Quote Originally Posted by Mukade View Post
The more I play WoW the more I get the impression that the game's dev team are a bunch of art school frat boys, with very little understanding of actual game coding or design beyond the purely aesthetic, and very little understanding of how people interract in the real world (Why the PvP in the game is seriously lacking in many respects).

Sucess has most certainly gone to their heads, as they are unwilling to accept and act on criticism, are largely ignorant of the community, and must go their own way instead of using proven and effective methods of game development and management.

The list of ill concieved additions to the game that facilitate or encourage griefing or cheating is always increasing, while the obvious method of controlling them, ie giving GMs the ability to actually moderate players, and not just act as in game customer support, seems to be beyond Blizzard, because even if a player is an a-hole, they are a paying a-hole, so Bliz stand to lose out doubly if they have to pay and train GMs, and have them ban players.

Testing is where they fall down in a big way. PTRs are not a suitable place to test game features, as they are not an accurate representation of what happens on live servers, with players split between many servers, and not drawn in by the novelty of what is being tested to the point where they will tolerate faults to a much greater degree. Proper organised play testing with a proper reporting system would give much more useful information, but of course, that is another area where costs are cut. Valve are a great example of a company that understands how to conduct effective play testing, and it shows in their games.

WoW is a success only in terms of the number of players it has, and resultingly, the amount of money it's making for it's shareholders.

Among the gaming press and gaming community at large, it is far from being noteworthy for any other reasons, and is largely seen as a joke.
Well... WOW pretty much created the model for the modern day MMORPG. Let's give credit where credit is due. They were groundbreaking.

These days I feel like the game has a huge flaw. This flaw is how WOW expansions work and I have come to realize it isn't fun. I've started from scratch in TBC, WOTLK, and I still haven't bought Cata. The changes while awesome- the starting from scratch once again got to me this time. Still WOW is very hard to walk away from and I keep tabs on the game and still come to Dualboxing because I like you guys. Not in a gay way though

Renewed my main account to just fart around. Still can't seem to get into the game. Kind of sucks, lol. It's weird since I still love WOW at heart- just don't feel like playing. Maybe I'm just burnt on WOW.

Wish WOW's expansions were done differently. For example City of Heroes. They come out with new content constantly without raising the leveling cap. It's a bit complicated to explain in just a few lines but you never feel like you're starting from scratch. Basically they come out with harder taskforces/dungeons and give you the ability to become more powerful to compensate. Also you can adjust taskforce/dungeon difficulty infinitely. Want a more challenging mission just change the difficulty.

What I see is WOW becoming free to play before the next expansion. Then they'll sell expansions and BS making even more money than they are now.

/rant off

What were we talking about again? lol