On July 27 2012 01:31 plogamer wrote: Pandas?.............
This absolutely kills the mood/theme of WoW. This is a game about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves etc. ie. resembling DnD.
I am not sure how Pandas will add to it.
Pandaeran in WC3 was a very very minor side joke/lore which culminated in one playable hero.
I would rather have seen dragonkins (like a remnant survivor of the blue dragonflight or what not) as a playable race than freaking pandas.
It's warcraft, man. Not cuddlecraft.
Think about WC3:RoC and WC3:TFT. Thing about them Nagas. What the hell, why would you play against mermaids? What the fuck this game is about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves, not mermaids. How will they add to the story of this game? There is only one playable Naga hero on multiplayer! This is ridiculous. Oh they were asleep 10000 years ago -- that's fucking lame. Right?
Look at what Nagas are nowadays. Pandas are the new Nagas. Get over it.
For all my WoW vets out there. I think we can all agree with this video. I hope Blizzard proves me wrong though
In case you haven't realized, WoW is as hard as ever. Both T11 and T12 were probably amongst the hardest tiers of raids ever made, although T13 is probably easier.
The video says that it took 4 months before Kael'thas was defeated. But TBC launched with 2 raid tiers, not 1.
In fact, if we compare this to Ulduar, released in WotLK (people who were never involved in progression raiding claim that this is when WoW started to be dumbed down for the masses), Yogg-0 wasn't cleared until 3 months after patch 3.1. That's 3 whole months on a single tier before the world first kill.
The claims that raiders are no longer special, that they aren't rewarded far above and beyond lesser players, and that progression raiding in WoW is now easy, are simply false. The people who do these heroic raids have the best gear, they get special mounts for the meta-achievements, and are highly regarded in the community.
Killing something on hard mode when you've already done it on normal mode and drooling retard mode is nothing at all like the same enjoyment or satisfaction as killing a boss when he is the only form of that boss.
The hardest hard mode of ICC and Cata are hard sure but they're not epic and fun to do because they're just something you've already done with the numbers turned up.
Now I know you've never done any heroic boss in your life.
A lot of heroic bosses require very different strategies.
The idea of hard modes is not new. In fact it's ubiquitous amongst pretty much all games. Unless there is an easy mode, players who can't get into a good guild, players who don't have a lot of time to play, and bads, won't be able to see the content. And with hard modes, highly skilled raiding guilds can still be challenged.
This is a win/win situation. The bads have easy content, and good players have hard content.
There's nothing wrong with casuals or bads or average-skilled guilds being able to see content, given that they already can't do the heroic modes, can't get the best gear, don't have the achievements or special mounts, and that it is generally very easy to measure and see epeen in WoW.
I've done pretty much everything in this game worth doing and most of my WOTLK stuff was done at an extremely high level.
I haven't even once brought up the word casual or anything to do with casual players so feel free to shut up about that and never bring it up again.
It has nothing at all to do with 'epeen', which I can assume is something you bring up because you feel your imaginary online penis is insufficient, which doesn't say much for your self confidence.
It has 100% everything to do with a game being rewarding and deserving of my time.
If Sc2 and DOTA had no PvP mode I wouldn't play it. Why? No it's not because I want to demonstrate that my imaginary online penis is bigger than random Protoss player A or random Russian pub team B. It's because I play games to either be challenged mentally and/or (and the best games combine both) to be immersed in a fictional world. WoW used to be the most awesome mix of both those things where the lore and fantasy was amazing and so was the challenge. Normal modes/LFR instantly kill both because they reduce what was once a epic boss and powerful character to a pathetic pushover meaning that this guy you've waiting two years to kill who commands the entire world you've spent an expansion fighting against can be killed on your first/second/third pull.
Now, what you're about to say is "oh but he's not a pushover on heroic". Which is where I realise that A) You never played pre WOTLK and B) You have no clue at all what makes PvE in WoW so amazing and rewarding.
When you kill a boss in WoW you're not just beating a series of computer scripts by running your own series of computer scripts with 9-39 other people. You're beating a character you've been building up to fighting and defeating over a series of days, weeks, months and in some cases even years. The reward isn't just hey ho another random mob (on 10 player normal mode with achievements X, Y and Z) down it's that you finally beat Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver this epic character from the Blizzard Warcraft story for good after so long of trying.
When you kill Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver on your first pull first week, your 10th pull third week, your 300th pull a few weeks/months later having already killed him a few times on the team realm anyway then that sure as fuck is not the same feeling.
Perhaps if you played this amazing game from Ulduar and before you would have the feintest clue what everyone in this thread and everyone in the community is talking about when they say this game isn't a fraction as good as it used to be and no, hard modes sure as fuck do not compensate.
I've played WoW for 7 years -- since the beginning of the game. I quit around March this year. I don't see how you can conclude that I didn't play pre-TBC based on the fact that I think it's OK for bosses to be easy on normal because they are hard on heroic. Somehow this implies I didn't play pre-TBC. That is a non-sequitur. I don't see how it follows.
Maybe if I had claimed that naked rogues could NOT kill a GM geared player in a stunlock back in Vanilla, then you could rightly say that I never played pre-TBC. But I never said anything of the sort.
You say it's about being rewarded, yet you also say it's not about epeen. Epeen is how the achievement of killing a hard boss is shared with the rest of the server and community. You hear about players saying how they looked up to players in full T1, T2, T3 sets, back in Vanilla. The guy who made the video that was posted earlier even mentions looking up to better geared players. That's epeen. And clearly he and those who say the same thing, agree that epeen matters. I will say that epeen matters.
I'm not going to argue that you don't feel a greater sense of achievement if it's the first time you killed a boss after hundreds of wipes, more so than under the current normal and heroic mode system. Though it is probably slightly lessened, the sense of accomplishment isn't anywhere near gone.Everyone on Vent felt it the first time we downed Ragnaros in Molten Core, just as how we all felt it when we finally killed Heroic Lich King after hundreds and hundreds of attempts. Players with average or less than average skill deserve to see content too.
When you watch videos of world first kills of raid bosses in WotLK and Cata, they still cheer and celebrate over Vent, just as vigorously as in Vanilla and TBC. Beating hard raid content is a great feeling, and people still feel a great sense of accomplishment when they finally succeed.
On July 27 2012 01:31 plogamer wrote: Pandas?.............
This absolutely kills the mood/theme of WoW. This is a game about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves etc. ie. resembling DnD.
I am not sure how Pandas will add to it.
Pandaeran in WC3 was a very very minor side joke/lore which culminated in one playable hero.
I would rather have seen dragonkins (like a remnant survivor of the blue dragonflight or what not) as a playable race than freaking pandas.
It's warcraft, man. Not cuddlecraft.
Think about WC3:RoC and WC3:TFT. Thing about them Nagas. What the hell, why would you play against mermaids? What the fuck this game is about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves, not mermaids. How will they add to the story of this game? There is only one playable Naga hero on multiplayer! This is ridiculous. Oh they were asleep 10000 years ago -- that's fucking lame. Right?
Look at what Nagas are nowadays. Pandas are the new Nagas. Get over it.
Really, are you equating Nagas to Pandas? Did you play TFT campaign at all? Naga lore was developed extensively in the campaign.
For all my WoW vets out there. I think we can all agree with this video. I hope Blizzard proves me wrong though
In case you haven't realized, WoW is as hard as ever. Both T11 and T12 were probably amongst the hardest tiers of raids ever made, although T13 is probably easier.
The video says that it took 4 months before Kael'thas was defeated. But TBC launched with 2 raid tiers, not 1.
In fact, if we compare this to Ulduar, released in WotLK (people who were never involved in progression raiding claim that this is when WoW started to be dumbed down for the masses), Yogg-0 wasn't cleared until 3 months after patch 3.1. That's 3 whole months on a single tier before the world first kill.
The claims that raiders are no longer special, that they aren't rewarded far above and beyond lesser players, and that progression raiding in WoW is now easy, are simply false. The people who do these heroic raids have the best gear, they get special mounts for the meta-achievements, and are highly regarded in the community.
