Crafting professions. Before BC if you weren't in a cutting-edge raid guild with access to the epic recipes first, then tailoring, enchanting, alchemy, leatherworking, and blacksmithing were all pretty much a waste of a profession (save some paltry transmute cooldowns). Now they all give specialized gear rewards that make sense. Did you want to sew your own magical robes when you picked tailoring at level 5? You get that at 70. Chose alchemy because you like to pot? Here, have some free super rejuv potions.
There's even a nice distinction between the feel of the professions. A blacksmith has to crawl through lots of dungeons to craft one specific weapon for himself, an alchemist casually cooks consumables in town and gets free new recipes, and an enchanter still has to really be a salesman in /trade.
The primal nether system is a thing of beauty as well. They gave professions a reason to charge a respectable crafting fee for exotic items without creating the sense that you're a jerk for asking 100g for something a dozen other players can do, or for making you go far out of your way for something obscure like a Demonic Rune. It reduces the obsolescence of "yesterday's moneymaker" too.
As noted elsewhere, the availability of many ways to farm gold also reduces the opportunity cost of forgoing one gathering profession (or even two!).
Creating a game environment that literally all generations and education levels can and do enjoy and actually play together and do so for years. That alone is one huge achievement.
Not only is this website incredibly useful it is well written. The entire player base, all the items, arena info, guild info (bank content too), is online. I fully expect tracking of PVE progression, combat log analysis, some standard community management tools for guilds, and the functionality that wowhead et. al. provide. If the guild tools were good enough and integrated with the game I might consider paying a bit more a month for them as well.
The sky is the limit on the web and I think they are being quite ground-breaking with the XML interface allowing the customization that Mod authors have extend to the Web.
The one thing Blizzard has done well more than any other MMOG I've ever played--you get to feel like a badass from the get-go. When you first zone in, you're not naked. You're not armed with a sponge bat and dressed in paper underwear. You don't spend your first hour stomping on cockroaches and stabbing rats and other non-heroic tasks.
No, in WoW, from the first moment you're taking on bandits or zombies or pony-sized animals or demons. You feel heroic, even though at level 1 you're the farthest thing from it.
I recently leveled up a new alt in the new Draenei lands and I was stunned to see how some quests got Kael'thas involved. As a newbie, you realise you can't take on the big chief himself but it does have a real feeling of accomplishment if you can sabotage his work.
Even the defias brotherhood is bigger than you first think. Those bandits you kill at lvl 4 are more than what they seem like. Before you know it, you discovered a whole plot against stormwind. That's just very smart quest design.
Not only is this website incredibly useful it is well written.
I'd have to argue the well written part. It tends to have a 50/50 chance of locking up my Firefox if it even decides to load. When it does work, it can be fairly handy though.
Tier 2 will sadly never be beaten. Long live Judgement!
One of the biggest things I give credit to Blizzard for is their creation of such a vibrant world. I remember an early WotLK interview where (I think) Kalgan responded to a question about why there were places that looked relatively warm (no snow) in Northrend. He responded that they did not want to make everything the same. They wanted every zone to have its own look and feel. I really think this is one of the things that has made WoW so amazing. The art, the music, the events; everything is unique. From the fiery depths of Molten Core to the sandy ruins of AQ to the ultra-futuristic innards of Tempest Keep to the lush greenery of Mount Hyjal, every instance has its own flavor. Yeah, quests get repetitive and boss fights seem to revolve around the tank and spank a bit too much (though this is getting better), but each zone has its own feel that contributes to making the world being much more alive.
Another thing that WoW has going for it is the huge amounts of lore behind the game. Blizzard has done a pretty good job of integrating the previous lore from old games as well as expanding it and adding new stuff. Some things have been retconned (*cough* the entire Paladin class *cough), but in general the game has stayed as true as possible to the pervious lore and its one of the largest contributing factors to the realism of the world.
Finally, and one of the most important aspects of what makes the game so great, is that WoW never takes itself too seriously. There are cartoony graphics. Item names and flavor text poke fun at out of world events, television, or games. Hell, read the tooltip for the Spirit of Redemption buff. It is one of those things that I think makes the game so great. It is a serious game, but the ability to make people chuckle every once in a while at some nod to another game or show or book is incredible and really helps the player connect with the game.
The biggest thing about WoW that Bliz did right is how many improvements and changes they've made since launch. They've actively improved the interface, fixed holes, added quest hubs, balanced the game, added flight points, made life smoother, buffed weaker professions, added meeting stones, messed with the LFG interface until it (mostly) works, added exclamation marks to "wanted" posters, added repair vendors to the minimap, and a hundred other changes.
