Almathea Toes Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 If a guy wants to play a game that doesnt happen to involve minis, let him. Geez. One can do both, ya know. Yeah one can, but one almost never does. My boyfriend has practically lost a friend or two in RL to WoW. Face it, we've all played one of those computer/video games that you slavishly toss hundred upon hundreds of hours into,(for me it was elder scrolls 3 with both expansions) but for some reason WoW just seems to suck people in worse than normal. Not to mention IMHO you have to balance multiple time consuming hobbies very carefully, or you never do some of them. So sure, I doubt anyone here particularluy cares if Ug plays WoW, but it would suck if he suddenly dissappeared from the boards and we never heard from him again. If the comments bother you, just take it all as a giant compliment to WoW. It's a game so great that the people who play rarely do anything else with their free time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergeant_Crunch Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Not to mention IMHO you have to balance multiple time consuming hobbies very carefully, or you never do some of them. No kidding, just ask the guitar in my closet. As a reformed MMORPG player (Star Wars Galaxies was my drug of choice) I found that I wouldn't realize how much time had passed. Then I realized that when I tired of the game what did I have to show for it, not a whole lot. I still play video games, but usually only when I don't feel like painting as even with single-player games I get sucked into a time warp of "just one more turn" or "after this mission." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qwyksilver Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 Heh, it's not even video games for me. I have the same problem with books. It will be about 10 PM, and I'm lying on the sofa reading a book, and I'll be around page 100 and getting into a good part. My brain gets stimulated and I hit a second wind and what starts off as finish the chapter, becomes maybe the next chapter, too good to put down, maybe the next one, it's too close to the end... Then it's 3:30 AM. I just finished the last 300 pages in the book. I'm cross eyed and exhausted and need to get up for work at 6:30 AM. But I finished the book! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lionmane Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 I will admit that it's easy to get caught up in RPGs, but you can say that about tabletop or pen-and -paper games as well. The trick is balancing things. I still read way more than I play WoW. I don't play wargames as much because it's hard to get all my friends together to do so with our schedules. With WoW, I can jump on and play wether my friends are there or not. Now, if someone's playing whatever and ignoring obligations to family/friends/pets/work/school/etc, then that's bad, but it's not the games' fault, its the doofus who can't pry himself away from the screen's fault. I'm sorry to hear that some of you have "lost" friends to computer games, but it isn't WoW's or Everquest's or fill in the blank's fault. And this may sound like blasphemy to some here, but is playing a game for hours any worse than painting minis for hours? As long as you're enjoying yourself, not hurting others, and meeting whatever obligations you have in your life, what's the big deal? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spike Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 But WAIT! I have a copy of the original Warcraft (orcs versus humans) downloaded on my old Win95 machine in the other room. If I can get the trusty ol' 16k external modem to work again maybe I can set up for modem-play and join in. Gee-golly-gosh that'd be swell! STOP POKING MEEEEEEEEEEE! :lol: As for hobbies and relationships, I won't say a dang thing. Many is the night I've tiptoed to bed at 2 am after sitting at my PC all night long diddling with Photoshop ONLY to discover the Stevester snoring with his nose marking the last page he was reading before he nodded off and dropped the book on his face. So if anybody ever wants to get on some Retro-WoW, just holler. I think I might can get it online with two plastic cups and about ten-zillion yards of fishing line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergeant_Crunch Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 You know, I used to play Star Wars Galaxies religiously. I was also playing 40k regularly (this was before I discovered Reaper) thanks to a great gaming group I was a part of when I was in Korea. I started lurking here for a few months then joined these boards and found hanging out here more enjoyable than playing SWG. After they made changes to the game shortly after I moved back stateside that completely broke my character I gave it up. I tried City of Heros but that didn't last long and I wasn't interested in fantasy MMORPGs so I gave them up entirely and decided to spend more time on miniature games. So migration from MMOGs to mini wargames does happen, I'm proof. I barely play video games nearly as much as I used to, but now my wife looks at me funny for spending so much time here. So I suppose it's a matter of which addiction, I mean pastime...yeah, you choose. On a somewhat related note, tonight I decided to check the SWG forums to see if my guild