Please help. Why am I not impressed with WoW so far?

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 11:28 pm

OK, I could be answering my own question, but so far I'm not impressed with WoW. I think it's the low-rez textures, and so far everything has that kind of blurry sameness look. Which means I keep getting lost, and have no sense of where I am. The only place that felt totally different is the Tauran wheatfields, where I have a better sense of direction.

None of my 15 test characters are above level 8 yet, so is that why I'm underwhelmed? Every character kind of looks the same right now too... Also because I'm in some kind of starter zone?

I know I'm impatient, but with all the hoopla, I thought I'd be a slobbering fool from the start. So far, my favorite part of the game is the music. I LOVE the music! But within the first 10 levels, CoH and DaoC gave me a greater sense of awe.

knob · Post by **knob** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 1:06 am

I don't know what to tell you. Textures don't seem that blurry to me, but there are a few exceptions. Each newbie zone looks entirely different from the other to me. I've found WoW to be the easiest MMO I've played to navigate. The map (M key) and the Mini Map makes it very easy (for me) to get around.

The game definitely gets better as you get higher, though. Instanced dungeons, pvp, all that stuff.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 1:12 am

Valeal, that's what has me baffled. I can't figure out why I'm havign truobe reading the maps, besides the fact I'm directionally retarded in real life too.

Will you be on for a bit tonight? If so, will you contact me? "Fearme" It'd be nice to have someone to chat with a bit. So far no one ever helps me when I ask questions and such in the game (though maybe it's cause I play so late at night)?

Faldarian · Post by **Faldarian** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 1:53 am

Try turning the texture filtering off in the video options menu. I personally think the game actually looks better with AA and AF turned off when playing it; it doesn't have the hazy aspect to the graphics.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:30 am

Really Faldarian? Well I'll have to give that a try!

yossar · Post by **yossar** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:46 am

In the beta, I got bored around level 8 too. I don't think the game really starts until level 10 when you start picking up talents, though. But I found the combat so boring I didn't care enough to find out how much better it gets.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:49 am

yossar, are you playing any MMORGS then?

Tareeq · Post by **Tareeq** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:43 am

I wasn't impressed by wow at all when I started playing it, and memorialized that sentiment for the ages here.

Now I love it. jpinard, perhaps you should quit running test characters up to level 8, pick one, and take it as high as you can go. Join a guild (I'll plug the Wanderers on Whisperwind not just because I am one but because they're decent people with a mature outlook), and see the world.

Specifically, join a few good groups. See an instanced dungeon and kill everything in it. Pick up some tradeskills, and put some time into them. Raid an enemy town, die 7 times (as I did last night). And so on and so forth.

Based on what I've seen I'm sure pvp (when it's finished -

) will be as stimulating in the battlegrounds as it was at the start of DAOC. It'll get better over time too.

Settle in.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:37 am

I gotta say, I"m one of those who found WoW kind of "bleh" during open beta. I wasn't getting into it and kept going back to EQ2. Now I'm stuck lovin' WoW. I like the quests, i like that it's essentially 8 games in one if you look at each set of quests from each race as a different RPG using the same rules.

I levelled a Night Elf Hunter up to 16 yesterday (Gauge on Melgyorn-think that's the server's name) and have about 4 other characters I'm messin' around with. It's quite fun. Right now I think I'm going to quit EQ2. Mainly because of the fact that the lag on entering cities in EQ2 makes the game unbearable for me. I don't have even an iota of that problem with WoW.

Of course, like any other experience I've ever had with MMORPG's, I'll get sick of it all after 3 to 4 months, tops. But I already feel like I've gotten my money's worth.

DiscoJason · Post by **DiscoJason** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:31 pm

hepcat wrote:I like the quests, i like that it's essentially 8 games in one if you look at each set of quests from each race as a different RPG using the same rules.

Right now I think I'm going to quit EQ2. Mainly because of the fact that the lag on entering cities in EQ2 makes the game unbearable for me. I don't have even an iota of that problem with WoW.

To me, the quests aren't incredibly varied from starting city to starting city. There are different stories, but they are all there to get you equipment, xp, and money at low levels. Whether you are collecting cones in the Night Elf City or pumpkins in the undead one, you can see the quest doesn't really vary that much.

As far as lag, I have yet to experience any at all. Is it graphical lag for you or network lag? Do you have a lower end computer? I see people complain about lag in EQ2 and I just am not seeing it.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:04 pm

discojason, from what I've read it's graphics + highload city lag.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:07 pm

Tareeq and hepcat -that's what I needed to hear. For me CoH was entirely the opposite. I was WOWED for the first 10 levels of any character I made, and then it just became blah. I will take DEPTH over inital WOW factor any day. But I wanted to know that a lot of time invested woudl be worth it later on. Sounds like it will be!

Tareeq - I'm glad your other thread was a joke, cause I seriously thought you wee going to jail as an innocent person

that would have been horrible.

yossar · Post by **yossar** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:42 pm

jpinard wrote:yossar, are you playing any MMORGS then?

