Further anti-MMO Rantings and Quake Live love

[MetalMusicMan]

I recently came across a fantastic addition to the GameRiot family of websites that inspired me to, yet again, hate on MMO's and show Quake Live the love that it deserves. 

For those of you who aren't aware, GameRiot is a very popular blogging community with sub-sites, such as WoWRiot, that feature game specific content.  They have recently added a section for Quake Live's blogging community, entitled Quake Life.

The first article I read was entitled The Top 5 Reasons why Quake Live is better than any MMO, these are my inspired thoughts.

The Quake Live community really hates WoW and MMOs in general, and I think that's freaking fantastic; all of this skill-less MMO mediocrity is driving me insane.  The best part is how obvious the developers are about how much they too despise the new wave of MMO's.

Further anti-MMO Rantings and Quake Live love

An award you get for playing Quake Live for 100 hours.

Lately, it's been all the rage to focus on deliberately limiting the competitive nature of video games and I find that to be utter garbage.  It's like every game out there, first person shooters included, has some sort of stupid unlockable class gimmick requiring you to play for hours on end to "obtain new and more powerful items". 

Unlockable items that give a player who has invested more time into a game an advantage are in direct opposition to the nature and purpose of a competitive game, especially in a first person shooter.  I'm looking at you, Team Fortress 2.  You had it all, and then you ruined it with retarded class upgrades.  For shame.

World of Warcraft is obviously the worst one, though.  Initially, it was an MMO that actually required a good amount of player skill (depending on your class) and players had legitimate competitions and rivalries via the game's Dueling system and world PvP.  Today, WoW is basically an online version of Mario Party with 10 million subscribers.  Pathetic.

[Syphien]

lmao, those devs are just amazing.

[Uneven Pavement]

I think your new-found hatred for MMO's is getting a little out of hand.  I understand your frustration with the current state of WoW; I can even sympathize with you.  I just feel like this hatred is unfair.  How many hours of enjoyment have you got from WoW?  Too many to count I'm sure.  If you disagree with the state of the game, that's fine.  If you feel you have outgrown WoW, that is fine as well.  I just feel like you are feeding a misplaced hatred that stems simply because you miss being able to play it.  It seems a little juvenile to be quite honest, because I feel like you know that it isn't ALL bad, just one aspect of the game.  The player vs. player competitive part.  Which, to you, is the most important part.

And this is where I start to see similarities in the arguments made for different games.  The problem with WoW at a highly competitive level is balance issues correct?  However, WoW is not a fighting game.  No matter how much we would like it to be... it is not Brawl.  But IF you are wanting to compare the two as games that are played at a highly competitive level, then you have to be able to accept a few truths...

WoW has top tiered characters, just like Brawl does.  Meta Knights, Snakes, DeDeDe's...Death Knights, Paladins, Hunters.  If you heard someone bitching about Death Knights being OP...what would you say?  You'd probably agree, right?  What would you say to people who bitch about Meta Knight being OP?  You'd tell them to stop QQ'ing and either get better or find a way to counter him, or you'd ask them if he's so damn OP how come they aren't playing MK.  Right?  Well WoW doesn't have AT's.  It doesn't have character development in the same sense that Brawl does.  It has RNG... and the characters are limited to what the developers design them to be.  These are the variables.  If you are playing to win, you will adapt to these conditions.  Or you will not, and you will not be able to play it competitively at a high level.

If DK/Paly/Hunter is the only viable team at a highly competitve level...and you want to play WoW competitively...Play to Win and roll one of those classes.  It's frustrating, yes.  It will take a lot of time, yes.  You feel like you shouldn't HAVE to do that, I understand.  But that's the way it is.  It's the way it always has been.  I've been a feral druid since season 1.  How many times have they been able to compete at a high level?  Why is that not a total outrage, but the current state of the game is?

I'm not trying to dissuade you from leaving WoW.  I AM asking you to cut it just a little slack.  The PvE in that game is still great.  I've heard Ulduar is awesome.  And for all of it's flaws...WotLK succeeded in many areas.  Northrend looks beautiful and leveling from 70-80 was not a chore at all.  The integration of Arthas into many of the elements was a great way to draw people into the story and really feel like you were a part of what was going on.  Things like the Wrath Gate quests were a welcome addition.  The instances are many and varied.  There are things to enjoy in that game.  Millions of people are still enjoying that game.  You don't have to hate on them for it.  If you don't like it...don't play it.  I just don't see the need to bash a game that you have enjoyed so much.

I truly hope that the MMO that Blizzard is working on is strictly a PVP oriented MMO.  It's obviously too much for them to try and balance the PvP with the PvE aspects of the game.  If you split them...make them two completely different games with different rulesets and different variables to live by, I think they could end up pleasing more people.  For now though... WoW is what we have.  Like it or leave it.  And should you choose to leave it... (like I have)... we shouldn't choose to bash it.  Enjoy your memories of it, and move on.

