They definitely are... One can have different tastes and maybe like or dislike Blizzard games/expansion... but compared to all the other companies (and I mean all of them) Blizzard is certainly top three when talking about quality.
They definitely are... One can have different tastes and maybe like or dislike Blizzard games/expansion... but compared to all the other companies (and I mean all of them) Blizzard is certainly top three when talking about quality.
Those zones in particular aren't seamless, though; DK, Pandaren, Worgen and Goblin starting areas are not attached to the rest of the world in the same way vanilla questing zones are. Of course, for all we know, Pandaren and Goblin areas -could- be distinct continents, but Worgen and DK zones are in distinct areas from the world, and yet people can't enter them. They're instances, just ones which are open to players.
I don't really find the loading screens to be painful, though that is a matter of personal opinion. If you're rapidly changing between zones and story instances, I can see how it would be painful, but that isn't the meat of the game.Having about fifty (painfully slow even from SSD!) loading screens while doing the very first area for levels 1-8ish (including the city for story quest NPC's) is a sign that the game is a turd compared to WoW. Although to be honest half of those were caused by overflow queues, but it still does not excuse the retarded server infrastructure they've designed.
That said, even 25 loading screens should get you to level 16, not level 8, unless you're constantly ducking back into the city at every opportunity.
If you are particularly bold, you could use a Shiny Ditto. Do keep in mind though, this will infuriate your opponents due to Ditto's beauty. Please do not use Shiny Ditto. You have been warned.
Of course they're still a quality game maker. MoP has been the best xpac yet, pretty much hitting in all the right places. For comparison's sake, I have played SWTOR, Rift, and GW2. While all of them had some solid points that are better than WoW at some of the stuff they do, none of them do so much nearly as well. After 9 years it's finally on a downswing, but the fact of the matter is, 7 million people still play it. The game continues to improve, but I doubt it'll be enough to grow the population anymore. In the end, you can only rework an old game with an old engine for so long.
Heart of the Swarm was an expansion felt like it added more than the typical xpac in an RTS. The Kerrigan as a hero unit and the unit evolution system set it apart quite nicely from the upgrade/research system of the first game. And on top of that, in the multiplayer, Blizzard keeps up on unit balance better than any other company in the biz. The Arcade thing is a really nice addition too. There is not a single RTS out there that can touch the quality of this game, it's unarguably the best game in the RTS genre.
Now the game that is probably the reason for the OP starting this thread: D3. Best ARPG to date. The RMAH sucks for sure, lets just get that out of the way. To compare it to the current game people like to compare it to: Torchlight 2. While TL2 does some things really nicely such as socket variation and a decent variety of bosses and rare creature, each character's toolset isn't nearly as diverse as any class in D3. Granted, I've only rolled an Embermage and Engineer in that game, in both cases I didn't feel nearly as much variety in abilities and effects as there are in D3s classes. While D3 doesn't have the same long term appeal that D2 did, times change and people change. Sure running CS or whatever over and over again was awesome back in 2002, with the overall cost of PC gaming going down, especially in the realm of game prices thanks to Steam, it's pretty hard to play the same levels over and over again when your 200 game Steam library beckons. I still sunk 300 hours into that game before finally really getting bored. I can't say I know anybody that has any less than 40 or 50 hours in that game, which is still a hell of a lot of time.
That was about 50 loading screens on first week after the game launched. Half of those from overflow queues (probably not as big problem now) and half from simply entering/leaving the various instanced NPCs following the story quest (I did all follow-ups to it as soon as the level was high enough to start).
That is simply ridiculous compared to WoW. If you start as any vanilla race today you can get to level 60 before seeing first loading screen which gets you to outland.
Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
Trolling should be.
Moving into and out of story instances, from level 1 to level 8, isn't that many. It might end up being something like 15, with a healthy serving of going back into the city, but other than that I don't think it's quite that high a number.
Assuming you never use your hearthstone.That is simply ridiculous compared to WoW. If you start as any vanilla race today you can get to level 60 before seeing first loading screen which gets you to outland.
If you are particularly bold, you could use a Shiny Ditto. Do keep in mind though, this will infuriate your opponents due to Ditto's beauty. Please do not use Shiny Ditto. You have been warned.
I think it is a matter of opinion... the loading screens didn't bother me at all, maybe because I played Ragnarok Online for like 8 years (still play from time to time)... even after playing WoW for many years I don't think it's a problem to have a loading screen when switching maps... I liked RO, I liked GW2, I liked WoW... but getting back to the OP, I think Blizzard is in the top three of companies, when talking about quality (whether you like a game/expansion or not)
I don't think they were that great to begin with. I love the lore in the Warcraft universe, but game wise I would not say it is the best, they just chose a good time to release it. Since there was nothing really out there to compete and already had some fan base from W1,2 and 3 they made a good start. Although the game was and still is good, lately the changes they have been doing don't scream at me quality. It seems they are slipping further and further into the "make as much money as you possibly can", pointing at those ridiculous head pieces and the upcoming bought XP potion. This is of course my opinion, I don't say it's right or wrong.
