The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

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The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Newbie » Fri Jan 31, 2014 8:23 pm

[This space reserved for character & realm names]

Rather than encouraging people who hate leveling to buy multiple copies of Warlords of Draenor, patch 5.4.7 is introducing a shop just for buying level 90 characters. While I'm not one of those people, I am using my free level 90 with expansion purchase to do the new content with Joxam and Malikial on Korgath; as much as I love Fizzcrank, I don't really know anyone who still plays there.
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Niku
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Niku » Sat Feb 01, 2014 12:57 am

I'll probably use my level 90 boost to get a leveled up Warlock on Moon Guard, because I fear change. That said, Moon Guard is a robust and populated RP-PVE server and if you stick to Horde side you never even have to see a single Draenei futa cock*. We've got a guild born of SA goons there that is pretty chill (i.e. not FYAD in a guild chat) that enjoys PVE, PVP, RP events, just having fun, and has 8 guild bank tabs**! I wouldn't want anybody to jump their character over on a whim or anything, but if anyone's looking for a new home when WoD hits, it's a pretty okay little guild. Hang out with all your favorite people like Niku! And Doom! And Niku when Doom is done playing a month and a half in!

I'm also half considering boosting up an Alliance shaman somewhere just because I am resigned to a life of never finding anything nearly as fun as Resto Shaman, so I might as well become Everything I Hate and finally have two of the same class. But I've never found an Alliance guild that was actually full of cool people, so my Dwarf beauty might have to wait a while longer.



*except for people who claim to be transmogrified Draenei in their MRP or some shit
**well we have the bank tabs anyway
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Bal
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Bal » Sat Feb 01, 2014 1:52 am

I'm going to re-up and level at least my druid, and also look at all my old characters with their fancy new models.

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Lyrai
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Lyrai » Sat Feb 01, 2014 3:28 am

I....think I am free of WoW's grip after 8 years. I just can't seem to register any excitement for WoD. Looking at MMO champ, reveals, it's weird to just...not care anymore. I don't mean that in a flippant "rain on everyone's parade" it is unusually bizzare for me to not even see that launcher on my taskbar or go over what to level during the day.

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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Niku » Sat Feb 01, 2014 4:52 am

I was free once.

/me casts far sight
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Bal
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Bal » Sat Feb 01, 2014 5:30 am

I went through that phase, and now I'm to a place where I still want to level and mess around a bit, but you'd have to make me a really interesting offer to get me into the end game again. I like leveling, I'll probably always like leveling, and new leveling is best leveling, so I'll do that, and get all my terrible lore needs fixed up, and probably quit again.

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Friday
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Friday » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:09 pm

I'm clean and sober for going on 3 years now, and my friends (who all quit with me) are all wanting to get back into it for Back to The Garrosh 3: Attack on Biff Tannen. (Theme music, scene of exploding outer wall, Garrosh, leading the new Iron Horde, rushes through, screaming war cries, a bored looking raid entirely all transmoged into black mageweave nonchalantly aoes them all down in 20 seconds)

It's an interesting feeling, I guess, truly having zero interest. I agree with Bal, though, if I was gonna play again, I'd do it because of the leveling.

dear niku: when you kill Garrosh at the end of this expak can you make sure he stays dead this time? i have fucking hated his stupid character and arc since goddamn BC
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Friday » Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:11 pm

WAIT GUYS HE'S NOT A COMPLETE ASSHOLE DUMBFUCK BLOODTHIRSTY SHITHEAD I MEAN THEY ADDED A THING WHERE HE'S NOT OK WITH USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON CENTAUR KIDS
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Niku » Wed Feb 05, 2014 2:47 am

hopefully this week we should get him down provided we don't have YET ANOTHER SCHEDULING PROBLEM(TM)

MOSTLY COURTESY OF ME

we have had truly shitheaded tenth-man luck this entire expac though, with the best so far being a person who's connection shit the bed like clockwork on garrosh at the second realm transition and after three hours of wipes confessed he was playing on his neighbor's stolen wifi

I really enjoy the raiding game, I just wish Flex mode worked the other way so you could just do the whole thing with like six of your bros. But new content and leveling stomping grounds are really just the bee's knees, so even if I got out of the endgame entirely I'd still be in to cruise around Draenor. The real test for me will be if Wildstar is any good. You mean .. I get all NEW places to level from 1 to 60 AND I can be a bunny girl and/or sexy evil robot?
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby sei » Wed Feb 05, 2014 3:03 am

Friday wrote:It's an interesting feeling, I guess, truly having zero interest. I agree with Bal, though, if I was gonna play again, I'd do it because of the leveling.

Don't. That's how I wound up raiding. If you feel like leveling in an MMO, just play something else. Maybe Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning or some other RPG.

Avoid FFXIV too. While much of its FFXIV endgame is fucking around on alt jobs (not alt characters), I still don't recommend it. Of the leveling modes, 2 are awful/stupid (Fates and escort levequests) and 1 has an enormous thumb-uselessly-up-ass queue time associated with it (dungeons).

