Kotaku 
Enter your username and password.
Denver, 7:55 AM
Mon Nov 30
12 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip us:
Editor-In-Chief:
Brian Crecente
| AIM | Twitter
Deputy Editor:
Stephen Totilo
| AIM | Twitter
Senior Editor:
Michael McWhertor
| AIM | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor, Japan:
Brian Ashcraft
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, East Coast:
Michael Fahey
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, Oceania:
Luke Plunkett
| AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editor, Weekends:
Owen Good
| AIM | Twitter
Correspondent, San Francisco:
AJ Glasser
| AIM | Twitter
Columnist:
Leigh Alexander
Columnist:
Tim Rogers
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/27/09
Why do you enjoy it so much?
And saying "it's the people who play it!" doesn't count. All MMOs have communities.
11/28/09
more than anything.
It's important to me that the motions all look and feel real. Fluidity.
I can wake up before work and spend 15 minutes joyriding on my Red Dragon flying-mount and feel completely satisfied.
cup of coffee, a scone, and oh, IDK, flying a red dragon...
Even in flight the dragonmount looks and feels right. If I stop and go idle, the dragon shifts his weight and struggles (visually) to keep us both aloft.
It coughs. It sneezes. It looks around for prey. If I type /mountspecial it arches it neck and roars!
I have a baby dragon as a pet. and when idle, it belches fire (and smoke ring) randomly every half hour.
Combine just my character, his dragon mount, and his dragonwhelp pet and you have over 1,000 animations.
11/28/09
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not anti-WoW, and this isn't me trying to find something wrong with it (I was and still am an avid fan of Warcraft III. Blizzard rocks, in my opinion.). I even tried to get into the game once upon a time, though I never got beyond level 22. It might be me. Everyone knows that every game isn't meant for everyone (except for maybe Wii Sports, or so the numbers say...). I'm just having a hard time pegging WoW's distinctive charm.
11/28/09
@Milo Corkey: i've played just about MMO--not to mention just about every CRPG and JRPG, and WOW has the best animations of them all. By far.
Sure, the rendition engine is dated. but I dont mind, I'm still taking incredible screenshots in a 4 year old game.
11/28/09
11/28/09
11/26/09
Of course Blizzard makes their money based on people paying the subscription bill every month, but I think they are still making some positive steps to make the game at least a little bit less of a time-drain. It will still take forever and a day to get all the really elite gear and experience the cutting-edge raid and arena scene, but now it is much easier for a casual player to make their way to the substantial endgame in a short time.
11/27/09
11/26/09
One day, I decided that I had enough, and uninstalled.
Nothing against the game itself, or it's players. In fact, I met quite a few nice, generous, well-grounded folks in my tenure as a rogue.
However, I could no longer justify spending the amount of time that was required to really play the game and get, what I felt, was my money's worth. College, other games to play, art to make, jobs to do. I just simply couldn't continue with the time-sink that is WoW any longer.
11/26/09
They talk about casual players but at the rate they dump content if you don't at least try to keep up at some pace you are left so far behind it's ridiculous, PvP or PvE wise. It's a double edged sword the rate they come out with content.
I really laugh at people who played to level 15, or even just 30, and said the game sucked. They really didn't experience the game. To me that's like loading Super Mario Bros 1, running into the first monster and saying the game was garbage and quitting.
11/26/09
I also raid 3 nights a week in a 25 man guild that is 13th on the 24th highest progressed server in the US. We also completed Tribute to Insanity on 10s. We are normal people who enjoy the challenge of the game as well as the social atmosphere it provides.
Plus I'm a girl.
So stereotypes are bad people, mmkay?
I'm just a little disappointed in this article. If you don't play, thats cool, it's just a game, everyone has different things they like and thats fine. I just feel a little targeted. It's not like you make "Why I don't play X game" for every game that came out.
11/26/09
11/26/09
11/26/09
11/26/09
No one's saying you have to like the game, but basically every comment here is so harsh. It's just a game. The people who take it too seriously are sad, but most people don't play it that much. Really.
I play WoW whenever there's something fun to do, like a world event. Sometimes I'll keep an active subscription for as much as 6 months, but never any longer than that. I got my boyfriend to play; he didn't want to at first, he thought it looked dumb. Now he likes it a lot.
When I play, I raid, with awesomely nice people who I sort of know in real life, but who live a few states away. I'm a night-owl, so it's nice to have people to talk to on Vent late at night.
WoW is as addictive as you let it be. If you don't like MMOs already, I don't see why WoW would win you over, but then, I never played anything like an MMO before this game.
It's actually fun to play with a significant other, too. I never got a character above level 40, even after a few years of playing, until I had someone to level with. It's also fun as hell when you get goofy late at night and start doing stupid crap with your characters, like jumping them off cliffs or killing as many penguins as you can at once.
*shrug* At least it keeps me off drugs.
11/26/09
But for me it was no different from any other great game. I put a lot of time into it and after a while I started getting tired of it and moved on another game.
I don't really see why people are scared about "addiction". Yeah there are people that play to excess but there were also people maxed out on MW2 after 2 days. It's no different from other great games, there are just a lot more people playing it.
11/26/09
The reason I dont play, and, this is my opinion, I know a ton of people that enjoy it, the reason is, I find it to be incredibly fucking boring.
Seriously, I cant play it, there was a time when I could play mmo's I played UO, Runescape, FFXI, Silkroad, Rose, and up to level 8 WoW, recently I tried WAR and COH as well but I couldnt get into them.
The only MMO type game I could stand playing these days would be a new PSO, but to me, theyre so god damn boring.
11/25/09
When I'm sitting on my ass talking to people I've never met in real life, developing close relationships with them, stuffing my face with unhealthy food, it's like I'm working for a phone hotline of the dirty persuasion.