WoW is almost like a new game compared to launch. That's no small thing.
The other things have mostly been mentioned, but to recap...
Crafting: Damn, it's been a long time coming, and there's a few issues still, but damn, crafting pretty much rocks right now. Almost every profession has some BoP items that really give the profession some power. From ring enchants to mad alchemist potions to the BoP tailor sets, almost everyone can leverage their profession to get some real benefits. And just as importantly, almost every profession can make some serious cash too. The nether system simplified and legitimized crafting as a gold making method. Really nice. And almost every profession also has some useful consumables it can make - mana oil, drums, sharpening stones, necklaces with charges, etc. Good stuff.
Epic quest chains: We need more of these. Big rambling quest chains that explain lore, introduce a faction, lead you into one (or more!) instances...nice. Most TBC quests were a bit too direct, which made TBC as a whole feel a little...fractured. Go here. Go there. Oh look, an instance. Of course, not all old world quest chains were created equal. The Missing Diplomat, Onyxia key, and Defias quest chains were real high points. Then you get weird crap like the Egg of Hakkar quest chain. It led you through three difference instances and I don't know how many zones on two continents, made no sense, involved way too much running, and had poor rewards. The damn thing almost DEFINED the word "epic", but any quest chain that starts with killing random mobs in Feralas, and ends with raiding Blackrock Spire might be shooting just a BIT too high.
Epic instances: Karazhan spring to mind here. Big, sprawling, beautiful, impressive, non-linear, well themed, full of impressive bosses with great voice acting...epic. Especially since they patched in the music. I understand Naxx was similarly impressive, but my guild didn't quite get there pre-TBC. Anyhow, Karazhan is, I think, a great example of what a raid instance should be. By contrast, The Eye doesn't thrill me at all. Small, boring, ugly, and the "winged" design is kind of lame. What is it supposed to be? A space ship? A fortress? Wander around inside...it looks like nothing so much as a collection of large ugly rooms connected by ugly cooridors. Who/what is VR even supposed to be? A guard bot? Guarding what? An empty room? He can't even fit through the door, so he can't guard anything else...gah. By contrast, Kara is...well...Medivh's tower, with everything that implies. For WotLK, more Karazhan, less TK, k thx?
Daily quests: I think every has covered this, but it's worth repeating. The daily quest system is very well done. It provides both gold and content to a decent chunk of the population. Good stuff.
Arena: The pvp system has gone through some massive changes, but in its current incarnation it works pretty damn well. WoW will never, in my view, have pvp as anything more than a tacked on afterthought, but the arena system is a really well done afterthought.
Huge world: I've been playing alts a bit recently, and I've been reminded just how much depth there is to the world. Small touches... Campfires, cooking pots, names, lore, stories, details, side quests, and monuments. Or notice just how many zones the Silithid are in...you can't level up without running into outbreaks of them everywhere...and then you hit the high 50s, and there's Silithus, and then you hit 60 and there's AQ, and then you hit 70, and Skyriss tells you that the Qiraji "span the universe, as countless as the stars", and you can't help but shudder, just a bit. And then there's the Scarlet Crusade, and the Scourge, and the Defias... (Who wouldn't love to see a Defias raid instance? Did we really see the last of them with the defeat of Van Cleef?)
Blizzard has an entire tier above any other developer when it comes to polish. High quality artwork on the icons, detailed and animated sets (sans some clipping), and little misc bells and whistles really make for a complete package. Nothing about this game looks dull or drab (unless you are in a world environment that calls for it).
Other people have mentioned the art, the UI and its customizability, the general level of polish on lore, story, the raiding game, the variety of gameplay options... these are all high points for me as well, but they're pretty well covered. I'd emphasize two things.
First, they recognize that their game isn't perfect and they try to improve it. From minor fixes to old content in the newest patches, new leveling curves to reduce the pain of 20-60 compared to 60-70, consumables fixes, removal of SSC/TK attunements, the vanilla class patches... they listen to feedback and implement fixes. Not always the fixes we ask for, but they do continually improve.
