Return to Azaroth

[pixelcurious]

After having not played World of Warcraft for several months, I was recently offered seven free days of gametime (an incentive to get players to return before the expansion that's coming out very soon). Instead of picking up my old characters where I left them, I rolled a couple of new ones. I made a blood elf mage, Tiphareth, and got her up to

Comments

[furryjackal]

I wish I could convince the crowd of cast-outs to look into WoW as an alternative to CoH when it closes but there's so much prejudism towards it from all of them. :(

it's a shame too, I do enjoy the game and it's not so bad on smaller servers with the idiot-factor (although it is there.)

I love the stag form, immensely. I saw screenshots of it from a friend of mine who also plays and was just "Oooh! I like that better!" Is it now Bear, Cat, Stag? Or... when do the forms show up? (Do they even still HAVE the bear form?)

You know my prejudism towards NCSoft right now, so every mention of someone trying Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2 makes me howl in anguish! "Nooooo! don't give those Asian gold-farmer centric games money!" (At least that's how Guild Wars 1 felt to me when I played it... it was filled with gold farmers and I found nothing compelling about any of the content writing and this was BEFORE that extra added layer of obnoxiousness with NCSoft was thrown onto it.)

I know I've been sort of curious about MoP since it's announcement. I really like the Pandarans. Always have. And I love the addition of the monk class.

At this point, though, I am not giving any games a serious look until CoH goes dark. Not even Secret World which has my strongest attention, right now.

[pixelcurious]

Stags are the new travel form, replacing the leopard form, and now the icon for it (which is shaped like a cloven hoof) finally makes sense! Night elf stags are paler and their antlers aren't as craggy looking. I think they have little jewels hanging from their antlers too.

Stag form looks really great, and I read somewhere that there's a way to have other players mount up, though I don't know how...

Bear form is definitely still there! And it has it's own spec now too, Guardian. Druids have FOUR specs instead of the usual three. Kitty spec is still called Feral, and then there's Resto and Balance. Guardian is a awesome name for bear spec, imo.

As far as Guild Wars goes, I wonder how long they'll even keep it around now that they have GW2. :/

[furryjackal]

Druids sound like they've gotten even more complex! I'm intrigued, now. *eyes her 7 day thing, again* C_C

And yes, the Alliance stags are bejeweled. I'm not a Night Elf fan save by default (my first Taliesen was a Night Elf because at the time it was the 'prettiest'? option available........ Thank you Blood Elves ) And I prefer Horde, any ways, but the NE's stags are so pretty!

Who else could be Druids on the Alliance side? I don't even remember now. I know NE's. Did they open it to Draenei and Worgens?

As for GW 1. I do have to wonder, too. NCSoft is suffering across the board which is why COH got canned and they have an enormous habit of just pitching games left and right. (See Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa.) And moreover they chuck the Western-feel titles first. So I'm dodgey with them, overall, at this point.

But really when I played it, it just felt like Aion felt. VERY pretty, very anime-ish, perfect, perfect world and characters.... and absolutely NO personality whatsoever. It's like looking at glamour-doll, perfect Sims or celebrities. All 'glam' but shallow as a puddle. CoH was certainly out of the mod for them. It didn't help that the entire town was FILLED with gold farmer bots because societally, Korea accepts and encourages this.

WoW has so much more life and personality to it than what I saw with Guild Wars and Aion.

[pixelcurious]

Worgen can be druids, but not Draenei. The idea is that the Night Elves taught them druid knowledge. Worgen don't seem like a very good fit for druids, to me, being all vicious and shit... but I guess it makes as much sense as troll druids! Which I just cannot do, though not for lore reasons. While I like the crazy troll druid bears and cats, with their bright colors and mohawk manes and all, their bat flight form just looks retarded.

I don't think druids are more complex now, if anything they're simplified. Dividing out bears helps both kitty and bear specs make more sense. Also, talents have been greatly simplified. Oh, and you no longer have to go to the trainer for your new spells, you just get them when you level. And AOE looting! AOE looting is the best thing ever.

NCSoft is suffering? I'm not up on the state of them as a company, I didn't realize that. I thought they were doing really well with Aion and GW2.

[furryjackal]

Yeah when I played last they had done away with the need for training, at that point. That was such a godsend! AOE looting? O.O that almost sounds like something DC Universe does. You hit Ctrl. and EVERYTHING comes to you! IT's glorious!
I'm almost tempted to take up my 7 days but I know I won't devote enough time to it and that'd be a waste of the freebie. Still, I enjoy my occasional jaunts through Azeroth. Especially at the holidays! So much fun celebrating Winter Vale :)

Asfor NCsoft, they're not doing... great. Most of their revenue is their Asian markets but they're still not humongous powerhouses of money. CoH didn't do anything in THEIR market but it was doing well here, but they felt it wasn't worth the bother. Aion does better there, fails here, too.
Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 and Lineage 1 are their primary money makers but still... it's apparently not a huge profit, last I had read.