or our city still existed in SWG after getting an email from the fine folks as Sony Online Entertainment trying to entice me to come back. Looks like about a month after I left our player city and our guild dissolved. I'm not trying to say that my leaving caused that, we had been hemorraging players for a while, especially after WoW came out. As far as I can tell only one person from our guild, which at one point was fairly sizable, remains active in the and has gone from running our guild and city to running a shopping mall in the game. Honestly, the people in the game were the only thing keeping in towards the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almathea Toes Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 I will admit that it's easy to get caught up in RPGs, but you can say that about tabletop or pen-and -paper games as well. The trick is balancing things. I didn't mean to say anything different; except that certain things seem to have more pull than others when it comes to difficulty in balancing. Qwysilver, that 3:30 morning thing is why I don't read during the week anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qwyksilver Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 Qwysilver, that 3:30 morning thing is why I don't read during the week anymore. I'm just very fortunate that I've always been able to function on very little sleep. I try not to read once my wife goes to bed around 9:30-10 because I know I will not likely put the book down if she's not there to remind me that I actually do need sleep. More often than not if I am reading when she goes to bed, she'll ask me if I plan to stay up all night and read. That's usually enough of a trigger to get me to hurry up and get to an ending point and put the book down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironworker Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 I picked it up in late November and played it through mid January. I even paid for a three month subscription because I thought surely it would hold my attention for that period of time. Unfortunately it didn't. There are many good things to say about it. It works. As a game it plays farily easily and the system seems to work. PvP works fairly well but I just can't get into RPG style PvP which is why the only PvP I did in SWG was in space. World design is nice. Just exploring is fun...... so long as you just try to explore those regions that your able to handle as per your level. Because the game is simplistic it allows the producers to focus on a lot of content. There are some very nice features for casual players like rest xp and less decay. However I can't seem to stay with it because.... Character design is awful. My dwarf looks like every other dwarf out there. PCs that is. NPCs have a great deal of variety. If I can't make my character my own then I might as well not bother with roleplaying as he won't have much character. Roleplay is non existant. Everyone, even on the RPG servers, just quest and do dungeons all day long. There is absolutely no player created content and no tools to do your own player created content. This makes that very nice world design seem less real. The community isn't much fun. Because the game is based almost entirely on "PHAT LOOT!" people stab each other in the back and take what could be enjoyable dungeon crawls way too seriously. The world is a static theam park. I'm aware that was the design but after experiencing it I don't much care for it. Running around from one adventure zone to another based on level gets old fast. There do seem to be some long scale story lines but nothing sucks more that getting a quest to an area you can't handle yet. You never escape the bad guys. Or at least very rarely. The whole "fight or flight" thing just doesn't work most of the time. Even in the wide open. If something agros you you'll likely have to fight it off or die trying. That can lead to a whole crap load of corpse running if you like to explore the world like I do and since most of the other players are too busy questing, queing, or doing a dungeon any exploration is largely a solo affair. I don't much care for levels and classes. Skill based is far more rewarding and interesting for me. If you don't know what everyone is and what they can do you end up doing a lot more natural roleplaying. It also makes guilds pretty stupid. What's the point of a guild if you can't do just about everything together? WoW seems to punish grouping with higher levels and offers little incentive for them to help lower levels. I'm not sure this is a WoW specific problem. I would imagine it's a problem for any level based RPG. I know as SWG switched to level based it got to be more an more that way. This hurts casual play because if you get behind your friends in level you basically have to find a new group of friends to run with. I could go on but really I don't think there is a point. I think WoW could be fun for certain types of players but it certainly didn't hold me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironworker Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 This is no shot at WOW or its players, but why are these style games so addicting? I have avoided them like the plague because in the past, I have wasted many many many hours on games that focus on character leveling and power advancement. IMO, it