I presumably can't mail the little items you can buy across servers. It's nice that alt rep will eventually be faster, though
The items aren't used by each character individually.
You buy them with the character that has the required rep level (revered), use them, and it's applied to your account.
They said they had it just automatically grant it upon reaching revered the first time, but it wasn't obvious enough to the player that it happened; so they made it a usable item.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
So there is no ending quest for August Celestials exalted? Lame. And the only reward is one mount, which seems really lacking compared to every other faction. (technically there is a bag pattern but lot of good that does me as a non-tailor... wish it was BoA or something)
I've wondered why they didn't link the auction houses along with zones when CRZ went in. Presumably linking AHs would be pretty easy since it's just a table of items, would alleviate most of the economic concerns on underpopulated realms, and would make the market more efficient for everybody.
I kind of suspect they wouldn't want to do that because it'd be super helpful for gold sellers, though
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It is class-action; I kinda thought those weren't really allowed anymore? I guess I just don't understand how that all works...which is the point I suppose.
Anyway, I dunno. I bough an authenticator the first time a friend of mine got his account hacked and have felt like it was a good purchase. At this point in time, though, I'd agree with the notion that it's not really ok for Blizzard to still be selling them ostensibly for profit, for any level of reliable security, and finding out how embarrassingly bad their security protocols are for accounts...I think the prosecution might have a point here.
If Blizzard can't implement even bare minimum security measures, they should be giving an authenticator with every account, for free.
The question, I suppose, is whether or not the presence of the app authenticator constitutes them doing so; since you can't expect every player to have a smart phone capable of running it, or know how to run a mobile emulator to run it on their desktop.
I presumably can't mail the little items you can buy across servers. It's nice that alt rep will eventually be faster, though
it's not an item you need to use per character. Its an item that needs to be used by ONE character, once, and then it's unlocked on your whole account. They did it this way so people knew about it better (an item instead of a buff that you may not realize is active)
Certain companies have forced you to sign a EULA or other document to use their shit, which strips you of the right to class-action lawsuits. I think Microsoft and Sony have done so for the use of their online console services. I do not know if Blizzard has done the same.
The thing is, the legality of these clauses has not been tested in court, and some say that it's fairly likely that a judge would call these clauses bullshit.
In regards to this case, it's junk and won't go anywhere. Blizzard sells the authenticators at cost, and have a free version on the OS of the most popular phones. There are also other free measures they have tried as well, such as the phone authentication. It's incredibly clear that Blizzard is not trying to profit off account security.
They've even admitted the phone authentication is more or less useless; when they had the big security thing a few months ago they pretty much outright said that it wasn't a replacement for a real authenticator.
Anyway, if they're not profiting off the authenticator at all, then yeah; that'll be incredibly easy to show and this will get thrown out fast.
I do think the egg on their face from the realization from players about how bad their security is if you don't have an authenticator should have made them tighten things up.
But as far as I know logging in with just a password still isn't case sensitive and still doesn't actually check all the characters in the password.
the profit for blizzard isn't in selling the little piece of plastic (which they sell at cost, as has been widely repeated); they make it on the backend by not having to employ more CSRs or deal with more gold selling. I'm also quite sure it's a cheaper solution that implementing more rigorous security on their end (I mean, bnet passwords aren't even case sensitive.)
For the individual player who practices good computer security an authenticator may not really be necessary, but for the population at large I'm sure they help
it's hard to tell what the lawsuit is even seeking damages for
ed: man, does bnet do that stupid thing where they let you input a longer password than the system actually checks? just fucking terrible
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
The problem is that WoW is just a giant target. Better passwords and other similar security can't protect from users getting trojans or viruses.
If an alt gets every accomplishment your main has then you have few reasons to play that alt. There has to be a better design.
