Wow. After reading this entire thread I HAD to make a forum account, and post here. You guys are incredible at exaggerating things. Especially WoW.
First of all, I have played many many MMOs, except EQ1, I have played pretty much all of them created. Starting out from AC1, AC2 (sucked, no economy), AQ (got boring, although they have very similar mission design to COH/V), Planetside (nice change from the typical MMO, got tedious though). DAoC an interesting game, (can't say I gave it a chance though, didn't play long enough). EQ2 was horrid. And finally, WoW.
Mostly the reason I'm posting here is to give WoW some credit. I couldnt stand and watch you guys hack up the game as much as you are, when really, although it has flaws, is a pretty good game. There really isnt as much of a rush to 60 as you may believe. All the fun of WoW is not all at 60, leveling to 60 is also just as much fun. Currently I have 3 60s, 2 55+, 3 30+ characters. So you can see I have played WoW for quite a while (since release) minus the summer of 2005. Leveling characters is pretty fun, and its possible your theory that leveling 1-10 is the most fun, and 11-20 slightly less fun and so on is accurate, but still leveling in WoW is not as bad as your express strongly here. I can't believe some poster stated it took them an hour to travel to a quest location on horse, are you crazy? You could probably ride from the north to the south of a whole continent in WoW in an hour. Maybe someone should enlighten you on the use of flightpaths, maybe you missed that in the tutorial section. And please, the longest flightpath is probably 5-10 minutes, but seriously why would sit there and watch yourself fly through the sky to your destination for 10 minutes, go get a drink or talk to someone on msn. You can play WoW in windowed mode, anytime your waiting for something, or crafting a crap load of potions on your alchemy bot, why dont you just minimize WoW, and search the web for a bit.
Also, let's talk about end game. Currently I am an officer in a guild that clears BWL (Black Wing Lair), the second big end game dungeon in WoW, and we are working on AQ40. What everybody else has been talking about here is Molten Core (MC, the orange dungeon someone described). A little bit of information for people who don't know anything about WoW, there are two 20 man dungeons, ZG and AQ that easily a pug group can run. Next there is MC, 40 man dungeon which requires a decent guild to clear. After mastering all of MC (possibly the last boss, Rag), you can move on to BWL (40man). After clearing that, next is AQ40, and then finally Naxx (40). All these dungeons require a lot of cooperation, strategy and skill to beat (all guilds make use of Ventrilo to organize these raids). Another thing, there is a progression factor here. I would say currently about 10% of the guilds in WoW have the skill/equipment to run Naxx right now. About 35% of the guilds in WoW can run AQ40. About 50-60% of guilds can do BWL, and about 80% can do MC. I don't mean they can clear the dungeon fully, just that they are working on it.
Also I'd like to talk about loot in WoW in endgame. I'll use MC for an example since thats the farthest some of you have got in WoW. Molten Core can be cleared by a decent guild in about 3 hours. There is 10 bosses in MC, each dropping approx 2,3 or 4 items each. So each MC run you get about 30 equipment pieces. There's 40 of you in the raid, so comon people, don't complain/whine about loot in your exaggered view of WoW. Its very possible that what your looking for doesn't drop in a night, but comon, thats the purpose of epics in the first place. Not everyone can get them. Also, unless your in a noob guild you never ever ROLL on drops from bosses. Thats insane. There is a DKP system, which means whenever you attend a raid, down bosses, stay the whole raid, and possible bring certain materials (like potions), you get DKP. You use DKP to bid on items that drop off bosses. No rolls, thats rediculous.
Also some of you that complain you get to 60 and have nothing to do, well thats because 60 requires you to cooperate with your fellow WoW populace, and get into a guild that runs 40 mans. If you are an immature 14 yr old kid, or just a plain jerk, your likelyhood of getting into these guilds is small, and you will quit WoW. Im glad, we don't want you here. It's a lot of fun being in a guild, talking on vent, and enjoying the encounters of bosses in WoW in 40 mans. Not every attempt on a boss is the same, sometimes things go wrong, things can be resisted, different stuff happens.
I landed myself here on these forums mostly to figure out what endgame was like in COH/V. I am currently trying the 14 day trial, because I heard good things about this game and wondered what it was like. I find a lot of similarities here with the leveling grind like WoW, even though most of you here complain about WoW's grind, when really this game isnt much different. And the badges, wow. Seriously, what an easy, brainless way to increase content in this game. So I get to lvl 30, and decent for some reason I want to collect these badges like some of kind of Pokemon kid. I have to kill 200 of some certain mob to get a badge, for what? What do I get? Bragging rights? Comon, what a waste of time. I was also a little discouraged after reading this thread that there is no serious endgame in COH/V. It boggles my mind then why people stay here. All there is to do is to keep making alts? I guess thats one way to keep people's monthly billing. Its either endgame content, or rinse and repeat of the leveling of different characters. Its actually easier for the game company to have what keeps people here just to be reusing the content over and over for different characters, rather than bringing out endgame content every couple months or so. That is probably why that your "issues" dont come out very often, all you guys are just happy doing all those quests, over and over again, with different toons, because somehow they seem different. And also each quest somehow seems different even though its just the killing of a different monster. In this quest I have to clear out a cargo ship of the Lost, monsters with tv heads and green lasterguns. And then the next part, I have to rid a research lab of the evil red hovering geenie guys, and Wolf Spider soliders. Not sure why this is very appealing, or how it keeps interest.
In summary, my intent of this post is to give WoW some credibility. I think most of you whine and complain about WoW because you can't make it to 60 (its not that bad of a grind, unless you make it that way). Like I said, at 60 if you want to continue enjoying the game, you need to get into a guild where you run raids a few nights a week and cooperate with others. A lot of why people stick with WoW has to do with the people, the friends they make, the people they talk to on vent. Some of you continue to push the notion of taking leveling slow and relax throughout the leveling process. Perhaps you should try the same strategy with WoW and maybe you will enjoy it.
