Blizzard sky rockets the ilvls purposely ...

[Kennyloggins]

The purpose behind the inflated ilvls is so old content remains relevant. Combine this with the fact that old raids will be slightly easier and drop way more loot, and the result is that in order for new players to reach a level of gear where Throne of Thunder can be feasibly completed, they have to have a mix of T14 gear and some LFR gear.

[Zeek Daniels]

... to change the communities mind about the item squish.

5.2

- 522 N
- 528 N TF
- 535 H
- 541 H TF

Ra-den might have a higher base ilvl than other heroic bosses, lets say 547. So with 5.3 and item upgrades we would be at 555 ilvl for the second tier of this expansion.

5.4

- 570 normal?
- 576 N elite/TF version?
- 585 heroic?
- 591 H elite/TF version?

And with 5.5 item upgrades we'd be at 599 at the end of the expansion, which'd result in a ~200 ilvl jump in a single expansion. Note that we only had 50-70 ilvl jumps in the past expansions, one of them having 4 tiers.

Item levels are irrelevant, its the stats on each gear tier that make it so. You could have an item with 200 ilvl with 100 stam, 150 intel and 130 crit. But if the next ilvl is 400 and has 120 stam, 180 intel and 145 crit then how much difference did ilvl really make.

[Flaks]

522-547: 25 ilevel jump, ~5% increase (rounded up)
76-83: 7 ilevel jump, ~9% increase. (rounded down)
128-138: 10 ilevel jump, ~8% increase (rounded up)
226-239: 13 ilevel jump, ~6% increase (rounded up)
378-397: 19 ilevel jump, ~5% increase (rounded down)

The ilevel jumps seem to be increasing, but the relative amount they are actually changing within a tier has actually been slowing down. In classic you were having 9% jumps in the second tier, and now the second tier has less than a 5% increase in ilevels.

As to whole expansion? including levelling gear

BC: 81-164, increase of 83 ilevels, or 102.5% increase
Wrath: 138-284: 146 ilevel increase, 105.8% increase
Cata: 272-416: 144 ilevel increase, 52% increase
Mists (projected): 372-599: 227 ilevel increase: 61% increase

It's a greater increase than Cata, but still markedly less than BC or Wrath. And that's including all the loot from the first quest you get loot from to the highest version of the last boss's loot table

In tBC a player in ilvl 115 could take on a player in 136 and win.

In MoP a player in 490 will completely obliterate someone in 470 regardless of skill difference.

[rowaasr13]

Its not about RAM. Higher numbers do not affect RAM at any alarming rate, its the CPU that starts struggling more as numbers grow bigger due to bigger numbers demanding bigger calculations.

You have zero clue about how numbers work in computers, do you? 1 + 1 is calculated at exactly same speed (and uses exactly same memory, BTW) as 9999999 + 9999999 as long as they're of same type.

[apepi]

Well pvp is still going to be low....

[det]

Ok..the item squish might happen, but it might happen the Blizzard way. I admit I have no idea where I am going with this, but: People asked for player housings and Blizzard gave them the Tillers and your own farm.

I seriously don't think there will be a straight "oh..today you ctiited for 200 000 tomorrow you crit for 200" ...squish

There will be sth worthwhile if they do it..no idea what, but I trust them.

[evokanu]

You have zero clue about how numbers work in computers, do you? 1 + 1 is calculated at exactly same speed (and uses exactly same memory, BTW) as 9999999 + 9999999 as long as they're of same type.

And what is doing the calculating? The ram is only there to store to store data for current running applications, the RAM itself is not the component that affects whether or not things is fast enough as long as its at least DDR3 running at 1333Mhz and assuming its not running out of space and that you are not running out of video memory on your GPU which means it will borrow space from your RAM sticks making things go slower but not crash fully. ( Which is also the reason that i wrote the part about computers that should been trashed years ago ), anything above that wont make the slightest difference for gaming as the amount of data being used by a single application is rarely above 2 GB on the RAM.

Its first when you are doing video editing/photo editing and having very large files loaded into the RAM that having higher speeds is good, Gaming is no where near those amounts. About how numbers work in computers i am very well aware of that it works on 0 + 1 basis in binary as well.

[Corayo]

How about the Korean servers?

H TF 25man gear. Shit's going to be insane.

The rate that ilvl is increasing at is kinda freaky. I really dislike how gear is starting to be more important than personal play in terms of DPS.

starting to be? what game have you been playing?

[gamingmuscle]

No.

ilvl scaling is ridiculous and seems to be on an exponential curve.

