Istaria is like WoW? no wai

[Akrion]

RE:Thickle:

Another thing that WoW likes to do, that Istaria, FFXI, and other games doesn't seem to, is give you more buttons to press during combat so you're spending less time watching and more time doing things.

Thing about WoW is you have more keypresses, but they're the same key. In Istaria you have a lot of different ability buttons, they just take longer to recycle so you just end up with fewer keypresses over all.

I'd rather play Bloodmage, running blood bolt -> ethereal parox. & Channel Vitae to support it -> Healing across the 5 life heals; Improved Revitalize, Revitalize, Major Heal, Heal, Minor Heal -> Self Sacraficium & Instant Transfer one who's nearly dead than play, say, a Warlock (Which would be WoW's closest bloodmage) doing: 11111111111111111111111-> Shadowbolt, 2222222222222222222222-> Immolate, 11111111111111111111-> Shadowbolt.. xD

[Dhalin]

Thing about WoW is you have more keypresses, but they're the same key. In Istaria you have a lot of different ability buttons, they just take longer to recycle so you just end up with fewer keypresses over all.

I'd rather play Bloodmage, running blood bolt -> ethereal parox. & Channel Vitae to support it -> Healing across the 5 life heals; Improved Revitalize, Revitalize, Major Heal, Heal, Minor Heal -> Self Sacraficium & Instant Transfer one who's nearly dead than play, say, a Warlock (Which would be WoW's closest bloodmage) doing: 11111111111111111111111-> Shadowbolt, 2222222222222222222222-> Immolate, 11111111111111111111-> Shadowbolt.. xD

That's the way WoW *was*. They changed that.

If you want Mage, I'll do a comparison.

WoW Mage, Arcane:

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles (if it procs, if not Arcane Blast again) -> Arcane Barrage -> Fireblast -> Cone of Cold (by now the mob is probably chewing on you) -> Frost Nova -> Blink -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles/Blast.

Current Demo Warlock:

Immolate + Pet Attack (all in one keypress) -> Corruption -> Curse of Agony -> Hand of Guldan -> Incinerate -> Incinerate -> Immolate -> Corruption... etc

It isn't 1 1 1 1 1 1 1, more like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.

Oh, and Arms Warrior? You're constantly mashing buttons, and you have to hit the correct button for what is happening, if you want to play it well, too. And you have to juggle 6-8 abilities and you're never *not* pressing buttons every global cooldown (1.5 seconds).

And even if it were 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 I'd rather do that than to hit a button, wait 10+ seconds, hit another button, wait 10+ seconds, etc.

But like I said earlier, I will admit (and very much appreciate) that VI thankfully gave Dragons more buttons to push, more often. I remember Pre-VI dragons and they were not only boring to play, but just plain not fun when Breezes were your *only* source of healing (other than 5min cooldown instant abilities), and you had no way of bypassing Slash resistance by yourself (beetles, UGH).

Now if only they could take some of that mentality and shuffle that over towards the bipeds... I've tried Warrior and Cleric... oh they got scads of abilities, but they are all on linked timers! What the heck good does it do me to have all of these abilities when I can only use 1 of them every 10 or so seconds?

[Akrion]

That's the way WoW *was*. They changed that.

If you want Mage, I'll do a comparison.

WoW Mage, Arcane:

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles (if it procs, if not Arcane Blast again) -> Arcane Barrage -> Fireblast -> Cone of Cold (by now the mob is probably chewing on you) -> Frost Nova -> Blink -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles/Blast.

Current Demo Warlock:

Immolate + Pet Attack (all in one keypress) -> Corruption -> Curse of Agony -> Hand of Guldan -> Incinerate -> Incinerate -> Immolate -> Corruption... etc

It isn't 1 1 1 1 1 1 1, more like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.

Oh, and Arms Warrior? You're constantly mashing buttons, and you have to hit the correct button for what is happening, if you want to play it well, too. And you have to juggle 6-8 abilities and you're never *not* pressing buttons every global cooldown (1.5 seconds).

And even if it were 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 I'd rather do that than to hit a button, wait 10+ seconds, hit another button, wait 10+ seconds, etc.

But like I said earlier, I will admit (and very much appreciate) that VI thankfully gave Dragons more buttons to push, more often. I remember Pre-VI dragons and they were not only boring to play, but just plain not fun when Breezes were your *only* source of healing (other than 5min cooldown instant abilities), and you had no way of bypassing Slash resistance by yourself (beetles, UGH).

Now if only they could take some of that mentality and shuffle that over towards the bipeds... I've tried Warrior and Cleric... oh they got scads of abilities, but they are all on linked timers! What the heck good does it do me to have all of these abilities when I can only use 1 of them every 10 or so seconds?

Notice though how Warlock in your example is still bound to 5 keys, it's still just a repetitive string of keys. I have more button presses to make than I have keys to hotkey them for Akrion, in fact I have all 10 hotkey bars open. Wow gives you a -few- buttons to push many times, where as Istaria gives you -many- buttons to push less frequently.

A Cleric easily surpasses 5 with its own stuff. Revitalize, Improved Revitalize, Major Heal, Heal, Minor Heal, and group heal already account for 6. All of which are on separate timers and, especially with the speed tech, the first ones cast will be recycled by the time you're done with the last one (minus group heal). And that's just the heal spells. Then there's purify, and mystic blaze for other life spells that aren't buffs or rezzes. Then you've got the AoE shields, Magic Crush, Cherub's Touch, Dispirit Foe, Dispirit Foes, and Instant Heal (Just for abilities that are masterable)

Here's the list of spells and abilities I use consistantly on Akrion while grouped: (For life heals..) Revitalize, Improved Revitalize, Major Heal, Heal, Minor Heal, Group Heal, xGenerateHealth III, xGenerateHealth IV, Instant Heal, Purify, (For life buffs..) Gleaming Shield, (For life debuffs..) Dispirit Foe, Dispirit Foes, (For spirit heals) Self Sacraficium, Instant Transfer, Group Instant Transfer, (For spirit DoT/HoT) Ethereal Leech, Ethereal Paroxysm, Channel Vitae, Soul Link, Boil Blood, (For spirit single hits) Blood Bolt, Stop Blood, Theft of Life, Improved Theft of Life, Exsanguinate, (For spirit buffs) Concentrate Blood, Blood Doll, Blood Shield, (for spirit debuffs) Constrict Blood, Bare Soul, (For druid magic) Lightning Storm, Thunder, Patch of Bramble, and Dark Cyclone. Sometimes I'll use the Sslik Regeneration racial if I need the health boost.

