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  1. #1
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Question Mists of Pandaria: The Story So Far.

    With Mists of Pandaria now getting on a bit, I feel now might be the time to judge some of it. There’s a fair amount of commentary on this subject, but I just want to have my say about where Blizzard have went right and where they’ve went wrong with their latest expansion. This is a discussion forum, after all.

    All in all… I think there’s more good than bad here, a far cry from what happened in Cataclysm. There are some particular highlights and lowlights, though, so let’s cover them in a bit more detail.

    The Good.

    1) The new continent is lovely. I know this is purely subjective, but nobody can claim effort hasn’t gone into realising and designing Pandaria and its inhabitants. I really like the new races (with the exception of the Jinyu) and find that each zone really does have its own distinct “feel”, similar to how the icy continent of Northrend was largely ice but still distinctive.

    2) The questing has, by and large, been pretty good. There’s not a lot more that can be done with kill/collect, and I think the players know that, so Blizzard have done a pretty good job of providing questing options via zones. I think a key component of this is how these quests are mixed in, however; other games such as Rift use kill/collect but don’t mix them up quite as well as Blizzard do.

    3) The pandaren work. Again, purely a subjective view, but I don’t think they look anywhere near as out of place as some suggest. I think the continent suits them, I think their factions are diverse and meaningful, and I think they do what they say on the tin for the most part, without ever really coming across as disparagingly as they might have done. The pandaren were a minefield, and I think it’s been navigated.

    4) I think the lore is honestly very good. The enslavement of the mogu, in particular, is the major story of this continent, and the way this ties in with the Sha has been done imaginatively and tightly. The Sha, as an entity of its own, risked irrelevance; and truth be told, defeating the Sha of Fear causes this. Yet the way the Mogu have developed into the Throne of Thunder has provided the right backdrop.

    5) So far, the expansion has been blessedly free of bugs. Yes, there are still a few annoying ones that had to be worked through (and exist still) but, all in all, I don’t think many complaints can be made on this front. There are always going to be bugs in the game, particularly at the launch of an expansion, but Blizzard’s quality assurance people deserve a pat on the back for MoP.

    6) Pet battles are a blast! For all the mockery about “Wowpokemon”, the feature itself has been a resounding success. Those who don’t care about pet battles never need to worry about it, but the addicting nature and depth of the original has been captured to a better degree than I thought it would be and I know of many who mocked the concept who now enjoy it. Well done.

    7) The speed of content release is excellent. It’s been promised for a long time, and Blizzard have finally delivered on it. I would even potentially argue that it’s gone a little too fast, but that might a symptom of my own chequered approach to 5.2 and lack of preparation for it rather than a wider complaint that applies to everyone. All told, nobody can complain about the rate of content in MoP – it’s been first class.

    8) Please, do the Brawler’s guild if you can; it’s totally worth it. That little bit of solo-PvE play is actually very rewarding and one of the biggest complaints (the queue) has actually turned out to be one of its biggest successes. Watching others do their battles, and the camaraderie that’s been built as a result, is more charming than I thought it would be. I still think the gold requirement to get started is a bit silly, but it’s worth it now.

    9) The raiding options are vibrant again, a far cry from the dearth of content in Cataclysm. 28 bosses in two tiers is FAR closer to what’s expected from the players, and Blizzard haven’t disappointed on this front. The different feels between MSV, HoF, ToES and the ToT are all keenly felt, and the instances are all very distinctive amongst themselves, while all being tied to Pandaria itself.

    10) Dungeoneering is back to how it should be, in my eyes. There’s now some leeway for better players to carry worse ones and nobody is held up while doing a bit of valor farming by punitive mechanics that almost instantly cause wipes. The speed of them also means that you can rattle through a few in pretty short order and spend an evening doing dungeons if that’s your wont.

    So, that’s what I think has been good in MoP to this point. Let’s talk about the not so good…

    The Bad.

    1) PvP has been… Interesting. From the ridiculous early burst of warriors and hunters, to the strength of healers, to the absurd amount of control in the game, it’s been something of a mess. Nothing has been done to break up age-old compositions and, in some cases, the issues have been exasperated. All that said, the new battlegrounds are interesting and something a bit different, while 5.3 shows the new man at the helm is willing to mess with something as fundamental as resilience in order to make PvP more fun and inviting.

