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Geek Culture / WoW : Cataclysm

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Herakles
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 09:37 Edited at: 18th Dec 2010 09:37
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Quote: "And the downside of ANY RPG is, you'll always be doing boring grindy 'Fetch' quests.. "


That's not true. There are definately RPGs that either don't have such quests, or don't require you to do them in order for your character to be powerful enough to do the more interesting ones. There's the examples I gave above (Dragon Age and The Elder Scrolls), and other games by Bioware and Bethesda. There's also The Witcher and the Gothic series, and several more.

And even when these games do give you a "fetch" quest, it's always more than just "Go to this area, kill all of a certain type of monster, sit around doing nothing while you wait for them to respawn, kill them again, and repeat until you've killed the requisite number of them." They give you puzzles, boss enemies that aren't exactly the same as the regular enemies just with more health, and dialogue with npcs beoynd just "Yes" (accept quest) and "No" (decline quest).

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Silvester
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 12:50
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And now ignore the shiny options around them, and look at the basics.. In the end it's the same with a pretty cover up, and WoW has plenty of new scripted events, but the problem with an MMO is that you can't script EVERY quest as you could with a single player game as the scale is simply much and much larger.

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RedneckRambo
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Posted: 18th Dec 2010 19:12
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Quote: "And now ignore the shiny options around them, and look at the basics.. In the end it's the same with a pretty cover up, and WoW has plenty of new scripted events, but the problem with an MMO is that you can't script EVERY quest as you could with a single player game as the scale is simply much and much larger."

Personally find that argument irrelevant given that the so called "shiny" options is what makes an RPG unique.

Signature's are stupid.
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Herakles
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Posted: 19th Dec 2010 06:49
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Quote: "Personally find that argument irrelevant given that the so called "shiny" options is what makes an RPG unique."


Exactly what I was going to say. The "shiny options" are the actual substance of the gameplay. In most MMOs such as World of Warcraft, all of the quests follow the same pattern over and over again, in their final goals and in the substance of the gameplay you go through to get to that goal. But in the games I mentioned previously, the actual substance of each quest is more varied and interesting (even if the final goal of the quest is still the same "fetch" quest).

If the "Cataclysm" expansion pack really did make World of Warcraft a more varied and interesting game, then I might be willing to give it a second chance.

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Silvester
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Posted: 19th Dec 2010 11:12 Edited at: 19th Dec 2010 11:14
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Strangely enough I tend to look through such shiny features and see a game's basics. To be fair I never cared to finish any Single Player RPG because of the fact they just get dreadfully boring and repetitive, save NPC X from Y to gain entry to Z.. Yeah, no?

With MMOs this is exactly the same in a different pattern, but the upside of it is to me at least.. The social aspect, I enjoy questing/exploring the world with other players, as well as toss in some Role Playing as we go along, creating our own stories inside the world's lore and possibilities, not plainly following the quests, instances and raids because we have to.

Quote: "If the "Cataclysm" expansion pack really did make World of Warcraft a more varied and interesting game, then I might be willing to give it a second chance."

In my opinion it did, but sadly enough they changed to little in the level 1-5 zones people might be like "Same crap.. meh" which in my opinion is a bit of a downer, however most of the content afterwards has become at least somewhat more interesting, and in most cases after about an hour of gameplay some of the more epic quests come in (e.g. Horde Side : Azshara, Alliance : Darkshore) which are simply miles above the old content in terms of quality and interesting scripts.

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RalphY
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Posted: 19th Dec 2010 14:19
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As a Guild Wars player that has friends that have tried to get me into WoW several times in the past, and not managed to get me to stay more than a few hours each time, I have to say Cataclysm has improved things quite a bit. Each zone now has an overarching story that you follow, and although there still is a lot of kill x of y quests, there's more variety as well now.

An example from a zone I've just finished, there was a quest chain which started of with destroying X raptor eggs. After destroying the last one a baby raptor hatches which then follows you around the zone. During another quest it digs something out of the ground which triggers another quest chain that ends with getting tricked into resurrecting some evil guy. Eventually the evil guy steals the raptor, which leads to a stealth mission where you mind control the raptor to try and free it.

I have to say so far, this time, I'm actually enjoying it. Of course it helps having friends that play the game as well. My character was already level 30, from when a friend had tried leveling it up in an attempt to get me to play, so I can't comment on the starting zones.

Go banana! | Super Nintendo Chalmers! | When I grow up I'm going to Bovine University!
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Herakles
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Posted: 21st Dec 2010 06:21
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Quote: "Strangely enough I tend to look through such shiny features and see a game's basics. To be fair I never cared to finish any Single Player RPG because of the fact they just get dreadfully boring and repetitive, save NPC X from Y to gain entry to Z.. Yeah, no?"


I still don't understand what you mean by "shiny features". In every game there is the basic structure of the missions (missions, quests, levels, whatever), and there is the actual gameplay in those missions. A game needs at least some degree of uniformity in the basic structure, as well as sufficient variation in the gameplay. Which of these two do you mean when you say "shiny features", because you can't ignore either.

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Silvester
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Posted: 21st Dec 2010 13:05
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Shiny features, the amount of crap that hides the actual game.. e.g. a dozen options to talk about with an NPC, but only one will yield an actual result.. Or the way some games hide the nature of their questing, I mean take Gothic 4 as an example, great game until you realize all you do is.. well, Help a dude get something and a next area unlocks. Which takes about 30 minutes to realize, I mean there's just a monotone quest line in them, it's all the same with some minor changes here and there to make it seem different.

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Wolf
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Posted: 21st Dec 2010 16:50
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Quote: "Shiny features, the amount of crap that hides the actual game.. e.g. a dozen options to talk about with an NPC, but only one will yield an actual result.. Or the way some games hide the nature of their questing, I mean take Gothic 4 as an example, great game until you realize all you do is.. well, Help a dude get something and a next area unlocks. Which takes about 30 minutes to realize, I mean there's just a monotone quest line in them, it's all the same with some minor changes here and there to make it seem different."


I agree! The Community was able to save Gothic3 from being complete trash with the CommunityPatch...but Gothic 4 is simply FUBAR

Not a part of the Gothic Series at all!



-Wolf

God Helps the Beast in Me!
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Herakles
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2010 07:00 Edited at: 22nd Dec 2010 07:07
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I haven't played Gothic 4 yet, so I can't continue that line of discussion. I can say that Gothic 3 with the community patch is a very underrated game.

Although, I did play the Gothic 4 demo, which was actually pretty good. The one thing I didn't like was how the camera zoomed out in combat. I mean, what's the point of having high resolution textures and models and fancy shader effects if the camera is zoomed out so far away that you can't see any of the detail? It's the same kind of problem with Depth of Field effects. What's the point of having good graphics if half the screen is just going to be blurred away?

Anyway, I think I've strayed too far from the original topic of this thread. I'll stop now.

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