I can't use all of the above as frequently as you would use something in WoW, but there's always -something- I can use, and it's not often the same thing, but all useful. There's never something I'm not pushing, especially as a blood mage with my health being hit by 40-60 per bloodbolt. So it is as I said, there's just more things you can use in Istaria, you just can't use them as frequently.

[Dhalin]

A Cleric easily surpasses 5 with its own stuff. Revitalize, Improved Revitalize, Major Heal, Heal, Minor Heal, and group heal already account for 6.

What's the difference between casting, oh, "Healing Wave" 10 times, or casting Minor Health, Health, Major Health, Revitalize, Improved Revitalize, etc?

All of those Cleric spells do pretty much the same thing. They heal. That's it. You could have cleanse or buff techs on the spells, but in the end, they are all heal spells. They heal you. That's it.

Casting 1 heal over and over again is the same thing as casting 3, 5, 10 different heals once. The spells all sound the same, look almost the same, the only difference is their strength.

Meanwhile, on the melee side of Istaria, when you DO have different abilities, they are oftentimes on linked timers, which I never understood. Spells don't have linked timers, why do melee abilities? Again, I don't see the whole thing about Istarian warriors getting all of those abilities when you can only use 2-3 of them in any given fight.

Meanwhile, over on WoW's end, very, very few classes have multiple abilities that do exactly the same thing. Healers being one of the very few exceptions; they all have 3 main heals. One low-cost, long cast mild heal, one high-cost, long cast, BIG heal, and one fast cast, high cost, mid-heal.

Otherwise, each and every ability is unique, and many class have abilities that interact with each other.

[Kulamata]

Ah, how much is forgotten. Long, long ago, I saw that Horizons was coming, and figured I'd better learn about these MMORPG thingies beforehand, so I played EQ. (I'd been playing Diablo II, lotsa loot, easy death penalty, etc. etc.) EQ was 'orrible! Terrible camera controls, terrible death penalties, sloooowwww progression, very much a pain=fun game. I mean, weeks to train your compass??? Really???

After two weeks I was admitted into early Horizons beta; what a relief, even at that buggy stage. I regard Horizons as having the first modern User Interface; and it had a light death penalty, complex crafting, multi-classing, dragons of course, Sslik and Saris, magnificent world events (for a brief, but brilliant while), and much better graphics (even if beyond the reach of any graphics cards around). Horizons was among the first in player-constructed housing, and of course, player-usable facilities like workshops. PVE-only was less unusual, but was still not a common game type. In some cases, like the UI, Horizons set the standard, and is still recognizable in other games (all hail the brilliant Tango); in other cases, like crafting, the method changed, but the idea of making crafting an important part of the game persisted.

At the time, Horizons had a huge impact; later on, the cumulative effect of some bad choices (hoard leakage, weak dragons, craft grind, the post-merge destruction of the economy, erratic and occasionally misleading customer relations, and disastrous investor relations) and austerity-driven changes (loss of world events, slow bug and exploit fixes, and the collapse of the game lore) obscured the industry-changing aspect of Horizons' innovations.

So, yeah, in some core areas, WoW was like Horizons, and now, so are many other games. Because Horizons taught them all.

[Akrion]

What's the difference between casting, oh, "Healing Wave" 10 times, or casting Minor Health, Health, Major Health, Revitalize, Improved Revitalize, etc?

All of those Cleric spells do pretty much the same thing. They heal. That's it. You could have cleanse or buff techs on the spells, but in the end, they are all heal spells. They heal you. That's it.

No, they're not all the same. Not only do they not heal for the same amount, but the recycle time on the Revitalize spells is slower than the heal spells, and the abilities recycle slower still.

So yeah, they do just heal, but no it's not as simple as just choosing a random heal out of the 5. In WoW you'd use 1 or 2 heals across everybody. *Select person* -> *Heal* -> *Select person* -> *Heal* ->*Select person* -> *Heal* ->*Select person* -> *Heal* -> ...

You can't do that in Istaria, you can't "just heal". If you're healing a group then dropping all your heals on one person is wasteful unless they really need them, or just any random heal on any random person. You have to -watch- the battle and anticipate who may need the more powerful heals. Drop a Major Heal on someone who could of been fine with a Minor Heal then someone who seriously needs healing now must receive one of the slower recycling Revitalizes and/or Minor heal & Heal.

Mix that with Bloodmage:
Someone nearly dead? Well Akrion can drop Self Sacrificium and Instant Transfer for a 2 second heal of ~1600hp (Which is about 3 times that of Improved Revitalize). However, Self Sac recycles every 30 seconds (even slower) and Instant Transfer every 5 minutes, and on top of that the combo will reduce the casters health by roughly 50% of their max. So using that on just anybody isn't smart either, especially since it'll cut the casters health by 50% regardless of how much was actually healed.

Casting 1 heal over and over again is the same thing as casting 3, 5, 10 different heals once. The spells all sound the same, look almost the same, the only difference is their strength.

See above, there's absolutely no way it's the same. In one case you can just select people and pound away at a couple keys, in another case you have to actually consider which of your heals best suits which person in the current situation.

Meanwhile, on the melee side of Istaria, when you DO have different abilities, they are oftentimes on linked timers, which I never understood. Spells don't have linked timers, why do melee abilities? Again, I don't see the whole thing about Istarian warriors getting all of those abilities when you can only use 2-3 of them in any given fight.

Spiritist and Bloodmage get plenty of their own abilities and they're not melee. Bloodmage, for example (assuming max level):
Boil Blood, Stop Blood, Exsanguinate - Direct (Unresistable) Damage abilities.
Boil Blood does an initial hit of damage and then a decent DoT afterwards.
Stop Blood does a bit more damage than Boil Blood for its initial hit, and then has a chance to stun.
Exsanguinate is just straight damage, doing by far the most of the three.

Concentrate Blood, Blood Shield, Blood Doll - Self buffs
Concentrate Blood hits you for 200 health and then increases your max health
by 200.
Blood Shield hits you for ~150-300 health and then gives you a shield that boosts your Armor and Ethereal Armor by 1000 for 2 hits.
Blood Doll hits you for 200 and gives you a doll that you can use to instantly heal yourself for 200 health. (Basically storing health for later).

Constrict Blood, Bare Soul - debuffs
Constrict Blood reduces the enemy's health to 65% of its max for a little bit.
Bare Soul reduces spirit resistances.

