World of Warcraft: Second First Impressions

I'm back in WoW, for a short while, mainly because a good few of my guildmates there are trying this PvP thing, and I like PvP. My first two impressions were, "Woah, smooth!", and "Woah, lag!"

Having been controlling ships in EVE for a while, I'm used to a slight delay in response. The battleship I've been piloting for a while now turns like an arthritic whale. The responses in WoW are instantaneous, and it lends a definite feeling of smoothness to the whole experience. On the other hand, there was ferocious lag across the entire battlegroup last night, and it made things... interesting. I could be into the third or fourth spell, from a buttons on the keyboard point of view, and not know if the opponent was still there or not. Once, I ran over a cliff, and was watching the pretty falling motion, and then was suddenly back on top as though I hadn't fallen at all. And then the whole battlegroup crashed.

PvP in WoW is easy and risk-free. You don't even have to pay repair costs when you get killed, and you get solid rewards for losing as well as bigger ones for winning. In some ways, it's a nice change from EVE, where you can lose a ship worth millions, and fittings worth the same, from one simple mistake. On the other hand, I figure that if I dived in and played every day, it'd take me less than two months to have a full set of the best battleground PvP gear available. I racked up more than 5k honour last night, all in pick-up battlegrounds, no premades or even much organisation in the pick-ups. I'm not convinced that it's going to keep me entertained, mechanically, for long.

Socially, it's a different matter. The guild seems to have thrived while I was away. There were fifteen people on when I glanced at the social panel last night, and nobody seemed to think it was remarkable. At the absolute best for EVE, we have seven people on, and two of those are a single player double-boxing. It's nice to get a response at any given time, and I'm pleased to see the number of lower-level characters, whether they're newcomers or alts.

I'm trying a few daily quests as well, to get in some money so I can play with the auction house again. No, I can't stay away from the economic stuff. The inflation is incredible, though - with the flow of gold in from daily quests and drops from high-level mobs, it doesn't look like it would be difficult to rack up several hundred gold a day. Cut gems that I remember were selling for 15g when I stopped playing in August now have people asking for 45g on the Trade channel. I've yet to see if those prices are reflected in the AH, but I'd be surprised if that weren't the case. There's also a lot more in the way of service offers; even passing briefly through Orgrimmar between battlegrounds, I'd have three or four different enchanters hawking their wares on Trade.

So, in summary, I'm liking it for now, but I can see that it's a shallow veneer compared to EVE's depth. I can't see it keeping me for a long time. We'll see, though.

Posted by Drew Shiel at January 21, 2008 12:26 PM

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Posted by: DODRE at April 15, 2008 1:53 PM