starts out a lot of fun and new, but soon turns into a mind numbingly dull task of increasing power levels where you do the same things over and over and over. But, for whatever reason, we, as gamers continue to plug hours and hours into a game and don't even realize the monotony of it until weeks or months have passed. At this point in my life, I have too many things that are important to do to fill my mind with the drive to create 50th level characters and just finishing this next quest. I know they are addictive, but why and how does one break the cycle? Because they are designed that way. At least most of them. The game developers seem convinced that players love to grind, grind, grind and play marathon sessions. Add in phat loot that usually at some point becomes obsoleet and you can get people to grind endlessly for that. If you've ever played any off-line RPG and told yourself "Ok I'll quit when I get my next level or when I finish this bit of the story or after I beat this boss" then you can multiply that by several fold and you have an MMORPG. A lot of the time spent is also spent getting groups cordinated to do quest or dungeons. Then you add in the factor that sometimes these quest really only benifit one player at an time and sometimes you have to run them over and over again to help the people who helped you. Now you can't log off just because you finished that quest or got that level or beat that boss because that poor slob who just spent the last four hours slogging through a dungeon with you needs your help with another quest and you told them you would help. But then they have to get something or get someone else who needs that quest or knows that quest together and they say "It won't take very long to get this together." Ok in the MMORPG world "It won't take very long to get this together" translatets to "It's going to take an hour at the very least to get this together". That cycle basically happens over and over again. Guilds can help that process but in a level based MMO like WoW if you do take some time off you will eventually start falling behind and you have to grind your buns off to catch back up so you can play with your friends again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ugluk69 Posted February 8, 2006 Author Share Posted February 8, 2006 Well my love of minis is too great I guess. Playing WOW has inspired me to buy more Dwarves and paint more orcs (I have sooooo many orcs to paint). My wife absolutly hates WOW cause now both of my sons and I all play it, and my offer to have her create her own character for the game resulted in one of the dirtest looks she has ever given me. Oh well the novelty of the game is wearing off, which is good cause I need to play more Warlord!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivrel Posted February 8, 2006 Share Posted February 8, 2006 Now then if youve ever seen the Leroy Jenkins video for WoW you will see the rare but embarassing moments of partying with CERTAIN people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lstormhammer Posted February 8, 2006 Share Posted February 8, 2006 I'll tell you why the game is so addicting: It's 'pickup and play' ability. I can literally say "I wanna play some WoW before I grab some dinner", and you do. You actually can complete something in less than half an hour. You can (unlike other games) do a mission on your own. Each class has things to do besides 'push button, sip on your soda, wait for the monster to fall'. Visually, it is unlike any other RPG out there. There are low hills, gullys, streams. With a good video card, you can see birds floating in the distance. Yes, the game is addicting, and I will easily say that I enjoy playing it. The downsides are just like any other game, the people. Thankfully, there's a very useful /ignore command, so if some yahoo is giving you grief, he stops exhisting in your world. As for character models, yes, they get repetetive after a while, but when you play with your group, it doesn't matter so much. --LSH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lionmane Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 Another big plus for me is that I have friends that haved moved to various parts of the country. We can still play together on WoW. It's not the same as being in the same room moving minis around, true, but it's still fun. What 'Storm said about the people on the game is true...you do occasionally run into some real jerks. But I've also played with some very cool folks as well. It sounds as if some folks have something against the game because they've "lost" someone to it. As I said previously, it's not the game's fault. These poor souls could have just as easily gotten "addicted" to things like gambling, porn, or religion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lstormhammer Posted February 9, 2006 Share Posted February 9, 2006 Just as an aside: When people say they 'lost' someone to a game, that gets a might annoying. OTOH, it's possible they enjoy playing the game because it's up and running at five in the morning when the rest of the world isn't. Just wanna put that out there, lest I say something like 'WoW is possibly more interesting than some of the people I know'... --LSH, he kids because he loves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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