User:Racthoh/WorldOfWarcraft

Why World of Warcraft is One of the Worst Games Ever

I've been playing World of Warcraft since the people in charge of Runes of Magic deciding they didn't want their game to be enjoyable and ruin every aspect of it. But I'm not writing this to hate on the idiocy of the Runes of Magic staff, no no. I'm venting because World of Warcraft is a horrible game and everyone saying Guild Wars is better couldn't be more correct. Oh it's fun for a while sure but if you ever intend on hitting max level enjoy being bored out of your mind once you do.

Combat: From 1-80 all you do is repeat one on one fights hitting the same few skills over and over. You might occasionally get a quest that involves killing an elite enemy which forces you to group with a few other people (unless you're a paladin which I'll touch on later). The only worthwhile encounters are the raid bosses and if you're the first group of people to ever attempt killing them, otherwise the entire strategy will be laid out in front of you by someone who has already done it. Then it's just a matter of how well you follow directions which apparently for everyone on my server is freaking impossible to do without wiping a few times. Although when I did play Guild Wars people would whine a lot about how difficult Shiro was when Wild Blow/Throw reduces all threat he ever posed so I guess I can't fault the WoW audience for being completely inept. Stupidity spans over all games. I won't comment on how my melee character somehow misses a 20 foot tall dragon, or how that dragon can simultaneously dodge/parry/block 20 people attacking it at once because arguing logic in a video game never works. I'll leave you, the reader, to debate how stupid the previous concepts are.

Enrage Timers: Pretty much every raid boss has this enrage timer which basically says if you don't kill them after so many minutes you die. This is fine in theory if maybe it wasn't so common. It reminds of me, oh I dunno, Super Mario on the NES. When was the last time you played a game where you could run out of time? Oh right, never, because it's a stupid concept and died a long time ago along with the absurd difficulty that graced many of the early console games.

Nothing to do: There is plenty to do but there is nothing enjoyable to do, ever, unless you're raiding. I actually wasted my time scouring the world and /loving every critter for some pointless achievement, another day exploring every zone for more achievement points. Achievement points are Blizzards way of saying "Here, go do these pointless mind numbingly boring tasks to distract from the shallowness that is our game". Know what I do when I logged into Guild Wars? Anything. There is maybe one or two things I can't do like FoW or DoA, elite areas, but those don't involve waiting for 24 other people to log in. One other person and our heroes and we're good to go. Even then when you get 24 other people you're plagued by the boringness that is the combat system. Is boringness even a word, I don't even know. Maybe I'll look it up while I'm doing nothing in World of Warcraft since there aren't enough people online in my guild to do anything. Just checked, it is a word. Actually that isn't fair. There are enough people on but...

Class Balance: Could not be any worse. Three roles that need to be filled, damage, tank, heals. Some classes can only damage, others can damage and heal, some can tank and damage, and others can do all three. Wait, what? Some can do all three? Yeah that's right, they can. You'd expect the ones that can only damage to be the best right? Well, not really. Recently I watched a video of a 25 man raid killing the latest raid boss (Algalon) and the guy at the top of the damage chart was a druid. A druid, guess what they can do by the way? All three roles. They're also one of the best tanks because their health gets really high. I chose to play a Rogue which is probably why I spend so much time doing nothing because the damage role is so freaking easy to fill since every single class can do it. Not only that though but melee classes are at such a huge disadvantage when it comes to raid fights. Range DPS is ALWAYS preferred for EVERYTHING. My advice to anyone who wants to waste their time with World of Warcraft is to role a Druid or a Paladin because they can fill all three roles which means you'll actually get to play the freaking game.

Lockout Periods: Which idiot thought this one up? Know how you get to clear FoW, DoA, UW, Urgoz, Deep, anything and everything as often as you like? Well in World of Warcraft you get to do each raid once a week. Yes, once a week. That's it. You kill a boss you get saved to that instance. Now you won't be able to clear an instance in one day but that could've easily be worked around. For example in Naxxramas the raid is divided into four quarters and then two final bosses after those four are done. There is no reason why that couldn't have been divided into four instances with the final unlocked in a similar manner to Mallyx in DoA. But no, they'd rather have this lockout system instead which kills PuGs entirely. If you're in a guild you're not pugging anything, ever. PuG a raid and you can't run that raid with your guild.

Community/Guilds: It's horrible. Everyone is so selfish in this game it's not even funny. As I touched on briefly with the lockout periods guilds will freak out if you do a raid with people outside of the guild. Getting gear for people not in the guild is a sin, apparently. To hell with having fun because raiding is the only enjoyable thing to do, no no. Always about the gear that's all it is. Applying for a guild is hell. Some will make you run for weeks without having any hopes of a single drop just to see if you're good enough to run with them. These trial periods. It's crap, plain and simple. If you're not 80 and not geared you're opinion doesn't matter. Trying to find a group of like-minded people in this game from scratch is impossible.

Progression: Here is how it works. Hit 80, run heroic 5 man dungeons. Get geared enough, run 10 man raids. Get geared enough, run heroic 25 man raids. Get geared enough, run 10 man raids. Wait, what? Yeah, you have to tell 15 people to sit out and wait their turn while you do the next hardest area. In theory you can skip the 25 man part but it will be extremely difficult to do so since it's about gear. Worst of all the 25 man content is 10 man content with maybe one change to each boss encounter and a few million more health tacked onto their bars. They might do a little more damage too, but that's it. There is absolutely no reason for them to exist.

In a nutshell WoW is extremely restrictive. The barriers are significantly worse than Guild Wars PvP and anyone who has tried to get into competitive PvP knows how difficult it can be. Personally I don't feel like spending anymore time trying to find the perfect group of people to make this game tolerable, nor do I wish to spend any more cash on the monthly fee waiting for that to happen. Also I don't feel like paying a fee to transfer my character to a different server in hopes the magic guild is there.

As a final note my brother's account was banned for depositing 1,000 gold into his guild's bank and then withdrawing it because we merged into another guild. He received some BS email stating that after a thorough investigation he was banned for exploiting the economy. About a week later he was unbanned, no time refunded, just an email saying they in fact messed up because they're idiots. After thoroughly enjoying the RTS Warcraft games and thousands upon thousands of hours in Diablo and Diablo II I thought Blizzard knew what they were doing. Apparently though I was dead wrong.