WoW posts excerpts

[Chioxin]

[Awe for crying out loud I write another novel =( ... sigh]

I've yet to see anything bad about any of the two games being poked at here. I think you're misguided or just trying to express something you can't.

I'm a fan of both games for various reasons as they both do things exceptionally well compared to the other, though I'll dare say I think WoW does more... but the one thing WoW doesn't do is build a community where as Horizons really hits that nail on the head.

As for you changing the world of Horizons? How? Every event that has happened was planned to happen as it did and despite the fact you might have taken part in the event, it's end was already decided. Secondly you pointed out you can /change the world/ and it will have an effect... Are you speaking of the dryad and satyrs? They're about the only thing we effectively had to do that actually unlocked game content. Amusing, if you'd played WoW when it started you'd known that there was a whole playfield and dungeon or two that needed unlocking in Silithus that required an entire server to work on and complete. Not to mention when I think Naxrammus was around floating necropolis's launched attacks on the various home cities and dungeons changed with random new bosses to fight... Much like the Aegis attacks on our own towns at times.

WoW has world wide festivals, things to do quest to complete during these times that are fun and playful. Winter Festival, Summer Festival, that dark moon or what not festival the first week of every month. Ever play with the "Tonks?" or have your fortune told? My WoW guild would get together and make a party of these events and they were as much fun as some of the parties I had in HZ.

The amusing thing about this discussion is that ... Someone who just joined HZ now could make the same accusations about HZ as you make on WoW as far as world dynamics go, because they weren't around or bothered to participate in events prior.

As to the grind... Pick your poison. I play in both worlds for they both offer a different experience, and a different grind. If I want to fight I'll be in WoW as at least the system works well and with the right people it's very strategic. Pull me aside some time and I'll tell you some of the incredible encounters I've had with just my roomate against some bosses meant for three. If I want to scratch at nodes of ore for endless hours, I'll be in Horizons and don't think I'm being sarcastic... Lately you'll see me there doing just that and chatting away in channels, or tells.

As to the itemization bit, well... You don't think Horizons is itemized at all? People put together and min max their armor by hunting down components, where as those in WoW raid bosses or battle eachother to earn the points for their armor sets. In the end, it's all the same just with a different means to getting there.

In summary:

Both games are strong in different areas, but neither is terrible.

Oh, and there was a comment about roleplay... I've had times where I just roleplayed all night long in WoW, just like I did in HZ. Heh on many servers there are dedicated bars with players acting as maids or owners and even have opening and closing hours. To top it off, entire guilds are dedicated to RP so much as to gathering their groups and playing through instances in a story telling way.

Here's the key to any MMO and your experience with an MMO. The mechanics do play a part in some way, but not as much as who you run into and how you try and get yourself into the community and flow of the world. Ask most people in Horizons why they stay? It's usually, but not always, going to be because they enjoy the company.

I can appreciate why one would like one world over the other, but I can't appreciate those who would rip at one world over the other claiming their preferences and views are the only ones. THey both have their place, and honestly, when HZ was more popular the forums [Tazoon.com, yes I'm old] looked JUST AS BAD AS what the WoW forums looked like.

[Corvinus]

[when HZ was more popular the forums [Tazoon.com, yes I'm old] looked JUST AS BAD AS what the WoW forums looked like.

It still does with Dragons lumping on Bipeds and Bipeds lumping on Dragons and everyone lumping on anyone who disagrees
Last point
Horisons = WROV ( Wont Run On Vista ) WoW= DROV ( Does Run On Vista )

[Vahrokh]

I'm a fan of both games for various reasons as they both do things exceptionally well compared to the other, though I'll dare say I think WoW does more... but the one thing WoW doesn't do is build a community where as Horizons really hits that nail on the head.

WoW of course is more polished, has more content and all. There has to be a difference when you have a 100M USD a month behind a 9M subscriptions title vs a 3k or so other title.

