World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[Duraframe300]

I dread to ask who here is or was hopeful for a fucking League of Legends MMO.

They have tons of lore already done, huge audience and lots of $$$ to throw away. If anything could have taken on WoW, that was it.

Replacing eating shit with eating even smellier shit ain't an improvement.

 

[abija]

Why exactly would a LoL "mmo" be guaranteed shit?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I dread to ask who here is or was hopeful for a fucking League of Legends MMO.

Riot had the man who was the lead game designer of WoW during its golden age, and Riot had the resources to deliver a a game with high production values. I personally don't like LoL or its universe or aesthetic, but Riot's MMO was the last hope for a good MMO. The only stuff in development is Asian grindiers riddled with cash shops that will die within a couple years, and kickstarter stuff that languishes in development hell because the teams behind them have barely any resources.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Holy crap, at long last, they're finally doing it. They're making an underground zone! (Coincidentally GW2 just delievered one a couple weeks back, though that map was very unsatisfying for exploration since the map revolves around a meta event). I might resub for this. When can we get that underground expansion discovering ancient Nerubian cities and trawling through dead old god guts?

 

[abija]

Finally? Deepholm was an underground zone 13 years ago.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Finally? Deepholm was an underground zone 13 years ago.

Blackrock Mountain was an underground zone on WoW launch. Etc.

Underground zones are like above ground zones except in a different colour and with a different skybox.

It was a weird comment.

 

[J1M]

Maybe virgins have a strong desire to explore mysterious caves. Would explain the popularity of the Underdark in D&D.

 

[Myobi]

strong desire to explore mysterious caves

I wanted to make a retarded mom joke here, but I love you J1M, you are the best of us.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Finally? Deepholm was an underground zone 13 years ago.

Deepholm never felt truly underground to me. The ceiling was so, so far high up I never noticed it.

 

[Dr1f7]

blizz can underground my fat ass

 

[Late Bloomer]

So an underground zone and flying? How anyone has fun "exploring" anything while flying is beyond me. The current flying in WoW is a gimmick that gets tiresome the more you play.

Anyways, they are offering another play Dragonflight free weekend March 9-12 in case anyone wants to see how shit an MMO can be for themselves. At this point they might as well turn it free to play, make their cash shop massive, and let the whales take over.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/wor...play-the-dragonflight-free-trial-this-weekend

 

[mediocrepoet]

So an underground zone and flying? How anyone has fun "exploring" anything while flying is beyond me. The current flying in WoW is a gimmick that gets tiresome the more you play.

Anyways, they are offering another play Dragonflight free weekend March 9-12 in case anyone wants to see how shit an MMO can be for themselves. At this point they might as well turn it free to play, make their cash shop massive, and let the whales take over.

Yeah I got an email about it, briefly considered it, and decided I'm not even interested enough to bother re-installing the client.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have resubbed and bought Dragonflight. I am currently playing through the new Shadowlands stuff that was added since I last played, though sadly I won't be able to experience the new Shadowlands raids since nobody queues for raids that aren't from the latest expansion. I might have a review out on Dragonflight's content in a couple weeks. After that, I'll review the underground patch when it comes out, and then unsub.

I stand by my opinion that the MoP talent system was good. I quite dislike the return of the vanilla talent system. Spending an hour mousing over and comparing a hundred different nodes with inconsequential "decisions" such as +2% haste or +1 second duration on Divine Steed or adding some miscellaneous effect to Avenging Wrath is not fun. It is a complete waste of my time. The MoP talent system was good: it cut out the superflouous fat and presented you with 6 or 7 real, meaningful choices, like brand new abilities or passives that had a noticeable impact on your gameplay, and allowed you to build your character in only a few seconds, and allowed me to dive straight into the fun.

That said, the new animations on the talent tree menu are neat.

I do not like the new, minimalistic mobile game art direction of the HUD. The hotbar, target profile, minimap, quest markers, NPC quest icons, etc. It looks like it's from a cheap, uninspired mobile game. The old UI had flavor, with the dark parchment and the ornate metal griffons and wyverns and all of the fancy detailing. I suppose there are addons that could reverse this, but the new mobile artstyle now infuses most of the game now (started becoming noticeable during WoD and Legion), from the modelling of the characters and armor sets, to the texturing of terrain and doodads, to the spell effects, to the oversaturated the color palette. I'd imagine that if you walked into TBC Outland wearing new armor (post-WoD) and with the current UI, it would look quite jarring.