Personally, I play an alt because I enjoy the feel of playing a new toolkit, not because I long to re-trace the steps of the character I just played. If that were the case, no one would ever pay for a faction/server transfer, they'd simply re-roll on that faction/server and start fresh. Yes, you can take these grinds at your own pace and no they're not mandatory*, but they do serve as the vast majority of content prior to raids and therefore many people feel compelled to do them. It would just be nice if you didn't have to do that for every character you played thereafter. Late in Wrath they introduced the rep tokens that you could purchase for badges, which was nice because they were account bound (I believe) and you could reap the rewards of your efforts on one character without having to start the grind on another.
Personally, I play an alt because I enjoy the feel of playing a new toolkit
This is the main reason I have alts, I enjoy the variety. Alt-crafting too, but that's to a lesser extent.
It would just be nice if you didn't have to do that for every character you played thereafter.Late in Wrath they introduced the rep tokens that you could purchase for badges, which was nice because they were account bound (I believe) and you could reap the rewards of your efforts on one character without having to start the grind on another.
Here's hoping they move back in that direction.
Agreed.
In previous expansions, you could go through an entire zone and gain faction rep from actually doing the zone quests, but the rep gains weren't the only reason to do so, you also had gear upgrades and a little pocket change. Did it ever get you all the way to Exalted status? Not that I recall, there may have been a couple here and there, but I had usually moved on to other content or just out-leveled the zone. I never really would have thought this was 'freebie rep' but someone did and the faction rep gains this time around have been drastically reduced while questing.
Ghost Crawler is ridiculous out of touch with the player base. Like he doesn't want to add more stable slots for hunters because he has the idea that the hunter's pet is their "boon companion." Oh no, it's my walking buff and I only collect the different types for their looks. Frankly if I could go without a pet and their buggy AI I would.
They've done a lot right, it just feels like he doesn't have the same wants as players and doesn't understand how the majority play the game.
Ghost Crawler is ridiculous out of touch with the player base. Like he doesn't want to add more stable slots for hunters because he has the idea that the hunter's pet is their "boon companion." Oh no, it's my walking buff and I only collect the different types for their looks. Frankly if I could go without a pet and their buggy AI I would.
They've done a lot right, it just feels like he doesn't have the same wants as players and doesn't understand how the majority play the game.
This, but I wouldn't point the finger at Ghostcrawler. He isn't the sole person making all the design choices and decisions. He has an entire team of devs under him, he's just the lead. Yeah though, this is something I feel many times when I see patch notes or changes or whatever. There is a disconnect between the players and the devs, that's for sure. It often feels like the devs are playing an entirely seperate game. One concerned with numbers and functionality. And the rest of us are concerned with "feel" and "fun", as subjective as those are.
I dunno. There's some decisions they make that I don't agree with, and there's some that I do. And all that aside, Ghostcrawler's a smart dude and I have mad respect for him. I don't know how he deals with all the unwarranted shit he gets. I certainly would not be able to do what he does without cracking.
It feels like they're stuck in a nexus between player freedom and player enforcement. It's like they're not confident enough in the plethora of content in the game already to remove asinine barriers like having everything locked to the player, or enforcing daily limits (whoop de shit, they removed the daily cap and then cut the rep rewards by 2/3), to just let players play.
If their design is that time spent playing alts is best done by repeating every single thing over again then their design is not only antiquated but regressive and is more likely to make a player not roll an alt at all, and quit, than it is to keep players from burning through the content too fast.
Someone asked GC a bit after the launch of MoP about account based reps and his response was basically: "and then what? the game plays itself? " As if that was the next step from preventing players from having to do something mind bogglingly boring over and over again.
But then...they do things like account based achievements/mounts/pet; increase valor points on alts after you cap it on a main, double rep gains on alts, etc.
The roller coaster of figuring out what they fuck they actually want to do with the game is getting exhausting. Every other day reading MMO-Champ is like "Oh shit, that's awesome!" /sleep "Oh shit, that is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever read!" /repeat"
At some point they need to just take down the gates and let players at it. The game has 8 years worth of content, it has more content than a dozen other games combined. I think it's time to let the content stand on its own merits and stop trying to carrot-on-a-stick stuff. New content? Fine, gate it somewhat, but make sure if you're gating it it is done so for a reason, and not just to prevent a few players from burning through it. Old content? remove the gates entirely.
