Iron Docks, Dev Interview, Blue Tweets, Setup of the Month, Ghostcrawler on WoW

D3 and Reaper of Souls on Sale, Wyatt Cheng on Trial Rifts, D3 Honest Trailer

Maintenace, Weekly News Recap - News, Popular Constructed Decks, Community Videos

Gold Refunds Issued, Icy Veins Heroes Dev Interview - eSports, Leavers, Rejoins, Team AI

Warlords of Draenor - Iron Docks
Today we are taking a look at the Iron Docks, a dungeon located in Gorgrond.





Warlords of Draenor - Dev Interviews
GAME recently had the chance to interview Tom Chilton at Gamescom.


  • Retaining the soul of the character with the new character models is very important, so players should feel that the new model looks like a higher quality version of the older one. Players have helped to address areas in which the models fell short of that goal during the design process.
  • The more human like races have more player sensitivity to changes, as players are more in tune with how their character looked before. Other races, such as Tauren, are a little harder to spot changes on.
  • Garrisons were originally called Frontier Forts when the team was brainstorming. Eventually the idea was refined to the Garrisons we see today, which finally answer the question of what players would actually do with player housing.
  • For the most part, players have accepted the stat squish.
  • The number of abilities classes have has gotten out of control, as most classes had enough abilities at WoW's launch, but more and more have been added since then. We finally reached the point where pruning had to be done.
  • The design of the Arms Warrior lost its way over the years, moving away from what Arms felt like when WoW was launched. The changes in Warlords should solve this and bring back the identity of the spec.
  • Tol Barad went the wrong direction after Wintergrasp, as it focused more on battleground like gameplay instead of the World PvP aspect. Wintergrasp did feel like an epic battle though.


Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Paladin (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Any chance for a on-screen visual for empowered divine storm? (Alike to what we have with exorcism etc.), would be lovely.
Yep, Empowered Divine Storm is getting a spell alert. (Celestalon)

Clemency is pretty mandatory for Paladins. Any plans to chance the other two talents, to be more an option for Paladin?
Unbreakable Spirit is a great option if you're worried about survival, which seems to be a big Ret complaint. (holinka)

Achievements
If no "real" scenarios 100, why add achievement to do 1000 scenarios in WoD, seems like overkill to go spam 90 scens
Agreed. Those were created long ago before we decided to focus on using scenarios as epic storytelling moments. Will fix. (WatcherDev)

Brawler's Guild
Will we see new Brawler's Guild at launch or later in the expansion?
Updated at launch, hopefully expanded later in the expansion. (WatcherDev)

PvE
I'm really happy with the somewhat slower raid release schedule. I'm hoping the "several weeks" turns into, like, 8. Better for me!
I like the number 8. (WatcherDev)
But seriously, probably in that ballpark. 4 weeks for MSV -> Heart of Fear was too fast. (WatcherDev)

Will Challenge Mode bosses drop loot? Or will they be rewards at the end? (Figuring out database tech)
Neither. Daily quest to do a specific CM dungeon of the day, like the daily CM quest that gives a bunch of Valor in Vale currently (WatcherDev)
So GOLD isn't required to get the LFR level gear?
Correct, it's literally just to complete a harder-than-Heroic dungeon. Speedrun is for cosmetic rewards. (WatcherDev)

Sort of confused on CM gear rewards now. Can you clarify the different ways to get different gear? Daily? Getting all Gold? Mix?
Daily CM quest for a shot at LFR quality loot with stats. Then all Bronze/Silver/Gold for title/mount/transmog like in Mists. (WatcherDev)

PvP
Why not make the crowd cheer in arenas when someone gets below 20 percent? And add some random yells from the audience.
We would like to do some more atmospheric things like this...but you may notice, that right now, there are no crowds. (holinka)

Please make skirmishes available for lvl 19s, a community that have been wanting them back for years and was so excited for WOD.
Understand the requests. Looking into it. No guarantees until it's in the game for sure. May be issues at these late stages. (holinka)

Alliance is being destroyed in Ashran right now.
It's rough on beta as there's really no population control going on. But I've seen it swing both ways. (holinka)

What happens to Spirit of Conquest enchants, etc. in WoD? Will still be able to be purchased? Maybe with honor like other items?
We're going to incorporate them into the Garrison enchant transmog system. (holinka)
with 2200 requirements still?
Yes still a rating requirement. Not final on the exact rating yet. (holinka)

