General Discussion

Lol, what customization?  As far as I'm concerned the only thing they're adding to make it any more personal is two new races, and I'll be damned if anyone goes as far as starting over from level 1 just to look different from other people.

WoW is upsetting in many respects, and this is just one of them that I don't see getting any better with BC.

Agree, and Agree

Might be nice to look a little different than everyone else out there.  WAR supposedly is allowing you to hang skulls from your armor.  Even if it is a the same armor everyone else has, that little tweek can mean a lot to a player.

And yes I hate raiding as well.  As much trouble and guild drama I went through to get the Tier 1 stuff, there is no way I was going to completely ignore RL again to get another purple.  Do I get destroyed in PvP?  Sometimes.  WoW loves Raiders.  Because they never cancel their account hehe.

I quit WoW for just that reason.  I'll resub for BC because I heard it is possible through PvP to get raid quality gear without the 80 hour a week BG grind.  We'll see. 

It's a good game.  Great mechanics.  Few Bugs.  Easy to play.  Now if they can listen to the rest of us besides the raiding-every-night-forum-trolls, it'll be even better.

            The extent to which WOW takes gear is way over the top, i dont mind raiding, i dont mind PVPing, i like them both, heck i like WOW as a game .It was, at one time, a very fun MMO. With that being said i think people are getting fed up with the neverending gear grind. Honestly if raiders werent allowed to bring thier tier 2-3 epics into the BGs, no one would ever have complained about raid gear. I in no way think this is the players fault, they worked hard for those epics and they have the right to wear them wherever they choose. But its Blizzards mechanic that is to blame.

            WOW did alot of good things for the MMO buisness overall, it attracted ALOT more people to MMOS which will, in the long run, benefit us die hard MMO fans by allowing companies to invest more time into a game and make it better and more polished on release, in other words, investors wont be breathing down the necks of game companies now that they have seen how much $$ WOW has brought in, well not breathing down their necks as much heh.

            I honestly believe WOW is turning the corner, in the near future there are several promising games coming out, Im not saying WOW will lose all of its playerbase by any means, in fact i think it will still continue to be #1 for quite some time. Personally i think its time for me to move on, i had a great time with it, but like Mr. Fuller pointed out the purple neverending gear grind is just gettin old and so is WOW.

            I look forward to what these new games will bring, Vanguard, LOTR, Warhammer, Spellborn all seem to be very interesting games, im sure they will have raiding wether it be PVP or PVE, but it will be a different atmosphere and hopefully they will see the mistakes that WOW has made with thier snowballing gear effect, because gamers are evolving, and its time for these games to evolve with us.

Well... i think the talents are pretty well done for a MMO, and if you like to you will always be able to play a "different" character - theres always some "best" build, no matter how complex your system may be...

But as for the looks - yes, i agree... its not fun looking like evry other orc schaman (yes, me too).

I can honestly say I don’t think WoW was ever made to be the eye candy game. What it was made to be was a game with very low poly counts so it could run on the worst machines, and also be able to handle multiple people on the same screen without messing up.

I think if you consider the original plans for WoW included player built cities similar to WC3 cities, and also raid based PvP it is not hard to figure out why WoW has limited themselves in customization for better performance and more action on the screen at the same time.

If you look at the batch of current next gen MMO's other than WoW and the ones in development you will see a similar trait in all of them, a diverse and extremly in-depth customisation of your character from creation to your first stumbling steps into their gaming world.

Customisation to alot of players is extremly important, take Everquest 2 for example, they had pre-order disks before the game went live so that you could create and play around with the very same character creation system you would eventually use in the real game.

WoW reminds me of the vast amount of korean games we see filling the MMORPG games list, they all offer one or 2 different character choices and very few other options to make your beloved character appear any different from the thousands of other players you spend your gaming time with.

I used to play a Druid in WoW and in any raid you would be hard pressed to be able to pick me out of a crowd of other druids as we all looked exactly the same with our tier1 armour, in fact it was ridiculous how alike we all looked and quite sad for a game that has so many paying subscribers.

I've since quit WoW in frustration at the many failings in the game and one of them is the lack of variety in how my character is seen in the game world.

I am all for more game systems (in this game and any game) where it's not all about the loot. There are many other things that can be emphasized.

But I disagree with some of the factual premises in this article, to the point I wonder if we are playing the same game?

I routinely defeat player opponents wearing much better gear than I. Gear makes things easier but it is no substitute for competence.

I also see entire raids full of people in awesome gear wipe, and just as often raids with lesser equipped players succeed. Tactics, teamwork and leadership are just as important as what you are wearing.

Then there are the talent trees and the choices you make on what to equip, or what pets or attacks or combinatons of those to use, and a million other things. There are lots of choices.

So while I applaud wanting to see less importance given to loot and more emphasis to other things, I disagree that what you wear is all there is to WoW.