From a completely neutral point of view, I can honestly say that both of you are a bit biased in one direction. 
SW:TOR, GW2, WoW:Cataclysm
- Thread starter Eisberg
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DArtagnan
Guest
From a completely neutral point of view, I can honestly say that both of you are a bit biased in one direction.
But I'm biased in the right way
just wanted to chime in a couple of points I read:
- I don't think WoW has 'the best' character system. That, imho, would go to City of Heroes with their archetype/primary/secondary/other + enhancements. In WoW you can be what, 12 classes? and each has I think 2 (or 3?) specialization routes, that's about it. In CoH you literally have hundreds of different combinations, some similar but most very different from one to the other (playing a fire/empathy controller is much different than playing ice/force field controller for example), and I'm not even mentioning the enhancement combinations for each power.
- The long term/end game gaming for MMOs is not necessarily 'raid' content. In fact, in my case the end game doesn't really exist. After playing, what, dozens of MMOs, I have only maxed level on one character (in CoH), yet I played EQ1 for 2.5 years, City of Heroes for 2 years, SWG for 6 months, DAoC for 7 months, WoW for 4 months. 'Raiding' at max level is just WoW's version of an end game, but not the only one.
- I don't think WoW has 'the best' character system. That, imho, would go to City of Heroes with their archetype/primary/secondary/other + enhancements. In WoW you can be what, 12 classes? and each has I think 2 (or 3?) specialization routes, that's about it. In CoH you literally have hundreds of different combinations, some similar but most very different from one to the other (playing a fire/empathy controller is much different than playing ice/force field controller for example), and I'm not even mentioning the enhancement combinations for each power.
- The long term/end game gaming for MMOs is not necessarily 'raid' content. In fact, in my case the end game doesn't really exist. After playing, what, dozens of MMOs, I have only maxed level on one character (in CoH), yet I played EQ1 for 2.5 years, City of Heroes for 2 years, SWG for 6 months, DAoC for 7 months, WoW for 4 months. 'Raiding' at max level is just WoW's version of an end game, but not the only one.
http://news.cnet.com/World-of-Warcraft-battles-server-problems/2100-1043_3-6063990.html
Here's a nice article, written a little over a year after WoW was released, that describes a few of their problems. It also explains why WoW managed to keep their fanbase despite all their problems.
Most issues mentioned are network related, but there's a fairly easy way to see if an issue is related to network/infrastructure or simply the server: Are other people in the same cluster having the same problems? If you ever see 5+ servers go down at the same time, it's a network issue related to a certain data center. If it's just your own server, it's related to the server. That particular sign is a bit rough, but it generally gives a good indication.
Based on what? I base my statement on the fact that I travel the world going to technological conventions and have the luxury/honor of working with such brilliant people on a day to day basis. I also have friends working in the gaming industry, and know roughly what expect.
I'd say I have a fairly good idea of how the world of technology looks. I'm sure Blizzard, with as much money as they have, can hire top class developers, but they're still not going to be very best; the ones who truly push the boundaries of development. Like I said, those guys work with projects significantly larger and/or more challenging/complex than anything Blizzard can offer them.
If you're looking for the top developers in the world, the best places to look would probably be the worlds biggest banks, NASA, various scientific/technological institutions or the military. Such places have extreme demands in terms of performance and network stability.
Remember, we're not talking about the best developers at optimizing C++ code in a graphics engine. We're talking about the best developers and systems architects, that are capable of building the most solid networks (you mentioned the "best developers" when discussing making a mistake regarding networks).
Blizzard had practically no prior experience at building such networks at all, so I really have no idea why you would ever think they were the best at it. How on earth would they know more about building solid networks than the ones who built the banking networks that practically run the world, with billions (trillions?) of daily transactions? It's not even remotely the same job as game development, and has nothing at all to do with that particular job. It's as different as a carpenter compared to a taxi driver, with completely different educations. My guess is, Blizzard had to hire such architects/developers before launching WoW, because I honestly doubt they even employed that kind of people prior to WoW (why would they, when making single player games? BNet is hardly reason enough to have a bunch of systems architects sitting around).
Well, yes, that's true. However, the puzzles and mechanics in MC are so simple, it's basically all about getting a half decent raid together, as anyone can understand the simple mechanics without a lot of practice (obviously, the team work still needs some practice, but most positions are fairly stationary in MC, so even that doesn't require a whole lot). These simple puzzles have evolved a whole lot since then, and now require significantly more skill and effort from every single raider. Also, the raids are tuned to the point where a single mistake will wipe the raid, whereas in MC, someone dying was rarely the end of the fight.
