After somehow staying out of the MMORPG scene entirely for my entire life, I broke down today I decided to try WoW...and here's my problem: I love it...but it looks like a game about to turn ten. My question is should I just suck it up and get used to an old game's visual look and drop $80 on the expansions, or is there are recent MMO (of any business model) that has a similarly enjoyable questing, leveling, and looting set up?

If your interested than go for it and with the upcoming expansion they will be upgrading character models for all the races so It will look better. There is a lot of great content in that game but you have to be really interested in MMO's to get the most out of it.

A new expansion is coming up where a major feature is that all of the original models are being updated with new detail and rigging.

And I thought "Pandaria" was the best stuff they've made yet. There is a quibble if they revealed "the plan" too soon instead of letting the players see it unfold but otherwise the advancement in quest design and zone layout make the game easier than ever to play now.

This seems like a spam setup.

@bongchilla:

that's what I figured...looks like I know what I'm doing this summer...

@sheer_sagacity: Uh don't be stupid. If you want to start playing an MMO stay the F away from WoW. I don't give a crap what they do with their character models in the new expansion you will still be playing a game that is 10 years old and looks it. Not only that you will be playing the lowest common denominator of MMO. So please if you REALLY do want to play a MMO go pick up Wildstar, or The Secret World, or FF14, or you know something with a soul that isn't purely by the numbers and still trying to actually do something good with MMO's instead of just be a cash churn.

@karkarov: I asked for WoW advice because as someone who has never played WoW I've enjoyed it for my first ten or so hours. If you want to play WIldstar have fun, I'll have fun playing WoW and our diverging interests and opinions CAN coexist. I *want* to play WoW, hence the question.

@mb: how exactly does this seem like a setup for spam?

@sheer_sagacity: We get people who start threads and then, once they've got a few replies, post out links for alternative games and stuff. It's not unheard of.

Don't worry, mods are just jaded :)

Well I am just here to tell you choose the tragically wrong MMO to try. Feel free to post your quitting story in two to three years when yet another derivative expansion that waters down the game even more is released and it "breaks your class". Also I gave you the only WoW advice worth listening to, don't play it.

To me getting two to three years of enjoyment out of a game is hardly "worst case scenario".

@sheer_sagacity: Except that there are other MMO's you could get that same 2-3 years out of that are more progressive, more fun, and you will less likely to look back at and feel like "why did I waste 2-3 years of my life on this". WoW is a meat grinder. It never gets better it just churns out repetitive updates that simply cycle the same changes they made 6 years ago over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over....

It is a dumping ground for everything bad about MMO's and it is just plain sad that new MMO players never listen when the veterans tell them it is a relic and to start somewhere else.

The expansions shouldn't be $80. Right now on Battle.net you can buy it for $20, which includes everything up until the lastest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, which is also $20.

It's kind of some potentially complex and time consuming stuff to get into for someone new, but there are several addons, and UI replacement packages available that make the UI much more useful and less dated looking.

This. So far, the new models (the ones they've shown) animate really nicely. Expressive faces, way more polygons...they just look a lot better overall. Not to mention every expansion is an improvement to general fidelity of environments and visual effects. You won't see generational leaps here, but if you look back to the original environments, there's a world of difference compared to what they've done in Pandaria. I also agree that MoP is probably one of, if not my favorite expansions, and I've played them all.

Also, don't mind that duder who keeps telling you to play lesser MMOs. He sounds incredibly bitter about something. I'm as "Veteran" as it gets with WoW. It's the been the best MMO on the market for a decade. Cataclysm was a low point, but even that wasn't terrible. Kind of tells you something when Blizzard's low point was just sort of "meh". They really brought it back with Mist of Pandaria. Almost to the point where I'm wondering if they can pull it off again with Warlords of Draenor. We'll see. The truth is that other MMO's have really just bitten off of wow. I can't tell you how many WoW clones I've played where I've come away going, "Eh, it seems well made, but if I'm going to play one of these...why not play the best one?" Don't think I'm some fanboy either. I'm just as critical of Blizzard's mistakes and missteps as anyone else. The difference is I can explain to you, without bitterness, what they've done right and wrong over the years, and what they could of/should do better.

I should note that I haven't tried Wildstar yet. That game could totally blow the doors off anything Blizzard is doing, but we'll see. I'm going to give the game a shot. I think you should too if you're that curious about it. Nothing is keeping you from being married to one MMO. Sure, you don't want a bunch of subscriptions stacking up, but you could always freeze one game while you check out another. Experimenting is only going to inform you more about something, rather than having to rely on other people on the internet.

