Patch 4.3 Interviews, Blue Posts, Diablo III Beta, Art Gallery Update

Originally Posted by Platipuss

Not the RAIDS - the GAME too easy. People, seriosly, go to WoWProgress and take a look at guilds who downed atleast one heroic FL boss. There are about 220k players who takes care about heroic raids - thats 2% from 11 milion player base. And if you just want to play the game - NOT to do raids or Arena - you literally have nothing to do right now. I played from BC start and that bullshit started in Wotlk - scraping out from game everything that makes it a game. Now we have only one way - rocketing in 2 weeks from 1-85, then 1 month dailies/5mans/professions, then raids, arenas or... em... nothing! Thats why i quit, i played pvp alot in BC, raided alot in Wotlk, im tired from both, and i have nothing to do in Cata. I have leveled my hunter, druid, dk and mage to 85, cleared first raids, get bored as hell and quit. And i checked my guild in Armory - only 2 people from ~40 earlier active members are playing now.

P.S. And sorry for my english, not my first language. Im just tired from people who using hc Ragnaros as argument that the game are not easy. 98% players do not care about hc raids. And game is something more than 7 bosses and 7 arenas. Atleast been 3 years ago.

That isn't the game being too easy that is an issue of the game lacking certain kinds of content. So far, honestly, Blizzard has been pretty bad at creating content for casual players. Daily Dungeons only help you build up gear for Raiding. Daily BGs only help you build up gear for PvP (and thank god for Rated Battlegrounds because I don't like the Arena very much). For the first time though I think Blizzard has found part of what they need for casual players in the Molten Breach.

The Molten Breach feels unimportant, progression ends abruptly and the tokens feel pointless most of the time HOWEVER there is player driven individual progress and that is important. A zone that feels feels important and has long-term player-driven progression would help

What the hell?Who is chaud and where is Boub? :O

This is the first expansion where I didn't raid right out of the gate and I've been playing since January 2006. There was a natural feel of progression regarding game play and the loot system from vanilla to BC. The changes made sense and the fights were a varied range of difficulties. The badge gear option was a great way for casuals to get in on some of the fun rather than them have to stick to PVP and be slaughtered there by people in T2, etc. I think one of their best moves was making the previous tier of arena gear available for BGs. It made it very easy for "seasoned" players to gear up alts and get going as opposed to having to farm tirelessly through content we'd been maxed out on. Wrath's content was another great shift. My BC content raiding group disassembled shortly after making some failed attempts at Naxxramas. The heroic gear grind was a much different feel and the gear obtained was kind of shitty. The transition, for a casual, felt a little off balance to me. And the balance wasn't really restored until ToC which did even more damage while seemingly done as a weak attempt to fix the growing fjord between casual and dedicated raiders. I had tons of fun in Wrath, but the social aspect became taboo. Wrath's strange reward system (kind of a bloated and meaningless revamp of the BC model) allowed so much gutter trash to invade the raiding populace and infect everyone with their drama. The teen culture who played WoW in 2005 either isn't around anymore or don't feel like plodding through content with such a vicious and mean-spirited playerbase. Say what you will about freedom of speech, thick skins, and whatever else. However, when the raiding pools began to admit the caste of morons who rolled DPS classes and spammed their way to the top of the charts, the entire sample was ruined. Now, the WoW culture is shame-based and Blizz has bumbled their way through damage control. It's not that the content sucks because pretty much every raid has some cool content in it (if not being entirely cool all together). It's simply that the playerbase is riddled with aggro, trolling, sad, angry little twerps who endless beat memes into the ground and have the sense of humor of a used tampon. Half the fools can barely string together enough words to form a sentence, much less type out "Everyone ready?" before a pull. I don't know what is racing through the mind of half these tweaker babies but they seem too anxious to even give a damn about the quality of their communication. Blizz resists too much with the quality players. They got sucked in by the assholes who cried, whined, and demanded certain things be changed a certain way and it threw the whole train off the tracks. I think Cataclysm is a fantastic expansion... For players other than me and my friends. The content was tuned too hard, too soon. What little content there's been. I'm not a stickler for this kind of thing; the rehash doesn't bother me too much aside from the fact I've done over 150 runs of Za/Zg on my alts now. But it feels like this expansion is merely half of a true whole and it's been a rough ride to get back to a place that makes sense anymore. I feel they're trying now and they understand that the problems exist - enough to tell us they are hiring more devs to guide the team better. But we're not there yet. And frankly, seasoned players like myself are either fed up and gone or they are well on their way. The real heat is on and I'm glad they're aware. But I don't think that the quality players who are left playing this game should spend their time shitting on each other. It's not a pissing contest and you don't need to step on the heads of other players to succeed in the game. If anything, we should keep insisting that Blizz stop giving in to people who would turn content into an exclusive boys club. Create options for every player. Make mid level raids. If Cataclysm can be used as an example - Tier 10's current difficulty would be a great intro setting for raids. Make sure the rewards they offer are meaningfully less powerful than the more difficult raids (think Firelands) or their heroic modes. Use the tried and true ladder system, not the current botched system. Badge/point gear should not somehow magically be both abysmally trivial for hardcore raiders to get AND ridiculously difficult for casuals.

