Bill Roper and his cronies that left to form Flagship were a large portion of the people who left Blizzard that you are talking about. And Hellgate London was a travesty. Somehow I think Blizzard will continue to do just fine without these people.
Those were also the majority of the original design team that made Vanilla WoW, and I know I'm not the only one that misses the original WoW and thinks that the game really took a turn for the worse with TBC and subsequently with WotLK. At the same time I can recognize that Hellgate:London was terrible, but I think a lot of that can be boiled down to running out of time, money and lacking clear direction, which is a problem that Blizzard surely doesn't have.
I don't have a lot of confidence in a game designed primarily by a guy like Jeff Kaplan.
Wow people miss Vanilla Wow, land of grinding on mobs to level and 8 hour raiding nights 6 days a week, and the SERIOUS BUSINESS guild leaders?
Personally I'm willing to see what this mystery project is, since Kaplan has done an excellent job in the past (to me).
I've heard people say that WoW was grindy at launch but I didn't ever grind from what I can remember.
Levels, that is. Everything else was grindtastic.
Exactly the point. People who look on Vanilla with fondness were those who weren't at 60 for long before TBC came out; I'm 99% certain of this.
I was at 60 for months and it was the grindiest shit ever. Once you hit the level cap in vanilla you went from being able to screw around and having fun to having the only option for character advancement being horribly long rep grinds, horribly long 5man grinds for shitty gear, horribly long raid grinds in terribly-designed raid instances for only slightly less shitty gear (which you had to grind resist gear for, so you had to grind in order to grind*), or a horribly long PVP grind that if you ever took a break from you had to restart from square one. You couldn't even quest for gold because there were no dailies and the Quest EXP to Gold At Level Cap conversion wasn't put in for a damn long time, meaning until that change 99% of quests gave maybe 80 silver as a monetary reward.
The reason that WoW has been successful is that it places most of the grind content at the level cap instead of during the leveling process, so people just starting the game can see they're visibly achieving something instead of getting stuck at level whatever, getting frustrated, and quitting. By the time they've actually gotten to the real grind, the game has gotten its claws into them.
EDIT/FOOTNOTE: Sup dawg, I heard you like grinds so I put resist checks in your raid instances so you can grind while you grind!
Also, just to clear up the myth, Bill Roper's dev team was from Blizzard North, the team most notable for their work on the Diablo series.
They did not develop world of warcraft. At most they contributed voice work and some code monkeys, but the WoW dev team was a completely seperate entity.
I liked grinding in WoW, it gave me an excuse to listen for hours upon hours of NPR and other public radio podcasts, while I worked on reps. I find it amazing how Blizzard could create a game where people didn't mind running in place on a cage wheel for hours on end.
Vanilla WoW sucked hardcore, btw. For the handful of raiders that were able to run the 40man content, the challenge of taking down a tough boss could be an exhilarating experience, especially if you have a good guild. However, the vast majority of players were stuck doing five mans for crappy blues, creating endless alts, and trying to compete in the horribly implemented PvP system where you had to play 16 hour days for months just to get epics.
A system where the top 5-10% of the population gets all the reward, while the bottom 90% live on breadcrumbs is not sustainable...much like how the distribution of wealth in this country isn't sustainable, but politics should be discussed in another thread.
Except not everything is accessible for everyone. Malygos and Sarth 3D are significantly less noob-friendly than Naxx. Plus we're talking about the first releases of 80 content here, new instances of increasing difficulty will come out and divide the community into ranks just as they always have.
I don't understand why people are so put out over the very first raid instance of the expansion being easy.
Yeah, I'm not sure where this love of Vanilla WoW is coming from. But then again, it's probably the difference between "casual" and "hardcore" once again. Some people just can't enjoy an MMO unless it's constantly kicking them in the balls or allows them to kick others in the balls.
WotLK is so much better executed than vanilla WoW because everything is a choice. I don't know where you're getting this "rep grinds are mandatory" stuff. I play on both PvE and PvP servers. On my PvE server, I'm at the second highest rep level with 2 factions and exalted with the others. I only ever did dailies for one faction, and got exalted/revered with the other just by running dungeons and doing regular quests - stuff that I liked doing anyway.
Then on my PvP server where most of my friends play, it was like:
Me: Ding! 80!
Guildies: Here's your Titansteel Destroyer. Time for Naxx!
Most of the factions are still neutral to me on that server and fuck 'em. There's nothing they have that I need for entry level raiding that can't be crafted/won through PvP/found in heroics. There's like 4 ways to do anything in Wrath and I, for one, think it's fantastic.
Maybe Blizzard's new MMO will have those "hardcore" mechanics like death penalties, forced grouping, sanctioned griefing, etc. that the more hardcore players seem to enjoy. Like Blizzard saying, "If you want an easy, relaxing game that you can dick around in with your friends and still progress, play WoW. If you want the exhilaration of winning in a game world with consequences, then play this new game!"
Also, why does the fact that you get a bear in the mail make city raids in Wrath less significant or meaningful than city raids in vanilla?
Tell me, how many of you ran all the 80 dungeons on non-heroic?
Have you even bothered to run them all on heroic (I have not).
There is more bloody content in there that is utterly wasted by removing the need for them. To gear up I get my puplez crafted weapon, a piece of honour gear, a WG piece of PvP gear, and wander through naxx 5 times with some VoA for shits and giggles.
I don't mind naxx being easy as much as I despise the weakness of the instance content, and the lack of motivation to do it.
Naxx was too easy because it is doable in excessively poor gear, which leads to no time spent gearing up, which speeds progression to a point of general frustration. It was a bad decision, and lead to something as absurd as ensidia completing all content within the 4 days or whatever. If the tank had needed a few heroic drops and pieces of badge gear to take patch hits - then it would have been a much better progression curve.
Personally I prefered the 'release, race, nerf + release new, race, nerf' structure.
Yeah, I'm not sure where this love of Vanilla WoW is coming from. But then again, it's probably the difference between "casual" and "hardcore" once again. Some people just can't enjoy an MMO unless it's constantly kicking them in the balls or allows them to kick others in the balls.
WotLK is so much better executed than vanilla WoW because everything is a choice. I don't know where you're getting this "rep grinds are mandatory" stuff. I play on both PvE and PvP servers. On my PvE server, I'm at the second highest rep level with 2 factions and exalted with the others. I only ever did dailies for one faction, and got exalted/revered with the other just by running dungeons and doing regular quests - stuff that I liked doing anyway.
Then on my PvP server where most of my friends play, it was like:
Me: Ding! 80!