Then there's Instant Transfer and Group Instant Transfer, the bloodmage instant-heal abilities. They're not linked. There's also Channel Vitae, Detoxify Self, Detoxify Group..

All of the above are just Bloodmage Abilities. They're not even counting any abilities mastered by other schools. A number of the abilities could definitely use a revamp, but my point is, they're available and they're quite varied.

I'm not exactly sure about Warrior abilities, but you seem to just be lumping every single melee class in as one. What about Reaver, for example?

Meanwhile, over on WoW's end, very, very few classes have multiple abilities that do exactly the same thing. Healers being one of the very few exceptions; they all have 3 main heals. One low-cost, long cast mild heal, one high-cost, long cast, BIG heal, and one fast cast, high cost, mid-heal.

Otherwise, each and every ability is unique, and many class have abilities that interact with each other.

Weren't you just talking about how Istaria's heals "all do the same thing" ? Because by that logic I could say the same regarding Healer's 3 main heals in WoW. And using your description of these heals, I could again do the same: Minor Health, low heal. Health, mid heal. Major Health, high heal. All on a quick timer. Revitalize, mid-high heal. Improved Revitalize, high heal. Slower timer. Instant Heal, BIG heal, slowest timer.

There's also things you can do in Istaria that you can't do in WoW: Start casting Self Sacraficium and queue up Instant Transfer. As soon as Self Sac casts, Instant Transfer will cast immediately afterwards, effectively casting them both at the same time. Healer can utilize this as well and it makes for great emergency healing. The same can be done with just about any spell combined with any insta-cast ability. WoW's global cool down and lack of a queue wouldn't allow this to happen.

[Dhalin]

You can't do that in Istaria, you can't "just heal". If you're healing a group then dropping all your heals on one person is wasteful unless they really need them, or just any random heal on any random person. You have to -watch- the battle and anticipate who may need the more powerful heals. Drop a Major Heal on someone who could of been fine with a Minor Heal then someone who seriously needs healing now must receive one of the slower recycling Revitalizes and/or Minor heal & Heal.

It sounds like it has been awhile since you've played WoW or did any healing in it. Yes, there are 3 heals, but you have to pick and choose which one, and God Help You if you are bad at choosing what heals to use when, because you *will* run out of mana, or end up with a dead tank. They give you 3 heals over in WoW, and you have to know which one to use when.

Weren't you just talking about how Istaria's heals "all do the same thing" ?

I said that WoW's healers are the exception to the rule when it comes to multiple abilities doing essentially the same thing.

I said, and I paraphrase: "In WoW, very few classes/specs have two or more abilities do exactly the same thing, except for the 3 heals that all healers get".

Well, let's look at Istaria, again. Care to tell me the difference between Smash and Power Attack? The numbers look different on the Abilities screen, but when I use them... at most, there's a 10 point difference (if even that, and that's *with* a mace that has +Smash tech) and they are on linked timers and have the same cooldown. They both do physical damage, they share a cooldown. So, uh. yeah.

There are other abilities I remember seeing and I was scratching my head going "Um, okay, I don't get the idea behind this..."

There's also things you can do in Istaria that you can't do in WoW: Start casting Self Sacraficium and queue up Instant Transfer. As soon as Self Sac casts, Instant Transfer will cast immediately afterwards, effectively casting them both at the same time. Healer can utilize this as well and it makes for great emergency healing. The same can be done with just about any spell combined with any insta-cast ability. WoW's global cool down and lack of a queue wouldn't allow this to happen.

Some abilities (usually important ones like taunts or survival abilities, things that are meant to be last-ditch effort to save yourself or someone else's life in an emergency) are not on GCD over in WoW. Otherwise, they created the GCD to..

1). Lessen the impact of Lag..
2). Prevent people from mashing keys blindly..
3). Actually give the character a chance to finish what you told them to do before telling them to do something else.

Okay, you want to talk about Istaria? How about this... my Warrior/Cleric biped oftentimes runs into this, sometimes I will tell her to do something, and then tell her to do something else and I wait, wait, wait, wait, and FINALLY she does it when she's done with the previous action's animation. Heck, the spellcasting system doesn't even make sense.

Sometimes I'll cast Revitalize and it'll take, oh, 2 seconds to cast. Other times it takes almost 4 seconds to cast the same spell. Sometimes the spell is cast in <1.5 seconds. There appears to be no predictability whatsoever at all, which I find quite odd.

And then, there's Dragons and Tail Whip. Tail Whip is probably one of the longest animations I know of, for melee abilities. I call it the Lag Whip because when you tell your dragon to Tail Whip (Breath of Fire also does this), your dragon will refuse to do anything else until that loooooooooong animation is done. Except spellcasting; sometimes you get lucky and the dragon will start casting the spell while doing Tail Whip or Breath of Fire.

I'd rather have a GCD system, at least that you can predict and you know when your character may do something and you know what to expect when you tell your character to do something.

Edit: Oh, and BTW, WoW added something like 3 patches ago called "Lag Tolerance". It is possible to Queue up commands with this, if you do it right. I can use 1 instant-cast ability and then, before the GCD is up, hit the button for a 2nd instant-cast ability and it will fire. There's still a 1.5 second wait between the two abilities, though, but on the client-side, it might not look like it. Like I said above, though, in Istaria, sometimes the wait time between abilities is more than 1.5 sec... depends on the animation.

[Raptress]

Dhalin, a lot of the "lag" you're talking about that doesn't seem to make any sense to you, I am 90% sure is just superficial. As far as I can tell, you are still making melee swipes while you're "stuck" in the BoF animation. You might be able to see this as you appear to make two or three swipes in rapid succession after a long attack animation.

Similarly, I'm pretty sure a spell always has the same cast time no matter what the casting bar shows. I've had cases where that thing seems to get totally desynched from what's actually going on. I tend to rely only on my combat log to see if the spell has actually hit in those cases.

I also have cases fairly frequently where I have killed a mob, but it still remains standing until all my attack animations/damage has actually shown up on my client. The mob is dead though; it does not make any further attacks. It's just standing there waiting to display that it is in fact dead.

Though the appearances of Istaria's combat system are a bit buggy, I believe that everything is still going through as it should based on my observations.

[Dhalin]

Dhalin, a lot of the "lag" you're talking about that doesn't seem to make any sense to you, I am 90% sure is just superficial. As far as I can tell, you are still making melee swipes while you're "stuck" in the BoF animation. You might be able to see this as you appear to make two or three swipes in rapid succession after a long attack animation.

