Why has Blizzard become so obsessed with PUGS?

[Deleted]

I have been playing World of Warcraft for about 6 years now, During World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade & most of World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King (Up to about ICC) PUG'ing was UNHEARD off, It never happened. It was simple, You didn't have a guild or time! You didn't raid!

When Blizzard nerfed ICC it opened the floor gate of PUG'ing. Suddenly people who had never raided a day in there life become "experts" in raiding.

The way raiding used to be is you got together with a bunch of people from the your guild on vent and spent hours going through a raid, Having a good time getting gear, talking & learning new encounters. Now when I look at trade chat it hurts my eyes "LFM FOR EPICSLY HARD RAIDSRSS!!!!!! LINK ACHIEVEMENST!!! OR NU INV FOR YOU LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!11" Then if someone makes a mistake in the PUG raid they get flamed like they have just killed a puppy! "WUT TEH HELL NUB LERN2PLY YOUR FKCIKING CLASS!!!!!!!!!!!1LOOT BAN LOLOLO"

If anyone ever spoke like that in my guild to any other player they would get kicked out the guild so fast. Raiding is suppose to be a fun way to spend your time but people who have only ever raided in PUG's are not experiencing that. There experiencing these absolute arse-hole "Elitists" who wouldn't survive one raid in a guild.

Now I admit it, I have PUGGED raids before, Once or twice. The way players act yelling, name calling, ninja'ing items. It would make anybody who wants to raid think again.

Why have Blizzard suddenly become so obsessed with "EVERYONE" seeing there content. Yes people are seeing your content, But are they enjoying it? Most likely no because they have been group with the people who every other guild avoids.

Your thoughts?

[Deleted]

wait, your server DIDN't pug before ICC nerfs? man, my server even started pugging SSC and TK during 3.0, and then continued on.

and no, those pugs weren't like those that you describe. i just think you were on an extremely PuG unfriendly server.

[Deleted]

Massive trade pugging began in the very 1st weeks of 3.0 dude (OS, Naxx). Even in TBC we held pugs but those were forum organised runs with alts from raiding guild mostly so that doesn't work imo.

Pugging is awesome, say what you will about WotLK but logging in and always seeing something being pugged on trade atm was awesome, you could raid anytime, anyday. Separated raid IDs helped too.
I mean yea, you can say "raid with your guild", I did, in world's top 100 even but this was offtime deal. Alts, 10mans etc. Pugging was the thing that kept a lot of players going, they had something to do apart from evening raids.

[Deleted]

Nope, ICC was when the pugging started on my realm do not recall anything else ever being pugged or people even talking about starting agroup

[Kathoris]

Lol i was pugging LK kills when nerf was at 10%. They want people to pug they said this before wrath launch so for the last 3 of your six years of playing have been puggable aside form the first month-3 months of cata.

Edit: didn't mean to come across as an ass

During tbc pugging was not as relevant due to not everyone being able to enter every raid

WOTLK was pug city i never raided with a guild the entire expansion until the last 5 months or so, every week i pugged TOC 10/25, ICC 10/25 on multiple characters i also only played 3 nights a week so pugs were everywhere

[Dakia]

Nope, ICC was when the pugging started on my realm do not recall anything else ever being pugged or people even talking about starting agroup

Heh, wow that sucks. I started running pugs back in classic. That is how I got in to raiding. MC and ZG pugs always seemed to be going on Stormreaver.

[Deleted]

Heh, wow that sucks. I started running pugs back in classic. That is how I got in to raiding. MC and ZG pugs always seemed to be going on Stormreaver.

We are talking about massive trade pugs that take basicly anyone who has at least the basic badge gear. And pugs that were very successful too.

[Jaerin]

There always has been PUG raids.

There were 40 man pug MC's back in Vanilla. They had nice web signup sheets and everything. Basically first come, first serve with probably a core of 20 regulars. Most people don't have 10-20 RL friends to raid with so they go with strangers.

Blizzard is simply making it easier to play with strangers, and what you are seeing is the social bonds of WoW are breaking down because they are not as strong as people thought. People won't admit that the only reason they put up with some people is because they are there to give them something, mainly loot. When that group is no longer necessary, all the people that were simply there for loot move on to other pastures. The problem is so many people are moving on to random grazing that they are losing the little social bonds that did exist.

