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Yeah, you will most likely be around ilvl 500 within a few days of hitting 90 now. Considering that the large ilvl gaps between raid tiers made all old content obsolete this was necessary. Would not be much point trying to force alts/new players to gear up on old content that no one else wanted...

Rift had some good points, but ultimately it was too similar to WoW. Most people that had played WoW were unwilling to commit to a game that just felt like more of the same with less polish. And given that most potential customers had played WoW this ensured a small player base. For a WoW-clone...

Played all of the Gold Box games. Pretty neat that they managed to put out more than ten great games using minor variations of the same engine.

I think the previous Fallout games managed this quite well. The worst offenders are probably KOTOR and Mass Effect since you are encouraged by game mechanics to consistently select good/evil options throughout the game to max out your meter.

But if I remember correctly the PC was never really involved. If you look back to FO2 these things impacted the PC more directly. You could side with the slavers and you could even sell your companions as slaves. Or you could take down the organization. Your choice. Short on caps? Go out and...

Yeah, it definitely felt like Bethesda was avoiding the more controversial stuff from the previous games in Fallout 3. While I usually end up playing some goody two-shoes character I like it to be by choice and not because someone was to chicken to put the options in the game.

It's not a bad quest line the first time to do it, but it feels seriously boring and grindy if you want to get the cloak on alts. There should really be some kind of shortcut for alts.

If you're talking semi-organized PuG raids it certainly happens now and then. But outside of that the only game I remember people using VOIP with any frequency in random groups was DDO. However, I have mostly been playing on European servers since the WoW release and I guess that it doesn't help...

I agree that the most effective groups rarely need conversation. However, as mentioned before by others, if the main objective is just to shut up and do your job, why not just replace the players with bots? If the only people you want to interact with are the ones you already know, would not a...

Yeah, but most people are still unwilling to chat with strangers over voice com even if it's built into the game. And this means that you would either need slow paced combat or important cooperative non-combat activities to promote socialization between people that are not already friends. Since...

I don't think many would argue that MMOs are a lot less social today than back in the days of UO, EQ and SWG. However, the reasons for this decline are a bit less clear. Personally I would argue that the main reasons are: * More emphasis on player performance * Not much reason to...

Yeah, non-instanced housing can be really awesome. It's hard to get the same kind of attachment to an instanced house.

The graphics don't look that hot, but then again few western MMOs launched the last 10 years have. Personally, I'm surprised they got this far.

Yes, and I would argue that one of the main problems with current MMOs is that they tend to be focused on combat to the exclusion of everything else. In UO and SWG players could be productive members of society even if they did not output optimal DPS or knew all the DDR-style raid strats. Now if...

Guilds were definitely alive and well in both UO and SWG and there was no real need for grouping in those games. That said, although I personally tend to group while leveling because it's more fun I do agree that it should be more beneficial.

Yeah, he might have made a few bad games, but he has also made more good games than pretty much anyone else. And I don't think that most people that didn't play UO back in 1997 can appreciate how revolutionary it was.

At least it's probably not a WoW-clone!

I'm pretty sure that the EU companies have to pay VAT as well. Before the taxation law change you basically got away with not paying VAT at all for things like MMO subs.

Yeah, wonder what idiot that came up with that idea. Most people doing the quest probably hates PvP, has no PvP gear or skills whatsoever, and will just queue until the they get lucky enough to find a team to carry them. End result is a sucky experience for everyone involved.

Once you got to the point of being able to dump your threat and mana was not an issue this was certainly the case, but not early in the game. Playing a wizard at launch it was definitely not a good idea to spam spells non-stop. If nothing else because you would end up the one tanking if you did.

Not sure I agree. True, competition makes people care more about what other groups of players do, but it also tends to turn bring out the worst in many people. And it tends to weed out a lot of nice people that perform poorly. I would also argue that WoW is much more competitive than EQ ever...

