Talk:Criticism of World of Warcraft

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This article was nominated for deletion on 25/8/2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Contents 1 NPOV Dispute 2 Gay rights 3 Citations 4 Deleted text needing citations follows 5 ****** BEGIN Container for working on citations ******= 6 ****** END Container for working on citations ****** 7 Frost Shock 8 Winterspring 9 South Park 10 Unmentioned topic 11 Queue times for the PvP Battlegrounds 12 Game addiction 13 PvP and Grinding

[edit] NPOV Dispute

Since I don't see a section for the NPOV dispute already here, I will initiate one myself. As a WoW player and one who has quit and returned twice already, I feel my views are partial and are completely fair to Blizzard Entertainment. With that said, after reviewing this article I have to agree with the user disputing this for NPOV violations. For instance, the original author states lag as a negative point of the game but does not offer contrasting argument that Blizzard has a dedicated team working on upgrading and purchasing new software. IFurthermore, the article does not include any counter-arguments that Blizzard CM's have included on the general forums regarding issues like overpopulation with upcoming paid server transfers. Perhaps adding the aforementioned will help alleviate the NPOV issue. --Novaprospekt 19:49, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I am going to start removing lots of information, because this article is a huge pile of POV. Only a few have citations. If this article dosn't bocome more then what it is at this stage I will add a VfD to it (which I don't want to). Havok (T/C/c) 20:43, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I have removed everything that was lacking citation. This article was a pile of POV, and I decided I would remove everything instead of AFDing it. Feel free to re-add the information which was removed if you have a source for it. Remember, wikipedia does not condone original research Havok (T/C/c) 08:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

---

I think we should put back most of what was deleted in this edit--because most of what was removed is good material which anyone can verify by visiting the cyberworld themselves. So it is not original research; it is common knowledge of anyone who has visited that world. An equivalent page lacking "sources" is Tokyo subway. Anyone can verify what is on that page by visiting the world described.

Similarly, anyone that has played World of Warcraft for very long has encountered the Lag, Population problems, Lopsidedness, ..., and Twinking that goes on there. And the deleted text provides good explanations of what is easily seen in these phenomena in a very NPOV manner and even-handed manner, neither blasting Blizzard, nor blasting Blizzard critics. And, surely, it would be good to find citations; the citations exist. And here is an inspiring story about a young guy who wrote a guide on how to conquer World of Warcraft and won a lawsuit against Blizzard. But in the outcome of the lawsuit, the young guy had to remove most of the links to the "cheats" in the game.  :(( I recommend that the deleted text be restored so that we can in the next few months add links to good sources as we find them. --Rednblu 00:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Without sources the information has to go. It doesn't matter if it is considered "common knowledge". Find the good sources, and then bring back the material. --Hetar 02:41, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, we need the whole text dragged out of the history file so that we can work on it. So I am creating a section below with the whole deleted text copied from the history file. --Rednblu 03:41, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Rednblu, the sections that were removed, that he pasted below definately belong in this article. While they may be difficult to cite, they make up the bulk of the criticisms against WoW. I was surprised to not see them in the main article at all, and now I know why.Xenocidic 20:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Without citations, they cannot be included. Simple as that. --Hetar 04:11, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gay rights

First of all, instead of immediatly jumping to a admin page, these pages are to discuss stuff.

Second, as a gay person myself, I do not see the problem with the text of User:144.35.254.12 although some fine tuning can be done.

Finaly, both of you are close to three reverts cool down. KimvdLinde 00:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Some finetuning has been done now. KimvdLinde 00:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

• THat gay criticism they would not allow a KKK or Nazi guild either so I dont know why anyone cares.

Greetings and just a few comments. I didn't like this section at all because it seemed too pro-gay. What the section fails to mention is that there is no allowance made for any guild formed for the sole purpose of selectively recruiting certain players based on religion, race, ethnic group, sexual orientation etc etc. The guild was "actively recruiting itself and stating itself as GAY or BiSexual. A guild doing something similiar for Whites Only, English Speakers only, Americans Only, Catholics Only would be found in the same violation. Had the guild existed and not PROMOTED ITSELF as being in essence exclusionary or formed for a specific group it would have been left alone. In the same vein as being Anti-Gay is repulsive to some, being Pro-Gay is repugnant to others creating the same intrusion of Real World Issues and Divisions into a Fantasy world getaway. Blizzard cannot allow a Outspoken "Join Us based one being one of Us" LBGA Type Guild anymore than it can a guild formed for a specific Race, Culture, Ethnic Group etc etc. the guild was only brought into question because of what it promoted itself to be and not for what it was. We all know there are guilds who want Whites Only or Blacks or Asians or Hispanice or English Speakers or Spanish Speakers or Muslims or Christians and they exist the same as Gay or Bi-Sexual Guilds exist. It wasn't the existance. It was the outward promotion.