I'd say the biggest difference is that WoW has an "endgame" while Horizons is more of a game without a real "objective". You basically "just" live.
Still, as Black Temple raider, I feel WoW's endgame concept is flawed in many ways. Too excessive, too demanding, promoting ugly and harsh competition between those who should be friends, imposing insane stress. And so on and on.

Even then, it manages to be marginally successful at best in what a MMO is about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmorpg

Massive
Multiplayer
Online
Role
Playing
Game

Massive, it's massive for sure. Still, we are 30 people on a 18,000 players server able to group together and do this flaunted end game (you can't enter MH or BT endgame if not attuned, and being attuned requires days and days of raiding in other instances).
We are so alone that if someone "important" is sick or something, the raid has to be cancelled.
We are so alone that we have to seek for other players on other servers.

Multiplayer: apparently WoW has lots of players, still how many are absolute jerks, uncapable at basic play, gold farmers / spammers and more? In the end, you spend 2-3 hours desperately looking for group. Just enter any random server and "LFG <Instance>". You'll be amazed how much you have to wait. Almost all rolled "DPS" classes to "own" in PvP and you end up always short on tanks and healers.

Online: of course WoW being what it is, has one of the biggest support at being "online". Still, in Europe we had servers rollback, servers shutdown for 5 days (Earthen Ring) with no explanation. Every day in prime time latency goes from 50ms to 360ms in prime time so things become choppy and PvP sucks. Trace routing you see it's their "Telia" (in EU) network that can't cope. When it's Alterac Valley PvP week end (read: free and afk honor epic gear) there's 1800ms lag inside that battleground.
So, while once I believed Horizons was "the sucks", I learned how even "the big guys" have their issues.

Role: even on forced RP shards, the amount of vile and ineducated people is staggering, the RP breach continuous. If you tell them to stop being jerks on a RP server, they cover you in insults, their characters can be labelled "IPWNU" and none will tell a thing. Nor reporting them will ever yield to any result. The non RP shards are a faithful mirror of BattleNet kids in action. The worst of the distilled worst of failed humanity lies there, it's like the slums of online gaming. Some chats are famous even outside WoW as example of mindless rubbish, the famous "Barrens chat" where all you can hope to listen for a whole day is "STFU NOOB U SUX" and more.

Finally, what role do you have in a game where whatever you do, next reboot will delete every trace of it? Sure, you can be "scarab lord". So what? You get an insect mount. That's it. And since WoW players are awfully anal at having everything "fair", "equal", "balanced", even those performing special deeds don't achieve something really special. That insect mount only one player can have is just a "skin" on top of a regular mount, nothing else.
Playing: until you are with your guild (guilds in WoW are like clans for Bronx: you are "one of them" and helped / accepted in a guild) it's fine. But no way you can achieve things like in Horizons when dealing with "randoms". It's absolute jungle, players interaction shallow at best, rude as norm. This is also due to the bad way the chats work in WoW: everytime you change region, you are disconnected from a chat and logged in another, so you can't really build up long lasting talks like you could do i.e. in Dragon or Market chat (on Unity we used that) and make friends.

Game: you'll be amazed at the sheer amount of people that makes of WoW a job. Be it at gold farming or at min maxing everything possible (whining for weeks about "unfair differences" everywhere, like Tauren having 5% more hp => no guild will want a non tauren tank

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=1

or grinding the most gear in the least amount of time, or forcing other players to "specialize" in a certain, min maxing and gimping (them)) you are made sure to play in a constant pressure to do more, do it faster, do it better.
It's like working in a rampant real life company.

Expecially in the most important part, the social aspect, WoW fails miserably and totally.

Now, Horizons has HUGE flaws right and left, but it's a true roleplaying game like old. When I played my MUDs, I felt "at home" when logging on Horizons, it was like a graphic 3D MUD.

When I log on WoW, I feel like I am back in my former company, a bunch of swearing jerks who would constantly pressure employees and making their life miserable.

