Bruggsman writes- (he's a WoW beta tester, the My concerns thread)
First I would like to say that World of Warcraft is an excellent game in many ways. I have some concerns about this game. The golden era of mmorpg's is simply over. All the new mmorpg's in development has the same goal. That is to make the game as "newbie" friendly as possible and static. There is really little costumization in all new mmorpg's. They try to prevent power-leveling, kill stealing, griefing. No risk or chance and give you always success.
WoW is in many ways a long singleplayer campaign. Until you get to highter lvls. You can solo almost everything in this game besides instances and elite quests.
The main goal about wow is to make thing better, and blizzard did that pretty well. But the game is pretty much static as you go up in lvls only numbers change, the gameplay doesn't really change beside instances. You can still solo everything, it is still the same collecting X amount for Y person questing. The game doesn't get harder as you go futher in levels. Monsters grow in size, more damage is dealt but still the same thing.
We've already seen 2/3 of the game and the world. Blizzard has now 6 month to finish rest of the game and make end game fun and addictive. Things doesn't look to bright in my opinion. With the delay of the next push really explain that blizzard is behind. The delay simply means less hi-end content because they need to release the game before X-mas. It is going to be interesting to see if Blizzard can live up to there high expectation.
Here is some things I'm already really concerned about. And im not here to beat a dead horse down, but being realistic. I hope blizzard has alot in the upcoming patch
We can take an example with Stats in world of warcraft. You earn skill points and you have almost unlimited of them, you will simply always cap them all. So in fact there is absolutely no points in having Stats in this game. Only minor factors has impact on stats like buffs and alchemy.
The World is simply to small, why because there is 40 zones in the game and we have 25 zones completed already. This leave 15 zones for the high-end game. And with 6 month to release there is no way Blizzard could polish more then that before release. It is 100% gurantee that Northrend and Outland will not be ready for release. Blizzard do 3-4 zones a month so the calculation is simple, 15 zones total more. This would give us approx 2-4 lvl 60+ zones.
Currently we have a few instances Dungeons and with 6 month left I would say Blizzard would be able to have circa 15 instance dungeons for release. This leave us again to 2-4 lvl 60+ dungeons.
Almost every item in WoW is currently really static and limited. And with the upcoming auction houses it would be even easier to get your "king's sword of haste" so everyone would run around with the same sword. This game simply lacking of times and item properties.
Questing in WoW, this is fun, but its only fun first time!!! Doing 1000's of quest to get to lvl 60 again will be a pain, and since you cant power-level in WoW or play 16 hrs a day to lvl it would get boring.
Resting system, this is not really to try prevent hardcore gamers to lvl slower but it's newbie/casual gamer love. Since most of the customers is Casual players this is a nice move. But with the currently design it is impossible to powerlevel/twink in WoW since the game is completely quest driven. This is the worst move ever. Because this leave you to "the first char I got to lvl 60" stuck forever.
Many gamers love to make new chars as they play and the game change in balance. But will you do the same 1000's quest over again? As all other games when you first have one high-lvl char it always easy to make a second char. This will not be as easy in WoW.
Monsters: I haven't even seen more then 50 monsters. In almost all zones there is dogs aka "wolfs", murlocs, birds, spiders, gnolls and beside that you did good job on reuse the Race chars for mobs. This game lack on monsters hardly there is even more monsters in TFT.
Within a month we've already completeled 2/3 of the game. The game is simply to easy.
Brugs
