check WoW playerbase, check the 2nd rank mmorpg playerbase, or other mmorpg playerbase for that matter, and think:

if they arent goin anywhere, will WoW be goin anywhere anytime soon?

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Added on December 3, 2007, 5:21 amQQ more.

pve cant be promoted as e-sport.

pvp can.

you can always continue to raid, or join the pvp bandwagon, no one's forcing you to do either. wow downhill? checks playerbase.... nope. only goin up. downhill for you, doesnt mean it'll be goin down for everyone else.

oh and in regards to shamans, theres really a ton of shamans doing fine in the pvp world, considering since class balances are mainly revolving around pvp (who the hell argue about class balances in pve lol. so long its constant buffs, everyone's happy)

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Added on December 3, 2007, 5:24 ampvp gear are only good for pvp.

pve gear are only good for pve.

nuff effin said.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Dec 3 2007, 05:28 AM

bad players will still be bad players regardless of their gear. arena itself is already competitive enough. people that lose and suck will still continue to lose and suck regardless of their gear.
hell, raiding is JUST ABOUT the same, just cuz the guild/raid is good, noobs can just leech along and gain gear just because they are lucky it dropped, or they got the dkp etc. and in the end gaining gear that they dont deserve. SAME THING. but will the raid ultimately progress far with such leechers around? would they tank good as a tanker? deal good dps as a dpser? heal good as a healer? doubt it.

if ur SO pissed that bad players are running around in gears they may or may not deserve, im calling jealousy on that. advice? get those gears yourself and beat them with it. simple as that.

hey, i dont play a shaman, but as an ex-raid leader, and current pvp team leader and guild leader for over a year, i value shamans and i bring them to raids and now, in pvp.

since i dont raid now lets just talk about pvp. in pvp, shamans are the only class with bloodlust, dispeling them off or not is irrevelant as people will still get to ultilize it and not every team have full offensive dispelers eg: druid/paladin healer teams. and if you dispel, ur burning GCD and any top end pvp'ers would know how precious every single GCD goes. Then, theres totems, you may argue that they are easily destroyed, but do you know how much effort it takes to destroy them? just to get it replanted. you may argue that you can send a hunter pet to do the job, but do you realize, not every team runs hunters, and even if they do, everytime the pet moves to the totem, thats 1 less dps or interruptions on the healer or caster.

earthshield cooldown? imho, thats no big deal, the only change to pvp is that shamans will now need to time their earthshield better instead of spamming it on targets and EZ-mode heal people from it. nerf to their own defense you say? lol have you ever fought a 490 resil 13k armored 12k hp shaman, with earthshield? its even tougher than hitting a paladin, as a rogue, and with the new 2.3 spell dmg from healing change, they can and will kill you.

so really, if you have so much complains on shaman, imho, maybe its just you sucking. and lets say shaman REALLY suck, advice to you, tough it out just like rogues or ANY classes that were sucking (warlocks pre 1.8 patch anyone?) and wait for the buff, or just shut up and reroll.

and in the meantime, ill bring shamans that arent crybabies and know how to play their class and ultilizing them to their fullest for my team.

resto shamans had been killing and raping rogues all around prior to patch 2.3 and even top rogues like neilyo, ming, nitrana have their troubles beating resto shamans, and even if its a win, all the above mentioned rogues are left with 20-30% health give or take, any mistakes they do will obviously mean fatal to them.

wounding poison can be easily cleansed, via a combination of poison cleansing totem spam/manual cleanse. and our stunlocks on post 400 resil people especially with over 10k hp and 10k armor holds minor value as opposed to stunlocking someone in prebc where people are usually dead before diminishing even kicks in. post bc especially heavily geared arena people, you can stunlock all you want but you're pretty much wasting your time as it'll get into DR early and your precious energy are being wasted.



id gank either the druid, paladin and shaman are debatable.

