Cataclysm Post Mortem - Dungeons and Raids, Darkmoon Faire Issues, MMO Report

[Ryme]

Just to reiterate: This interview implies that both Dragon Soul and Firelands were dream level raids for this team - That should really scare you for future content.

[BrerBear]

Mercer was allowed the encounter lead in Wrath, so I ask you... how's that working out?

Well, people seem to agree that Ulduar was the best raid of all time, and Molten Core one of the worst.
So, I would say, "consistently hit or miss", same as it's been since the game launched.

[Deleted]

Compared to previous Post Mortems Im seriously dissapointed. Look back at the other end of expac raids, I mean, I know we did ICC for like a year and a bit but it was epically big with new models set in an environment that had been overaching the whole story line with a serious villain.

T11 was boss, so much variety allowed by the three different raids designed perfectly around the typical guild which will raid 3 days a week. They said that raiders were finding this too much (semi hardcore here, never saw anyone complaining about that) and they cut it down to 7 in FL. TBF we did skip 4 winds and al'akir most weeks, but the options and variety was awesome.

FL was unique and interesting, confusing as hell the first time you set foot in it and nice new models. Fights like Alyz and Ryho were truly inspired. Downside was the staff collection rate of 10vs25 but overall a good tier.

THEN we have DS, imo 5 awesome fights (not ultrax spine or madness) (this is heroic) including one of my favs warmaster, the variety of strategy the bredth of the encounters allowed (in these 5) were truly great. HOWEVER Ultrax was literally intended to be a brick wall to heroic guilds racing for world first lacking any truly interesting mechanics for a dragon which was supposed to be better than Nefarion (WTF?!?!?!111?). Spine, how the hell can this guy say how proud he was of it when it induced such a harsh class stacking mechanic and noone even saw the f*cking boss unless the died?! The fight is terrible, the most interesting thing that happens is you get 10000 bloods and your tank has to kite them around *clap* *clap* sure it takes execution but really its whoever has the most legendary arcane mages whos going to get the kill. Madness is such a huge anti-climax, kill a claw kill a tentacle woop woop you beat the game. Oh wait dont forget the big head you have to beat on at the end of the fight, but then again those adds are posing more of a threat better kill them first....

Truly tragic he cant admit that he wouldve prefered another content patch and a more epic climax to the expansion. The guy designed ulduar, ICC, BWD, BoT and FL he thinks that Spine is the best thing to come out of cata? That 5 minute heroics where 1 geared dps can carry a group are a good thing?

[sithorion]

I normally never QQ, but this was just horrible. People(inlcuding me) have been so unsatisfied by the current state of raiding and dungeons. For some people they are too hard, for some they are way too easy. What they made of it was some kind of very weird mix between some encounters just being stupidly overtuned and only doable by having shitloads of legendarys in your team, and others were so faceroll even the most clueless people could oneshot them.I'm all in for making encounters for everyone, but the line between heroic and normal is just weird and not in balance. Then when some dude of blizzard just says LOL RED DRAGONS WERE EPIC WE ARE AMAZING I'm really dissapointed by the lack of the learning curve developers at Blizzard have.

[Yalingo]

I recent resubbed to rift. I havn't had this much fun in an mmo since playing BC era WoW, only with a dungeon finder ^_^.

[Deleted]

You know come to think of it, I don't think I've ever wiped once in the new dungeons with super pugs. To be quite honest, I think I wiped more on that 2nd boss in Blackwing Caverns with super pugs than any of the newer dungeons.

Amen. It is sad watching Blizz prove they are so out of touch with players and clearly completely lacking in understanding why they are losing subscriptions,

The 4.3 dugneons were great dungeons in terms of design, story and mechanics, but the fact that they provided ZERO challenge made them boring and made players like myself, who isn't in any way hardcore, lose interest very very fast. Compare them to ICC 5-mans, which provided challenges and playable content for months and months, these were just money down the drain for Blizzard.

The problem is the whole "tourist mode" attitude of Blizz to raids and dungeons alike. If you can do it in tourist mode, you get done with it a few weeks after patch day. Then what? Well for me, I've just unsubscribed. I'll come back for MoP, sure, but it will be the same again after completing MoP content 1-2 months after launch. Their business modell really isn't great for people being subscribers for a total of 4 months every 2 years.