[MetalMusicMan]

Weeee!  This will be fun!

I think most of what you are saying is stemming from misunderstanding what I enjoyed and what I hate about WoW.  I am not hating on WoW, I am hating on what they have changed about WoW.  I thought that was obvious, but apparently not.  I will elaborate, though.


In regards to whether or not I "enjoyed World of Warcraft". 

Of course I did.  WoW is a fun game if you want to level and experience content.  It is a fun game because of the people who you play it with.

I would like to state that I have never liked MMOs to begin with, though.  Ever.  I didn't even play WoW until like 4 months after you all picked it up, and then it was only because Kevin kept nagging me.  I would never have even played it to begin with if you guys didn't keep bugging me to.  I'm not saying I regret playing it-- I loved my first year or 2 on Zerabitu and had a great time ganking and making movies.   

I will agree with you that some of the PvE in the latest expansion is fun for a while-- but that all fades really fast and it has always been that way.  I never enjoyed WoW's PvE at max level / max gear.  Ever.  I had a lot of fun leveling my character the first time, as everyone does.  High-end raiding was always total nonsense to me, really.  I don't think anyone can argue that I have had a steadfast and planted hatred towards raiding since day one.  I hate having to get 24 other morons together (or 40 in the old days) to do something so trivial.  Historically, this is accurate for me--when our guild Ruin was raiding Molten Core, I was, instead, ganking people at Thorium Point.  Thus, Zerabitu was born.


So why do I hate WoW now?

I hate WoW now for the same reason that I now hate TF2-- they took a perfectly good game and slowly shit all over it through the course of its life by adding in patch after patch of unnecessary changes.  If WoW was mostly the way that it was when it first came out, I would still be playing it today.

A lot of people will look at that last sentence and argue that "if nothing was added to the game, people would stop playing it".  I think that is entirely ridiculous.  People still play loads of games that have no major changing updates after release.  I'm not saying that the addition of new content is always a bad thing, but sometimes you just shouldn't fix what isn't broken.  Blizzard and Valve have both done this, though, and it has ruined 2 of the best games out there.



Playing to Win in WoW?

In regards to you linking me to my own posts about Playing to Win several times...

I got over 2,000 rating over 10 times in my WoW arena career.  Probably more than that, I don't even remember.  My view of the competitive aspects of the game is much more informed than your own. 

Try not to read this as an insult:  You have accomplished scarcely more than nothing in WoW PvP in your entire time of playing it. I can safely say that you know almost nothing about WoW from a competitive standpoint.  You have never been on a good arena team or tried to play the game competitively.  If you had, you would not be arguing about WoW's competitive aspect, because you would know what a joke it is.

Now that we have established that, here is my take-- I will try to be as thorough as possible.

The "playing to win" philosophy does not apply to a game like WoW because it has little to no sense of balance and what balance it does have is ever changing.  I have said this about WoW from day one.

WoW has top tiered characters, just like Brawl does.  Meta Knights, Snakes, DeDeDe's...Death Knights, Paladins, Hunters.If you heard someone bitching about Death Knights being OP...what would you say?  You'd probably agree, right?  What would you say to people who bitch about Meta Knight being OP?  You'd tell them to stop QQ'ing and either get better or find a way to counter him, or you'd ask them if he's so damn OP how come they aren't playing MK.

 

No.  Apples and oranges my friend.

A fighting game with 35 total characters and ~10 or ~15 balanced characters is not a parallel to an MMO RPG with 9 classes and 3 "viable" classes.

Comparing them is ridiculous because:

• The end game balance is laughable by comparison even in the best case scenarios
• Saying that people should "buck up and reroll a top tier WoW class" is not equivalent to picking a new character in a fighting game.  Not only is the time invested VASTLY greater, the payoff is negligible because that very same class could very easily become useless in a mere 1 or 2 month period, which is less time than it would take to get the character to the max level and geared-up to begin with.

WoW is a terrible competitive game because at any given moment, all of your hard work could be pissed away by a crappy developer applying a 100MB patch that completely re-arranges and effectively ruins all of the balance in the game.  It has happened over and over again this way.

Metaknight is not a Deathknight.  King DeDeDe is not a Paladin.  Falco is not a Hunter.

You will never play Metaknight for 6 months only to find out that Brawl had a patch released that makes him worse than Captain Falcon.  You will never find out that King DeDeDe's chain grab was nerfed so that it now has a 2 minute cooldown.  You will never see Falco's lasers have the hitstun removed because it is too "frustrating to the other player".

Brawl is a game that was designed to be uncompetitive by the designer, but is made competitive by the community by pushing the limits of the game.  Thus it is a good game.

