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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2024

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  • You and I must have played different versions of BC, because I remember people running around like they fell out of bags of Skittles with their armor, silly transformations (Noggenfogger, anyone?), and other goofy things. WoW has always had a healthy dose whimsy (both intentional and not) mixed in.

    Pandas looking badass and Dracthyr not is purely subjective.

    I think you have rose-tinted glasses on, friend.







  • I started with World, and put hundreds of hours into that and Rise, plus their expansions. I tried the GU demo on Switch, but it felt too clunky.

    The thing that hooked me was the first large monster you hunt, Great Jagras. He’s a pushover for any hunter with even a slight amount of experience, but for me as a new player, it was an epic battle and I certainly didn’t expect that much intensity that early in the game. I also liked how even after you had a monster on “farm status” a hunt could still easily go from good to bad if you weren’t careful. It emphasized that these monsters were incredibly dangerous, and even seasoned hunters could be in trouble if they get too cocky. It also helped keep farming more interesting as you needed to pay attention if you wanted to be successful.

    Overall, I like the… world, in World more, but the gameplay mechanics and combat more in Rise. In World, the maps were larger, with more detail and felt more alive. I also liked the tracking aspect, and was disappointed that aspect didn’t make it to Rise. It felt like you were actually hunting your target, instead of just sprinting to their location on your doggo friend and beating them up like in Rise.

    I’m definitely looking forward to Wilds releasing next year.


  • Counterpoints:

    1. Describing the graphics/art style as broken or ugly is highly subjective. A lot of WoW players like the art style as it is. I would’ve preferred the graphics got updated when I played, but it is what it is.

    2. Updating assets and textures takes art resources, which means taking designers off of working on new projects. Blizzard’s allocation of resources is another discussion entirely, though.

    3. A lot of WoW players play WoW and nothing else, and a lot of them play on hardware that’s barely able to run the game. Check the forums whenever the system requirements get updated with new expansions and see all the people complaining about not being able to afford new hardware. Now, Blizzard definitely shouldn’t support everyone’s dinosaur PCs forever, but they risk cutting off portions of their playerbase whenever they raise the system requirements, so I’m sure that’s taken into account.

    4. WoW’s engine is built in-house and OLD, and started as a heavily modded Warcraft 3 engine. They most likely face significant challenges whenever they want to add or update anything, including graphics.

    Note: Take my post with a grain of salt, as I stopped playing in 2018 and haven’t been playing the closest attention since.