I'm thinking of trying WoW for a few months.

[Liquid Blue]

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/s...ature/1/page/1

I've been skimming a few reviews of the game, a few boards and I think I might try it out. I quit FFXI about 4 and a half months ago because of the time drain became too much of a hassle for me. I don't know if this will be the same for WoW (apparently, the game doesn't force you to be apart of a group all the time) but even if it is, I still think I'll try it out for a few months. That's one of the great things about have a job and having a check card. One paycheck can pay for my whole little WoW stint, and I get plenty of game time action.

Now I know you might be a litle wary about the fellow WoW players- I wouldn't be surprised if most aren't 14 year old kids who get a hardon every time you mention Warcraft 3. But hopefully I'll meet more normal players than I will jackasses (FFX = 70% jackasses, 20% normal people, 10% ultra cool almost as slick as Cheaty people). It's also a great thing about only playing for a few months- I'm not going to be dealing with them ALL the time, or for more than 5 months so it will (hopefully) be bearable.

I think I might be a Night Elf Priest, or a Dwarven Paladin.So, anyone else thinking of trying it? I think I remember Conc and Dameon are going to play it, I know Jason has an account but is selling it..that's about it.

[Dameon Angell]

I haven't been able to get in to play it. I'm gonna delete my FFxi account at the end of this month (or now, depends on the billing) and get WoW when it comes out, i've heard good things.

[DaiShiva]

I just quit my ffxi account, cant stand the game - having to wait for groups past 10, the mobs that you have to check each and every one (some are a lot stronger than others) the list goes on and on

Played the stress test, o wow that game was addicting, I cant wait to play it for real =)

[Roxy]

The problem with these kind of games are the so called hardcore gamers, they do nothing but play the game with their elite guild full of other no life gamers. They rush through content in no time so the developers have to get new expansions out fast even though its not properly tested (hi everquest).

It has to be properly tested or you get balancing issues. Some classes get overpowered (clerics) but this is unavoidable due to the nature of these games.

Itemization will start to be a major problem as well a few months down the road. You have these nerds who play 12 hours a day decked out with the best items the game has to offer and regular players who dont have all that shit thus are a lot less powerful. The gap between these two type of players get so huge overtime its almost impossible to balance monsters/content properly.

You might think WoW will be different but I wouldnt get my hopes up too much since they hired some well known powergamers from the best guilds in Everquest (Fires of Heaven and Legacy of Steel) to design quests and whatever else, you do the math how risk vs reward will work out there.

[Kolar]

Most people I've met have been nice, decent people. The game masters have probably been the most polite customer service reps I've ever talked to. With every game, even closed betas you'll find a lot of idiots. I think blizzard is doing a good job at trying not only to balance issues of game play but also playable issues like ganking and laming. An honor system is going in to make it unfavorable to gank low level characters, I have my doubts about it but at least it will give some meaning to PVP. The priest class is pretty good, most healer classes find grouping a lot easier because they're in demand more so then others. For questing and for "farming" or just plain leveling from MOBs you will at times need to group with people, including most world dungeons. Right now "Ninja Looters" or people who steal drops without rolling for the item within a group seem to be a rising problem. Mostly those people are singled out in the relatively small gaming comunity and are rejected from grouping. Over all not a lot of personal problems.


There's a few SS players in closed beta including myself. I know some SS people on "elite" guilds, few players. Melufa and some others had a guild going with some people but it failed. Me, some pallies and some WR are on the pallies guild now. Mostly I see Pusher, Vihta, Wadi, me and Asmo playing mostly. A lot are busy with work and school.

Blizzard is going to be like most other companies when it comes to after gold content. Yes there probably will be expansions. One thing that sets blizzard apart from games like EQ is that they have plans and ideas which are split into 3 divisons keeping devlopment organized and clear. There's more info in their pvp article on Wow.com.

Levels effect a great deal on the ammount of damage and the level of MOB you can fight and how many, currently, so I don't think weapon items will ever be a problem as Roxy said. I think by having areas for specific levels and keeping that in mind you won't have a problem like this. Also by having skill trades like blacksmithing able to rival the effectiveness and damage of those world drops, they've opened up the market and want for someone to spend the time on these abilities.