Lore
Am I the only one who noticed Kargoth's wrong hand being ripped off in the Lords of War?
Shattered Hand generally replace their left hands. The original Warlords key art was mirrored. (WatcherDev)

So.. we haven't seen Naga yet in Draenor. Will we, or how did they get to Outlands?
No naga in Warlords. They came to Outland with Illidan and Lady Vashj, and weren't here in this time. (DaveKosak)

World
I don't understand why don't they make every FP conneect to every other FP. All problems solved with a straight line,
There's a custom path that the gryphon/whatever takes from each point to each other one. Has to be manually created. (Celestalon)
I thought these were being rethought from the ground up? Seems like the same issues they've always had.
Not sure what 'rethinking' you're referring to. Flight paths are still flight paths. Just need to be more efficient (Celestalon)
These problems have persisted for years. Wonder if FPs were put aside for a bit a better way could be found.
It comes down to what you want flight paths to do, from a game design point of view. Point is not just fast travel. (Celestalon)

Garrisons
---recruitment felt like the big draw of the Inn to me.
Epic dungeon quests with unique rewards a la WOTLK dungeon dailies, from awesome visitors like Gamon, Budd, Lunk, Oralius, etc. (Muffinus)

can you add a garrison follower to spires of arrak inn or was one recently added?
Several spires followers still to come. (Muffinus)

Misc
So, any chance Reshad is this expansion's "Lorewalker Cho"?
Cho was definitely an inspiration. Reshad probably won't be quite as involved, though. (_DonAdams)
That being said, I would love to see Reshad come back. He was fun to write and his voice actor is legendary. (_DonAdams)

Computers - Setup of the Month
Each month or every 2 months, depending on the hardware evolutions, we will post a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!

This month
The current SSD prices are trending slightly downward over the past few months, with most SSDs under $0.50 per gigabyte when on sale.

The Devil's Canyon CPUs are here and they offer somewhat better overclocking performance and lower temperatures. Depending on how much you want to overclock, you may need to spend a bit more for a better CPU cooler like the NH-D14.

Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or streaming, you do not need the 4790K and should spend that money elsewhere.

Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.

Don't hesitate to post any feedback in the comments of that news post, and don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions! If you are interested in Folding@home, take a look in our team's thread.


Peripherals/Monitors
ComponentPuppy Dolphin
MonitorASUS VS228H-P 22-Inch Monitor - $130ASUS VS248H-P 24-Inch Monitor - $170
KeyboardKensington Pro Fit Media Keyboard - $14Cyborg V.5 - $48
MouseLogitech G400s - $46Razer DeathAdder 2013 - $64
SpeakersCreative A250 2.1 Speaker System - $26Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $45
ComponentNarwhal Unicorn
MonitorDell P2414H Monitor - $200HP ZR2440W 24-inch - $386
KeyboardLogitech G510s - $90CM Storm QuickFire XT - $120
MouseLogitech G500s - $54Razer Naga 2014 - $60
SpeakersLogitech Z323 2.1 Speaker System - $50Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $70


Puppy and Dolphin
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.
ComponentPuppy Dolphin
CaseNZXT Source 210 - $35NZXT Source 210 - $35
Power SupplyEVGA 600B - $50EVGA 600B - $50
CPUAMD FX-6300 - $108AMD FX-8320 - $154
HeatsinkCooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $32Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $32
MotherboardASUS M5A97 R2.0 - $91ASUS M5A99FX PRO - $115
MemoryKingston HyperX Blue 4GB 1600 - $468GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $86
Graphics CardGigabyte R7 260X - $100XFX R9 270X - $160
Hard DriveWestern Digital Caviar Blue 500GB - $51Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $78
DVDAsus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $22Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $22
Total$535$732


Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.
ComponentNarwhal Unicorn
CaseCooler Master HAF 912 - $60Corsair Air 540 (Special Layout) - $130
Power SupplyRosewill Capstone 650W - $90Rosewill Fortress 750W - $130
CPUIntel 4690K - $230Intel 4690K - $230
HeatsinkThermaltake Frio - $63Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $77
MotherboardASUS Z97-A - $145ASUS Z97-A - $145
Memory8GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $8616GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 - $182
Graphics CardXFX R9 270X - $160XFX R9 280X OR EVGA GTX770 - $260 / $300
Hard DriveWestern Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $78Western Digital 2TB Caviar Black - $137
SSDCrucial MX100 128GB (Review) - $75
OR
SanDisk Extreme II 120GB (Review) - $80 		SAMSUNG 840 EVO 120GB (Review) - $87
OR
SAMSUNG 850 Pro 128GB (Review) - $125
DVDAsus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $22Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $22
Total$934 - 1059$1388 - $1478


Ghostcrawler on WoW
Ghostcrawler took the time to talk about WoW at the end of last week on the LoL forums and Twitter.
Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
For a REALLY long time, you either had to play RMP, or pray you weren't queueing for 3v3 with the good RMPs were. RMP mirror matches were common on both the live game and in tourneys.
Yeah, I agree this is another good example. At the time it felt like the choice was between PvP dominated by rogue-mage-priest or more diverse comps. The rogue-mage-priest ecosystem did have a lot of depth and a lot of what Riot calls counterplay. But if you mained a hunter or paladin, you felt shut out, and leveling viable alts was a much steeper proposition back then. We made the call to open up more Arena comps, but that did come with the added "bonus" of a lot of disruption and instability. Giving more CC and other PvP cooldowns to other classes did create some burst comps that lacked a lot of the depth and finesse of the RMP monoculture. (Trying to balance abilities for both PvP and PvE didn't help at all.) It took several expansions before this felt better once again.

Was there a specific wow example that you think changed the balance too much? Whether you meant to shift the game that way or not, it seems like the playerbase thinks this has happened.
There were a lot of specific class changes where players were convinced they were weaker than we thought they were, or others where players just had a different vision for the class than the developers did, which is always a tough path to navigate.

If I had to point to one controversial change, I'd say that in vanilla and BC to a lesser extent, there were many specs that weren't really viable for PvE or PvP. We felt like they needed to be viable in order to justify being in the game, and we were reasonably successful in getting all of them much more competitive. I'll be honest that there were times when there was still one dominant PvP spec, one dominant PvE spec and one more-or-less dead spec per class, but we did get a lot closer than ever before, especially in the most recent expansion. (And that was the team that accomplished that -- I take very little credit.)

So why was this direction controversial? One, it was just flat out harder to balance since there were more variables. It led to all sorts of religious debates such as whether pure classes "deserved" to do more damage than hybrids. In order to guarantee that a particular class or spec wasn't mandatory for raiding or Arenas, we had to share utility among more classes. (One example is shaman were no longer the only ones to bring Bloodlust.) This did homogenize classes, and some players were understandably not excited about that direction. I'm not sure of a better approach though. Maybe WoW should just have had 10 classes and not the 30 that different specs brought. Maybe some specs should have just stayed dead. I still think about this a lot.

I was the lead systems designer on WoW. I managed about half the design department. My team was responsible for class design, combat, item design, encounters, and many of the features in the game like Dungeon Finder, Transmog and Achievements. As one of the leads on the team, I helped set the vision for the game as well. I was not the lead of WoW overall. I had much less to do with say world design, lore, quest design or anything business related. I didn't do very much implementation myself, because I didn't have the bandwidth to do it right, and because there were designers more qualified to do that. I was ultimately responsible for balance and that includes PvP, but I didn't make every change myself, and mostly I focused on removing barriers so other designers could do their jobs. I make that distinction because I don't mind being blamed for anything, but it does a disservice to a very large team to imagine one dude sitting on a throne spewing out edicts. Blizzard, like Riot, was very consensus based and focused on alignment.

Did I and my team make mistakes? Sure. Every game designer does. I'm pretty honest about admitting them, though it's tacky to throw colleagues under the bus, so I tend to stay away from areas where I had limited influence. I'm pretty happy with the work we did overall, and very proud of the team we were able to build.

Why am I spending all this effort to explain my role on another game? Because I don't want you or any other player to worry what my work on League means for the future of the game. While I think there are contributions I can make, I'm not interested in overhauling League by any stretch, and Riot would never let me get away with making dramatically bad choices that negatively affected our flagship, our only, product.

So, if I may, here are some distinctions between truth and rumor, offered in the spirit of getting to know me better.

