AAARHG!!!! Fuck you, Mickey Mouse!

[Rianaru]

I played WoW for a while. I was a kid when I played, so I think it was easier for me to get sucked in. Anyways, I got kind of addicted for a few months and then got bored and quit for a year. That trend continued for about four or five years until I quit completely, so I think they did a fairly good job of attracting an audience and keeping it(at least kids, but I felt like in the development of the game over the course of that time declined in quality because of the ease factor going WAY up).

[OldMarriedDude]

I played wow for about 5 minutes several years ago. Frankly after playing Everquest for several years WOW was just way too easy. I used to be a big fan of MMORPG not so much with the advent of Free to play. So now I just stay away from them.

[Rianaru]

I played wow for about 5 minutes several years ago. Frankly after playing Everquest for several years WOW was just way too easy. I used to be a big fan of MMORPG not so much with the advent of Free to play. So now I just stay away from them.

Guild Wars 2 actually gives a pretty good product without the monthly fee. You still have to buy the game though. It's very different from most MMORPGs in a lot of aspects, but IMO it's a great game. I wish I had more time to play it :(

[Simurgh]

LucasArts had some ace games back in the day (dark forces 2, tie fighter, monkey island etc). I guess its sad to see the name dissapearing, but from what's been said above it seems like its been a name only for quite some time.

On Blizzard, I haven't seen a great game from them in ages. Passable games, yep, but nothing amazing, just re-hashes of previous IP and the impression I get from it is that they are relying on the success of the previous games to carry the new one. The gaming industry seems to be going to hell in general, far too much of a commercial aspect coming across as time goes on, I guess similar to how the music industry became much more commercial back in the 80s.

Guild wars 2 I felt was as much of a let down as D3. I'd say it will probably be worth shelling out for once the balancing is done and the mechanics are sorted out, but IMO they shipped before it was ready.

[Rianaru]

Guild wars 2 I felt was as much of a let down as D3. I'd say it will probably be worth shelling out for once the balancing is done and the mechanics are sorted out, but IMO they shipped before it was ready.

What do you think the balance issues are/what mechanics aren't sorted out? I've noticed a couple(mostly combat is a little easy and leveling is pretty fast), but I feel like the game is still definitely playable and enjoyable.

[Simurgh]

It's a multiplayer game, yet you are to be self sufficient. I don't quite get how that lends itself to cooperative play, it just ends up with any team based activity being a massive zerg of damage through the mobs till you hit the boss, then its just a case of watching for the tells and timing your dodge - no actual tactics or planning involved for even the hardest encounters. I loved the concept of doing away with the healer/tank/dps trinity, but theyve not put in any mechanic to replace it to encourage team play.

The conditions don't work well as a damage mechanic (stack limits, no variety to damaging conditions). Any more than one person dealing damage over time per team is wasted. This applies to open world events and bosses also, where you can have tons of people piling a boss, or the guild missions. The pet AI is screwy at best.

The map completion thing, I just wish it wasn't just a % to grind away on (In fact with a lot in the game I wish it wasn't just a task to grind away at). If there was some incentive to go out and explore these areas rather than just for the POIs vistas etc it would give a better sense of satisfaction to it. i.e making the % a secondary reward you collected while passing through type thing.

The WvW system is a mess, it's just massive zergs of players flinging AOEs and whoever has most people will win.

They are piling more importance on concentrating on one character, where they touted it as being alt friendly and no gear treadmill. Plus the fact that some characters are not suited for some play modes so by concentrating on one you are limiting your play experience.

The story is atrocious, if you're going to do story in a game do it right, it's half limping storylines like this that give games a bad rep for games. There is no depth to the game at all, everything is very superficial.

The combo field/finishers are a real wasted opportunity, they missed a trick with the implementation of them.

I could really go on and on about how they messed it up.

Oh yeah.. and the armour is fugly.

[Rianaru]

I think you may be biased on some of those things, and while I agree that there is room for improvement, I don't think it's quite as dismal as you think. I've found that, especially in dungeons, team play is encouraged through guardian buffs/heals, the various buffs of other professions. Mobs also focus almost exclusively on characters with the highest defense, necessitating a tankier frontline.

It also takes more than a few people to max out stacks of conditions, and I've definitely noticed it in the open world group events. In fact, I've seen decent sized groups of people(10-15) fail to max out conditions, and I'm pretty sure that it's next to impossible to max them out with a smaller group, so while a few people of the same profession might max out one or two condition stacks, it's very difficult to max out more than a few unless you have a large group, so I'm not really sure where you're coming from on this one.

