Maybe so, but again is that still good game design? Nerfing content ~2 months after the raid released (don't remember exactly when that 15% nerf came in, but it was pretty quick) lulling raiders into a false sense of overconfidence before getting shit stomped by the un-nerfed H Rag?
But this has dragged on a bit and gotten fairly off topic. In short, I haven't enjoyed Blizz's design philosophy with raiding and I think that's one of the biggest factors hurting the community.
I'm afraid your dates are far from accurate. DS was released last week of november (30 nov IIRC). The 15% nerf was 27 march. The first nerf 5% was 31 jan. After 2 months, and 1 month after world first kill of Spine & Madness, the content was first nerfed. After 4 months, the 15% nerf was active.
Ragnaros HC was nerfed various times throughout Firelands both before the huge, overal FL nerfs as well as afterwards. FL was released 29 june. The majority of the nerfs were performed end september (24 sept IIRC) so that is 3 months and these nerfs were stronger than 10% DS. Ragnaros HC was further nerfed in autumn, and also even further somewhere in the end of DS with also the mount bug occuring on Ragnaros N (100% drop chance on mount).
Call it nitpicking but it matters. DS, being last content of expansion, had to run longer than FL. That's why the staggered nerf made sense. Ragnaros HC was just there, so incredibly hard, to give the HC crowd something to do. No, it isn't fun for the less good / hardcore players (not the same) to have to roflstomp 6/7 HC and then beat a dead wall witch a toothpick but at least this gave these players something to do. Its all about the sub and giving players something to do, not about quality content; that's secondary.
The attitude of so many community members. I believe it has a serious effect on the community and peoples' desire to play the game long-term. If you make even a small mistake, or don't have very good gear, or even if you try out a different reforging strategy, people will swear at you, call you names, kick you out of groups, and be generally hostile. It doesn't take very much. Some people seem compelled to tell everyone else how bad they are, even if it's LFR and the group kills all the bosses with no wipes.
I question why I still play this game every time Trade goes through an "anal [item or spell]" fit. My server isn't particularly active so that can be the dominant conversation sometimes. That's usually when I decide it's time to leave the city. Given the choice, I'd rather people link Thunderfury over and over again.
When I encounter a new player, or someone that needs help I usually go out of my way to make sure they get what they need and feel welcome in the game. There's more than enough people out there that just want to cut others down, in the harshest and most vulgar way possible.
Sorry if I wasn't clear but I wasn't talking or meaning to reference DS at all, just Firelands. Firelands 4.2 patch dropped June 28th, 2011 and the big FL nerf occurred September 20th, 2011. So less than 3 months after the release of FL was the nerf. Now BEFORE this on September 6th there was a nerf to heroic rags health. So about ~2 months after heroic raids were released H rag was nerfed and I was wrong about that in my previous post.
Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-they-re-found
Source: http://www.wowhead.com/news=194808/h...s-a-major-nerf
Ya that's the type of game philosophy that scares me and I generally avoid as a player.
Ya I wish there were more players like you. It's almost a surprise now if you meet someone in lfd/lfr that doesn't mock your play, spec, gear, rotation, mom etc for one reason or another.
I always did form guild groups, but I can't form pugs and get to know people easily. People aren't interested in making friends in LFD's. I also never said it's blizzard fault in my posts (for the second time) - whether I think they could have done better or not is irrelevant - arguing "well that's just how people are" doesn't change what LFD did to the community. I also never mentioned trade at any point. Not only was the LFG channel widely used, it was easy to ignore anything that didn't begin with an LFG/LFM...
Last edited by Raiju; 2013-02-04 at 10:59 PM.
"The community" is not some artificial construct out there. It's us. We are the community. And what we do is on our heads, not the devs. The devs merely put in gameplay options and improvements. It is the players who twist and misuse them, who snap at and hound new players, who troll and form into cliques. This hasn't changed since day one. If anything, the game's sheer age has served to filter most of the genuinely nice and helpful people out of the player pool, leaving behind a relatively high quotient of recalcitrant bastards who elevate general nastiness to an art form.