1) I'm not super interested in compromising LoL design in the name of accessibility. Yes, League is obnoxiously hard to learn if you don't have a friend showing you the ropes. That sucks, but it's not worth stripping away the depth or potential for mastery for our core audience -- you guys -- in order to attract new players. That's not an approach every game can or should take, but it's the right call for League.

2) I never played a Frost mage in WoW, or any caster really. I played healers and melee. Frost was hard to balance in WoW because of the kit of control plus burst, and I'm fine taking flak for that. But it wasn't because I wanted to dominate in PvP with my character. I would have been fired for that. It was hard in general to balance combat and rewards for a game with both PvE and PvP components. It's very nice to be on a game that is emphatically competitive, team-based PvP.

5) I care enormously about player feedback and trust. That is why I spend so much time reading forums, Reddit and Twitter (@occupygstreet). In fact, that is one of the things I love about Riot and why I wanted to come work here. Anyone from my WoW days will tell you, I hope, that even if they disagreed with a design, they appreciated the effort I made to explain our reasoning and hear out their concerns. And this is the TLDR really. I have always been very vocal in my communication with players. I didn't intend to be the spokesperson for WoW, but my name was recognizable by a lot of players, and when they wanted to complain about something, they wanted to focus on a name. Again, I can take it. But that doesn't mean I called every shot on WoW and neither do I for League.

6) I do like ponies, gin and long walks on the beach. That part is true.

Do you ever regret opening the game up to be more casual? Instead of taking the kind of direction you are with league?
Different approaches work for different products, and I don't want to second guess the WoW team. Let's just say that after working on Age of Empires and World of Warcraft for a total of 16 years, it's really refreshing to work on a game where I don't have to worry whether someone's grandmother can pick it up or not.

Would like to see GC's grandmother (or mother or father or brother etc) kill Heroic 25m Siegecrafter Blackfuse!
Blackfuse is not the standard by which most of the game is designed. It's memorable in fact because it's so much harder than 99% of what you do in the game. Very few players even try (though it is a great fight). You don't wipe 100 times leveling up. Few players quit running dungeons because they're too hard. In much of the game, death is unlikely and not much of an obstacle when it does happen. That's just the way the game was designed and the way nearly all players experience it. I'm not even commenting on whether I agree with that philosophy or not, but it was the philosophy.

Regardless of whether anyone's grandmother can beat Blackfuse or attain Challenger tier is really besides the point. The points (and these are facts, because I was on the staff of both dev teams) are:

1) WoW spends a lot of effort to make sure almost any player can pick up the game, learn the ropes, level to 90 and even raid if that's their interest. LoL spends almost no effort making sure almost any player can pick up the game. It does expend some effort to make sure that players who self-identify as gamers can pick up the game.

2) As a result of these efforts and different definitions of potential audience, WoW has a much broader audience than LoL. That's fine. Different strategies work for different games.

My point was that I spent a lot of development time on both Age of Empires and WoW trying to make the games approachable to a wide audience without compromising the game design. I don't have to do that anymore, which is s nice change of pace.

It sounds kind of spiteful to say "a grandma can pick it up." Just throwing that out there
I meant no offense, but I chose that verbiage because "casual" is a very overloaded term. For some players it means that they play say League, but only once a month or so. For other people, casual means they play Candy Crush. For others it means, IDK, that you're unskilled at the games you play with no motivation to get better.

I figured "grandma" would communicate the kind of non-traditional gamer that doesn't usually show up in your League matches. To be fair, they don't show up in WoW that much either, but we would use that term when discussing whether some UI or teaching element was obvious enough.

WoW players seem to think I am dissing WoW. I'm not. I love WoW. But difficulty and accessibility are not the same thing. We spent a lot of effort on AoE and WoW making them accessible for almost any gamer. That was the direction of both games. League is targeted at core gamers and it's really nice to be able to spend all our effort on making the game engaging for them. (Source)
No, you aren't dissing WoW. Instead you are being contemptuous of a large portion of WoW subscribers.
Contempt wasn't what I had in mind. They are just different games. I'm not advocating for WoW to abandon non-hardcore players. (Source)
of course that risks LoL putting off core gamers such as myself that dislike the environment Riot has established in LoL
The best way to play almost any game, including League, is with friends. I really believe that. If your friends are toxic, well... (Source)
and - I dunno. Coming from the console dev world, WoW fails pretty hard on the accessibility front, imo. (pedrothedagger)
Yes, but we spent a lot of effort on making it more accessible. (Source)
is LoL not something that should be able to be accessible?
Not for a broad audience and not for casual gamers, no. Could it be easier to pick up? Of course. (Source)
It's very odd to hear that, because most people (including me) consider LoL very casual.
Games can be played casually without being targeted at casual players. (Source)

