Black Raven Dragoons

[Tirian]

I'm curious, is anyone still playing Wow? Or Swtor?

I might reup Wow and run around a bit, but i just started a new job, so I really mean "a bit"!

By the way, I'll be in Borderlands soon I hope -- Valve really screwed up my preorder.

[Grimblast]

WOW is the same shit, different expansion with the usual Blizzard standard of changing the game physics again and dumbing it down more. SWTOR was unfortunately a victim of flashy and story but once they announced it going free to play later this year, interest sunk and a lot of us got busy with life stuff. Plus they forced server migrations and that just screwed everything up.

At the moment we are playing Guild wars 2(no subscription, yay!) and some of us have been doing Minecraft and Borderlands 2. Mostly just keeping busy life wise so the forums have been quiet lately. Once I'm not too stressed out with work and life in general, I'll probably start doing more posting but it's all assuming I can pull away from other stuff that I have little time to do. Guild Wars is pretty fun for a game of its type and the detail in it is amazing so I really recommend you grab it when you get a chance. Just know that if you choose a European server, you may not be able to play with us. Once you pick a server, thats it. That's the only place you can have characters.

[Zancarius]

Generally the same thing here.

I was eyeing off MoP a little, but the exceptionally thorough talent and inane game mechanics changes make me more interested in setting up a private WotLK WoW server than actually re-upping my subscription (and battling with the hundreds of broken or half-broken quests). I saw a preview of the new "talent" system (and I begrudgingly call it that), and since you now have a choice between two things you could have gotten from the same tree, I suspect it's going to feel like 1) you won't have a "cookie-cutter" build anymore at the expense of 2) feeling greatly nerfed.

But, hey, let's face it: WoW is Blizzard's cash cow, and only so because of the large-scale addiction that many perpetual players face. For the rest of us, constant changes aren't always favorably received--but we also realize that change in an MMO is largely inevitable--but I think it's the dumbing down that Josh mentioned that has really killed off much of the desire to keep playing. For a game like WoW that has retained many of the classical MMO attributes for this long to strip out core mechanics every expansion in favor of making it more approachable just suggests to me that they realize their US audience is dwindling (but not critically so). As good as Diablo 3 was (generally), you can definitely see a sort of institutionalize inertia in Blizzard's dev teams toward simplifying their products. I haven't personally decided how I feel about this outside the context of WoW.

I've largely been going through Skyrim whenever I remember that I have it installed, but mostly I've been doing some single player campaigning on Borderlands 2 since it's really easy to override important dialog in multiplayer for everyone (which sucks). I've also renewed some interest in Minecraft with our hardcore instance. Several of us also have Torchlight II. While I haven't played it yet, those who have played it have told me that it's basically as close to a modernized classical RPG (yes, with multiplayer, finally!) as you can get. Plus, you also have real, legitimate choices, not the illusion of choice, with regards to character development, stats, etc. Unlike other games, online play isn't a requirement (thankfully), but the downside is that it doesn't appear to use the Steam networking APIs, because you have to create an account through Runic to play multiplayer (I think). Kinda sucks to have to set up yet another account, but I'm hoping to eventually fire it up and do some multiplayer there to see how it works.

If you can, I'd highly suggest getting GW2. I'm not really in any position to spend a lot of time on an MMO myself, but just about the entire guild has shifted over to GW2 and has even pulled in some new blood. From the screenshots I've seen, it reminds me a great deal of WoW, or perhaps more accurately: What WoW should have looked like with a greatly improved game engine. Everyone seems to suggest that GW2 is basically just as approachable as WoW (maybe more so) but minus some of the reduce-this-game-to-the-lowest-common-denominator business.

Also, MoP just reeks of pandering (har har har) to the Asian markets--probably to snag more subscribers from the various popular MMOs that are dominant in the Asia-Pacific market.

[Elade]

OMG SIMS 3 SUPERNATURAL JUST CAME OUT! Let's totally make a zombie apocalypse while maxing out our gardening and athletic skills. Maybe we'll get super lucky and get hit by a meteor on the way!

...Don't judge.

[Grimblast]

Night of the Comet, anyone?

[Tirian]

I gotta say, for my very limited game time, running dungeon finder on alts and pet battles is really fun.

[Tirian]

On the question of whether to purchase Mists of Pandaria, the following video statement must be considered: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X21mJh6j ... ata_player