People are always complaining. They complained the BC was too "spacey" and that everyone's gear got upgraded too quickly, replacing all the epics people got at the end of vanilla. They complained that Wrath was too easy and too bland, and they complained that Cata was too hard and didn't add enough content.

Which I find strange, because I've been playing WoW since Vanilla, and this is the first time I've gotten to raid, and it's not that hard. And I've been doing dungeons since vanilla, and the heroic modes aren't any harder than pre-wrath. And when I run out of things to do on my main, I am having fun leveling my alt through nearly 60 levels of new content, including some of the most amazing low-tier quests I've ever played (punch deathwing in the face anyone?).

Is this the best expansion ever? Maybe not. Was it a necessary expansion? Yes. Azeroth needed to be reworked, both for flying and for retuning the pre-60 set. Is this better than Wrath? In my opinion, yes, but I understand that's open to debate.

Originally Posted by chrisisvacant

This is the first expansion where I didn't raid right out of the gate and I've been playing since January 2006. There was a natural feel of progression regarding game play and the loot system from vanilla to BC. The changes made sense and the fights were a varied range of difficulties. The badge gear option was a great way for casuals to get in on some of the fun rather than them have to stick to PVP and be slaughtered there by people in T2, etc. I think one of their best moves was making the previous tier of arena gear available for BGs. It made it very easy for "seasoned" players to gear up alts and get going as opposed to having to farm tirelessly through content we'd been maxed out on.

Wrath's content was another great shift. My BC content raiding group disassembled shortly after making some failed attempts at Naxxramas. The heroic gear grind was a much different feel and the gear obtained was kind of shitty. The transition, for a casual, felt a little off balance to me. And the balance wasn't really restored until ToC which did even more damage while seemingly done as a weak attempt to fix the growing fjord between casual and dedicated raiders. I had tons of fun in Wrath, but the social aspect became taboo. Wrath's strange reward system (kind of a bloated and meaningless revamp of the BC model) allowed so much gutter trash to invade the raiding populace and infect everyone with their drama.

The teen culture who played WoW in 2005 either isn't around anymore or don't feel like plodding through content with such a vicious and mean-spirited playerbase. Say what you will about freedom of speech, thick skins, and whatever else. However, when the raiding pools began to admit the caste of morons who rolled DPS classes and spammed their way to the top of the charts, the entire sample was ruined. Now, the WoW culture is shame-based and Blizz has bumbled their way through damage control. It's not that the content sucks because pretty much every raid has some cool content in it (if not being entirely cool all together). It's simply that the playerbase is riddled with aggro, trolling, sad, angry little twerps who endless beat memes into the ground and have the sense of humor of a used tampon. Half the fools can barely string together enough words to form a sentence, much less type out "Everyone ready?" before a pull. I don't know what is racing through the mind of half these tweaker babies but they seem too anxious to even give a damn about the quality of their communication.

Blizz resists too much with the quality players. They got sucked in by the assholes who cried, whined, and demanded certain things be changed a certain way and it threw the whole train off the tracks. I think Cataclysm is a fantastic expansion... For players other than me and my friends. The content was tuned too hard, too soon. What little content there's been. I'm not a stickler for this kind of thing; the rehash doesn't bother me too much aside from the fact I've done over 150 runs of Za/Zg on my alts now. But it feels like this expansion is merely half of a true whole and it's been a rough ride to get back to a place that makes sense anymore.

I feel they're trying now and they understand that the problems exist - enough to tell us they are hiring more devs to guide the team better. But we're not there yet. And frankly, seasoned players like myself are either fed up and gone or they are well on their way. The real heat is on and I'm glad they're aware. But I don't think that the quality players who are left playing this game should spend their time shitting on each other. It's not a pissing contest and you don't need to step on the heads of other players to succeed in the game.

If anything, we should keep insisting that Blizz stop giving in to people who would turn content into an exclusive boys club. Create options for every player. Make mid level raids. If Cataclysm can be used as an example - Tier 10's current difficulty would be a great intro setting for raids. Make sure the rewards they offer are meaningfully less powerful than the more difficult raids (think Firelands) or their heroic modes. Use the tried and true ladder system, not the current botched system. Badge/point gear should not somehow magically be both abysmally trivial for hardcore raiders to get AND ridiculously difficult for casuals.

