I started playing World of Warcraft

[DBR]

Much like how almost everybody I know uses facebook to communicate, a great deal of people I know play WOW--and I have been harped on to get in on the action.... In order to not be completely cut off from my friends, I threw 'em a bone. Or I caved. Not sure which.

So... about 3 week--or 12 hours--into the game, my Dwarven Paladin has reached level 13. I am getting bored. I've encountered very little story, and I cringe at the thought of running around killing 10 furblogs here and 15 stoneheads there and 10 morlocks here, and running from stormwind to ironforge and back for another six months.

I thought there would be more story, or at least something that doesn't move as slow as refrigerated molasses. Itty bitty snippets of plot lines given out when I complete a quest or all this wondering isn't cutting it for me.

Does it get better?

 

[TheBrew]

The fun (for me) comes from running instances. Also, you need to get a good guild. Having a group of fun people is why I play.

 

[Manticore]

There's a couple of really good storylines later on that immediately stand out, like the one where you're tracking down a murderer through basically the entire Kingdom of Stormwind, or The Missing Diplomat--though when I was last playing, it ended very abruptly. I hear that they recently added to that storyline, but it's still not over yet. However, it's still an awesome storyline.

Plus, the Defias storyline that involves killing Van Cleef in the Dead Mines is pretty good, now that I think about it. It's amazing what a few apples and some silk will do for a disguise.

However, WoW doesn't focus too much on the story, I'll admit. If you want an MMO which focuses more on story, try Lord of the Rings Online. It's similar to WoW in a lot of ways in terms of gameplay and UI (at least, the basic UI, LOTRO doesn't have nearly the same flexibility in mods). However, there's a unifying storyline in the form of the epic books. Admittedly, books 1 and 3 are kind of weak, but they pick up quite nicely, and there's some other damned good stories that aren't directly tied in with the main books.

For example, there's a quest-line where you help Aragorn find a jewel necessary to reforge Narsil that does more to test you than just pit you up against an uber-boss (though that is involved), but also tests your wits. And the new Hillmen storyline that they added in Book 12* is nothing short of amazing.

*Books refer both to the epic quest line and the regular content patches. It can get confusing, I'll admit. Book 12 is the fourth major content patch released since the game went live.

 

[Lindley]

My mother got me WoW for Christmas, figuring I liked that "Warcraft stuff."

It's sitting on my shelf. I really don't dare open it....I spend too much time online as it is.

 

[Garrett]

Have you tried any other classes/races besides the dwarf pally? That won't necessarily make the quests more interesting, but you might find something more enjoyable. Not that paladins are bad, but I personally find them to be a little more tedious than other classes. (I tend to prefer casters, anyway) Generally, it's a good idea to try a character up to about level 20. It doesn't take too long, and you get a little idea of what the class is going to be like later on.

It also helps to play with some other friends. Even if you're out soloing, it's nice to shoot the breeze with some people on your friends list. I'm not particularly social online (I hate talking on vent, and only started because I have to for tanking the HKM fight ), but being in a guild has kept the game fun a lot longer than it may have been otherwise.

Quests are there more to assist in leveling than necessarily providing a story, though some of the quest chains do have interesting story lines. Some of the good ones have already been mentioned. A lot of the story is built up in the RTS series. For instance, the story of the Lich King, who will be a central figure in the next expansion, is in Warcraft 3. You also get a lot more about characters like Thrall, Lady Sylvanis as well as seeing a lot of the locations you'll visit in WoW.

 

[jadcox@mindspring.com]

Try Lord of the Rings online. The storytelling is truly engaging. Granted, it helps to be a Tolkien fan.

 

[kalysto]

See, your problem seems to be playing Alliance side!



For the Horde!!!

Seriously though, try some other race/class combos. The newer races (blood elves and dranei) tend to have a little more storyline in their newbie areas, but in the end, they are all near the same.

 

[Kegek]

See, your problem seems to be playing Alliance side!