The official implementation of controller support feels halfassed. I got a better experience downloading the ConsolePort addon, which allows you to play using FFXIV's crosshotbar setup. However, you do not get the tactile experience of clicking on objects in the game world like you do with a mouse, which is one of WoW's greater strengths: immersing you into its world through interactivity. But the current design of WoW's gameplay where you have at least a dozen different combat abilities that are a part of your rotation (and that's before getting into miscellaneous spells and items), makes it uncomfortable for me to play with a mouse and keyboard. I don't want to stretch my fingers to reach the 9 key or spend a lot of time rebinding my keyboard and having to relearn my muscle memory. The FFXIV-esque controller setup allows me to comfortably fight without cramping my fingers, so I'll stick with that. (I still play GW2 with mouse and keyboard, but in that game you only ever have 10 abilities max, so it's quite comfortable to play). So far, ConsolePort's only failing is that vehicle controls are not bound, so I have to reach over back to the mouse and keyboard when a vehicle segment happens.

 

[abija]

I stand by my opinion that the MoP talent system was good. I quite dislike the return of the vanilla talent system. Spending an hour mousing over and comparing a hundred different nodes with inconsequential "decisions" such as +2% haste or +1 second duration on Divine Steed or adding some miscellaneous effect to Avenging Wrath is not fun. It is a complete waste of my time. The MoP talent system was good: it cut out the superflouous fat and presented you with 6 or 7 real, meaningful choices, like brand new abilities or passives that had a noticeable impact on your gameplay, and allowed you to build your character in only a few seconds, and allowed me to dive straight into the fun.

That said, the new animations on the talent tree menu are neat.

They have preset builds in game for people just like you.

However, you do not get the tactile experience of clicking on objects in the game world like you do with a mouse, which is one of WoW's greater strengths: immersing you into its world through interactivity.

What is this even supposed to mean?

 

[BlizzardStockholmSyndrome]

Holy crap, at long last, they're finally doing it. They're making an underground zone! (Coincidentally GW2 just delievered one a couple weeks back, though that map was very unsatisfying for exploration since the map revolves around a meta event). I might resub for this. When can we get that underground expansion discovering ancient Nerubian cities and trawling through dead old god guts?

Are we finally getting the Underdark expansion? Finally? I love the idea, I truly do but you sold me on the idea that this expansion will be all about spreading my wings and taking the skies so why the fuck are you taking me below the crust of the earth? I swear, the first good idea they had in a decade and they couldn't wait 2 years to make an expansion out of it.

 

[Nathir]

I have resubbed and bought Dragonflight.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

However, you do not get the tactile experience of clicking on objects in the game world like you do with a mouse, which is one of WoW's greater strengths: immersing you into its world through interactivity.

What is this even supposed to mean?

In WoW, you get to interact with people and objects in the world a lot. You run up to an NPC, you mouse over to him, click on him, and then he turns to face you and talk to you. When a mob dies, you mouse over and click on his dead corpse to kneel down and loot him. You mouse over and click on the chest to open and loot the chest. In Hillsbrad foothills, you click on the heads of the humans buried up to their necks to bash their skulls in with a shovel. In Dalaran, you click on a gate to open it and enter the Rogue class order hall. In Bastion, you help a smith by clicking on debris and clutter to clean up her forge, and click on fuel and throw it into the fire and click on the bellows to pump them. In Maldraxxus, you help a scientist create a slime, by clicking on various ingredients. You click on fungal masses to order your slime to consume it and clean the stuff inside it, and then your slime comes back with the cleaned part and you click on the part inside your slime to retrieve it. And so on.