Killing something on hard mode when you've already done it on normal mode and drooling retard mode is nothing at all like the same enjoyment or satisfaction as killing a boss when he is the only form of that boss.
The hardest hard mode of ICC and Cata are hard sure but they're not epic and fun to do because they're just something you've already done with the numbers turned up.
Now I know you've never done any heroic boss in your life.
A lot of heroic bosses require very different strategies.
The idea of hard modes is not new. In fact it's ubiquitous amongst pretty much all games. Unless there is an easy mode, players who can't get into a good guild, players who don't have a lot of time to play, and bads, won't be able to see the content. And with hard modes, highly skilled raiding guilds can still be challenged.
This is a win/win situation. The bads have easy content, and good players have hard content.
There's nothing wrong with casuals or bads or average-skilled guilds being able to see content, given that they already can't do the heroic modes, can't get the best gear, don't have the achievements or special mounts, and that it is generally very easy to measure and see epeen in WoW.
I've done pretty much everything in this game worth doing and most of my WOTLK stuff was done at an extremely high level.
I haven't even once brought up the word casual or anything to do with casual players so feel free to shut up about that and never bring it up again.
It has nothing at all to do with 'epeen', which I can assume is something you bring up because you feel your imaginary online penis is insufficient, which doesn't say much for your self confidence.
It has 100% everything to do with a game being rewarding and deserving of my time.
If Sc2 and DOTA had no PvP mode I wouldn't play it. Why? No it's not because I want to demonstrate that my imaginary online penis is bigger than random Protoss player A or random Russian pub team B. It's because I play games to either be challenged mentally and/or (and the best games combine both) to be immersed in a fictional world. WoW used to be the most awesome mix of both those things where the lore and fantasy was amazing and so was the challenge. Normal modes/LFR instantly kill both because they reduce what was once a epic boss and powerful character to a pathetic pushover meaning that this guy you've waiting two years to kill who commands the entire world you've spent an expansion fighting against can be killed on your first/second/third pull.
Now, what you're about to say is "oh but he's not a pushover on heroic". Which is where I realise that A) You never played pre WOTLK and B) You have no clue at all what makes PvE in WoW so amazing and rewarding.
When you kill a boss in WoW you're not just beating a series of computer scripts by running your own series of computer scripts with 9-39 other people. You're beating a character you've been building up to fighting and defeating over a series of days, weeks, months and in some cases even years. The reward isn't just hey ho another random mob (on 10 player normal mode with achievements X, Y and Z) down it's that you finally beat Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver this epic character from the Blizzard Warcraft story for good after so long of trying.
When you kill Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver on your first pull first week, your 10th pull third week, your 300th pull a few weeks/months later having already killed him a few times on the team realm anyway then that sure as fuck is not the same feeling.
Perhaps if you played this amazing game from Ulduar and before you would have the feintest clue what everyone in this thread and everyone in the community is talking about when they say this game isn't a fraction as good as it used to be and no, hard modes sure as fuck do not compensate.
I've played WoW for 7 years, since the beginning of the game, I quit around March this gear. I don't see how you can conclude that I didn't play pre-TBC based on the fact that I think it's OK for bosses to be easy on normal because they are hard on heroic. Somehow this implies I didn't play pre-TBC. That is a non-sequitar. I don't see how it follows.
Maybe if I had claimed that naked rogues could NOT kill a GM geared player in a stunlock back in Vanilla, then you could rightly say that I never played pre-TBC. But I never said anything of the sort.
You say it's about being rewarded, yet you also say it's not about epeen. Epeen is how the reward of killing a hard boss is shared with the rest of the server. You hear about players saying how they looked up to players in full T1, T2, T3 in back in Vanillia. The guy who made the video posted earlier even mentions it. That's epeen. And clearly he's, and those who say the same thing, agree that epeen matters. I will say that epeen matters.
I'm not going to argue that you don't feel a greater sense of achievement if it's the first time you killed a boss after hundreds of wipes, more so than under the current normal and heroic mode system. Though it is probably slightly lessened, the sense of accomplishment isn't anywhere near gone. Everyone on Vent felt it the first time we downed Ragnaros in Molten Core, just as how we all felt it when we finally killed Heroic Lich King after hundred and hundreds of attempts.
When you watch videos of world first kills of raid bosses in WotLK and Cata, they still cheer and celebrate over Vent, just as ceremoniously as in Vanilla and TBC. Beating hard raid content is a great feeling, and people still feel a great sense of accomplished when they finally succeed.
There are some fights that were so amazing and well designed that it didn't matter that you'd already killed them once. In fact during WOTLK they largely dodged the shitness of doing bosses multiple times I described above due to the sheer weight of amazing encounters like Firefighter, Yogg Saron, Freya+3, Sarth+3, Lich King Heroic, Putricide Heroic, Anub Heroic and Algalon (although obviously he was HM only).
Encounter design in Cataclysm was awful. Ragnaros was the only fight all expansion as good as any I just listed and there was a massive, massive number of mediocre and awful bosses. Dragon Soul didn't have a single boss I'd consider above average.
These terrible encounters definitely highlighted the problems of having to do a boss 2/3 times.
I would be happy with a comprimise where all bosses come in one mode they just nerf it as over time. This would make both camps enjoy the game far more in the long run.
You're also completely ignoring the fact that casuals actually far, far preferred TBC and Vanilla. Most of my friends were total scrubs in Vanilla and TBC the kills they did get meant far more to them and lived much longer in the memory than their freebie heroic kills in Cataclysm.
For all my WoW vets out there. I think we can all agree with this video. I hope Blizzard proves me wrong though
In case you haven't realized, WoW is as hard as ever. Both T11 and T12 were probably amongst the hardest tiers of raids ever made, although T13 is probably easier.
The video says that it took 4 months before Kael'thas was defeated. But TBC launched with 2 raid tiers, not 1.
In fact, if we compare this to Ulduar, released in WotLK (people who were never involved in progression raiding claim that this is when WoW started to be dumbed down for the masses), Yogg-0 wasn't cleared until 3 months after patch 3.1. That's 3 whole months on a single tier before the world first kill.
The claims that raiders are no longer special, that they aren't rewarded far above and beyond lesser players, and that progression raiding in WoW is now easy, are simply false. The people who do these heroic raids have the best gear, they get special mounts for the meta-achievements, and are highly regarded in the community.
Killing something on hard mode when you've already done it on normal mode and drooling retard mode is nothing at all like the same enjoyment or satisfaction as killing a boss when he is the only form of that boss.
The hardest hard mode of ICC and Cata are hard sure but they're not epic and fun to do because they're just something you've already done with the numbers turned up.
Now I know you've never done any heroic boss in your life.
A lot of heroic bosses require very different strategies.
The idea of hard modes is not new. In fact it's ubiquitous amongst pretty much all games. Unless there is an easy mode, players who can't get into a good guild, players who don't have a lot of time to play, and bads, won't be able to see the content. And with hard modes, highly skilled raiding guilds can still be challenged.
This is a win/win situation. The bads have easy content, and good players have hard content.
There's nothing wrong with casuals or bads or average-skilled guilds being able to see content, given that they already can't do the heroic modes, can't get the best gear, don't have the achievements or special mounts, and that it is generally very easy to measure and see epeen in WoW.
I've done pretty much everything in this game worth doing and most of my WOTLK stuff was done at an extremely high level.
I haven't even once brought up the word casual or anything to do with casual players so feel free to shut up about that and never bring it up again.
It has nothing at all to do with 'epeen', which I can assume is something you bring up because you feel your imaginary online penis is insufficient, which doesn't say much for your self confidence.
It has 100% everything to do with a game being rewarding and deserving of my time.
If Sc2 and DOTA had no PvP mode I wouldn't play it. Why? No it's not because I want to demonstrate that my imaginary online penis is bigger than random Protoss player A or random Russian pub team B. It's because I play games to either be challenged mentally and/or (and the best games combine both) to be immersed in a fictional world. WoW used to be the most awesome mix of both those things where the lore and fantasy was amazing and so was the challenge. Normal modes/LFR instantly kill both because they reduce what was once a epic boss and powerful character to a pathetic pushover meaning that this guy you've waiting two years to kill who commands the entire world you've spent an expansion fighting against can be killed on your first/second/third pull.
