World of Warcraft

[Althena]

This thread is dedicated to a game I put a lot of time into, back in the day. I loved this game. It did a lot of great things and set some standards for the rest of the industry going forward. It was fantastic at world-and-lore-building, there were memorable characters and unforgettable dialogue. Sadly, in my opinion, the past several expansions have made it really fall from grace. The missed opportunities in Shadowlands, design and gameplay changes. Don't even talk to me about Blizzard's recent scandals. Yeah, it's left a bad taste in my mouth where I have extremely fond memories of the game, but I can't see myself playing it again. A lot of folks here I either know from, or I know HAVE have played WoW. Namely Kustom, The Real Nasti , Destian , Hamm , Jett , Sarthis , Ryonite , Jassa , BoomerTiger and probably some others I am forgetting. This thread is for us to reminisce, praise, and RANT about this memorable game.

(Also welcome The Real Nasti! Excited to see you here!)

[Jassa]

I sometimes consider firing it back up, but then I look at the current state of affairs and don't want to further diminish my memories. Can we just have WotLK servers?

[The Grimace]

I tried playing it for a month or two way back in maybe 2007, but it didn't grasp me for two big reasons: controls and visuals.

I wouldn't call myself a conventional PC gamer. When given the chance, I'll pretty much always choose controller over KB+M. I often don't have ideal sitting arrangements necessary, and being able to do everything but type is best for me.

I played Final Fantasy XI from 2003 until maybe 2011, and I have many good (and bad) memories of that game. The story of Vana'diel always enraptured me, the game stoked my interest in learning to speak Japanese with the playerbase before NA release, and the controls on controller and on keyboard felt very natural. I ended up playing the game on PC, PlayStation 2, and practically got an Xbox 360 just to play the game in better quality. And through all this I was not social or a raider, the worst combo for XI. Still loved it.

Then XIV 1.0 was released in its infamous state and I tried to stick with it. By the time 1.23 came along, Yoshida had really turned the game around and I still miss large portions of content that are no longer in the game. But even today, I aim to be a top class Ninja playing on controller. It flows so naturally.

I guess the biggest thing I'm saying with this is more MMOs need controller options. Probably not the most interesting take for most PC only players, but I think companies are preventing themselves from reaching larger audiences when they don't cater to more playstyles.

Sorry for talking a bunch about Final Fantasy in the Wow thread. If people get me talking about XIV's WXHB controller setup, I can go on for hours about how brilliant it is. Oh my god it's so brilliant

[Selbaek]

I played Final Fantasy XI from 2003 until maybe 2011, and I have many good (and bad) memories of that game. The story of Vana'diel always enraptured me, the game stoked my interest in learning to speak Japanese with the playerbase before NA release, and the controls on controller and on keyboard felt very natural. I ended up playing the game on PC, PlayStation 2, and practically got an Xbox 360 just to play the game in better quality. And through all this I was not social or a raider, the worst combo for XI. Still loved it.

Then XIV 1.0 was released in its infamous state and I tried to stick with it. By the time 1.23 came along, Yoshida had really turned the game around and I still miss large portions of content that are no longer in the game. But even today, I aim to be a top class Ninja playing on controller. It flows so naturally.

Are you me? I can basically echo every detail here, except I stopped playing XI probably around 2015-2016 when the story wrapped up with Rhapsoides of Vana'diel. And then started playing again in December last year for the new Voracious Resurgence story since it wrapped up in 2023. There has been a LOT of shit added since 2016 - let alone 2011. It's been a lot of fun figuring it all out.

I still have so much love for some things in XIV 1.0 that didn't make it into ARR. Like character movement and how it felt more realistic and characters had real weight to them. It would be really tough to do most of the combat today with movement like that, but I still miss it. Plus, so many iconic sound effects that were just scrapped for ARR.

This thread is dedicated to a game I put a lot of time into, back in the day. I loved this game. It did a lot of great things and set some standards for the rest of the industry going forward. It was fantastic at world-and-lore-building, there were memorable characters and unforgettable dialogue. Sadly, in my opinion, the past several expansions have made it really fall from grace. The missed opportunities in Shadowlands, design and gameplay changes. Don't even talk to me about Blizzard's recent scandals. Yeah, it's left a bad taste in my mouth where I have extremely fond memories of the game, but I can't see myself playing it again.

I've tried WoW a total of two times. One was for curiosity's sake, but the graphics and movement didn't look or feel as good as Final Fantasy XI did it, and I wasn't much of a fan of Warcraft III to be into the lore to care enough to push past that. They had just changed too much mechanically about the game since Warcraft II, and I really just wanted more Warcraft II. I loved Warcraft II.

The second time was for a girlfriend at the time. I think this was post-cataclysm, but I created a character and did my best to get interested in the game so that we could have something to play together. She had tried FFXI for me, and just didn't find the appeal, so I gave it a shot - but ultimately, I didn't like that there were markers everywhere telling me where to go or that most of the quests were very quick "kill x amount of shit" and other menial tasks that took 2 minutes and rewarded exp. I honestly think it was the quests rewarding exp that put me off on this attempt. I had such a different mentality back then, haha.

The game has made so many changes since then. Apparently so many that they have found success in revving up classic servers that play like the original release... I kinda wish FFXIV would do that for 1.0. Yeah, people hated the clunk of most things, but they have the server structure to streamline that process for those that want to play so that it's not as clunky. Yoshi-P answered a question about this in the past and considered it a nightmare, so it won't happen, but I'd love for people to see the story of Nael van Darnus before his rebirth in later expansions.

[Random Encounter]

I feel that comment about Warcraft II a lot; it's the only game in the series that I really got into. I gave WoW a trial run years ago, but I didn't last more than a day. My experience with MMOs was pretty much FFXI, which probably influenced the expectations I had. I could see the appeal for others, but it wasn't for me. I wonder sometimes how I would have felt about both games had I started WoW first and then FFXI.

[Destian]

I enjoyed some parts of my time with WoW. There's a lot to like about the game, but there's a lot to dislike about it as well.

The real problem was that every hour of fun I had in the game needed to be purchased with at least 10 hours of tedium: grinding for one thing or another to make sure I was doing everything required on a weekly basis to max out my gear as best I could for raiding.

The game also had a bad habit of making everything feel compulsory, and I'm not sure how it managed to do this. There was no such thing as being a casual WoW player for me because doing one thing sent me down the unending rabbit hole of "Well, may as well also do _____". XIV just doesn't do this, thankfully. Everything I do in XIV is because I want to, not for the sake of minmaxing.

I wish WoW could have as healthy of a relationship with players' time as XIV does.

[Kustom]

Currently, all I can think of WoW is how much they're about to divide its player base.

Season of Discovery, Retail, and Classic are all gonna have major releases in a month or two.