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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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