Recommended Posts

Personally, I don't believe Blizzard developers outright asks themselves what they can do to increase money in their pockets. They may ask themselves how they can get more out of their content which indirectly benefits their subs and also benefits the players if it's done right.

I don't think developpers take such decision. Dev do what they are asked to do. Those decision (dailies) are taken by people who don't touch code with a 10 foot pole.

Maybe developers wasn't the right word, but people like Ghostcrawler. Sure there's got to be influence to increase revenue but my point is that only doing what gives maximum profits will not benefit the player and will result in less profits. In other words: what's best for players is what's best for Blizzard. Mostly..

Maybe developers wasn't the right word, but people like Ghostcrawler. Sure there's got to be influence to increase revenue but my point is that only doing what gives maximum profits will not benefit the player and will result in less profits. In other words: what's best for players is what's best for Blizzard. Mostly..

More like King Kotick since all he cares about is how much $$$ he can squeeze out of people.

  • 2 weeks later...

The new direction Blizzard is going with Mists isn't working for me. It's not a "take my ball and go home" situation, I just wasn't really having much fun in October. Combine "not fun" October with a busy real-life in November and then Christmas (and finals):it just makes sense to not play for a couple of months.

I might give it a go again in January - I sort of want to make one more "how to UI series" but the fun-per-dollar of warcraft just isn't justified for me right now.

I hear ya. I've been strictly playing only on raid nights for my guild just so I don't leave them hanging. None of the raids have the lore behind them that interests me.

Closed my account last month. Did not play since october i think.

All the people i played with don't play anymore. And i just don't feel like finding a new good group again. I sorta like mist but not enough for that. I just don't like the raids enough. Cata post fireland nerf really purged any remaining interest i had in this game. Maybe i'll start again next spring. But probably not. I'm curently playing Guild Wars 2, Borderlands 2 and Halo 4.

Say goodbye to Granule, Garnotte, Bourlette, Grillepain and S?rac. I'll miss my toons :( specially my hunter Granule and my paladin Garnotte. It's strange but i kind of have a bond with some of my toons. I know it's stupid but it is the way it is.

  • 4 weeks later...

I just got into the 10 day trial and am leveling up a panda monk. Its ok... Seems like with every exp WoW gets sillier and sillier but I still think it has tight gameplay. I'm still undecided if I'll buy. Maybe if they were still doing a $20 sale on it. Its $30 now. Just the face that they are dropping the price so close to release is a bad sign...

I don't think that the talent changes are necessarily bad. Still figuring it out.

I wish that character transfers were cheaper. I have level 85 toons spread out all over :( I really want to play my warlock and paladin. But they are on other servers and 25 bucks to transfer is not worth it IMO.

I've played many MMOs over the years (EQ1, 2, DAoC, AO, SW:TOR, Rift, Star Trek, Conan, GW:2...) and I always come back to WoW. I'll admit I thought the Panda stuff was silly at first but I got over it and actually enjoy it. I actually like the graphics in this game because they aren't so intense that they affect gameplay.

Last year this time I was hardcore SW:TOR. The one thing that really bothered me was the damned gameplay. It was so laggy, the actions were that is. I also had to decrease all my settings to lowest everything to get 'decent' playability. I'd read about people with mega-gaming rigs that had problems running it. Felt like I was playing through jello or wading through mud. We even had to time our jump for those damned datacrons. The tip was to hit spacebar about .5 seconds before you'd ACTUALLY hit the space bar. Yeah, it was bad. It wore me down and I stopped it and all MMOs for a time.

Fast foward to Mists Beta and I was back at it. The smooth gameplay is just second to none. I also have friends I play with and that's a definite plus.

I've yet to play an MMO that has the smooth play of WoW ( closest was GW:2 but they nerfed my class! :p ). That's my baseline standard for an MMO: how smooth is the play? If your game looks like real life but plays like crap then I could care less. :)

Yeah, I agree. WoW has some smooth/tight gameplay. That is something Blizzard always does well at even if they lack in other areas.

I'm frustrated as hell at the moment though because I'm stuck on level 8 as a figgen n00b Panda Monk at the Temple of the Five Dawns trying to head west to The Ridge of Laughing Winds. It looks like I need to get to the top of the temple in order to cross the bridge that heads west but I'm banging my head against the wall trying to find the friggen lift/stairs/whatever to get up there. I've wondered around the whole map trying to find an alternate route. Grrrr. I feel like such a newbie and my google foo fails me.