Guildies: Here's your Titansteel Destroyer. Time for Naxx!
Most of the factions are still neutral to me on that server and fuck 'em. There's nothing they have that I need for entry level raiding that can't be crafted/won through PvP/found in heroics. There's like 4 ways to do anything in Wrath and I, for one, think it's fantastic.
Maybe Blizzard's new MMO will have those "hardcore" mechanics like death penalties, forced grouping, sanctioned griefing, etc. that the more hardcore players seem to enjoy. Like Blizzard saying, "If you want an easy, relaxing game that you can dick around in with your friends and still progress, play WoW. If you want the exhilaration of winning in a game world with consequences, then play this new game!"
Also, why does the fact that you get a bear in the mail make city raids in Wrath less significant or meaningful than city raids in vanilla?
I am the only one that wants that type of mmo? I liked to fear death,it felt less like grinding and more like...fighting for your survival.
Yeah, I would guess that that's early concept art for Starcraft 2, and not some kind of MMO project
I think Blizzard would be above shilling off another franchise to the MMO market.
oh god please don't let me eat my words
Gee, after shilling off Warcraft which resulted in over ten MILLION subscriptions reculting in several BILLION dollars in revenue, my question would be why wouldn't they do Starcraft Online?
Fire up the grill and get the A-1, baby, we're having grilled words tonight!
Seriously. If I liked PvP more than I do (and I really don't), I would be playing WAR instead of WoW right now. I had more fun in WAR PvP than in any other PvP system in any other MMO.
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Tell me, how many of you ran all the 80 dungeons on non-heroic?
Have you even bothered to run them all on heroic (I have not).
There is more bloody content in there that is utterly wasted by removing the need for them. To gear up I get my puplez crafted weapon, a piece of honour gear, a WG piece of PvP gear, and wander through naxx 5 times with some VoA for shits and giggles.
I don't mind naxx being easy as much as I despise the weakness of the instance content, and the lack of motivation to do it.
Naxx was too easy because it is doable in excessively poor gear, which leads to no time spent gearing up, which speeds progression to a point of general frustration. It was a bad decision, and lead to something as absurd as ensidia completing all content within the 4 days or whatever. If the tank had needed a few heroic drops and pieces of badge gear to take patch hits - then it would have been a much better progression curve.
Personally I prefered the 'release, race, nerf + release new, race, nerf' structure.
I don't think it's wasted so much as it's giving people options. On my PvE character, hell yeah I ran every Northrend dungeon. Heroic and non - because I wanted to gear up that way for that character.
On my PvP server, the class I play there I think is more fun in PvP so I geared him up with Wintersgrasp shoulder/head enchants, and Savage/Hateful Gladiator gear and a crafted weapon. Optimal for PvE? No. Sufficient? Yes.
My guild isn't that great at raiding, so if Ulduar came out guild-shatteringly difficult like Sunwell, we simply wouldn't be able to do that. With Ulduar, with 10 bosses having optional hard modes, we can right away get into new content on easy mode and progress at our leisure. Meanwhile, the 1337 guilds can go for hardcore achievements and lewtz without limiting my casual guild's options.
Sad to say, I hated it. It had its moments, and the pvp was occasionally fun when it happened, but I couldn't make it past a month. The game relies too much on an active population for both sides, which wasn't there when I was playing. I would have been able to get over that if the way the game actually played was any good. I've heard they've done some good things to it
I think the vanilla wow hate here just further illustrates what a good job Blizzard did in making a big fluffy curtain to cover the grind that exists in wow now.
The WoW grind today is far worse than it ever was because it touches every part of the game. Nothing is grind free and nothing happens spontaneously in the game anymore, which is what I miss from the vanilla days.
The quests themselves are generally better, so the leveling from 70-80 is a pretty great experience, but once I got to 80 I realized I was doing the exact same thing that I was doing at 60 and at 70, except if felt even more like a job. At 60 when I logged on, if I wasn't raiding I could go and do whatever I wanted. , I could start a battle in southshore, I could find people willing to do casual 5 mans for fun and money, when battle grounds were released I could join for a few casual rounds of WSG or go for a huge epic 7 hour AV etc.
Now when I log on everything has a structure of grinding related to it. Large scale world pvp has evaporated unless it was for world pvp objectives. After which people just left once they got what they needed. People don't do 5 mans unless they're for reputation that they need, you can't do battlegrounds without being forced to grind for pvp gear in order to be competitive or to even really contribute depending on your class, etc. Even reputation grinding can't be done at your convenience anymore. Instead you have to make sure you log in to do your dailies or else you've wasted a day. How many times have you been online and seen someone log in for 45 minutes to do their dailies? That's like doing a chore to me.
YMMV but when I logged on once I hit 80 I felt like I had to log on every day and devote x number of hours to grinding or it was a waste of a day.
The one thing I will say I liked was making some of the raid dungeons more accessible everyone deserves to be able to access the content they paid for, although I do think it cheapens the epic when more people have more epics than people have blues, greens, and white items combined.
The thing is blizzard did nothing to halt the spontaneous activity you describe (except nerf AV to be faster). All that happened was people got tired of those things- the novelty wore off- so there were far fewer people doing those things spontaneously.
And you're bitching about dailies and rep in 5mans? Jesus, dailies are a far better system than the endless rep grind system that was in place in Vanilla. Did you ever grind rep for Cenarion Circle? Did you ever grind rep with Argent Dawn? Timbermaw Hold? All of those things were awful. And the 5man rep was horrible. Right now you can get 3k a run; in vanilla you were lucky to get maybe 500. And I'm not sure where you're getting that people are only running 5mans for rep now; the reps are so optional that I'm pretty sure 99% of the population just throws on a tabard and runs 5mans until they ding exalted, then throws on a different one.
Seriously, what you're describing sounds more like how the game was in TBC, not WoTLK.
I don't think the problem is with the game, I think the problem is that you're just burned out on it. Which is fine, but you don't need to go angsting all over the forums about it.
I think the vanilla wow hate here just further illustrates what a good job Blizzard did in making a big fluffy curtain to cover the grind that exists in wow now.
The WoW grind today is far worse than it ever was because it touches every part of the game. Nothing is grind free and nothing happens spontaneously in the game anymore, which is what I miss from the vanilla days.