They don't want Hunters to have every pet because it's more data for them to deal with. That's why there are bag sizes and caps on the pets you can have, and so forth. Obviously "we can't do that because it hurts our bottom line" isn't going to resonate with players.
Blizzard is a business. They want to make money. Unfettered access to everything means shorter subscriptions. There's ALREADY players in here whining that all they do is log in for raids 2-3 times a week. There is a fine line between gating too little which leaves players done with everything in a month, and gating too much which lets player see the hamster wheel behind the curtain.
MoP has bad gates like rep grinds for VP, as it leaves players feeling incredibly unaccomplished when hitting a new rep level. But the game has gates that we don't question, like raid lockouts.
But the game has gates that we don't question, like raid lockouts.
Have raiders called for a shorter time for lockouts? Keep in mind that I don't raid, except older content when I'm helping guildies shoot for mounts or mogs or cheevies, and that's a once a month kinda thing.
I've tried Arcane and Fire and they're both fine for instances and whatnot (prefer fire), but for questing the casting times of everything makes my mage just feel so slow. Does Frost have a decent amount of instants that can manage quest stuff or is it just like the rest?
They don't want Hunters to have every pet because it's more data for them to deal with. That's why there are bag sizes and caps on the pets you can have, and so forth. Obviously "we can't do that because it hurts our bottom line" isn't going to resonate with players.
Blizzard is a business. They want to make money. Unfettered access to everything means shorter subscriptions. There's ALREADY players in here whining that all they do is log in for raids 2-3 times a week. There is a fine line between gating too little which leaves players done with everything in a month, and gating too much which lets player see the hamster wheel behind the curtain.
MoP has bad gates like rep grinds for VP, as it leaves players feeling incredibly unaccomplished when hitting a new rep level. But the game has gates that we don't question, like raid lockouts.
They're a business with a game with more content than any game in the history of history. That content should be able to stand alone at this point without gating.
Basing how players are handling content based on folks around here is like basing it on the official forums. We're self selected gamers who are more inclined to burn through so much content so fast that it's our own fault if we do so. That's not meant to be blamy on the player, but we're not the rule.
In my alliance guild that is full of people who have families and play 'casually', they only log in 2-3 times a week because that's all the time they have; and there's a ton of content they simply can't see (or achieve within a reasonable timeframe) because of the arbitrary gating around things in this xpack. 1k rep or so a day, max, for golden lotus, and only being able to play a couple times a week means that some of these folks could play for months before they have the opportunity to see Shado-pan or August Celestial stuff; and what if that's what they wanted to see, and not Golden Lotus? By the time they get to where they're going there, we'll have a new patch of content that will just get backed up, gated itself behind other things; and it cascades.
You could argue that if they can only log in so little they're not going to see stuff anyway, but that's not a good answer; they should be able to choose what they see; but when all the content is gated then what? They have to wait in line to play what they want, effectively. Maybe they just want to run instances, and then find after a few weeks of that they have a bunch of VP they can't spend because, oh wait, that's behind reps you don't have time to do; so it's wasted.
And it goes on.
It's not like everything they've done with MoP is bad, a lot of it is great; which I stated. But the blanket defense that "they're a business', after 8 years of excessive amounts of content, is no longer really logical. The game has enough content to stand on its own and be worth the enterance fee. Let players choose what they do after that without arbitrary restrictions.
EDIT: I mean, I have a year of /played and there is still a shitton of stuff I haven't done and want to do. If it were up to me I'd just burn the fuck out of MoP reps asap so I could be free to do those things without the concern of being given each tiny bit of rep piecemeal every day.
I've tried Arcane and Fire and they're both fine for instances and whatnot (prefer fire), but for questing the casting times of everything makes my mage just feel so slow. Does Frost have a decent amount of instants that can manage quest stuff or is it just like the rest?
