I already have played the game and loved it then stoped but I have some questions...
I dont get blacksmithing, runes etc can I still make it through the game and enjoy it?
If I get WOTLK and just start playing from there will I get confused?
Are there any better payed MMOs?
World of Warcraft
Game » consists of 9 releases. Released Nov 23, 2004
World of Warcraft is an MMORPG that takes place in Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft universe. At its peak, it boasted a player base of over 12.5 million subscribers, making it the most popular MMO of all time.
Too late for World of Warcraft...
I'm a person fan of GuildWars (wrote a review on my profile), I've had friends who moved to World of Warcraft with the launch of WoTLK and they seem to be doing fine, found Guilds, do Raids, etc. There are thousands of games you could play besides World of Warcraft, some of the more popular MMO's are below.
Popular Released MMOs
Guild Wars
World of Warcraft
Aion
Lineage 2
Darkfall
Eve Online
Warhammer Online
Age of Conan
Lord Of The Rings Online
Dungeons And Dragons
Everquest 2
Vanguard Online
Dark Age of Camelot
Final Fantasy XI
City Of Heroes / Villains
Champions Online
Ultima Online (Still? :P)
Anarchy Online
Cabal Online
RF Online
Free Realms
Rappelz
Maplestory
Ragnarok Online
Scions Of Fate
Mu Online
Star Wars Galaxies
Pristontale
That's all I can think of, view the upcoming game list below.
Upcoming Popular MMOs
Guild Wars 2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Trek Online
All Points Bulletin
Final Fantasy XIV
Stargate Worlds
Earthrise
Jumpgate Evolution
The Agency
Black Prophecy
DC Universe Online
Planeshift
Unannounced Blizzard Next-Gen MMO
Torchlight MMO
Diablo 3 (Not an MMO, I know)
Pristontale 2
That's about all I can think of, there are a lot of games you can play, as for World of Warcraft I think if you've played it before it won't be very difficult to pick it up again and learn the new systems, I'm personally playing Modern Warfare 2 while waiting for Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2, in addition to WoTLK with the upcoming release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm I'd imagine the best time to learn the new systems would be right now before anything else gets added with Cataclysm.
I doubt that you will be so confused over the new stuff in WotLK that it will reduce your enjoyment of the game. If it does, it would probably only be during a brief period. If you can manage to restrict your gaming, I believe it is probably for the better to pick it up again. I got stuck in it and shit got bad, so I had to quit. (addict lol)
Still.. There are many good MMO's as WildFire here kindly took time to list and I have only played a small fraction of those.
WoW is fun when you play with friends and not letting the game consume you. It's your choice.
Go for it. If you liked the game before there's really no reason you shouldn't like it now. It's even more streamlined nowadays so there's little chance of confusion, especially if you read up on some recent patches and stuff. Worst thing that can happen is you waste 15 bucks.
As for other MMO's I've played almost all of them, and I've always ended up coming back to WoW. AoC, Warhammer, LOTRO, Guild Wars and even older ones like UO. WoW really feels like the ultimate mix of all of them. I find myself enjoying WoW a lot more when I play just a few hours a week - maybe a raid or two, some crafting, otherwise I get burned out. There are some upcoming MMO's that look really good (SWTOR) so it's also an option to wait for a new one.
" game went to hell in wotlk imo, i'll never go back season 2 & 3 tbc were likely the best gaming experience i've ever had.... wow is garbage now. "I'd be very interested in hearing your reasoning behind that statement. For me it's the opposite - I liked WoW back in pre-TBC and TBC days, but I love it now that I can play just a few hours a week and still keep up with all my friends. It's a much more fine-tuned game these days, raids are easier to get started & organize, bosses have more interesting mechanics, not to mention class-balance (PvE, I don't do PvP) is actually there.