The quests themselves are generally better, so the leveling from 70-80 is a pretty great experience, but once I got to 80 I realized I was doing the exact same thing that I was doing at 60 and at 70, except if felt even more like a job. At 60 when I logged on, if I wasn't raiding I could go and do whatever I wanted. , I could start a battle in southshore, I could find people willing to do casual 5 mans for fun and money, when battle grounds were released I could join for a few casual rounds of WSG or go for a huge epic 7 hour AV etc.
Now when I log on everything has a structure of grinding related to it. Large scale world pvp has evaporated unless it was for world pvp objectives. After which people just left once they got what they needed. People don't do 5 mans unless they're for reputation that they need, you can't do battlegrounds without being forced to grind for pvp gear in order to be competitive or to even really contribute depending on your class, etc. Even reputation grinding can't be done at your convenience anymore. Instead you have to make sure you log in to do your dailies or else you've wasted a day. How many times have you been online and seen someone log in for 45 minutes to do their dailies? That's like doing a chore to me.
YMMV but when I logged on once I hit 80 I felt like I had to log on every day and devote x number of hours to grinding or it was a waste of a day.
The one thing I will say I liked was making some of the raid dungeons more accessible everyone deserves to be able to access the content they paid for, although I do think it cheapens the epic when more people have more epics than people have blues, greens, and white items combined.
I think you just don't like WoW. I do, as do a few million other people, and so I would say that Blizzard is doing something right.
There's no such thing as the perfect game to appeal to everyone, but I think WoW does an excellent job in significantly reducing the amount of grind in their game as compared to every other MMORPG on the market, and what grinding they do have isn't completely unpalatable, especially in WoLK.
The only way to completely remove grind is to remove any sort of levelling system, and then you just have a multiplayer FPS. One without unlocks, I might add, meaning no BF2/2142 or TF2.
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
The thing is blizzard did nothing to halt the spontaneous activity you describe (except nerf AV to be faster). All that happened was people got tired of those things- the novelty wore off- so there were far fewer people doing those things spontaneously.
And you're bitching about dailies and rep in 5mans? Jesus, dailies are a far better system than the endless rep grind system that was in place in Vanilla. Did you ever grind rep for Cenarion Circle? Did you ever grind rep with Argent Dawn? Timbermaw Hold? All of those things were awful. And the 5man rep was horrible. Right now you can get 3k a run; in vanilla you were lucky to get maybe 500. And I'm not sure where you're getting that people are only running 5mans for rep now; the reps are so optional that I'm pretty sure 99% of the population just throws on a tabard and runs 5mans until they ding exalted, then throws on a different one.
Seriously, what you're describing sounds more like how the game was in TBC, not WoTLK.
I don't think the problem is with the game, I think the problem is that you're just burned out on it. Which is fine, but you don't need to go angsting all over the forums about it.
I don't think people got tired of it, I think that blizzard just put in a system of stuff that you feel you have to do in almost every other part of the game. It's not that people don't want to do that stuff, or that it isn't fun, it's just people are too busy doing their dailies and rep grinds.
I didn't grind those reps before because they were basically worthless for me. I had no reason to grind them. But now I simply have nothing else to do when I log on but grind rep for different factions because no one's doing anything else but that. I agree that TBC was worse than WotLK with a lot of this, but can you honestly think of anything they've added to the game in the last 4 years that isn't just another type of grind, or adding a grind onto a system that was already in place (specifically pvp)? Admittedly what you DO for those grinds is more interesting than it was, but it's still the same old grind fest.
This whole thing started when I said that I preferred vanilla wow over what it's become, and vanilla was called the big grindfest, when I clearly see it to be the opposite. There was always a grind, but there's far more to grind now than there was then. It's just now there feels like there's 20 things that you can easily grind, when back then there was maybe half that that took more time to grind. I feel grind time has gone up, it's just been spread over a larger pallet and you have to spread it out over days/weeks because of dailies and instance lockouts. Heck when the game launched I can't even think of any reps that anyone would grind except maybe hydraxian. The dailies that you're lauding are effectively the same thing as the repeatable quest grinds from back in vanilla except you can only do the dailies once a day. So while if you wanted to spend 2 hours grinding rep in vanilla you could do it all at once, now you have to spread that over 5 days. It's the same system, it's just designed to keep you paying subscription fees longer.
You're right about me burning out on it, it's almost a shame that it's still probably the best MMO on the market though, despite its flaws. So I hope that their new mmo follows a completely different path than WoW, with the same attention to detail and quality of gameplay of course.
I think the vanilla wow hate here just further illustrates what a good job Blizzard did in making a big fluffy curtain to cover the grind that exists in wow now.
The WoW grind today is far worse than it ever was because it touches every part of the game. Nothing is grind free and nothing happens spontaneously in the game anymore, which is what I miss from the vanilla days.
The quests themselves are generally better, so the leveling from 70-80 is a pretty great experience, but once I got to 80 I realized I was doing the exact same thing that I was doing at 60 and at 70, except if felt even more like a job. At 60 when I logged on, if I wasn't raiding I could go and do whatever I wanted. , I could start a battle in southshore, I could find people willing to do casual 5 mans for fun and money, when battle grounds were released I could join for a few casual rounds of WSG or go for a huge epic 7 hour AV etc.
Now when I log on everything has a structure of grinding related to it. Large scale world pvp has evaporated unless it was for world pvp objectives. After which people just left once they got what they needed. People don't do 5 mans unless they're for reputation that they need, you can't do battlegrounds without being forced to grind for pvp gear in order to be competitive or to even really contribute depending on your class, etc. Even reputation grinding can't be done at your convenience anymore. Instead you have to make sure you log in to do your dailies or else you've wasted a day. How many times have you been online and seen someone log in for 45 minutes to do their dailies? That's like doing a chore to me.
YMMV but when I logged on once I hit 80 I felt like I had to log on every day and devote x number of hours to grinding or it was a waste of a day.
The one thing I will say I liked was making some of the raid dungeons more accessible everyone deserves to be able to access the content they paid for, although I do think it cheapens the epic when more people have more epics than people have blues, greens, and white items combined.
I think you just don't like WoW. I do, as do a few million other people, and so I would say that Blizzard is doing something right.
There's no such thing as the perfect game to appeal to everyone, but I think WoW does an excellent job in significantly reducing the amount of grind in their game as compared to every other MMORPG on the market, and what grinding they do have isn't completely unpalatable, especially in WoLK.
The only way to completely remove grind is to remove any sort of levelling system, and then you just have a multiplayer FPS. One without unlocks, I might add, meaning no BF2/2142 or TF2.