Now, what you're about to say is "oh but he's not a pushover on heroic". Which is where I realise that A) You never played pre WOTLK and B) You have no clue at all what makes PvE in WoW so amazing and rewarding.
When you kill a boss in WoW you're not just beating a series of computer scripts by running your own series of computer scripts with 9-39 other people. You're beating a character you've been building up to fighting and defeating over a series of days, weeks, months and in some cases even years. The reward isn't just hey ho another random mob (on 10 player normal mode with achievements X, Y and Z) down it's that you finally beat Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver this epic character from the Blizzard Warcraft story for good after so long of trying.
When you kill Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver on your first pull first week, your 10th pull third week, your 300th pull a few weeks/months later having already killed him a few times on the team realm anyway then that sure as fuck is not the same feeling.
Perhaps if you played this amazing game from Ulduar and before you would have the feintest clue what everyone in this thread and everyone in the community is talking about when they say this game isn't a fraction as good as it used to be and no, hard modes sure as fuck do not compensate.
I've played WoW for 7 years, since the beginning of the game, I quit around March this gear. I don't see how you can conclude that I didn't play pre-TBC based on the fact that I think it's OK for bosses to be easy on normal because they are hard on heroic. Somehow this implies I didn't play pre-TBC. That is a non-sequitar. I don't see how it follows.
Maybe if I had claimed that naked rogues could NOT kill a GM geared player in a stunlock back in Vanilla, then you could rightly say that I never played pre-TBC. But I never said anything of the sort.
You say it's about being rewarded, yet you also say it's not about epeen. Epeen is how the reward of killing a hard boss is shared with the rest of the server. You hear about players saying how they looked up to players in full T1, T2, T3 in back in Vanillia. The guy who made the video posted earlier even mentions it. That's epeen. And clearly he's, and those who say the same thing, agree that epeen matters. I will say that epeen matters.
I'm not going to argue that you don't feel a greater sense of achievement if it's the first time you killed a boss after hundreds of wipes, more so than under the current normal and heroic mode system. Though it is probably slightly lessened, the sense of accomplishment isn't anywhere near gone. Everyone on Vent felt it the first time we downed Ragnaros in Molten Core, just as how we all felt it when we finally killed Heroic Lich King after hundred and hundreds of attempts.
When you watch videos of world first kills of raid bosses in WotLK and Cata, they still cheer and celebrate over Vent, just as ceremoniously as in Vanilla and TBC. Beating hard raid content is a great feeling, and people still feel a great sense of accomplished when they finally succeed.
There are some fights that were so amazing and well designed that it didn't matter that you'd already killed them once. In fact during WOTLK they largely dodged the shitness of doing bosses multiple times I described above due to the sheer weight of amazing encounters like Firefighter, Yogg Saron, Freya+3, Sarth+3, Lich King Heroic, Putricide Heroic, Anub Heroic and Algalon (although obviously he was HM only).
Encounter design in Cataclysm was awful. Ragnaros was the only fight all expansion as good as any I just listed and there was a massive, massive number of mediocre and awful bosses. Dragon Soul didn't have a single boss I'd consider above average.
These terrible encounters definitely highlighted the problems of having to do a boss 2/3 times.
I would be happy with a comprimise where all bosses come in one mode they just nerf it as over time. This would make both camps enjoy the game far more in the long run.
You're also completely ignoring the fact that casuals actually far, far preferred TBC and Vanilla. Most of my friends were total scrubs in Vanilla and TBC the kills they did get meant far more to them and lived much longer in the memory than their freebie heroic kills in Cataclysm.
My favorite Cata boss fights were Atramedes, Nefarion, Al'akir, and Ragnaros. But no, Cata boss fights were not as fun as WotLK boss fights.
Although WotLK had Sindragosa. WORSE BOSS EVER.
Having to do a boss 2 or 3 times doesn't happen in Cata. You kill a boss once a week, and that's it. This isn't WotLK where you had to kill each boss 2 times a week, or 4 times for ToC. Guilds were obligated to do this at the start of every raid tier to stay competitive, until they had enough 25M gear so that they didn't need 10M gear anymore.
The fact that you say casuals enjoyed Vanilla and TBC more is either selective memory, or tinted glasses, or having no idea what actually happened during Vanilla and TBC and the player sentiment back then.
During Vanilla, the overwhelming complaint was "raid or die", even more so than the awful class balance, there was literally nothing to do in endgame if you were not in a 40 man raid guild.
Then in TBC, the raids and heroic dungeons were simply too hard for most players. As a result, people got most of their gear from Arenas. The term "welfare epics" originated from people doing arenas to get easy epics because raiding was way too hard for them. And people hated arenas, and they still do. They think WoW was destroyed because Blizzard tried to turn arenas into a eSports (get over it, arenas are great and the only form of skilled and serious PvP). Many guilds were also still farming Kara and Gruul by 2.4 because it was too hard to progress.
On July 27 2012 01:31 plogamer wrote: Pandas?.............
This absolutely kills the mood/theme of WoW. This is a game about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves etc. ie. resembling DnD.
I am not sure how Pandas will add to it.
Pandaeran in WC3 was a very very minor side joke/lore which culminated in one playable hero.
I would rather have seen dragonkins (like a remnant survivor of the blue dragonflight or what not) as a playable race than freaking pandas.
It's warcraft, man. Not cuddlecraft.
Think about WC3:RoC and WC3:TFT. Thing about them Nagas. What the hell, why would you play against mermaids? What the fuck this game is about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves, not mermaids. How will they add to the story of this game? There is only one playable Naga hero on multiplayer! This is ridiculous. Oh they were asleep 10000 years ago -- that's fucking lame. Right?
Look at what Nagas are nowadays. Pandas are the new Nagas. Get over it.
Really, are you equating Nagas to Pandas? Did you play TFT campaign at all? Naga lore was developed extensively in the campaign.
Snakes, not fish. And not Pandas. Get it?
Did you play RoC at all? There never was a single mention of fish-snake-whatever. Nagas were bullshit that appeared out of fucking nowhere on TFT.
Yet, here they are. Fully developed. With an amazing story.
To be honest, if they instead decided to create a race of birds as playable instead of pandas, would that feel better? There are harpies in the warcraft universe after all. Maybe a race of wolv-- oh wait, Worgens. Where the fuck did they come from? Not from WC3 as far as I remember.
There was a playable panda hero on WC3:TFT. There was a panda that actually got involved with Rexxar in Kalimdor.
My point is: pandas being part of the lore makes as much sense as anything else, really. All you need is a chance to develop the story. Going "OMG PANDAS WTF" before the story has even been released and developed is ridiculous.
I wouldn't be surprised if the events from the Well of Eternity and Nagas were somehow connected to the fact that Pandaria was hidden for so long from the world.
My guild killed Staghelm on Heroic when it was relevant content and the only thing we did differently was have 2 DPS and a healer stand outside of the group to keep up the Concentration buff while everyone else stacked for a cooldown rotation. Aside from that, the fight was identical, only on Heroic it was more beneficial to avoid damage. I recognize this is not the only viable strategy, but it's what we used.
For Hagara, you actually need to do the ice and lightning phase properly. You cannot run around the room in a circle to do the lightning anymore because you will die from the damage in heroic. You need to assign players to form an X shape formation beforehand. In the ice phase you have to run around multiple times, stand in the right place when you get dispelled or else you will put an ice patch on the ground that slows everyone and wipes the raid. There are also no ice tombs in normal.
Actually, there are ice tombs in normal. I'd argue that there is increased coordination required, but nothing that drastically changes the feel of the fight compared to something like Baleroc or Nefarian. It's clear we're just arguing subjectively here, though.
Heroic modes are not a substitute for new content.
Actually, a few recent threads on the EU forums have had community managers argue that in some respects, Heroic modes can be used as a substitute for new content. The argument is of course more nuanced than that, but the notion that a CM would suggest that anyone who hasn't killed Heroic Madness still has content to tackle is troubling.
Cata had one less raid tier, but the time between Cata and MoP is less than the time between any 2 expansions.