In GW2, you don't click on specific objects. Instead, you run around until you see the "Press F to interact" prompt flash, press F, and then you have completed the objective. You might be told to retrieve a book, but rather than looking for a specific book and clicking on it, you just might just walk up to a table with several books on it and press F. Your interaction is divorced from the physical object in the game world and you didn't actually touch it. In FFXIV, you look around for glowing sparkles, press A on your controller to target the sparkles (rather than an individual object like a book), and that completes the objective. Again, you don't know what you were interacting with, and you didn't touch it. In WoW with the ConsolePort addon, you just aim the center of your screen at an NPC or an object and press the right thumbstick, but it just doesn't feel the same like actually mousing over and clicking on it, actually touching the object.

Are we finally getting the Underdark expansion? Finally? I love the idea, I truly do but you sold me on the idea that this expansion will be all about spreading my wings and taking the skies so why the fuck are you taking me below the crust of the earth? I swear, the first good idea they had in a decade and they couldn't wait 2 years to make an expansion out of it.

I think the idea of flying through huge underground areas is appealing. I really liked flying through Draconis Mons in GW2. Also having walls and a ceiling rush past you can also give a better sense of flight and speed than flying high over a slowly moving landscape below with an unmoving skybox above. The selling point of the third How To Train Your Dragon movie was that they were going to fly around a huge, gorgeous underground world (fantastic art by Pierre-Olivier Vincent below), though sadly the titular Hidden World was only visited for 5 minutes. In a game like WoW, you might get to spend many hours flying around a cool underground world.

 

[abija]

Basically you described in many words a feature that was better done in GW and FF and now WoW copied it in Dragonflight. You somehow romanticized a clumsier UI implementation.

 

[SerratedBiz]

makes it uncomfortable for me to play with a mouse and keyboard. I don't want to stretch my fingers to reach the 9 key or spend a lot of time rebinding my keyboard

God just kill yourself already.

 

[Reever]

You're doing yourself a big disservice by not learning a few keybinds. All the ones near your WASD are easier than reaching for 5 on your keyboard and your muscle memory will transfer from one character to another and even other MMOs. My Z key is always my pvp trinket/EMFH/CC clear button, my F1-F4 are big CD defensive spells etc. Hell, I have not played my main in half a decade and I am confident I still know 90% of my binds by heart.

 

[J1M]

You're doing yourself a big disservice by not learning a few keybinds. All the ones near your WASD are easier than reaching for 5 on your keyboard and your muscle memory will transfer from one character to another and even other MMOs. My Z key is always my pvp trinket/EMFH/CC clear button, my F1-F4 are big CD defensive spells etc. Hell, I have not played my main in half a decade and I am confident I still know 90% of my binds by heart.

Okay, but if you rebind Z, then how do you sheath your weapon? That's the most important thing on some servers!

 

[Reever]

on some servers

I don't spend my time around Goldshire with furries and hookers.

 

[J1M]

on some servers

I don't spend my time around Goldshire with furries and hookers.

That's... oddly specific.

 

[Seethe]

What a mistake it was to try this game again after 10 years. It's even more theme parked, even more streamlined, even more QoL-ified that takes me out of the game instantly, even more shit writing that's now constantly thrown at my face with voiced dialogue and scripted instances, and I cannot even remember if the itemization is as bad now as it was 10 years ago, as it now seems to be nothing more than just straight up stat increases with the FOTM set bonuses serviced by blizzard every major patch. The combat, for some reason feels like a 60 BPM metronome, I assume because everything is on a set GCD and everything can be spammed the moment the GCD is finished.

At least the animations are cool, but that's not gonna make me stay that's for sure.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am enjoying going through Dragonflight's content (I have several issues but I will get to that in my review). And pet battles. I don't have an urge to play WoW every waking moment like I did in prior expansions, but it is fun.

The new Ret talent revamp has been good, IMO. Crusading Strikes (crusader strike becomes an autoattack), and Consecrated Blade (Blade of Justice and Consecration are merged into a single ability), along with Vanguard of Justice (your holy power spenders cost 4 power instead of 3) are a godsend for me as they reduce how often I have to push buttons and how many different CDs I have to manage. I want to spend my time looking at the characters and what's going onscreen, and maybe look at my allies and throw out heals and blessings on them, rather than spending all of my time staring at my cooldowns and procs on my hotbar. Still wish I could get rid of procs entirely.