Every increase in ilvl is greater than the previous increase. This leads to a larger than ever discrepancy between players. This has especially heavy repercussions in PvP but also adversely effects PvE.

I'd bet if you looked at more then just Tiers, gear progression is mostly linear.

[Daveon]

Also @Frozenbeef: Welcome to MMORPGs, if you don't want gear play a game that has no new xpacs or patches coming out, like Everquest, or Hello Kitty. This is a game that contains expansions, your items will become worthless.

If you're going to try to talk down to someone at least get your facts straight.

Everquest is the MMO with the most expansions of all time (19 total now, in the roughly 14 years it has existed), with the most recent one being released only 3 months ago (November 2012). Everquest was actually even well-known for NOT having gear resets, you had to raid through essentially every tier to be able to tackle the next one. They did get away from this in the last few years/expansions because of declining subscriptions and they realized that you need some means of gear catch-ups or anyone that falls behind will just eventually quit.

[Ghul]

serioussly guys, would you like to hit mobs for 100 damage again? because I'm sure as hell I won't

soon we will hit for 100k, back to the basics!

[Holofernes]

current tier is 509. (+ 8 = 517 upgraded).

in cata, before the invention of lfr, normal mode next tier gear startet 6 lvls higher than old heroic gear.

Only in consideration of upgrades, the new normal gear would be useless to raiders.

Too, from bliz perspective is to put lfr in between.

so new lfr = upgraded normal mode gear (504(funny number) - 2. New LFR may be a very slight upgrade for people who are still doing normal modes at the end of a tier, and didnt spend any valorpoints in upgrades.

new normal mode = slightly better than old upgraded hc gear. (517)

next tier starts with 522.

Former it was 6 lvls differnence, now it is 5 if, or 6-8 if not everything is upped. On average, it will be 6 like always.


-----------------------------------------------------------------
tl,dr:
Whats the fucking matter? OP; Eat sum nuts and some brocoli, they will help your brain.
What happened? Lfr got put into equation, for raiding people nothing changed, only rerollers or really slow raiders may find slight upgrades in new lfr.
everything is fine. there is no conspiracy.
There is only a realization of a well-thought concept from the devs, that u are not smart enough to understand.

[Theodon]

You have zero clue about how numbers work in computers, do you? 1 + 1 is calculated at exactly same speed (and uses exactly same memory, BTW) as 9999999 + 9999999 as long as they're of same type.

As evonaku has already said, the RAM stores the information for fast retrieval in a dynamic state, whilst the processors handle all of the mathmatical calculations. If I'm remembering this correctly, graphical processors are more efficient at handling lots of small calculations whilst computer processors are better at handling large-scale ones. Some large servers use a combination of the two for that reason.

The size of the number can matter depending on your processors data width, but I seriously doubt adding up the additional math required due to bigger numbers in WoW would really make that big an impact. for example; if your processor has 32 bit data width, it would take an extra cycle to add a number larger than 4,294,967,295 to another number, I believe. any number that is higher than the data width allowance takes twice as long to calculate with.

[Fenixdown]

There isn't a conspiracy, but there's still a problem with this system. You can't simply "assume" that each player has upgraded every piece of their normal mode gear to "avoid" having to do LFR.

Currently on my priest, I have seven pieces that are below the LFR item level. I'm not even going to think about the fact that the rest of those slots will see immediate replacement in normal, but seven item upgrades in LFR for someone who actually did have some heroic mode progression and was 16/16 normal modes is a bit absurd.

All this item level equation removes from "LFR necessity" (which is obviously not a necessity, but you try and tell a min/max player it isn't) is guilds that are full 16/16 heroic geared. That's about 2% of the game's total raiding population. Which kind of goes against what their previously perceived promise was, which was that if you raided normal and heroic modes with success you would not need LFR.

[Valium104]

We won't go for hundreds of bilions in any near time, so it would took for me about 10 expansions to get crazy numbers. And computers can handle those with ease. And things like secondary ratings will always be the same...

[UcanDoSht]

Item levels are irrelevant, its the stats on each gear tier that make it so. You could have an item with 200 ilvl with 100 stam, 150 intel and 130 crit. But if the next ilvl is 400 and has 120 stam, 180 intel and 145 crit then how much difference did ilvl really make.

No. Ilvl are directly responsible for the amount of every stat on an item - thats why the systems like item upgrades, challenge mode down scaling, PTR up scaling for gear even works.

You cant make an item with 999,999 armor, INT, haste, mastery, crit and giving it an ilvl of 123.

