Ghostcrawler - "I’m a big fan of exclusive, prestige rewards for the best players."

[Socialhealer]

I do. But I wish this board would stop posting his stuff, as of now he's just some individual who hasn't even played WoW for years.

why? we have blue posts from people like celestalon and holinka who work at blizzard and are clueless.

ghostcrawler actually makes some fucking sense.

[callipygoustp]

Compared to the people who fly off the handle to scream about LFR and how its somehow taking away from their own achievement, when by every objective matter its not.

I would love to see an accurate achievement accounting of the people that bitch about LFR. I'd bet one of my homes that the average achievement level of a complainer is mid, or just below mid, skill level.

[Nurvus]

I agree with exclusive rewards based on skill.
I disagree with limited time rewards.

Agreed, unless those are recurring like holidays.

[callipygoustp]

And WTF is with people hating on Ghostcrawler. Hate him or love, agree with him or don't, the fact is he is a successful game designer and has been for over a decade. Why would you ignore someone with that kind of pedigree.

[SirCowdog]

In the latest post by Ghostcrawler, he says that he is a big fan exclusive, prestige rewards for the best players.

He also mentions that there should be content for all types of players, however he is in favor of time-limited and rewards that people aspire to, but are never able to obtain.

I think the reason he feels this way is because having aspirations in the game make players better. It also gives players goals to go try to achieve.

Back in TBC, I aspired to be a raider and clear BT and Sunwell because of the fact that it was prestigious. It was cool because I liked that other players saw my gear and wanted to become like me and try to obtain the gear that I had. It felt good because the gear was unique and if a player had T6 gear, it meant they were good players.

Now that gear is so diluted, especially since the same look is obtainable in different difficulties, just with different color variations, it loses some of its umph and prestige. Blizzard is known for being wishy washy on their stance, but one stance that I really wish they would go back to is the WoD model of gear, where the tier gear looked different from the tourist gear.

Do you agree with Ghostcrawler?

Spending lots of development time on content which only rewards the "best" players for a limited amount of time is a mistake. Pick one: Limited content that's available to everyone only for a short period of time(Monthly/yearly events), or skill-based rewards that are only obtainable by playing very very well, but which are always accessible.

The problem with GC's line of reasoning when applied to WoW is that WoW is a game which is based on catering to an EXTREMELY broad range of players. By creating rewards that are only available to an exceptionally tiny percentage of the playerbase, you're alienating what makes your game good in the first place.

[clevin]

I like exclusive, time limited rewards. But I think they should exist for many playstyles, not just raids. Let's say they added in Legion a title and mount for getting all of the M+ runs at +25. That would be cool. People who love M+ would have a reward. Same for raids. Hell, give rewards for completing every quest, etc.

Don't give so many that things become meaningless but it would be cool if almost every play style had one reward and/or title that you could get if you did that as well as it could be done.

And yes, I'd time limit them. Conquering a challenge when it's hard is worth a reward, doing it when it's easy... is not. There's a reason you don't see high school players going back to the 5th grade bracket, dominating it and gets the 1st place trophy. We all understand that even if it doesn't devalue the title for the 5th graders, it's a silly, meaningless accomplishment for the high school kids.

[sweboy99]

I do. But I wish this board would stop posting his stuff, as of now he's just some individual who hasn't even played WoW for years.

Do you know him that well that you know he hasn't played WoW for years? :O

[RoKPaNda]

Mounts, achievements, VASTLY different appearances on Tier in Mythic. The top players have exclusive rewards.

[Themanintobuildafire]

I disagree with time gated challenges because being punished for not playing the current expansion is stupid to me.

This is exactly my thought. OR if I am playing the current expansion, maybe I don't have enough time to get all the things done they they design content for people who play 10hrs a day, every day.

I like some of the prestige awards they have, but having started like 10 months late into the xpac with this system, and not playing all my online time in pvp, it will be impossible for me to hit the top end rewards. I hate that when the xpac ends, I am screwed and if I didn't get it, I am done with any chance of getting it in the future.

That's just bad design.

[corebit]

I agree with exclusive rewards based on skill.
I disagree with limited time rewards.

But in the WoW context where difficulty is tied to item level and every expansion redesigns the classes and gives new abilities or prunes them, these two statements cannot coexist.

Take Mists of Pandaria Challenge Mode dungeons, they were time limited because they were designed with MoP gear and skills in mind. A new expansion comes and revamps everything, and suddenly the skill that was required to complete them is no longer there. Blizzard can tweak those dungeons with each expansions (an unrealistic goal by itself), and at most they can only approximate the skill required to complete them, which is still unfair to the people who earned them legit.

That's why PVP elite gear can't be made available without raising a huge stink in the community.

[Darththeo]

It depends honestly. There needs to be a mix, if all rewards are only for top players and time sensitive, you are going to turn away players. Players should be able to obtain most rewards in as long as it takes. Cosmetic rewards (ie, achievement mounts) are perfectly fine when limited, but a game about gear shouldn't have a time limit on gear (unless it is purely cosmetic gear).

[corebit]

This is pretty much a misrepresentation of what he said by context mining. To quote Ghostcrawler: "You can get away with locking up a little bit of power under the justification that it gets more relevant at the more competitive upper end of the player base, but you have to be careful."