Second, whoever they have doing behind the scenes math is generally *very* good. Itemization, the effects of varying stats on combat capabilities, all sorts of things - their game is *very* tightly balanced from a numbers perspective, and the people they have doing theorycraft and adjusting mechanics ought to be proud of themselves.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
Well, one cannot not feel a sense of nostalgia to vanilla WoW especially in the early days. Purple was very, very rare. The thrill of your first Molten Core run. Gathering at Kargath. The sensation of awe when seeing all those spell effects hit a molten giant. The world PvP. The Rank 14 grind. When Battleground premades were the end-game PvP. The long farming hours for raiding materials. PvP at instance portals delaying raids by long minutes. Naxxramas. All these things will be remember with nostalgia and people will persist in saying that "original WoW was the best" or that "pre-TBC raiding was more fun". It's mostly bullocks -- but still, those memories especially the 'first time' will always have an effect on perception. Moreover, there is a simple fact to take into consideration. The game has improved, implying that before it was "worse". By being worse, it was more difficult...perhaps more frustrating and time consuming (e.g. farming). The improvements to the game made it 'better' which is also perceived by many people as 'easier' ...less time/dedication to achieve success. Less farming. Raids reduced to 25-man. Crafing professions produce very powerful items. Consumable nerf. Marks of Illidari. And so on. For a dedicated raider in a well-organised raiding guild it is easier to raid. Full stop. It simply is. But that doesn't mean it's less enjoyable or the game has got worse - on the contrary.
Perception is as important as reality. However, the reality is that the game has improved a lot and Blizzard has done many things right.
1. Levelling is much better in the new zones. Better quests, fast respawning mobs, several flight paths, strategically-located bases, beautiful locations and great variety between zones. Think about WoW 1.0 Barrens and cry =)
2. The PvP system (Arena vs old BG/R14 grind) is much better. Less based on time, more based on skilled teamplay. Class balance is the downside in this system as it's more accentuated but still much better than the old honour system.
3. PvP Gear. For two years, dedicated PvPers were upset because to be good at PvP you were forced to raid. The best PvP gear was the one you get from raids. The exception was perhaps Warlord gear which was disgustingly hard to get not in terms of skill but in terms of time. This situation was indeed wrong and the introduction of Resilience and Arena gear is a good move. PvE gear is still substantially better for PvE, making it balanced.
4. Summoning stones. Fast transport to instances and less frustration for Warlocks.
4. Soul Well, Ritual of Refreshment, 30 min Blessings, reduced mana cost on group buffs etc. - like summoning stones they don't "dumb down" the game or make it less technically difficult. They just make it less frustrating - yes, "easier"...but more fun.
5. Consumable change and Marks of Illidari. Limiting the number of consumables that can be used is perhaps a crude move ...but also perhaps a necessary one. As long as there are consumables to be farmed, raiders will feel the need to farm them. Encounters will be designed around the full use of consumables which do require hundreds of gold to sustain...leading to more farming. This was an issue...probably the main issue why Naxxramas was only completed by a handful of raiders. I know ...you didn't "need" flasks for anything other than perhaps Kel'thuzad or Loatheb. But still optimally a high-end raider was pressured to farm a lot and spend a lot of time outside the raid. Im TBC, the farming component was systematically eroded from the raiding system. Food and oils are cheap and flasks can be obtained through Marks of the Illidari. Nowadays you can just log, get summon and start raid: even at the highest levels. This is a good change: raiding is focused on the actual raid content not on the farming outside of the raiding zone. Of course, it feels "easier". But it is in actual fact, better.
6. Daily Quests. A brilliant move - gives those not interested in trading a chance to get a daily flow of money. Everyone agrees this was a great addition.
7. Hybrid Power - From a raiding perspective, this was perhaps the most significant change for the better. Class synergies in TBC are insane. Almost every hybrid is raid-viable and can offer something to the raid. It's simply fun to have diversity and colour in raids which are truly viable. Indeed, raiding guilds have proved that using hybrid synergies yields much higher power than using pure classes. This wasn't the case in vanilla WoW.
Anyway, the game simply got better. Less farm, many ways to make gold, the PvP crowd have their own identity and there is less frustration in those day-to-day activities like making water, summoning and so on. However, these things are often perceived as a bad thing because they made the game "easier" and not as demanding as it was before. Well, think again.
Blizzard surely has still much to work on -- we want to see raiding fights that surpass in technical difficulty those in Naxxramas, for example. Naxx will never be back...the raiding system is different now. All you need is 25 good raiders which are easy to get. However, people are surely eagerly waiting an well-tuned encounter which can still hold Nihilum or DnT for a month. This was the magic of the 4H. The rest of Naxxramas was cleared very fast. Moreover, I totally dislike that PvP and PvE sets use the same templates...they should look unique, different from each other.
Anyway, despite these small things, TBC as it is today (2.3) is by far the superior game and Blizzard has got it right. The same cannot be said to TBC 2.0 probably...but we've moved past that now.
The primal nether system is a thing of beauty as well. They gave professions a reason to charge a respectable crafting fee for exotic items without creating the sense that you're a jerk for asking 100g for something a dozen other players can do, or for making you go far out of your way for something obscure like a Demonic Rune. It reduces the obsolescence of "yesterday's moneymaker" too.