The time between TBC and WotLK was ~22 months (January 2007-November 2008). The time between Cataclysm and Mists will be about 21.5 months (December 2010-late September 2012), so while you're correct it certainly isn't a significant-enough difference to cover the lack of an entire raid tier. I know we're once again arguing semantics, but there's a clear indication that there has simply been less raid content in Cataclysm than in previous expansions, though this has already been acknowledged by the devs. Admittedly, much of the raid content was of higher quality, but I don't think I'm alone in claiming that it wasn't enough to compensate for the overall absence of it.
The notion they were spreading the spectrum of skill in TBC better than under the normal/heroic raid model doesn't make sense. In both cases, you get up to a point where you don't have enough gear/skill to progress, and then you bang your head on the wall until you eventually beat the boss or your guild falls apart.
With such a model however, the ideal raid progression paradigm would mean that straight-up brickwalling would be much less likely to occur because encounters get gradually more difficult over an extended spectrum of bosses rather than across 8 normal modes and 8 heroic modes. The scenario you described is much more likely to occur in the current model because difficulty from boss to boss has to increase so sharply to accommodate all raiders into a single instance/tier.
Another major problem with the TBC model is guild poaching. You had to gear players up over multiple weeks, through old and new raids, and then there's a large chance that they will be poached by a better progressed guild, wasting all that effort. Under the current model, there is no incentive to poach based on gear.
This is an argument that many players seem to throw around but I just didn't see it happening enough on my server (Mal'Ganis-US at the time, one of the most heavily populated and best progressed Horde servers in TBC) to make a big deal out of it. There were very few pre-Sunwell encounters that required a minimum level of gear from each member that could not also be compensated by other players. I can only think of High Warlord Naj'entus and Gurtogg Bloodboil in Black Temple that required a certain HP threshold for classes (read: mages) to survive encounter mechanics, but some would consider that a design oversight. If you brought two or three Karazhan/ZA-geared DPS to Teron Gorefiend instead of your usual T5/T6-geared players, the worst that would happen is that you might extend the fight by 20 seconds. The discrepancy in gear for the majority of pre-Sunwell encounters is something that could certainly be compensated for as long as players understood the mechanics of the fight.
All that to say that if guild poaching did occur in sufficient numbers to have made it a problem, most encounters lent themselves fairly easily to replacements if they knew the fight mechanics and could pull respectable numbers in their own roles. The poaching problem could easily be averted if guild perks required a certain reputation to be unlocked and were useful enough to warrant loyalty while not affecting any competitive aspect of the game.
Guilds also fell apart more often, not only because of poaching, but because the best geared or most skilled raiders in the guild (often including the main tank) wants to see content and not be held back by everyone else. Under this current system, there is no incentive to leave your guild just to see content, because everyone can see all the content. Guilds don't fall apart due to players leaving for better guilds as often as it use to.
This argument implies that there is a noticeable skill differential between particular segments of raiders in a guild, and this happens just as much now as it did in TBC. I don't think many players would put up with being held back on encounters that they perceive as easy but are challenging to others in the guild. Rather than change guilds to see a new instance, they'll simply change guilds to see a new encounter instead, and it's only normal for players to seek guilds that are of their own skill level, is it not?
For all my WoW vets out there. I think we can all agree with this video. I hope Blizzard proves me wrong though
In case you haven't realized, WoW is as hard as ever. Both T11 and T12 were probably amongst the hardest tiers of raids ever made, although T13 is probably easier.
The video says that it took 4 months before Kael'thas was defeated. But TBC launched with 2 raid tiers, not 1.
In fact, if we compare this to Ulduar, released in WotLK (people who were never involved in progression raiding claim that this is when WoW started to be dumbed down for the masses), Yogg-0 wasn't cleared until 3 months after patch 3.1. That's 3 whole months on a single tier before the world first kill.
The claims that raiders are no longer special, that they aren't rewarded far above and beyond lesser players, and that progression raiding in WoW is now easy, are simply false. The people who do these heroic raids have the best gear, they get special mounts for the meta-achievements, and are highly regarded in the community.
Killing something on hard mode when you've already done it on normal mode and drooling retard mode is nothing at all like the same enjoyment or satisfaction as killing a boss when he is the only form of that boss.
The hardest hard mode of ICC and Cata are hard sure but they're not epic and fun to do because they're just something you've already done with the numbers turned up.
Now I know you've never done any heroic boss in your life.
A lot of heroic bosses require very different strategies.
The idea of hard modes is not new. In fact it's ubiquitous amongst pretty much all games. Unless there is an easy mode, players who can't get into a good guild, players who don't have a lot of time to play, and bads, won't be able to see the content. And with hard modes, highly skilled raiding guilds can still be challenged.
This is a win/win situation. The bads have easy content, and good players have hard content.
There's nothing wrong with casuals or bads or average-skilled guilds being able to see content, given that they already can't do the heroic modes, can't get the best gear, don't have the achievements or special mounts, and that it is generally very easy to measure and see epeen in WoW.
I've done pretty much everything in this game worth doing and most of my WOTLK stuff was done at an extremely high level.
I haven't even once brought up the word casual or anything to do with casual players so feel free to shut up about that and never bring it up again.
It has nothing at all to do with 'epeen', which I can assume is something you bring up because you feel your imaginary online penis is insufficient, which doesn't say much for your self confidence.
It has 100% everything to do with a game being rewarding and deserving of my time.
If Sc2 and DOTA had no PvP mode I wouldn't play it. Why? No it's not because I want to demonstrate that my imaginary online penis is bigger than random Protoss player A or random Russian pub team B. It's because I play games to either be challenged mentally and/or (and the best games combine both) to be immersed in a fictional world. WoW used to be the most awesome mix of both those things where the lore and fantasy was amazing and so was the challenge. Normal modes/LFR instantly kill both because they reduce what was once a epic boss and powerful character to a pathetic pushover meaning that this guy you've waiting two years to kill who commands the entire world you've spent an expansion fighting against can be killed on your first/second/third pull.
Now, what you're about to say is "oh but he's not a pushover on heroic". Which is where I realise that A) You never played pre WOTLK and B) You have no clue at all what makes PvE in WoW so amazing and rewarding.
When you kill a boss in WoW you're not just beating a series of computer scripts by running your own series of computer scripts with 9-39 other people. You're beating a character you've been building up to fighting and defeating over a series of days, weeks, months and in some cases even years. The reward isn't just hey ho another random mob (on 10 player normal mode with achievements X, Y and Z) down it's that you finally beat Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver this epic character from the Blizzard Warcraft story for good after so long of trying.
When you kill Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver on your first pull first week, your 10th pull third week, your 300th pull a few weeks/months later having already killed him a few times on the team realm anyway then that sure as fuck is not the same feeling.
Perhaps if you played this amazing game from Ulduar and before you would have the feintest clue what everyone in this thread and everyone in the community is talking about when they say this game isn't a fraction as good as it used to be and no, hard modes sure as fuck do not compensate.
I've played WoW for 7 years, since the beginning of the game, I quit around March this gear. I don't see how you can conclude that I didn't play pre-TBC based on the fact that I think it's OK for bosses to be easy on normal because they are hard on heroic. Somehow this implies I didn't play pre-TBC. That is a non-sequitar. I don't see how it follows.
Maybe if I had claimed that naked rogues could NOT kill a GM geared player in a stunlock back in Vanilla, then you could rightly say that I never played pre-TBC. But I never said anything of the sort.
You say it's about being rewarded, yet you also say it's not about epeen. Epeen is how the reward of killing a hard boss is shared with the rest of the server. You hear about players saying how they looked up to players in full T1, T2, T3 in back in Vanillia. The guy who made the video posted earlier even mentions it. That's epeen. And clearly he's, and those who say the same thing, agree that epeen matters. I will say that epeen matters.
I'm not going to argue that you don't feel a greater sense of achievement if it's the first time you killed a boss after hundreds of wipes, more so than under the current normal and heroic mode system. Though it is probably slightly lessened, the sense of accomplishment isn't anywhere near gone. Everyone on Vent felt it the first time we downed Ragnaros in Molten Core, just as how we all felt it when we finally killed Heroic Lich King after hundred and hundreds of attempts.