since you mentioned ganking, given the nature of ganks, i will have the opener, so the druid is a clearcut choice.
so that leaves either shaman or paladin, and to be honest, both share the same value to be ganked or avoided. shamans with their totems and their spell dmg are a killer to rogues. where else paladin couldnt kill me as easily, their bubbles, blessing of freedom and plate are enough to make any rogue frustrated.
so minus druid which is a clear cut choice, id say ill either gank both paladin or shaman, or avoid them completely.

assumingly you're talking about arena target selection, id choose anyone of them. i can counter paladin bubble via massdispel and they are as good as dead. shaman on the other hand actually can hold a few sec more than paladin due to ns heal/hearth shield, but same thing, they cant run away. druids id rather tend to avoid unless i can get a clear trap against them such as catching them in caster form with my teammates already prepping a huge dmg burst unload, else its no point having the druid kiting everyone around with his hots ticking with his teammates cc'ing/killing us or a 2nd'ary healer healing him.

and im not gonna lie, they are actually fine with the majority of the new patch changes, surely they arent too happy being unable to spam ES anymore, but the new water shield and ES mana cost helps them in the long run in a serious arena fight. the biggest problem in resto shamans in high end arena is that they run oom FAR quicker than any of the other 3 healer types. with watershield changes and ES cost lowered, it solves a huge majority of their problems. so yes, they are fine.



but the fact is leechers will still occur especially to guilds that do not have the manpower to sub in people everytime a leecher is removed. take for example is asiapacific players playing on US servers. so they are still gonna leech happily, and the fact is that there people all around the world that are gearing up despite them being deserving to their gear or not.

this thread is still about how the OP is wondering if WoW will last, you claim its going downhill, i strongly disagree, and this is merely a debate of it. dont see a problem in that.

I wouldnt hold too much hopes on sunwell considering its rather geared towards the hardcore raiding community aside its lesser/more casual dungeons. Main reason to that is because the majority of hardcore guilds claim that BT/HJ being too easy, and as time passes, BT/HJ is slowly turning into a non-factor and pve is getting old really quickly as there is no additional content for them to work on. Sunwell is the solution to that and unless you're done with the present raiding world (HJ/BT), it wouldnt be too wise to look up to sunwell which is a notch ahead HJ/BT.

That said, imho Blizzard, even though they may seem ignorant or outright bastards to some, (even myself from time to time) but if you take the time to think and compare with other mmorpgs out there, im very certain that blizzard in overall, is doing MUCH MUCH better than the rest and its very apparent with the ammount of player base they are getting as opposed to other mmorpgs. No doubt, it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to please everyone i dare say, but they are striking that balance very hard to please both the pve/pvp'ers, hardcore and casual alike, and to various categories of target audience and thus far, imo, they are doing a very good job in striking that said balance.

To be honest though, despite whats being said, i REALLY hope there would be some competition in the mmorpg market to arise, to at least keep blizzard on their toes. No doubt the market is already monopolized by blizzard and as we all know, monopolization in ANYTHING is not good, competition is always needed for the benefits of the consumer. Take a look back to our very own tmnut screamyx, prolly the best example i can think up from the top of my head.

ME SEE WHAT YOU DID THAR!

like i said, they need competition, if they are gonna further dominate the mmo market with yet another mmo title, lolgg.

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Added on December 4, 2007, 2:03 pmfirst off, pvp is not balanced around 1v1, and in 5v5 formats, or even arguebly 3v3, its almost perfectly balanced. granted, theres 9 classes and to strike a balance between maintaining the 9 classes to be unique yet not having any of them being overpowered over another, is not a simple task. even the supposedly overpowered and godlike warlocks arent so op'ed now since they arent getting buffs at all in recent patches where the other classes are, imho now they are almost the same as any classes and are very killable just like any other class.