Why do you hate my grandma Greg?
It's challenging to be a hardcore gamer and have to constantly put yourself in the mindset of a very casual one. That said, I know some grandmas who raid. (Source)
Sounds bitter.
Bitter? No. It's just nice not to have to worry about attracting casual gamers. (Source)
I'm open to recruiting any grandma's that can heal heroic thok. just saying.
WoW has very hard content. That's not the same as being accessible to a broad audience. (Source)

I love WoW but if not for heroic raiding, I likely would have left a long time ago.
I'm a heroic (mythic) raider. That's how I fell in love with WoW. But they can't sustain the game alone. (Source)

There's a widespread misunderstanding that most people even want to be "brought up." Everyone has the tools and capability to do anything. How many do it? (Bashiok)
We thought in Cata that we could entice players to rise to the occasion to do harder content. But, you know, some players just said that's not why they play the game. More power to them. (Source)

I'd like to know what Blizzard considers to be the big barriers.
Well *I* consider the biggest barrier being it's a 3D WASD game with a movable camera. (Bashiok)
I agree. So does a lot of data. (Source)

Man, I always supported you with WoW changes and felt really bad when you left, but that WoW comment... ouch.
We updated Elwynn Forest twice while I was there to make the game accessible. It was a lot of work. There are very hardcore aspects of WoW but there are also casual ones. Catering to both (or all) is a big challenge. That's all I meant. I earned a reputation for "dumbing the game down" which is bizarre to me. I was countering that supposition. No offense intended.(Source)

I'm reading a lot of comments confusing accessibility with difficulty. Learning to play WoW is accessibility. Raiding is difficulty. WoW's intent when I was there (I can't speak for it now) was to appeal to a wide audience. Developing for a wide audience is very hard. Ulduar (my favorite raid) had two raid sizes (and optional hard modes). After that we added more difficulty tiers to broaden raiding appeal.
Is that something you didn't want to do?
You can argue it exposed more players to the fun of raiding, but might have diminished the psychological reward of doing so. Raids also self nerf over time as players gear up, and we did across the board nerfs as well. So dedicated players would eventually get to see the content. The change was more about whether players deserved to see new content when it was new vs several patches later. (Source)
Adding multiple tiers per raid is more work. Appealing to a broad audience is more work. For once in my career, I don't have to do that. (Source)
People struggled through bad design and confused it with mastery of difficulty.
There also was very little concept of damage meters or optimal rotations in Molten Core. The audience matured. (Source)

What by your experience are the constant things that come up that make learning a game hard?
1) Identifying the goal, 2) Understanding the controls, 3) Realizing where the fun is going to be. I mention that third point because too many tutorials strip away too much fun out of fear of burdening a new player.
Hand held guidance vs joy of discovery and freedom. Can`t have both.
Yes, but you can make the hand held guided part fun. Maybe you can see a dragon even if you have no business fighting one yet. (Source)

Explained another way, when you see a big drop off in players after only a few minutes then they are probably very confused. Players can't usually tell if a game will be fun that quickly, but if they have no idea what's going on, then they may quit. You see this a lot when casual players can't mouse look, a skill second nature to many core gamers. (Source)

Look, you can play a very demanding game casually or invest many hours in a simple iPhone game. WoW appeals / tries to appeal to many gamers who don't fit the traditional gamer mold. League doesn't go after those gamers. Simple as that. (Source)
I can mouse look, play WoW, and adventure games. Dont consider myself (hard)core gamer. Core/casual split seems so limiting
It is very limiting. However, when even game developers watch a brand new player struggle with controls it's eye opening. (Source)