I agree in general, but it's just like what I was saying before, I really don't think the grind has lessened, just spread out over a much larger number of things. I hardly ever did any grinding at 60 in vanilla and I was in the top raiding guild horde side on the server. I unsubbed after I hit 70 with TBC because I felt that they really went in a different direction with the game, but I resubbed for WotLK and leveling was a ton of fun, but at 80 I found myself grinding a lot more than I ever did at 60. So maybe I'm just an anomaly?
My guess is that since you were in a top guild you were able to get carried past a lot of the grinding (no offense) and didn't have to deal with it. Grinding fire resistance gear for molten core/BWL was horrific, dealing with the rep grind for AQ20/40 was horrific if you couldn't consistently fully clear both raids. Basically if you were able to hit 60 and jump right into raiding past BWL, then no you wouldn't have any problem with grinding because the biggest grinds in the game were getting to that point; once you had solid BWL gear you were set, and if 95% of your raid already was geared with BWL/FR gear then you could probably skip grinding more for the last 5% because you'd have been able to just heal through the extra damage with better gear.
Then that didn't happen in TBC because you were playing it from the start instead of jumping into an already-successful raid guild.
(The above is just me guessing. You may very well have been in a different situation.)
I mean, if you really think the grind in WoTLK is that awful, this game isn't for you. There has never been less intensive grinding in the game. Yes, there's still reps and shit, but you don't even have to put any effort into getting half of them. The one exception is Sons of Hodir, and you don't even need exalted with them- the honored-level enchants are just as good.
Eh, I started with FFXI. Final Fantasy XI was my first MMO. My views are skewed as fuck. I don't think WoW is all that grindy, and certainly not any less so now than in Vanilla.
My guess is that since you were in a top guild you were able to get carried past a lot of the grinding (no offense) and didn't have to deal with it. Grinding fire resistance gear for molten core/BWL was horrific, dealing with the rep grind for AQ20/40 was horrific if you couldn't consistently fully clear both raids. Basically if you were able to hit 60 and jump right into raiding past BWL, then no you wouldn't have any problem with grinding because the biggest grinds in the game were getting to that point; once you had solid BWL gear you were set, and if 95% of your raid already was geared with BWL/FR gear then you could probably skip grinding more for the last 5% because you'd have been able to just heal through the extra damage with better gear.
Then that didn't happen in TBC because you were playing it from the start instead of jumping into an already-successful raid guild.
(The above is just me guessing. You may very well have been in a different situation.)
I mean, if you really think the grind in WoTLK is that awful, this game isn't for you. There has never been less intensive grinding in the game. Yes, there's still reps and shit, but you don't even have to put any effort into getting half of them. The one exception is Sons of Hodir, and you don't even need exalted with them- the honored-level enchants are just as good.
Yeah, I was with the guild from the start, so we had to farm FR gear, and NR gear for AQ, and all that stuff. It was annoying, particularly the AQ stuff, the rest wasn't so bad or anything. That's one thing I'm glad they did away with. But I'm not really talking as much about raid-prep grinding. That still kind of happens now, it's just different and not as required (ie-grinding heroics for epics that make things easier but aren't required). I'm more talking about the rest of the stuff in the game. Specifically, I think, for me the big thing they ruined was PVP. They made it so you had to choose between spending your time doing pvp or pve. You couldn't grind both unless you've got a LOT of free time. I think pvp is its own reward, I don't see why they had to add in a system where those who pvped more got gear that made pvp easier for them.
I also think you're misunderstanding me, I don't think WoW's a terrible game now, I just think it's kind of like a run away train and its gotten out of control. The game's still a lot of fun because the core mechanics of the game and the way it plays is still solid. But they've added the carrot and stick to almost every facet of the game under the guise of it being 'more content', and that doesn't appeal to me. And I do think you're putting as much effort into the grind now as you did then, it just doesn't seem like it because instead of doing the same boring turn in quest 30 times in one day, you're doing the same boring turn-in quest once a day for 30 days.
I can't say any of the reps took as long as oldworld ones, even with dailies factored in, and factoring the fact that even when I peaked a month or so after WoTLK came out I was still missing at least 3 days a week. I'm exalted with practically everything and at no point did I ever stop and make an effort to grind with only one exception, and even that exception wasn't nearly as bad as cenarion circle... jesus, Cenarion Circle was horrifying.
And really, if you're complaining about resilience, it was needed. Nothing was worse than going into PVP and getting one-shot left and right because the only viable PVP spec for half the classes was the one that enabled you to oneshot people. Remember 3 minute mages?
I'm not advocating you jump right back into the game and forget all your issues with it. At their core MMOs rely on a fairly repetitive gameplay structure: they need you to play for a long period of time, and unless they vomit forth an endless stream of content (which would take a hell of a lot more developer output than Blizzard is known for), they can't purely rely on grindless content. But WoW is very low on grind relative to other MMOs and WoTLK is the least grindy expansion yet; if you can't handle the grinds in WoTLK I'm going to up and say you're not going to be satisfied with WoW or any other MMO on the market now.
Yeah, I'm not sure where this love of Vanilla WoW is coming from. But then again, it's probably the difference between "casual" and "hardcore" once again. Some people just can't enjoy an MMO unless it's constantly kicking them in the balls or allows them to kick others in the balls.
WotLK is so much better executed than vanilla WoW because everything is a choice. I don't know where you're getting this "rep grinds are mandatory" stuff. I play on both PvE and PvP servers. On my PvE server, I'm at the second highest rep level with 2 factions and exalted with the others. I only ever did dailies for one faction, and got exalted/revered with the other just by running dungeons and doing regular quests - stuff that I liked doing anyway.
Then on my PvP server where most of my friends play, it was like:
Me: Ding! 80!
Guildies: Here's your Titansteel Destroyer. Time for Naxx!
Most of the factions are still neutral to me on that server and fuck 'em. There's nothing they have that I need for entry level raiding that can't be crafted/won through PvP/found in heroics. There's like 4 ways to do anything in Wrath and I, for one, think it's fantastic.
Maybe Blizzard's new MMO will have those "hardcore" mechanics like death penalties, forced grouping, sanctioned griefing, etc. that the more hardcore players seem to enjoy. Like Blizzard saying, "If you want an easy, relaxing game that you can dick around in with your friends and still progress, play WoW. If you want the exhilaration of winning in a game world with consequences, then play this new game!"
Also, why does the fact that you get a bear in the mail make city raids in Wrath less significant or meaningful than city raids in vanilla?
I am the only one that wants that type of mmo? I liked to fear death,it felt less like grinding and more like...fighting for your survival.