It is being tested right now and all I can say is things are looking better with every push. I would like to see some of the more finer points of a MOG introduced before launch but Blizzard is probably gonna try and pull it off for X-Mas, but i'm not surprised. I think balancing the classes will be done by then at least though. Mages in the past few pushes have been reworked a lot, they lost invisibility and some other spells so they're more balanced yet still very useful in PVE and PVP. Shamans I think are they next to take a major hit (stupid horde :P).

http://img17.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img17...404_190224.jpg

http://img48.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img48...504_081226.jpg


http://img17.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img17...604_195940.jpg

http://img48.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img48...004_193457.jpg

http://img17.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img17...104_004623.jpg (mount cost me 100 gold :eek: )

Edit: Also I do see a lot of idiots going off like "oh this is like EQ or this isn't blah blah freaking blah". I really just tell them to fuck off, I never liked EQ and if they really want an EQ game goto EQ2. This kind of game does bring in the EQ kids but really, they played a bad game for like 5 years and now they want to play a good one. Good for them but I'd rather not have them in devlopment.

[Jason]

Someone buy my WoW beta account. I'll drop the price down to $300.

[Dameon Angell]

If noone ever buys it, could I like, borrow it for a day or so, just to see what's up with that game myself?

[wadi]

You can take a look a while back and see where a bunch of us put down our first impressions about this game. I've been playing for.. what? 2-3 months now and although there are points where I've gotten bored with the game, every patch has brought enough new content to keep me coming back. The two most recent patches have added ALOT of polish to the game, including a very nice group loot system than does a good job of getting rid of ninja looters (read the patch notes at www.worldofwarcraft.com for details), and even has a need>greed option so that mage doesn't roll on the 2-handed sword of uberdoom just so he can vend it for a couple gs.

THIS IS NOT FFXI. I can't make that more clear. I couldn't STAND FFXI I hated the game from the first moment I played it till the 5th hour when I cancelled my account and tried to return the game for my money back. First, the graphics in WoW probably are as nice or a little worse than FFXI, BUT the art is _way_ more inspired. It's been called a bit cartoonish, but honestly just because your mythical monster isn't exactly anatomically correct doesn't make it any more fictional. You do NOT have to group in this game, and I mean EVER. 44 levels in to the game, and if I had wanted to, I could've done solo quests for like 95% of my leveling so far. Of course instances require groups and yield better loot, but if you just want to run around and explore the very colorful, and varied zones there will always be places to go and quests to do that probably won't take more than you, no matter what your class, or at most you and a buddy. The tradeskill system does not require stupid crystals, although I do wish the animations for it were a little more interesting, and there were more uber-rare, uber-cool recipes in the game. If anything is going to make or break this game outside of pvp, it's going to be the tradeskills, as the battle system is already a no-brainer for anyone who LIKES mmorpgs. That last part's important, because this is still an MMORPG, and if you didn't like um in the first place, WoW is not going to change your mind.

As of right now, still 1-2 months of beta to go, WoW already has way more polish on it then any other MMORPG did when it was released, and each patch adds content, fixes bugs, addresses balance issues, and with very few exceptions has added fun to the game. I'm really not a huge fan of Blizzard as a company, I stopped playing WC after WCII, and never liked starcraft or diablo, but this game is _very_ good for what it's tried to do so far, and if blizzard continues to put this kind of commitment in to content and balance after release it's going to be a very hard game for EQ2 to top.

[Liquid Blue]

Thanks for the considerable amount of info, wadi/kolar. I appreciate it. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions about some things-

Farming- How tedious is it? Is there alot of variety to it? Or do you mainly rely on your tradeskills for cash?

Being a Paladin- Is Dwarf a good choice? I really don't want to go human (this is a fantasy game after all) and night elf's can't become pallies. Does this job require alot of money? Can they only use hammers?

I almost went for Night Elf Priest, but I took whm up to like level 30 in FFXI. After that I took a ranger up to 21, and about 4 other jobs up to 15 or so. I never tried out being a Paladin, so I want to do it first here. I'm hoping to seriously get to a high level and I was wondering if you or your clanmates thought it was a fun job. I'm not going to powergame (don't have the time to) but I still want to get a good ways into the Paladin job, no matter how much time it will take.