Can you talk one feature you like paper but did not went well in WoW? And one community complain announced b like when tested
Reforging sounded great on paper but just became extra work solved by a website for most players. (Source)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Iron Docks, Dev Interview, Blue Tweets, Setup of the Month, Ghostcrawler on WoW started by chaud View original post
Published on 2014-08-24 11:31 PM
78 Comments
Comments 78 Comments
  1. Aelric70's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Trassk View Post
    I just hate the attitude of douchebags like Greg Street, who thinks elitist hard mode is the only thing that matters and screw anyone else, anyone else who isn't an elitist hardcore player is a 'grandmother'.
    Fine, but that wasnt the attitude he expressed. He said it was challenging to have to generate the additional incremental guidance features that eased players into all of the games mechanics... Creating accessibility. He didnt say the mechanics of any of these games being mentioned were harder than the others, just that it was nice to have less in-game training to factor in. Its not hard to guess why... From the production side of things it slows the pace of dev with all the manpower that must be devoted to designing, coding, doing the graphics, etc. for all that obligatory learning content. If you can write that off for the players (of any skill level) to just figure out on their own over time, it removes a big resource drain. There might even be some changes that get sidelined because the overhead cost of accessibility is just too high.

    That really has nothing to do with hating anybody. Early on in wow, there was less accessibility investment and players just had to go to 3rd party stuff (elitistjerks, wowwiki, blogs, etc.) for most of the intermediate+ info. A lot more is baked in now, and more ingame assistance is getting added all the time. So he didnt enjoy managin all that overhead... So what?
  1. Jaq's Avatar
    The more GC talks, the more I realize that there is, within Blizzard, a culture of people who want to make the game to cater to the 1% of hardcore players, and who can really care less about the 99% that actually pays the bills. A lot of the changes in raiding in Warlords-especially the gutting of LFR, because oh those poor raiders, having to go into the cesspool of LFR to get a tiny advantage over other progression raiders-scream "the only people that matter are the ones sponsored by mouse companies." I am starting to suspect that GC himself is responsible not for making the game more accessible, but for helping to create the "all that matters is heroic raiding" culture we see all too often at Blizzard.
  1. CaptainArlong's Avatar
    It's so cute how WoW players think they're so hardcore when they do raid bosses on the hard modes. I'm sorry, it shouldn't take you more than an hour to kill a boss, even at launch. I've been playing video games all my life, nearly 30 years, and I have NEVER ONCE took more than an hour to learn a boss fight. WoW was the most brutal game I had ever played, since I had to wait hours, days, weeks, for other people to learn a fight.

    Your grandma should be able to beat any WoW boss, regardless of the difficulty, because they're all so simple.
  1. mmoc840776f426's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jaq View Post
    The more GC talks, the more I realize that there is, within Blizzard, a culture of people who want to make the game to cater to the 1% of hardcore players, and who can really care less about the 99% that actually pays the bills. A lot of the changes in raiding in Warlords-especially the gutting of LFR, because oh those poor raiders, having to go into the cesspool of LFR to get a tiny advantage over other progression raiders-scream "the only people that matter are the ones sponsored by mouse companies." I am starting to suspect that GC himself is responsible not for making the game more accessible, but for helping to create the "all that matters is heroic raiding" culture we see all too often at Blizzard.
    Why are people mad about the absolute best loot in game not being available in the absolute easiest content of the game? How on earth do you justify that?
  1. Moonie1's Avatar
    I stopped reading at the Grandma bullshit. The guy was not fired, he left a place that happily employed him and this is the garbage he spews out about them? What a spiteful ingrate.
  1. markdall's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Altarion View Post
    GC's problem is that he often tried to justify changes to the game which were not so wise.

    A good example: The changes made to the raiding model in Cataclysm, which GC often tried to justify. Telling players that 10 = 25, when everyone knew that different raid sizes posed different challenges, was insulting to the player base. Not only were we told that 10 = 25, but loot, achievements and lockouts were shared. That was just daft. You could not even fit all of WoW's classes into a 10 man raid, let alone include all player abilities, which limited boss raid design. Blizzard and GC's were so stubborn regarding this change to raiding, which was to the detriment of the raiding scene, and game at large.

    Sadly, and I wish I could say different, but I'm pleased that at least one defender of the silly changes to raiding made in Cataclysm is no longer working for Blizzard.
    IDK, watching 25 man raids get much better gear and that quicker was always disheartening. 10 != 25, but heroic should == heroic. Clearly Blizzard agrees with you though, so now we're stuck with 20 man Mythic. Thanks for that.

