Wold of Warcraft Is a Good Bashing Material
No matter what MMOG you play, unless you block the general channel for one reason or another, it is hard not to notice plenty of people saying how bad World of Warcraft is compared to the current title. I guess this is pretty much inevitable with WoW being one of the most popular MMOGs in the world and all.
The real problem about this is people actually feeling the necessity to bash Warcraft. I have been playing the game for almost 4 years. During that time I tried several other MMO titles, some of them I grew fond of, the others were not to my fancy. And of course, no matter what, I always kept comparing (to some extent) all the games I played to World of Warcraft, as it is kinda impossible not to, the game really set high standards. But, unlike so many people, I really couldn't really say that World of Warcraft was clearly better or the other way around. All the major MMO games are really unlike each other, they all provide the different things to the player. The only thing I can admit is that Warcraft is the most polished (in every possible aspect) game of all I've seen.
Recently, I totally dumped Warcraft and was open to new opportunities. If before I had a choice to only take a glimpse of some new online titles while devoting most of my time to WoW, now I actually have the chance to dedicate myself to something new. It wasn't that hard to pick a new title to devote myself to. I already had a game I wanted to play in mind - Tabula Rasa. I played it in open beta and continued playing it for a month or two after the official release, but was unable to keep up with WoW raiding and spending my time on Tabula Rasa, so had to dump it. Now that I was ready to return to TR, I found out that the game was announced to be shutdown some time ago already (don't even know how I missed the news). No matter how disappointing that was for me, I still had a couple of choices left.
For a very long time, my mind was set on checking two particular MMO titles - The Lord of the Rings Online and Warhammer Online. I bought both games (The Lord of the Rings Online was particularly a great bargain - the special edition of the game features the original game, plus the expansion and two months of pre-paid time - all that for a very low price) and was totally excited by them. If LotRO surprised me to a great extent with a detailed world, interesting quests and character development mechanics, WAR totally blew me away with a high paced action, it really showed me a new perspective to fast and fun PVP-ing, among other things. You can pretty much guess, what I will be sticking to for now.
Anyway, I drifted away from the topic a bit. The idea is, I am not playing WoW for a couple of months already and totally enjoying WAR at this point, but I still don't have the need to bash Warcraft. Even though I grew tired of WoW and totally disliked what Blizzard made of the game with the latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, I still can't state that it is better or worse than any other MMOG. WAR is new and exciting, it has a very great approach to gameplay - sometimes it is really enough to play the game only for one hour a day. In Warhammer you can literally jump into action the second you log in. All the other online games advertise that "feature", but struggle to deliver. I enjoy that side of WAR a lot. Still, is WAR better because of it? Surely not. Worse for some reason? No way! Warcraft made a great job of keeping me hooked up for a long time and I still think highly of the game, but reject to stick to something for such a long time, even if there are some things left to explore. Period.
Currently, there are several interesting MMO titles in development. One of them is Star Wars: The Old Republic. Being a huge fan of all Bioware games, I can pretty much predict that I am gonna be all over it. Maybe by the time that game is published, I will be able to say that World of Warcraft is worse. Surely doubt though. Both games will be great in their own way.
One interesting observation. Recently, I started asking those WoW bashers, what made them think the game is worse than the title they are playing now. It came out, that most of those people didn't even get to play Warcraft a lot, didn't get to reach the level cap and enjoy the end-game contents. For me WoW was all about end-game, so I wouldn't even think about comparing it to any other possible game without knowing what it's like to raid. I kinda suspected those general channel flooders were low-minded people, now I am confident they are.
The real problem about this is people actually feeling the necessity to bash Warcraft. I have been playing the game for almost 4 years. During that time I tried several other MMO titles, some of them I grew fond of, the others were not to my fancy. And of course, no matter what, I always kept comparing (to some extent) all the games I played to World of Warcraft, as it is kinda impossible not to, the game really set high standards. But, unlike so many people, I really couldn't really say that World of Warcraft was clearly better or the other way around. All the major MMO games are really unlike each other, they all provide the different things to the player. The only thing I can admit is that Warcraft is the most polished (in every possible aspect) game of all I've seen.Recently, I totally dumped Warcraft and was open to new opportunities. If before I had a choice to only take a glimpse of some new online titles while devoting most of my time to WoW, now I actually have the chance to dedicate myself to something new. It wasn't that hard to pick a new title to devote myself to. I already had a game I wanted to play in mind - Tabula Rasa. I played it in open beta and continued playing it for a month or two after the official release, but was unable to keep up with WoW raiding and spending my time on Tabula Rasa, so had to dump it. Now that I was ready to return to TR, I found out that the game was announced to be shutdown some time ago already (don't even know how I missed the news). No matter how disappointing that was for me, I still had a couple of choices left.
For a very long time, my mind was set on checking two particular MMO titles - The Lord of the Rings Online and Warhammer Online. I bought both games (The Lord of the Rings Online was particularly a great bargain - the special edition of the game features the original game, plus the expansion and two months of pre-paid time - all that for a very low price) and was totally excited by them. If LotRO surprised me to a great extent with a detailed world, interesting quests and character development mechanics, WAR totally blew me away with a high paced action, it really showed me a new perspective to fast and fun PVP-ing, among other things. You can pretty much guess, what I will be sticking to for now.
Anyway, I drifted away from the topic a bit. The idea is, I am not playing WoW for a couple of months already and totally enjoying WAR at this point, but I still don't have the need to bash Warcraft. Even though I grew tired of WoW and totally disliked what Blizzard made of the game with the latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, I still can't state that it is better or worse than any other MMOG. WAR is new and exciting, it has a very great approach to gameplay - sometimes it is really enough to play the game only for one hour a day. In Warhammer you can literally jump into action the second you log in. All the other online games advertise that "feature", but struggle to deliver. I enjoy that side of WAR a lot. Still, is WAR better because of it? Surely not. Worse for some reason? No way! Warcraft made a great job of keeping me hooked up for a long time and I still think highly of the game, but reject to stick to something for such a long time, even if there are some things left to explore. Period.Currently, there are several interesting MMO titles in development. One of them is Star Wars: The Old Republic. Being a huge fan of all Bioware games, I can pretty much predict that I am gonna be all over it. Maybe by the time that game is published, I will be able to say that World of Warcraft is worse. Surely doubt though. Both games will be great in their own way.
One interesting observation. Recently, I started asking those WoW bashers, what made them think the game is worse than the title they are playing now. It came out, that most of those people didn't even get to play Warcraft a lot, didn't get to reach the level cap and enjoy the end-game contents. For me WoW was all about end-game, so I wouldn't even think about comparing it to any other possible game without knowing what it's like to raid. I kinda suspected those general channel flooders were low-minded people, now I am confident they are.
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