As for map completion, I don't like the way that it was implemented, but you do get rewards for completing areas, and each point of interest/vista/whatever gives a big chunk of experience, so I would say that % completion is a bit of a secondary reward. Plus the world feels like it has life in it, making exploring less of a chore IMO.

I'm not the most experienced MMO player, but GW2 has the most organized large-scale PvP I've ever seen. It may not be the most coordinated, but from what I've seen it's much better than WoW and Rift(the other main MMOs that I played)

Never used pets really, so I'm not able to comment on them.

I'm not sure why you say that they're putting more importance on one character, I certainly havn't noticed a huge amount of it.

The storyline isn't stellar, but I feel like they did an OK job with the goals they had in mind. It definitely makes the game feel much more cohesive and directional for me at least.

The combos and finishers I agree on, they could have added special effects or perhaps given combos some incentive other than the bonus xp and the extra damage inherent in chaining the most effective moves together, although it does feel quite epic to string together combos correctly because of the animations right now. Maybe a little choppy, but better than anything I've seen so far.

The armor for me is kind of a refreshing change from most MMOs where things start to look epic around level 30 and only gets ridiculous as you get closer to max level.

Overall I think we just have different standards for games. Sure, they could have done much better, but no game can do everything, so I'm personally OK with what they did accomplish in the game. Maybe I just have poor MMO choice, but it's the most fun I've had in an MMO so far, so I'll stick by it.

[Thalarctia]

Whoa.. I think you guys just managed to off-topic in the off-topic section! Double rainbows dude...

I played Dark Forces shortly after it was released, and though I was too young to have learnt english at that point (You brits and 'muricans have it way too easy...), I thoroughly loved being able to immerse myself in the Star Wars universe.

Day of the Tentacle, Fate of Atlantis and Monkey Island all stand as major milestones in my gaming life, and its been really disappointing seeing a once-great studio like Lucas Arts go from being masters to basicly catering to the lowest common denominator - Star Wars Kinect has to be one of the greatest jokes in gaming history.

[DaveYanakov]

Sadly I never had the opportunity to play Day of the Tentacle but I did read the bejeezus out of the Nintendo Power guide for the port. It was one of the ones I kept the magazine for and kept rereading for a couple years while dreaming about being able to buy my own games.

[jorgebonafe]

The Dig was my favorite... I play that game every now and again so much I like it... The soundtrack, story, the characters, the puzzles, I loved everything about that game... It was the main reason I was so sad when I heard the news... But to be fair, yeah, its been a while since there were any quality adventure games from lucasarts (or games of any other genres for that matter...)

Good adventure games are becoming rare lately... Seems like a dying genre... Although there were some that were very good, like The Longest Journey and Grey Mass... I kinda hoped to see more of these games... I'm looking forward to the new Broken Sword...

[Donzaffi]

It's been a very long time since I saw a LucasArts game, even more for a good game.
They had some of the best adventure games out there, Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island. Then they went to shit.
I miss those games like I miss Sierra's games.

Same with Ubisoft like your avatar shows (Heroes III if I remember correctly ) they ruined the series, especially in support matter, like Lucas Arts too.

Now that they are closed what happens with the support of the games ?

[Solymr]

Same with Ubisoft like your avatar shows (Heroes III if I remember correctly ) they ruined the series, especially in support matter, like Lucas Arts too.

Yup, Heroes 3 & 4. I have the whole non-Ubisoft collection and Heroes 5.
The problem with them is that NWC and 3DO bankrupted after 4 and Ubisoft bought and subsequently butchered the series. 4 was a turning point for the series and the drastic changes were only half good. The campaign stories 4 presented were interesting but they had no interaction between them apart from the Order and Death ones.

4 needed some work but when Ubisoft got the series they just destroyed it. They tried to change the gameplay back to what made it great but a square grid is just crap. The hexagonal grid was one of the basic stuff. But the worse part is the stupid and cheating AI, in a game where outsmarting and outplaying the opponent is the damn objective, and not just brute force through it (I had a particularly infuriating run in with this).
Also spelling and description errors make it look amateurish.

I could talk a lot about the Heroes series but I feel like I expressed my point. And I won't start on the resource system butchering of Heores 6...

[Rianaru]

I have Heroes III, and I was thinking about getting back to the series recently but I guess if what you say is true, then it's not really worth playing the new ones :(

[Solymr]

I have Heroes III, and I was thinking about getting back to the series recently but I guess if what you say is true, then it's not really worth playing the new ones :(

I know I made them sound bad, but they're not "that" horrible, if you can stand the bad acting and stupid characters/story. I don't recommend spending money on them though.