I absolutely want an MMO with relatively harsh death penalties and allowed griefing.
The problem is that death penalties are so unpopular, not alot of design thought is put into them, so we get bullshit like Vanguard with corpse recovery.
Then, grieving is typically exploiting flawed systems, rather than designed systems that were intended to allow grieving.
In fact... one of the reasons I was so hooked on Xenimus(http://xenimus.com/) in my youth is because it had sensible death penalties and grieving... and the dungeons were designed heavily in the tone of making grieving possible, but something you really had to work for to do.
As for Blizzard... I don't think it's design process. I think it's knowing what hooks Evercrack addicts and designing those systems under the guise of something better.
Getting one shot sucked, but resilience was a pretty backwards way of doing it. Remember when they increased stamina by huge amounts? Why did they make weapon and spell damage scale at the same rate? Since weapons and magic power have scaled at nearly the same rate, all it means is that those without resilience are still getting killed in seconds by those who don't. Meaning they've put in an unnecessary grind to get gear in order to be competitive where there didn't used to be one. If they stopped at increasing stamina by that huge amount and didn't scale weapon and magic damage to max resilience wouldn't need to exist. But then they wouldn't have a carrot to dangle in front of PVPers.
And no, none of the reps individually take more than the old world ones, I agree, but they got around that by putting in so many MORE reps to grind.
At launch there was one rep worth raising, hydraxian waterlords, and that was only IF you planned on running MC, and most people weren't ready to do that for a long while. Then they slowly added in more.
The grind for PVP gear to start out in was bad in TBC, true, but again they learned from mistake and now there are craftable sets which are cheap to make and more than enough to start PVPing in; I use them and they work fine.
I also don't see how there's so many more reps than before. There's 5 which you barely have to do anything to grind; 2 which are mutually exclusive and purely optional; 3 which have no rewards whatsoever and exist purely to act as subfactions for one of the first 5; and then one rep which you actually have to put some effort into getting and has some necessary items- Sons of Hodir. That's it. You can get exalted for the first 5 just gearing up in heroics and leveling to 80 without even putting any effort into them, the optional ones are optional, and only sons of hodir requires any effort and it is laughably easy compared to the vanilla stuff.
And most of the nightmarish rep grinds were added in between the release of BWL and the release of Naxx, when vanilla raiding was in fullswing. But even then, you seemed to have forgotten about Timbermaw Hold and the Argent Dawn, which had some necessary crafting patterns at exalted and were a nightmare to grind.
Getting one shot sucked, but resilience was a pretty backwards way of doing it. Remember when they increased stamina by huge amounts? Why did they make weapon and spell damage scale at the same rate? Since weapons and magic power have scaled at nearly the same rate, all it means is that those without resilience are still getting killed in seconds by those who don't. Meaning they've put in an unnecessary grind to get gear in order to be competitive where there didn't used to be one. If they stopped at increasing stamina by that huge amount and didn't scale weapon and magic damage to max resilience wouldn't need to exist. But then they wouldn't have a carrot to dangle in front of PVPers.
And no, none of the reps individually take more than the old world ones, I agree, but they got around that by putting in so many MORE reps to grind.
At launch there was one rep worth raising, hydraxian waterlords, and that was only IF you planned on running MC, and most people weren't ready to do that for a long while. Then they slowly added in more.
How come every single one of your complaints boils down to, "I am unhappy that they added things to this game?"
They add gear for pvp, you complain about the requirement of getting said gear. They add quests you can repeat every day, you complain both about being required to do these quests and also not being able to the quests more than once per day (if they were infinitely repeatable, you'd complain "everybody just grinds the same quest over and over again"). You complain when people log in for a short time to do a daily quest, and if they weren't there you'd complain about the lack of something to do if you only had a short time to play. You complain about rewarding players in general, regardless of what it is they're doing. You complain that they've added PURPOSE to activities that were, in the past, purposeless, and for some reason this translates into your mind as forcing you to perform that activity and you feel compelled to rebel.
Everything you complain about is an addition to the game, not a change. You can still play the game the same damn way you always have. You can ignore all the reps, you can delete your War Bear, you can never purchase pvp gear, you can never raid. WotLK is not a requirement.
Or, you can go on a long-winded crusade on an internet forum about how the game is breaking into your house and shoving reputation grinds up your ass.
Additionally, I find the argument that the company is trying to force people to play their game as long as psosible to be laughable. Producers of entertainment aiming to make their product as entertaining as possible? WHAT FIENDS!
The issue isn't just "Naxx and all current content is too easy." It's an issue, but it's one nobody would care about if we weren't 6 months out since the expansion launched with no new content. My old guild was top 5 on our server I believe and they had cleared all the content in 5 weeks from launch. Sure, they didn't get 3d and the other hard modes for a couple months later, but frankly nobody is really going to give a shit about that crap until they get better gear for it.
Which they will in Ulduar, so I guess my main point here is that Blizzard should update more than once every 6 god damn months*
yes I know they do other smaller patches.
Arkady on
LoL: failboattootoot
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited April 2009
Humor me a moment guys.
Who here thinks that, eventually, Blizzard will make some kind of Starcraft MMO?
I do. I think its only a matter of time.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
We'll know for sure when they're done with Starcraft 2 and its expansions, they'll prep the storyline for an MMO. I expect the Zerg to take over from the undead Scourge as the big bad enemy.
Tell me, how many of you ran all the 80 dungeons on non-heroic?
Have you even bothered to run them all on heroic (I have not).
There is more bloody content in there that is utterly wasted by removing the need for them. To gear up I get my puplez crafted weapon, a piece of honour gear, a WG piece of PvP gear, and wander through naxx 5 times with some VoA for shits and giggles.
I don't mind naxx being easy as much as I despise the weakness of the instance content, and the lack of motivation to do it.
Naxx was too easy because it is doable in excessively poor gear, which leads to no time spent gearing up, which speeds progression to a point of general frustration. It was a bad decision, and lead to something as absurd as ensidia completing all content within the 4 days or whatever. If the tank had needed a few heroic drops and pieces of badge gear to take patch hits - then it would have been a much better progression curve.
Personally I prefered the 'release, race, nerf + release new, race, nerf' structure.
I don't think it's wasted so much as it's giving people options. On my PvE character, hell yeah I ran every Northrend dungeon. Heroic and non - because I wanted to gear up that way for that character.
On my PvP server, the class I play there I think is more fun in PvP so I geared him up with Wintersgrasp shoulder/head enchants, and Savage/Hateful Gladiator gear and a crafted weapon. Optimal for PvE? No. Sufficient? Yes.