As for you changing the world of Horizons? How? Every event that has happened was planned to happen as it did and despite the fact you might have taken part in the event, it's end was already decided.

The fact you were not there and did not join an event cannot be fixed by Horizons nor another game. But you can want as hard as you like, in WoW you'll never see a GM acting an event twisting and destroying Harro, because WoW is static, completely static, *cannot* change.

When they change 1 inch of terrain, you get to download a patch, exit the game, apply the patch, relog and only then you see that terrain changed.
The fact that Horizons had some sad past, so that its functionality has not really been used does not alter the fact Horizons *can* do that.

Amusing, if you'd played WoW when it started you'd known that there was a whole playfield and dungeon or two that needed unlocking in Silithus that required an entire server to work on and complete

Silithus was just a farce. The "required an entire server to work on and complete" worked like this:

- First of all, nothing "dynamic". You had to bring loads of random stuff to NPCs in your capital city, basically a simple turn in.

- Alliance would not fill their part, because they were behind in PvE progress and did not want to open the gates and let Horde take more advantage. So we had to wait for months.

- On Horde (my faction), most guilds told us to sod off, they were all stuck at URBS or Molten Core and had ZERO will to give materials to the NPCs since they would not benefit at all from the gates of AQ40 to be opened for us only.

So we decided to grind the insane thousands of materials in our guild alone. "Magically" all the sub-components and raw materials started appearing in what in Horizons would be "connies" at 10 times the price they had 1 day before.

- In any case, past a certain amount of time, the gates would open anyway. No way to affect the story. Give items = gates will open. Refusing = gates will forcibly open anyway past a "timeout". So, even less reasons to turn in stuff.

- When after insane efforts we finished with the stuff, the server could not manage the amount of players that went to see the gates opening.
Result: after weeks of efforts, the event cinematics started for 5 seconds, then the server crashed. We got a rollback and had to re-grind again the stuff of the last week.

Started event again, the cinematics did not play at all and server crashed again. Once back online, the gates were open, the event ruined and did not play any more.

WoW has world wide festivals

Horizons too. Horizons has lots of unused things. The fact the former owners did not use them, is their *human* fault.

Pull me aside some time and I'll tell you some of the incredible encounters I've had with just my roomate against some bosses meant for three.

The most encounters I have are the omnipresent warlocks soloing spawns and whoever comes gets killed by them like an insect.

With the class imbalance we have in WoW, I can solo some 5 men 70 elite outdoor bosses, others can't kill an elite of their own level. For an "hobbyst" and purely PvE game like Horizons I can understand this.

But a game for the millions and with strong emphasis on PvP and claiming they want to become an e-Sport?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esport

There's people making thousand dollars at winning in arena, where some classes can kill others in a purely reliable way and some classes can kill most of the others while the contrary cannot happen.

As to the itemization bit, well... You don't think Horizons is itemized at all? People put together and min max their armor by hunting down components, where as those in WoW raid bosses or battle eachother to earn the points for their armor sets. In the end, it's all the same just with a different means to getting there

I don't recall having to spend 6 hours a day in Horizons or be kicked and guild kicked for low attendance (some guilds in WoW including mine demand 90% attendancy).

My dragon had the best crystals and scales and event techs and the best 101 x 101 plot, yet I did not have to find excuses not to leave home or not to pay visit to my relatives like WoW forces me to (else I am out).

when HZ was more popular the forums [Tazoon.com, yes I'm old] looked JUST AS BAD AS what the WoW forums looked like

Try http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/bo...&forumId=11117

I can't quote any of the posts, because they'd be half censored by the forum and the moderator would ban me for too heavy swearing and stuff.

I am one of the top posters on the WoW forums, whatever hard I try, I'll never find worse on the Horizons forums.

It still does with Dragons lumping on Bipeds and Bipeds lumping on Dragons and everyone lumping on anyone who disagrees
Last point

Dragon vs bipeds look like innocent children fluff compared to the stuff you can find on the WoW forums.

