My opinions on World of Warcraft, the game itself. There is a lot of things I like and dislike about WoW. I miss my good old Ultima Online days, when I could go dungeon run or player kill and make gold either way. Where I could lose all my stuff and be back to a threat and pvp/pve in like 10minutes. Where the economy was more run about players then non-players.
I started WoW in the closed beta (Tauren Warrior named Galdar to around the mid twenties), which then I did a Tauren Warrior named Galdar in the open beta to about level 35 or 40. So once on the release I made a Tauren Warrior on a PvP server in my timezone; Deathwing (the only PvP server for Mountain Time). I played for about a year, till I moved since all my friends kind of stopped playing but one. He preferred Alliance, and the server Hellscream since his friend was in a top guild there from EQ. So then Kitha was born, my Human Priestess. It was a nice change of pace to see new zones, new quests and etc. It is weird to even play Tsuno now (moved to Mannoroth and now Velen), since he was my character before I really "knew" anything. So going to Tsuno is still a challenege and feels like he is in a hole dug by being a "newb". I logged on him the other day and his little 11gold, crappy gear, grappy band and bags...compared to Kitha's decent gold, decent gear and such.
Anyways, that being said I remember when PvP was all world content. Before the Honor System, before the old Honor system. Before battlegrounds...when THE battleground was Southshore and Tauren Mills. I will admit I miss those days, when it was not a "grind" or about rewards but about pure "conflict" or just because.
I think WoW is a PVE game with added aspects. I think it is trying to be too much...but with half-hazard tries. I disagree with PvP using the same spells that are used against PVE bosses with over 250k hp minimum. I really believe they added PvP onto a PVE game, and it really isn't working as it should. Some people like it...I really do not. They have added Arenas, added more BGs...added more marks and rewards. Just seems to be a lot of adding of "shiny" and new things to try and fix, or move the attention away from a somewhat broken aspect. Are they trying to work on it? I guess. I will admit I was impressed and excited about vehicles for PvP...which quickly faded after a few vehicle quests in Northrend. Which then my first time in Wintergrasp was my last...dissapointment. I will admit I played Season 1, 2 and some of 3 on my warrior and not priest. Which being a squishy sucks....never been one shotted so much, no wonder my monitor has taken some verbal abuse.
I have said my somewhat peace on greedy Goblin about the badge rewards beign changed...but the aspect of PVE raiding is about the same as it was in Molten Core to AQ. Really the hard stuff becomes obsolete, new stuff is then having to be added and the top guilds move on to bigger and better things. Are the bigger and better? New epics, better epics...better rewards but is the content really better? I raided MC in a good guild back in the day and one of my serious comment/observation regarding th Core Hounds was laughed at as a joke. Who seriously designed this shit? Who sat down and said we will have a pack, and they have to die in 3-5 seconds of each other it comes back to life. Which of course has become a staple of WoW now. I understand the simple tank and spank is not doing it for the mass majority. It gets old, so they come up with "new" encounters to circumvent this. Then why do we really have the classes? Look at the Twins in TBC. You had to have a caster tank...it is different and challenging I guess but not really something that was there for the original intention of "caster" classes. I have always felt thata fter BWL, enocunters seemed to have gotten hard script wise because some lack of imagination. I guess that is somewhat of a lie because it does take imagination to come up with some of these encounters, like an iceblock and standing behind it in Naxx, or Patches, or Grub. A lot of enoucnters seemed re-used and well...I just tink overly hard ont he script then it needs to be. I would like to see something but not entirely sure what yet, they made us classes to fit specific roles...not classes to fit specific encounters/scripts. I guess it is "skill" or something, but like I said I have no clue on what I really want to see or what a fix is.
Economy and trade skills in WoW I think are a big failure. Yeah Greedy goblin has pointed out a few times you can make gold...but that isn't what I am talking about. Gathering skills are really lacking and well boring/worthless. I say worthless because like Goblin has pointed out, it is about time to money ratio. I remember mining in UO and the better I was, the more I mined and the more smelted. I still have a hard time that my 450 miner gets the same as my 10 miner from the same node....which of course a change to this would lower and bring in more raw materials. Which of course should make crafted items easier to make, and more profitable. I think I would like to see a little more ability for crafters to make some gold...maybe some services. Like Leatherworkers repairing Leather, Blacksmithes for mail and plate and Tailores for cloth. Bascially more of economy then gold drops and gold sinks.
