Who hates World of Warcraft TBG and why?

I kind of like it, in a once or twice a year way, but it's not the greatest by far. Still have to try Burning Crusade though, but I remember the first expansion was pretty neat.

The fun part of the game is pretty much the levelling up of your character, pretty pure min-maxing stuff. Then it's just going through the motions for the quests, trying not to go too out of the way. Then, a few turns before the end, you really need to count how many actions you have left and how many you need to go and try to defeat the big bad guy with the whole team, otherwise it's that boring PvP (unless you really want your end game to be that). So perhaps you'll have to waste a valuable action just to be able to make it to the final guy, and most of the time you won't even reach level 5.

Yeah, that's right...I didn't much like that the whole game was "go here and kill this guy" over and over again for like five hours. It was very much a RUNEBOUND-kind of thing, and I hate RUNEBOUND. The shocking secret at the heart of games like RUNEBOUND and WORLD OF WARCRAFT is that they're every bit as mechanical and mathy as any Eurogame. You spend the whole game trying to maximize your character with benefits and bonuses. It doesn't matter that what you're trying to get more efficient at is killing Murlocs and not shipping oregano. If I'm looking at an array of cards and they may as well all be "+1", "+1 die", "Reroll", and there's very little narrative or concept attachted to them, then how thematic is the game _really_?

What drug store does Barnes shop at? You won't find me ripping Barnes often but his comment about the minis is one of two things 1. extreme hyperbole showing just how bad FFG has spoiled him OR 2. Barnes is totally ignorant about miniatures. Miniatures like these would run anywhere from 2-3$ a piece if you purchased them from a miniatures retailer/company and nothing in my drugstore is of this quality.

It is a hyperbolic statement, but the fact of the matter is that plastic miniatures are pretty hugely overrated as a barometer of quality. Sure, the dollar store bags of plastic dinosaurs or cowboys or whatever aren't as nicely sculpted, but the fact remains that plastic figures are cheap and cheaply produced- we tend to think that when they're in a boxed board game that there's something special about them. WORLD WAR IV has a giant bag of 400 of them- and pretty nice ones- but the game isn't worth a dime.

The _only_ reason that plastic miniatures like those in WoW would be $2-3 a piece would be because they were produced and marketed as a hobby item. If Games Workshop made them, they'd be $7-8 a piece. If I took all those plastic figures in WoW and put them in a plastic bag at a yard sale I'd be lucky to get a dime for them. It's all relative to context.

I was given WoW TBG as a gift. We played it once, I traded it away. It was really boring, no interaction and the final combat was cumbersome and lame.

But that describes WoW itself except you have the incremental reward system that gives players a fix and keeps them on the train. Very glad I quit that game.

The entire "there is no story, you just kill things and level up" is a legitimate gripe if you came to the game not expecting WoW.

Bullshit. It's a legitimate gripe on the grounds that it means the game isn't very engaging or fun. If the source material makes for shitty board gaming, then the designer needs to deviate from the source material. Some things don't translate well to the tabletop, and WoW's character development is one of them.

What drug store does Barnes shop at? You won't find me ripping Barnes often but his comment about the minis is one of two things 1. extreme hyperbole showing just how bad FFG has spoiled him OR 2. Barnes is totally ignorant about miniatures. Miniatures like these would run anywhere from 2-3$ a piece if you purchased them from a miniatures retailer/company and nothing in my drugstore is of this quality.

I'm perfectly happy to rip Barnes, but in this case, he's right. These new plastic minis publishers like FFG are using are a step up from those old gumball machine figures, but it's not a very big step. In any case, they've got absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay itself, which is really all that matters.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Yeah, that's right...I didn't much like that the whole game was "go here and kill this guy" over and over again for like five hours. It was very much a RUNEBOUND-kind of thing, and I hate RUNEBOUND. The shocking secret at the heart of games like RUNEBOUND and WORLD OF WARCRAFT is that they're every bit as mechanical and mathy as any Eurogame. You spend the whole game trying to maximize your character with benefits and bonuses. It doesn't matter that what you're trying to get more efficient at is killing Murlocs and not shipping oregano. If I'm looking at an array of cards and they may as well all be "+1", "+1 die", "Reroll", and there's very little narrative or concept attachted to them, then how thematic is the game _really_?

But isn't that what the RPG experience (at least on consoles and PCs and most certainly in MMOs) boils down to? Stat maximization? Trying to create those uber combos to kill doods and get phat l00tz?

ubarose wrote:

metalface13 wrote:

But isn't that what the RPG experience (at least on consoles and PCs and most certainly in MMOs) boils down to? Stat maximization? Trying to create those uber combos to kill doods and get phat l00tz?

I disagree. The best console and PC games have a story that is a mystery of sorts, that unveils slowly. They include elements of exploration and problem solving. Exploring areas advances the story and provides clues and items that allows you to solve problems, even if it as simple as finding am NPC that that gives you a hint to the location of the key to a door, that allows you to proceed through the game world and get closer to achieving your ultimate objective. That ultimate objective isn't just being strong enough to beat a big monster, although you may need to do that. It's usually to rescue the princess, or find the 7 crystal shards, or something like that.

