Hm.. It seems I missed this thread last week when it was created. I honestly don't even know where to begin, so I'm going to go grab some dice and roll 'em.
First off let me start by saying that I do currently play WoW, my sub is canceled(I hadn't played in over a year, re-subbed with some friends for the last two months) however, I am only playing with a group of friends killing time waiting for Swtor to be released and hoping it has more staying power than Rift had.
Let us talk Pandas. I have seen on several different forums that I "lurk" on, talk about Pandas as if Blizzard ripped them off straight from Kung Fu Panda.. Those who believe that are fairly new to gaming I'd think, or are intentionally ignorant. The Panda race was actually going to be one of the earlier *new* races you could pick, however Blizzard literally didn't want to upset its Chinese players, as they feared China would have restricted access to the game if people could play - and kill - Pandas. I know, it is silly on an order of magnitude. At least as a reason. Back during WarCraft 3, the Brewmaster Panda hero was a fan favorite. A really powerful and interesting hero, and it pre-dates the animated movie for which the amorphus "some" people seem to think it is ripping from. I love how people use WoW as a byword for all things that are evil and wrong in the world. Every time I see someone just bring up WoW like they're dropping some kind of bomb, I can't help but wonder.. "Who hurt you man? Who hurt you!? It'll be alright..It gets better! It's not your fault.".
I personally have a lot of issues with WoW and how they had done things. I enjoyed Vanilla, the original AV is something I think back very fondly on. Well, frustrated at the infinite spawn of guards from towers and such, but still fondly. The pvp was always fairly terrible in terms of actual balance, for reference, go to youtube and type "world of roguecraft" and you'll see what I mean. The first expansion was fun at the start, then well.. They took the beautiful, and pure storyline of WarCraft 3 and locked it in a cellar and would periodically go down in a drunken stupor to beat it. Also note by this time, the guys who made Vanilla a strong game with "hardcore" raiding the principle of the end-game were now gone or leaving. Though I never found WoW raiding to be hard, it was primarily a gear-check, and not standing in the circle of seething darkness and/or fire that taunts you with threatening voices in your head of stealing your soul and wiping the raid. And we're moving on.
Lets address the issue of stealing themes. Better yet, lets not, as there is no issue. Taking inspiration from is not the same thing as stealing. Afterall, you can't re-invent the wheel. There are only so many different ways you can achieve things within a high fantasy setting. And spoilers: most of them have already been done. However, what WoW did do is... Set the industry standard on so very many levels. Now I will not argue on whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing. I do however think any game designers out there that are looking at that 10+ million sub mark as their measure of success is an absolutely atrocious idea. WoW simply had a mix of factors that allowed it to not only grow itself to its current size and that of its peak, but the entire market of the genre. Now which of those factors mixing created the cocktail of success, you are free to form your own opinion.
Yyou must wonder with the cheap gimmicks Wow developers are starting to release into the game to keep their fanbase exactly HOW bad their revenue stream is at the moment.
World of WarCraft currently has 11,000,000+ subscribers. That be a lot of zeros my friend. They have no issues with their moneybin. They can not only swim in it, they can dive their golden submonerine with diamond encrusted spinners quite comfortably. It is true that they have lost a good number of subs, but nothing at all that they [Blizzard] would be worried over. Though as far as gimmicks go.. Yeah, WoW is full of them. However, it is a theme-park game.. So that is kind of actually intended.
Now about the talent trees.. I have no real opinion other than it sounds kinda like what Rift did, but just a step further. The direction of which could be right or wrong, but I don't really know. As I will not be playing the game. I left WoW shortly after BC came out, though I came back just before the WoTLK expansion for my friends, who had been bothering me to return to play with them (which I am sure is a big reason why they still have so many subs) and so I did. I can say that I enjoyed the time I spent with my friends there, but the game itself.. It was something to do in my spare time. Didn't have much feeling for it beyond that. And that is my primary gripe with Blizzard and World of WarCraft. I had nothing in the game to be passionate about. Blizzard lost their fire, their passion when they sold out. The story became bland, the content became entirely about the end-game Earl Z. Moade raiding and/or pvp, the leveling experience was just a half-assed afterthought now. Watching the storyline die from neglect was a tragic thing to witness.
In closing I'd like to say that as far as WoW goes, I have many memorable moments, funny stories, and frustrated rantings about the game. Those being the good things, the bad I'd say mostly revolves around how terrible the pvp was and the kind of "griefer" that it cultured, I'm a big time pvper, I have been since my EverQuest days, however I never once got off my mount to gank some lowbie just because I could. I take no joy from defeating an opponent that poses no threat to me. I seek challenge, not a random temporary meat-sheath for my sword. So overall, I give WoW a solid 7 out of 10. And 5 of those 7 points come from my vanilla experience, with the other points being fractions for this and that. Though I would say I am curious about Titan.. Blizzards mysterious new MMO that is in the works. However, knowing Blizzard, we will not see much of that game until 2016 I'd wager. And now done with my rant, time for breakfast.