Similarly, I'm pretty sure a spell always has the same cast time no matter what the casting bar shows. I've had cases where that thing seems to get totally desynched from what's actually going on. I tend to rely only on my combat log to see if the spell has actually hit in those cases.

I also have cases fairly frequently where I have killed a mob, but it still remains standing until all my attack animations/damage has actually shown up on my client. The mob is dead though; it does not make any further attacks. It's just standing there waiting to display that it is in fact dead.

Though the appearances of Istaria's combat system are a bit buggy, I believe that everything is still going through as it should based on my observations.

That might be so, but it does cause problems on the user's end.

Like the Breath of Fire/Tail Whip example. With the lag, you choose to use Breath of Fire, and then tell your dragon to, say, bite or something... and then you Queue another ability, say Silver Strike or something... the client won't free the 2nd slot up until Tail Whip's animation is done. Even if you are machinegunning attacks as soon as Tail Whip is done. You still have to wait until you can do anything else.

Or the whole "mob is dead, but appears to still be there" can get in the way of looting, or attacking other mobs. Server-side, the mob is dead. Sure. But you also have 2 more mobs attacking you, and normally you'd switch to one of those other mobs and start working on them ASAP, and you would if such lag wasn't present.

As to the cast bar, I'm not so sure it has to do with lag. When I am experiencing unusually high latency, there's a noticeable gap from the time I push a hotkey to the time I see the action actually execute. That's normal. But there are times that I will hit a key and my character performs that action almost instantaneously. Under the same conditions, I'll try a Revitalize, ~4 second cast. Later on, in the same battle, still almost instantaneous response times, I'll click Revitalize and get a ~1.5 second cast which is almost twice as fast. I can see lag happening now and then, but modifying a spell's casting speed more than 2x? Never seen another game that does it so erratically. Usually if you're having any sort of latency over 200ms, the results of such latency are usually consistent, in relation to how much latency exactly you're having.

As to the spell cast bars being messed up due to character animations, that's unlikely because with my Biped Cleric/Warrior, Most of my heal casts fall during Auto-Attack time and auto-attacks have very short animations. I'll watch more closely to see if the slow/fast casts come before/after certain animations, but I doubt it.

[Raptress]

I wasn't saying that the "varying" cast times and the cast bar desynching were related to long animations. I apologize if I wasn't clear. I don't know what causes the casting bar thing, just that it happens.

I do still think it's just superficial though, especially since I have someone else who plays Istaria within view of me while I'm playing. He gets terrible lag sometimes, where he won't see his character cast a spell for literal minutes after he's clicked. However, his spell cast does go through as soon as it should because I can see it on my end.

He's been able to heal characters of mine by screen-watching, even though, on his screen, the character can appear to be almost at the edge of his view distance and far out of range of his spells. So long as I am in range on my client, everything works fine. It's.. interesting. >.>

[Balthizar]

1> Istaria is older.
2> Istaria is a MMORPG 1.0 where WoW is a 2.0

Definition of MMORPG 1.0

In these games the developer provides a framework for players to have fun together.

Defintion of MMORPG 2.0

Here you get a much more limited game, but with e-sport elements. They are all about being the best at this and the best at that, beating others.



There is also sandbox vs theme park differences. Istaria is a sandbox where WoW is a Theme Park.


Just because it's 1.0 and 2.0 doesn't mean 2.0 is automatically better, though no one can deny 2.0 games has the potential to get way more players. I'm not much of a 2.0 fan myself and thats just how the world is now.

I more or less second just this in thought on MMO's in genral. I'm a 1.0 player myself I like UO/Istaria/EVE type games.

[Dragonboy]

Istaria is in no way like WoW… If there are things that look similar that is probably just a coincidence.

Istaria has things that people like, the crafting system and dragons being the most prominent. On the other hand WoW probably also has things that some people like. Okay granted… many people… I don’t know what other people like about it, but it is probably not something that I like.

In a way all MMO’s are the same… In all MMO’s I have played you create an Avatar which you use to run / fly around in. So someone could just as easily claim that WoW is a SWG ripoff…

[Dhalin]

1> Istaria is older.
2> Istaria is a MMORPG 1.0 where WoW is a 2.0

Definition of MMORPG 1.0

In these games the developer provides a framework for players to have fun together.

Defintion of MMORPG 2.0

Here you get a much more limited game, but with e-sport elements. They are all about being the best at this and the best at that, beating others.

It is more like...

Definition of MMORPG 1.0:

Older MMORPG where "Pain is Fun", where leveling involves mostly killing the same mobs over and over and over again for the majority of your EXP to level up, where you're forced to do the same thing over and over and over again before the game allows you to pass that phase into another phase that is repeated over and over and over again. Other people use the term "Grindy". Grind = Repetition upon Repetition. MMORPG 1.0 games are very easy to bot, due to the more "simple" nature of such grinds.

Istaria's adventuring system is slowly getting towards 2.0 with this, as there are more quests, but it is a long way away, yet. The crafting system, however, is pure 1.0 style grind. Pure. Grind. Un-adulterated grind.

MMORPG 2.0:

Newer MMORPG that gives you more variety of things to do. MMORPG 2.0 games tend to be more difficult (not impossible though) to bot due to the complexity and variety found in these games. MMORPG 2.0 games usually offer you multiple ways of gaining EXP and within those multiple ways of gaining EXP there's also variety in there too.

Using WoW as an example, there are 4 main ways of gaining EXP:

1). Pure Grind. You can go out and kill junk endlessly. This will work, but it is far from optimal.

2). Solo Questing. The quests (especially after "The Shattering"!) are quite varied, some quests want X of this Y of that killed, some quests want you to get X of Y item from Z mob, some quests want you to go kill X boss mob, some quests give you an item that you're supposed to use on mobs X number of times, etc. Sure, at the end of the day, it might be "just another kill X of Y" but yet that is mixed in with other quest types.

3). Dungeons. Once you reach Level 15, you can enter the Random Dungeon Finder and wait until it finds you a dungeon group. These give lots of XP and sometimes you find nice items, and until you reach Level 78, you get a bag that gives you 1 random piece of armor that might be good for you (vendor it, if it isn't). There's lots of said dungeons, and plenty of variety.