The thing that WoW lacks compared to contemporary games is that the limitations in the combat engine itself constrains encounter design. Tanking can not stack while Healing stacks poorly while DPS stacks infinitely which often manifests as static encounter. These issues are the big hurdle they need to address going into the future because modern games like Wildstar are starting to solve them.

I want to call out what Blizzard does correctly in quest and lore design and streamlining as stellar and heads and shoulders above the competition. The irony with Star Wars The Old Republic is they claimed they cared way more about story than the "other game" but got bogged down by it and turned it into a boring and tedious feature. Blizzard recognized that forcing a player to do the lore is a bad idea and adopted a bunch of design and tricks modern game designers use in other games. Most of the story of "Mogu'shan Palace" is in Mogu'shan Palace. You see it unfold as you move through the instance and kill stuff off. Most of it is told to you while you are busy doing something else. And the most important of all you can completely ignore it because the 15th time through on your second character you've long past caring.

@sheer_sagacity: I wouldn't listen to the WoW naysayers too hard. They stopped having fun, but it shouldn't let it impede on you having fun. If you enjoy a game for a year before burning out, you had fun.

I've been playing WoW on and off since beta. Before Paladins had seals. When the game had a day/night cycle. I raided Naxx in Vanilla. The game ebbs and flows, and some changes you'll like, some changes you'll hate.

I enjoy WoW as it offers gameplay on multiple levels. If I want to explore and take quests seriously, I can do that. If I'm rolling an alt, I can skip questing and level through pure dungeons, PVP, or simply ignore the quest text and grind stuff out. My girlfriend, who's not a gamer and doesn't grasp 3d movement very well can play with me and we can both have a good time. She wanted me to play Wildstar with her, but the combat was a bit too active, and I swear, if I have to play that tutorial zone one more time...

I've played just about every MMO under the sun. WoW is the only one I go back to for more than a week.

But if you'd like to try Wildstar out, shoot me a PM. I have a guest pass you can use so you can try that game out.

@zelyre: Thanks for the offer, but considering I have ten years of content in front of me I should be set, especially given the amount of time law school takes up, but thank you.

Maybe it's a bit short-sighted coming from someone who has played the game for eight years (while also being my first MMO) and only recently took his longest break, but none of the games I've tried in-between haven't gripped me as good as WoW. Warhammer - AoR was a good attempt, but sadly the technical side of it blew too much for the setting to make up for it.

Granted, it has become pretty streamlined in the past years even for my casual-ish taste, but it still plays so well and is so easy to get into that I could see myself going completely crazy with it, would I start playing it for the first time now. Different starting zones for nearly every race, completely so for both factions, four expansions worth of exploring to go through...that's a huge overload of goodness!

I've always loved the visual style of WoW and have mostly been impressed by some of the design they've managed to squeeze out in each expansion, not letting some of the messy looking stuff bother me...though I'll admit that I'm pretty grateful for the character model updates, because some of the races have really needed a facelift...

TLDR; Take those HD glasses off and enjoy your journey through Azeroth! Just don't get too hooked on it, like some people...

@sheer_sagacity: Wildstar.

One thing WoW did which was good was simplification of stats and. Wildstar has a bit of complex system that I find frankly daunting where I couldn't tell you the difference between "Finesse" and "Moxie" or what to do with "AMP" let alone how to configure it correctly for...which roles?

I think it is an issue I need to use an external tool to figure out how to configure my gear in WoW to meet minimal let alone optimal requirements. Wildstar goes way beyond this which makes it hurdle to anyone casually playing to even answering fundamental questions of "should I pick this thing up and equip it??"

I say this as a hardcore EVE player. WoW is the best type of that MMO currently on the market. I've played tons of themepark games from Aion to FFXIV and I have yet to play a themepark MMO executed better than WoW. It has everything you would want out of that type of game and it's done better than the competition.

If you really like questing (I'm not sure how, but hey!) and leveling, WoW is the game to play. Just about the only thing it's lacking is the visuals. People can say they're "stylized" all they want, but they still lack fidelity. This isn't going to change anytime soon, since Blizzard appeals to the absolute lowest common denominator. If that is one of your major holdouts, you might want to check out the competition like FFXIV (also pretty good!).

WoW has been running for almost ten years, so it has to be doing something(s) right.

OP, if you're enjoying it, play it. When you get tired of it, stop. When you feel like going back, go back. Only way you're going to figure out which kind of MMO is for you is to actually dive in. You might end up disliking it and regret spending time and money on it, but at least you'll have formed a better idea about your own preferences for future reference. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?