[edit] Citations

This article needs more citations, as it is now, it's a work of POV. Havok (T/C/c) 09:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Someone today, Nov 5th 06, added a whole new section, and from what I can tell, it appears to be lacking any and all citations to it's sources either in the article or in the accompanying comments when it was added. Poster needs to add his sources for those issues. I can guarentee Havok or someone else will pull it when he sees it if you don't. EDIT: I went ahead and pulled it myself. Again I -DO- think that stuff belongs here, but as alot of it is opinion/PoV based currently, it supposed to have an outside source to stay up. Find just ONE link related to that stuff and you're all good. [Sunday, 2006-11-05 T 11:35 UTC]

[edit] Deleted text needing citations follows

[edit] ****** BEGIN Container for working on citations ******=

• Lag: The popularity of the game means that at times, so many people are on-line that the servers become overloaded and very slow. Serious lag — or slow operation — often occurs on weekend nights, and in the central cities of the Warcraft world, such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar (sometimes nicknamed "Lagforge", "Ironlag" and "Lagrimmar"), where large concentrations of players congregate. This is still a serious problem, even though changes were made to the Auction House. The Auction House, the trade channel, and the group channel are now linked with every capital city since the patch 1.9. The idea was that people would be spread among these cities instead of lagging one correspondent area. During the server world events corresponding with the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, many servers experienced extremely high lag and multiple crashes, possibly resulting from high concentrations of player characters in the gate area.
• Population: Some World of Warcraft players created characters on servers with medium to low populations. Certain low population servers are experiencing a vast number of players leaving the servers, making it harder for people to find groups, and affecting the in-game economy. Blizzard has taken certain measures to alleviate this problem by allowing character transfers on certain servers, but it is still something of a problem. The opposite of this is also true; some servers are too overpopulated and are hard to play on because of server load and long queues to log in.
• "Lopsided" Horde to Alliance ratio: Many of the servers are becoming outnumbered, with many PvE and RP servers suffering a 2:1 ratio of Alliance to Horde. This affects PvP and the quality of gameplay for some players. Generally on servers following a PvP ruleset, the ratio is less exaggerated and in some cases even swings in the Horde's favor[1]. This issue will possibly be addressed in the expansion, The Burning Crusade, where it has been announced that the Blood Elves will be a new playable race for the Horde. This will provide the Horde with a so-called "pretty race," which is one of the previous reasons a player might choose Alliance over the Horde races. This issue seems to be being addressed by Blizzard by enabling server transfers among specific realms. The realms that are designated for server transfers are notified beforehand, and have leveled out the "lopsided" nature of many realms.
• Unbalanced classes: Many people tend to believe that certain classes or races are over- or underpowered. Blizzard periodically releases patches (downloaded with the Blizzard Downloader) which, along with adding features or fixing bugs, also attempt to balance gameplay by updating the class skill trees and spells. This balancing action is sometimes called 'buffing', 'nerfing' or 'revamp', depending on whether the change strengthened, weakened, or just reconfigured the features of the class.
• Lore: The Warcraft Universe was previously developed in three major games with two expansion packs, and its history is periodically expanded with new books. As a result fans have occasionally found inconsistencies or inexplicable occurences in the Warcraft storyline. The most controversial and recent of these centered around the expansion's new races, the Blood Elves and Draenei. The Blood Elves' alliance with the Horde, though puzzling, can be explained in part by shared history with The Forsaken. More serious is an unintentional anachronism written by Blizzard Entertainment's writers; the Eredar race, ancestor to the Draenei, was recently described as having been demonically corrupted by Sargeras in the expansion's announcement, but previous writtings had described the Eredar as a demonic race before having met Sargeras. Another criticism regarding the history of the Warcraft Universe notes the heavily derivative nature of certain aspects of the game (particularly races such as Dwarves and Elves resembling those created by J.R.R. Tolkein and found in other fantasy games/writings), although introduction of "World of Warcraft" allowed.
• Role-playing: On "RP" servers, which focus on role-playing, story-telling, and immersion in the game world, Blizzard is occasionally unable to effectively prevent or punish excessive out of character behavior. When character names and communication that refer too much to the real world or the "game" become common, it becomes difficult for dedicated role-players to stay in character, damaging what is for many players a substantially important aspect of gameplay.
• Long time online required at high level: High-level dungeons can take many hours of party finding, strategy discussion, and battles. The Molten Core (a commonly run, high-level instance usually referred to as 'MC') can usually take as long as six hours to complete. However, Blizzard has made it so that the instance does not have to be done in one, large chunk. Once a group of players kill the first boss, their future progress is saved and stored for one week from the first boss kill, or to when the weekly server maintenance takes place, whichever happens first. This means that none of the bosses will spawn again until after that time period is up and the entire instance resets itself.