4). PvP. Never liked PvP but PvP now gives you viable XP in WoW. You can use the random battleground finder to enter several different battlegrounds, where you can duke it out with other players for your XP. There's no more variety than playing against human-controlled characters; some people love this sort of thing.

And, when you're not doing that, you can...

1). Participate in Endgame PvE (5-player dungeons or 10/25 player raids) or Endgame PvP (Battlegrounds, Rated Battlegrounds, Arena).
2). Collect achievements! These range from holiday achievements to dungeons, to PvP, to other such things.
3). Collect pets and mounts! There are 150+ mounts and 150+ pets in the game to collect.
4). Crafting!

That, to me, is the definition of MMORPG 1.0 vs MMORPG 2.0.

But like I always said, Istaria has playable real dragons, and until an MMORPG 2.0 game comes out that does, I'm not likely to stop playing Istaria. The buildable lairs is just icing on the cake, TBH.

[awdz]

It is more like...

Definition of MMORPG 1.0:

Older MMORPG where "Pain is Fun", where leveling involves mostly killing the same mobs over and over and over again for the majority of your EXP to level up, where you're forced to do the same thing over and over and over again before the game allows you to pass that phase into another phase that is repeated over and over and over again. Other people use the term "Grindy". Grind = Repetition upon Repetition. MMORPG 1.0 games are very easy to bot, due to the more "simple" nature of such grinds.

Istaria's adventuring system is slowly getting towards 2.0 with this, as there are more quests, but it is a long way away, yet. The crafting system, however, is pure 1.0 style grind. Pure. Grind. Un-adulterated grind.

Wowsers, do I disagree with this impression of Istaria. I love the variety of quests and the lore associated with them. Crafting mixes well with adventuring - go out hunting for comps and work off dps by crafting items so that you can hunt more effectively next time.

I really don't consider it pain at all, whereas the competition style of 2.0 is extremely frustrating for me even when I win 'cause I hate leaving others stuck outta luck.

As for collecting things, I don't have room in my inventory/vault/storage for all the fun things I like to keep - and in Istaria, they are blended into the game/lore, not side things that don't really fit with anything else in the game.

So I guess it's just a matter of preference, which style of gaming folks enjoy more. I know mine.

[Raptress]

The crafting system, however, is pure 1.0 style grind. Pure. Grind. Un-adulterated grind.

Heh... Have you ever played a Death Knight? Ever picked up Mining and then had to level that from zero to max without the buffer of leveling while doing it? That grind was worse than Istaria's craft grind, imo.

I don't think WoW's crafting system is as good as Istaria's and certainly not better. WoW's crafting basically boils down to grabbing resources you see while you're out leveling and processing them when you're back in town. And if you're going to spend a large amount of time farming mats, then.. see my comment about leveling Mining on a DK.

The thing about Istaria's craft grind is that it's passive. I can alt-tab. I can read a book. I can watch TV. I just have to listen for the dig sound to stop, at which point I tab back to Istaria, move to another node, double-click, and go about whatever else I was doing.

Can't do this in WoW. If I'm gathering mats in WoW, my attention must be on WoW. I have to fly a continuous circuit around a zone, checking spawn points of whatever it is I'm looking for. And god forbid I'm on a highly populated server with other people who are doing this.

I also dislike how crafting is completely secondary in WoW. If I want to craft in that game, I must adventure. There might even be hard caps on skill that I have to be a certain adventure level to break. I can't remember.

In Istaria, I could get to level 100 DCRA without ever fighting a mob if I wanted to. I could be a pure crafter. I also prefer an experience level system to WoW's skill system where you gain skill points semi-randomly. There is nothing worse than running out of mats one point away from a critical skill level that you were sure you would have been able to get.

The actual product of the crafting is another thing. It always felt to me that every profession only really brought a few things to the table; everything else was either just there to skillup on, or was gear that you would likely never use, either because it wasn't worth the mats or because you'd outgrown it by the time you could make it. Many of these pieces don't really sell on the AH either. They're just... there.

Istaria has the vastly superior technique system. You don't just make one Mithril Dexterity Back Scale with +25 Strength, +25 TnC, +25 Armor. You can make that scale with any configuration of stats that you have the techniques for. You also don't have an endless list of useless items to scroll past when you're trying to get to what you want. Don't get me wrong, you do still get an endless list, but it's all stuff that you can foresee actually using at some point.

A lot of the crafting recipes in WoW I am 100% sure I will never use.

And a small, non-crafting note: Istaria has endgame PvE content for people who solo. I like this. WoW has only group-oriented activities, which on the whole I do not participate in. I dislike being in an environment where everyone needs to cooperate to get a difficult boss down when I'm playing with people I most likely don't know at all and may never see again after the dungeon is over. WoW's playerbase is also infamous for being largely comprised of.. difficult people too.

[Akrion]

It is more like...

Definition of MMORPG 1.0:

Older MMORPG where "Pain is Fun", where leveling involves mostly killing the same mobs over and over and over again for the majority of your EXP to level up, where you're forced to do the same thing over and over and over again before the game allows you to pass that phase into another phase that is repeated over and over and over again. Other people use the term "Grindy". Grind = Repetition upon Repetition. MMORPG 1.0 games are very easy to bot, due to the more "simple" nature of such grinds.

Istaria's adventuring system is slowly getting towards 2.0 with this, as there are more quests, but it is a long way away, yet. The crafting system, however, is pure 1.0 style grind. Pure. Grind. Un-adulterated grind.

I guess I'll counter this with positives of "1.0 style MMORPG":

The Grind:
Yes, this was a strong fallback as it didn't leave for much to be desired. But in the case of most 1.0 style MMO's, this fact meant that developers had to focus more strongly in other parts of the game to counter for it. I can tell you that I absolutely hate instancing. Hate it. Worst idea ever concerning MMOs, in my opinion.

Once upon a time worlds were completely seamless, everywhere you went, and only loading if you teleport or go to an entirely different world (like the planets in SWG). And sure while you had certain cases where some bosses may be camped for them to spawn and that would often cause frustrations (this still happens in WoW), you also again had the fact that developers had to design everything around completely seamless, uninstanced worlds. Instead of getting a predetermined group together to run a certain dungeon, you'd pull together a group and run off somewhere, going from one place to the next.

I recall hunting Tusken Raiders in SWG with a group, and as we were moving to a more difficult spawn, we crossed paths with another group and joined forces. I know you'll almost never encounter a situation like this in WoW.