[Marooned]

they tuned the FOUR raiding difficulties well?

10 25 normal
10 25 heroic

[TimeTravel]

I recent resubbed to rift. I havn't had this much fun in an mmo since playing BC era WoW, only with a dungeon finder ^_^.

Rift currently does have the best PVE endgame content. I have always said if Trion had brought out a popular RTS, RPG like blizzard did before creating a MMO they would have a much larger sub base which they deserve.

Problem is people are sheep and will stick to one thing.

[Adrim]

What makes me truly upset is that as a total layman without ANY connection to Blizzard's development department, I can still see *exactly* what the problem with Darkmoon Faire turnins and how to fix it. That's how fucking awful Blizzard's developers are when someone completely outside the game could fix it better than they can.

The problem? It's so fucking obvious. They made the criteria for the achievement QUESTS that they then RESET every month. DUH FUCKING DUH. Because they couldn't find a non-fail way to limit the Darkmoon turn ins rather than let people just farm them and get "too many" previous tickets at once.

Who gives a shit about Darkmoon tickets at this point four months later? Just make the turnin quests infinitely repeatible without resetting them every month, done, the end, so fucking obvious.

[DarkZero]

Spine is awesome? I've tried my best to watch the scenery during the fight, but it's just too much out of the way. I can't move around or deathwing rolls. I've got to wait for some adds to do something and then just attack something that I don't even exactly get to see exactly what it is. Yeah, awesome.

[Alayea]

Q. What were your main goals going into Cataclysm?
We really wanted to make sure we were creating new challenges, strong mechanics, and cool creatures while staying true to the expansion and the themes we wanted to carry out. The three raid dungeons came out well and we had a lot of fun bringing the story of Nefarian and the Twilight’s Hammer to life. We were also able to add some dynamic mechanics in Throne of the Four Winds, which featured players moving across multiple platforms.

The Omnotron Defense System and Atramedes bosses were fun, but that was it. People in general were teed off about facing Nefarian and Onyxia yet again. Old is old, Blizzard. Also, while TotFW was a beautiful raid zone... its loot wasn't worth the trouble beyond having another chance at a tier token, and only if you were having some seriously bad RNG. For the most part, the drops were disenchanted.

Q. How did this evolve over the various content patches?
Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman were entertaining raids with diverse mechanics, and they translated well when we converted them into Heroic dungeons for patch 4.1. Interesting mechanics and features that once were restricted to raids are now finding their way into our five-player dungeons.

Heck no! I think I can speak for many players when I say "NEVER AGAIN!" I hate those places with a passion, and am still mad what Blizzard has done to the Zandalar tribe. (And they removed content for this tripe.)

Adding the Dungeon Journal in patch 4.2 was also a major step forward. We wanted to be able to share more information in the game so that players wouldn’t feel the need to go look everything up on external websites. While those sites are great at what they do, we felt like we needed to try to alleviate the need to go out of the game to find the information players wanted to see.

This I don't mind. It still needs some work, but it's great to refer to for boss(es) abilities.

The addition of Raid Finder in patch 4.3 also opened up more opportunities for players to be able to experience our raid content. The feature has proven to be extremely popular, and not just with people who had given up on raiding. Many players use Raid Finder to gear up their secondary characters, gain Valor for the week, or just because it’s fun.

Raid Finder is great for alts. Mains, not so much.

Q. What do you think worked best?
We’ve been reasonably successful with our tuning across all four raid difficulty modes. There were a few warts here and there, but we delivered on the idea that 10-player and 25-player raids could exist at a similar difficulty. We also had some memorable dungeons and cinematic moments in Cataclysm. I’m particularly fond of the interactive bombing run in Grim Batol involving the red drakes. Players really got a sense of the epic scale of Grim Batol, and how well they performed in the event could make clearing the rest of the dungeon much easier.

So the death of many 25 guilds due to the equalizing of loot item level doesn't even appear on your radar? Ok. And Grim Batol... ooh, that name greatly increases my blood pressure.

