Did WoW suck when it was first released?...
- Thread starter adamknox
- Start date
It depends what you mean by a solid launch. Yes it sold well and setting up accounts wasn't difficult, and as MMOs go it wasn't bad for bugs, but the continual cockblocking by Blizzard on bosses when they thought people where progressing too fast was annoying, to say the least.
They've made a few awful games but not for a long time.
Well said
It was after they switched from Blizzard wax to Activi$ion/Kotick wax that things got messy
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Apr 2006
- Posts
- 7,890
- Location
- North West
Absolutely loved it at launch, one of the best games I had ever played at the time. But it sucked me in for 6 months which was fun but my new girlfriend at the time soon put a stop to that 
4 years later I wouldn't mind going back to see what it's like but I think the missus still remembers what it was like 4 years ago, so that'd be a no!
4 years later I wouldn't mind going back to see what it's like but I think the missus still remembers what it was like 4 years ago, so that'd be a no!
Are you even serious, the game had countless bugs and some main futures such as stats did nothing. The servers were stable but the game itself had many bugs.
It had very few, yes, the game itself was featureless and **** but everything was stable and playable, just a shame they didn't deliver what was promised. I'm deadly serious.
It was pretty awesome discovering the game for the first time and disovering all the places and most of it still being unknown, I'll never have anything like it again.
The problem with the game now is that there is little reason to explore the world, especially at top level, summoning straight into the instance and just being able to fly right in too, I would always have flying mounts included but I miss the days of meeting at kargath before the whole raid would ride to blackrock mountain, probably right into a pvp ****storm at peak time!
The problem with the game now is that there is little reason to explore the world, especially at top level, summoning straight into the instance and just being able to fly right in too, I would always have flying mounts included but I miss the days of meeting at kargath before the whole raid would ride to blackrock mountain, probably right into a pvp ****storm at peak time!
Last edited:
all of you that are saying about release been fine were probably talking about the eu release, this was six months after the us release if i remember correctly, I would class that as enough time to fix most bugs.
I seem to remember there were a few bugs with us release, however the main one as i believe someone has mentioned was the shortage of servers meaning sometimes you had to queue for up to 90 minuets to get into the game.
I seem to remember there were a few bugs with us release, however the main one as i believe someone has mentioned was the shortage of servers meaning sometimes you had to queue for up to 90 minuets to get into the game.
I did the WoW US and EU releases - as people have said, the main cause of problems was the sheer amount of people trying to play it at the same time. IIRC they didn't stop selling it because of this (that would have been commercial suicide) - new servers came along pretty quickly and I don't recall personally having that many issues playing it in the first few days/hours/weeks 
By the EU release, they had a fix on the sort of numbers that were going to buy it. Bear in mind that at the time of release, 500,000 subscribers would have been almost unimaginable for an MMO, let alone the eventual 12 million WoW rose to.
The only other MMO I can remember having a similarly smooth opener was FFXI - still to this day, the most stable and bug free MMO I've played. SWG was just a shambles from start to it's inevitable demise with the NGE. AoC was horrific from what I heard and the less said about WAR the better.
By the EU release, they had a fix on the sort of numbers that were going to buy it. Bear in mind that at the time of release, 500,000 subscribers would have been almost unimaginable for an MMO, let alone the eventual 12 million WoW rose to.
The only other MMO I can remember having a similarly smooth opener was FFXI - still to this day, the most stable and bug free MMO I've played. SWG was just a shambles from start to it's inevitable demise with the NGE. AoC was horrific from what I heard and the less said about WAR the better.
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Mar 2004
- Posts
- 16,007
- Location
- Fareham
Remember the original WoW pretty fondly, the 40 man raids were pretty epic too as I recall
Played right through to Wrath really with only short breaks in the game from launch until then. Once I got through Naxx in Wrath I got bored. One day I didn't feel like logging in, and after that I never logged in again. Didn't even tell my guild, thought they'd try and persuade me to stay so thought best to stop playing totally without feeling too guilty about it. In the end it just felt like a job to me and that's just not fun
To this day i've not resubscribed. I sold my account and I can't see myself going back to playing WoW at all. I quit in roughly February last year. These days I just play FPS games like Battlefield and whatever else comes along (currently playing FM 2010 as well).