Nah, I haven't had the time or the willpower to stick with one game long enough for an MMORPG since Ultima Online. Was thinking of trying out City of Heroes, though.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:47 pm

OK, some interesting things I discovered today:

I'm posting this for others because I was getting very irritated at the fact everything in WoW looked washed out and semi-blurry. So I started testing all the different visual options "in-game", and "out-of-game". I discovered the suggested set of high-end options (on the forum and in-game), vs. switching to what I suggest, is like comparing a crappy ps2 fps vs. DOOM3 on a supercomputer.

So in case you didn't know... when you enable "Full-Screen Glow Effect, aka bloom" in WoW, it disables FSAA. They are mutually exclusive in this game. In addition, much of the advice on the forum says to disable trilinear filtering and use bloom (over FSAA) for crisper textures. This could not be more wrong!

If your machine can handle it, I suggest 1600x1200, 16X AF, 4X FSAA, turn OFF "Full-Screen Glow Effect" in-game, and make sure all the non- performance enhancing boxes are checked. I went from hating the graphics to loving them.

I don't have the bandwidth to host these high-rez screenies but if someone does, I'll get them to you. The difference is truly stunning, but to see best, you need to look at them side-by-side. See this thread for full details: http://www.octopusoverlords.com/phpBB2/ ... php?t=2803

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 11:54 am

DiscoJason wrote:
hepcat wrote:I like the quests, i like that it's essentially 8 games in one if you look at each set of quests from each race as a different RPG using the same rules.

Right now I think I'm going to quit EQ2. Mainly because of the fact that the lag on entering cities in EQ2 makes the game unbearable for me. I don't have even an iota of that problem with WoW.

To me, the quests aren't incredibly varied from starting city to starting city. There are different stories, but they are all there to get you equipment, xp, and money at low levels. Whether you are collecting cones in the Night Elf City or pumpkins in the undead one, you can see the quest doesn't really vary that much.

As far as lag, I have yet to experience any at all. Is it graphical lag for you or network lag? Do you have a lower end computer? I see people complain about lag in EQ2 and I just am not seeing it.

Believe me, I'm no EQ2 basher as I was on here right it was released talking about how much I loved it. I have to say, however, that the quests ARE quite different in WoW according to race. Of course they're going to be essentially the same at levels 1-5 or so, but that's because they're basically tutorial missions. Kill, gather, deliver, that's the holy trinity to teach new players the interface, combat, and movement. If you play beyond that though (which does not take more than an hour or two to do...heck, i've seen it done in LESS than an hour) you'll see what i'm talking about.

last night i had a mission for my level 18 night elf hunter that blew me away. i'm not going to spoil it, but it was a three parter that had me using my head instead of my trigger finger to get through. my favorite quest in ANY mmorpg, bar none.

the quests in eq2 were pretty good too. but i never saw anything of that scale. it doesn't mean they're not there or that they won't be someday, just that from level 1 to 16, I never saw any for my scout character.

but as i mentioned, the main reason i'm leaning toward WoW (in addition now to the quests) is the city lag...which is NOT a problem of my graphic settings, contrary to popular belief. i had it set to rock bottom during my last attempt to up the framerate and it STILL looked like a freakin' slide show the moment i entered any city gates.

outside the city, it was great. and i prefer the graphics in EQ2 to those in WoW...when it's not crawling.

DiscoJason · Post by **DiscoJason** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 12:33 pm

hepcat wrote: the quests in eq2 were pretty good too. but i never saw anything of that scale. it doesn't mean they're not there or that they won't be someday, just that from level 1 to 16, I never saw any for my scout character.

Quests that require you to think are also in EQ2 as well. I have had quests where I had to find certain locations based on a puzzle-like description of the places. I had another low level quest in Qeynos that was basically a poem describing places and had ot figure out where they were talking about and go visit those places. So, there are a couple of examples of me having to solve puzzles and I can only assume there are more of them in the game. By the way, I have liked the puzzle quests the best out of all the EQ2 quests I have done.

WoW also has some pretty cool quests as well and I enjoyed them just a smuch as the ones I have done in EQ2.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 12:52 pm

Hope I didn't come off as being too hard on EQ2, Jason. I really do like both games. My comment on the quests did come with a caveat that just because i hadn't seen anything on the scale of the quest i had in WoW last night in EQ2, it didn't mean they're not there. It just means I didn't come across them while playing.

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:09 pm

I've decided to stick with EQ2 till I'm bored and jump into WoW after I'm sick of EQ. Both games will be around for a long time, and should only get better over the years.

Toe · Post by **Toe** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:05 pm

I have done two quest so far in WoW that were multi-part and once I completed them the NPC yelled to the zone that I "saved the day". Pretty cool. I especially liked the Save the Damn one in Loch Modan. I won't go into all the specifics but it was a great, fun quest. The second one, the Westfall/Defias Brotherhood storyline was awesome and culminated with completing the first instance zone (and, consequently it started out with Collect X number of Ys and Kill A numbers of B's). And its not even over yet as I got a new quest at the end that continues the storyline.