Q. What didn’t work out as planned or expected?
Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we’re now in a much better place. We’ve always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

I would give kudos to Blizzard for belatedly recognizing that the starting tier of dungeons was over-tuned, but I can't do that in good conscience. They were told before-hand about the problem, and still ignored feedback even as they were [strike]ruining[/strike] developing the troll heroics.

Q. What have you learned from Cataclysm and what are some of your top goals for Mists of Pandaria?
We learned we could create a crazy encounter like the Spine of Deathwing. It took a lot of hard work from the whole team and it was a difficult design challenge to tackle. How do you orchestrate a fight on the back of a gigantic flying dragon without inducing nausea? How do we make sure you feel like you’re on Deathwing? Delivering that experience was really important and everyone wanted the opportunity to work on it. What was really great was that we launched the story of Cataclysm with the cinematic that showed Deathwing having his elementium plates being put on, then we end the expansion with those very same plates being torn off. It gives some real closure to storyline.

Deathwing. The great villain that never was.

Q. Do you have a “dream” dungeon or encounter that you’d like to create if you had the opportunity?
I’ve never felt that I haven’t been able to do the things I want to do. Everyone on the team is completely dedicated to giving us unlimited opportunities to make epic and awesome experiences. But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

My dream is being able to over-gear dungeon mechanics that are current to the expansion. Basically, I want back the days of running around inside instances in my ICC gear and just trampling everything. RIP AoE damage.

[ihateyouall]

To be fair to the new 5-mans, they *are* tuned around 353 geared players when a lot of the people running them are in 378+. They're still fairly easy though, but IMO, they hit the sweet spot in length for the most part. Don't necessarily mind a longer dungeon from time to time, but even then, rather than make one long dungeon, it probably works better split into two wings. As far as some of the other things, I think some of you are reading more into some of the responses than is actually there. Overall, thought the article was pretty sparse though. Was hoping for some more interesting info to come out of it.

[ANewStart]

After reading this Q&A I think many players that have unsubbed will not be returning to the game. There is no respect to be had in the PVE aspect of the game in anymore.Well if my 8 year old nephew wants my account it's all his.

[Idletime]

Well, people seem to agree that Ulduar was the best raid of all time, and Molten Core one of the worst.
So, I would say, "consistently hit or miss", same as it's been since the game launched.

Most people playing today never saw Molten Core in it's prime or at level. While it was very, very, very simple in it's raid mechanics (tank, spank, decurse, heal, stay out of fire baddies, feral druid innervate me) it was hardly terrible. TOC has it beat by a mile for bad. The reason most hate it as well was the sheer fact you had to farm resistance to be able to also complete the place and were rewarded with T2 quality items and level 48 blues for your efforts. Rag's entrance was also considered by many the most epic of all boss entrances in the game for years.

You just had to see the original BWL, AQ40, and Naxx at the level as they were developed and for the classes available at that time. Since the player population has turned over 3 times in 7 years (Source: Ghostcrawler) it's really difficult to get a solid internet opinion. This is one huge reason why I think MoP should include Legacy servers - just to give everyone a shot at playing the way they really want to play. I'd actually pay money for an expansion if it gave me the option to play the game in 5 different versions rather than the crap we're fed today. Pandas... no. Regrind the entire AQ event? Yes please.
Pokemon... no. A true GM/HW grind again? Omg yes please. Take me to Illidan with all the gating and toppings, please. One day, maybe not anytime soon but someday. I've waited almost 12 years for D3, so I'm one patient no-lifer.

[david0925]

MC was awful and not remotely challenging except for tanks without fearward on Magmadar and assigning adds on Garr with them running around until Domo, where teamwork actually mattered a bit. Rag was pretty good, but the mana burn mechanic was really annoying Firelands was fine in both creative design and difficulty tuning, for both heroic and normal. A minor nerf to push people over wall was fine, but not the 15% abomination given. There was just nothing redeeming about Dragon Soul

I enjoyed BWL in general (aside from more the half the boss being fire immune and others highly fire resistant), C'thun, Twin Emps, and about half the fights in Naxx. And yes, I completed them while they were relevant.

[Magemaer]

Cata initial dungeons were hard? ROFLThe wow community is really really bad. Lol having trouble clearing Deadmines Heroic, Grim Batol etc. I actually enjoyed these instances and i found them funny to do. But never hard.Go figure.It's a game for morons.