Played right through to Wrath really with only short breaks in the game from launch until then. Once I got through Naxx in Wrath I got bored. One day I didn't feel like logging in, and after that I never logged in again. Didn't even tell my guild, thought they'd try and persuade me to stay so thought best to stop playing totally without feeling too guilty about it. In the end it just felt like a job to me and that's just not fun
To this day i've not resubscribed. I sold my account and I can't see myself going back to playing WoW at all. I quit in roughly February last year. These days I just play FPS games like Battlefield and whatever else comes along (currently playing FM 2010 as well).
As everyone has said, the EU release was pretty much flawless. It was also my first MMO, so I figured that was how the launch always went, and all MMO's shipped as essentially finished products (as in, every feature actually worked) like WoW did. There was a fair amount of shock on my face the second I realized that AoC had content for the first ~20 levels on launch and after that it was nothing but a grind... Obviously it took a while for some stuff to appear, but the existing stuff was enough for me. Plus, it was fun to just explore the world, so many little details all over the place.
But yeah, vanilla WoW was great. It wasn't perfect, but it just had that something. Raiding was so much fun with it's ups and downs (the damn Germans just could not play the game...), and back then you really got to play your class in a raid. As a paladin, I was forced to be a healer (the "holy warrior" description in the manual was totally wrong!), but during pretty much every raid I also got to do something else. That was probably because nothing was balanced quite so tightly, so there was some more room to experiment with stuff. 5-mans were even more fun in that regard, especially once we got some gear and ran everything with a 3-man (or even a 2-man for certain instances). We actually ran instances for the challenge, it wasn't just plain sailing to the end boss for a bunch of badges. Plus, epic items were actually epic, so it was really cool to get one.
TBC I enjoyed greatly as well, Black Temple being the clear highlight. The only negative came as a by-product of raids being scaled down to 25 players. The negative obviously being that bad players had a much bigger effect on the raid's success. I must have lost my mind a dozen times a week over the players that just couldn't handle certain encounters.
WotLK... I sold my account after about a month. Just could not care less about the game at that point. The leveling content was really good, but everything after that was just tiring. I get why the game has gone that way, but it's just not for me anymore.
But yeah, vanilla WoW was great. It wasn't perfect, but it just had that something. Raiding was so much fun with it's ups and downs (the damn Germans just could not play the game...), and back then you really got to play your class in a raid. As a paladin, I was forced to be a healer (the "holy warrior" description in the manual was totally wrong!), but during pretty much every raid I also got to do something else. That was probably because nothing was balanced quite so tightly, so there was some more room to experiment with stuff. 5-mans were even more fun in that regard, especially once we got some gear and ran everything with a 3-man (or even a 2-man for certain instances). We actually ran instances for the challenge, it wasn't just plain sailing to the end boss for a bunch of badges. Plus, epic items were actually epic, so it was really cool to get one.
TBC I enjoyed greatly as well, Black Temple being the clear highlight. The only negative came as a by-product of raids being scaled down to 25 players. The negative obviously being that bad players had a much bigger effect on the raid's success. I must have lost my mind a dozen times a week over the players that just couldn't handle certain encounters.
WotLK... I sold my account after about a month. Just could not care less about the game at that point. The leveling content was really good, but everything after that was just tiring. I get why the game has gone that way, but it's just not for me anymore.
Last edited:
the av battles was EPIC they went on for hours and hours
I was in an AV battle for 18 hrs straight years ago.
That was one of the reasons why I liked the way Daoc did its BGs, they were persistent in their own right without a start and finish, and players could come and leave whenever they wanted. Also only had the 1 version of the BG so everyone was in the same one, made for many awesome battles, all meant that you could be defending the central keep at night , then log in the next day to find your faction still defending the keep. Dont really know why more MMOs havent adopted that kind of ongoing BG idea instead of having them as limited minisports games that only last a short while with a low population cap.