what brought people was the name, bar none. Blizzard had made a name for themselves up to that point, a big name....and people were ACTUALLY INTERESTED to see what they would release next.

And there do exist, like I said, some good hardcore games. My old clan plays Darkfall online, pretty much the only good hardcore mmo out there.

As for the bold, is it really that funny? Aside from the sects of korean MMO players and Japanese kids scoring 9billion on gradius, the west pretty much defined the idea of hardcore gaming. What other countries had the money to offer prizes for big tournaments and/or feats of insanity?

edit: in the 80's/90's

It certainly wasn't europe, or the middle east. Japan was still in the final stages of recovery from WW2 and China was China...too busy being communist to worry about the entertainment of the people.

edit2: don't quote me on that though...

This post was edited by Eep on Dec 11 2010 10:14pm

sup, as long as we're comparing grinders: pwi games.
it takes upwards of 6 months to a year/lvl from 102-105.
and even those aren't that grindy, i think wanmei was the last real mobgrind game they released. the rest are questspam bs, where mobs give like 13 xp/kill or some bs.

e3 rappelz was by far my favorite grinder though. shit was simple, no overpowered pet bs, every class had its strengths, weaknesses, and mages were actually fun to play.
lvl cap of what, 200 or something? i played that for like a year'n a bit, only got to 120 or so, before they boosted xp into the fucking sky because of casual niggers. and then it was literally like, what took us 9+ months & assloads of xp items, was achievable in 1 week with newbie gear.
thanks gpotato.

You got it here, that's where I agree with you.
But I will never, ever again mindlessly grind my ass off just to have a little fun.
I wish they'd find some less boring way to actually seperate casuals from organised and devoted to the game people.

I played WAR for sometime after it's release and it was damn good.
You could level up via pvp and that's what I liked the most.



who cares, it was an example of mindless grinding.
98% of grind, 2% of pvp.

Well, time invested certainly is a factor in some of these things, though I don't think time invested actually does a good job separating the casuals and hardcore gamers that much.


(Note: from here on, I am talking about games with the option for PvP)

My reason is this: A casual can play a game for 2 years and over that time span finally get as geared as the guy who played it for 1....


the problem therein lies: Once the grinding is done (assuming a cap)....what next?

Next, logically, comes the skill of the players.

I am a firm believer in skill above everything, personally. If you are good at something, if you can run circles around fools with your strategies and bind work, then that is the peak of gaming.

Just investing an ungodly of amount of time and pressing 2 buttons to win every fight vs less grinded people doesn't necessarily make you a good player.

And IMO, to be hardcore you should be able to invest time AND be a good player. And I don't just mean random knowledge of the game, but skill at controlling your character, dealing with latency, improvising etc.



I say this because...you'd be surprised how many people attempt to 'buy skill'

In game shop perks, better equipment, entire characters...


Fact is, you cannot purchase skill. You can purchase an arbitrary amount of virtual items, stat upgrades, etc....but you will never get the hang of not pressing the back key to move away from people...

This post was edited by Eep on Dec 11 2010 10:33pm

There is always this, that casuals are mostly unorganized and because of this they won't be able to get like end-game gear or skills or whatever.

I bid goodnight to this wall-o-txt

not if the content is catered toward them


hay guys press 1 and 3 alot hay look the boss is dead collect loot that makes you 10000x better than the guy working his way through the pvp ranks

I won't play game like this, coz it'll be like, no contest.

most people wouldn't, but some people had time invested from day 1 or whenever, and then things get rapidly changed and then what?

It's asinine to force people to play a certain way because others want something changed.


If you played the original WoW today compared to the new one, your mind would be blown....it'd be like 2 completely different games.


edit: this is a point I agree with xenon on....that game companies should have some backbone.

It's ok to take criticism, it's NOT OK to take advice on how to run the game.... if your designers aren't worthless sacks of overpaid shit then you should be fine.

This post was edited by Eep on Dec 11 2010 10:38pm

man this i s where i need to step in.

Lets take WoW for instance. Yea u can have gold farmers and casual rich idiots who buy all the best gear they can. ON THE OTHER HAND, you can only get so good with the gear u can "buy". Most of the games GOOD gear is from boss kills and in order to get those kills, u need skill. u can just buy gear and expect to fucking kill everything. lvl 80s still wipe on lvl 70 raids, its a typical thing with noobs who dont understand the mechanics behind the fights. your gear doesnt keep you alive from fucking up your job. it only makes u last .1 seconds longer than you normally would.

/e alot of people take WoW lightly. when infact, its not an easy game at all. if u wanna buy the game to play it casually and run around killing noobs thats all fine. but if u want to do real pvp or Raids, ur either good or bad. if u can understand how things work off the bat you will get far in the game. about less than 5% of people who play WoW are actually good at the game. the rest are just fucking rands.

This post was edited by Paintball91 on Dec 11 2010 10:41pm