A couple of things....

[mellificent]

We are one mission away from the end of the original GuildWars game (I've completed all of the others with at least one character, and columbina has finished two of the three), but the last mission - well, it's called Hell's Precipice, and it's hard and pretty tedious, and at one point Col said, "You know, they don't give you anything for finishing this anyway." And after a while we gave up on it. So now... it only took them three years, but they are fixing that. As part of the third anniversary festivities, they are introducing prizes for finishing Prophecies. And I guess now we have no excuse.

(Neither one of us has been playing for three years, incidentally. Col started in early 2006 and I was a few months behind.)

Via iko: Guillermo del Toro to direct 'Hobbit' - that in itself is interesting, but look at what they say about the 2nd movie. What are they gonna do, make that part up out of whole cloth? I can't think that Tolkien wrote enough about the "in between" part of Bilbo's life to make a movie out of. Well, we'll see.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's very interesting. Do you think the vast majority of WoW players by this point are up in the higher levels? I was tending to assume a continual influx of newcomers but maybe not.

[iko.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is a continual influx of newcomers. Where do they go? They get shoved into the new servers with lower populations. In general (at least my personal observations tell me this is true).

This means that newer, less populated servers are populated by folks in general that Haven't Learned Stuff yet. Their behavior tends to be... more problematic than the folks in the older servers, who tend to only get aggravated at noobishness. Does that make sense? New servers = newer players = folks who don't understand the concept of grouping, of reciprocal assistance, etc. Older servers = long-time players = folks who tend to group well, understand how to be efficient in questing, etc.

The biggest problem with TOG is that a majority of those folks have moved on. Or they have had over three years of dealing with noobs so they aren't the best of folks to turn to for assistance (they had problems at the year and a half mark trying to make it fun for the new players, I don't even want to think what they are like now).

If I was you and I wanted to start afresh on a new server, I'd pick an old one. YES it will have a larger population and it will be busier, but it will be busier in Outland, not in the new areas. Every once in a blue moon, you'll run into some level 70 who is totally doing the mining/picking thing on their mounts and being an ass because they just dropped a profession and are levelling up a new one again, but really, there isn't much of that going on. At least, not the last time I played WoW, which was about 6/9 months ago.

(Also, I'm sort of itching to try to play WoW again, even though I'm trying to commit myself to not play until the next expansion comes out. Start new but this time with Horde or something, since I never got that experience. I'm sort of flailing around until another MMORPG comes around that I will throw myself at its mercy (see: Warhammer Online), but right now I'm sort of playing around here and there. I've even picked up freaking Puzzle Pirates again for those quick 30 minute game-plays here and there.)

[columbina.livejournal.com]

This is mostly the same thing that has happened with the TOG Guild Wars folks as well - the people who had been members the longest just got plumb wore out, and many of them have moved on (although they will all come back when Guild Wars 2 is released). Frankly, one reason I'm willing to dabble with WoW is that I'm getting a bit burned out with GW myself, even not having done everything I could do.

[iko.livejournal.com]

PS - You can totally play with just two IF (this is the BIG IF) you pick good classes that balance each other out. Mike and I? Prot-specced warrior and fire mage = AWESOME for 60 to 70 leveling. Not necessarily awesome for other things, but pretty good for that 60 to 70 leveling.

Instancing is a big part of the game, but it really isn't necessary TO enjoy the game. If you're the type to feel "left out" because there is instanced content that you really need a group to experience, then... I'm not sure what to say about that. Getting five people of a somewhat good balance to make it through the instance is important because the fights are designed to take maximize what the individual classes bring to the table. But do you need to instance to move forward? Nope! (But the fights ARE fun, even if you're high leveled and the fights are easy. They are really scripted events that are pretty cool.)