Blizzard can't be blamed for people acting as douchebags. Blizzard can however be blamed for douchebags being allowed to continue playing despite all reports.
What buried this community was lack of consequence for any sort of retarded, malicious and disruptive behaviour.
You are right I was wrong, WoW had 11.5 mil subs when patch 3.30 came out, than peaked to 12 mil the next quarter after LFD and is now down to 10 mil as of 3th quarter 2012.
There are no functions in the game that ruined the game, what ruined hat game was how people choose to behave like douchebags and ruin other peoples gaming experience just for the entertainment value. If someone is riding someones bumper and swinging in and out of traffic lanes while barely missing clipping other drivers its not because they drive a mustang, its because they are douchebags.
LFD Single handedly destroyed communities in wow. I dont have a clue who 90% of the people are on my realm, before LFD you had a stronger connection with people on your realm. Now it seems you only have the connection within your guild.
The community hurt itself. It's filled with arrogant, selfish assholes that take pleasures in insulting people just because they're not as good as they are in a game. LFD and the server transfers, imo, have little to nothing to do with how crappy the community is. Like other people have said LFD is not forced on you to use everytime you can still look for groups the old fashioned way (which I thought was the worst thing ever back then). The transfers, I'm not really sure how it damages the community.
Last edited by Pony Soldier; 2013-02-06 at 12:50 AM.
- "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black" - Jo Bodin, BLM supporter
- "I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun. The kids used to come up and reach in the pool & rub my leg down so it was straight & watch the hair come back up again. So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap, and I love kids jumping on my lap...” - Pedo Joe
See people say things like this to me a lot. And there are definitely a few people like this out there, but the opposite also exist and are equally a problem; The people who get offended and defensive at the slightest hint of advice.
Example:
I'm on an alt doing a dungeon. The tank runs off and pulls 2-3 additional packs which are in the wrong direction.
I say "You don't have to pull those, we can just run this way and grab one pack then do the boss"
He says "Omg I'll pull what I want, just stfu and dps"
The party says "pull them all I want the exp"
I say "faster runs is faster exp coz of the exp bonus, grinding trash is inefficient"
They say "gtfo you elitist arrogant loser zomg"
And then I log my main, do a heroic, the tank starts pulling half of scarlet monastery, cue the same scenario plays itself out all over again.
LFD/LFR/CR BG/Transfers/Name-Faction Change.
All the above have their share into today's wow non existand community.
And yes, i am amazed by those people saying that it is not Blizzard's fault that has a completely faceless automated system for pretty much everything but community's fault...
And we re talking about a game that by majority is played by kids and teens.
Right...Human stupidity at its finest.
The players hurt the community. LFD/R would be awesome if you didn't have the assholes.
As much as I wish to agree with this, LFD/R did hurt the community, but not because it did what it intended to do.
LFD/R hurt the community because it gives no repercussions whatsoever for ninjaing and other forms of assholish behavior when using the feature, there is no means to filter servers, or even turn off the cross realm feature of LFD, which pretty much means you are stuck with having to either use the feature and be unfortunate enough to have ninjas in the group, or be out for another hour looking for people the old way.
The system was great for its original intent, but it is nowhere near fine tuned to serve the purpose the community needs atm, and it hurts the community because the tools do not exist yet.
If you added a feature to LFD/R to explicitly filter out servers, or even the whole cross realm feature, you would be surprised how many people would use it compared to the normal version of LFD
Fod Sparta los wuth, ahrk okaaz gekenlok kruziik himdah, dinok fent kos rozol do daan wah jer do Samos. Ahrk haar do Heracles fent motaad, fah strunmah vonun fent yolein ko yol.
I would say the Activision influencing Blizzards decisions as a company and turning WoW into a more casual friendly type game.