ToA > Wow pve

[Ovi]

Horses for courses!

I have a 60 Druid and a 34 Druid, I find Druid is the most fun class to level by a long way. It isn't the quickest, but to be honest I have never found a significant difference between any of the classes. HOWEVER, levelling speed can be heavily dependant on spec!

A restoration spec Druid would take longer to level, For levelling you can't beat Feral. It's one of the few specs in game that is equally at home taking on a same level elite, or farming low yellow / green cons mobs.

Mulgore (the Tauren starting zone) is also my favourite starting zone

As for taking time off, you may lose the PvP ranks, but at least Blizzard had the sense to change the system to allow you to continue losing the kit. Doesn't make a huge difference.

If you had PvE kit, then it isn't worse having taken a break (may change once the level increase comes with the add-on though), it is still good enough for everything it was good enough for before. I can point to a couple of times when that certainly wasn't true for DAOC.

MLs may only take 1-2 hours now, but there was over 12 months of ToA (longer than WoW has so far been around...) where it took significantly longer, and exluded all but the most dedicated. They also had a far larger impact on the rest of the game for those that were missing them.

[Xest]

There's your problem right there. Druid is perhaps the slowest levelling of all the WoW classes. All WoW classes solo quite well but the rates do vary enormously. Fastest is probably Hunter or Rogue and slowest is easily the Druid.

Also, because of race restrictions Druids don't have the best start zones, especially where interesting quests are concerned. For Alliance, Night Elf start zone is isolated and the quests are rather dull, I agree. Tauren start zone is a bit better, but still the worst of the Horde start zones. Try Undead, Orc, Troll, Gnome or Dwarf start zones, far more fun - some genuinely fun quests to be had.

Quests in Wow are quite enjoyable and well thought out on the whole, though there are some rubbish ones like farm the same mob type until some rare item drops. The quests also get more adventurous as you level up and some chains are genuinely exciting. At level 17, many of the best quests are still ahead of you.

The quest interace in WoW, whilst plenty of room for improvement, is one of the better one in a MMORPG. EVE has a good mission interface too. The Daoc quest interface by comparison is clunky, non intuitive and overly verbose (a backstory is important, but not when it turns into a dull and stilted novel).

Shame then I guess really, Blizzard lost a customer by how horribly dull levelling a night elf druid was. I did try a dwarf hunter also and it did seem faster but after the druid boredom I just wasn't interested.

Are the later quests really any different to DAoCs? All the ones I got were just "Go kill 7 of these", "Go speak to so and so", "Go find one of these at such and such location". I prefer more interesting stuff like the ML2 chess step or like UO's Khaldun puzzle chests - in other words something where you actually have to use your brain a bit instead of just sit mindlessly walking round/killing the same mob.

[Cromcruaich]

DAOC is all about rvr, all the grind is simply to be able to compete in rvr.

For that you dont need ml's, you dont need to bother with Co5, the cl's will come. 8v8 takes a lot of work to get a lot of reward, months and months infact to put a group together, keep it together and still climb the rr greasy poll. Solo however, and with a good guild behind you (Like Na Fianna Dragun), you can be fully templated in 2 weeks and ready to hit the ground running.

Roll a solo character and you can enjoy 30 minute sessions to relax once you come home from work before putting the tea on, get into a guild group, or set one up yourself and youve got enough there to keep you going for months and months.

I love the game and I love the community. Even the people who ive been fighting for months on end are great. Going to FH and seeing a bitch post by Gamah or Brite, I love that to. Keeps it all interesting, and getting to know the community is a large part of the enjoyment to be had from the game.

Anyway, bit of a disjointed post and should get back to work.

<3

[Treeeebeard]

WoWs quest felt too patronising from my personal experience

"Talk to the dude on the other side of town, And ill give you half a level "
"Oh... Sure you dont want me to talk to someone in another city? mabye slay a few dragons..? Just go to the other side of town?"

I got a shadow priest to level 40 (Was easy for killing elites ect, they where OP ><) then just got fiarly bored, got a hunter to 26 tho still then finaly just gave it up.