Crafting:
At least there's the option for people to craft for those who prefer crafting. In WoW crafting isn't its own thing, it's a compliment to adventuring. So people who don't care too much for adventure and rather craft instead? Tough luck, they'll always encounter a situation where they'll need to raise their adventure level in order to push further in craft.

Crafting was at one point in time meant for people who prefer to craft over adventure, as it gave them classes to focus in over adventure to let them go in that direction and be just as useful to the world as a healer. SWG comes to mind for this. People who focused in adventuring couldn't craft nearly as well as people who focused in crafting. It gave people who prefer crafting a sense of worth. You can't do this in WoW, at all, period.

Also in the end the core of most crafting is: Gather, Create. So I don't see how Istaria can be notably worse in this area than WoW.

MMORPG 2.0:

Newer MMORPG that gives you more variety of things to do. MMORPG 2.0 games tend to be more difficult (not impossible though) to bot due to the complexity and variety found in these games. MMORPG 2.0 games usually offer you multiple ways of gaining EXP and within those multiple ways of gaining EXP there's also variety in there too.

Using WoW as an example, there are 4 main ways of gaining EXP:

1). Pure Grind. You can go out and kill junk endlessly. This will work, but it is far from optimal.

2). Solo Questing. The quests (especially after "The Shattering"!) are quite varied, some quests want X of this Y of that killed, some quests want you to get X of Y item from Z mob, some quests want you to go kill X boss mob, some quests give you an item that you're supposed to use on mobs X number of times, etc. Sure, at the end of the day, it might be "just another kill X of Y" but yet that is mixed in with other quest types.

3). Dungeons. Once you reach Level 15, you can enter the Random Dungeon Finder and wait until it finds you a dungeon group. These give lots of XP and sometimes you find nice items, and until you reach Level 78, you get a bag that gives you 1 random piece of armor that might be good for you (vendor it, if it isn't). There's lots of said dungeons, and plenty of variety.

4). PvP. Never liked PvP but PvP now gives you viable XP in WoW. You can use the random battleground finder to enter several different battlegrounds, where you can duke it out with other players for your XP. There's no more variety than playing against human-controlled characters; some people love this sort of thing.

I really don't see how botting has much relevance but to make a point about it: You can bot just about anything. And there are certainly bots in WoW. Personally I don't see how botting in a "1.0 MMO" and in a "2.0 MMO" are any different. They both have mobs that can be farmed for items, they both have be resources that can be farmed for materials, they both have bosses with fixed spawn points...

And to respond to the ways to make XP:
1) Pure Grind - The same as just about any MMO so it doesn't need much of a response. xD

2) Solo Questing - I don't see how this is any different than a pure grind. Instead of going out, running around and killing 100 (X) of *Mob* (Y) and selling the loot (Z) off for money; you're running around talking to people who want you to go out and kill X of Y. Or to go kill Y to get X amount of Z, meaning you must kill Y an unknown number of times (WoW is just as guilty of "Item that should drop every time drops almost none of the time"). Or you're asked to run around and talk to people.

So really if you take all of the above, WoW just took the "Run around to different spawns and mobs to kill an X amount of said mobs and selling off the loot" and divided it up into quests. It's only imaginary different when you really get down to it. But hey, I guess if it works.

3) Dungeons - "Once you reach Level 15, you can enter the Random Dungeon Finder and wait until it finds you a dungeon group." And in SWG, you could head to town and look for a group that will, and often did, consist of any number of people and run off to some dungeon or encampment or what have you. Your group would grow and shrink as the day went on and you lost people, met up with other groups, merged, lost more people, etc.

I really really don't like the whole "Wait to be placed in a group of a set size, with set classes, and hop into an instance where you will then be entirely separate from others." mentality. Really, the only randomness there is the quality of the player. Nothing's organic anymore, nothing flows over the course of the day, it's all strictly paced and rigidly planned out. Things must be followed in a certain way. A group of people could run the same dungeon in WoW over and over and expect the same results each time through, not so in SWG.

4) Coming from Eve Online, my views may be a bit skewed, but WoW's PVP is lackluster and a joke. Heck, most PVP in MMOs these days are. Even PVP on WoW's PVP servers is far from thrilling. There's nothing at risk, nothing that makes you weigh the consequences of putting yourself out there for attack like with Eve Online or Shadowbane. With WoW it's "Ooohh nooo now I have to run back to where my body was" ..

And, when you're not doing that, you can...

1). Participate in Endgame PvE (5-player dungeons or 10/25 player raids) or Endgame PvP (Battlegrounds, Rated Battlegrounds, Arena).
2). Collect achievements! These range from holiday achievements to dungeons, to PvP, to other such things.
3). Collect pets and mounts! There are 150+ mounts and 150+ pets in the game to collect.
4). Crafting!

That, to me, is the definition of MMORPG 1.0 vs MMORPG 2.0.

But like I always said, Istaria has playable real dragons, and until an MMORPG 2.0 game comes out that does, I'm not likely to stop playing Istaria. The buildable lairs is just icing on the cake, TBH.

I only consider the endgame PvE and PVP a plus, but it's group oriented and not for people who like to solo. Collecting things is nice but really what's the point if that's all you can really do? And crafting? Well, I still think WoW's crafting is horrible. xD

For me, the biggest difference between "MMORPG 1.0" and "MMORPG 2.0" is that you're often a lot more limited in what you can do with your character. In a WoW group, you could swap out any good Warlock player for any other good Warlock player. Every endgame character is very cookie-cutter build. In the older MMOs, you had much more to choose from, many more trees and classes to specialize down. At least, that's how it all felt to me.

And on a final, much more personal note regarding WoW vs Istaria. As an Order player, WoW's RP leaves a lot to be desired. Even in its worst days Order RP is so much better.

[Dhalin]

Heh... Have you ever played a Death Knight? Ever picked up Mining and then had to level that from zero to max without the buffer of leveling while doing it? That grind was worse than Istaria's craft grind, imo.

I did, and it doesn't take long since The Shattering/Cataclysm; roll the death knight, level it two levels (58 to 60) and get the Flight Master's License. You can now fly in Azeroth, and leveling mining, herbing, whatever 1-300 is not hard at all. I could do it in one sitting, even.

1-300 is about halfway done in WoW. Try leveling a craft (your FIRST one) from 1 to 50 in one sitting without powerleveling it with an alt. Go ahead, try it.

I don't think WoW's crafting system is as good as Istaria's and certainly not better. WoW's crafting basically boils down to grabbing resources you see while you're out leveling and processing them when you're back in town. And if you're going to spend a large amount of time farming mats, then.. see my comment about leveling Mining on a DK.