The social bonds are not the basis of why people are playing together anymore, its for loot. Before you were forced to develop those social bonds because if something were to happen where they get broken then more often than not you were setback months of time. Now you can jump in trade and probably get a PUG faster than an organized group.

[Deleted]

I have been playing World of Warcraft for about 6 years now, During World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade & most of World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King (Up to about ICC) PUG'ing was UNHEARD off,

What server have you been playing on dude?

On my medium populated server there was plenty of pugs during tbc from kara all the way upto MH,most of the time they was quite successful..

Same for Wrath, people was pugging that content from day 1...Naxx was a joke,infact a guild mate got his first tier peace hours after leveling from a Naxx pug...I was still lvl 79 at the time (not quite sure how long this was after release but it was the first week for sure)

Pugging was awesome for killing time and gearing up alts during non raid hours....Cata killed most of that,that's why Im bored shitless when Im not raiding..I cant wait for this LF raid tool next patch.

[Deleted]

There always has been PUG raids.

There were 40 man pug MC's back in Vanilla. They had nice web signup sheets and everything. Basically first come, first serve with probably a core of 20 regulars. Most people don't have 10-20 RL friends to raid with so they go with strangers.

Blizzard is simply making it easier to play with strangers, and what you are seeing is the social bonds of WoW are breaking down because they are not as strong as people thought. People won't admit that the only reason they put up with some people is because they are there to give them something, mainly loot. When that group is no longer necessary, all the people that were simply there for loot move on to other pastures. The problem is so many people are moving on to random grazing that they are losing the little social bonds that did exist.

The social bonds are not the basis of why people are playing together anymore, its for loot. Before you were forced to develop those social bonds because if something were to happen where they get broken then more often than not you were setback months of time. Now you can jump in trade and probably get a PUG faster than an organized group.

also, Social bonds

[Deleted]

When Blizzard nerfed ICC it opened the floor gate of PUG'ing.

I stopped there. You are lying. You say 6 years player and you didn't know Naxxramas 80 was majorly pugged? Really?

[Rapret]

my realm started puging ZG and MC in vanilla and contiuned doing so for every tier

[Dakia]

We are talking about massive trade pugs that take basicly anyone who has at least the basic badge gear. And pugs that were very successful too.

Which has happened for quite some time.

[Styxz]

When I started (Sunwell patch) ppl were pugging all of the raids. Of course not every boss was puggable, but mag, gruul and kara were pretty easy seeing as the player base was generally more skilled.

Wrath was puggable all the way through.

Cata is puggable if your server isnt super elitist. Illadan (horde) wants 365 min for normal t11 content a lot of the time =/

[Venziir]

Nonsense... There has been pug raids since forever. Strath, Scholo, LBRS, UBRS, ZG, MC and AQ20 just to name a few.

[Deleted]

2 extremes doesn't make it right.

It neither "started at ICC", nor "all raids were puggable".

You would not pug the final bosses of Ulduar when Ulduar was the latest raid for example. But you would pug most of Naxxramas, etc.

[ZeroEdgeir]

Simple answer to your question:

Why does Blizzard make the game more accessible?

Cause it pleases a larger portion of the playerbase.

People who play the game hardcore like 6+hrs a day, 7-days a week are actually a financial loss to Blizzard compared to those who play 10-12hrs a week. Those who play heavily are getting alot more service usage out of the same financial payment. That alone makes it so that appealing to the masses is more of a financial benefit, to keep the larger part of the playerbase is happy with content to do.

Besides, if you haven't done it by now, almost 3 months since Firelands launched, you weren't gonna get to it anytime soon. Deal with it.

[Belloc]

It really shouldn't be hard to understand, but apparently it is. Blizzard wants people to experience their content. It's that simple.

Firelands is coming to an end with 4.3. They want players to experience it before they no longer have any reason to. LFR tool allowing players to fight Deathwing is all the reason that players need to stop running Firelands. In other words, nerf them now or no one progresses any further.

[holyman]

Like so many said be4, i aswell puged loads in tbc. Infact kara, gruul maggy, za and bt was pug loads. There was ssc tk and swp pugs aswell but i never joined them. So ye maybe it was just ur server

[gingerlemon]

Because there are way more people in non raiding guilds than otherwise.

They want everyone to see what they've spent hours of labour and love making. As long as that doesn't effect myself as a semi-hardcore raider, I'm fine with that.