For the Horde!!!

Indeed. Back in the days that I traded in any semblance of human existence to be a a bloated toad glued to the computer screen, I was the rather unimaginative but insanely fun choice of Undead rogue. Story-wise; I liked the Undead quests the best; as they often had a liberal sprinkling of black humour. (One such quest has you search for ingredients to so it can be tested as a posion on a poor sucker who thinks she's here to get treatment).

Trying an RP server might also help; there's no difference in actual gameplay but many of the players are more likely to act in character. But yes, when it comes down to it WoW is all about the grinding.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

It does get better, level 13 is pretty early... but you have to be willing to get involved with other players.

Start running instances (use the looking for group interface), and also go find the battlemasters in SW or Ironforge and do Warsong Gulch and other PVP battlegrounds for a while. Group up for quests, that sort of thing.

Also find a fun profession, if you're a mage, tailoring works well. Some people have fun scouring the world for materials to make stuff, and selling stuff on the auction house. Even playing the auction house can be fun if you think of it like a strategy game.

Another thing, consider a PVP server. I have a level 25 undead rogue on a PVP server. Yesterday I'm running around Ashenvale, someone asks if I want to join a "hunting party", I say sure. Now there are 4 of us travelling the road, hunting down Alliance players. Then one of the Alliance players we are attacking calls in re-inforcements. Before you know it, its basically a 5 on 5 battle along the road. Very fun and organic.

 

[Evil Twin]

I've been playing LOTRO nonstop since January and love it. Haven't played WoW but hear a lot of complaints about it. Come join my hobbit on the Arkenstone server!

 

[Othello]

WOW's a crappy MMO IMHO. Just don't like the game play there at all. If you really want a good MMO play Everquest2. I've converted many WOW people over to EQ2 and they all love it.

 

[Garrett]

See, your problem seems to be playing Alliance side!



For the Horde!!!

Indeed. Back in the days that I traded in any semblance of human existence to be a a bloated toad glued to the computer screen, I was the rather unimaginative but insanely fun choice of Undead rogue. Story-wise; I liked the Undead quests the best; as they often had a liberal sprinkling of black humour. (One such quest has you search for ingredients to so it can be tested as a posion on a poor sucker who thinks she's here to get treatment).

I switched over to the Horde after about a year of playing Alliance, and have loved it since. I find the quest chains sometimes have more story, and the black humor is fun. My favorite is troll, though, just for that laugh and some of their other emotes. As useful as the Undead Priest racials are, I'm considering rolling another troll just because I like them so much.

Horde can also have the better population depending on what the population percentages are. I've found that when it's 65/35 in favor of Alliance, you'll likely find a more mature playerbase on the Horde side, though the introduction of Blood Elves has made that less true. The other down side is that the AH can sometimes be bare compared to the Alliance one, and you might have a little more difficult time scraping enough people together for an instance. Though, getting into a good guild can help with that.

 

[darthraidr]

i've been playing for a while now. the only other mmo's i've played are CoX and Phatasy Star Online.

much of the story is in the quest text. i am hit or miss with reading the text. still i have lots of fun with it. though i definately reccommend checking out other classes. if you have the expansion, i'd say check out the newer races, they do have some interesting stories/quest chains going on there.

 

[Manticore]

WOW's a crappy MMO IMHO. Just don't like the game play there at all. If you really want a good MMO play Everquest2. I've converted many WOW people over to EQ2 and they all love it.

I played the EQ2 trial, and I couldn't stand it. I enjoyed the crafting system, but I found the combat to be slow and clunky compared even to LOTRO (which people say is slow and clunky), I couldn't stand the world design of the two zones that I checked out--and I wasn't allowed to go to any other except for the third starting area!--and I thought that the general art design was terrible. It also didn't help that, compared to LOTRO, my framerate in EQ2 was worse, at lower equivalent settings.

