What ever happened to MMORPG ?

[Rivin]

Maybe not roles but class/spec uniqueness is being blurred.

Are you just going to change your argument every time you fail to come up with a defense for it?

Utility has been spread around, yes. Unique utility goes against game balance, though, so it's not what should be unique; playstyle is. None of the specs play exactly the same, and I would even say that Cataclysm made the specs' playstyles even more unique than before by adding more abilities and procs and such. It's no longer "I'm a rogue" "Oh, okay, they're all the same anyway", but it's "I'm a Combat rogue, I bring different utility and play differently than this Assassination rogue" "Oh, okay, you fit into our raid well even though we have a rogue already". Therefore, it is my opinion that uniqueness is in fact not being blurred, but the opposite.

[Einarr]

...wat? O.o

I feel that I am allowed to assume you have not raided or have not completed any dungeons. Tell me how many things don't require strategy.

Troll some more, I beg you.

[boneschaman]

vanilla and strategy? go watch the vanilla ragnaros world first

burst burst burst burst burst burst ... 5 minutes later ... kill adds ... burst burst burst boss down

[sandmoth12]

Vanilla and BC had strategy? Where?

Plus, RPG means Role Playing Game, not Real Time Strategy. Guild Wars 2 could potentially be the first MMO to surpass WoW exactly because of its hack 'n slash style of gameplay. Nobody really likes %, RNG and procs...

We'll, all the BC heroics absolutely required CC. Now with a geared tank you can blow through heroics without CC. Raids required guilds to try many different strategies to succeed even on a single boss. In pvp every class had a weakness you had to try an exploit to win the match. However, if you knew your classes weakness you could defend it. Now it's simple the same strategy for all matches "CC any target then burst down any other target.

[DeltrusDisc]

I miss having strategies in world of warcraft, nowadays it's just burst and burst and burst

Hell there was once strategy in setting up your talent tree. In setting up your raid comp (now almost anything is viable, unless you're world-first class, which you most likely aren't, don't kid yourself hehe). There was strategy involved in soloing, now any 85 can defeat any 85 daily trash, I remember back at 70 being a holy priest that was a mighty difficult task, on the Isle of Quel'Danas for instance.... *shudders*.

The list goes on and on and on and on and

[Rivin]

Hell there was once strategy in setting up your talent tree. In setting up your raid comp (now almost anything is viable, unless you're world-first class, which you most likely aren't, don't kid yourself hehe). There was strategy involved in soloing, now any 85 can defeat any 85 daily trash, I remember back at 70 being a holy priest that was a mighty difficult task, on the Isle of Quel'Danas for instance.... *shudders*.

The list goes on and on and on and on and

There was no strategy in setting up talent trees. Theorycrafters calculated the mathematically optimal spec and you either copied that or suffered.

There was no real strategy in setting up raid comps. You brought the classes with the utility you needed, and if there were any spots left over you could bring whoever.

There was no strategy in soloing. Either your spec sucked at it or not. And soloing as Holy was difficult? Haha! I did Quel'Danas on a terribly-geared Holy priest all the time in BC. It was easy, just tediously-long. Holy was actually better for soloing than Shadow was.

[Adalwolf]

We'll, all the BC heroics absolutely required CC. Now with a geared tank you can blow through heroics without CC. Raids required guilds to try many different strategies to succeed even on a single boss. In pvp every class had a weakness you had to try an exploit to win the match. However, if you knew your classes weakness you could defend it. Now it's simple the same strategy for all matches "CC any target then burst down any other target.

I didn't CC much in BC after I got geared. I CC'ed a lot in Cata dungeons when I had 333 gear. Raids in Cataclysm, overall, are harder than most raids in BC. You taling to someone that killed Kel'thuzad 40-man. What changed is that now you have normal and heroic mode. Personally, I think that to kill the SAME boss again, just with a different mechanic, is very lame. Sure, to kill heroic Al'akir is cool, but it would be a lot cooler is you hadn't killed him already on normal.

[Deleted]

o-O I find this hard to fap too...

Did you reply to the wrong thread? cos that made me laugh out loud.

[StationaryHawk]

Despite how much strategy WoW requires, or how many spells classes share, WoW is still an MMORPG by definition. You are still in a massively multiplayer online society, playing the roles of your characters.