I've been Arcane on my mage for what feels like forever and I've developed a real affinity for it, even with the new class adjustments. If you prefer Fire, stick with Fire, Scorch is your friend because you at least get to kite a little.
Oh goddamnit. Bought a pair of epic crafted cloth gloves to try to put my item level over 470 so I could get into the second LFR since I'm sitting at 468...
...and it puts me at 469 instead. I'm betting it's like .9, too.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
You are acting like years-old content that I can literally one-shot in some cases is incredibly attractive to players. It falls under the "nothing else to do" umbrella of content that still has a carrot but there's no real entertainment. There is a wide breadth of content, but the majority of it is shallow. Doing ICC or MC in an hour doesn't constitute compelling, meaty gameplay. We had a whole YEAR of that thanks to MoP taking forever to release, and it doesn't keep players subscribed.
We already said that the gating in MoP is overkill, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make your anecdotal evidence. Yes, it's incredibly silly to lock two factions behind another faction. Yes, the rep gains for the factions are two slow (I literally do my dailies every day, and am not even halfway through Revered with the Celestials). Yes, replacing normal rep rewards with VP ones was asking for trouble. This doesn't mean that have normal faction grinds with normal rewards is a bad thing. Most people haven't even cleared Vaults, so there's no reason to release every raid at once.
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Something will be done in the short term, that's pretty clear. Enough people are dissatisfied with the status quo that they will do more than just halve the rep requirements once your main has hit revered with a faction. The gating is the first one that needs to go, and I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see that restriction lifted with the first real content patch (5.2? 5.3?). Beyond that, as Ghostcrawler has said, they need to get a handle on what constitutes the 'demand' of playing an alt. Should it literally be a continuation of the progress on your main, or should you need to start from scratch (per GC: "Leveling alts with no bonuses worked for years" - to be fair, it didn't "work", it just 'was', and there was no alternative. It 'worked' in much the same way that walking 'worked' until the car was invented).
There's a middleground, and I'm confident they'll find it. It's just a question of when.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
I've tried Arcane and Fire and they're both fine for instances and whatnot (prefer fire), but for questing the casting times of everything makes my mage just feel so slow. Does Frost have a decent amount of instants that can manage quest stuff or is it just like the rest?
Frost still lags behind the others in DPS. It's my secondary questing spec for crowd control and occasional use when I get bored with Arcane, but I would not make it my primary. Arcane still rules the day.
I've tried Arcane and Fire and they're both fine for instances and whatnot (prefer fire), but for questing the casting times of everything makes my mage just feel so slow. Does Frost have a decent amount of instants that can manage quest stuff or is it just like the rest?
I decided to level my Mage as Frost. I was pleasantly surprised. Frost has a good number of instants (Ice Lance, Frostfire Bolt), great AoE and 2-target Cleave (Frozen Orb, Glyphed Ice Lance), great burst, and has crazy good control. Things died at a good rate. Setting up Shatters with Deep Freeze cuts through mobs like a knife through hot butter. And of course, having your main nuke be a slow doesn't hurt at all.
So for reference, I found a rare (Omnis Grinlok) that came with 5 patrolling mobs. I ended up living on about 1500 health for nearly 3 minutes. No, not a typo, 1500 health. My Evocate had gotten interrupted (glyphed, for the heal) so I had to kite the shit out of this dude til it came off cooldown. Ice Barrier is a godsend, and I was extremely fortunate that he ended up targeting my Water Elemental (or Mirror Images) for most of his attacks instead of me. But yeah, I alternated Frost Nova and the pet Freeze, used Deep Freeze on CD, and just didn't let him touch me at all. Killing the 5 patrolling mobs was the hard part, but they went down fast thanks to Frozen Orb and Frost Bomb.