I always saw leveling up your character, and maximizing your stats as a construct put in place by the game designer to control the order in which you explore the world. It really didn't matter otherwise, because the enemies you encountered as you advanced to the next game region were getting stronger at the same rate you were, so the probibility of success never really changed.

Really good DMs will do this in RPGs as well. You have to use the clues they give you in the story to figure out what's going on and exactly what you need to do, and where you need to go.

There really aren't any board games that adequetly capture these aspects. I think that is perhaps why I am ambivilant about Runebound, since it has a construct in place to control the order of encounters that could have been used to achieve this.

Yes, story is the key focus of the best video game RPGs. But still, the core gameplay part (forming parties, equipping characters, leveling up) is about maximizing stats and combos. And in games like Diablo and World of Warcraft it is the entirety of gameplay. There are no roles to play in WoW, just classes to fill and gear to equip.

So, the question is why are board game RPGs cloer to the DIABLO model than the CHRONO TRIGGER model?

I think the "click on monsters until they dispense XP/treaure" model is fine for a video game...it can be fun to do that for an hour or two. But it doesn't sustain my interest during a 4 hour board game unless there's something else there- the PU&D mechanics and route planning in RotH, the goofy randomness and surprise of TALISMAN, the extremely high level of detail and narrative in MAGIC REALM. If all the game turns out to be is flipping a card, rolling dice at it until it goes away, and getting another +1 item then it's not very interesting me.

Even though it's not a "great" game as a whole, WARLOCK OF FIRETOP MOUNTAIN shows that there can be other elements...it has that whole key finding/combination mystery to figure out over the course of the game. Even that little piece alone makes it more interesting than "kill green monsters until you get enough stuff to fight yellow ones, then do that until you can fight red ones".

mjl1783 wrote:

Some things don't translate well to the tabletop, and WoW's character development is one of them.

I don't see this at all. I can understand if you don't like it, but that doesn't mean it's inherently true.


ubarose wrote:

I disagree. The best console and PC games have a story that is a mystery of sorts, that unveils slowly. They include elements of exploration and problem solving.

But not the action RPGs like Diablo or WoW. Story is functionally irrelevant, and even if it isn't the first time, it sure is the 20th.

WoW the video game is not very exciting and you don't make many interesting decisions. Yes you can tweak/max-min your character, but the game is not much different from rewarding lab rats with a food pellet every time they push a button and then slowly decreasing the frequency that the reward is dispensed. There is no character development other than whatever loot your character is wearing and can show off to the other players. It's tough to make an interesting board game when you are modelling it after something like that.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

clockwirk wrote:

hancock.tom wrote:

I agree that every "mission" is just going to kill stuff... but since it is based on a diablo/WoW game where basically that is what you do I went in expecting that.

I can understand and appreciate that. You want to maintain the same kind of flavor. It has to be asked though, if it's the same as the video game, why don't you just play the video game? That's not rhetorical, by the way. I've never played WOW the MMORPG or board game. I would honestly like to know why someone would choose to play WOW:tbg over the MMO.

Because I want to play a boardgame.
It's a representation of the videogame, but it isn't the same thing. Its like saying "Why play spacehulk when you can play doom on the PC instead?"

As far as missions go - yes it is all killing. But what else do you want to do apart from that? They could do the whole "pick up and deliver things" quests I guess, but apart from that what other kinds of quests are there really?

Not much, although uba listed some good ones up the page that are possible. It would be really something if someone could work a puzzle/problem solving aspect into a RPG board game. Legend of Zelda: The Boardgame, maybe?

I still don't really understand why you would want to play the board game version of "kill things, level up" when a video game does the same thing but keeps track of stats, equipment, life, looks better, and happens in real time. The reason I would rather play Space Hulk over DOOM: the PC game is that Space Hulk involves some tactical desicions that are deeper than a real time FPS. If WOW:TBG is no deeper than WOW:MMORPG, I'd rather play the video game. At least you'd still have to have some physical dexterity/skill for the combat beyond chucking a bunch of dice.

Not much, although uba listed some good ones up the page that are possible. It would be really something if someone could work a puzzle/problem solving aspect into a RPG board game. Legend of Zelda: The Boardgame, maybe?

I can't remember the name of this game, but this guy was showing me once, it's an adventure game but it also comes with this really thick paperback full of puzzles and riddles. So whenever you have an encounter that is supposed to test your wisdom/intelligence you flip open the book according to some numbers and you had to figure it out, rather than just roll according to your stat.

I'd rather play the boardgame version because I can sit with my buds when I do it and the Scotch doesn't damage my ability to play all that much.