" @slacker4life said:I agree, it's much more easier to do stuff now. Like finding a group for a instance is much easier now." game went to hell in wotlk imo, i'll never go back season 2 & 3 tbc were likely the best gaming experience i've ever had.... wow is garbage now. "I'd be very interested in hearing your reasoning behind that statement. For me it's the opposite - I liked WoW back in pre-TBC and TBC days, but I love it now that I can play just a few hours a week and still keep up with all my friends. It's a much more fine-tuned game these days, raids are easier to get started & organize, bosses have more interesting mechanics, not to mention class-balance (PvE, I don't do PvP) is actually there. "
@ Magresda
@ EpicBenjamin
I was somewhat of a hardcore wow player in college for a while and was likely considered an elitist. I played WOW even since pre release of the game but my skills just culminated during season 2 and 3 i suppose. All i did was arena at gladiator level so the only thing i really cared about was some semblance of balance regarding pvp. i would spend my time either raping alliance in their own cities, outside org having people ogle at my character while dueling, or playing high level arena. I occasionally would pve when begged to go and would still top meters as i found pve easy, tedious, and yet frustrating as i thought there was always to many people fucking up which i rarely experienced with my arena partners.
In season 2 and season 3 there was still some issues but was the best time balance wise in the game since launch. in wotlk pvp was officially broken and arena characteristics went to hell.
Most of wotlk i spent pissing about with arena friends until we quit. i even fucked around with a top raiding guild for 2 weeks until my brains turned to mush out of boredom and i then i quit for good.
My friends and I even rolled over to warhammer and got some world firsts, quit that game as the combat was at such a large scale individual skill didn't shine enough and then we even did the aion thing and again the game just wasn't cutting it.
But yea i was a big timer in PVP and now that's gone to hell. plus now i work full time so i don't have the time to play anymore, no more mmo's for me.
If you're this unsure, then you probably don't like WoW that much.
Try something new or wait for The Old Republic.
" I already have played the game and loved it then stoped but I have some questions...You don't need to be a blacksmith to get through the game. Pick a different profession.
I dont get blacksmithing, runes etc can I still make it through the game and enjoy it?
If I get WOTLK and just start playing from there will I get confused?
Are there any better payed MMOs? "
You can't just get WOTLK, you gotta play through everything first.
No.
" @Yukoei said:" I already have played the game and loved it then stoped but I have some questions...You don't need to be a blacksmith to get through the game. Pick a different profession. You can't just get WOTLK, you gotta play through everything first. No. "
I dont get blacksmithing, runes etc can I still make it through the game and enjoy it?
If I get WOTLK and just start playing from there will I get confused?
Are there any better payed MMOs? "
I already have the original and burning crusade but had to quit because I was confused about everything but I made it to lvl 28 fine.
I was confused about the whole expansion thing, will I catch on?
You don't need to do any crafting skills but they can be useful so look into them, they aren't that complicated, only time consuming. Blacksmithing in particular will only be useful if you invest a lot of time in it for the highest possible gear, otherwise loot you get from quests and instances will be better. If you join a guild, chances are they'll already have assigned duties for such skills. Of course, then they may not need you, so it's best to be good at something, be it a crafting skill, or simply kick ass at your specific class and its battle abilities. There's also the alternative of the gathering skills, skinning, mining, etc, to provide materials for those who craft (though since you can have two such major skills they often pick both the craft and the most related gathering skill, though extra materials are often needed as well). If they don't need it you can at least make extra gold by selling the materials, or at least their later high end versions.
You can't "start" with the expansion, it will be too high level for you (unless the new one completely overhauls how WoW used to work when I played). Whether you get the expansion or not won't affect you until you actually reach the level requirements. How long that will take depends on if you'll start anew, and if not, what level your character was/is (edit: you didn't even need The Burning Crusade before since you didn't make it past lvl 28, it's lvl 50+ I think).
Having played way more MMOs than any one person should, my biggest piece of advice is play with a friend. It's so much more enjoyable to quest and learn from the ground up when you're not alone, not to mention easier to accomplish a lot of things, such as elite quests in WoW... though they sort of got rid of every single one while leveling 1-60, those spineless jerks. Elite quests were the most fun as they actually challenged you to learn your class! *ahems*
What are you looking for in an MMO? A sense of community? Lots of loot? A cool looking character? PvP? Different games offer different things, though if graphics aren't a big deal to you, WoW tends to trump most competitors in a lot of aspects. It's not necessarily that WoW does things the best, but it does the majority of them right and offers enough incentive to keep going back and doing those things over and over. It's also a relatively easy game to understand and you'll do fine leveling up to end-game with a basic knowledge of things.