I tried leveling as Fire for a bit. Honestly I found things died slower that way. Fire has a bit too much ramp up and is too rng dependent for leveling, in my opinion. Maybe it's because I lacked the control of Frost, or what. Either way, Frost is actually pretty good. I just hit 90 last night, and I'm pulling like 40k+ in my crappy ass gear. 80-90k for AoE/Trash packs. It's a very fun spec! I seriously recommend people try it. Not only is it viable, but it's actually competitive dps.
I was surprised with the 5.0 changes to Frost. Before it was spam frostbolt. Weave in CDs and proc Ice lance off of frozen targets. Now it is proc city.
Also I would say that frost still holds the best leveling spec as you have all sorts of mob freezing abilities for the multiple mob pulls.
Frost is even good for raiding now, it's weird. Fire is better, but fire has been topping charts on most fights for a while now. I switched to frost for heroic Feng, since my guild was struggling with killing the adds in the shield phase and my fire aoe was abysmal. Only lost about 5k dps, I was really surprised.
Last night I managed to get 3 piece of loot from LFR and in only 2 bosses.
Unfortunately the first piece was Gloves and I have Crafted ones that are equalish in stats, So I spent a coin and won the same pair of gloves again . The third piece was a helm that I already have. I think you should still have the option to pass loot on to someone else in LFR as none of that is any use to me right now. I wish I could take back that coin though, I didn't really realise that it would/could award the same piece of loot I just won. (my fault I know).
I suppose it's some Sha Crystals, but I don't have any enchants that need them yet so it feels a bit of a waste to DE epics when I have tonnes of blue items left still.
You need Sha crystals for bracer and the high level weapon enchants, so keep them around for when you hit revered with shado-pan and celestials. They are in massive demand, at least on my server.
HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Well, that's fun. I managed to fall off the cliff doing one of the farmville dailies today and oh look, my corpse is in an area only accessible via flying mount. Which we no longer have while dead.
I mean, I can understand their approach to some things and I'll even grudgingly accept their retarded "we didn't really mean to give you 100% movement speed while dead for an expansion, that's a totally broken advantage" rationale, but good fucking christ, WHY remove the sole means of accessing some of the content they themselves created? So, now I've had to take a spirit rez, or more accurately a "afk for ten minutes" rez, effectively nullifying the gold I got from doing those dailies in the first place! And to top it off, I'm so weak I can't even fight off the little nuisance asshole things that spawn on my crops until the sickness is done.
Really, fuck those devs for some of these decisions. Right in their eye sockets.
I still don't understand why they won't put in flying ghost mounts. Couldn't they just reduce their speed to whatever bullshit level they think is acceptable? We all know they're completely full of shit on why they removed it, but come on put the flying back in.
Of course that begs the question of why rez sickness still exist. I guess theoretically players could spirit rez and Zerg world bosses, but since that's certainly not Blizzards concern, why not remove it? It's pretty much always the less convenient option and doesn't also dump an increased durability damage on you as well?
I've been leveling a Death Knight in my continuing pursuit of a class I want to play the endgame with. Holy crap these guys are broken at low levels, I hope blood boil never weakens (it will, I know).
Except he's melee, and my elemental shaman is ranged. Damn it.
Revered with Shado-Pan, yay. 1/3 of the way to Revered with August Celestials, ugh. And down to Sho, Fish, and Haohan. If only I could stop seeing dailies for Jogu, Tina, and Chee Chee...
I saw there's a Shado-Pan meta...yeah, whatever. When I've gotta get a melee character through one set without taking a hit, eh, no thanks. And besides, that meta also requires a Gold in challenge-mode Shado-Pan Monastery.
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The items aren't used by each character individually.
You buy them with the character that has the required rep level (revered), use them, and it's applied to your account.
They said they had it just automatically grant it upon reaching revered the first time, but it wasn't obvious enough to the player that it happened; so they made it a usable item.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I kind of suspect they wouldn't want to do that because it'd be super helpful for gold sellers, though
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I mean I'm used to Pokemon and its erratic accuracy rates. But this is getting ridiculous.
It is class-action; I kinda thought those weren't really allowed anymore? I guess I just don't understand how that all works...which is the point I suppose.