    Nobody I know has any interest in raiding heroic in WoD. It's Mythic or nothing. New video card not included.
  1. ExtremelyCrusty's Avatar
    Another Wintergrasp-like area would just be amazing.
  1. mmoc0abcacbae5's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Paula Deen View Post
    10/10 Joke/Bait

    League is a MOBA, by the very definition of the genre it is easy. It is basically WoWs PvP with less buttons to push and it even GUIDES YOU on what gear you should pick up. LoL is, in more than one sense of the word, easier than WoW on any level.
    I mean lol doesnt even have a third dimension to control
  1. Zairn's Avatar
    He wasn't disparaging casual play at all...he was commenting on how much more difficult it is to design for a wide audience. Accessibility is a whole 'nother dimension you have to layer on to a game that competes with everything else you are trying to do. Of course he would feel good moving to a game where accessibility is not a pressing issue, that's not even remotely controversial or shocking. It would be like, I don't know, telling an artist they didn't have to worry about shading on their next project. Hot diggity, that's a load off your back!

    Goodness freaking gracious do people go out of their way to misinterpret Ghostcrawler. I really feel awful for the guy and I don't know how he puts up with it. I guess that is why companies keep using him as a visible person, he seems to function well as a target dummy...
  1. Airbag888's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Yriel View Post
    In the end that just happened. We managed to get by through Wrath and Cata normals but the MoP normals were to hard for our raidgroup and we disbanded the raid altogether.
    But still it was not a matter of them not trying or anything, we tried and tried and tried, they were just not able to manage the gameplay.

    So in a way yes, i think everybody should be president. Easymodes makes it possible for bad players to see the content. Bashioks comment goes in the direction that one hard mode and nothing else is enough since everybody could do it if they really want. And that is not the case in my experience. Some people just can't.
    Here's the thing.

    Resources are limited. Blizz will probably stick to x months of development of an expansion before moving on to the next.
    With that in mind. We're either going to get great varied content with a progression curve meaning some will never experience part of it or content that's 80% re-used (assets/art/textures/environments) with tweaks (some new spells and mostly new numbers) in 4-5 installments (1 for each difficulty level) and given the time taken to make those they'll give us some silly time sinks in between to do (dailies, farming, garrisons).

    So basically the game becomes 'repeat the same raids on various difficulty' or 1 long beautiful raid with various non raid content equally as engaging (think class epic quests of vanilla)

    People just need to recognize this is not the game for them when they've banged their head against it for long enough
  1. Yriel's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Airbag888 View Post
    Here's the thing.

    Resources are limited. Blizz will probably stick to x months of development of an expansion before moving on to the next.
    With that in mind. We're either going to get great varied content with a progression curve meaning some will never experience part of it or content that's 80% re-used (assets/art/textures/environments) with tweaks (some new spells and mostly new numbers) in 4-5 installments (1 for each difficulty level) and given the time taken to make those they'll give us some silly time sinks in between to do (dailies, farming, garrisons).

    So basically the game becomes 'repeat the same raids on various difficulty' or 1 long beautiful raid with various non raid content equally as engaging (think class epic quests of vanilla)

    People just need to recognize this is not the game for them when they've banged their head against it for long enough
    I still think it's strange that in single player games no one is starting by default on easy ('cause why would i make it more difficult than nessesary) and then complain that is was no fun since it was so easy and refuse to play the other difficulties because they are the same content.
    No you start on normal or hard, depending on your taste and ignore the easymode.
    But in multiplayer games somehow it's unreasonable to ignore LFR because it would give a small gear-powerbonus to normal. It's somehow a "we want it more difficult but we want the hard difficulty as easy as possible". I don't get it.

    And i don't think that balancing a dungeon to 4 or 5 difficulties is that much effort, in the end it's just adjustments in their database and a bit of testing.
  1. voskopoula's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by edw View Post
    Some people here are throwing things like "LoL is more casual then WoW" ... now, I don't play LoL, I play Dota2, but the games are similar and both of them are harder to master by far then WoW ... in wow you can get away with anything ... in LoL or Dota you make a mistake it costs your team, make another and it costs your game.