Raids in general have come a long way since then - the most challenging encounter so far (that's not impossible, like Cthun was before they fixed him) is either M'uru or in Sunwell, or the hardest version of Yogg-Saron in Ulduar (an Achievement called Alone in the Dark). Especially the latter is so extreme, even the best guilds in the world spent several months completing that fight alone. We're talking about the same guilds that, with 40 people, spent less time clearing all of Naxxramas than Yogg-Saron. These people have had years to perfect their teamplay and coordination, so when they spend three months killing a single boss, you know it's far more than just getting the group coordination to work.
It's hard to explain why such encounters are so much more difficult than it used to be, but it boils down to a few things:
- Far more abilities to counter. Instead of 2-4 abilities, tough bosses have 10-15.
- More random factors involved. In MC, most abilities were used with X time between them, making them very predictable. Especially since there were so few abilities.
- More finely tuned. In MC, as you said, the raid didn't need max DPS/HPS from everyone. In tough encounters, every single DPSer must be able to push to the max of what their class is capable of in almost perfect gear (and obviously have close to perfect gear/spec). Otherwise, you'll hit the enrage timer, and the boss instantly wipes you. M'uru in Sunwell is an example of a fight that is redicilously fine tuned, where a single second will keep you wiping for 50+ tries, because you lack that tiny bit of optimization from one of your players.
Our raids carried quite a few players through MC. You said yourself that you were top DPS. Imagine if most of the raid was as good as you, would it really matter if a few of the bad DPSers were dead? You'd still have more than enough damage to kill the boss. If you raided up to BT, you've cleared places like SSC and TK, so how can you even say that MC was challenging? Fights like Lady Vashj, Kael'thas and pre-nerf Gruul/Magtheridon are lightyears ahead of MC in terms of challenge (due to the reasons listed above, though they weren't as finely tuned as the encounters mentioned). All those bosses took several weeks, if not months, even for experienced raiding guilds to kill. I spent more time on pre-nerf Magtheridon than most of MC combined, and we had a server first kill, so the rest were even slower.
Like I said, Ragnaros and Onyxia were decent. The rest were just plain bad, probably for a reason - they were entry level raid encounters, which means any guild with experience in other MMOs would naturally find them fairly easy.
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hishadow
Level N+1
Ah, good old lag days when Blizzard overbooked many of their eu-servers. They never owned up to it. Instead they handed communication over to the poor support personnel on the forums to request bullshit like traceroutes etc. I can feel the anger coming back now.. lol. If I remember correctly I think my server was unraidable for some 5-6 months. Some guilds ultimately transferred to other servers by paying Blizzard a transfer-fee for each guildmember. Pretty good from Blizzards point of view in turning crappy servers into a business opportunity.
Aye, that was the case for many. Some were lucky, but the most populated servers were more or less unplayable during primetime. First you spent a good 20 minutes logging on (due to the massive queue), and then you were lagging so badly you couldn't even walk around Ironforge/Orgrimmar without the game looking like a screenshot compilation instead of a fluid game.
Looking back, I can't believe I even endured, but I suspect the article is right: The options for anyone between "casual" and "semi-hardcore" were simply rubbish. WoW was the only real alternative, and in time, they did build a solid, smooth game.
But indeed, the lag was crazy for a long time (half a year sounds about right, that's roughly what I went through as well when my server reached max population, before they opened migrations to ease the load).
I suspect DArtagnan was lucky, playing on a medium or low pop server, as there is no way anyone could ever forget the terrible lag overpopulated servers had.
Edit: Haha, do you remember the silly excuses they came up with? Stuff like, "it may be your internet provider". Yes, half a million players going mad on the forums all experienced issues with their internet provider every single day of the week, especially during primetime.
I should pull that one the next time my boss wonders why there's some slight unstability somewhere..
Looking back, I can't believe I even endured, but I suspect the article is right: The options for anyone between "casual" and "semi-hardcore" were simply rubbish. WoW was the only real alternative, and in time, they did build a solid, smooth game.
But indeed, the lag was crazy for a long time (half a year sounds about right, that's roughly what I went through as well when my server reached max population, before they opened migrations to ease the load).
I suspect DArtagnan was lucky, playing on a medium or low pop server, as there is no way anyone could ever forget the terrible lag overpopulated servers had.
Edit: Haha, do you remember the silly excuses they came up with? Stuff like, "it may be your internet provider". Yes, half a million players going mad on the forums all experienced issues with their internet provider every single day of the week, especially during primetime.
I should pull that one the next time my boss wonders why there's some slight unstability somewhere..
Definitely worth buying imho, specially now that you get both City of Heroes and City of Villains in one. It's not f2p, standard $15/$14/$13 a month I think