgeous surroundings (even if a little tedious and boring) without requiring much of a system at all to run it. Why the hell couldn't EQ2 do the same thing? Answer: their programmers are stupid, and make stupid decisions. Artistically, we disagree. WoW has it's own kind of hyper-stylizing. Like it or hate it, but it's hard to really compare artistic merit. Both have their ups and downs, EQ2 did a better job of making things look like an actual object in the gaming world. They still have stupid, stupid running and movement animations for some reasons I can't fathom. I can't recall anybody that liked the Luclin style animations, and EQ2 is all the same stuff. Blah. EQ2's upsides are that it's very very easy to get into. Newbie friendly++ Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.
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This is the MMOG topic right? Marvel sues COH. Discuss amongst yourselfs. |
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Oh, from what I gather, they're suing because the game gives the player the ability to possibly create a Marvel trademarked character. Also, it could just be sour grapes. |
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Euri, I guess EQ2 may be programmed poorly or whatnot, but it runs fine for me. The blurry bit comes from Bloom and something else, which you can uncheck now (might not have been able to in the beta) if you don't like it. I realize that I have a pretty good machine right now, so that probably explains why it runs fine for me. Still, WoW doesn't have nifty normal mapping and bumpies and all that hooplah to bog it down, though it does have a nice bloom effect and some good speculars. The weird thing is, I dig Warcraft 3's art direction, and WoW is the same thing. However, it worked for me in the RTS setting, but as an mmorpg when I need to be immersed in the game world, it just ended up being too cartoony. Also, can someone explain to me what zergs and diablo are doing in the WoW setting? Cute player pets, ok....but space aliens in a fantasy mmorpg? Bleh. |
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