uruloki’s lair

Since I am nominally at work, and therefore not able to go questing through Azeroth, here are some thoughts on WoW from around the MMORPG/game-blogging community.

First, Cosmik from n3rfed has some thoughts on WoW’s PVP aspects:

Blizzard has decided to make some changes to the PvP aspect of WoW. One change in particular is this fucktacular;

-You cannot get a dishonorable kill for killing another player.

Yes, what you’re thinking is correct. This means a level 60 Rogue can now camp exits/entrances to low level caves and kill anyone that comes past, and without fear of any game mechanical repercussion.

As far as I am concerned, PVP isn’t implemented in the game yet. I don’t think Blizzard believes so either, and Cosmik is taking issue with something that never existed. Dishonorable kills has never meant jack-squat in the game, it was/still isn’t fully implemented. Somehow, Blizzard will figure out a way to fix this, and if they don’t isn’t that the lovely cycle of PVP? Get ganked repeatedly until you grind out barely enough levels to gank other players, and then gank them until they reach a slightly threatening level, at which point you move to other (read: newer) targets.

There are two major issues the Blizzard has to face for PVP: Ganking and Camping. I haven’t seen anything more than plans for how to deal with the ganking, and camping is going to suck for a long, long time.

Then, we pretty much have all of AFKGamer, where the front page of posts looks like mine in terms of WoW references and bitching about downtime and more downtime.

Considering some servers were down for a few days, others up and down, still others with 2 and 3 hour queues, almost all were/are/will continue to be lagged to hell … this smells like horseshit. Wouldn’t it just be easier to give everyone an extra free week and call it even?

It’s like trying to get this one guy at work to pitch in for the lunch bill … assrag pulls out this tiny calculator and goes at it for ten minutes. Dude! You’re embarassing yourself.

The guys at Terra Nova admire the scenery in WoW and wonder if it’ll be the first North American MMORPG with 1 million subscribers.

The benchmark for US virtual worlds comes from Asia, where worlds with more than a million subscribers are common. Two years ago, anyone working in this area would have picked three or more forthcoming titles as candidates for the first to reach this level. Some of those candidates have failed even to cover their development costs; others are probably profitable; but none has reached the Golden 1M. The MMORPG glut, now more than a year old, certainly played a role. Another factor is the failure of US demand to ramp up as quickly as it has in Korea, Japan, and especially China. True, the space as a whole continues to expand, judging from the most recent numbers. But we still await the first American superstar.

In what is a common occurence (at least judging by some of the personal anecdots I’ve heard), a Grimwell writer gets hooked:

To my surprise, I now find myself playing WoW and enjoying it. The reason why I’m playing is in itself an interesting indication of why the game is successful, but I’ll get to that below. Others have discussed the basics of WoW and compared it in detail to EQ2. In this article, I’m going to run through what has made WoW a great success out of the gate. I’ll also comment as a jaded gamer on where WoW’s eventual downfall is going to be.

And finally, Ubiq at Zen of Design has WoW posts on branding, release, and server localization. Go read. Now!

Tags: Gaming //