Anyway, I dunno. I bough an authenticator the first time a friend of mine got his account hacked and have felt like it was a good purchase. At this point in time, though, I'd agree with the notion that it's not really ok for Blizzard to still be selling them ostensibly for profit, for any level of reliable security, and finding out how embarrassingly bad their security protocols are for accounts...I think the prosecution might have a point here.
If Blizzard can't implement even bare minimum security measures, they should be giving an authenticator with every account, for free.
The question, I suppose, is whether or not the presence of the app authenticator constitutes them doing so; since you can't expect every player to have a smart phone capable of running it, or know how to run a mobile emulator to run it on their desktop.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
it's not an item you need to use per character. Its an item that needs to be used by ONE character, once, and then it's unlocked on your whole account. They did it this way so people knew about it better (an item instead of a buff that you may not realize is active)
The thing is, the legality of these clauses has not been tested in court, and some say that it's fairly likely that a judge would call these clauses bullshit.
In regards to this case, it's junk and won't go anywhere. Blizzard sells the authenticators at cost, and have a free version on the OS of the most popular phones. There are also other free measures they have tried as well, such as the phone authentication. It's incredibly clear that Blizzard is not trying to profit off account security.
Anyway, if they're not profiting off the authenticator at all, then yeah; that'll be incredibly easy to show and this will get thrown out fast.
I do think the egg on their face from the realization from players about how bad their security is if you don't have an authenticator should have made them tighten things up.
But as far as I know logging in with just a password still isn't case sensitive and still doesn't actually check all the characters in the password.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
For the individual player who practices good computer security an authenticator may not really be necessary, but for the population at large I'm sure they help
it's hard to tell what the lawsuit is even seeking damages for
ed: man, does bnet do that stupid thing where they let you input a longer password than the system actually checks? just fucking terrible
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Personally, I play an alt because I enjoy the feel of playing a new toolkit, not because I long to re-trace the steps of the character I just played. If that were the case, no one would ever pay for a faction/server transfer, they'd simply re-roll on that faction/server and start fresh. Yes, you can take these grinds at your own pace and no they're not mandatory*, but they do serve as the vast majority of content prior to raids and therefore many people feel compelled to do them. It would just be nice if you didn't have to do that for every character you played thereafter. Late in Wrath they introduced the rep tokens that you could purchase for badges, which was nice because they were account bound (I believe) and you could reap the rewards of your efforts on one character without having to start the grind on another.
Here's hoping they move back in that direction.
*if you're not a hardcore player.
This is the main reason I have alts, I enjoy the variety. Alt-crafting too, but that's to a lesser extent.
Agreed.
In previous expansions, you could go through an entire zone and gain faction rep from actually doing the zone quests, but the rep gains weren't the only reason to do so, you also had gear upgrades and a little pocket change. Did it ever get you all the way to Exalted status? Not that I recall, there may have been a couple here and there, but I had usually moved on to other content or just out-leveled the zone. I never really would have thought this was 'freebie rep' but someone did and the faction rep gains this time around have been drastically reduced while questing.
They've done a lot right, it just feels like he doesn't have the same wants as players and doesn't understand how the majority play the game.
This, but I wouldn't point the finger at Ghostcrawler. He isn't the sole person making all the design choices and decisions. He has an entire team of devs under him, he's just the lead. Yeah though, this is something I feel many times when I see patch notes or changes or whatever. There is a disconnect between the players and the devs, that's for sure. It often feels like the devs are playing an entirely seperate game. One concerned with numbers and functionality. And the rest of us are concerned with "feel" and "fun", as subjective as those are.
I dunno. There's some decisions they make that I don't agree with, and there's some that I do. And all that aside, Ghostcrawler's a smart dude and I have mad respect for him. I don't know how he deals with all the unwarranted shit he gets. I certainly would not be able to do what he does without cracking.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
If their design is that time spent playing alts is best done by repeating every single thing over again then their design is not only antiquated but regressive and is more likely to make a player not roll an alt at all, and quit, than it is to keep players from burning through the content too fast.
