30 Day Trial: World of Warcraft - Part 01

My MMO addiction started with SWG, I played through the CU and NGE (the two game-changing updates that fractured the player base). I logged something like 1500 hours into that game, I was even paying for two accounts at one point. I'll probably never spend that much time with a game again.

It really is interesting how much WoW has influenced the MMO genre as a whole. When SWG launched, it was a very unique game with a completely player-driven economy. Both of the big updates to that game tried to refocus it and make it similar to WoW.

I played WoW pretty heavily for two separate bouts. I got to around Lv55 with a Warrior before quitting for SWG again, and then rolled a DK who I got to 80. I did the WotLK endgame content with him for about a month before quitting again, and never felt the urge to return when either of the newer expansions came out.

I've gotten into The Old Republic a few times, and I still play it occasionally. It is very similar to WoW, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. To me it's a well produced game, and I enjoy the story content enough to have completed two different character stories. Although I enjoyed the limited time I spent on endgame content in WoW, I have barely touched any of it in SWTOR.

Wow, this game is even worse than I ever imagined! This became so popular? This? Amazing!

That was magical. And now I'm seriously considering re-activating my WoW account and adding 3-5 more characters to may ......... stable?

i wonder if he realizes its a checkup every week. only four episodes.. lol

I've played mmos a couple years back when I was a teen because I didnt have a source of income to buy them big games and consoles. All I had was an emachines computer with dial up internet in 2009 and the only mmo that I could play that was free, worked on my computer, and was fun was Runescape. I played that for a while until I got to level 87 and occasionally would get a subscription so I I could explore the whole world and do member only stuff. I would still do the holiday events for a couple years after I stopped playing and the one day I guess I grew out of it. I built a gaming comptuer, got comcast internet, bought consoles and I didnt go back. I did do quite some research to find other mmos that I liked, I tried runes of magic, perfect world, aion, lord of the rings, tried the wow trial and got bored within a few minutes. I also recently downloaded rift and tera, wildstar and those didn't grab my attention. I just feel like Im wasting my time with those collecting quests or maybe its because when I played runescape I had my cousin to teach me and adventure along with me. I did play champions online, and DC universe online and enjoyed them for a couple of hours, I was mostly interested in the character customization and the superheroes you meet. I still shed a tear remembering my quest for 99 woodcutting in the village of lumbridge in runescape.

This game looks interesting. I hope they do a graphics pass before it leaves beta.

Yeah, I did actually spend a couple years playing.

I wish there was a series of videos going back to the very first mmos that were made. Jeff and Dan could go back and play Ultima online, Meridian 59, the realm online, everquest, and asherons call. I think some of these might not exist anymore, but just imagine taking a look at these amazing worlds again.

Dan's more apparent ignorance about certain games has made me appreciate the range and depth the Giant Bomb crew have had over the years in their ability to talk games that much more.

In that way it's actually quite shocking they hired Dan Ryckert given how much each of these dudes know their shit (with selective ignorance by Matt Rorie of course). In a way there's no better place for Dan to be than Giant Bomb if he's gonna step it up so in that way this should be good.

What Dan really wanted to play is a Shaman. Rorie would have been able to tell him that.

hearing jeff talk about how much wow has changed in almost 10 years is pretty interesting

First, World of Warcraft.

Next... tea.

I honestly find it super refreshing to have Dan join the crew, he's unabashed about the things he enjoys and doesn't care what other people think (his controversial opinions on Terminator for example). He brings a new perspective to content and makes me excited about the future of Giant Bomb. I'm sure Jason will come out of his shell in time, similar to how Drew did.

@lun49gameon: This is the same thing that happened to me. Played Runescape for a couple years and then WoW got huge, tried it and hated it. I can't get into just going quest to quest, it seems so meaningless. Runescape you can pretty much just go and do whatever you want.

I'm a bit bummed he went with human warrior!
There were a bunch of other races that looked kind of weird.

They have updated the models at least once already that I can think of, and obviously the newer races look way better than the original ones. One of the biggest-billed features of the new expansion is that they're redoing models and animations for all of the old races.

This feature is so funny.

Oh Burning Rangers for the Sega Saturn, such a great firefighting game.

YES, Endurance runs are back!

Guild Wars 2 please. WoW is old and busted.

So *this* is the Warcraft movie they were talking about at Comicon.