His post, taken in total, makes it pretty clear that he feels that the top level rewards should be primarily represented by power ... which they currently are in the form of higher ilevel gear. When he talks about things that "express what kind of player I am", which would likely be along the lines of xmog and mounts and titles, he takes a position of "I’d be careful about locking those kind of rewards away to the top percent".

Most people don't bother reading or researching that much, they just think whatever the OP posts is taken as truth. That's why Jaylock is so successful.

I wonder how much undeserved hate Ghostcrawler gets because so many of his statements get taken out of context.

[Kazuchika]

What insight from Greg "I can say whatever the fuck I want when it comes to WoW because I haven't worked for Blizzard for years so my opinion is absolutely meaningless" Street

I'm amazed that the MMOChamp staff has the time to keep up with this as I'm sure digging up 3 week old WarcraftDevs tweets to post on the front page obviously takes a huge chunk of their manpower.

[Racthoh]

i think time limited awards are the best type of rewards too. sometimes you actually put a lot of effort into playing at a high level for a short amount of time and it's nice to be able to show that off years later. hence the r1 gladiator titles. they should do it with raid mounts too imho.

[Jaylock]

What insight from Greg "I can say whatever the fuck I want when it comes to WoW because I haven't worked for Blizzard for years so my opinion is absolutely meaningless" Street

I'm amazed that the MMOChamp staff has the time to keep up with this as I'm sure digging up 3 week old WarcraftDevs tweets to post on the front page obviously takes a huge chunk of their manpower.

Why don't you like his insight? He was the LEAD developer and director of the game during its best years. Thats gotta mean something.

[shrunken]

I don't personally like it (because I have inferiority issues sometimes), but it's entirely fair.

rare honest post

[Treecko]

Why don't you like his insight? He was the LEAD developer and director of the game during its best years. Thats gotta mean something.

Best years for you might be garbage years to someone else. I mean, if you think any part of Cataclysm was part of the best years of WoW, more power to you, and you're entitled to that opinion.. but most of my friends gave up on WoW during Cataclysm and never came back, JUST because of how bad Cata was. To add to that, most people that I personally talk to (while maybe a small selection of people) used to link to Ghostcrawler blue posts and wonder if he even plays the game at all..

I think last week one of his quotes on the front page here was about how he loved the Rogue combo system and he mentioned that he liked that the combo points weren't part of the rogue but were always stuck to the target, and then he said he has no idea that's still the case, which should show people that he's really moved on from the game and has no clue about what the current gamestate is.

The fact that he even responds to any WoW question anymore baffles me, and it's almost a daily occurrence. Like, does he sit down in the morning with his paper and coffee and answer these questions for any reason other than to feel relevant (which he isn't)?

Also, to just further dig into this thread.. The only real prestige rewards have always been for Gladiators. PVE prestige has always been nonexistent. Like, sure, there have always been legendaries. But having a legendary doesn't correlate to being a great player, it means you got lucky. Does being persistent and patient enough with total RNG timesinks equate to being a great player in an MMO? It might, it might not. WoW really has never had any prestigious PVE rewards though - the challenge mode stuff was close, but not quite close enough because it was so niche. Even the challenge mode skins in Legion can't really separate the elite from the mediocre.

The old World/(Server?) first raid achievements were probably the closest thing to being a prestigious PVE reward, but I feel like there should have been more at some point. In a lot of competitive TCGs the best players who win the big tournaments gets to design a card. If the best raiders/world firsts were able to have input or help design a future raid boss, that'd be prestigious. The top players do need something to shoot for, and I don't think it should offend anyone who isn't a top player.

[Moozart]

In the latest post by Ghostcrawler, he says that he is a big fan exclusive, prestige rewards for the best players.

He also mentions that there should be content for all types of players, however he is in favor of time-limited and rewards that people aspire to, but are never able to obtain.

I think the reason he feels this way is because having aspirations in the game make players better. It also gives players goals to go try to achieve.

Back in TBC, I aspired to be a raider and clear BT and Sunwell because of the fact that it was prestigious. It was cool because I liked that other players saw my gear and wanted to become like me and try to obtain the gear that I had. It felt good because the gear was unique and if a player had T6 gear, it meant they were good players.

Now that gear is so diluted, especially since the same look is obtainable in different difficulties, just with different color variations, it loses some of its umph and prestige. Blizzard is known for being wishy washy on their stance, but one stance that I really wish they would go back to is the WoD model of gear, where the tier gear looked different from the tourist gear.

Do you agree with Ghostcrawler?

Who??????????????

[A Chozo]

Yeah sure. Reward the best players. Remove those rewards once they become easier to obtain after the expansion ends.

People loooooove chunks of a game they bought being removed forever because some randoms need more attention.

[Sentynel]

we need more exclusive stuff, as a pve`er im totally fine with pvpers getting some badass armored flying mounts
I do wish that we would get more curve rewards like garrosh that gave a mount (it was also nice gold to boost for it lul)

Hoping they would go back to wod "armor raid sets", mythic/elite pvp gear looking badass, and rest looking like questing gear,
wanna look cool, guess u have to work for it

Archimonde gave the Moose mount and we will most likely get something in Legion too.