If you want to raid at end-game, you'll want to know more about the combat mechanics of the game (such as hit cap... if that's still an issue.. they seem to nerf everything with each iteration so that even a two-year old can raid) and you'll eventually want to pick up crafting (best to start early, but not necessary). Don't be afraid to tell people you're new, just don't expect handouts. I always loved showing new players around and giving them dungeon runs, but if someone just came up to me and said "I'm new, can I have gold?" I'd tell them to piss off.
I left WoW almost a year ago, but I don't have anything against it; I just got tired of the end-game grind once and for all. Plenty of people are still finding a lot of enjoyment in it so there might be something there that you like, especially since you haven't been exposed to it ad nauseum. Again, I would stress playing with a friend if you can, but if you're the sort of person that can make friends easily in games, then that's really a non-issue, and you can start up some conversations with people in game and maybe find some leveling partners or people who will run you through dungeons.
I think this is enough rambling from me, though if you ever want to know anything more about it, feel free to ask me.
" @SJSchmidt93 said:I'm confused, I really don't see anything to be confused about." @Yukoei said:I already have the original and burning crusade but had to quit because I was confused about everything but I made it to lvl 28 fine. I was confused about the whole expansion thing, will I catch on? "" I already have played the game and loved it then stoped but I have some questions...You don't need to be a blacksmith to get through the game. Pick a different profession. You can't just get WOTLK, you gotta play through everything first. No. "
I dont get blacksmithing, runes etc can I still make it through the game and enjoy it?
If I get WOTLK and just start playing from there will I get confused?
Are there any better payed MMOs? "
" @Symphony said:Haha,good point. I'm guilty of this myself >.> "Oh I'll just farm some mats while my friend is offline." *10 hours later, friend logs on and asks "How the hell did you get 15 levels while I was gone?!"*" Having played way more MMOs than any one person should, my biggest piece of advice is play with a friend.Make sure you can trust them a lot, however. It only takes one night of "I'm just gonna do a tiny bit while you're not on" and it snowballs. "
" @Fallen189 said:"I'll just do some dungeons while you're away dude, because I'm not doing the quests we're on, it's free EXP and won't disrupt us"" @Symphony said:Haha,good point. I'm guilty of this myself >.> "Oh I'll just farm some mats while my friend is offline." *10 hours later, friend logs on and asks "How the hell did you get 15 levels while I was gone?!"* "" Having played way more MMOs than any one person should, my biggest piece of advice is play with a friend.Make sure you can trust them a lot, however. It only takes one night of "I'm just gonna do a tiny bit while you're not on" and it snowballs. "
Considering you only got to 28 when you played, I'd advise you to wait until Cataclysm, the next expansion due later this year. You're going to be better off starting a new guy from scratch and taking advantage of all the new refinements that are being put into the game - in particular the staring game - where much of the expansion is geared towards improving.
WoW's biggest problem was that Blizzard left the early game alone for years, making new players see the oldest part of the game first. While that part of the game is still what got millions playing, the fact that it has remained the same all this time made it look a little flat compared to other MMOs out there. Any MMO vet will tell you, the first 20 levels are the most important for an MMO to catch on, if you overwhelm, bore, or make it too hard for new players in that time, you're going to lose them. Games like Conan, STO, and others have some prettty great early game content, making it hard to compete with something from 5 years ago.
Cataclysm is going to re-work the early game in a big way, from starting abilities and spells, to weapon use, to giving a better understanding of how the class works. Some of that got added a few patches ago, especially the Hunter class, which was horribly vague to play at early levels. The fact that you can get a mount at 20 now seems crazy to old-timers that had to slog through STV on foot until 40, but when my alt hit 20 and could get a mount it sure helped me want to keep going.