• Twinking: In PvP environments, certain players engage in a practice known as "twinking". In twinking, a high-level character provides money or equipment to relatively low-level "alternate" characters. This can provide an overwhelming advantage in PvP, because the superior gear enables the lower-level characters to survive far longer and to dish out enormous damage. Many people feel that the advantage is grossly unfair.

• There is also a dramatic shift in the game style when reaching the final levels. This has been off-putting to players. Content from levels 1 to roughly 54 is geared towards solo and small group players. At level 55 the content shifts dramatically to large group raids and instances requiring groups of 10 to 40 players. Many players are forced to find a new larger guild to find enough players to form these groups. Casual players often feel they do not have enough time to play anymore as they have to now spend a lot more time searching for a group, or participating in raid that can take more than 4 hours to complete. In order to address these problems, Blizzard announced that in patch 1.10 experience accrued after the maximum level cap will be converted to gold. It is hoped that this will increase the number of players participating in end game quests apart from simply raiding with their guilds.

[edit] ****** END Container for working on citations ******

[edit] Frost Shock

Was its own article but was about to be deleted. Seems to have some value so merged into this article. However it might make sense to put under Criticism or Exploits headings--Esemono 05:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't really see the value of having this in the article. Also, it doesn't have a citation or source. --Hetar 17:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I was very surprised that I didn't find Shamen even mentioned in the criticism page... Granted, such criticisms may be somewhat irrational, but they still exist. I constantly hear (in-game) complaints about how rigged shaman are, and I have to agree [2]. Oh well. --HantaVirus 12:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

A criticism that I have often heard is that Blizz engineers must all roll Shamen, which is why that class is so often able to avoid being nerfed in patches. ...*I kill a shaman*...*Self-rez*...*Frost shock*...*I begin to cast BLINK (yes, the "instant cast")*...*Windfurry tripple crit for 1300, 1900, 900*...*I die.* --HantaVirus 13:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Winterspring

Hey guys, why isn't there a section on the Funeral Bombing in the PVP territory of Winter spring? There was a real life funeral there and an Alliance guild called Serenity Now attacked all the Horde members, but it's disputed, so I don't know. --D-hyo 15:17, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

zOMG! [3] However, this is not a criticism of WoW, since the funeral was not sponsored by Blizz. --HantaVirus 13:11, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hilarious though it is, Hanta is right in that it can't be a direct criticism of WoW. Unless you're trying to prove that assholes are good at WoW, too. --Almighty WALKER 15:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

People were holding a real life funeral on WoW? I guess if you don't have citations, it can't go in the article, but, for my own curiousity, could you tell me the situation that arised in which they decided to do a funeral in an online game? Riphal 09:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

See here. Cribcage 02:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Adding to my earlier statement, why were they holding a funeral in a PVP area? That is another question. Riphal 09:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't played WoW, but i'm framiliar with the term pvp, sorry to keep going on about this, but why on earth in a pvp area, couldn't they have held the funeral in an area where people couldn't jump in and kill them? Riphal 09:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, they were Horde but decided to hold the funeral in an alliance region, probably for asthetics. (It was a beautiful lakeside, snow-covered area, so i can understand why they liked it)Avalanche Knight 05:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Well I can certainly understand that, but did the Horde members notify everyone on the realm forums before they actually held the funeral? If so, it only serves to reinforce my hatred of the Alliance in general on the realms I play on. (Although I do acknowledge that there ARE some Alliance players who are actually honorable in-game and aren't even remotely attracted to the female jug-jugs!) But unlike most other people, I do see both sides of the situation, and it is (slightly) likely when the Alliance guild saw this gathering of Horde players intheir realm, they must have thought that this group of Horde were gearing up for a massive raid or something. Tacitus666 03:09, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

notified on forums... not everyone reads the forums, and even at that, there is absolutely no defendable reasoning behind holding a serious event in a pvp area in my mind. no matter how nice the pvp area's environment looked.