    Ghostcrawler is right about wow ... it is made for casuals, 90% of it in may optinion is made for casuals, the 10% is the heroic content that ... guess what, only a small percentage of players clear it.
    So yes wow is made that even a gandma can clear it (LFR ?) ... LoL and Dota are unforgiven, you will get stomped, you will be called a noob if you are one, if you rage and leave you will be punished ...

    So let me get it straight, you consider skill to avoid making 1 small 10pixel move that will give the opponent the ability to take an advantage on an online game that a possible lag spike will ruin it anyway? And you consider a game more skillfull if you have to coordinate with 4 other players than a game that can go up to 24 other players in demands of coordination? You also consider a game more skillful if it's about players cursing other players and accusing them for small mistakes of 10 pixels because as you all think 10 pixels show the skill or not of a player?

    There are raid fights in WoW that are so sadistic that you gonna feel despair (blackfuse heroic 25 belt, Garrosh 1st intermission 25man, Garrosh 3rd phase without monk :P ) and so on. Lei shen hc. Yes WoW has a broad range of players but what the hell, LoL and Dota2 are also played from loads of kids that play them because they are free 2 play and i doubt the kids next door can beat me in LoL or any fps game or in wow skill. So let's put everything in perspective, GC is a whore and he is sucking his client (LoL) and his clientelle that thinks they are important and more hardcore (lol) because they play intense 30 minutes of not moving 10 pixels in a wrong way.
    If you think you can master a class in wow you are dreaming, being in the top 30% of WoW is way more deep and harder to achieve than being in the top 30% of LoL where you just need games over games along just 4 more other persons that can take and withstand your curses and shit. and you theirs :P.
  1. Blowmeup's Avatar
    Am I the only one who thinks its ironic he calls WoW too easy to get into when the game he develops now is considered the easiest of the Moba Genre. GC comes across as smug. Pretty much par for the course with him.
  1. mmoc7174a5509c's Avatar
    nice info on the comp setup, thnx
  1. xact4's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptainArlong View Post
    It's so cute how WoW players think they're so hardcore when they do raid bosses on the hard modes. I'm sorry, it shouldn't take you more than an hour to kill a boss, even at launch. I've been playing video games all my life, nearly 30 years, and I have NEVER ONCE took more than an hour to learn a boss fight. WoW was the most brutal game I had ever played, since I had to wait hours, days, weeks, for other people to learn a fight.

    Your grandma should be able to beat any WoW boss, regardless of the difficulty, because they're all so simple.
    You sound like the guy who's absolutely convinced the reason he has no friends and has been kicked out of every guild he's ever been in is because everyone is jealous of his skill...
  1. mmoc5eb69ce1b0's Avatar
    Ghostcrawler said that chess has a RNG element to it. He is THAT absurdly stupid. Discussing his opinion is a waste of keystrokes.
  1. mmoc3f25629bd0's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shilien View Post
    The real funny part is the actual dumbing down of the game (and the coinciding loss of subscriptions) didn't start until GC actually joined the team. Sounds like he just had the wrong job all along, based on his comments after leaving. That he's sitting there and making it sound like it wasn't his fault for the past however many years is pretty disingenuous.
    The funny thing is that he went to LoL, which is the dumbed down, your granny can play it, version of Dota. (nothing against league, i have no problems with accessible games, I just find it hilarious that GC said this when thats exactly the type of game he went to!).

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Blastfizzle View Post
    Ghostcrawler said that chess has a RNG element to it. He is THAT absurdly stupid. Discussing his opinion is a waste of keystrokes.
    whut? Chess has rng? yeah I really hate it when I want to move my rook 4 squares but RNG only lets me go 3, or when my queen loses to a pawn because of rng......../facepalm

    did he really say that?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Blowmeup View Post
    Am I the only one who thinks its ironic he calls WoW too easy to get into when the game he develops now is considered the easiest of the Moba Genre. GC comes across as smug. Pretty much par for the course with him.
    no you are not. LoL is the WoW of the Moba scene, easy, simple, "dumbed down"....and massively successful because of it.
  1. Zonned's Avatar
    I should be good on system requirements right?

    Intel i3 3240 @ 3.4ghz
    8gb DDR3-1600
    AMD Radeon R7 250
Page 4 of 4 FirstFirst ...
2
3
4

Site Navigation

Social Media

Services

My Account

Support

Advertise

Resources

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

Our Communities

© 2023 Magic Find, Inc. All rights reserved.