That said, I quite enjoyed the crafting system, at least after I figured out how to gather resources. It's definitely nice compared to WoW's or LOTRO's crafting systems, and it compares favorably even to AC2's crafting 2.0. I'd love to see LOTRO adopt a similar "player-skill-based" system at some point a couple of expansion packs down the line.

 

[Evil Twin]

You really liked EQ2's crafting? Ugh, I found it to be WAY too overly complicated and tedious. LOTRO's is far more intuitive and straight forward I think.

 

[Manticore]

But in LOTRO, you don't do anything. You gather the components, select the number that you want, click "make", and then go to the bathroom or get some food.

Oh, if you master the tier, you can also select to use the crit component, but there's only one crit component per recipe, just because of the way their tech works, and then you go AFK.

I much prefer having a player's skill involved in the crafting, as well as the character's.

 

[Garrett]

I played EQ2 for a couple of months while taking a break from WoW. It's a pretty good game, though I agree that the combat was a bit clunky compared to WoW's (as is LOTRO's combat). The newer zones added in EoF and RoK were pretty good. Far less zoning than the original zones, too, which was nice.

I didn't care much for factions not meaning much of anything on a non-PVP server. You could group with, and even join guilds made up of both evil/good races. It seemed bizarre to me that I could make a high elf, and then run down to the new evil starter zone and quest. After playing SWG and WoW, I prefer factions to mean a little more than they do in that game.

EQ2 had far too many technical problems for my taste. Especially in that as I upgraded my hardware, the performance became worse and worse. It was downright unplayable with a dual core processor, a GeForce 8800 and Windows Vista.

LOTRO was terribly boring to me. For the most part I enjoyed the instanced quest areas and the amount of story in the game. But the actual gameplay was a bit boring for my taste. Especially the combat. After playing WoW where the slow fights take 30 seconds, and in same cases can involve a lot of mobility (playing as a mage anyway, you get more mobility in general in pvp), LOTRO just felt clunky.

After playing games like WoW, it was also a bit annoying that group quests couldn't be easily overcome by leveling a little bit past the stated difficulty if you were having trouble finding a group. There were a number of times I spent an evening in LFF trying to find a group to get some story quest done.

Whatever the lore reasons, I didn't care for the lack of a proper mage class, which is my preferred class/profession for any fantasy MMO. The monster play was kind of interesting, but it would have been nice to have players be able to make an orc or something. Once again, they have a lore reason for choosing to not allow players to be on the evil side, but the game would have been far more interesting IMO.

 

[FPAlpha]

Hate to be the bad apple in the bunch but..

Remember to stay social.

I've lost quite a few friends to this game. It starts out as people telling you they don't have time because they have made prior arrangements in WoW and i accept that. I've seen WoW and heard enough of it to know that assembling 40 people at a precise time to tackle one of the big instances takes quite some planning.

However this developed soon into almost no date is good because WoW takes up the time and it usually ends in "Oh.. we were supposed to meet? I was playing WoW"

I've seen people ruin their prospering real life careers because of it and i tend to get thin skinned when a bigger group has gathered for a party and suddenly about half of the people start talking WoW tactics and other related stuff.

I like this game.. don't misunderstand me and if played modestly go for it. However i've seen non-addiction prone people completely losing themselves in the game and also losing friendships, relationsships and in extreme cases jobs.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

While MMOs have always looked intriguing, I've never, ever had the time to play one. Between work and family, it's hard enough to find a few hours a week to enjoy my Xbox 360 (it can take me MONTHs to finish some games ).

Maybe when I'm retired ...

 

[Evil Twin]

But in LOTRO, you don't do anything. You gather the components, select the number that you want, click "make", and then go to the bathroom or get some food.

*shrug* Works for me! Hell, it took my lore-master only two nights to become a grandmaster farmer last week. Granted though, farming is ridiculously easy to raise compared to the other crafts since you don't have to do any traveling to gather the resources, just buy them all from the NPC farmhand.