[Cilarith]

Taxing people's computers? lol. Come on realy. The graphics in wow put more tax on any computer then it having to count tens of thousands numbers realy fast. The average computer now days can more then handle counting you do a million dps.

Unless... You aren't still using a windows 95 laptop are you?

The item level squish is not and never has been because of players' computers. The players' computers don't do all that much number-crunching in WoW - because that would make it far too easy to cheat. The primary reason, as far as I could tell, is based around Blizzard's servers.

Working with large numbers is harder than working with small numbers. Performing a calculation like, say, x*y, involves more computational operations if x and y are ten million, than if they're ten. Not necessarily a million times more complex, but still more complex. That, in turn, means that for a set of calculations, Blizzard needs more powerful hardware, and more powerful cooling to keep it running. On the level of a home computer, this is near negligible, but for a large server farm, running millions or billions of these calculations per second, the consequences of using larger numbers when smaller numbers could be used add up. I'm talking about the power you need to supply to the servers, the upgrades you need to perform, the number of servers you need to run, etc.

This might seem nonsensical to some, but it is quite real.

If Blizzard can return to running calculations involving tens or hundreds, instead of thousands and millions, the hardware they have becomes relatively more powerful without a physical upgrade. Costs of running server farms drop slightly. Players eventually get used to it, and bingo, the problem is staved off for another two or three expansions.

[Siaer]

serioussly guys, would you like to hit mobs for 100 damage again? because I'm sure as hell I won't

From an aesthetic stand point, there is virtually no difference between hitting for 100 damage and 100M damage (MEGADAMAGE RAWR).

It looks basically the same and it will be noted in the same manner in damage meters upon its introduction.

I worry about the kinds of people that get bummed out by doing 100 damage but jizz in their pants when they see 100M come up. It is functionally the same.

We won't go for hundreds of bilions in any near time, so it would took for me about 10 expansions to get crazy numbers. And computers can handle those with ease. And things like secondary ratings will always be the same...

Sure they can handle them fine, but displaying them in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing becomes difficult as you add more and more digits unless they are infrequently displayed (eg damage numbers only being shown for critical hits).

Also, it really will not take that long. It has only taken 4 expansions to go from Tier 3 (Warrior: 23 STR, 49 STAM) tier 14 (Warrior: 829 STR, 1363 STAM from normal). Health pools have gone from 4-5k in Vanilla to many hundreds of thousands in MoP. Damage has gone up exponentially.

There is good reason why the developers have long been considering how to deal with such high numbers and why the item squish was brought up after just 3 expansions.

[Holofernes]

There isn't a conspiracy, but there's still a problem with this system. You can't simply "assume" that each player has upgraded every piece of their normal mode gear to "avoid" having to do LFR.

Currently on my priest, I have seven pieces that are below the LFR item level. I'm not even going to think about the fact that the rest of those slots will see immediate replacement in normal, but seven item upgrades in LFR for someone who actually did have some heroic mode progression and was 16/16 normal modes is a bit absurd.

All this item level equation removes from "LFR necessity" (which is obviously not a necessity, but you try and tell a min/max player it isn't) is guilds that are full 16/16 heroic geared. That's about 2% of the game's total raiding population. Which kind of goes against what their previously perceived promise was, which was that if you raided normal and heroic modes with success you would not need LFR.

i just dont get this amount of retardism. a guy that NOW has no upgraded normal mode gear and no heroic gear feels himself so devoted into this game that he feels FORCED to run lfr for better gear? He had nearly 5 month time of getting better gear. if a player is min-maxing, he has upgrades and heroic gear.

this is so bigot casualism #
" i am a minmaxer and i cry because of a few ilvl, i dont raid sucessfully, i have no / bad gear, but i dont want to be forced into lfr to do something about my gear that has been outdated since a quarter of a year."

even if you would be able to upgrade some slots, fine. u got 2 or 3 ilvl gain from 2 hours lfr wiping.

Of course, u checked all the stats of the new gear and know exactly witch lfr items of nearly similar ilvl are so much better itemized, that it would make a difference, und with the 2-3 weeks coming to farm the old content, gaining additional 2 k valor to make at least 3 further upgrades, before the new instance opens.
Additionaly, u as a minmax casual too must have the knowledge that lfr opens after the normal mode, where u will get 5-6 ilvl from a clear run of the new raid, with only winning one or two parts..

But U still feel so much forced to do lfr as a minmaxing casual normal mode player.

[Kryos]

I think the DPS is only going one way