World of Warcraft...

[seawasp]

... actually downloaded and tried the free version for a bit yesterday. (Well, given how honkin' huge it is, I actually had downloaded it over the prior night).

I doubt I'll be playing it again. It's pretty enough, I guess, and the FMV to start it was impressive, but the controls suck (not surprising, I'm using a keyboard), the tutorial features aren't sufficient, the flexibility in creating a character was minimal, and the icons and text are printed in teeny-tiny print I can barely read even when holding the computer up near my face.

No character interaction or intro; I get more character in Oblivion. And the controls on the PS3 just are totally lightyears beyond anything on a keyboard. (yeah, I presume there's probably some awesome USB joysticks or something out there, but I don't have one).

But I'll leave it on my HD for a bit; I may change my mind and give it another shot. 

Comments

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I can't argue against your opinion, since I'm not you and it is specifically an opinion. However this does remind me that you are more of a console gamer than a PC gamer. Because I have been using them for around 20 years I find keyboard and mouse more natural than a gamepad and I don't know that there can be a decent gamepad control for warcraft.

This also reminds me how old fasioned World of Warcraft really is, and how much of the enjoyment really rests on playing with other like minded people. Unfortunately I think players on a free account are restricted from talking to and trading with paying players, so it can serve as an intro, but only as a solo experience.

I think you should give it another shot, but I don't expect that you will change your mind.

[seawasp]

Well, I probably will give it another shot, but the *teeny tiny print* is a major barrier. I really have to hold my laptop up to within about six to eight inches of my face sometimes, and that's really a pain.

The controls are annoying, but hey, I played through Escape Velocity Override and Nova perfectly well with just keyboard commands. I did my original gaming with keyboard commands (Sundog and Dungeon Master on the Atari ST).

But if the main draw is really interacting with people, and I can't interact with them, that's something of a showstopper.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

As a specific point for text size I set mine to a point where I was happy with it and it took me about 5 minutes to find where to change the option. To adjust the font size in the chat window right click on the tab title. the options are 12, 14,16,and 18 point text. Bumping it up to 18 might make it non minuscule on your laptop, 14 is reasonably comfortable on my 17" laptop.

[seawasp]

Are there more character choices if you're paid up? I chose "human" and it seemed they could only be one character class (priest or cleric or whatever it was); same for the others. Do you get to choose different classes?

[argonel.livejournal.com]

You should have more choices even in the free sample. Each race has around 6 or 8 different classes with 3 specializations per class. In the free version you probably can't play as a panda or access the death knight and monk classes, but everything else up to level 20 should be there.

IIRC on character creation the races are selected on one side of the screen while the classes are selected on the opposite side. I don't recall if they dim the classes you can't pick or hide them, but the choices should be available.

[seawasp]

Weird. I couldn't find any way to change any of the races; they had a default and there was no obvious way to change that. I'll try it again.

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

I would not recommend Warcraft for a laptop (except for serious Warcraft players logging on just to do a few quick things.) That said, shift-V makes names more prominent and there are a bunch of options in Interface and Key Bindings which might help you.

[seawasp]

So WoW really requires a desktop with a manly monitor?

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I play it on a regular size monitor and I play it on my laptop, too. Of course, it's way impressive on my youngest son's Alienware computer with the 23" monitor, but I don't have issues on either my 19" desktop monitor or my 17" laptop screen.

The new expansion coming out at midnight is very pretty. I played it for a couple of months. I enjoy the game, but I know lots of folks don't.

[seawasp]

Well, my laptop's a 13", so that's considerably smaller than even your smallest example.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I can see that a 13 inch screen would be very limiting, yes.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Once I get my rebuilt desktop up and running I'll see how I like it on my compensating for something screen. I will have it connected to my theatre projector and putting it up on a 9 foot screen.

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

Well -- it doesn't require a large screen to play(*). I think for most people it requires a large screen to be fun. Lots of exceptions, of course (especially good eyesight, already hooked on Warcraft, lying in bed with the laptop screen a foot away, specialized interests in Warcraft where the screen size doesn't matter much, etc.) I would expect most people starting warcraft to have similar reactions to yours on a small screen.