As noted elsewhere, the availability of many ways to farm gold also reduces the opportunity cost of forgoing one gathering profession (or even two!).
I disagree about the nether thing. My character used to be alch/herb, and I wanted the spellstrike pieces crafted. I was more than willing to run heroics (indeed I used to do so daily), and I'd even run a dungeon with a tailor to get the nether.
Why should I have to pay for people's time when I'm willing to put in my own?
I think all the Lore behind the game is very facsinating. That and the quests are really interesting and captivating, for me anyway since I'm a fan of the lore, and i actually read the quests =p.
I find the combat system and the lore aspect of WoW to be unrivaled. When I first started playing WoW, I never expect a game that is as incredible as this. The lore of WoW seems to draw me into the game more and more. I started reading about various WoW characters and getting myself interested in the lore itself.
The best part is the combat system, which IMO, is one of a kind. There is something very addictive about tweaking my gears, trying out different gear pieces, raiding...etc, just to see how things work in practice. I love the way I never get tired of the same old fireball landing on the opponent, even though the only thing that changed is the numbers that pops up. I also enjoyed playing my alts just to see them in action with different specs. The responsiveness is also incredible. The feelings of my AoE hitting the targets around me, the feel of my spells hitting the target is almost perfect. Its funny how the same old fireball / scorch rotation never gets tired even though I've been using for months.
Off topic: Is anyone interested in starting a thread about the things Blizzard has done poorly? I think that will complement this thread very nicely. For all the good things that are good about WoW, we tend to also think about the aspect that needs to be improved or are simply a source of frustration...etc.
Off topic: Is anyone interested in starting a thread about the things Blizzard has done poorly? I think that will complement this thread very nicely. For all the good things that are good about WoW, we tend to also think about the aspect that needs to be improved or are simply a source of frustration...etc.
There isn't any need to try that. People complain all the time about different things and get a given post for whatever it is; yes, it isn't perfect, but the point here that is being made in this threat is that there is a ton of stuff that they get right and a very solid reason why people continue to play this game and why it dominates on market share. Look at this as a very nice positive thread - they're rare and there really isn't need for yet another miscellaneous complaint thread.
Nothing about this game looks dull or drab (unless you are in a world environment that calls for it).
I just had to quote this for emphasis. Everything in the game is so vibrant and colorful, and then you get to Desolace, which feels like the loneliest place on Azeroth, but that's because it's SUPPOSED to be like that.
There isn't any need to try that. People complain all the time about different things and get a given post for whatever it is; yes, it isn't perfect, but the point here that is being made in this threat is that there is a ton of stuff that they get right and a very solid reason why people continue to play this game and why it dominates on market share. Look at this as a very nice positive thread - they're rare and there really isn't need for yet another miscellaneous complaint thread.
I think there is room for such a thread, to talk about the poorly done features of WoW, more for the purpose of feedback than a thread for whining. I think the good and bad features come hand in hand, and it is only when Blizzard become aware of the poorly implemented features, will they think of refining it. It will be nice if we can talk about things that were broken or source of frustration, with the aim of pinpointing what went wrong.
Think of healthstones, meeting stones...etc. Some of these features started out as broken or has room for improvements. With the correct feedback, Blizzard is able to improve on it. Personally, I don't enjoy talking about the broken features in WoW's official forum due to the incredible amount of whining and spam there, which is why I believe such a thread will have a place here instead of on Blizzard's forum.
I disagree about the nether thing. My character used to be alch/herb, and I wanted the spellstrike pieces crafted. I was more than willing to run heroics (indeed I used to do so daily), and I'd even run a dungeon with a tailor to get the nether.
Why should I have to pay for people's time when I'm willing to put in my own?
Two reasons:
First, because if nethers were BoE then they would just be another mat, and we'd be right back to the pre-TBC situation where tailors (and others) had to ask for tips. The entire point of the nether system is that the customer can't substitute their own time, but simply has to pay for the crafter's time.
Second, you can still easily substitute your own time. As an alch/herbalist, it shouldn't take you more than a couple hours to farm up 100g worth of flasks. AH them or hell, trade them to your crafter. I know I'd almost always be happier with a stack of flasks than a crafting fee, since that's probably what I'd spend it on anyhow.
I hate to go off on a tangent like this, but part of the issue of being an herb/alch is that you have absolutely no use for Nethers. If you run heroics with your guild you might be able to get a say on what the nether is used for, but if no one in that group can make anything useful for you then you're out of luck. I have no problem paying ~100g for nethers used in a recipe, nor do I have any problem with them being Bind on Pickup - just give me a recipe with them. I'm not going to drop alchemy, but I'm seriously thinking about picking up engineering and having an alt farm my herbs - except that I can farm them much faster on an epic mount and don't have nearly the money for another.