One thing I noticed when trying to use Google to find Mists of Pandaria advice: You have to explicitly add "wow" to the search or "warcraft" or else you don't get any WoW results! Crazy! That just shows how downhill population-wise the game has gotten. Use to, type anything and a world of warcraft website would be number 1 or 2 on Google (for instance 'jewelcrafting' or 'mining').

Edit: Click the whirlwind...durp.

I've played many MMOs over the years (EQ1, 2, DAoC, AO, SW:TOR, Rift, Star Trek, Conan, GW:2...) and I always come back to WoW. I'll admit I thought the Panda stuff was silly at first but I got over it and actually enjoy it. I actually like the graphics in this game because they aren't so intense that they affect gameplay.

Last year this time I was hardcore SW:TOR. The one thing that really bothered me was the damned gameplay. It was so laggy, the actions were that is. I also had to decrease all my settings to lowest everything to get 'decent' playability. I'd read about people with mega-gaming rigs that had problems running it. Felt like I was playing through jello or wading through mud. We even had to time our jump for those damned datacrons. The tip was to hit spacebar about .5 seconds before you'd ACTUALLY hit the space bar. Yeah, it was bad. It wore me down and I stopped it and all MMOs for a time.

Fast foward to Mists Beta and I was back at it. The smooth gameplay is just second to none. I also have friends I play with and that's a definite plus.

I've yet to play an MMO that has the smooth play of WoW ( closest was GW:2 but they nerfed my class! :p ). That's my baseline standard for an MMO: how smooth is the play? If your game looks like real life but plays like crap then I could care less. :)

Yep. One thing WoW has going for it is that its smooth as butter. When I played SWTOR it was so unresponsive it felt like I was playing it on a laptop monitor from 1993.

I come and go in my Wow, 6month here, 3 months off, 1year back on etc.

Enjoying MOP a lot as Ive joined a small Scottish raiding guild and whilst there not in heroics yet, im having a great time.

However I,ll mirror what others have said, dailys are too much.

Yeah, I agree. WoW has some smooth/tight gameplay. That is something Blizzard always does well at even if they lack in other areas.

I'm frustrated as hell at the moment though because I'm stuck on level 8 as a figgen n00b Panda Monk at the Temple of the Five Dawns trying to head west to The Ridge of Laughing Winds. It looks like I need to get to the top of the temple in order to cross the bridge that heads west but I'm banging my head against the wall trying to find the friggen lift/stairs/whatever to get up there. I've wondered around the whole map trying to find an alternate route. Grrrr. I feel like such a newbie and my google foo fails me.

One thing I noticed when trying to use Google to find Mists of Pandaria advice: You have to explicitly add "wow" to the search or "warcraft" or else you don't get any WoW results! Crazy! That just shows how downhill population-wise the game has gotten. Use to, type anything and a world of warcraft website would be number 1 or 2 on Google (for instance 'jewelcrafting' or 'mining').

Edit: Click the whirlwind...durp.

?

9jzm0j.png

OMG, Demonology for Warlock has become so crazy. There are demons popping up everywhere and a million things to keep track of. I may have to respec to Destruction or something for leveling. And there is some kind of "Tank" build for warlocks now? Are any Warlocks actually tanking or is that a joke?

7 more days of free trial left... Still on the fence if I purchase or not. Wish it was still $20 or the subscription was cheaper... Still $45 for me to have the expansion and play for a month...thats kinda pricy for me.

i decided to pick this up again after about a 2 year gap.

I can't really remember where I was up to but I've only ever been a casual player.. too casual to be involved in a group or a guild, which is why I've never been in one. I'm level 65 at the moment, and I've done it all by myself. :rofl: I would say that the game has gotten a lot easier for some reason. Have they decreased the difficulty of the enemies or something?

i decided to pick this up again after about a 2 year gap.

I can't really remember where I was up to but I've only ever been a casual player.. too casual to be involved in a group or a guild, which is why I've never been in one. I'm level 65 at the moment, and I've done it all by myself. :rofl: I would say that the game has gotten a lot easier for some reason. Have they decreased the difficulty of the enemies or something?

Yes, enemies have far less armor than they used to. They have also changed a lot of the gear/talents to do more damage. I quit wow for a solid year, got the 10 day mists trial. Ended up buying it as I wanted to level up past 85 on my priest. Currently don't intend on resubbing, but have the option if I want.