I would go a step further and say that few modern games promote socialization with your established friends either since they tend to divide players by skill level and in many cases hard coded factions as well.

I think the general idea is to just shovel everyone into a raid instead. After all, the loot was made totally obsolete by timeless isle and valor points are useless unless you raid since they didn't add new valor items in 5.4. Unfortunately, with LFRs being worse than ever I would imagine that...

I would say that the MMO that does NOT lose 75% of the subs within 6 months is the exception these days. Too many too similar MMOs. I think this quote sums up the last few years in the MMO industry: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Even as...

I think one major thing that limits socialization in current MMOs is widely available performance metrics and relatively tightly tuned encounters. Back in the day of EQ and early WoW most guilds, even fairly serious raid guilds, were happy to invite people without considering their usefulness...

Around 20 min on bike. Around 1 hour if I walk because there's too much snow to cycle. A nice way to get a bit of exercise every day.

I agree. The only reason it worked was because MMOs were new and awesome at the time and there were no real alternatives. I think one key design objective for a social MMO would be to invent profitable ways for players with different levels of skill and dedication to work together towards a...

The first wing of SoO is usually not too bad in LFR. Maybe a couple of wipes on average, but nothing too painful. The second wing tend to be a lot worse though. Kor'kron Dark Shaman and to a lesser extent General Nazgrim can be a nightmare in a bad LFR.

Have you found all the chests on Timeless Isle? You usually get a decent number of armor tokens from them and one gives a guaranteed Burden of Eternity (so that you can create an ilvl 535 item). If not, this guide could be useful: In-depth Timeless Isle Hidden Chest Guide

I think LFR is seriously overtuned considering that it got knocked down a peg by flex. It's there to give the people that are too bad or too lazy for flex something to do (considering that there are no real PvE alternatives to raiding). It should present a minimal amount of challenge for the...

I hope the LFR is actually tuned for a raid of people wearing the ilvl 496 gear from the timeless isle. For reference, the ilvl 553 normal gear has ~70% more stats than the ilvl 496 stuff timeless stuff. At the beginning of the expansion the ilvl 489 normal gear only had ~62% more stats than...

The project managers and ultimately the management of your company. Outside of the gaming industry this is a very common situation.

I agree. However, I think people cared a lot more about what other people did back in vanilla because the game was new, cool and had a bright future. Now that the game is way past it's prime there will naturally be less prestige to be had from accomplishments. No matter how shiny stuff or how...

Sure, but most people did not know BRD well enough to do this early on. Which is one of the reasons that BRD didn't became so popular with PuGs. I mean, with some creative lava swimming you can skip past everything up to the Lyceum, but attempting this in a PuG would probably leave half of the...

I don't think GTAV should try to emulate SR4. On the other hand, they do need to come up with something new. I have to agree with Itzena that the last few GTA games have been too similar to each other. I actually only managed to play GTAIV a few hours before I got bored and stopped. By contrast...

I'm sure that contributed a bit, but the main problem was that it took too long time to be practical for most people. It wasn't like you could find a group and do BRD if you had a couple of hours after work to play.

I think raids being the only real path of progression combined with the ability to consistently raid several days every week was a huge design flaw. Not many people can grind out raids several days a week for years without them feeling like work.

MoP was not a bad expansion. The biggest fuckup was really trying to force everyone to do dalies in an attempt to create a living world. The rest was fairly well designed. However, WoW isn't bleeding subs because of lacking raid content or people hating dalies. WoW is an old game and most...

WoW is now an old game working in a labor camp to satisfy herr kommandant Kotik who is trying to squeeze out as much money as possible before it croaks! Seriously though, a lot of stuff is cross server. Basically to keep queue times reasonable and to make sure you see some other people...

I think the problem is that as long as a game has some tiny RPG element in it the creators tend to tick the RPG-box because it can't really hurt. But in reality they are RPGs as much as Saints Row is a flight simulator (hey, you can fly planes in it!).