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That Blizzard has made an MMORPG that I actually have played and enjoyed is quite nice. I really hated the idea behidn them, but the fact that you can play the game basically solo really helps. Some stories from my guild about the EQ days made me shudder and wonder how people put up with it.
The large amount of lore hidden in the books around the world is rather impressive, even if I read them all on WoWwiki instead of in game.
You're not armed with a sponge bat and dressed in paper underwear. You don't spend your first hour stomping on cockroaches and stabbing rats and other non-heroic tasks.
One of the most memorable RPG's I've ever played was Grandia, and that started out with a game of adolescent hide-and-seek while donning a wooden sword and pot lid. I can recall the names of practically every character and location even after almost a decade... something I can't say the same for eye-candy dependant, driveless, borefests like FF12.
I hate to go off on a tangent like this, but part of the issue of being an herb/alch is that you have absolutely no use for Nethers. If you run heroics with your guild you might be able to get a say on what the nether is used for, but if no one in that group can make anything useful for you then you're out of luck. I have no problem paying ~100g for nethers used in a recipe, nor do I have any problem with them being Bind on Pickup - just give me a recipe with them. I'm not going to drop alchemy, but I'm seriously thinking about picking up engineering and having an alt farm my herbs - except that I can farm them much faster on an epic mount and don't have nearly the money for another.
Bingo. A nether is pretty much the biggest reward from a heroic, and they worked it into basically every crafting profession besides alchemy.
But even with the current situation, tailoring itself doesn't make the cash for the most part. The time you put in to run 4 heroics (assuming a 1 in 4 chance of actually winning the nether), but farming for 100g nethers is hardly efficient money making unless you're already doing it for dailies/badges
Professions don't make money when dozens of people can make whatever you have. That's never going to change even with BoP nethers.
I really enjoyed the druid flight form quest. Long and epic, it took you from Moonglade to Terrokar and had some great lore and fun tasks. Also it really tested your ability to play your class (if you did it solo).
Bingo. A nether is pretty much the biggest reward from a heroic, and they worked it into basically every crafting profession besides alchemy.
But even with the current situation, tailoring itself doesn't make the cash for the most part. The time you put in to run 4 heroics (assuming a 1 in 4 chance of actually winning the nether), but farming for 100g nethers is hardly efficient money making unless you're already doing it for dailies/badges
Professions don't make money when dozens of people can make whatever you have. That's never going to change even with BoP nethers.
I thought nethers were a fantastic idea, especially when you consider they put them in for reasons not limited to giving crafting professions a way to make money. The other reason they were put in was to allow themselves a way to include all the amazing crafted epics in the game. Spellstrike, battlecast, etc., were all great caster gear, and you couldn't replace them until SSC or TK. They couldn't just let people power level tailoring in the first few weeks and have SSC worthy epics at a time when people were still wiping on the hideous SSC trash (remember what it was like in the beginning?). So they limited the dispersal of those epics by making the patterns BOP random drops AND including a nether in the drop.
The fact that it was potentially profitable for tailors and other crafters was just a side benefit. The real goal was to make the epics available, but not to flood the servers with them. I think it worked spectacularly, and did not DE my spellstrike set until I had the hood from the hex lord and the t5 legs. If they had not included a mechanic like nethers, I doubt they would have been willing to put those epics in the game.
Quest design has been one of the best things about this game for me. As was mentioned, the silithid you kill in the Barrens you don't really understand what they really are until later and the quests that lead you on that story. Alot of the quest chains are just FUN. My favorite though, and hasn't been mentioned yet, is the chain for the Battle of Darrowshire. I think of all the quest that one has been the most emotional. I felt compelled to complete it just because little Pamela asked me to.
12/26/07, 12:46 PM
I understand Naxx was similarly impressive, but my guild didn't quite get there pre-TBC. Anyhow, Karazhan is, I think, a great example of what a raid instance should be. By contrast, The Eye doesn't thrill me at all. Small, boring, ugly, and the "winged" design is kind of lame. What is it supposed to be? A space ship? A fortress? Wander around inside...it looks like nothing so much as a collection of large ugly rooms connected by ugly cooridors. Who/what is VR even supposed to be? A guard bot? Guarding what? An empty room? He can't even fit through the door, so he can't guard anything else...gah. By contrast, Kara is...well...Medivh's tower, with everything that implies. For WotLK, more Karazhan, less TK, k thx? 