Excellent post and I'm adding some formatting in hopes people will read it. I disagree about certain parts, but his ideology is sound. (at least how I read it, I could have interpreted it wrong?)

To add onto the last part, I feel like the "hubs" that players congregate at could be a means of separating "hardcore" and "casual" players. In EQ, you would find "low-end" players gathering at one town, while the "hardcore" would commonly gather at another. There were still main towns where they all intermixed, but the majority of their time was spent apart. Separating the two player bases would help give the illusion that the casual who does well in those "easy" raids is actually at the "top" of his game, as he will be sporting the best gear among the people of the town he spends the majority of his time in.

People are always complaining. They complained the BC was too "spacey" and that everyone's gear got upgraded too quickly, replacing all the epics people got at the end of vanilla. They complained that Wrath was too easy and too bland, and they complained that Cata was too hard and didn't add enough content.

BC was the best of WoW, imo. My biggest complaints with BC were
1. At release itemization was not finished, T4 gear had better stats than T5, Kara gear had better stats than T4, T4 and T5 raids were so incredibly broken that in one attempt you could be instantly wiped and another attempt the boss would sit in a corner and let you rape them. It took 2 months for them to fix it, and after that point it was pretty much perfect.
2. Arena/PvP balanced effected PvE way too much. They should have separated PvP and PvE rulesets back then, and resolved a multitude of issues that have now destroyed the balance of the game's classes (instead their solution was homogenization).
3. When Kael got nerfed. By far the most perfectly tuned encounter in the game. It required a diverse set of class roles, just the right amount of gear requirement, and a large learning curve that got more and more rewarding as you were able to reproduce each phase.

"•They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite."
lol most people quit because cataclysm endgame content is less accessible than in the last expansion

"•Raids are significantly harder than they were in WotLK"
indeed, what a coincidence and how did harder raids made the content more accessible? because it did not.

edit: ok looks like these are quotes of Thomas Debeauvais, of UC Irvine's Department of Informatics, who has nothing to do with Blizz.

They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite.

Sounds like a really weak reason. I've never stopped doing something just because someone else that did it too was worse at it than me, or had less skill and that he skill managed, e.g.

As a casual, PUG raids fail at the new raids so I don't see how "everyone can do it" really applies, every raiding guild, sure, everyone, not by far. PUG of raiders can do it too ofc, but not casuals that randomly form a raid, so it's not really that easy to raid even to this date, people that you play with are the problem.

Blizzard should blame their players for making this expansion so bad, players that scam, overprice the AH, do not help you, do not teach you, do not give you a chance to improve, act like jerks, ninja on purpose because they know they are anonymous on the net, e.g. the list goes on. A fun game consists of two things, I think Blizzard generally holds up on their end, but the players I've noticed have started to behave worse since after TBC. Greedy attitudes, very rarely do I find nice social people to play with, the most important part is feeling needed and appreciated in a MMO game (and real life), otherwise it's not fun no mater what content you add to it.

IMO the difficulty discussion shouldnt focus on the raids.
Its the game itself. The questing, leveling, reputation and all the other parts of the game are very easy these days compared to previous expansions.Well, people like it usually if they dont have these time sinks and grinds but these are usually a part of an mmo, what WoW is.
Also those grindy parts are also content and let it last longer. New people could need few weeks/month to reach max level.
Then they still can spend quite a bit of time for farming rep, doing dungeons and what not.

Today you rush in a very short time to level 85, start the 5m dungeons circus and grind your rep on that way in no time.
After 1-2 weeks you can start heroics and rush through these as well. On one hand its comfortable these days, that you dont have these time sinks, but on the other hand you devour the content in no time and get bored pretty fast.
Since the only thing remaining is raiding or pvp. WotLK "solved" that problem with pugging the raids. Just imagine gearing up in 5m dungeons without LFD and portals. How long it would take to get your gear. Also people would socialize a bit more than today.

The mighty Barbarian named Mudbutt.

Hard end-game content, lot of remakes, lame storyline, over-used phasing, linear questing, frustrating and unforgiving boss mecanics for heroics/raids etc. Cataclysm got what it deserved. It even pales compared to WotLK. Nuff said..

On Mists of Pandaria: "Most of the time when we do anything panda-related it's going to be a comic book or a figurine or something like that."

As in not always, as in, next expac is mists of pandaria!

