Commander Shepard

At the risk of being flamed, and because I got one of them for a gift this holiday season, both of these, at the same time.

but I play a Paladin...judging is what I do!

1 pantsu of out 5.

You obviously played the inferior version, see:

Maybe he's the pilot for the ship.

what

World of Warcraft has it's ups and downs. The beginning of an expansion, or just starting the game, is an exciting experience. Seeing all the sights, completing quests to acquire XP, and running dungeons to acquire loots; it's all really fun, especially when you play with friends or family to enhance the experience. Where WoW breaks down is the endgame experience. When you reach the level cap, you are faced, primarily, with the decision of joining a guild for raiding or engaging in PVP combat for its own reward. (At this point, I am going to ramble on about TBC into WotLK, so if you want to skip the wall of text, do so now) Speaking from the perspective of someone who spent time as a "hardcore" raider in The Burning Crusade, it was a fun experience downing a difficult encounter, such as Pre-nerf Kael'thas Sunstrider in Tempest Keep or blasting through Sunwell Plateau's M'uru pre-3.0 patch that trivialized any encounter. There were no achievements in these days, the only proof that you had of conquering a foe was your armor, weapons, and titles that you showed off in town. Come Wrath of the Lich King, the first time through dungeons was, again, an exciting experience, learning about the lore and what was happening around Azeroth. Conquering Wintergrasp to gain access to the boss(es) contained within the fortress was different. Then came raiding, starting off with Naxxramas, which was revamped from Vanilla WoW days, back when Naxx was THE endgame dungeon for level 60s, now changed for people to start off with at level 80. For anyone that had not done Naxxramas before, it was something new and different, tying in well with the Lich King motif; however, those that had done it before were simply facing rehashed content modified to support either 10 or 25 players instead of the original 40 players. Upon conquering the Sapphiron encounter, players were granted access to the Eye of Eternity encounter with Malygos, an amazing boss fight that introduced players to vehicular combat, in a raid setting, during the final phase of the encounter. Finally, ending out the first tier of WotLK raiding was the Obsidian Sanctum, arguably Blizzard's most successful attempt at adding the option of making the boss fight more challenging in the reward of bonus loot (and potentially a new flying mount). For an expansion, this was an abundant, although somewhat regurgitated, amount of content to launch into. However, as time went on, the content was quickly smashed and players craved more. Blizzard promised the release of new content, in the form Ulduar, to sate the players. Time marched on, some players became bored with waiting for the new content and lost interest in farming the current content. Eventually, Blizzard did deliver Ulduar, and it was an amazing experience as well. The lore, the visuals, and the encounters really drew fans back into the game. Flash forward to the Trial of the Crusader/Trial of the Champion following Ulduar. While fans were wondering when they would cross swords with the ultimate villain for Wrath of the Lich King (Being the Lich King), Blizzard drops this content pack on players. Players gain access to a new 5 man dungeon, and a new raid dungeon. Unfortunately, it seemed Blizzard had dropped the ball going into this content. Instead of a raid dungeon containing numerous bosses dripping with lore, players face off against 5 "trials" to prove their merit to march on Icecrown Citadel. The encounters are, arguably uninspired, as the player does not feel he is besting evil and bringing chaos to order. You are simply just providing a show for NPCs in the stadium to watch, unlike conquering Naxxramas to destroy a fortress of death plaguing the forces of the Alliance/Horde, or fighting your way through a lost city to curb in the influence of an Old God who tampers with the minds of men. Eventually, Blizzard unleashes the final batch of content on players, Icecrown Citadel. Players are greeted with the opportunity to final defeat the "Greatest evil Azeroth has ever faced" in this 12 boss raid dungeon, which also came packaged with three new 5-man dungeons to help gear players up with. However, along with this release came Blizzard's most game-changing feature to be added in World of Warcraft, the cross-realm Dungeon Finder. This tool allowed players to queue into a pool of other players, and instead of the player being forced to monitor chat in search of a particular dungeon that required the role of said player, this tool would form dungeon groups automatically and transport the players to the dungeon when they were ready. Now, some might argue that automatically being transported to the dungeon was a nice time saver, but at the same time, it allowed players to become lazy and miss out on seeing the sights and learning their surroundings as they made their way to the dungeon entrance. Furthermore, as it required little effort to join the queue, many players further became lazy by not performing their roles to a professional extent, such as damage dealers dishing out pathetic amounts of damage, healers being slow or inefficient in healing, or tanks not generating threat. Compounding this problem was, as it matched players from different servers, odds were you would likely never see many of your dungeon companions ever again, which translated into people being selfish jerks in chat and when possible, allowed players to roll Need and take virtually any item they wanted, with the only repercussion being vote-kicked from the group which only results in that player still keeping the stole loot and still being able to re-queue in the Dungeon Finder tool for a new group to repeat the process. tl;dr version: WoW is fun in small, controlled doses. They've changed it alot, some for the better, some for the worse, though I will say the WoW community has taken a nose dive because of all the cross-realm features/server transferring stuff.

I come to this thread expecting to see things like Madden, World of Warcraft/Final Fantasy, and such things. Then I see Minecraft and Mass Effect. Also, zero interest in WoW: Cataclysm or any sports game that is NOT NBA Jam.

IN THE YEAR 20XX, WAR WAS BEGINNING

All that blast processing. Though I went through both consoles, enjoying what they had to offer. I used to have a local game shop where I traded in my NES and games for a Genesis and some games, then traded it, down the road after playing so many Genesis games, in for a SNES. Had equal fun and fond memories with both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYhCjXbG0ko&feature=related

I was mislead when I came to this thread.

Since someone brought up, one of the classic RTS games that spawned a legacy. The trailer that got us all hooked: Shine on, Command & Conquer, shine on. (Except C&C4, you can burn in hell.)

Considering with most games aiming for "realism", imagine putting on 70+ pounds of equipment, armor, etc... then jump. Now factor in running and strafing. Having your character vault or do simple climbing allows me to say more immersed rather than the bunny-hopping Counter-Terrorist unit. Now in fantasy/magic/RPG/whatever-floats-your-boat games, as long as I'm not some heavy armored knight in full plate-mail doing 50 foot vertical leaps, I have to have my jumping. RPGs that limit my mobility and force me to find an opening or unlocked gate in a fence, or a path around some piled rocks, will forever be the bane of my existence.

Rez. Great music-based rail shooter, or greatest music-based rail shooter? Amazing game on the Dreamcast, and every time it moved to a new console, it kept getting better. See:

I'm not that kind of guy. Also, Sentai.