That said, the camera zoom, angle, etc. can be adjusted, and I mentioned shift-V above to toggle the type of nameplate display.

(*) There are some specialized cases involving playing in groups where you really *need* a large monitor. But those aren't things you'd do just starting out.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Yeah... WoW was designed with a keyboard in mind. As opposed to Oblivion and Skyrim which weren't and it shows. Fortunately for me, SkyUI addresses most of the UI for Skyrim on PC. There's a similar overhaul for Oblivion but since I don't have that game yet I haven't dug into it.

As an aside, the Logitech F310 gamepad is an excellent controller for not much money.

A huge screen isn't necessary to play WoW, but you may need to adjust the UI scale to make things fit well. I forget how to do it, only that I recall having to do it back in the day. It's a bit of a GPU hog, but turning down shadow quality helps immensely on notebook and other lower-power GPUs.

You've run into one of the reasons why I no longer play WoW: every class is designed and balanced around a couple of very specific builds, and every high-level raid encounter is designed and balanced around those class builds. And the flak from some players that comes with deviating the slightest from these builds. It stopped being fun after not too long. Guild Wars 2 handles it much better, IMO, although I haven't played that in over a year and I don't know how much it's changed.

Still, Skyrim kicks all of their asses. Not needing to be balanced for multi-player lets it have the freedom to do pretty much anything.

[richardboustead.livejournal.com]

Ahh...I remember WoW. Been clean three years now. And by 'clean' I mean I've transferred the addiction to other games.

Such as, you might want to give Star Trek Online a quick look. The customisation is massive- easily beating Oblivion hands down. And you can customise your Bridge Officers just as much. The interface is hugely scalable as well.

Controls take a little bit of getting used to, but ever since the Legacy of Romulus expansion, the tutorial/intros have gotten far better, both in terms of story and in instructions. It's Free To Play. The balance there is actually pretty good. You can even get all the paid stuff via in-game grinding, but that takes a long time.

Doesn't have the sheer player-base of WoW, but has it's own core audience of somewhere around 300k-400k.

Its fully possible to fly around in say, a gigantic indoor arena in a ship you named yourself - such as maybe "USS Skylark with Bridge Officers customised however you want them to look or be named. Maybe a First Officer with long blue hair named Ariane, or perhaps an engineer with a black beard named, say Marc. Possibilities are limitless.

What? No, I can't think what I might be referring to there and those suggestions are in no way based on actual experience. :P

[seawasp]

Hmm. That sounds intriguing, actually.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

I wanted to ponder this a bit before I wrote anything about the customization in STO vs. Elder Scrolls games.

See, STO, like most on-line games, doesn't really offer much customization at all. Sure, you have a wide variety of cosmetic options available but the very first game play affecting decision that you make is to put yourself into a box. That is, you have to pick a class from the MMO holy trinity: tank (engineer), healer (science) or damage (tactical). STO is a bit less restrictive than most MMOs in this regard but still, it's the holy trinity and you're stuck with it.

In Morrowind and Oblivion you do pick a class but the choice is not a box. It's a list of skills that your character is better than average for a player character. Several classes spit in the eyes of the old D&D tropes about how magic and weapons and armor don't mix. Skyrim does away with classes entirely, allowing players to switch up play styles at will without having to roll up new characters. Unless you want to do that, of course, and the mod "Alternate Start" makes that a lot of fun. My last play had me starting out as an Imperial Battlemage heading straight into the civil war. No, the game does not acknowledge that rank but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

As a kind of follow-up, my advice is not to let yourself get sucked into any kind of big MMO. They can, and will, suck up all of your gaming time. I'm talking thousands of hours. No exaggeration; I logged about a thousand hours in Guild Wars 2 over the course of a year from launch until I logged out for the last time.

[seawasp]

I wanted to play one just so I actually could say I have first-hand experience in playing one. I have specific gaming time limits, so they can't suck up more than the time that I already spend on my PS3, after all.

[baronger.livejournal.com]

The interface is and controls are really basic but hardly anyone plays with the standard setup. I always remap the keybinds to esdf forovent and map abilities arond them. Addons are then added to address preferences.

I havn't played for a year but plan to start after nanowrimo is over to try out the new expansion