Much of the negative comments are from the so-called "hardcore raiders" that feel the game is now a joke compared to the old raids of TBC and vanilla. They are partly correct, those days are gone, but that goes for all MMOs. It's a sign of the times and the landscape of MMOs today. People in general don't want to bang their head on a wall for hours with 24 others trying to get some make-believe armor anymore. Part of WoW's old society was the elite raiders that had purple and orange gear and the other 90% that never saw anything past Karazhan. That was fine for a few years but eventually people lose interest when all they do is the same old dungeons and some PVP between messing with professions. Why play a game when the best part is something you never see? If an MMO company wants to keep people paying to play their game, they need to have something for them to do, so making raiding easier to do allows everyone a chance to at least experience the content. They may not clear it out, or they might have to wait for eventual nerfs to make it doable for them, but they've got something to do now instead of level another alt.
Being someone who has raided since TBC, and played since vanilla, I'm glad they made the game more open to casual players. Sure I'd like the content to be a little more difficult, but it's hard enough with heroic modes and achievements to keep my guild raiding. I'd rather the game go on and have new content than have millions quit and the game go into some stagnation period. Go look for an MMO out there that's better and enjoy it, many people leave WoW thinking this, only to either come back or just quit MMOs outright. WoW does what it does very well, and until something comes along that is better, enjoy the time you spend in it.
" ...It's a sign of the times and the landscape of MMOs today. People in general don't want to bang their head on a wall for hours with 24 others trying to get some make-believe armor anymore. Part of WoW's old society was the elite raiders that had purple and orange gear and the other 90% that never saw anything past Karazhan. .... "
First off, DukeTogo, you're not wrong. The landscape has changed, and is more casual. I'd be guilty of being one of those relatively hardcore (in terms of affinity for challenge, not raw /played) raiders. I ran my own guild for a couple years and we prided ourselves on tackling the tough stuff. Character progression was definitely one of my main motivations in game. To get our Amani War Bear (we weren't in T6) we had to climb the rungs along the way to optimize our characters and our strategies and it was super rewarding.
You're not wrong about the way the game is more casual, and I think Karazhan was definitely too hard for an entry dungeon, but they overcorrected in a bad way. Whereas you point out that they shouldn't build content that 90% of their player base doesn't see, I didn't see the point of getting epics in Wrath because so little actually required it. They flattened the difficulty curve so low that they undercut their own design:
- Monsters have more interesting mechanics (but they're so underpowered zerging is better).
- They added good gear to heroics, but totally obsoleted 5-man non-heroics at level 80, and Naxx is so mind-numbingly easy there's little incentive to do them (apart from badge farming).
- You can fight hard to beat hard modes and get better gear, but by the time the next dungeon comes out that won't be an advantage because you will immediately upgrade it.
Call loot whore if you want, but in Vanilla and BC, there was a lot of satisfaction in progressing your character beyond "look at me having what you don't have". You had challenging 5-man content to do with your friends. Amp up the challenge further in heroics. The first raid was tough to do unless you upgraded in 5-mans, giving you a reason to do that 5-man content. In Wrath, apart from the Glory of the Hero stuff, there was almost nothing interesting about any of the 5-mans. Most classes got some new CC abilities, but the dungeons were so zergy that you didn't really need those most of the time.
I'm not saying they should have made Wrath as hard as BC, but they should have kept *some* content back and nerfed it over time like they did in BC. A sandbox for hardcore players or something. The launch content (5-mans and raids) was just depressing.
I don't play anymore, and I get my challenge elsewhere in other games, but I think there was a middle ground between making Kara as hard as it was and the complete lack of character progression in Wrath. I guess the game isn't "for me" anymore.
So yeah OP, it's casual friendly, you'll be fine. But Cataclysm is going to make that leveling more interesting in a lot of ways, most notably because you will no longer be leveling in a ghost town.
" @NekuSakuraba: Why the fuck did you bump an old thread? Some people. "Because I was going to make a thread asking the same thing, one thread is better than two.
If you do start again and blacksmithing was too much of a pain in the ass, go with two gathering professions (mining, skinning, or herbalism): all you need to do is collect materials then sell them on the auction house. It's what I wish I had done; I don't even want to know how much time I spent trying to collect/purchase materials for leveling engineering.
Please Log In to post.
This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:
Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.Comment and Save
Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.
Log in to comment