Egads... My Wife Wants to Try WoW...

[Nyghtfall]

My wife loves CoH as much as I do, and has no intention of leaving that game, but she also misses playing in a fantasy-based MMORPG but doesn't want to go back to DAoC.

With all of the turmoil I've read concerning server stability, I'm hesitant to let her get a copy, but am willing to do so if she's really interested. Should she wait a few months, or is it safe to at least test the waters?

[Cap'n]

Honestly Nyght, you may get mixed opinions on this. Some people have experienced lots of server issues, others little to none at all. Me and Donna play at least 4hrs a day and I can say that 90% the time the server is error free. However with that said, you will run into the occasional problem. For example when they put in the new patch last Tuesday, the servers went skitzo and most where down all day till 8pm EST. Since then there have been minor porblems on a few servers that are supposed to be addressed in todays regualr maintenance.

If you two have good rigs, you shouldn't have much lag at all. You will have occasional database lag on high population servers, but lately it's been vary rare for me. The database lag will pop-up when you go to loot something or buy something at the AH. Again, it's been very rare for me these days.

Alot of other bugs and class issues have been addressed in the last patch. There have been some major improvements, with only a few being questionable. Overall I think they've done a good job as of late and seem to be getting a better grasp on the whole MMO thing. The only thing I question is the end-game content, but they continually stress that more and more is on the way.

You have much more MMO experience than I do, but I'll tell ya that Donna and myself really enjoy this game. We love questing and think the warcraft world is fantastic. I also enjoy the crafting, I find it easy and rewarding.

Basically, I would say that this is a good time to test the waters. If anything you have more servers to choose from, the classes have had alot of issues addressed, and there are alot of us on here to get advice from and group with. You have the guild on Azoul server, Donna and myself on Earthern Ring and Gaim over on Shadow Council.

Another note: Be warned that if you buy and try to login today (Tues) that it's their regualr server maintenance day. This means that all servers will be down untill 1 or 2pm EST. Also some people have a problem using the patching system. I would suggest trying it first and if it doesn't work, come on here and downlaod the patch.

[Gaim Mastr]

I've decided to cancel my account for good. No chance of renewing any time down the road. Reasons...

1) Boring. 99.9% of all quests are "go fetch" quests or "deliver this" quests. If I wanted to work for UPS or Fed-X I'd have filled out an application. Beyond the quests there is...... nothing. PvP is around, but good PvP battles are very few and far between. And on most servers, large PvP is not possible due to server lag and crashes. There's the RP servers, which is definitely a step up from the regular or PvP servers. But that alone couldn't save the boredom of the rest of the game.

2) Character class imbalances. The game's designers absolutely refuse to resolve any of these issues. The "class issues" Cap'n mentioned above must have referred only to some class-based bugs that were finally fixed, because class-imbalances remain. Don't take my word for it, go check out any of the official class forums sometime.

3) Bad game code. Even on my low-population server, there was the occasional lag and getting stuck while looting.

4) Brutally bad decisions by the game's designers. Far too many to list here. Just use the example of them allowing unrestricted character transfers from a high pop server to a medium-high pop server (AN), instead of a low pop server. And onto that the fact that new people can join the AN server to further increase it's population.

5) Down time. I'm not very experienced with various MMOGs. However, of those who are, many have been, and continue to, complain about the higher-than-normal percentage of server lag-out, crashes, and being taken down for "emergency maintenance".

6) WoW is a major memory hog. Definitely recommend at least 1 GB.

7) Piss poor communication between the designers, GMs, Forum Staff, and, of course, the customers. About the only response issued from any of them to customer concerns is "We're looking into it". Even if the problem has been brought up for 4 months straight, you'll still get the "We're looking into it" reply.

There are also a lot of little things that work against this game and the people behind it. Personally, I really wish they'd have an adults-only server or two. One of the things more experienced MMOG players have complained about is that WoW seems to have drawn in a lot more newbies to the genre than any game since Ultima Online. I think that's their way of politely saying that there are a lot of ignorant, unsupervised little kiddies out there who couldn't possibly care less about any other players, except when it concerns making them miserable.


On the good side, I did have many good hours with the game. I'd say it's worth at least some time to go in, check it out and play around for a while. I wouldn't pay $50 for this game though. If you can find it for <$30, with the free month, then you might have some fun.

I've read comments from people who claim that WoW is better than other games, such as CoH, DAoC, EQ2, etc., etc. I have no reason to doubt these people. WoW may very well be the best MMOG to come down the road so far. If so, then the genre still has a long way to go before I become a hard-core fan. Not bad, mind you. But still a lot of room for what I'd consider to be very basic improvements.

[SupaTroopa]

She'll probably love WoW, especially if you enjoy COH. The server problems are intermittent and not a game breaker by any means, I usually get some loot lag here and there, and have had one "lag death" in the last week, but that's it. 95% of the time it's error free.

This will probably be my last month, there just hasn't been any other new games coming out that have caught my interest this year. Gosh I remember the days where every month had a new release to get at least moderately excited about. These days I'm lucky to find one great/good game every six months. It's sad, and I wonder if this MMORPG madness has anything to do with it.

[MasterChief]

I've been playing nonstop since mid-December and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I can say without doubt that this is the best time I've had playing an MMOG before, and I've played alot of them. Some people report experiencing nonstop problems but honestly, I hardly experience any outside of the occasional lag spike. I'm not a power leveler though (I get distracted too easily :p:) so I can't speak for lack of end game content.

[Fzoulcmbyl]

are you still on our server?... cause I hardly see you on much.


:p:



Fzoul

[RHooks]

are you still on our server?... cause I hardly see you on much.


:p:



Fzoul

Of course you do. Can't go anywhere without seeing a dead body lying around.

:wink:

[Bruenor]

Of course you do. Can't go anywhere without seeing a dead body lying around.

:wink:

:lol: :thumbup:

[MasterChief]

Yep. I've got 3 other characters that I play on the same server so that's probably why it seems like I'm not around much.

[Ojnod]

I play a PvP server in WoW and that is a totally different experience than what these other guys are experiencing. I think I can speak for all players on a pvp server when I say we don't really care about the quality of quests, because most of us aren't even going to read them and we will just do the objective. PvP server players are mostly power gamers, including myself. I got the game almost a month ago exactly and I am almost level 46, which is a little bit past the "half way point" on the road to level 60.

What I can comment on that may concern you is the support of the developers. The support is not that great and servers are rather buggy, even for a new MMO (though it is 5 months old now). New content seems to be pushed out rather slow in comparison to many other MMO's. I also feel that the devs are out of touch with the community when it comes to meeting our needs.

I feel that the classes are pretty balanced (then again I play a shaman who is considered to be overpowered). Each class has it's own benefits and problems. Mages aren't that good for soloing things. They are slow and they have to take breaks often. However, if you try to raid anything and don't have a mage, you may run into trouble. They have very powerful AoE spells that can wipe city guards away quickly, but this goes for most MMO games. Blizzard seemed to balance this game for large scale PvP battles, and for that, I think it is balanced very well (better than most games I have played).

So all in all, I feel that this game is just a typical MMO, unless you play on a PvP server. It brings very little new things to the table, and most of the things you will recognize. The game does have great humor, it is in the warcraft universe (which is cool if you liked the games), and there are so many people playing it that it isn't going to become a dead MMO any time soon.

[Gaim Mastr]

I just want to clarify my claim of the game being boring. What I meant is that the game has become boring to me. I've a lot of great hours playing, and I've played every single class available.