raids are much more casual despite your claim. and theres always even more casual raids like kara/ZA. if hardcore raids arent for you, dont do it then, stick to the casual raids such as kara/za. i wont argue about the grindfest that still exist in pve as it still exist be it for mats for consumables or reputation grinds/attunement/heroic badges etc. But to claim pvp or arenas being a grind is really absurd. 10 games per week is really too much to ask? and hell, you pvp for the sake of pvp, and have fun, if having fun and playing the game is a grindfest to you, might as well dont even bother about it.

again your claim of the changes to tbc changes for the worse and the current mechanics/flaws driving away a lot of a players are still far from the truth, as a matter of fact, the playerbase is ONLY increasing. and a further hard solid fact is that TBC is far more casual friendly than ever and could also be claimed to be the most casual friendly mmorpg ever in the market. if WoW is not your liking still despite all that then by all means, just rollover warhammer, i can guarantee you, 60-80% of WoW players rollin over warhammer, in the end returned to WoW very promptly, especially since 20-30+ of my WoW friends that went over warhammer before, all of them came back to WoW and never looking back.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Dec 4 2007, 02:03 PM

then you need not bother about this discussion if your enjoying the game.

the TS is stating his worries about how long WoW will last, and the main discussion is between the naysayers claiming wow is on its way to its doom and the opposition which is mainly me in disagreement.

ZA is pretty much casual considering thats what:
- blizzard announced
- its just a notch above karazhan, which is already non-factor
- most fights are simple tank n spank, the only hard part about it is the gear sink, but if your fully kara/heroic geared, its not an issue
- the only hardcore portion about ZA is the timed quest.

and now you bring in BG9, 2v2, wtf? you wanna start looking at the 5v5 or even 3v3 brackets now? no, warrior/druid dont dominate those brackets. Blizzard already claimed and admitted what pvp will not be balanced around 1v1/2v2, they also even claiming the reluctance of even making 2v2 arena format but its due to player's demands it got out in the first place, get over it. Hell, your also a hunter, and despite their past history of being arguebly the weakest class in arenas, they are now heavily buffed and is a contender for top spots on the class rankings for high end arenas.
here: http://www.geekboys.org/arena/index/5/all/hunter/all/all/
and lets not even forget the hunter legend that defied all naysayins about hunter being bad even way before the hunter buffs - Hamchook.

Snail pace of patches? if you've checked the timeline of WoW patches and expansion releases, and the length of patch notes/changes, then compared it to ANY OTHER mmorpg in the market. tell me who wins.

No doubt just like every mmorpg, WoW will eventually come to an end be it the outdated graphics due to technological advancement, better programming or even game structure itself. But with what the current market is offering, like the ones you listed - City of Heroes, Warhammer online, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan (lolwtf?) just does NOT offer any advantage over WoW. and despite your claims of people migrating over, i can also claim people that even migrated over in the first place returned to WoW. Hard fact is that WoW playerbase subscriptions are increasing, while the games you listed are either having an awfully slow increment in playerbase, being stagnant completely, or even worse, declining in playerbase.

Ive been an old school WoW'er playing since closed beta, ive come across many old school player burning out from WoW, leaving it, or even migrating to various other mmorpgs even the ones you listed. but hard fact is that, most if not all of them, returned to WoW eventually in the end. Why is that? nothing else matches up to what WoW offers, simple as that.

As i said, i havent done ZA myself so i will refrain from further commenting, however, ZG was pretty much the next UBRS despite how hard it may be to some raiders/players. ive pretty much done a huge majority of my ZG in semi guild/semi PUG due to the lack of players. while no doubt it isnt as effecient or successful as the majority of guild runs out there, but we've been full clearing zg on many occassions and its being done very casually.

Unless you consider the initial releases of mmo where almost everything is bugged and crappy that immediate hotfixes are needed to keep the players intact, or the minor patches that lists no more than a few lines of changes, no, other mmo's arent doing all that much better at all, if not, as i claimed, a lot slower than blizz's WoW.