Currently leveling as Disc, I never lose more than 25% HP killing mobs higher than my level, and I can go through a solid 10+ enemies before my mana is considered low. I haven't even used any of the gear from the quests which would increase my stats by a lot. I've been using my cata heroic gear and it's still standing solid.

Also, making 9g per quest, money for repairs doesn't even cause me to blink.

I left the game after trying Cata for a few months, i absolutely lost all interest in the game after that.

However since Mop was released... I am starting to really get back into it. The dailies are to much, i am not going to grind them at all. I am not a hardcore raider anyway, I am going more into PvP.

If anyone is on Xavius-EU, let me know! PM ME!

My 10-day trial of WoW Mists is over tomorrow :(. So Sad. Won't be purchasing though because it isn't worth $45 to play for another month. Maybe if they went to a free model I would buy into it but right now I only feel like playing every once and awhile and don't want to pay $15 for the right to play a game I already purchased.

Oh well. Tons of games out there. Maybe if Blizz lowers the price a bit I'll be back. Cheers!

My guild is still chugging along. We're 4/16 heroic. I've thought about quitting but my annual pass doesn't expire until March or April and by then the new raid will be out. I've just about finished needing to do daily quests since i'm exalted with almost everyone now. Once you get over daily quests, the too much to do thing begins to go away and you get bored again.