Thanks ahead of time.

[Kolar]

From 35-41 I farmed orges on the Alterac Ruins (kinda did it for XP and the money mostly before doing mining). This area is one of the best places in Azeroth to mine Mithril and Iron ore. The easiest way I've gotten money in the past is by selling the ore on the Ironforge Auction House, mithril goes for 4-6 gold per stack (a stack being 20 bars/ore). The ogres gave about 2 silver per kill and also gave silk cloth that sold for around 70 silver per 20 on the auaction house. For the high end items, very rare weapons, armor ect... mostly boss mobs inside instances drop them and some people do farm those instances for rare items. Over all mining has been well worth it and I haven't tried looking for the rare types like truesilver or thorium yet.


I now have an engineer and blacksmith, my engineer is at a high level and I haven't found much use for this trade skill yet for cash. Blacksmithing can make some okay weapons and probably better than most armor (you pick either being a weapons smith or a armor smith at one point, giving you way better items to make).

I think Ryang was playing a paladin for a while, he didn't like the game play from what I heard on guild chat near the end of 50 cap compared to other classes so he's mostly on beta server 2 playing a shaman. I know pallies can use more then maces but I haven't played one yet. Pallies are tanks not primarary healers. Leveling, questing and fighting are all part of moving forward in the game. WoW is still very centered around fighting and leveling because of the level and monetary restraints on trade skills.

[wadi]

Right now I don't particularly like paladins. They're sort of a tank/healer hybrid, with some interesting abilities, but that class hasn't been touched in a while, so comparatively it lacks polish (especially at the upper end, since they haven't really been touched since the cap was 40!). Buutttt, you could've said that about any class before they had their talents added, and there's still quite a bit of gameplay that Blizzard has said they're going to add in to separate out the classes/races. Right now, mages and warriors have a monopoly on class quests, and talents, but slowly that's changing, and even though I can't say I'd choose a paladin if I was making a fresh character RIGHT NOW, that might definetly change down the road. Personally, I'm not a huge of fan classes who's main damage comes from weapons anyway =].

As for race, right now there's very little distinction. There's some stats differences, but your stats will mostly be dictated by your items, so that's kind of moot anyway. Blizzard has said they will be adding racial quests and abilities (I hope they add a racial talents tab!), hopefully before gold, but for now you pretty much pick the class/race/sex combination that gives you a smile (or at least a laugh. Brunhilda, female dwarf priestess, still no dance animation).

As for farming... farming IS tedious, but thankfully you won't have to do it till you're around level 40 and need to buy a mount, or you're itching for something at the AH. By then, you'll be strong enough to pick from a bunch of different mobs/instances to farm, so while your questing will probably take a bump for a bit, you won't be stuck with 90 other people waiting for 2 monsters around your level to spawn and then praying you hit um first!

[Sleepy Weasel]

I'm level 45 and I haven't farmed anything ever. Granted I borrowed some money from blood and pusher and a few others at level 40 to buy my mount, and I've gotten some free armor from vihta but eh I gave away a lot of free stuff too. There is really no reason to farm unless you're one of those nuts who has to have all the extremely rare stuff. I like the rare stuff but I just play the quests and if I get something cool, that's great, if I don't oh well. If I do happen to get one it's just a nice little treat. Play the quests and you'll have more fun than playing warrior dressup with your character.

You never need to farm for XP. There are so many quests in the game you can't do them all. Everytime you get 1 it leads you to three more it seems. Hundreds and hundreds of quests, you almost always have at least 18 waiting to be done, and by the time you finish a good batch of them, you make it to a new harder area which has loads of new quests.

[Pearl Jam]

Someone buy my WoW beta account. I'll drop the price down to $300.

i'll sell mine for a hundo-fitty

for those that aren't hip, that's $150

[Jason]

alright, since pj is being a fuck and trying to undercut me... $150 for my account as well.

remember folks, this baby is MINT!

[Jason]

by the way peej, i love that damn song. i first heard it 'cause it's the intro to a show called "rescue me" on FX. then i got the von bondies album and damn... kickass tune.