[Nikolas]

I've already found out my limits with the pvp system and I quit at rank 11 since I have to work and cant play 12 hours a day 7 days a week, or have friends play my account to make it further. You certainly wont get rank 11 playing 2 hours a day 5 nights a week. If you play pvp though in daoc you can technically reach a higher rank if you spend the time over a long period of time.. If you think that's casual it's anti casual, and as a pvp player I can't wait to trade it for Warhammer.

[Ovi]

I've already found out my limits with the pvp system and I quit at rank 11 since I have to work and cant play 12 hours a day 7 days a week, or have friends play my account to make it further. You certainly wont get rank 11 playing 2 hours a day 5 nights a week. If you play pvp though in daoc you can technically reach a higher rank if you spend the time over a long period of time.. If you think that's casual it's anti casual, and as a pvp player I can't wait to trade it for Warhammer.

But you don't need to be rank 11 to compete. Unlike DAOC where you do have to be rr7+ to compete.

If you only play 2hours / 5 days per week, then you adjust your goals. in wow you can do that and still have fun and compete. You can't do that in DAoC so easily, as you need high rr's and MLs to compete, and there is very little end-game (top level) content that can be done on a casual basis, at least Wow does have some top-level instances that can be done on a casual basis.

Admittedly it does create tiers of players; but at least the difference in tiers isn't significant enough to spoil the game for those on the lower levels.

[Terracotta]

Agree with Gahn, get back ingame :I

Want to fight you with merc some time now i've got some rr's behind me and fz isn't on a 2 min timer

[Jobbegea]

funny thing is. Blizzard boost the lvl60 to lvl70 or smth.
So all the months a lvl60 has grinded for the best lvl60 gear is a total waste
MORE PVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVE!
good luck in this kindergarten mmorpg named WoW, ppl!

yes, SI> toa was kinda fucked up aswel. but wasn't that hard to get a toa'd char in 2-3 months if you got a nice guild/friends.

[Ovi]

funny thing is. Blizzard boost the lvl60 to lvl70 or smth.
So all the months a lvl60 has grinded for the best lvl60 gear is a total waste
MORE PVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVEPVE!
good luck in this kindergarten mmorpg named WoW, ppl!

yes, SI> toa was kinda fucked up aswel. but wasn't that hard to get a toa'd char in 2-3 months if you got a nice guild/friends.

As yet I have seen few details on how they plan to implement the higher levels. It is possible to implement the extra levels without too much impact on kit levels, I'll reserve judgement until there are more details

As for Kindergarten, the best example of that I have seen in any MMORPG was the MLs in the early days, 200-man zergs 4teh1337skillzz

DAoC > WoW for PvP, and nothing else. (IMO)

[Cernos]

Are the later quests really any different to DAoCs? All the ones I got were just "Go kill 7 of these", "Go speak to so and so", "Go find one of these at such and such location".

Well you're comparing quests to MLs here. WoW quests and Daoc standard quests are similar as they're all about "kill X", "deliver Y to Z etc", the difference is the interface and the verbosity (too much is offputting when it's written so dryly as the Daoc content is).

I prefer more interesting stuff like the ML2 chess step or like UO's Khaldun puzzle chests - in other words something where you actually have to use your brain a bit instead of just sit mindlessly walking round/killing the same mob.

Well I agree with you in principle. The problem comes in the reality. Let's be honest, how many people worked out the ML steps for themselves? The majority blindly followed a leader who had read how to do it on VOS. And if anyone suggested a deviation from that they were slapped down as "that's not how it says to do it on VOS". Incredibly mindless. To be fair this isn't all Mythic's fault, it's human nature to be lazy. But they could have designed the MLs so there was a bit more variation in the solution, so the group(s) doing it needed to think on their feet and not just follow a walkthrough.

And where's are all the brains in use while being towed around in a huge zerg doing the MLs? Of course not all such steps were intended to be zerged, but too many were designed to require a zerg, although some may now have changed.

The best MLs were indeed the ones like the chess game and the ML5 encounters that can be done as 1FG or 2FG (I always enjoyed leading groups through ML5, it was different every time depending on what classes you had). In that size of encounter you can discuss options for tactics and everyone has a role.

ALL MLs should have been designed for a maximum of 2FG (better still 1FG) with only perhaps the very end encounters such as last steps of ML8, 9 and ML10 being 'realm' events.