But at least you aren't sitting for hours on end watching your character dig dig dig dig. When whatever you were harvesting from was exhausted, move onto the next, dig dig dig dig. You spend 90% of the time sitting there doing absolutely nothing while your character gathers.

The thing about Istaria's craft grind is that it's passive. I can alt-tab. I can read a book. I can watch TV. I just have to listen for the dig sound to stop, at which point I tab back to Istaria, move to another node, double-click, and go about whatever else I was doing.

See, therein lies the problem. You can Alt-Tab, or Read a Book or Watch TV. Oh, in fact, you're pretty much obligated to, if you wish to keep any of your sanity. When a game almost forces you to seek outside entertainment while playing the game, that means the game isn't holding your attention and interest.

Can't do this in WoW. If I'm gathering mats in WoW, my attention must be on WoW. I have to fly a continuous circuit around a zone, checking spawn points of whatever it is I'm looking for. And god forbid I'm on a highly populated server with other people who are doing this.

The game is fast-paced enough that you shouldn't want to seek outside sources of entertainment. *shrug* But even so, there are always multiple places to gather whatever materials you need to gather, some are very popular, others.... not so popular. And if you're only doing it to raise your crafting skill, then you really don't need very much of it at all.

I also dislike how crafting is completely secondary in WoW. If I want to craft in that game, I must adventure. There might even be hard caps on skill that I have to be a certain adventure level to break. I can't remember.

They did this to further encourage a market, something we have very little of here in Istaria. Because everyone can be everything, there's a very small market, and most of our market is selling mob-drops like Forms, Techs, and Tech Comps.

Blizzard didn't want this. They wanted to encourage players to pick 2 crafts, and level them instead of having an army of mules/alternate characters (some people still did, but they had to level actual mules/alts) with maxed crafting.

That way, people needed to trade with each other. You want that nice suit of plate mail, but you decided from the start you wanted to be an engineer? Go buy the suit of plate mail from a blacksmith. That's market trading.

In Istaria, I could get to level 100 DCRA without ever fighting a mob if I wanted to. I could be a pure crafter. I also prefer an experience level system to WoW's skill system where you gain skill points semi-randomly. There is nothing worse than running out of mats one point away from a critical skill level that you were sure you would have been able to get.

Yet, once you get to DRAG100, and make yourself, what, 3-4 sets of scales and a few claws, you're done. Nothing else DCRA can make that you actually want or need, except for making things for younger dragons. If I recall, I recently read several posts where people were bemoaning about DCRA being worthless to really level up, other than getting skills to make DLSH easier? Heck if you have a guildie who has DCRA100 with all the scales, you don't need DCRA yourself -- have THEM make the scales for you.

The actual product of the crafting is another thing. It always felt to me that every profession only really brought a few things to the table; everything else was either just there to skillup on, or was gear that you would likely never use, either because it wasn't worth the mats or because you'd outgrown it by the time you could make it. Many of these pieces don't really sell on the AH either. They're just... there.

Crafts in WoW are all about the personal perks, and Cataclysm introduced several late-game pieces of armor that ARE quite good. Obviously, you'd have to pick the correct craft for your class; no reason to be a blacksmith if you wear Leather or Cloth, except for the fact you can attach sockets onto your Gloves and Bracers and make your own Belt Buckles (which puts a socket on your belt). All crafts have perks, some perks are better than others, but they all have them.

Blacksmiths as I said earlier, can put sockets on Bracers and Gloves (nobody else can do this). Scribes get low-cost powerful enchants for their shoulders and there are a few items they can make (and the glyphs are quite profitable to make too), tailors get low-cost powerful enchants for their capes, leatherworkers get bracer enchants, enchanters get Ring Enchants (they can only enchant their own rings, nobody else's), etc.

Istaria has the vastly superior technique system. You don't just make one Mithril Dexterity Back Scale with +25 Strength, +25 TnC, +25 Armor. You can make that scale with any configuration of stats that you have the techniques for. You also don't have an endless list of useless items to scroll past when you're trying to get to what you want. Don't get me wrong, you do still get an endless list, but it's all stuff that you can foresee actually using at some point.

Except, only a few configurations are actually good, and actually used by majority of 'educated' players. A good melee set, maybe a spellcaster set, and a few craft sets. Once you get all these made, that's it. You won't be needing DCRA for anything else.

A lot of the crafting recipes in WoW I am 100% sure I will never use.

Again, at the end of it all, you get perks that nobody else has. Many crafts also have mounts/pets one can make too. And most of the crafts have -something- that is profitable to sell on the AH. Blacksmiths have Belt Buckles (which are consumable), Tailors can sell their Dreamcloth or Bolts of Cloth, or their Spellthread, Leatherworkers make nice money by selling Leg Armor kits. The only craft that doesn't have a good AH profit, is Engineering. Engineering, however, has lots of nice little gadgets for you to play with.

And a small, non-crafting note: Istaria has endgame PvE content for people who solo. I like this. WoW has only group-oriented activities, which on the whole I do not participate in. I dislike being in an environment where everyone needs to cooperate to get a difficult boss down when I'm playing with people I most likely don't know at all and may never see again after the dungeon is over. WoW's playerbase is also infamous for being largely comprised of.. difficult people too.

False.

There's plenty to do solo, every expansion has included a large Daily Quest hub or three (they're planning a HUGE one for an upcoming patch, in fact), and PvE grouping is not hard anymore. Click a button, wait a few minutes, get into a dungeon. I do this now-and-then (I'm mostly solo but I don't mind the occasional dungeon group). 90% of the people I meet are OK, that I still enjoy the experience.

As to what Awdz said, there really isn't that much competition in a game like WoW, except for PvP (which is completely optional -- I don't do PvP myself). Sometimes someone will beat you to a mining node or such, but a couple minutes later, you'll run into another one. If you want competition, you have to go out and look for it. You don't really see it much in day-to-day life.

[Dhalin]

I guess I'll counter this with positives of "1.0 style MMORPG":

The Grind:
Yes, this was a strong fallback as it didn't leave for much to be desired. But in the case of most 1.0 style MMO's, this fact meant that developers had to focus more strongly in other parts of the game to counter for it. I can tell you that I absolutely hate instancing. Hate it. Worst idea ever concerning MMOs, in my opinion.