When you watch videos of world first kills of raid bosses in WotLK and Cata, they still cheer and celebrate over Vent, just as ceremoniously as in Vanilla and TBC. Beating hard raid content is a great feeling, and people still feel a great sense of accomplished when they finally succeed.
There are some fights that were so amazing and well designed that it didn't matter that you'd already killed them once. In fact during WOTLK they largely dodged the shitness of doing bosses multiple times I described above due to the sheer weight of amazing encounters like Firefighter, Yogg Saron, Freya+3, Sarth+3, Lich King Heroic, Putricide Heroic, Anub Heroic and Algalon (although obviously he was HM only).
Encounter design in Cataclysm was awful. Ragnaros was the only fight all expansion as good as any I just listed and there was a massive, massive number of mediocre and awful bosses. Dragon Soul didn't have a single boss I'd consider above average.
These terrible encounters definitely highlighted the problems of having to do a boss 2/3 times.
I would be happy with a comprimise where all bosses come in one mode they just nerf it as over time. This would make both camps enjoy the game far more in the long run.
You're also completely ignoring the fact that casuals actually far, far preferred TBC and Vanilla. Most of my friends were total scrubs in Vanilla and TBC the kills they did get meant far more to them and lived much longer in the memory than their freebie heroic kills in Cataclysm.
My favorite Cata boss fights were Atramedes, Nefarion, Al'akir, and Ragnaros. But no, Cata boss fights were not as fun as WotLK boss fights.
Although WotLK had Sindragosa. WORSE BOSS EVER.
Having to do a boss 2 or 3 times doesn't happen in Cata. You kill a boss once a week, and that's it. This isn't WotLK where you had to kill each boss 2 times a week, or 4 times for ToC. Guilds were obligated to do this at the start of every raid tier to stay competitive, until you have enough 25M gear so that you don't need 10M gear anymore.
The fact that you say casuals enjoyed Vanilla and TBC more is either selective memory, or tinted glasses, or having no idea what actually happened during Vanilla and TBC and the player sentiment back then.
How often you have to do it on a week by week basis has nothing at all to do with anything. All that's ever mattered in WoW is your first kill.
By the way Sindragosa was a good fight. Way better than anything in Dragon Soul.
During Vanilla, the overwhelming complaint was "raid or die", even more so than the awful class balance, there was literally nothing to do in endgame if you were not in a 40 man raid guild.
Then in TBC, the raids and heroic dungeons were simply too hard for most players. As a result, people got most of their gear from Arenas. The term "welfare epics" originated from people doing arenas to get easy epics because raiding was way too hard for them. And people hated arenas, and they still do. They think WoW was destroyed because Blizzard tried to turn arenas into a eSports (get over it, arenas are great and the only form of skilled and serious PvP). Many guilds were also still farming Kara and Gruul by 2.4 because it was too hard to progress.
Nothing but revisionism. At the time players loved it and even now casual's look back on that time as the peak of WoW just like hardcore and semi hardcore players do. No matter how often you, Blizzard and other fools tell them how to feel.
On July 26 2012 07:00 Copymizer wrote: I haven't played since 2-3months after cataclysm where i found out what direction blizzard has been taking with wow. It's casual now it feels like a single player the leveling is no longer any challenge everything is being guided and given to you. People are standing in city 24/7 on LFR and LFD pressing a button to be TP'd to dungeoun play with 4 strangers that'll probably rage quit after 1st wipe and knowing you wont see them again they will ditch you.
The game has become a shadow of it's former glory TBC as i remember it. When there was an actually community on the server when people were out doing something, you had to be social and gather a group for that hard elite quests, so many aspects world pvp too. There was a time when gearing up for normal to heroic, kara, SSC, TK, MH and BT and getting your gear to get up there was challenging. All these guild perks too have made it way too easy. This vid sums it up well for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd0-zVIBVo
TBC raiding was all about going to the moon, not because of the loot, not because it was easy, not because of e-dicks. It was all about it being a challenge, not just as boss fights, but as organisation, team, community, friendship and love and supporting each other and learning together and doing and re-doing and perfecting.. Look at WoW now, where is the love? Where is the friendship and server pride and guild pride and community? Where are these things that made TBC an adventure to be shared?
I love this guy's main point in this video.
Blizzard has caved into what the COMMUNITY ITSELF ASKED FOR. That's the crazy thing.
I'd absolutely love to have WoW's endgame go back to the way it was, but there's a hard truth to be had here, there's no going back. For any MMO. No MMO will ever go back to the unbelievable commitment required that WoW's endgame was in Classic and TBC.
The gaming community has changed, evolved. Gaming companies can't develop games with the older generation in mind anymore because frankly there just aren't enough of us to make the financial investment worthwhile.
I don't blame Blizzard for where WoW is right now. They simply answered the call that their community cried for. Blame the community, change the community and the game might follow, but don't sit back and just bitch at Blizzard about it because that's how we got where we are in the first place.
That said. MoP is still fun, but this video does highlight where WoW came from. But the sad truth is that there's no going back.
Honestly what really struck me the most about that video was that it took TWO WEEKS for the first 10 man boss to go down, and 10 days for the first 25 man boss to go down. That it took FIVE MONTHS for the initially released content to be cleared, and blizzard was releasing new content before it was even completed -- which motivated people even more to raid. And that the ENTIRETY of WoTLK content (as in, all of it) was cleared in 48 hours from release.
That just shows the stark difference of philosophy at Blizzard now =/
I disagree though, we can blame Blizzard. The loudest and most vocal community is the one who screams "I DONT WANT TO WORK FOR CONTENT JUST GIVE IT OT ME", he said it best in the video. First it was we didnt have the gear to raid, then we didnt have the time, and soon it will be "just give me the achievements too why should I have to not get the gear I'm paying $15/mo for while they do!" BC was regarded as the best expansion of all time, not even just in MMO's, but one of the best of all time in any game. I can understand WoTLK, sort of, as a test experiment of "Okay, let's give them what they asked for." And they did, and they should have changed back.
They DID change back too, temporarily, for Cataclysm. Shit was going to be hard again, I still remember the discussion of how awesome and hard it is again and how heroics can wipe raids. But the fucking WoTLK babbies who can't handle aggro and just wanted to AoE through everything whined, and Blizzard caved again, and made it fucking easy as pie. And now they're just skipping the pretense.
Great points! I was extremely upset by all the changes in WoTLK throughout the whole thing. I did enjoy ulduar and doing some arena ( until season 8, and if i didnt get rank one in 7 i would have hated that season a lot too bc it was frankly terrible), but it didnt hold a candle to BC. Then Catacylsm looked really promising. AND IT WAS, at least on PVE side. Shit was harder, leveling was good. But about 2 weeks in healing buffs came...then another 2 weeks and massive raid nerfs came. After that happened, it just all fell right back to WotLK...and I've been done with WoW ever since.
Should we expect a very old game to be as good as it initially was? Of course not, but the steep nose dive the game has taken since Wrath is definitely blizzards fault. They should have held US to a better standard. After all, their peak numbers was in BC.
There is a pretty clear divide in MMO fans these days. Theres the older generation, who have seen games like the greatest of them all Ultima Online, and Everquest and DaOC and shadowbane. We saw what a Massive Multiplayer truly meant, a far difference from the garbage the genre has evolved into. Then theres the new "MMO" player generation...who is just a curious type indeed. They aren't quite like console gamers or competitive pc gamers or gamers in general...they just want to sit down and hang out in a chat room to feel like they are doing something, not put much effort in, and "play" a game. They like that WoW is basically a single player game with a bunch of different multiplayer mini games in it. I guess its like a small step above a casual person who plays Wii fit and Ipad games basically. I just fear that this mentality doesnt ruin the general gaming market too, as we are starting to see signs of..
There's also way more motivation for a guild not to brick wall when you're up against a genuinely new boss rather than a harder version of something you already did.
My guild killed Staghelm on Heroic when it was relevant content and the only thing we did differently was have 2 DPS and a healer stand outside of the group to keep up the Concentration buff while everyone else stacked for a cooldown rotation. Aside from that, the fight was identical, only on Heroic it was more beneficial to avoid damage. I recognize this is not the only viable strategy, but it's what we used.
