Sunday, September 12, 2010

Beta Information Overload


Anyone else get the distinct impression that there's absolutely nothing happening in WoW these days? I mean 'real' WoW, not that unreleased expansion. I hardly play anymore, because there isn't much to do, and when I putz around online on mmo-champion it's just data mining galore on a version of WoW I (for the first time, I guess, sour grapes?) can't take part in. Ghostcrawler posts every day about stuff that doesn't affect paying customers, unless you consider that they need to have valid subscriptions to be invited to the beta at all.

It's not a question of "Why so much coverage?" on mmo-champion's part; it's obvious given a choice between covering the 800 blue posts yesterday on unreleased goods, or recapping trade channels in the 'live' game (LF9M VOA10... do people still even run VOA10?). The choice on their end is clear.... but aside from one or two little 'live events', the main game has gotten very little love from the actual devs.

It seems to me that they've all moved on from Live. Which brings me back to a point I made a while back, that Cata feels more like it should be (boxed and sold as) WoW 2.0, not Expansion 4. I know they're hard at work on the next big thing, and to release a new client at this point would only muddle SKUs, but come on... let vanilla DIE, already. Release the Windows ME (Vista?) version that will hold us over until the next full fledged system (2000? 7?) is ready for primetime. Stop putting service packs on the vanilla client.

And yes, I need to play more games and stop IT-ing from time to time. It's affecting my ability to even talk about WoW.

/sigh

Valid question, though: Would it besuch a horrible idea to release a single product (even so highly derivative of WoW 1.0), with NO EXPANSIONS, to last us out until Big MMO #2 is released from Blizz? Wipe the slate, let people get used to leveling again, play around with 31 point calculators, and then drop the bombshell? Since we're going to have to quit and start fresh eventually, why keep putting it off?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Losing a character is no fun. Blizzard can get away with doing that once if the new MMO is awesome enough, but if people have to start over too often, they'll start to look at other kinds of game.

Klepsacovic said...

Is five and a half years too often?

lothe said...

Goto Lotro.com is Free and good time killer till wow is fun again

oshin said...

The game is at some stage going to need some sort of reset, simply because stats are going to become unmanageable, players will be able to get 100k health in cataclysm, and no doubtless damage will increase in a similar fashion.

Problem with that is, its much harder to distinguish say a crit for 2532421 and 253242, than a crit for 250 and 2500. Then again maybe they'll just say 2.5M or 253k, but I still reckon its another consideration

Hatch said...

I see the appeal in a full reset for some people, but I think there are a ton of people who hate it. I would hate to see the investment I've already made in my characters go away when it's still essentially the same game. Sure it's updated, and is a sort of WoW 2.0, but it's still the same game at its core and isn't changing enough to warrant a full reset like that. They'd have to release a WoW 2 with a lot more improvements and substantial differences for it to work, and I don't see that happening until at least the end of their next MMO's life cycle (the unannounced new IP).

Tesh said...

Split off "vanilla" WoW and make it a free to play boxed game like Guild Wars, then lock characters to those servers. Lock the data, only updating it if there's a crash bug. Players can migrate for free to the Brave New World of Cataclysm and pick up their subs and play with the new shinies if they feel so inclined.

Boom, you corner the burgeoning F2P market EQ2 and LOTRO want to rule, and keep cutting edge players on the dole with CAT.

...not sure how to splice TBC and Wrath in there, but there's wiggle room.

kangax said...

i am amazed how ixobelle thinks... i am following this guy since the NotAddicted days and jeez ...

i am really happy to see people with such clear and constructive thought...