Instead of spending 10 minutes talking about which class to pick, they could have taken 10 secons per class to read the summary and figure out they were looking for the Shaman class, or even the Druid can do melee and magic. I guess there is some mandatory rule in videogame videos that whoever is playing must read as little as possible of the text on the screen :)

Also, I hope they indeed switch out Jeff with someone else, if only to prevent it from turning into more wrestling talk. Dan is taking the joke that is wrestling way to serious....

For some reason I kinda wanna get back into WoW now,

@fuzzyset: This isn't Dan's true first time with the game. He mentions playing it on last week's podcast.

As someone that has been playing games all my life, I hate free to play.

If the game is free to play, the mechanics are inherently designed around wasting the player's time, as an incentive for them to spend money instead.

If I were a child with "unlimited" free time, I would probably be really excited for free to play, as I could play a lot of games without having to spend any money.

But I'm not a child, and my time is limited.

This is also why I hate the trend of so many games needlessly adding levelling mechanics or collectible items that have an effect on gameplay.

If your game is designed around me wasting time before I can progress, then I'm not going to play your game.

@wsgexe: He mentions it last week, at which point they were already recording these.

@lordofultima: So they waited six days to post this video? Sounds unlikely.

Just sat here shouting "Pick shaman!" at my screen. >_<

Well there ya go.

I just saw him scroll by the servers 'Turalyon' and 'Shadowsong', and i shed a tear of happiness :'-) Good times *sob* good times.

I've always wanted to try WoW, but always backed off in the end because I know I'd probably get waaay too obsessed with it, so just watching this is kinda already feeding that impulse.

Picks a Warrior class, chooses a staff as a primary weapon.

Awesome.

It's unfortunate they picked WoW for Dan to play, but it's kind of understandable. The problem with WoW is that there is no social interaction whatsoever over the course of the game. It can barely be considered an MMO. At no point do you ever have to interact with anyone. Ruminating on this a bit led me to realize that actually makes this way easier for them to produce a video on it.

@echozs: Ask, and ye shall receive: http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/giant-bomb-unplugged-pathfinder-part-01/2300-8028/

Man, as a roleplayer, it's tough hearing the Bombers talking about roleplayers. Fair enough that you don't want to roleplay, but come on guys, you sound like scared moms from the 80's.

Part one? Looking forward to more, when they get around to it! (Also, when I try to page through the comments it shows videos instead).

It might sound crazy, but my "play on the side while watching a show" game is Dark Souls. Once you know the game well enough, it becomes pretty relaxing just to dick around in it.

I found this feature to be kind of meh. What I'd really like to see is Dan playing all of the Twisted Metal games and giving his opinion on them, because that bombastica was fantastic for TM2

I would be willing to pay more to see this.

As someone who is absolutely terrible at all loma games that was painful to watch. If he was actually trying I feel really bad right now.

I'm already loving the concept behind this. Here's to a great, new feature!

Should get him to play a pre-WoW MMO. You know.. a real classic MMO..

But anyway, I've played a bunch of them over the last 15 years and I managed to skip WoW. Game always looked dumb to me so I'm curious to watch this. I think I played the trial version for literally 10 mins once many years ago. I immediately thought it looked so crappy/cartoony that I immediately shut it off.

This should be interesting.

Edit: Also, as usual, whenever they discuss MMOs and Free to Play vs Subscription, no one mentions Final Fantasy 14's current success as a subscription model. Subscription model is perfectly feasible, as long as the game doesn't suck.

I always thought the Horde were the bad guys till I actually played WarCraft 3 and realized they were more the good guys than Alliance.

When I first played WoW I was a Night Elf cause they just looked cool (great starter area), then later I played as a Blood Elf cause they looked cool, and now I'm installing it again cause I wanna be a werewolf cause that's cool.

Point is, play whatever you want! :D

Got into WoW a couple months ago...so I'm looking forward to seeing another newcomer's reaction. Though I've been playing with people I know IRL a lot, including a friend who's been playing since launch/does raiding/has multiple 90s/etc., so I might just get enraged at his incompetence :D

Whenever I hear of "Oceania", I immediately think of an undersea world like Atlantis.

Certainly not "Straya" where I'm from.

I'm kinda taken aback, I'd never seen anyone die at level 1 until now.

Great, now get him to play FFXI next.

@nobel: Watching newbies when you've played a game for years is one of the most painful experiences a gamer can go through.

O God.