That said, I have played it before, and damn't, I just enjoy playing non-mmo's so much more, as I get more variety, freedom and creative inspiration from them, than I ever would from one never-ending video game.
11/25/09
My roommate in college last year had a boyfriend who played WoW religiously too. He only got to see his girl for a couple days every two-three weeks...and he would spend much of his time with her playing that game. It makes me really sad when I think of it now, because she is a wonderful girl. How could a guy ever think to neglect his girl in favor of a game?
I tried playing WoW once before. Just the demo. There didn't seem to be an experience there that I wanted. I went for about 3 hours before giving up.
Mind you, I've found that generally I've lost a lot of interest in gaming recently. I find the random craziness of life a lot funner. Plus real life has more boobs.
11/25/09
Then I got married and spawned offspring. Let me tell you, the ability to pause and leave it alone when your adorable little Exorcist baby spews green stuff out the face to scrub, bathe, and vomit myself, is invaluable.
Also, I have this little thing about controlling myself. I don't drink, or smoke, or get toasted, or even regularly watch TV, because I don't like relinquishing control of my time, mind, and body, to the whims and whiles of anyone but my wife (and she's hot, and has bewbs IRL, for serious). The minute I start to feel the my decisions have been made for me, by someone else, is when I am officially done.
WoW is the antithesis of all that. For all the reasons above, and more. Sitting around, playing on someone else's schedule, neglecting what I would like to do and turning a hobby into another chore. Monthly fee, too much time, not enough fun, and I like to actually have sex with said wife, which is hard to do when locked out of the room and sleeping on the couch. Which brings me to my ultimate example.
I worked with a girl, let's call her Linda. Linda, not her real name, was nerd crack wrapped in dork heroin with a porno chaser. She was a very pretty, very (very) well built (read: bewbs and teh bootie) black girl, fluent in Japanese, an anime and video game and D&D and Star Trek dweeb of the highest order. And her boyfriend at the time was a chubby boring white guy. On several occasions, she came over to his house, and wanted sex. Sex. What just about every other male who had ever met Linda wanted. What did pudgy white guy boyfriend DO with the gift from the geek gods that was Linda? Ignored her for hours at a stretch until she left or passed out. Whether or not he had a pulse is yet to be determined, but I can say with certainty he's never gonna find a woman half as incredible as her, if he winds up a doctor.
...
I don't play WoW because my penis would wind up strangling me to death from neglect, and someone else would wind up with my wife and job. Plus, it's boring and looks butt-ugly, but that's just the icing on the giant cake of No.
11/25/09
As for my roommate he still plays, not as much as before, but it's effected him really badly. He gained A LOT of weight, stopped showering.. I had to and still have to from time to time, remind him that he stinks and he needs to clean up. His social life went to hell, and he seems really depressed.. I've spoken with him a lot about it, and still enjoy the WoW chat from time to time. It is a lifestyle choice and some people don't want to be bothered. I can understand that, we all want to escape in a game or not think about our troubles...
Anyways, that's all I have to add. I don't hate the game, just it's that I don't play anymore and I've seen how bad it can get for people.
11/25/09
I have a couple friends who spend a lot of time playing, and I just don't get it. I've watched them both play. They just go into some PvP server, put on some shitty metal music, sit back, and cast "Damage over time" spells on other players whilst running around in circles and healing themselves.
I DON'T UNDERSTAND. I guess I'm just not one for giving a shit about leveling up in video games. I also never could understand it when one of the same friends kept on PRESTIGING IN CALL OF DUTY 4!!! WHY!?!??!?!
He would always complain afterward about losing all of his perks and weapons. I don't understand the mentality!
11/25/09
There's this really bad questing system in place too. Like I was expected to actually -do- stuff just to advance. Screw that. I play to kill stuff. Why would I want to worry about an economy or writing letters? I don't. I want to aim my gun at some hapless player and blow it to pieces.
After about 20 minutes of frustratingly trying to figure out how everything worked, I was constantly harassed by the scum of the earth. ; Role-players. Apparently my name was not up to their standards, and my lack of care when it came to "breaching their fourth wall" or something pissed them off. Whatever that means. I didn't start playing to breach any of your walls, pervert. Leave me alone.
After a long argument about pets, I was told to take my character to a hunter trainer to learn new skills and learn to tame a pet. WHAT? I actually have to sit there and purchase skill ranks? WTF. And who needs a stupid pet anyway? I wasn't there to play the goddamn sims pets. I'm not feeding some virtual fleebag. I'm shooting things.
All in all, keep WoW out of your games-to-buy list this holiday season. Worst FPS ever invented, in the history of forever. It's so over-hyped.
11/25/09
lawl, you call shitty fetch quests "doing stuff?"
11/25/09
I have a friend or two whose reason d'etre revolves around playing one multiplayer shooter or another at the expense of everything else. They sponge off their parents, make half-hearted efforts to find work, schedule what little temporary work they find entirely around "game night(s)" and focus entirely on the games to the exclusion of hanging out with real friends or just doing stuff that doesn't involve playing those goddamn games (like growing up and digging themselves out of the holes they dug).
I also got my head talked off about how difficult it is to manage clans and all the personal lives of their virtual friends, and the social aspects of these games (whatever they may be, I just see my own online opponents as robots to avoid or destroy in what little time I spend on multiplayer games), and I just find it irritating.
I hate WoW, I hate what it does to people, and I hate what it brings out in people. I can't help but associate the game with socially-retarded shut-ins and unmotivated layabouts adrift in some crappy fantasy world, and I'm not too keen on anything else resembling WoW either.
11/25/09
This!
11/25/09