  • 2 months later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Posts

    • And the fact that the majority of people from Poland are white European Christians while the people you are complaining about in post after post are not is just a coincidence... Every sentence in your post I am replying to is racist nonsense. None of it is actually based on any facts whatsoever. All immigrants are seeking a better life too. It's literally the only reason they would risk everything and leave their homes, families, and homeland. They are working and contributing to the economy too, as you even admit. They get the same benefits your partner did AND that YOU are eligible for as well. That is one of the key things of the EU and a mark of a civilization. That is the definition of a society where everyone is given a chance, treated equally and fairly, and is judged by the content of their character, not their different skin color or which version of ignorant superstitious nonsense their parents lied about as children. Racists around the world said the same things about the Irish and Jews and Poles (like your partner) and...every other immigrant movement over the centuries. What's your family's heritage, by the way? Were your ancestors lied about with racist fearmongering crapola by self-entitled locals the same way as you are now? If someone like that said the same things about all people from Poland, like your partner, would they be right? Or would you want them to judge your partner based on who they actually were, not where they just happened to come from?
    • Again, this is an irrelevant attempt to attack the messenger. The truth does not require any justification.
    • Removed the blue and underline as you did not post a link. This would also  be considered spamming.
    • Why it's almost impossible to produce a smartphone in the United States by Hamid Ganji If you look at the back of some Apple products, you can see the famous phrase “Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China.” This phrase appears on products from one of the largest smartphone brands in the United States. These products are designed in the U.S., but their manufacturing takes place in China, India, Vietnam, or even Brazil. But why can’t Apple, as one of the largest American tech companies, produce its iPhones on U.S. soil? The idea for this topic came to me after the Trump Foundation launched a smartphone called the T1 and claimed that it was designed and built with American values in mind. However, this claim did not last long, as it was revealed that Trump’s phone was actually a rebranded HTC U24 Pro, with only a gold case and minor internal component changes. You see? Even a phone that is supposed to represent American values is manufactured in China. With a gross domestic product (GDP) exceeding $32 trillion, the United States is currently the world’s largest economy, while China ranks second with around $20 trillion. On the other hand, the United States is by a wide margin the global leader in various technological fields, and American companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on research and development. From Apple and Google to Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and others, American tech and industrial giants lead their foreign competitors in many sectors. The United States also has no shortage of smartphone brands. Apple, Google, and Motorola are among the major brands in the smartphone market, collectively holding a significant share. However, the vast majority of their products are manufactured outside the United States. So why is it that the world’s largest economy, home to the most advanced technology companies and industrial powers, cannot produce a smartphone on its own soil? Let’s explore this question together. Even threats to impose tariffs won’t work After Trump entered the White House as the 47th President of the United States, his administration adopted strict tariff policies. One of these policies was the imposition of a 25% tariff on smartphones manufactured outside the United States. Trump said he “had a little problem” with Apple CEO Tim Cook over producing smartphones outside the U.S. So he thought that threatening a 25% tax on imported phones might force Apple to bring manufacturing back to the United States. “I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhones that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Image via The White House Although Apple currently manufactures some of the iPhone’s chips in the United States with TSMC's help, it still shows no willingness to shift full iPhone production to the country. At the time, renowned Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote on X, “In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to the US.” However, manufacturing a smartphone in the United States is not as easy as it might seem, and many technical and economic barriers are involved. The lack of necessary manufacturing hubs There is a clear reason why many companies prefer to manufacture their products in China. China has established itself as the main global manufacturing hub for international companies, and over the past few decades, large contract manufacturers have emerged there, allowing companies like Apple to outsource production. One such example is Foxconn, which also manufactures some Apple products in India. Building the infrastructure required to produce smartphones in the United States would require tens of billions of dollars in new investment. Factories would need to be built, essential manufacturing equipment would have to be installed, and, most importantly, a skilled workforce capable of operating these systems would need to be recruited and trained. The United States currently lacks the core infrastructure needed to manufacture smartphones, and for this reason, many companies prefer to outsource production to Chinese contractors rather than spend tens of billions of dollars to build that infrastructure, which is significantly more economically efficient. Additionally, building such infrastructure in the United States could take up to a decade, ultimately leading to a significant increase in the product's final price for consumers. Shortage of trained labor in the U.S. compared to China Decades of serving as a global manufacturing hub have allowed China to build a massive talent pool in the production sector that is almost unmatched worldwide. Today, if a company chooses to manufacture its products in China, it can be confident that the workers involved in production have years of experience in their respective roles and are capable of producing high-quality goods with minimal errors. Even if we assume that tens of billions of dollars were invested in building smartphone manufacturing infrastructure in the United States, finding skilled workers would remain highly challenging. Apple CEO Tim Cook visiting the iPhone 6 assembly line in China in 2014. Image: Tim Cook on X In a 2015 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Tim Cook said the main reason Apple isn’t producing in the US is a lack of skills. "China put an enormous focus on manufacturing, in what you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The US over time began to stop having as many vocational kinds of skills. I mean you could take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in the room that we're currently sitting in. In China you would have to have multiple football fields,” Cook said. Also, in 2017, at the Fortune Global Forum in Guangzhou, Cook once again emphasized the importance of highly skilled Chinese workers. “China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like. The thing that most people focus on if they’re a foreigner coming to China is the size of the market, and obviously, it’s the biggest market in the world in so many areas. But for us, the number one attraction is the quality of the people,” Apple CEO said. Higher labor costs in the United States Producing almost any product in the United States is more expensive than in many other countries, and one of the main reasons is the higher cost of labor in the U.S. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly earnings of full-time workers in the United States were $1,235 in the first quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, the average annual salary in China's private sector in 2025 was RMB 71,590 (US$9,961). In many parts of the world, the weekly wage of an American worker is equivalent to several months of income. Another important factor to consider is that in the United States, the workforce capable of working on a smartphone assembly line is highly specialized and therefore commands higher-than-average wages. According to an estimate by Bank of America, producing an iPhone in the U.S. is technically possible, but “iPhone cost can increase 25% purely on higher labor cost in the U.S.” However, this 25% increase applies only if final assembly is performed in the United States while components are still sourced from China or elsewhere. In this case, the price of a base iPhone would rise from $799 to around $1,000. But in another scenario, if Apple were to produce the required components for the iPhone within the United States, production costs could increase by more than 90%. Trump’s dream for a “Made in the USA” iPhone might never come true In a free-market capitalist economy, one of the primary responsibilities of any CEO is to maximize profit. Using Apple as an example, Tim Cook’s role is to maximize the company’s profits so that it can fund research and development for new products and invest in areas such as artificial intelligence, while also keeping shareholders satisfied. Therefore, it is entirely understandable that Apple would choose not to bring its manufacturing back to the United States and instead keep production in countries where labor is cheaper, and products can be manufactured at a lower cost, thereby maximizing its profit margins. What is your opinion about manufacturing smartphones in the United States? If you are an American citizen, would you be willing to pay hundreds of dollars more for a smartphone made domestically in the USA? Let us know in the comments.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Conversation Starter
      jessse3334 earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • Reacting Well
      JuvenileDelinquent earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • One Month Later
      Excellence2025 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Excellence2025 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      506
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      196
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      153
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      72
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      65
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!