[edit] South Park

Can someone find a citation for the critisism that "Several points in the show poke fun at how World of Warcraft players have no lives, eat junk food, and are overweight." If non can be found, I'm removing this from the article as it adds nothing, is WP:OR, and almost sounds like an insult to anyone who plays WoW. Havok (T/C/c) 07:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I saw the episode and the references are obvious. If you provide a dilog transscript anyone with half a brain could point of the references.--68.192.188.142 01:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unmentioned topic

What about the very common criticism(more common than any on the page) that World of Warcraft contributes to video game addiction? Am I the only one who think's this is missing? i kan reed 16:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

If you can find a reliable source for it, sure add it. It is a common problem, but us saying it is one dosn't help this article I'm afraid. Havok (T/C/c) 18:25, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I have added a paragraph about it, including references to articles on lawsuits involving it, and a study done on the issue, as well as one about game addiction in general. An additional source was... http://gamasutra.com/features/20060822/clark_02.shtml ... series of articles which delve into research and reasons for the game addiction. I didn't have enough time to read them all though to see if they should be linked. (oct 21/06)

I added some things from articles I found on the internet. I, too, believe gaming addiction is one of the most overlooked factors in game criticism. Both my brother and my uncle are addicted to MMORPG's so I know what dealing with that problem is like.

[edit] Queue times for the PvP Battlegrounds

This section looks entirely written from an in-universe perspective. I have no clue what this means. Somone needs to explain how WoW works so the battlegrounds bit makes sense. Also, the second-person should be cut out as well. Hbdragon88 04:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

That is explained in the main WoW page, and shouldn't be repeated on the critism page as it would be Off-Topic there. In fact if you don't play WoW, you really should read the main page before jumping to critism since it really is hard to understand why things aren't working or are being constantly improved if you don't understand how they are intended to work and where Blizzard is focusing it's improvement efforts. {oct 21, 06}

Ideally, articles need to make sense to someone unfamiliar to the topic. It wouldn't be off-topic. Even a sentence or two would make it easier to understand. Hbdragon88 22:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Arent't people not supposed to repost stuff like that on stub articles like this one? This isn't really a full article is it, it's a sub section of a larger article that already explains it. If they are then if the OP doesn't update maybe another player or I can... but the OP was correct in that all that is already talked about and maintained on the main page. 2006-10-25 T 23:26 UTC

Are you guys still sure this exists? I have had no waits over one minute since cross-realm battlegrounds. -Ryanbomber 13:25, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes very sure, to the point Blizzard has made official stickies on it's forums in recent history sure, Blizz still tries to manage how new servers get added to needed clusters sure, and topics still spring up on the official forums semi-regularly and are discussed with the Blues in regards to one day fixing the problem sure. Again this isn't like it's a problem Blizzard denies, they openly admit it exists and they want to one day fix it. But it is not fixed now, and thus is an existing problem, and thus falls under critism. Especially since criticism has to be in context, and in context many other games have worked out these issues (including Blizzard in past MP games). Also to you personally, what server/cluster are you, and what level are you at? The topic is mainly related to Alterac Valley (though on some clusters in the 60+ bracket it applies to AB and WSG as well), on clusters with either slanted Horde/Alliance population or low overall numbers. If you're not a level 50+ yet you won't fully appreciate the issue as you cannot go there until 50, and if you're on one of the larger clusters your times are SIGNIFIGNATLY better then on smaller ones. In my own experiance, I play on three clusters. None have Alterac Valley waits better then 35-40 minutes (30 minutes on the AV weekend once every 4 weeks). The worst averages over an hour and fourty mintue wait (about an hour and ten minutes on the AV weekend once a month). Still look at that... on the average the larger cluster will enjoy a ONE HOUR SHORTER WAIT per entry. I do think Blizzard is trying to fix this with the new expansion due out in January or Febuary of '07, and once all clusters get below the half hour Blizzard originally was shooting for this really won't be a fair critism. Until then, it's still a valid issue about the game. [Friday, 2006-11-03 T 17:25 UTC]

[edit] Game addiction

The quote from the good Dr. was removed from World of Warcraft due to not being reliable. Even with the sources. Thoughts about this? Seems it was re-added by someone, and now it's all good. :P Havok (T/C/c) 21:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PvP and Grinding

I think it should be noted the amount of Critisism of WOw's PvP, and how it is very poorly done and fore the msot part a joke.

I think it is also important to say that though Blizzard has tried to make the game fun for casuel players, it really is not past level 30 and is from around that point on based mostly on grinding and farming.