My lorefag buddies seem to like the quest writing more than WoW's, though.
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pacobird
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby pacobird » Wed Feb 05, 2014 6:19 pm

LFR resolves the question of at what point you can no longer play solely for yourself and still advance by removing it entirely. It's wonderful.

14 has a nice leveling experience that is ultimately pretty aimless.
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Bal
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Bal » Thu Feb 06, 2014 7:07 am

LFR is one of the main reasons I stopped playing. I don't have a problem with the intent, let basically everyone see the content, but to me, who was only interested in real deal raiding, the extra layer of often expected progression was one too many. It's also raised player entitlement attitudes to an all time high. I think LFR should have been Flex from the start, and has done a lot of damage to the community.

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pacobird
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby pacobird » Thu Feb 06, 2014 9:55 pm

What ruined the community was paid server transfers circa 2006, brother. Pretty much everything else since has been an indirect response to that and the balkanization of WoW based on playstyle and competence that necessarily followed.

(in the MMO-as-anthropological-case-study subfield that exists in my head, WoW's big contribution is the transition from the quasi-feudal structure of isolated servers to the "urbanization" that occurs once legitimate physical mobility is an option)
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sei
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby sei » Fri Feb 07, 2014 1:26 am

I find balkanization by skill to be a fine thing.

Making it require paid server transfers...not fine.

Get rid of distinct "servers." Sharded zones are better at keeping content fucking playable (Ascalon 1-25, etc.). I don't need to know a bunch of stupid bums I'm coincidentally on the same server as. I don't find a sense of community in being trapped on a server, just inconvenience.
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby pacobird » Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:38 pm

I'm not saying it's necessarily bad for everybody, just that it's unquestionably had a large effect on WoW's community that strikes me as pretty close to how urbanization affects communities: the rural areas decay as the best and brightest get out, and the urban areas get increasingly congested and cut-throat as an ever-raising bar of individual competes for ever-decreasing shared resources.

More to the point, it wasn't bad for you, but that doesn't really mean a whole lot because as it turns out most people aren't as good at video games as you are.

EDIT: worth noting that balkanization by skill is only a good thing is if the point of playing world of warcraft actually really is nothing more than killing internet dragons
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Newbie » Wed Feb 12, 2014 12:45 am

If anybody whose subscription has lapsed WAS thinking about getting back into the game, it's worth noting that the Scroll of Resurrection program is being discontinued on February 18th. With a Scroll of Resurrection, your lapsed account gets 7 days free game time, a free boost for one non-Monk character to level 80, and upon the resurrected player's resubscription for at least 30 days of game time, the sender gets an exclusive mount. If you think you might use one in the next 30 days, please PM me your account email address (mine's jsnlxndrlv@gmail.com), and I'll send it ASAP!
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sei
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby sei » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:19 am

pacobird wrote:I'm not saying it's necessarily bad for everybody, just that it's unquestionably had a large effect on WoW's community that strikes me as pretty close to how urbanization affects communities: the rural areas decay as the best and brightest get out, and the urban areas get increasingly congested and cut-throat as an ever-raising bar of individual competes for ever-decreasing shared resources.

More to the point, it wasn't bad for you, but that doesn't really mean a whole lot because as it turns out most people aren't as good at video games as you are.

EDIT: worth noting that balkanization by skill is only a good thing is if the point of playing world of warcraft actually really is nothing more than killing internet dragons

Who is the victim, here? Are the world's Timmy-the-paladins missing out on being carried by superstars who happened to roll on the wrong server? Or are you saying people miss out on the opportunity to do progression with their more ambitious friends?

I personally gravitated towards playing with roughly similarly skilled players. I tried playing with a guild that had a more diverse level of talent. That mostly just led to me yelling at my monitor. Carrying your bad friends through normal/flex mode kills is not something I enjoy in video games. I do, however, acknowledge that carrying the ineducable through normal content can be more challenging than downing heroic content with people who otherwise can remember to breathe, tie their own shoes, and keep Vendorstrike's tines out of the light socket.

Allow me to move your goal posts, for a moment.

Keep in mind that player obligation-schedule and desired-time-raiding also vary wildly. Realistically, playing with a few friends is nice, but I don't expect a group of friends' raiding availability/desires to match up, even in the happy coincidence that they're equally skilled and equally invested in the game.

Being able to play with a larger pool of players helps alleviate both the skill and schedule gaps by giving you a wider pool of warm bodies to recruit from.
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sei
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby sei » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:23 am

Flex in MoP even seemed like ideal place for geared players to slum content and do shit with their normally-confined-to-LFR casual buddies.

I don't remember how lockout sharing is going to work in WoD, so I can't comment on the future.
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sei
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby sei » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:28 am

sei wrote:I personally gravitated towards playing with roughly similarly skilled players. I tried playing with a guild that had a more diverse level of talent.
On this note, does anyone remember that priest who couldn't dodge lava waves, who was single-handedly preventing us from doing 3-drake, 10-man Sartharion? Good times. For no one.
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Bal
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Re: The Ever-Expanding Worlds of Warcraft

Postby Bal » Wed Feb 12, 2014 12:05 pm

I remember that I hated him.

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