For Hagara, you actually need to do the ice and lightning phase properly. You cannot run around the room in a circle to do the lightning anymore because you will die from the damage in heroic. You need to assign players to form an X shape formation beforehand. In the ice phase you have to run around multiple times, stand in the right place when you get dispelled or else you will put an ice patch on the ground that slows everyone and wipes the raid. There are also no ice tombs in normal.
Actually, there are ice tombs in normal. I'd argue that there is increased coordination required, but nothing that drastically changes the feel of the fight compared to something like Baleroc or Nefarian. It's clear we're just arguing subjectively here, though.
Heroic modes are not a substitute for new content.
Actually, a few recent threads on the EU forums have had community managers argue that in some respects, Heroic modes can be used as a substitute for new content. The argument is of course more nuanced than that, but the notion that a CM would suggest that anyone who hasn't killed Heroic Madness still has content to tackle is troubling.
Cata had one less raid tier, but the time between Cata and MoP is less than the time between any 2 expansions.
The time between TBC and WotLK was ~22 months (January 2007-November 2008). The time between Cataclysm and Mists will be about 22.5 months (December 2010-late September 2012). I know we're once again arguing semantics, but there's a clear indication that there has simply been less raid content in Cataclysm than in previous expansions, but this has already been acknowledged by the devs. Admittedly, much of the raid content was of higher quality, but I don't think I'm alone in claiming that it wasn't enough to compensate for the overall absence of it.
The notion they were spreading the spectrum of skill in TBC better than under the normal/heroic raid model doesn't make sense. In both cases, you get up to a point where you don't have enough gear/skill to progress, and then you bang your head on the wall until you eventually beat the boss or your guild falls apart.
With such a model however, the ideal raid progression paradigm would mean that straight-up brickwalling would be much less likely to occur because encounters get gradually more difficult over an extended spectrum of bosses rather than across 8 normal modes and 8 heroic modes. The scenario you described is much more likely to occur in the current model because difficulty from boss to boss has to increase so sharply to accommodate all raiders into a single instance/tier.
Another major problem with the TBC model is guild poaching. You had to gear players up over multiple weeks, through old and new raids, and then there's a large chance that they will be poached by a better progressed guild, wasting all that effort. Under the current model, there is no incentive to poach based on gear.
This is an argument that many players seem to throw around but I just didn't see it happening enough on my server (Mal'Ganis-US at the time, one of the most heavily populated and best progressed Horde servers in TBC) to make a big deal out of it. There were very few pre-Sunwell encounters that required a minimum level of gear from each member that could not also be compensated by other players. I can only think of High Warlord Naj'entus and Gurtogg Bloodboil in Black Temple that required a certain HP threshold for classes (read: mages) to survive encounter mechanics, but some would consider that a design oversight. If you brought two or three Karazhan/ZA-geared DPS to Teron Gorefiend instead of your usual T5/T6-geared players, the worst that would happen is that you might extend the fight by 20 seconds. The discrepancy in gear for the majority of pre-Sunwell encounters is something that could certainly be compensated for as long as players understood the mechanics of the fight.
All that to say that if guild poaching did occur in sufficient numbers to have made it a problem, most encounters lent themselves fairly easily to replacements if they knew the fight mechanics and could pull respectable numbers in their own roles. The poaching problem could easily be averted if guild perks required a certain reputation to be unlocked and were useful enough to warrant loyalty while not affecting any competitive aspect of the game.
Guilds also fell apart more often, not only because of poaching, but because the best geared or most skilled raiders in the guild (often including the main tank) wants to see content and not be held back by everyone else. Under this current system, there is no incentive to leave your guild just to see content, because everyone can see all the content. Guilds don't fall apart due to players leaving for better guilds as often as it use to.
This argument implies that there is a noticeable skill differential between particular segments of raiders in a guild, and this happens just as much now as it did in TBC. I don't think many players would put up with being held back on encounters that they perceive as easy but are challenging to others in the guild. Rather than change guilds to see a new instance, they'll simply change guilds to see a new encounter instead, and it's only normal for players to seek guilds that are of their own skill level, is it not?
On heroic modes being a substitute for new content: If you haven't done heroic modes, then there is more content to do, so it's additional content. But I don't think the fact that Blizzard makes heroic modes means that Blizzard will make less raid content, so it's not a substitute for new content. There wasn't less raid content in WotLK.
On the quality and quantity of content in Cata: I don't dispute your counting, but I'm surprised that the time between Cata and MoP is as long as between WotLK and MoP. WotLK certainly felt longer because ICC lasted 1 year, whereas DS will last about 9 or 10 months. The quality of content in Cata is definitely lower than WotLK. I wasn't happy about having only 3 raid tiers in Cata, it seemed lazy given that basically everything is recycled: ZA, ZG, and that most of DS is Dragonblight. And there was no large sprawling raids like Ulduar or SCC. All the raid environments in Cata were small. I assumed they spent all that time on MoP because it had looked almost complete when it was announced, and it was in beta shortly after. Perhaps it was the old world revamp.
On guild poaching and players leaving guilds: Well, I saw a lot of it. Unfortunately, there are no statistics or objective measures on this. But it's clear that there was a far greater incentive to poach better geared players to avoid the hassle of taking a lesser geared player and having to run him through all the old content to gear him up, and there was an incentive for better players to move into better progressed guilds to see content. I'm not saying that people don't leave for better guilds now. They can leave because they want to play with better players and progress faster. But there's one less reason for leaving: leaving to see content is no longer applicable. Guild perks -- no one cares about that, especially not progression raiding guilds. The TBC raid model created incentives that destroyed many guilds.
For all my WoW vets out there. I think we can all agree with this video. I hope Blizzard proves me wrong though
In case you haven't realized, WoW is as hard as ever. Both T11 and T12 were probably amongst the hardest tiers of raids ever made, although T13 is probably easier.
The video says that it took 4 months before Kael'thas was defeated. But TBC launched with 2 raid tiers, not 1.
In fact, if we compare this to Ulduar, released in WotLK (people who were never involved in progression raiding claim that this is when WoW started to be dumbed down for the masses), Yogg-0 wasn't cleared until 3 months after patch 3.1. That's 3 whole months on a single tier before the world first kill.
The claims that raiders are no longer special, that they aren't rewarded far above and beyond lesser players, and that progression raiding in WoW is now easy, are simply false. The people who do these heroic raids have the best gear, they get special mounts for the meta-achievements, and are highly regarded in the community.
Killing something on hard mode when you've already done it on normal mode and drooling retard mode is nothing at all like the same enjoyment or satisfaction as killing a boss when he is the only form of that boss.
The hardest hard mode of ICC and Cata are hard sure but they're not epic and fun to do because they're just something you've already done with the numbers turned up.
Now I know you've never done any heroic boss in your life.
A lot of heroic bosses require very different strategies.
The idea of hard modes is not new. In fact it's ubiquitous amongst pretty much all games. Unless there is an easy mode, players who can't get into a good guild, players who don't have a lot of time to play, and bads, won't be able to see the content. And with hard modes, highly skilled raiding guilds can still be challenged.
This is a win/win situation. The bads have easy content, and good players have hard content.
There's nothing wrong with casuals or bads or average-skilled guilds being able to see content, given that they already can't do the heroic modes, can't get the best gear, don't have the achievements or special mounts, and that it is generally very easy to measure and see epeen in WoW.
I've done pretty much everything in this game worth doing and most of my WOTLK stuff was done at an extremely high level.
I haven't even once brought up the word casual or anything to do with casual players so feel free to shut up about that and never bring it up again.
It has nothing at all to do with 'epeen', which I can assume is something you bring up because you feel your imaginary online penis is insufficient, which doesn't say much for your self confidence.
It has 100% everything to do with a game being rewarding and deserving of my time.
