this isn't fair, it's a very quality game with a ton of effort put into it. there are very few video game experiences as great as downing a difficult boss in WoW with your raid group, and thats a direct result of the high quality design of the game. that's saying nothing for just how huge and immersive the world is.

Some of those I could forgive, but I'm pretty sure absolutely everyone over 25 who's ever played a video game at knows at least NBA Jam and OutRun.

Was kind of surprised Maniac Mansion 2 beat out Secret of Monkey Island as the representative point-and-click (personally I prefer Full Throttle or Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, but I accept they might not be the best representative for the genre), but hey, if you only get one slot....

Also kind of sad that the only Ultima game represented is Ultima Online, but although the Ultima series blew the market open with what you could do in terms of story, depth, and non-linear play (For those under 25 - Final Fantasy is more "Diablo", Ultima is more "Elder Scrolls"), unfortunately, the games age really poorly in terms of graphics, controls, and gameplay.

There we go. Now I just have to work in a reference to text adventures and you should be able to guess my age down to the month.

Downing a difficult boss with a raid group is definitely an awesome experience, but once you've played the game for maybe ten hours or so, you've seen 98% of the content. All the quests are nearly identical variations of one another and most of the new skills your character gets as they level are just straight upgrades of skills you already have.

WoW is the pinnacle of what Blizzard does best: take a repetitive grindfest of a game and figure out the exact minimum amount of fun required to keep the majority addicted, sprinkle it in, and bam!, best seller.

Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but that's my opinion. The community aspect of raiding keeps people plugged in a lot longer than they otherwise would be. Other than that, most of the game isn't "doing fun stuff" it's "doing boring stuff over and over to get a fun reward."

When I played WoW and was on the cutting edge of figuring out boss encounters, etc. yes, that was fun. Then there were all the other nights of the week when we cleared boring raids for the 40th time practically on autopilot because hey, no one's having fun, but we need to do it anyway so we can get the gear to participate in the potentially fun stuff later down the road.

Sorry, but any game that takes 39 of your friends to help you do something boring for hours so you can get two or three items that *maybe* someone can use, then asks you to repeat that boring activity for weeks, so you can have a bit of fun trying a new encounter before repeating the entire process again, that game has some pretty serious design flaws imo.

...and that's just the raiding. Stuff like faction and rep quests are just a straight up middle finger to players.

Players: "So, is WoW more repetitive than Space Invaders?"
Blizzard: "Not yet, but we'll get there, don't worry."

Edit: Note in an above post I did say I'm fine with WoW being on this list. The sheer number of players and total hours spent in game just make it impossible to leave off. But just because a game supplies people with community and does a great job of balancing grind/fun ratio doesn't automatically make it "high quality" imo.

You clearly haven't played WoW in a long time, because so much of what you said in that post doesn't apply anymore.

I don't want to get roped in to a discussion on this though so I'll hopefully stay out of this thread now

Can't believe I (and they) forgot this game. At least personally, it's top 3 OAT for me and just about the only game > 10 years old that I still play regularly.

Imo missing from the list that haven't been mentioned I think:
-Fire Emblem rep
-Perfect Dark
-Resident Evil 1 (just put it instead of 4)
-Suikoden rep
-Earthbound
-The Simpsons arcade game
-Xenogears rep maybe
-Okami maybe
-Star Ocean rep
-Tales Of rep
Timesplitters rep

you're just wrong

there's a number of different ways to play each class, many requiring some higher level skills to be played properly. every class i played would switch to a different play style as i leveled up.

quests are tied into the lore of the area they're in very well. they're reasonably diverse -- the idea that they're all kill x monster or collect x item is really silly and i could prob give literally 100 different examples of at least somewhat interesting and immersive quests in the game. i feel like wow gets this rep because at times you'll just get inundated with quests at times so it's easy to see the kill x or collect x quests and wish they weren't there cluttering your quest journal.

as for raids, i haven't raided since TBC (which i hear is among the best time to raid in the game) but from my experience there was never a time when my raid group wasn't pushing content. yes we would kill certain bosses a number of times but never was there a time when it was just boring autopilot (gruul was prob the best example of a boss needing to be killed more often than it should because of the rogue trinket he dropped, but even then i still had fun with the fight), a single split second loss of concentration could cause a wipe. mt hyjal was unbelievably epic and downing archimonde was amazing (more so than illidan imo). on top of that, i've never had more fun in any video game than fighting lady vashj, not even close.

entirely agreed on rep quests, i tried to start playing again but rep quests made me stop. they're ridiculous and i hate them with a passion. the only thing i'll say about them is that by the time you get to the point that they're important, you've already put what...100+ hours into the game? tell me a game that doesn't start getting unbearably repetitive at 100+ hours

avalanche of diverse content and areas, extremely fun and interesting boss battles, many novels worth of lore woven into the game seamlessly, living breathing changing world, the very definition of epic in a video game. yes it's grindy at times (although, imo, this doesn't become really annoying until you hit max level) and can be game-breakingly so for many people when it comes to rep quests. but come on, saying this game isn't high quality is just nonsense. save that for the zynga games or ****ty little iphone games.

agreed with earthbound, although i got the feeling chrono trigger kinda reps that era of rpgs. also agreed with simpsons arcade game, such a stupid amount of fun.

rest i dunno, suikoden 2 was an amazing game but never got as popular as it really deserved and xenogears would have been amazing too if it didn't turn into a slideshow at disc 2.

Well, it's just my opinion. I guess from when I played (and as someone pointed out above, it was quite awhile ago) I spent most of my time at the max level and raiding, which is where the repetition gets really bad. It's like there's interesting content as you level, then suddenly a massive grind, then a limited amount of more exciting content after that.

There *is* quality in WoW, for sure. The grind to quality/fun ratio is just way off imo. I'd rather play a game that's fun for 10 hours and then I've run out of content, than a game that's fun for 12 hours but I have to play for 100 to experience it all.

it's really a matter of personal bias. like i said i tried to get back into the game but the firelands rep quests made me want to gouge my eyes out. I understand what you mean about the grind/fun ratio; there's 3 very identifiable sections of the game imo, pre max lvl, hitting max lvl and gearing up for end game stuff, doing end game stuff. that second section is painful and lasts far longer than it should.

focusing on that and ignoring how diverse and immersive pre max lvl is or how epic/fun end game content is just isn't at all fair.

yeah god forbid other people like a game that you dont. Better yet just because someone else likes something you dont lets call them retarded!

Daer confirmed mad

It's not that great a game maybe?

November of '77

Confirmed liked MGS's story.

MSG had a good story.

WoW is not a good game (it's obv popular)

Advance upon me Brethren!

Jopke list as usual...any point in pointing out why even? GoW3 is clearly not the best game in the series and probably shouldn't be on the list at all, OoT is a top3 game and original LoZ shouldn't be there (or that high)

Doom II, um, why the sequel?

Bioshock a triple joke. For being in #3 and that it was in any way better than similar games Deus Ex or SS2.

Rock Band 3? This was released when the genre was already beaten to death

Shadow of the Colossus #9, ok ok very funny.
Portal was a couple of hours of a fun experimental "game" so why not rank it HIGHER than HL, HL2 the episodes and everything else that's not even there

Ms Pacman and no Pacman just proves that this has to be what NVGers call a level

Then again that's the reaction they want isn't it. Sigh