Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
Originally posted by: RBachman
How much is it for you? It's around $50 here, with DirecTV at $45 iirc.
Something like $9 a month, although you only get a dozen or so channels.
Just FYI, that is an
extremely low for basic cable service in the US. Most cable systems have gone to giving you a lot more channels, but at a higher price. I pay something like $40 per month, plus ~$5 for my cable box, and another $5 or so in random fees. I do get a discount for getting both cable TV and internet service from Comcast, however.
As far as WoW is concerned, I actually just picked up a trial account this week. I've previously played a number of MMORPG games, including EQ, AO, AC2, PlanetSide, and (most recently) CoH. I tend to play a fair amount of solo, and I don't always have huge blocks of time to devote to the game (which was a problem I had with CoH -- the fastest way to level is to do the big team missions, but they take 6-8 hours of continuous play unless your group is REALLY good). Overall, I will probably not be able to play more than 20 hours per month tops. I'm enjoying it enough that I ordered the full game.
Is it "easy"? Well, sort of. I can solo level pretty quickly without a great degree of difficulty (so far). But I've had to form groups to do some of the quests without getting the smack laid down on me by the mobs (or else I'd have to go grind for 2-3 levels until I could solo the monsters in groups). The quests pull you along in the storyline pretty well, and quest completion gives you a lot of experience relative to some of the other games I've played. The quests also involve a good mix of tasks (not just 'take this item to this other place' or 'go camp this unique mob with 80 other players until you get the rare item it drops').
I did notice that the crafting is a LOT easier than in most other MMORPGs, and so far I have not had much in the way of money troubles (my character is a druid, so I don't need to buy as much gear as some other classes). I can appreciate the sense of accomplishment and value that comes with making crafting very hard (or at least very time-consuming) -- but it's also nice to be able to craft something useful without having to devote tens of hours just to building up skills or finding rare drops. I have assumed, from the progression so far, that crafting advancement will get significantly slower and reagents will be much scarcer/more expensive at higher levels, but I confess I have not studied the economics of the game closely. I'm not sure how (or if) they avoid the rampant inflation that plagued some of the early MMORPGs.
I can see how having no death penalty removes some of the 'danger' from the game -- you don't have to worry too much about getting smacked down by some overpowered critter if you poke your nose in the wrong place, since all you lose is a few minutes of time. However, it's
nice to not have to worry about that for someone who doesn't play as much; being set back in your character's development by an hour or two because of a mistake in combat (or a mob respawning on top of you during a fight) is incredibly frustrating when that is a day or two of play. EQ was particularly brutal, since if you kept getting killed it would take you forever to level up. CoH had a nicer system, where you accrued experience at half your normal rate until you had paid off your 'debt'. This meant that, at worst, you advanced at half-speed for a while (rather than being stuck in a cycle of getting killed before you could level up and not getting anywhere). Frankly, I would rather have it err too much on the side of generosity than punishment, as it is easy to die (especially when soloing) without it really being your fault.
I'm on an almost-brand-new server (Draka), and I haven't noticed any lag issues (even during peak times). Perhaps this will change as more players come into the world; I will have to keep an eye on it. The player base seems relatively benign, and not as full of 12-year-olds as I had feared (although there are plenty of people spamming guild invitations in the low-level area I am in, but they just go on the ignore list). Again, this probably varies considerably from server to server, and my experience with other games is that it is worse when PvP gets involved (since people tend to take it more personally). PvP in an MMORPG just doesn't do it for me; I'll fire up CS:Source or BF2 if I feel I have to kill something that fights back.
About the only thing I would *really* like to have added is a grouping system like the one in CoH. In that game, you can join a per-area list of people looking for a group, and the list can be viewed by everyone and sorted by level or "class" (for instance, if you need a healer for your group, you can glance at the list and see if there are any looking to join a group). Makes it a LOT easier to find pickup groups of people in the area, and it's less intrusive than a LFG chat channel.
And yes, the people whining about monthly fees are just being whiny. $15 a month is not a lot of money to pay for 10+ hours of entertainment compared with a lot of the other options out there.