Last edited by mmocf2cc86af6c; 2013-08-06 at 01:20 PM.
Anyone who has played the first Mass Effect knows exactly how Blizzard gets around load screens. Just like the elevator non-load screen set up in Mass Effect, Blizzard also cleverly disguises their loading time. Instead of using an elevator they use huge expanses of nothing between map areas, playing a modern mmo and going back to wow it's pretty easy to see how much space is wasted in WoW and how much of the terrain is just load buffering.
Nice looking load buffering, but still.
Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
Trolling should be.
In short.... No. Not since they were devoured by Activision. Big gaming companies buying up smaller developers is good for making money but bad for game quality. Thats the bottom line.
It isn't a matter of being sloppy, it's a decision about spending resources. When developing anything with multiple pages you always have to consider what your transitions are and whether to smooth them over or just to pull the bandaid off. Much of the consensus in app development and web design has landed squarely on getting the loading over quickly and using the loading screen as a preview of the ui layout giving the user the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the program while it's launching. With a game the decision is more nuanced; you are balancing the immersion breaking of a loading screen versus the immersion breaking of constant luls in action.
Neither method is inherently good or bad.
Blizzard is like George Lucas.
They made some great stuff back in the day, but now its mostly crap.
Diablo, StarCraft, Brood War, Diablo II and Lord of Destruction were all great. Even Warcraft III was fun, albeit a bit flawed.
But that Blizzard is gone now, and we will never see them again. Vanilla WoW had its moments, BC was fun at times, but its gone downhill since.
I'm not saying everything they've done is awful, but the flaws and mistakes have multiplied quite a bit.
StarCraft II is fun if you play it with friends or against other players, but the campaign is awful. The story is a joke, and a slap in the face to the original.
The same goes for Diablo III.
Wrath did have its moments too, but Cataclysm was pretty bad. Mists is better, but not by a ton.
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So the bottom line is, no. Blizzard isn't a great developer anymore. At least not to me.
And if you spend resources into wrong places like eyecandy (GW2, AoC, Aion, FFXIV...) the end result is there's no lasting power in the game. People come back to WoW because it's done so well, not because of what it looks like.
Ever since Half-Life did completely seamless world in 1998 that has been my measuring stick of sloppy work in AAA 3D games.
Which MMORPG has constant action? Oh... None?
Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
Trolling should be.
I don't want to argue. Everyone has their own opinion.
I just didn't like it. In the opening scene, Mengsk releases Tychus from prison and sends him on a mysterious mission. It was written to be some kind of "shocking twist ending" when they had him reveal who he was working for all along, and we were supposed to feel emotion when Jim shot him in the face. I didn't feel anything. The characters were flat and uninteresting.
In the original StarCraft, Jim Raynor was a cunning tactician. He was a smart and brave leader. In SCII, he's an idiot. A dim-witted cowboy who has the hots for the mutated chick that killed his best friend, Fenix.
Horner: "Sir, it looks like the sun's energy jumped 500%!"
Raynor: "Whoa, slow down Matt! What does it mean?"
The dialog was pretty poorly written.
There's more, but like I said... I don't want to argue.
If you think its good, then great. I just didn't care for it.
It is very likely that kotick, morhaime, and morhaime's bonus goalposts in fact measure it exactly that way - by the numbers.
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this in and of itself is a highly biased viewpoint - essentially, across the present and former playerbase, you cannot recognize that some cross-section would in fact actually prefer that expansion, and that any such vote is totally based on this 'nostalgia' thing I read about here?
Comments like this are self-disqualifying on having any credibility on a topic - not being able to understand that other people have opinions wildly divergent from your own for perfectly legitimate reasons (not just the nostalgia card).
[edit - in later post you actually are a lot more reasonable so maybe I am dead wrong here]
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Indeed, the forum has many posters who use public numbers in a misleading or deceptive fashion.
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and how about pac-man? they must have been embarrassed to release that cartridge.
Asteroids was at least functionally very similar to the coin-op.
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proper presentation is people who (in the US) say they liked Old Coca-Cola better than New Coke are just being nostalgic. New coke and old coke are different, but there is no objective reason other than nostalgia for someone to say they prefer the old coke.
Last edited by Deficineiron; 2013-08-07 at 02:37 PM.
Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.
Yeah, absolutely, they just attracted too many of the wrong kind of players.
The night is dark and full of terrors...
If you are particularly bold, you could use a Shiny Ditto. Do keep in mind though, this will infuriate your opponents due to Ditto's beauty. Please do not use Shiny Ditto. You have been warned.