WoW is a game that was designed to be uncompetitive by the designer, but cannot be pushed to the limits by the community because 30 seconds after any advance is found, it is patched or fixed because the devs have a magnifying glass on the the game's "balance".

With Brawl, the community is in control.  With WoW, the devs do not allow the discovery of Advanced Techniques (like weapon swap macros, etc.).  They stomp out any advancement and attempt to replace it with their own mechanics that are even more broken and less balanced.





To conclude, I find your attempts to make me eat my own words on Playing to Win laughable.  I think that my response here absolutely crushes any attempt you made at trying to draw the conclusion that I am somehow a hypocrite for not applying that philosophy to a game as terrible as WoW. 

You may think I am angry but I feel that this was a fun debate and I always enjoy seeing what others have to say about my rants.  So I am glad that you posted and not angry in the slightest.

[Uneven Pavement]

My intention for linking the Play to Win article was not for you to eat your own words.  I also was not in any way trying to call you a hypocrite.  I only linked it a couple of times because I think that article is good for people to read in order to see a different veiwpoint.  It help "open your mind", as it were.  That was the only intention on linking it.  My only intention of the post was for you to lighten up a little bit regarding WoW...

The article points out that in order to play a game competitively at high levels, one must adapt to the rules that we are given.  Not complain about them, because you cannot control them. 

And you don't like WoW because you feel you can't play it competitively...like a fighting game... this is why the comparisons in my original post are valid.  Especially since you want to compare the competitive nature of a MMO to an FPS or fighting game.

I think that my comparison to top tiered characters is still valid as well.  As you pointed out...35 characters in brawl with 13 of them being viable...or 10 characters in WoW and 3 of them being viable.  Any way you slice it you're talking around 30% of the characters. 

And in a game like WoW...if you are on a DK/Paly/Hunter team...and you are fighting a DK/Paly/Hunter team...the better skilled team can prevail.  I am not saying that WoW can be played at a highly competitive level like Brawl can...I personally think it is ridiculous to do so...all I am saying is IF you WANT to play WoW competitively.  You can...you just have to be willing to deal with the rules that exist.

[Uneven Pavement]

Brawl is a game that was designed to be uncompetitive by the designer, but is made competitive by the community by pushing the limits of the game.  Thus it is a good game.

WoW is a game that was designed to be uncompetitive by the designer, but cannot be pushed to the limits by the community because 30 seconds after any advance is found, it is patched or fixed because the devs have a magnifying glass on the the game's "balance".

With Brawl, the community is in control.  With WoW, the devs do not allow the discovery of Advanced Techniques (like weapon swap macros, etc.).  They stomp out any advancement and attempt to replace it with their own mechanics that are even more broken and less balanced.

This is exactly the point I am trying to make.  They are different games.  Brawl is a better game.  I am not trying to argue WoW's competitive aspect.  Again...I am saying IF you want to play it at high levels you have to be aware of this and adapt to it.  If you don't...don't.  Bitching about it does nothing but make you look like a child. 

[MetalMusicMan]

Any way you slice it you're talking around 30% of the characters.

A flat numerical value that is similar proves nothing and is not relative to the argument.  I explained why in my post-- more time invested to level it and gear it than it takes for the game to change and have said character become nonviable via patch cycle coming full circle.

With 3.0, it has all gone totally down the shitter, though.  Now, you can't even play it competitively in the slightest.

I do not expect WoW to ever be as competitive as Smash bros, or Street Fighter, or Counter Strike-- but it at least could be argued previously that it was not a TOTAL JOKE to play it competitively.  It is a total joke now, though.

The game is SO UNCOMPETITIVE that it isn't even fun to play casually.

[Uneven Pavement]

Agreed.  Again...I understand the frustrations perfectly.  The original post was intended to simply change your opinion from hating the game... to just lighten up...remember the game fondly... and just move on to something else.  I don't see the need for everyone to dwell on how bad it sucks NOW (after how ever many YEARS).  Just move on.

[MetalMusicMan]

I do remember it fondly-- that's exactly why I am so pissed about it's current state.  How does that not make sense to you?

[Syphien]

Man, it's fun reading you guys rant.  I like quakes devs because they aren't afraid to show their hatred toward something.  They actually go with their community on the shared hatred they have for WoW and MMORPGS.  I thought it was cool.  

[Yoggi]

wow is much more balanced at 49 than 80, i only pve on my 80, i save pvp for my twinks

[sonchez]

on a upper note: New painkiller game coming out WOOT!
there is only one class to choose from: Badass.
there is only one race to choose: The best
and all weapons come with +10 death
lol

[oograx]

link sonchez? Painkiller is the shit.

[sonchez]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/971/971617p1.html