I love it, because as you introduce MORE people into the world, there becomes too many people to fight the too few mobs that are around. Let's picture an Istaria that had, say, 50x the playerbase it currently has. What if you wanted to kill [insert epic named boss here]? You'd go out there.... oh nice, someone is killing him and he won't pop for an hour (or whatever his respawn timer actually is). Okay, let's kill [insert another epic named boss here] .... oh wait, he was just killed 10 minutes ago.

Instancing gets rid of this problem, it allows everyone to get in on the action without competing for epic mob spawns. It also reduces lag, if you only allow 1 group into the instance, you are going to see less lag.

Once upon a time worlds were completely seamless, everywhere you went, and only loading if you teleport or go to an entirely different world (like the planets in SWG). And sure while you had certain cases where some bosses may be camped for them to spawn and that would often cause frustrations (this still happens in WoW),

Errr, what? When's the last time you actually played WoW? Vanilla? Nobody camps world spawns anymore, except for rare mobs (which are 'fluff' activities).

you also again had the fact that developers had to design everything around completely seamless, uninstanced worlds. Instead of getting a predetermined group together to run a certain dungeon, you'd pull together a group and run off somewhere, going from one place to the next.

WoW is best of both worlds -- each continent is a seamless world, but yet, lots of epic mobs for you to fight in instances. That way, you get epic mobs, but no spawn camping.

I recall hunting Tusken Raiders in SWG with a group, and as we were moving to a more difficult spawn, we crossed paths with another group and joined forces. I know you'll almost never encounter a situation like this in WoW.

And that's a good thing. Not good enough to kill a mob? Just throw more bodies at it! This is the style that FFXI went through; to keep things challenging, the developers started doing absolutely stupid stuff like making the mob so strong it can wipe out several people in one blow. By instancing and limiting the number of players per instance, developers can make mobs hard by using actual strategy rather than ramping up its damage forcing you to throw yet more bodies at it. Now, instead of "throw more bodies at it!" it is "how do we avoid XXX attack" or "how can we exploit his weakness?".

Also in the end the core of most crafting is: Gather, Create. So I don't see how Istaria can be notably worse in this area than WoW.

You don't spend 90% of your crafting time sitting at the chair doing absolutely nothing, and it doesn't take hours to gain 1-2 levels. I remember when my first craft on my biped (blacksmith) got into the Level 90 range. I'd go out gather a whole load (15 minutes of doing NOTHING but moving from node-to-node watching my character dig up stone) and I'd drag it back to the stonecutter and... oh wow. I got 15% of a level. Whoopie! *rolls eyes* That was with 2:1, btw.

Meanwhile, in WoW, I go out gathering for an hour and I'm likely to gain 20+ levels.

And to respond to the ways to make XP:

2) Solo Questing - I don't see how this is any different than a pure grind. Instead of going out, running around and killing 100 (X) of *Mob* (Y) and selling the loot (Z) off for money; you're running around talking to people who want you to go out and kill X of Y. Or to go kill Y to get X amount of Z, meaning you must kill Y an unknown number of times (WoW is just as guilty of "Item that should drop every time drops almost none of the time"). Or you're asked to run around and talk to people.

So really if you take all of the above, WoW just took the "Run around to different spawns and mobs to kill an X amount of said mobs and selling off the loot" and divided it up into quests. It's only imaginary different when you really get down to it. But hey, I guess if it works.

Variety is the spice of life, my friend. Doing "Kill X of Y" over and over and over again would indeed get boring. However, if you do "Kill X of Y" and then a "Gather Y" and then a "Kill Z Boss Mob" and then do a "Use A on B" and then a "Kill X for Y drops" and then finally another "Kill X of Y" it doesn't seem so repetitious. It DOES work.

3) Dungeons - "Once you reach Level 15, you can enter the Random Dungeon Finder and wait until it finds you a dungeon group." And in SWG, you could head to town and look for a group that will, and often did, consist of any number of people and run off to some dungeon or encampment or what have you. Your group would grow and shrink as the day went on and you lost people, met up with other groups, merged, lost more people, etc.

I really really don't like the whole "Wait to be placed in a group of a set size, with set classes, and hop into an instance where you will then be entirely separate from others." mentality. Really, the only randomness there is the quality of the player. Nothing's organic anymore, nothing flows over the course of the day, it's all strictly paced and rigidly planned out. Things must be followed in a certain way. A group of people could run the same dungeon in WoW over and over and expect the same results each time through, not so in SWG.

The randomness is from different classes you might get in a dungeon. A Warrior tank might do things differently from a paladin tank, who might do things differently from a druid tank. Meanwhile, priests heal differently than druids do, who heal differently than shaman do. And the three DPS classes, well... depends on who/what you get. Also, how you fight the bosses may differ slightly depending on what classes are actually in your group. Also, there are lots of different dungeons, too.

4) Coming from Eve Online, my views may be a bit skewed, but WoW's PVP is lackluster and a joke. Heck, most PVP in MMOs these days are. Even PVP on WoW's PVP servers is far from thrilling. There's nothing at risk, nothing that makes you weigh the consequences of putting yourself out there for attack like with Eve Online or Shadowbane. With WoW it's "Ooohh nooo now I have to run back to where my body was" ..

When's the last time you played WoW? Just curious. And World PvP was never where PvP was supposed to be emphasized anyways -- PvP is more for Battlegrounds, and Arena anyways. Like I said, not really a PvP'er myself, and I've heard my own stories about Eve. Yeah, maybe at the end of the day it is "oh man now I gotta go get my body" ... sounds better than "oh man, my ship got destroyed and I lost most of my crap..." ... starting from almost scratch whenever you're killed does NOT sound fun, not at all.

And on a final, much more personal note regarding WoW vs Istaria. As an Order player, WoW's RP leaves a lot to be desired. Even in its worst days Order RP is so much better.

There is that. But then, there's also lots of threads saying "Why does Order RP suck so much these days?" kinda makes me wonder if Order RP is really that much better. lol. Bad Apples no matter where you go. That's why I simply don't RP in graphic video games. I keep my RP to Text-based environments; the RP quality tends to be much better, trust me. I've seen what people call "RP" on the Order channels and it didn't really impress me all that much. No offense meant to Order or anyone who plays/RPs there, not saying it was *bad* but I wouldn't call it *awesome* either. I only know that some of the text-based RP I've done... is far more complex/better.

Not saying WoW is better than Istaria in the RP point -- I've seen plenty of WoW "RP" too and yes... most of what I saw was worse.