5's are very balanced as the game changes progressed. season1 wasnt much the case, but season 2 especially this season (S3), 5v5 is pretty much as balanced out as it can be. every 9 class with ALMOST every different build (such as feral druids or ret paladins) are viable for 5v5. And despite your claim, its actually the opposite. If you find yourself being hardcountered due to "class balancing" issues, the best way to counter that is swapping in another class, and my team's been doing that since our major establishment on the 1.7k ratings and we're shooting past 2k ratings even the 2.1k ratings mark time to time. Today its been even better with a now FULL 10 man roster with all sorts of classes available at our disposal with the exclusion of a warrior and so long we have at least 6-7 people logged on for rotations, we've been able to come up with solid counters against almost any kind of compositions being thrown at us. That imo is balance, since nothing is particularly overpowered over another and everything can be countered. True, WoW wasnt originally designed to pvp, but yet another fact is that, since the closed beta theres pvp servers already, and patches are constantly being rolled out to address pvp balancing issues.

True, 2345 is the most popular and perhaps the most dominant composition in 5's, but do you know that 4dps are one of the best hard counter to a 2345 team? and that 2345 can be varied to different compositions to produce different results? the only definitive 2345 setup is that the team must have a warrior and holy paladin, and that 2 class alone can be easily countered by caster heavy teams especially if you have a warlock COT'ing the paladin and felpuppy constantly on him. Hell, the term 2345 in the first place is from team pandemic with the buttons that the shaman pushes to win. imho that doesnt mean much jack as team pandemic isnt a exactly the top 3 team in BG9. they are however damn popular and rather successful in profession WoW tournaments and just recently won their dreamhack tournament too at sweden.

As for 3v3 RMP, i run RMP myself, and i admit that it is fairly overpowered, especially with the recent changes to the bandwagon rogue AR Prep spec, mage co-effecient cast changes, the upcoming trainable iceblock change, and the major Disc priest changes. But do you know that Warrior/Warlock/Paladin is the hardcounter to RMP? or the infamous drain team that usually comprises Warlock/Priest/Hunter? Hell, team pandemic lost to hamchook's drain team badly and if it werent for their team's stubbornness in not switching out classes to counter pandemic's anti-drain team counter comprising rogue/rogue/druid (yes, messed up i know, one should never allow stacked classes in tournaments) pandemic would never even win the tournament at all. And if you havent checked the the majority of top 3v3 teams, no, its not really dominated by RMP entirely. theres a vast lot of 1 warrior + 2 healer or warr/warl/pala setups or even the infamous drain teams.

With the new hunter changes, if you still can claim wow pvp is not balanced at all (well, in entirely it isnt 100% balanced, or would it ever be as this is a very subjective matter) then you may want to have a step back and have a look at perhaps yourself being the hunter, or your teammates. As far as hunter goes, even our hunter that was with us as a clicker/keyboard turner was able to do fine even in the 2k rating bracket, and thats prior to the hunter buff. (if you've been following my minor pvp blog) Of course now things changed a lot for him as he is using macros and keybindings, and with the hunter buffs, hes pretty much a beast now able to take out people single handedly in arenas. At a lot of occassion we even assign him to solo dps 1 guy while main dps on another, causing intense preasure on the healers and they will have to choose who to keep alive and who to let go, either choice is obviously not good for them. And as fight drags out, viper stings and our priest mana burns or even warlock mana drain will kick in and we will emerge victorious eventually as oom casters cant do shit.

Yes the archtype system maybe good on paper, but will it be as good on release? while its hard to judge a game that isnt fully released many beta testers that supposedly migrated from WoW claim that it isnt as good as it claims. Also, if you havent noticed, WoW is the only mmorpg thats being played as a true professional e-sport, will warhammer bear the same ammount of quality of not more to be able to achieve that status? again, its still not on full release and its hard to make judgements based on the state of the game, but it is one good point to think about and it sets a VERY HIGH benchmark for warhammter to reach.

