TheBig3

but...i love newb island...

I think quite a bit of the game opens up as you play it in this expansion at least. "veteran of the wrathgate" or the quest line that reveals the faceless ones carrying Arthas's heart to the nether regions of ICC.

To me the game really works to make it related.

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Thrice

I started playing D2 about a year ago, only on singleplayer. It was fun and I think Ill try out D3 when it comes out....hope its not 12 years from now. Thats another reason I dont like Wow, I think it halted, or at least slowed the productions of sc2 and d3. I think if they ever make a wc4 I might actually die, if I havent died from old age.

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mr dave

i'm still bitter about starcraft ghost getting trashed after basically being developed twice

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TheBig3

that has less to do with WoW though and the fact that the SC was but on the job for 5 years to create the 1st game. I think they were burned out and they like to keep some consistency between games. Going from RTS to FPS isn't easy to do.

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mr dave

but SC:G was outsourced, and if i remember right there was a connection to the people who made Metroid: Prime at one point.

besides, the people who worked on Starcraft likely went on to work on Warcraft 3 prior to WoW.

oh yeah, your noob island comment...

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TheBig3

Starcraft Ghost, from what I recall, was probably not up to standards. It was on point to be another lameass FPS.

Blizzard is (flame on!) the Shakespeare of gaming. Nothings new, its the delivery. Some of the stuff that went on in their RTS games were incredible.

And with the MMO, its just a god damn joke. I mean you've got other companies basically making games based on what bored, dip**** kids are whining about on the WoW forums.

Warhammer? All sizzle no steak. "Hey look guys, we bring the PVP for reaslz"

Sure you do, but thats all you bring. Thanks for a sub-par Planetside.

AoC? Wooooo! Our game doesn't even work!

Aion? Absolute knock off, and whats more theres no end game. Thanks for the free wings, i'm going back to WoW.

i'd put hard money on SC:G being just an absolute ball of suck that couldn't pass the quality standards. Its hard to make an FPS original, and thats pretty much how Blizzard operates. Revolutionize the platform or gtfo.

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LoathsomePete

Starcraft: Ghost was never set up as an FPS, it was suppose to be a 3rd person shooter and last I heard it's been indefinitely postponed.

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mr dave

what have they revolutionized besides their revenue stream?

most of what went on in their RTS games was directly lifted from Westwood (you do remember an old franchise called 'Command and Conquer' right? hehe)

MMOs? you might have heard of this little one called Everquest from back in the day. what Blizzard really accomplished is a way to get around the stigma of paying to play an online game and figured out how to market it to both hardcore and more casual players, while Sony tried to diversify its game worlds by offering more than just medieval fantasy action (star wars galaxy for example)

as for Ghost. it's very possible that it sucked but i figure it's more probable that they recognized that they weren't going to top Metroid: Prime and would be seen as a clear copycat as opposed to an indirect one.

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TheBig3

I had a huge point written up for this, but Everquest was (as far as I know) the first, but Blizzard cleared it from the map because of the attention to systems.

I think Sony Kowtows to its clients a lot more, at the sacrafice of its own game. Now servers are barren and you can hire NPC's from what I hear to run with you. At this point you can bump it down to a platform game and sell it to the consoles.

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mr dave

actually Ultima:Online was the first commercial MMO.

regardless of who invented that wheel, what do you mean by 'attention to systems'?

all MMOs have been very scalable from the get-go to encourage as many players to join up without having to buy a new pc. what i really saw Blizzard accomplish with WoW was a way to get around the stigma of paying to play a game, it sold the product in a way that non-hardcore gamers wanted it. that's what gave them the edge over everyone else. it's a game for the kind of people who 'play' on Facebook for 5 hours at a time.

as for Sony how do you figure they're kowtowing? most rpgs offer an NPC service (whether it's an MMO or not). the state of their servers is probably still up in the air and initially established based on peak EQ popularity, or global markets and not properly reflected back to the players. it's something that's bothered me significantly since the first MMO i tried. there's always a page for 'server status' (on/offline) but it never gives you details like how many players are logged in, from what area they're logging in from, the status of the characters, max capacity for the server, etc.

it's frustrating as hell to start a new character when all the other players on that server are reaching the final tier of levels and are all based out of southern asia, or having to trial by error your way into finding out that the next server in the list was packed with noobs from the west coast of north america.

it's not that WoW really handles it's player / server info any better (or maybe they started semi-recently), just that there are so many WoW users that it doesn't matter when or where you login.

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