Someone asked GC a bit after the launch of MoP about account based reps and his response was basically: "and then what? the game plays itself? " As if that was the next step from preventing players from having to do something mind bogglingly boring over and over again.
But then...they do things like account based achievements/mounts/pet; increase valor points on alts after you cap it on a main, double rep gains on alts, etc.
The roller coaster of figuring out what they fuck they actually want to do with the game is getting exhausting. Every other day reading MMO-Champ is like "Oh shit, that's awesome!" /sleep "Oh shit, that is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever read!" /repeat"
At some point they need to just take down the gates and let players at it. The game has 8 years worth of content, it has more content than a dozen other games combined. I think it's time to let the content stand on its own merits and stop trying to carrot-on-a-stick stuff. New content? Fine, gate it somewhat, but make sure if you're gating it it is done so for a reason, and not just to prevent a few players from burning through it. Old content? remove the gates entirely.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Blizzard is a business. They want to make money. Unfettered access to everything means shorter subscriptions. There's ALREADY players in here whining that all they do is log in for raids 2-3 times a week. There is a fine line between gating too little which leaves players done with everything in a month, and gating too much which lets player see the hamster wheel behind the curtain.
MoP has bad gates like rep grinds for VP, as it leaves players feeling incredibly unaccomplished when hitting a new rep level. But the game has gates that we don't question, like raid lockouts.
Have raiders called for a shorter time for lockouts? Keep in mind that I don't raid, except older content when I'm helping guildies shoot for mounts or mogs or cheevies, and that's a once a month kinda thing.
I've tried Arcane and Fire and they're both fine for instances and whatnot (prefer fire), but for questing the casting times of everything makes my mage just feel so slow. Does Frost have a decent amount of instants that can manage quest stuff or is it just like the rest?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
They're a business with a game with more content than any game in the history of history. That content should be able to stand alone at this point without gating.
Basing how players are handling content based on folks around here is like basing it on the official forums. We're self selected gamers who are more inclined to burn through so much content so fast that it's our own fault if we do so. That's not meant to be blamy on the player, but we're not the rule.
In my alliance guild that is full of people who have families and play 'casually', they only log in 2-3 times a week because that's all the time they have; and there's a ton of content they simply can't see (or achieve within a reasonable timeframe) because of the arbitrary gating around things in this xpack. 1k rep or so a day, max, for golden lotus, and only being able to play a couple times a week means that some of these folks could play for months before they have the opportunity to see Shado-pan or August Celestial stuff; and what if that's what they wanted to see, and not Golden Lotus? By the time they get to where they're going there, we'll have a new patch of content that will just get backed up, gated itself behind other things; and it cascades.
You could argue that if they can only log in so little they're not going to see stuff anyway, but that's not a good answer; they should be able to choose what they see; but when all the content is gated then what? They have to wait in line to play what they want, effectively. Maybe they just want to run instances, and then find after a few weeks of that they have a bunch of VP they can't spend because, oh wait, that's behind reps you don't have time to do; so it's wasted.
And it goes on.
It's not like everything they've done with MoP is bad, a lot of it is great; which I stated. But the blanket defense that "they're a business', after 8 years of excessive amounts of content, is no longer really logical. The game has enough content to stand on its own and be worth the enterance fee. Let players choose what they do after that without arbitrary restrictions.
EDIT: I mean, I have a year of /played and there is still a shitton of stuff I haven't done and want to do. If it were up to me I'd just burn the fuck out of MoP reps asap so I could be free to do those things without the concern of being given each tiny bit of rep piecemeal every day.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I've been Arcane on my mage for what feels like forever and I've developed a real affinity for it, even with the new class adjustments. If you prefer Fire, stick with Fire, Scorch is your friend because you at least get to kite a little.