And you've got me wrong in the sense that:
- Im also claiming that WoW is not in a decline at all even in the lifecycle itself, at least not yet, seeing how it is doing now in the e-sport level, and the upcoming release of WOTLK.
- this i may agree, but you've mentioned that they are working on WOTLK, which would only mean good for the game in the long run.
- PVP is definitely balanced, given the options you can have to counter any forms of imbalance you may be faced with. What you claim is true though, for example the rogue/hunter class prior to 2.3, but since 2.3, they have recieved a huge number of buffs and as season3 hits, the statistics are showing that those said classes are definitely improving a lot and previously dominant classes such as warlocks and/or warriors are declining with the rising of hunter/rogues.
- difference in experience perhaps, but i could also claim that it may be the focus of one server from my part compared to you playing on 3 servers. as i am able to establish more presence and contact with players as opposed to a person playing 2 or even 3 sevrers as you mentioned.
- that would be too hard to answer, but i personally hope it wont reign as the most popular and dominant mmorpg as stated in previous posts. monopolization in anything never works, same would go for WoW

TLDR would be a better summarization of your post.

one thing though, WoW being so casual friendly, so long you dont mind being ownt by hardcore players be it pve or pvp, its perfectly fine to play at your own pace. My pace from Sunset Swish. its an ending theme music from Bleach anime in case you didnt know, just google or wiki it for more info.

actually is more of dont complain or get jealous of people's gear when your not working for it. its fine to be casual so long you understand that being casual would mean slower progress in pve or pvp especially when gears/rep is concerned.

email support@blizzard.com

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Added on December 6, 2007, 3:48 pmreported

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Dec 6 2007, 03:48 PM

and THATS why i like the arena system, you dont commit to time, you commit to skill.

we only play 10-30ish games/week for our main 5v5, and its usually done on weekends since weekdays theres a lot of sudden OT issues even from myself. or people needing to sleep early due to work/school etc.

to be honest, raids are the same too. problem? you need the other 24 or 9 people to have the same level of "skill" and teamwork to make it work. ive seen many casual raiding guilds that does only weekend raids and each raids being just 3-5 hours and they still make it to bt/hyjal. Same could be said for arenas, even if you suck, so long you play an assload of games you'll prolly more ratings than you play less since you encounter more teams and chances are you'll face easier teams, and hard teams wont take much ratings off you if they are highly rated. Difference? You only need 4 person to do it instead of 9, or 24.

it actually is, and its legal too.

WoW arena tournaments *COUGH*

pro-wow arena players have yearly income ranging between 20-60k US dollars. my yearly income is around 20k ringgit.

so yea, it is that good. but i mean, not everyone gets to live up the gamer dream

and ataris, just, roll over and die in car fire or something already please.
=edit=
and i dont know why, but you somehow managed to be more annoying than jas, i really cant figure out why.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Dec 11 2007, 03:05 PM

dude, get a gf like hafu, grind 10 hours, eat/shower/toilet 1 hour, sex 4 hours, rest sleep. THATS A PERFECT WAY TO SPEND MY LIFE FOR AND DIE FOR.

and yes i know what you mean

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Added on December 11, 2007, 3:14 pmwouldnt be too late to start a career 35+ then

i live for an interesting life. absolute NO! to being a sheep like the rest
sadly im just not good enough for all of that

thats the thing man, hes like, some random plague of shroom, hes never here, but suddenly he just SPROUTS outta no where with a 1 liner spam, and not just the LYN WOW boards, literrally across LYN boards :/

oh i think i may figured out why, hes a dotard too. and my intense hatred against dota and dotards seem to picked up the scent.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Dec 11 2007, 03:14 PM

ah, ive had my time playing that too, and it was my first game and i won XD

indeed it has its thrills being a zero-sum based game, but i surely does suck for being the loser. and even being damn pro you'd still have a decent chance to lose. imo its all bout daring and reading people's faces. luck does play though hehe.

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Added on December 11, 2007, 4:05 pmyou are correct, we have almost zero support from our government when it comes to e-sports.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Dec 11 2007, 04:05 PM