[Prof_Sarcastic]

RP = Role-Playing. You can fill the role of a healer, tank, or damage dealer in WoW.

I am saddened that people think this is what role-playing means.

[Vanaline]

WoW is hardly more of an MMO than Diablo than Guild Wars anymore. Hubs and instances for 99.9% of the game

I miss one thing about vanilla, and that was the world.

[Rivin]

WoW is hardly more of an MMO than Diablo than Guild Wars anymore. Hubs and instances for 99.9% of the game.

Diablo had a completely different multiplayer system. I understand that you don't like the Dungeon Finder, but you should also understand that your personal likes and dislikes do not alter genres. If a game is still massively-multiplayer and online, then it is still an MMO by definition.

[mordale]

Maybe not roles but class/spec uniqueness is being blurred.

actually opposite, before it was had to tell one spec of mage apart from another.
now there are a plethora of ways each spec of each class makes it self unique.

[The Madgod]

Funny how when I think of RPG I think not of classes but of personalities, character backgrounds, etc. Stuff that RP'ers deal with, not really class mechanics.

But yeah everyone's right, the style of gameplay (hack and slash / strategy) doesn't correlate with the type of game WoW is, WoW is still relatively strategy based. Even if the strategies are fairly negligable sometimes, it's still there. No boss is a straight up burn with only healing the tank, there's some mechanic or another that does something, and therefore there is a strategy to the boss, whether it is as simple as "dont matter if you stand in fire, just heal through it" or more along the lines "dodge the traps, kill the dogs first, switch targets while one is frozen, healers be ready for extra damage at blah and blah points." Either are strategies.

[mordale]

I am saddened that people think this is what role-playing means.

role playing means you play a role, a role however means many things.

[Prof_Sarcastic]

role playing means you play a role, a role however means many things.

Then every game other than Tetris-type games are roleplaying. OOH IM PLAYING THE ROLE OF A BLUE HEDGEHOG, LOOK AT ME IM RPING! Entirely useless as a description in that case.

[papajohn4]

I am saddened that people think this is what role-playing means.

this...

I am also against the homogenizing of the classes..yes I remember so many times we canceled raids in TBC because we missed X class and it was no fun at all!but at the end I preffer this over what is going now...

no matter what class you go with, no matter what proffessions you chose, nothing matters..just install DBM and go...

I preffer the times that x class was best at this and suck at this. Although i understand the people who preffer the situation as it is now.Everything is a matter of taste and personal decisions.

But I doubt blizzard homogenized classes in favor of raids..they mostly did that in their eternal try to balance pvp yet they failed once again...it reminds me the movie "Fountain" where that protagonist is searching a cure for death until he accept it :P

[Askyl]

Love all scrubs here saying "LOL WAT STRATEGY IN RPG LOLOL". Really? Are you just young or stupid? No offence.. Have you even played RPG games? The new ones like Assassin's Creed are fun, very fun, but it's like playing a movie. Old school good RPG games are strategic and mindbreaking (with puzzles, a lot of thinking etc). So yes, strategy is, or was, a very huge part of RPG games.

Wrath of the lich king was close to hack and slash.. I quit in Cata so I don't really know for sure how it is now.

[Rivin]

Love all scrubs here saying "LOL WAT STRATEGY IN RPG LOLOL". Really? Are you just young or stupid? No offence.. Have you even played RPG games? The new ones like Assassin's Creed are fun, very fun, but it's like playing a movie. Old school good RPG games are strategic and mindbreaking (with puzzles, a lot of thinking etc). So yes, strategy is, or was, a very huge part of RPG games.

But strategy is not required for a game to be an RPG. It doesn't matter how prevalent it is in them; the OP claimed the game was straying away from being an RPG, despite that his reason didn't contradict the definition of RPG.

[DeltrusDisc]

There was no strategy in soloing. Either your spec sucked at it or not. And soloing as Holy was difficult? Haha! I did Quel'Danas on a terribly-geared Holy priest all the time in BC. It was easy, just tediously-long. Holy was actually better for soloing than Shadow was.

Fair enough, not difficult, I often use difficult to mean more than it actually does. It was annoyingly long though doing those dailies. If I was ever outnumbered there was a decent chance I'd die however, I was still fairly new. =/

btw unrelated, I like your siggy.

Q is a letter!