...and it puts me at 469 instead.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
We already said that the gating in MoP is overkill, so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make your anecdotal evidence. Yes, it's incredibly silly to lock two factions behind another faction. Yes, the rep gains for the factions are two slow (I literally do my dailies every day, and am not even halfway through Revered with the Celestials). Yes, replacing normal rep rewards with VP ones was asking for trouble. This doesn't mean that have normal faction grinds with normal rewards is a bad thing. Most people haven't even cleared Vaults, so there's no reason to release every raid at once.
There's a middleground, and I'm confident they'll find it. It's just a question of when.
Frost still lags behind the others in DPS. It's my secondary questing spec for crowd control and occasional use when I get bored with Arcane, but I would not make it my primary. Arcane still rules the day.
Or this pic shall tell the story
Holy fuck.
Just.... Holy. Fuck.
Blizzard has come a long, long way from vanilla WoW.
Was me and gratz.
Thank you good sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar.
I decided to level my Mage as Frost. I was pleasantly surprised. Frost has a good number of instants (Ice Lance, Frostfire Bolt), great AoE and 2-target Cleave (Frozen Orb, Glyphed Ice Lance), great burst, and has crazy good control. Things died at a good rate. Setting up Shatters with Deep Freeze cuts through mobs like a knife through hot butter. And of course, having your main nuke be a slow doesn't hurt at all.
So for reference, I found a rare (Omnis Grinlok) that came with 5 patrolling mobs. I ended up living on about 1500 health for nearly 3 minutes. No, not a typo, 1500 health. My Evocate had gotten interrupted (glyphed, for the heal) so I had to kite the shit out of this dude til it came off cooldown. Ice Barrier is a godsend, and I was extremely fortunate that he ended up targeting my Water Elemental (or Mirror Images) for most of his attacks instead of me. But yeah, I alternated Frost Nova and the pet Freeze, used Deep Freeze on CD, and just didn't let him touch me at all. Killing the 5 patrolling mobs was the hard part, but they went down fast thanks to Frozen Orb and Frost Bomb.
I tried leveling as Fire for a bit. Honestly I found things died slower that way. Fire has a bit too much ramp up and is too rng dependent for leveling, in my opinion. Maybe it's because I lacked the control of Frost, or what. Either way, Frost is actually pretty good. I just hit 90 last night, and I'm pulling like 40k+ in my crappy ass gear. 80-90k for AoE/Trash packs. It's a very fun spec! I seriously recommend people try it. Not only is it viable, but it's actually competitive dps.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Also I would say that frost still holds the best leveling spec as you have all sorts of mob freezing abilities for the multiple mob pulls.
Unfortunately the first piece was Gloves and I have Crafted ones that are equalish in stats, So I spent a coin and won the same pair of gloves again
I suppose it's some Sha Crystals, but I don't have any enchants that need them yet so it feels a bit of a waste to DE epics when I have tonnes of blue items left still.
I mean, I can understand their approach to some things and I'll even grudgingly accept their retarded "we didn't really mean to give you 100% movement speed while dead for an expansion, that's a totally broken advantage" rationale, but good fucking christ, WHY remove the sole means of accessing some of the content they themselves created? So, now I've had to take a spirit rez, or more accurately a "afk for ten minutes" rez, effectively nullifying the gold I got from doing those dailies in the first place! And to top it off, I'm so weak I can't even fight off the little nuisance asshole things that spawn on my crops until the sickness is done.
Really, fuck those devs for some of these decisions. Right in their eye sockets.
Of course that begs the question of why rez sickness still exist. I guess theoretically players could spirit rez and Zerg world bosses, but since that's certainly not Blizzards concern, why not remove it? It's pretty much always the less convenient option and doesn't also dump an increased durability damage on you as well?
Except he's melee, and my elemental shaman is ranged. Damn it.
I saw there's a Shado-Pan meta...yeah, whatever. When I've gotta get a melee character through one set without taking a hit, eh, no thanks. And besides, that meta also requires a Gold in challenge-mode Shado-Pan Monastery.