Just thought I’d make a post and maybe try to update this page every once in a while.
I’m not really sure what to write about in regards to WoW but I’ll give it a go anyways :).
As most of you know right now I’m playing World of Warcraft, and not a whole lot else, so I thought I’d give a bit of detail for those of you into both RTS and WoW AND still read this page lol.
Anyways I’ve been playing WoW now since january or so, and I’ve been playing on the Boulderfist server since february with my brother KS_Batman, his wife (obviously batgirl?), and a few former AoM players such as Nerve_Druid, KS_Nike, Simie, their friend brandon whose AoT name I don’t know, and several vagabonds (lion, neggy, mojo, ben, sin). Anyways we formed a guild which eventually split apart with the vaga’s leaving and the rest staying. The details aren’t really important there just thought I’d give you some background.
Anyways I’ve currently got a 60 priest, 60 druid, 60 rogue, 40 warrior, and a bunch of alts below 20(too much time on my hands since being on sick leave for a while).
Enough about that I guess I’ll just post about my overall experience in WoW compared to that of the Age series.
The biggest difference I’ve found in the communities is that there is an awful lot more no name people. The community isn’t really any larger than the AoM one (on a given server that is), however anyone with enough time can reach the “top ranks” of the game without having the least bit of gaming skill in them. Therefore it becomes a real task to figure out who actually knows how to play the game and who has just put in their time and will likely mess up any efforts you put out. Since there is no real way of telling how skilled a player is until you play with them in a difficult situation you can literally group with someone in a lot of different situations and not tell they suck at most things.
For the most part people run instances (dungeons with groups of people that are seperate from the rest of the world) in groups 2x the amount that is intended so you really can’t tell how good or bad a player is until you do a smaller run with them for the most part (unless they’re really bad and make a lot of really stupid mistakes that kill the group). If you compare that to the RTS communities it’s pretty easy to tell what your partners are good at very quickly. This is likely one of the more frustrating parts of the game, you’re not always with group members who are of the same skill (or even near to it) and it can be quite frustrating.
On the other hand WoW really doesn’t take a great deal of “skill” to be good at. All you really need to do is have a little brain power and you’re good to go as long as you don’t have to fight another human being in which case strategy does start to come into play.
Another big difference in the communities is the whole guild vs. clan thing. Clans and guilds are in theory supposed to be the same sort of thing, but in reality tend to act very differently IMO. The guilds in warcraft that want to pwn up the end game stuff have to have well over 60 members in order to be able to function properly. Compare that to the elite (and non elite) clans of AoM that tend to be anywhere from 5-30 members in general. This creates a very different atmosphere, in general people in clans get along with each other, enjoy playing with each other and tend to have the same sort of aproach to the games they play as each other. However the guilds in WoW tend to keep people in them whether they’re jackasses, loot whores, or whatever just simply because they fill the role that is needed in the guild gameplay-wise (right type of character etc). What I’ve seen happen a lot of times is people allow cheaters, lamers, jackasses etc to remain in their guild (without any reprimand whatsoever) just simply because of the fact they are able to do their job well enough to warrant their need in the end game content.
Just simply because of the way things work guilds who are interested in doing everything in the game don’t always end up being friends nescessarily, just aquaintances working towards the same goal. Sure some online friendships form I’m sure, but for the most part it’s a group of people working towards a goal, more like a company than the standard Age of clan tend to be. This doesn’t really apeal to me, so I’m sticking with my relatively small guild of people I know pretty well and like to play with (for the most part….. nike is a jerkstore what can I say).
Anyways if any of you play or plan to play WoW feel free to join me on boulderfist, just let me know. I guess I’ll end this rambling post that really most of you won’t be interested in anyways ;).