If Sc2 and DOTA had no PvP mode I wouldn't play it. Why? No it's not because I want to demonstrate that my imaginary online penis is bigger than random Protoss player A or random Russian pub team B. It's because I play games to either be challenged mentally and/or (and the best games combine both) to be immersed in a fictional world. WoW used to be the most awesome mix of both those things where the lore and fantasy was amazing and so was the challenge. Normal modes/LFR instantly kill both because they reduce what was once a epic boss and powerful character to a pathetic pushover meaning that this guy you've waiting two years to kill who commands the entire world you've spent an expansion fighting against can be killed on your first/second/third pull.
Now, what you're about to say is "oh but he's not a pushover on heroic". Which is where I realise that A) You never played pre WOTLK and B) You have no clue at all what makes PvE in WoW so amazing and rewarding.
When you kill a boss in WoW you're not just beating a series of computer scripts by running your own series of computer scripts with 9-39 other people. You're beating a character you've been building up to fighting and defeating over a series of days, weeks, months and in some cases even years. The reward isn't just hey ho another random mob (on 10 player normal mode with achievements X, Y and Z) down it's that you finally beat Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver this epic character from the Blizzard Warcraft story for good after so long of trying.
When you kill Kil'Jaeden the Deceiver on your first pull first week, your 10th pull third week, your 300th pull a few weeks/months later having already killed him a few times on the team realm anyway then that sure as fuck is not the same feeling.
Perhaps if you played this amazing game from Ulduar and before you would have the feintest clue what everyone in this thread and everyone in the community is talking about when they say this game isn't a fraction as good as it used to be and no, hard modes sure as fuck do not compensate.
I've played WoW for 7 years, since the beginning of the game, I quit around March this gear. I don't see how you can conclude that I didn't play pre-TBC based on the fact that I think it's OK for bosses to be easy on normal because they are hard on heroic. Somehow this implies I didn't play pre-TBC. That is a non-sequitar. I don't see how it follows.
Maybe if I had claimed that naked rogues could NOT kill a GM geared player in a stunlock back in Vanilla, then you could rightly say that I never played pre-TBC. But I never said anything of the sort.
You say it's about being rewarded, yet you also say it's not about epeen. Epeen is how the reward of killing a hard boss is shared with the rest of the server. You hear about players saying how they looked up to players in full T1, T2, T3 in back in Vanillia. The guy who made the video posted earlier even mentions it. That's epeen. And clearly he's, and those who say the same thing, agree that epeen matters. I will say that epeen matters.
I'm not going to argue that you don't feel a greater sense of achievement if it's the first time you killed a boss after hundreds of wipes, more so than under the current normal and heroic mode system. Though it is probably slightly lessened, the sense of accomplishment isn't anywhere near gone. Everyone on Vent felt it the first time we downed Ragnaros in Molten Core, just as how we all felt it when we finally killed Heroic Lich King after hundred and hundreds of attempts.
When you watch videos of world first kills of raid bosses in WotLK and Cata, they still cheer and celebrate over Vent, just as ceremoniously as in Vanilla and TBC. Beating hard raid content is a great feeling, and people still feel a great sense of accomplished when they finally succeed.
There are some fights that were so amazing and well designed that it didn't matter that you'd already killed them once. In fact during WOTLK they largely dodged the shitness of doing bosses multiple times I described above due to the sheer weight of amazing encounters like Firefighter, Yogg Saron, Freya+3, Sarth+3, Lich King Heroic, Putricide Heroic, Anub Heroic and Algalon (although obviously he was HM only).
Encounter design in Cataclysm was awful. Ragnaros was the only fight all expansion as good as any I just listed and there was a massive, massive number of mediocre and awful bosses. Dragon Soul didn't have a single boss I'd consider above average.
These terrible encounters definitely highlighted the problems of having to do a boss 2/3 times.
I would be happy with a comprimise where all bosses come in one mode they just nerf it as over time. This would make both camps enjoy the game far more in the long run.
You're also completely ignoring the fact that casuals actually far, far preferred TBC and Vanilla. Most of my friends were total scrubs in Vanilla and TBC the kills they did get meant far more to them and lived much longer in the memory than their freebie heroic kills in Cataclysm.
My favorite Cata boss fights were Atramedes, Nefarion, Al'akir, and Ragnaros. But no, Cata boss fights were not as fun as WotLK boss fights.
Although WotLK had Sindragosa. WORSE BOSS EVER.
Having to do a boss 2 or 3 times doesn't happen in Cata. You kill a boss once a week, and that's it. This isn't WotLK where you had to kill each boss 2 times a week, or 4 times for ToC. Guilds were obligated to do this at the start of every raid tier to stay competitive, until you have enough 25M gear so that you don't need 10M gear anymore.
The fact that you say casuals enjoyed Vanilla and TBC more is either selective memory, or tinted glasses, or having no idea what actually happened during Vanilla and TBC and the player sentiment back then.
How often you have to do it on a week by week basis has nothing at all to do with anything. All that's ever mattered in WoW is your first kill.
By the way Sindragosa was a good fight. Way better than anything in Dragon Soul.
During Vanilla, the overwhelming complaint was "raid or die", even more so than the awful class balance, there was literally nothing to do in endgame if you were not in a 40 man raid guild.
Then in TBC, the raids and heroic dungeons were simply too hard for most players. As a result, people got most of their gear from Arenas. The term "welfare epics" originated from people doing arenas to get easy epics because raiding was way too hard for them. And people hated arenas, and they still do. They think WoW was destroyed because Blizzard tried to turn arenas into a eSports (get over it, arenas are great and the only form of skilled and serious PvP). Many guilds were also still farming Kara and Gruul by 2.4 because it was too hard to progress.
Nothing but revisionism. At the time players loved it and even now casual's look back on that time as the peak of WoW just like hardcore and semi hardcore players do. No matter how often you, Blizzard and other fools tell them how to feel.
Normal mode kills don't count as first kills.
Sindragosa was not a good fight. She has an annoying voice. The slows and debuffs and general RNG were annoying and prevented you from doing anything most of the fight. The ice tombs felt finicky. Awful, awful fight.
My comments on Vanilla and TBC are not revisionism. I guess you never played or visited the forums during Vanilla and TBC. Everything I said were the general complaints of the community at the time of Vanilla and TBC. These new rose-tinted glasses view are revisionism. If you have a specific counterargument to anything I said about Vanilla and TBC, then make it.
Nobody loves WoW in the moment, at least they never express it on the forums. So it's highly dubious how you manage to draw the conclusion that people loved TBC at the time, while completely ignoring all the complaints it got at the time. In fact, you haven't even demonstrated an nuanced understanding of what actually happened during TBC and the general player sentiments of the time. You've said nothing other than that it was hard, absolutely awesome and that everyone LOVED it. It's almost like a delusional and nostalgic yearning for "the good old days".
On July 27 2012 02:36 Aeroplaneoverthesea wrote: There's also way more motivation for a guild not to brick wall when you're up against a genuinely new boss rather than a harder version of something you already did.
High masters sc player and S2 shadowcomp gladiator here, and Arena sucked. It required a fraction of the skill it takes for sc at a high level, stop kidding yourself.
One bad thing about TBC raiding was attunements. In a guild that raided about 3 times a week, one day always had to be spent attuning new recruits to Hyjal and BT. I am sort of glad they removed the requirements for that. It was also a pretty big factor in guild poaching. Why bother spending the time attuning a new member of the guild when you could steal a person from another guild (generally a tank) who is already attuned and will most likely have better gear?
In order to be called additional content, heroic fights need to be different than the normal, aside from + hp, + damage. I would say that for the most part, Blizzard made heroic modes different enough. I haven't done anything in Firelands or Dragon Soul, so I can't say anything about that.
The best part of BC for me was that the big bosses you got to face were characters you got time to know in Frozen Throne. You knew their motivations and actually liked them. In MoP, the big bads from what I can tell are Shah, manifestations of negative emotions. Not really the same caliber as Illidan. Illidan's motivations are slightly more complicated than "destroy the world". Arthas was somewhat the same way. Deathwing? Destroy the world. Shah? Destroy the world (probably). Fighting evil gods that want to destroy the world is not as interesting as fighting human-like characters with their own motivations. But I may be wrong.
On July 27 2012 01:31 plogamer wrote: Pandas?.............
This absolutely kills the mood/theme of WoW. This is a game about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves etc. ie. resembling DnD.
