skinnydefenselessheroism:
iamthefirechild:
“Because Everquest and Anarchy Online weren’t accessible? Or City of Heroes or Guild Wars which came out in the same year? What about Lineage II? Saying accessible is meaningless. It got a lot of attention because it’s Blizzard, and the size of the subscriber base means other companies follow their standard blindly, despite there being positive proof that other styles of games are at least as good, if not better, and that there are elements of the WoW-style MMO that could and have been improved upon — just not by WoW.” Summer pauses to take a deep breath after spilling all that out.
“I’ve basically tried them all, you know. Even if WoW has improved I can’t afford to be paying for another game, really.” She shrugs, bypassing that thought. “Did they put in anything like gear appearance customisation yet? Rift lets you assemble whole outfits that don’t affect your stats. Plus I didn’t like their teaming paradigm at all. But then I got really spoiled by City in that regard.” Helios marks her nose with the side of his face, and she chuckles a little and pushes him away. “Not for kitties.”
Stiles snorts a laugh, fingers drumming arhythmically against the steering column of his jeep. “I am so not prepared for an intellectual throwdown about whether or not it’s Blizzard that made WoW popular. Accessible isn’t meaningless, though, accessible is what’s gonna kill Elder Scrolls Online. You have to actually give a shit about theorycrafting to be able to put together a build that supports the play style you like, the crafting system is so complex I still don’t really understand it, grouping is hard as shit and it’s too locked down to how the single-player games were in ways that aren’t good for an MMO. I absolutely agree that there are a lot of things WoW does wrong, though.”
His head shakes, absently, as if to dismiss her fears. “Not trying to convert you to the Alliance or the Horde, promise. But yeah, they call it the transmogrification system? Transmog for short. They also made it easy for you to solo old content if you’re level capped so you can go back and get the gear you like the look of. You can have a mod called MogIt that helps you find whatever you like the looks of to build sets, and as long as it’s the same kind of gear as what you’re wearing you can just have the stuff with the bad stats in your bank and wear the stuff with the good stats but with the look of the old stuff. But you can’t like…make your plate look like cloth so if your character wears plate at level ninety you still gotta pick from the plate looks. No dyes, but if you get like…gear from raids usually there’s a couple of different colors to choose from based on how hard the raid was.”
He might be rambling a little.
Summer sighs nostalgically. “I admit it, I’m shallow — my other main objection to WoW is that I don’t like the way it looks. It’s not pretty enough.” She laughs at herself. “But then, my first was City of Heroes, and there was so much about it that’s different than the standard, from the teaming to the complete detachment of appearance from stats.” She scratches Helios’ head and goes on, “Most of the games where accessibility is a problem don’t last long out of beta — though there’s always Final Fantasy XIV, where they actually scrapped most of the game and started over. But, you know, the thing about the builds and theorycrafting applies to Rift, too, and they’re doing pretty good. Even if they did have to put in autobuilds for stupid people.” It’s obvious she doesn’t think much of players who aren’t into at least some theorycrafting.
“Theoretically I get the concept about not being able to appear outside your armour type, but it /still/ annoys me. The only point in the game where it makes that much difference is PvP, and honestly PvPers who are that anal can suck it. I hate that kind of player. So what difference does it make, in a world-setting with magic, if you make your plate look like leather? Or hell, your mage robe look like plate mail?”