My guild isn't that great at raiding, so if Ulduar came out guild-shatteringly difficult like Sunwell, we simply wouldn't be able to do that. With Ulduar, with 10 bosses having optional hard modes, we can right away get into new content on easy mode and progress at our leisure. Meanwhile, the 1337 guilds can go for hardcore achievements and lewtz without limiting my casual guild's options.
Choices, man! It's all about choices!
PvP gearing up is fine. I am entirely happy with the PvP system, gearing especially, or at least as happy as a shadow priest can be with PvP after s2.....
You ran heroics and normals to gear up? Yet every alt I've seen has just blitzed through the current raid content and geared up easy mode. Where is the challenge in that? Where is the excitement?
I remember running heroic weekends, 8-10 instances, maybe one piece of gear and some badges just to get good enough to go into kara. Course it got nerfed, but I was proud to clear it the first time. Who felt like that about naxx (or even any of the current heroics)? I needed to feel stretched in order to work harder for gear. I don't care about gear except in as far as it kept me alive and worked towards boss kills. When everything except hard mode sarth is pointlessly afk'able I simply have no motivation or interest in epix.
I really don't like achievements in general, and whilst I do think sarth 3-D is a good fight it was not enough challenge for the release. I also cba to work like a bastard for 1 fight. Just do him with 1-2 adds and clear all content in a night. Not good.
Edit, for clarity, never actually done it all in one night. Was being hyperbolic. But a night and a half is easily done.
from a financial standpoint, releasing Starcraft: The MMO once Starcraft 2 and its expansions have been on the market for some time would probably be a great idea...
By then, WoW should have fizzled out further, and the starcraft franchise would be fully revived.
and bam, Worlds of Starcraft release and blizzard becomes richer than god
Posts
Levels, that is. Everything else was grindtastic.
Exactly the point. People who look on Vanilla with fondness were those who weren't at 60 for long before TBC came out; I'm 99% certain of this.
I was at 60 for months and it was the grindiest shit ever. Once you hit the level cap in vanilla you went from being able to screw around and having fun to having the only option for character advancement being horribly long rep grinds, horribly long 5man grinds for shitty gear, horribly long raid grinds in terribly-designed raid instances for only slightly less shitty gear (which you had to grind resist gear for, so you had to grind in order to grind*), or a horribly long PVP grind that if you ever took a break from you had to restart from square one. You couldn't even quest for gold because there were no dailies and the Quest EXP to Gold At Level Cap conversion wasn't put in for a damn long time, meaning until that change 99% of quests gave maybe 80 silver as a monetary reward.
The reason that WoW has been successful is that it places most of the grind content at the level cap instead of during the leveling process, so people just starting the game can see they're visibly achieving something instead of getting stuck at level whatever, getting frustrated, and quitting. By the time they've actually gotten to the real grind, the game has gotten its claws into them.
EDIT/FOOTNOTE: Sup dawg, I heard you like grinds so I put resist checks in your raid instances so you can grind while you grind!
Relative to what it is now.
They did not develop world of warcraft. At most they contributed voice work and some code monkeys, but the WoW dev team was a completely seperate entity.
Vanilla WoW sucked hardcore, btw. For the handful of raiders that were able to run the 40man content, the challenge of taking down a tough boss could be an exhilarating experience, especially if you have a good guild. However, the vast majority of players were stuck doing five mans for crappy blues, creating endless alts, and trying to compete in the horribly implemented PvP system where you had to play 16 hour days for months just to get epics.
A system where the top 5-10% of the population gets all the reward, while the bottom 90% live on breadcrumbs is not sustainable...much like how the distribution of wealth in this country isn't sustainable, but politics should be discussed in another thread.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
And now less than 0.5% of the population hasn't seen new Naxx.
Somewhere there is a happy medium, but fuck that because making everything accessible for everyone makes Blizzard more money.
I don't understand why people are so put out over the very first raid instance of the expansion being easy.
So? The vast majority having fun outweighs the minority "hardcore" players wanting to be supar leet.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
WotLK is so much better executed than vanilla WoW because everything is a choice. I don't know where you're getting this "rep grinds are mandatory" stuff. I play on both PvE and PvP servers. On my PvE server, I'm at the second highest rep level with 2 factions and exalted with the others. I only ever did dailies for one faction, and got exalted/revered with the other just by running dungeons and doing regular quests - stuff that I liked doing anyway.
Then on my PvP server where most of my friends play, it was like:
Me: Ding! 80!
Guildies: Here's your Titansteel Destroyer. Time for Naxx!
Most of the factions are still neutral to me on that server and fuck 'em. There's nothing they have that I need for entry level raiding that can't be crafted/won through PvP/found in heroics. There's like 4 ways to do anything in Wrath and I, for one, think it's fantastic.
Maybe Blizzard's new MMO will have those "hardcore" mechanics like death penalties, forced grouping, sanctioned griefing, etc. that the more hardcore players seem to enjoy. Like Blizzard saying, "If you want an easy, relaxing game that you can dick around in with your friends and still progress, play WoW. If you want the exhilaration of winning in a game world with consequences, then play this new game!"
Also, why does the fact that you get a bear in the mail make city raids in Wrath less significant or meaningful than city raids in vanilla?
Tell me, how many of you ran all the 80 dungeons on non-heroic?
Have you even bothered to run them all on heroic (I have not).
There is more bloody content in there that is utterly wasted by removing the need for them. To gear up I get my puplez crafted weapon, a piece of honour gear, a WG piece of PvP gear, and wander through naxx 5 times with some VoA for shits and giggles.
I don't mind naxx being easy as much as I despise the weakness of the instance content, and the lack of motivation to do it.
Naxx was too easy because it is doable in excessively poor gear, which leads to no time spent gearing up, which speeds progression to a point of general frustration. It was a bad decision, and lead to something as absurd as ensidia completing all content within the 4 days or whatever. If the tank had needed a few heroic drops and pieces of badge gear to take patch hits - then it would have been a much better progression curve.
Personally I prefered the 'release, race, nerf + release new, race, nerf' structure.
I am the only one that wants that type of mmo? I liked to fear death,it felt less like grinding and more like...fighting for your survival.
Gee, after shilling off Warcraft which resulted in over ten MILLION subscriptions reculting in several BILLION dollars in revenue, my question would be why wouldn't they do Starcraft Online?
Fire up the grill and get the A-1, baby, we're having grilled words tonight!