---------- Post added 2012-03-06 at 04:04 AM ----------

Btw

The community is very creative and intelligent.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

[PhearMark]

Almost everything he mentioned were things I hated, Grim Batol was a pain, Conclave of Wind sucked, ZA and ZG were boring and we had to deal with them for way too long, and the Dungeon Journal is laid out incredibly poorly. Basically, everything they see as a good point, I see as a bad point, guess that's why I stopped playing >

[ANewStart]

Cata initial dungeons were hard? ROFLThe wow community is really really bad. Lol having trouble clearing Deadmines Heroic, Grim Batol etc. I actually enjoyed these instances and i found them funny to do. But never hard.Go figure.It's a game for morons.[COLOR="red"]

I actually think a lot of the good players have moved onto rift, the community in that game is very similar to what I experienced in burning crusade. It's great!

[Deleted]

This is such a BS. Do players enjoy Spine? No! I mean the idea was good but it turned out to be fail. Do players enjoy Madness? No. If your idea of fun is doing more or less same thing 4 times to get to final phase to kill head of the dragon, head. Seriously there was no new content, its like Crtl+c -> Ctrl+v and what is with the tentacles? They are everywhere, its sick. But from the start: T11 hc dungeons were indeed too hard. I mean if u went with friends that have a clue it was ok but if u went alone, after work to get your vp points you sometimes spend 2 hrs with noobs. Endless "cc that, cc this, do that, do this". BTW the idea that u have whole week to cap ur vp was very good. They should did it faster. T11 raid were cool but there are some flaws for me. First of all they were unfinished (Sinestra for example), they were buggy and had many shits like grounding totems on Twin Drakes, the ice shit on Council, Magmaw adds kiting, Atramedes bug and some more. I know there will be always bugs but there were just too many. Also what with this "extraplayerbar" shit. They can't just add this as a debuff with "sound level" or "corrupted blood level" like on yog? Instead they add some new bar and think ppl will go like "oh, this is new". In DS they added some new button to press. I mean rly, after MoP we will have like 10 new buttons to click 20 new bars to watch and maybe something else. Throne of the 4winds was good. Al'akir fight was fun, but i know its like u want to eat your own face fight on the beginning . Troll dungeons = Crtl+c -> Ctrl+v. Zul'gurub was nice mechanic wise, nice bosses, almost no trash, coll stuff with claudrons but Zul'aman was like omfg. Tons of trash, long dungeon i mean instant leave. T12 was nice raid. It was small, cool bosses, some cool mechanics, and the most important good final boss. T13 its joke. I think I dont even have to comment on this. LFR is joke. The idea to get every1 to see everything is stupid. First of all if Blizzard says that only like 5% of wow players go raid why do you even care? Leave those 5% alone and do something for rest/or everyone. Now its like u have to go for LFR, and then to go normals to get your gear. Its like 10 and 25 again. Hello? Not to mention final boss. When i heard the Deathwing will be 2-boss encounter i thought "man, that needs to be cool" but then this bloods/tentacles and shit. I mean rly Blizzard. You have misstake in your cinematic, insteand of big dragon flying around and destroying azeroth put there big tentacle flying around, add some bloods as a tail and there you go. Final boss.

[greyghost]

The biggest issue I had with Cataclysm was patch 4.1. While I could praise the unique boss mechanics for new Zul'Gurub, it was vastly overturned -- the gear didn't justify the time investment to clear either of the overhauled Zandalari dungeons in a reasonable amount of time for most players who the dungeon's gear rewards were aimed at.

I mean, if you've routinely experienced LFG groups where a tank is votekicked if they're not vastly outgearing the dungeon, that is indicative of a huge balance problem. Considering that there are going to be challenge mode dungeons in Mists of Pandaria based off of the Mount speed runs for Zul'Aman, this is something that Blizzard desperately needs to be careful of.

Risk vs. reward levels for different levels of gameplay, and attempting to shove an apple (an instance where blue-geared players earn mediocre epics without the group dissolving due to a long dungeon/difficult trash mobs) and an orange (instance where well-geared players race to a bonus loot chests) into the exact same instance should not be something to be repeated.