I am not sure how Pandas will add to it.
Pandaeran in WC3 was a very very minor side joke/lore which culminated in one playable hero.
I would rather have seen dragonkins (like a remnant survivor of the blue dragonflight or what not) as a playable race than freaking pandas.
It's warcraft, man. Not cuddlecraft.
Think about WC3:RoC and WC3:TFT. Thing about them Nagas. What the hell, why would you play against mermaids? What the fuck this game is about demons, undeads, orcs, nightelves, not mermaids. How will they add to the story of this game? There is only one playable Naga hero on multiplayer! This is ridiculous. Oh they were asleep 10000 years ago -- that's fucking lame. Right?
Look at what Nagas are nowadays. Pandas are the new Nagas. Get over it.
Really, are you equating Nagas to Pandas? Did you play TFT campaign at all? Naga lore was developed extensively in the campaign.
Snakes, not fish. And not Pandas. Get it?
Did you play RoC at all? There never was a single mention of fish-snake-whatever. Nagas were bullshit that appeared out of fucking nowhere on TFT.
Yet, here they are. Fully developed. With an amazing story.
To be honest, if they instead decided to create a race of birds as playable instead of pandas, would that feel better? There are harpies in the warcraft universe after all. Maybe a race of wolv-- oh wait, Worgens. Where the fuck did they come from? Not from WC3 as far as I remember.
There was a playable panda hero on WC3:TFT. There was a panda that actually got involved with Rexxar in Kalimdor.
My point is: pandas being part of the lore makes as much sense as anything else, really. All you need is a chance to develop the story. Going "OMG PANDAS WTF" before the story has even been released and developed is ridiculous.
I wouldn't be surprised if the events from the Well of Eternity and Nagas were somehow connected to the fact that Pandaria was hidden for so long from the world.
Of course -anything- can be made into lore. I'm not disputing that fact. But that doesn't mean anything and everything should be put into lore.
Blizzard can make anything "make sense", but it has to be done with taste. Do most people put war and pandas in the same context?
Forget it, let's have Leprechauns as a playable race next. Who cares if it just sounds silly in a game titled "World of warcraft".
Or better yet, Unicornians. Recently discovered in the Isles of Rainbows.
I'm really excited for this. So much so that I have resubscribed to get myself geared enough to blow through the first areas and whatnot. Couple questions though.
Besides dungeon and raid finder, how else can I occupy my time? Obviously lots of people spend a bunch of time on WoW, so I am curious what else I should be up to besides raid and dungeon finder. How do I effectively improve my jewelcrafting? I am having difficulty finding new recipes...
For all my WoW vets out there. I think we can all agree with this video. I hope Blizzard proves me wrong though
In case you haven't realized, WoW is as hard as ever. Both T11 and T12 were probably amongst the hardest tiers of raids ever made, although T13 is probably easier.
The video says that it took 4 months before Kael'thas was defeated. But TBC launched with 2 raid tiers, not 1.
In fact, if we compare this to Ulduar, released in WotLK (people who were never involved in progression raiding claim that this is when WoW started to be dumbed down for the masses), Yogg-0 wasn't cleared until 3 months after patch 3.1. That's 3 whole months on a single tier before the world first kill.
The claims that raiders are no longer special, that they aren't rewarded far above and beyond lesser players, and that progression raiding in WoW is now easy, are simply false. The people who do these heroic raids have the best gear, they get special mounts for the meta-achievements, and are highly regarded in the community.
Killing something on hard mode when you've already done it on normal mode and drooling retard mode is nothing at all like the same enjoyment or satisfaction as killing a boss when he is the only form of that boss.
The hardest hard mode of ICC and Cata are hard sure but they're not epic and fun to do because they're just something you've already done with the numbers turned up.
Now I know you've never done any heroic boss in your life.
A lot of heroic bosses require very different strategies.
But many of them also don't, or at least not sufficiently enough to make players think they are new encounters. Some bosses have changed up enough mechanics in Heroic mode to make them feel different, like Warmaster, Zon'ozz, Baleroc, etc. and that's a step in the right direction. However, as of late it's become increasingly common to have bosses that are just slightly different iterations of their normal-mode counterparts in which the strategy remains largely the same, such as Morchok, Hagara, Ultraxion, Majordomo Staghelm, Rhyolith, etc., which contributes to the aforementioned burnout. Of course, this problem isn't helped by the fact that guilds are forced to clear normal mode before Heroics are unlocked. If the devs are going to insist that Heroic mode is a substitute for new content, then they should at least make the majority of bosses feel substantially different.
The idea of hard modes is not new. In fact it's ubiquitous amongst pretty much all games. Unless there is an easy mode, players who can't get into a good guild, players who don't have a lot of time to play, and bads, won't be able to see the content. And with hard modes, highly skilled raiding guilds can still be challenged.
The problem is that the devs are trying to fit a vast spectrum of players into an extremely narrow corridor of raid tuning because of the number of relevant bosses in the current tier. They have to ensure that all raiders who identify themselves as being above the LFR-aimed skill level find a niche within 2 iterations of 8 different bosses. In previous versions of the game, specifically TBC, the spread of players was across a spectrum of ~50 bosses so tuning and progression could be much more gradual.
I recognize the problems with the TBC model as well, but I really think that with some adjustments it could become the most advantageous raid system to date, particularly if LFR is here to stay. Things like making progression through older tiers proceed more quickly when newer tiers are released, either by increasing loot drops (from 2 pieces to 3 in 10-man and from 4 to 5 in 25-man) or by targeted nerfs to specific encounters could succeed where TBC fell short.
Staghelm is very different on heroic than normal. In heroic you have to setup a cooldown rotations for the tank to eat the flame scythe since you cannot afford the DPS loss that comes with DPS losing their stacks without hitting enrage (at least when this was relevant content). Since the tank can only eat 1 to 3 scythes with cooldowns blown, instead of around 8, he shapeshifts far more, which increases his stacks far more quickly, meaning the fight gets chaotic and unmanageable more quickly. You also needed to put the orbs in a single place, and set up a rotation of mages or paladins to go invulnerable and eat the damage from the orbs, again because you can't afford the DPS loss.
For Hagara, you actually need to do the ice and lightning phase properly. You cannot run around the room in a circle to do the lightning anymore because you will die from the damage in heroic. You need to assign players to form an X shape formation beforehand. In the ice phase you have to run around multiple times, stand in the right place when you get dispelled or else you will put an ice patch on the ground that slows everyone and wipes the raid. There are also no ice tombs in normal.
Heroic modes are not a substitute for new content. It's not as if Blizzard is making less raid content because heroics are a substitute. WotLK didn't have less raid content because of heroics. Cata had one less raid tier, but the time between Cata and MoP is less than the time between any 2 expansions. Heroics are just hard modes. The same bosses made harder by new and extra mechanics (usually). Heroics are the *real* raid content. You can't compare Vanilla and TBC raids to WotLK and Cata normal modes, because normal modes are too easy. You should think of normal modes as easy mode and heroics as Vanilla and TBC raids.
The notion they were spreading the spectrum of skill in TBC better than under the normal/heroic raid model doesn't make sense. In both cases, you get up to a point where you don't have enough gear/skill to progress, and then you bang your head on the wall until you eventually beat the boss or your guild falls apart.
Another major problem with the TBC model is guild poaching. You had to gear players up over multiple weeks, through old and new raids, and then there's a large chance that they will be poached by a better progressed guild, wasting all that effort. Under the current model, there is no incentive to poach based on gear.
Guilds also fell apart more often, not only because of poaching, but because the best geared or most skilled raiders in the guild (often including the main tank) wants to see content and not be held back by everyone else. Under this current system, there is no incentive to leave your guild just to see content, because everyone can see all the content. Guilds don't fall apart due to players leaving for better guilds as often as it use to.
I wouldnt call rhyolith the same fight either, since iirc in heroic(may not be since i quit after i killed rag) it didnt have taht QOL volcano change that normal did(where they wouldnt spawn behind him and you'd die to completely retarded as fuck RNG) not to mention that fight became exponentially harder if you were trying to work with a weird comp
EPT
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