Margaret Thatcher
http://www.warhammeronline.com/
Margaret Thatcher
Seriously. If I liked PvP more than I do (and I really don't), I would be playing WAR instead of WoW right now. I had more fun in WAR PvP than in any other PvP system in any other MMO.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
I don't think it's wasted so much as it's giving people options. On my PvE character, hell yeah I ran every Northrend dungeon. Heroic and non - because I wanted to gear up that way for that character.
On my PvP server, the class I play there I think is more fun in PvP so I geared him up with Wintersgrasp shoulder/head enchants, and Savage/Hateful Gladiator gear and a crafted weapon. Optimal for PvE? No. Sufficient? Yes.
My guild isn't that great at raiding, so if Ulduar came out guild-shatteringly difficult like Sunwell, we simply wouldn't be able to do that. With Ulduar, with 10 bosses having optional hard modes, we can right away get into new content on easy mode and progress at our leisure. Meanwhile, the 1337 guilds can go for hardcore achievements and lewtz without limiting my casual guild's options.
Choices, man! It's all about choices!
Sad to say, I hated it. It had its moments, and the pvp was occasionally fun when it happened, but I couldn't make it past a month. The game relies too much on an active population for both sides, which wasn't there when I was playing. I would have been able to get over that if the way the game actually played was any good. I've heard they've done some good things to it
I think the vanilla wow hate here just further illustrates what a good job Blizzard did in making a big fluffy curtain to cover the grind that exists in wow now.
The WoW grind today is far worse than it ever was because it touches every part of the game. Nothing is grind free and nothing happens spontaneously in the game anymore, which is what I miss from the vanilla days.
The quests themselves are generally better, so the leveling from 70-80 is a pretty great experience, but once I got to 80 I realized I was doing the exact same thing that I was doing at 60 and at 70, except if felt even more like a job. At 60 when I logged on, if I wasn't raiding I could go and do whatever I wanted. , I could start a battle in southshore, I could find people willing to do casual 5 mans for fun and money, when battle grounds were released I could join for a few casual rounds of WSG or go for a huge epic 7 hour AV etc.
Now when I log on everything has a structure of grinding related to it. Large scale world pvp has evaporated unless it was for world pvp objectives. After which people just left once they got what they needed. People don't do 5 mans unless they're for reputation that they need, you can't do battlegrounds without being forced to grind for pvp gear in order to be competitive or to even really contribute depending on your class, etc. Even reputation grinding can't be done at your convenience anymore. Instead you have to make sure you log in to do your dailies or else you've wasted a day. How many times have you been online and seen someone log in for 45 minutes to do their dailies? That's like doing a chore to me.
YMMV but when I logged on once I hit 80 I felt like I had to log on every day and devote x number of hours to grinding or it was a waste of a day.
The one thing I will say I liked was making some of the raid dungeons more accessible everyone deserves to be able to access the content they paid for, although I do think it cheapens the epic when more people have more epics than people have blues, greens, and white items combined.
And you're bitching about dailies and rep in 5mans? Jesus, dailies are a far better system than the endless rep grind system that was in place in Vanilla. Did you ever grind rep for Cenarion Circle? Did you ever grind rep with Argent Dawn? Timbermaw Hold? All of those things were awful. And the 5man rep was horrible. Right now you can get 3k a run; in vanilla you were lucky to get maybe 500. And I'm not sure where you're getting that people are only running 5mans for rep now; the reps are so optional that I'm pretty sure 99% of the population just throws on a tabard and runs 5mans until they ding exalted, then throws on a different one.
Seriously, what you're describing sounds more like how the game was in TBC, not WoTLK.
I don't think the problem is with the game, I think the problem is that you're just burned out on it. Which is fine, but you don't need to go angsting all over the forums about it.
I think you just don't like WoW. I do, as do a few million other people, and so I would say that Blizzard is doing something right.
There's no such thing as the perfect game to appeal to everyone, but I think WoW does an excellent job in significantly reducing the amount of grind in their game as compared to every other MMORPG on the market, and what grinding they do have isn't completely unpalatable, especially in WoLK.
The only way to completely remove grind is to remove any sort of levelling system, and then you just have a multiplayer FPS. One without unlocks, I might add, meaning no BF2/2142 or TF2.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
I don't think people got tired of it, I think that blizzard just put in a system of stuff that you feel you have to do in almost every other part of the game. It's not that people don't want to do that stuff, or that it isn't fun, it's just people are too busy doing their dailies and rep grinds.
I didn't grind those reps before because they were basically worthless for me. I had no reason to grind them. But now I simply have nothing else to do when I log on but grind rep for different factions because no one's doing anything else but that. I agree that TBC was worse than WotLK with a lot of this, but can you honestly think of anything they've added to the game in the last 4 years that isn't just another type of grind, or adding a grind onto a system that was already in place (specifically pvp)? Admittedly what you DO for those grinds is more interesting than it was, but it's still the same old grind fest.
This whole thing started when I said that I preferred vanilla wow over what it's become, and vanilla was called the big grindfest, when I clearly see it to be the opposite. There was always a grind, but there's far more to grind now than there was then. It's just now there feels like there's 20 things that you can easily grind, when back then there was maybe half that that took more time to grind. I feel grind time has gone up, it's just been spread over a larger pallet and you have to spread it out over days/weeks because of dailies and instance lockouts. Heck when the game launched I can't even think of any reps that anyone would grind except maybe hydraxian. The dailies that you're lauding are effectively the same thing as the repeatable quest grinds from back in vanilla except you can only do the dailies once a day. So while if you wanted to spend 2 hours grinding rep in vanilla you could do it all at once, now you have to spread that over 5 days. It's the same system, it's just designed to keep you paying subscription fees longer.
You're right about me burning out on it, it's almost a shame that it's still probably the best MMO on the market though, despite its flaws. So I hope that their new mmo follows a completely different path than WoW, with the same attention to detail and quality of gameplay of course.
I agree in general, but it's just like what I was saying before, I really don't think the grind has lessened, just spread out over a much larger number of things. I hardly ever did any grinding at 60 in vanilla and I was in the top raiding guild horde side on the server. I unsubbed after I hit 70 with TBC because I felt that they really went in a different direction with the game, but I resubbed for WotLK and leveling was a ton of fun, but at 80 I found myself grinding a lot more than I ever did at 60. So maybe I'm just an anomaly?
Then that didn't happen in TBC because you were playing it from the start instead of jumping into an already-successful raid guild.
(The above is just me guessing. You may very well have been in a different situation.)