Horisons = WROV ( Wont Run On Vista ) WoW= DROV ( Does Run On Vista )

TBC expansion does not install on my Vista computer since it has a bad bug on the installation folder routine. So if you are not English it crashes and you can't install it.

On Windows XP it works perfectly and on the same folders.

Wonder why WoW patch 2.2 is being delayed and delayed since weeks too? Because they are *converting* WoW to be Vista compatible and as of now they can't get the new sound code to work well when you start the game on Vista.

WoW had the "luck" to run straight well in retro-compatibility mode even if not being a Vista software, while Horizons did not.

[Chioxin]

You're blaming the community on a good number of your points which has nothing to do with the developers or the game itself other than the fact "blizzard" is a well known name as is "Warcraft" and there for it attracts people regardless of whether or not it is a terrible game. I'm not up for a quoting debate on every point though so I'll leave it at that after this. I do think your comments are very contradictory and can be applied to HZ as well in several cases. The only reason they can't right now is because the HZ populace is so small. If it were larger, and had development power.. you'd see a lot more balancing, and a lot more whining, and a lot more gold farming/component farming, among many other things. If Horizons had the money, you'd see the nerf bat flying around. Hell it was doing a pretty good job back in the day when Horizons was just a baby.

WoW serves it's purpose though, and does it incredibly well. It's just not your kind of game. So be it. I think opening up like this on the game in another games forum is kinda weak though. And people "Live" there as well, as I mentioned there are taverns open at various hours and what not. I've attended balls in RP, parties... Gatherings at pubs that were just random folk I didn't even know. People "LIVE" there, it's just not your world type... That or you're not looking in the right places.

By the way.. I'm on EU servers [The Sha'tar]. I rarely ever experienced spikes so I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. Out of the 7 months I've been there, only a couple days were plagued by some terrible disconnectivity but that wasn't Blizzards fault, it was discovered that it was a HUB somewhere in Europe. Blizzard even refunded the 3 or 4 days lost for that problem. It wasn't even their fault! So far I've had the same experience with WoW on US and EU servers both, it's rather good.

Lastly! ... Using "arguements" on the forums is rather weak, even wiki where anyone can change things. 80% of what you'll find on a forum is just silly whiny junk. Yes there are some gems! Most however, is pure junk. You can look through Horizons forums to find the same =) Tazoon.com if it were still around to find more.

That's all from me though I guess. Take care! *goes to gather the components for a flame resistant suit for World of Warcraft, and ponders if he should add crush resistance too... seeing as they might have things thrown at them.*

[Vahrokh]

You're blaming the community on a good number of your points which has nothing to do with the developers or the game itself other than the fact "blizzard"

The total lack of serious moderation on their forums is Blizzard's fault. They have the cash to hire moderators, instead you'll see that if you want to troll / flame / spread a keylogger all you have to do is to do it past office hours or in the week end.

They have very detailed policies they don't apply on the posters as well.

The lack of any control on the RP shards is not community fault, nor the lack of bans to gold farmers, harassers, exploiters (they post some token bans every couple of months and guess what, I still have every and all the obvious bots here, including the repeatedly reported ones).

The fact they make content so that either you min max or are worthless, the fact you must be "XXX spec" to make a certain task, is something the players are complaining about since 2005 and it keeps going strong.

The need of grinding consummables and raid about 4+ hours a day is not players made. Unless you play in the top world guild, even being in a pretty hard core guild you must attend and grind every day.

We are still not done with the last 3 Black Temple bosses and we raid every day. We are not expecially "skilled" but still we are in the top worldwide 200 guilds.

This imposes an heavy tax on your life if you want to see the whole content and it's not the players that made it like that.

You have a "timeout" too, because if you take your time, they release a new expansion and then the whole end game becomes worthless as the first random mob green drop in the next expansion beats what you earned wiping for months.