Originally Posted by plosion

Well you could, you know, play the game? Learn how to play better?

casuals

bads

bads

gearscore

Or, I could not. I played the dungeons, found them too hard to be fun, and reading "this was nothing nub it gets much harder" I figured, why bother? Kept my money, kept my time, did something better with it.
Oops, maybe I was too casual and too bads for the game, or perhaps even a "mouthbreather" (what a great WoW coined term)? Now doesn't that make me feel bad! And that wasn't elite enough? Sure, make it more elite - I think that's a mighty smart decision. Looks like my dollars aren't going anywhere near Blizzard for a good while.

Originally Posted by Vasti

As in not always, as in, next expac is mists of pandaria!

i think so too, this man could just said that we would NOT have an expansion on pandarian but no, he stay on grey zone in saying that most of the time we do that and that..

good i'll look forward to the new 5 man heroics just can't wait untill deathwing is over they're dragging it on a bit too much now

"Most of the time when we do anything panda-related it's going to be a comic book or a figurine or something like that."



Thanks Tom Chilton, for confirming that we're getting Pandas!

I agree the specs play differently, but I'm not sure why they even bother with talent points any more.The point distributions are so generally obligatory (I can only think of a couple exceptions to the 'standard' spec that are worth a damn) that all the mechanism of talent points do is allow you to gimp yourself and force a respec if you click the wrong thing*.*yes, I know you can change the default UI to have a confirmation step.Otherwise it's just every time you ding, you spend your talent point in the obligatory place for your spec and level. Doesn't seem like it adds much.I *did* like AoC's 'generic' talent tree that all classes shared, where everyone could spend points for generic things like more armor, more dodge, better to-hit, etc. I could see this even being expanded to more run speed, or even an ability to move on 1% steeper slopes, jump further/higher, bonus to incoming heals, etc. I think it made the FotM calculations always a little more complex, which is good.

They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite.

I hope they also realise that quite a lot of people quit because Cata made the content LESS accessible to everyone. They'll have a hard time making it both accessible to everyone AND offering challenges to the high-enders. Most probably, they'll either make it less accessible, thus scaring off the casuals and pandering to the hardcores, or they'll make it more accessible and attract a lot of casuals back, while scaring off the hardcores. Of course, they COULD put thought into keeping everything accessible, (raids included) but adding fun, exciting, "real" hardmodes that makes the encounters feel different, a bit like Ulduar, but "more". But that would take more resources...

They need to work on the whole "easy as hell mode" and "hard" mode model they had for wrath and have something else in between there. They tried to improve on the challenge in Cataclysm and it's obviously not worked out as planned, but if they make heroic modes easy then it's just going to cause the same problem for subs. 2 difficulty modes just aren't working for the size of the subscription audience as there's just too wide a spectrum of ability for 2 difficulty modes to cover.

I just cannot see Blizzard attempting this though as they seem to have lost the vast majority of their ability to be innovative when adding content. It's the same stuff with a slightly different flavour lately, and most responses seem to be bullshit politician answers that tell you nothing when any questions are asked in regards to content being added, but I imagine that's due to anything they say being ripped apart and shit all over by the massive amount of trolls that seem to make up the community.

Originally Posted by Vladinator

Sounds like a really weak reason. I've never stopped doing something just because someone else that did it too was worse at it than me, or had less skill and that he skill managed, e.g.

As a casual, PUG raids fail at the new raids so I don't see how "everyone can do it" really applies, every raiding guild, sure, everyone, not by far. PUG of raiders can do it too ofc, but not casuals that randomly form a raid, so it's not really that easy to raid even to this date, people that you play with are the problem.

Blizzard should blame their players for making this expansion so bad, players that scam, overprice the AH, do not help you, do not teach you, do not give you a chance to improve, act like jerks, ninja on purpose because they know they are anonymous on the net, e.g. the list goes on. A fun game consists of two things, I think Blizzard generally holds up on their end, but the players I've noticed have started to behave worse since after TBC. Greedy attitudes, very rarely do I find nice social people to play with, the most important part is feeling needed and appreciated in a MMO game (and real life), otherwise it's not fun no mater what content you add to it.

This is it. The game has been taking quite the battering from trolls and people with shitty attitude. If anything, it's the elitism-approach adopted by the players that has killed it for many. Also, what Chrisisvacant wrote about communication and actually bothering stringing a sentence together is worth a mention.

Blizzard and the devs are doing a decent job with the content - but these things seems to be beyond their realm of responsibility. Of course, they could do something about age restriction but I doubt they will as it would cost them more costumers.

"They realize some people quit because they made the content more accessible to everyone and it no longer felt elite."
Daww. The poor widdle babies no longer feeling like special widdle snowflakes when they AFK in their capital city with full tier gear because more players have access to the same content. Oh QQ! /asspat
Might I put emphasis on the word "some", meaning they are the minority. Blizzard made WoW to make money. They won't get money if they cater to the minority, aka, the elitist pricks that don't have a life outside of WoW.