I mean, if you really think the grind in WoTLK is that awful, this game isn't for you. There has never been less intensive grinding in the game. Yes, there's still reps and shit, but you don't even have to put any effort into getting half of them. The one exception is Sons of Hodir, and you don't even need exalted with them- the honored-level enchants are just as good.
Yeah, I was with the guild from the start, so we had to farm FR gear, and NR gear for AQ, and all that stuff. It was annoying, particularly the AQ stuff, the rest wasn't so bad or anything. That's one thing I'm glad they did away with. But I'm not really talking as much about raid-prep grinding. That still kind of happens now, it's just different and not as required (ie-grinding heroics for epics that make things easier but aren't required). I'm more talking about the rest of the stuff in the game. Specifically, I think, for me the big thing they ruined was PVP. They made it so you had to choose between spending your time doing pvp or pve. You couldn't grind both unless you've got a LOT of free time. I think pvp is its own reward, I don't see why they had to add in a system where those who pvped more got gear that made pvp easier for them.
I also think you're misunderstanding me, I don't think WoW's a terrible game now, I just think it's kind of like a run away train and its gotten out of control. The game's still a lot of fun because the core mechanics of the game and the way it plays is still solid. But they've added the carrot and stick to almost every facet of the game under the guise of it being 'more content', and that doesn't appeal to me. And I do think you're putting as much effort into the grind now as you did then, it just doesn't seem like it because instead of doing the same boring turn in quest 30 times in one day, you're doing the same boring turn-in quest once a day for 30 days.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
And really, if you're complaining about resilience, it was needed. Nothing was worse than going into PVP and getting one-shot left and right because the only viable PVP spec for half the classes was the one that enabled you to oneshot people. Remember 3 minute mages?
I'm not advocating you jump right back into the game and forget all your issues with it. At their core MMOs rely on a fairly repetitive gameplay structure: they need you to play for a long period of time, and unless they vomit forth an endless stream of content (which would take a hell of a lot more developer output than Blizzard is known for), they can't purely rely on grindless content. But WoW is very low on grind relative to other MMOs and WoTLK is the least grindy expansion yet; if you can't handle the grinds in WoTLK I'm going to up and say you're not going to be satisfied with WoW or any other MMO on the market now.
I absolutely want an MMO with relatively harsh death penalties and allowed griefing.
The problem is that death penalties are so unpopular, not alot of design thought is put into them, so we get bullshit like Vanguard with corpse recovery.
Then, grieving is typically exploiting flawed systems, rather than designed systems that were intended to allow grieving.
In fact... one of the reasons I was so hooked on Xenimus(http://xenimus.com/) in my youth is because it had sensible death penalties and grieving... and the dungeons were designed heavily in the tone of making grieving possible, but something you really had to work for to do.
As for Blizzard... I don't think it's design process. I think it's knowing what hooks Evercrack addicts and designing those systems under the guise of something better.
And no, none of the reps individually take more than the old world ones, I agree, but they got around that by putting in so many MORE reps to grind.
At launch there was one rep worth raising, hydraxian waterlords, and that was only IF you planned on running MC, and most people weren't ready to do that for a long while. Then they slowly added in more.
I also don't see how there's so many more reps than before. There's 5 which you barely have to do anything to grind; 2 which are mutually exclusive and purely optional; 3 which have no rewards whatsoever and exist purely to act as subfactions for one of the first 5; and then one rep which you actually have to put some effort into getting and has some necessary items- Sons of Hodir. That's it. You can get exalted for the first 5 just gearing up in heroics and leveling to 80 without even putting any effort into them, the optional ones are optional, and only sons of hodir requires any effort and it is laughably easy compared to the vanilla stuff.
And most of the nightmarish rep grinds were added in between the release of BWL and the release of Naxx, when vanilla raiding was in fullswing. But even then, you seemed to have forgotten about Timbermaw Hold and the Argent Dawn, which had some necessary crafting patterns at exalted and were a nightmare to grind.
How come every single one of your complaints boils down to, "I am unhappy that they added things to this game?"
They add gear for pvp, you complain about the requirement of getting said gear. They add quests you can repeat every day, you complain both about being required to do these quests and also not being able to the quests more than once per day (if they were infinitely repeatable, you'd complain "everybody just grinds the same quest over and over again"). You complain when people log in for a short time to do a daily quest, and if they weren't there you'd complain about the lack of something to do if you only had a short time to play. You complain about rewarding players in general, regardless of what it is they're doing. You complain that they've added PURPOSE to activities that were, in the past, purposeless, and for some reason this translates into your mind as forcing you to perform that activity and you feel compelled to rebel.
Everything you complain about is an addition to the game, not a change. You can still play the game the same damn way you always have. You can ignore all the reps, you can delete your War Bear, you can never purchase pvp gear, you can never raid. WotLK is not a requirement.
Or, you can go on a long-winded crusade on an internet forum about how the game is breaking into your house and shoving reputation grinds up your ass.
Additionally, I find the argument that the company is trying to force people to play their game as long as psosible to be laughable. Producers of entertainment aiming to make their product as entertaining as possible? WHAT FIENDS!
Which they will in Ulduar, so I guess my main point here is that Blizzard should update more than once every 6 god damn months*
LoL: failboattootoot
Who here thinks that, eventually, Blizzard will make some kind of Starcraft MMO?
I do. I think its only a matter of time.
PvP gearing up is fine. I am entirely happy with the PvP system, gearing especially, or at least as happy as a shadow priest can be with PvP after s2.....
You ran heroics and normals to gear up? Yet every alt I've seen has just blitzed through the current raid content and geared up easy mode. Where is the challenge in that? Where is the excitement?
I remember running heroic weekends, 8-10 instances, maybe one piece of gear and some badges just to get good enough to go into kara. Course it got nerfed, but I was proud to clear it the first time. Who felt like that about naxx (or even any of the current heroics)? I needed to feel stretched in order to work harder for gear. I don't care about gear except in as far as it kept me alive and worked towards boss kills. When everything except hard mode sarth is pointlessly afk'able I simply have no motivation or interest in epix.
I really don't like achievements in general, and whilst I do think sarth 3-D is a good fight it was not enough challenge for the release. I also cba to work like a bastard for 1 fight. Just do him with 1-2 adds and clear all content in a night. Not good.
Edit, for clarity, never actually done it all in one night. Was being hyperbolic. But a night and a half is easily done.
By then, WoW should have fizzled out further, and the starcraft franchise would be fully revived.
and bam, Worlds of Starcraft release and blizzard becomes richer than god