World of Warcraft is truly formidable. From the first, Blizzard sought to produce a game that avoided outright the downfalls of others in its genre, fit in and expanded upon the world they'd hewn over the course of five games and some four novels, and could measure up aesthetically to the newest releases using an engine far less powerful.
I'd say they succeeded.
The game boasts no bump maps, shaders, or real-time shadows - but it looks great. Every texture you see was drawn by hand - which, believe me, is no mean feat, especially considering how well they turned out. The zones, nigh thirty in number, are expansive and diverse, and feature major landmarks from all five games (granted, some more accurately than others. I'm looking in your direction, Dalaran) - not to mention the transitions between them are visually seamless. Immersive quests are offered to players of all levels, and rarely does gaining experience become a chore to be ground through. The player classes are fairly balanced; each is fairly original, insofar as MMORPG classes can be, and offers a distinct experience from the others. There are some forty servers, I believe, with new ones being introduced periodically; Blizzard performs maintenence on them weekly, and they generally remain stable, despite it that their subsciptions number over a million.
And then, on occasion, servers crash, quests and enemies behave strangely, etc. - and guess what people say?
"Blizzard sucks." "Blizzard pays no attention to their fans." "Blizzard never fixes anything." "Blizzard doesn't put in enough work." "Blizzard is getting enough money that they should be able to produce a completely flawless and infinitely stable game." "Blizzard is a s**tty company."
And I respond: shut the f**k up. Just shut the f**k up. Seriously, a good game comes along which is entertaining, which is far more stable than others in its genre, into which its maker has poured an undeniable amount of sweat and blood, and which you regularly enjoy - and the very moment it f**ks up even slightly, perhaps clearing away a few hours of effort tops, you've got to let the whole world know that its creators are a gang of incompetant hacks.
And I say the same to those of you who complain about Valve: shut the f**k up. Here's a game with an engine that's solid and rife with potential (good God, just look what we did to HL1), extremely accessible developer's tools, and an impressively organized (though often buggy) online distribution and patch system, whose developers, too, constantly work to create new content - see DoD Source and the soon-to-be-released additional HL2 level - even though they aren't paid a dime past what they received when you purchased their product and, I assume, have enjoyed far less commerical success than Blizzard.
Are Steam and Valve's lineup perfect products? - by no means. Are they, in fact, flawed? - in some respects, very much so. Should you go off and run your f**king mouth about every inconvenience you happen upon? - no. In my humble opinion, it's a pretty damn good game, and Valve is doing a better job of keeping it up to date than most games' developers do.
Oh, and about this hitbox s**t - I've never had a problem fragging. I believe someone on the Plan of Attack forums explained this as being latency compensation, though whatever the case may be, I will guarantee you that you'll all be ready to pounce on Valve as though it'd been trying to f**k up your game all along.
Now please, tell me about how I'm a bulls**tter blindly fawning over my favorite game development company.
[addsig]