I'll confess to being a bit amused when people talk about a theme or narrative aspect to a boardgame, because all of them are hamstrung at best and non-existent at worst. If a game doesn't have a Dungeon Master (note I didn't say overlord -- there ain't no story in Descent either) to weave on the fly it just can't have mystery or emotion. Once you've explored all the cards, the theme is just another static attribute.

That is, the nature of any game committed to a defined inventory and ruleset has to have a clear, tight boundary.

Once that boundary is established, what remains is the implementation of the ruleset and how it's dressed up by the theme. In my opinion WoW:TBG does indeed have a set of euroistic rules and mechanics, but one of the good sets. There's ways to wiggle, there's a free-choice across a lot paths and opponents (map driven, random appearance driven, card-draw driven) . . . if I remember correctly you can't die and that's a pretty big drawback in my book, but all in all I felt like I had a pretty broad set of options when I played, even if the logical goal was to find which one would work best.

The theme is big and boisterous and full of moments when you get to mock your friends for not doing well. I enjoyed it. I'd like to play it again. It doesn't seem to be appearing in math trades for some reason, so it's likely I won't get a shot at it anytime soon.

Sag.

clockwirk wrote:

Not much, although uba listed some good ones up the page that are possible. It would be really something if someone could work a puzzle/problem solving aspect into a RPG board game. Legend of Zelda: The Boardgame, maybe?

The only Zelda I have played is the Wii one, so maybe that was different, but it pretty much seemed 90% combat to me. Occasionally there was a 'puzzle' to solve which involved hitting things in a certain order or something.
The story was 100% static. It was just like watching a movie.

So I'm not sure what these video games are people are talking about which have all of this amazing RPG like experiences are. Everyone I have played is basically combat and cutscenes.

I still don't really understand why you would want to play the board game version of "kill things, level up" when a video game does the same thing but keeps track of stats, equipment, life, looks better, and happens in real time.

Because that makes it boring to me. I like to keep track of my own stats and stuff. If I didn't I'd be a video gamer.

The reason I would rather play Space Hulk over DOOM: the PC game is that Space Hulk involves some tactical desicions that are deeper than a real time FPS. If WOW:TBG is no deeper than WOW:MMORPG, I'd rather play the video game. At least you'd still have to have some physical dexterity/skill for the combat beyond chucking a bunch of dice.

The board game has more tactical decisions. In the end if I had to choose one over the other the boardgame stays.

The rest of these arguments I could level at any boardgame. "Blah blah blah it's just like a Euro!" - this is becoming one of the most overused arguments ever. EVERY game can be boiled down into being an optimisation excercise, because that is what gaming is - making the most out of what you have. It happens in Risk, arkham horror, and tic tac toe. That's gaming for you.

As far as narrative goes - same deal. Yeah, its mostly combat, because thats what I want to do as a warrior or wizard - fight shit! I don't want to go mining for gold or making potions in a boardgame. Narative can be discarded in most games; is talisman "You are trapped in a maze, lose a turn" really all that thematic? The reality is the really thematic games that use paragraphs and shit also have little replayability. That's the cost.

Everytime someone writes one of those "what do you want in an adventure game?" threads on BGG I feel like writing "the impossible", because that is what people end up asking for. Is there another genre of boardgames where people have such rediculously high expectations?

If you want a RPG go play a real RPG, because a boardgame will never fill that niche.

I played Lineage II tonight, and it threw into sharp relief just how lousy the WoW board games are.

First of all, it does more or less the same thing WoW does in terms of combat and character buffing, only without the needlessly convoluted numbers game that the WoW combat is. You get three different classes of monster from which to choose, you have to pick the best combo of weapons for the situation, and when you kill things, money and items pop out. It's the same approximation of the Diablo-style RPG, just leaner and more immediate. In other words, it's more like the video games.

Secondly, you get to go to town and grab your special cards, haggle with other players for items, and even fight directly through the castle sieges, which add a nice layer of strategy to the game. The game moves towards something all the time. You kill monsters, get money, buy soldiers, and take castles.

There's no reason an MMO-based board game can't be good. Even the WoW CMG is pretty good, but when you try to map too much of the micro-managing of the video game to board game mechanics, then it really isn't that far removed from playing Power Grid.

Yeah, its mostly combat, because thats what I want to do as a warrior or wizard - fight shit! I don't want to go mining for gold or making potions in a boardgame. Narative can be discarded in most games; is talisman "You are trapped in a maze, lose a turn" really all that thematic?

If it's all going to be about fighting shit, then just make a fantasy wargame, or an arena combat game. Don't call it an adventure game if there's not going to be any actual adventure.

Being trapped in a maze may not be all that thematic, but at least in Talisman there are different things happening. One turn you're fighting a dragon, the next you're in a maze, then you may be hit with a tornado, or thrown into a dungeon. With the Runebound/WoW model, it's "you climb a cliff and fight a monster," followed by "you go into the woods and fight a monster," followed by "you enter a cave and fight a monster..." And so on and so forth. That's not adventure, that just grinding, and I've always considered level grinding to be a chore in video games.