    2) Scenarios have underwhelmed. The introduction of heroic scenarios in 5.3 imply that Blizzard don’t consider them the finished article, but they just haven’t caught fire in the way some people hoped they would. It’s hard to pinpoint why this is, but it’s potentially because it’s hard to shoehorn an epic encounter into a setting with no trinity, but also because the rewards for completing scenarios are very lacklustre. There’s still potential here, in my view, but the opening salvo didn’t really cut it.

    3) Challenge modes haven’t gripped the imagination, either. As with scenarios, the idea is probably sound, but it’s hard to see past the fact that most players won’t put themselves through this type of content without rewards at the end. That’s fair enough, and is part of the design intent, but the other major flaw is just how powerful certain classes are in five-man content; it’s skewed some of the results, no question. The reason this is in the “bad” section, however, is because they’ve been pretty successful with some players, so they’re not a write off. Hard to see any development potential, though.

    4) The class redesign hasn’t added any spice to the game as intended. The new talent system has a lot of supporters, but has it added anything legitimate to the gameplay? Not really. Behind all the bluster and commentary, there are still some talents that are obvious and some that are close to useless. All that effort, all that PR and all that convincing has left us with something of a damp squib at the end of it all.

    As you can see, “the bad” list isn’t actually all that bad. It includes things that have failed (subjectively), but aren’t doomed to an eternity in Jabroni Drive because they have potential.

    Alas, that leaves us with:

    The Ugly.

    1) Dailies. How could I have started this section with anything else? We get that some form of repeatable content is probably necessary in the game these days, and we get that some folk like dailies. But making them mandatory, allied to kicking off with the double gate of the Golden Lotus, disillusioned a huge number of players because there was no way around the issue. Domination Point and the Isle of Thunder have been streets ahead of the initial batch, but that still doesn’t escape the fact that players who want their extra roll on raid encounters are stuck with dailies.

    2) The difficulty of raiding is… Well, it’s all over the place. Heroic raiding has probably been as challenging as it could be, but the settings for normal raids and LFR have, painfully, continued from Cataclysm and compounded the ostracism casual guilds received as a result. Normal mode raiding should allow stronger players to carry weaker ones as they could in WotLK, but that’s simply not possible anymore and players are simply not afforded any mistakes. I think Blizzard need to take a long, hard look at the WotLK model, realise why that worked so well, and start moving back to it before casual raiding guilds just give up wholesale. Alas, LFR has compounded this problem rather than be the solution it’s often sold as.

    And that’s it, off the top of my head. Almost every point on my list is up for debate, and I’m acutely aware that some people would have certain points at the completely other end of the scale.

    But I’ve tried to be constructive, so let’s see if everyone else can do the same.

    How have you found MoP?

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Good post i agree with alot of it and i think this has been a pretty good expansion.

    As im now technically "casual" i don't raid outside of LFR (and that was just to gear up for the warlock greenfire boss) I spend most of my time pvping/Leveling alts and just recently started pet battles. So a small breakdown on how i find "my" content.

    LFR:- a means to an end...the end being loot and once the next is unlocked with better gear move on quickly. I got lucky and geared my warlock to 480 (from 463) in one full lockout the day before 5.2 hit so i can't complain about drops (my monk and shaman however are still stuck in the 470 req ilvl raids). Rng is Rng don't like it don't do it.

    PvP:- This is the first expansion where i am actually taking pvp seriously as opposed to the run some bg's for fun. It's still fun but there are those times where i wish i could do just a little more before dying (chain cc im looking at you).

    Pet battles :- I put them off untill 3 days ago and wow they blew my mind. I got instantly addicted and now its all i want to log on and do. Gotta catch them all...oh and if i was still interested in raiding i spent 3 hours pet battling this morning and went from 90 lesser coins to 400 lesser coins (i'll hit the world bosses so coins still handy) so stop moaning about having to do dailies people, there is another methods!

  3. #3
    Elemental Lord Tekkommo's Avatar
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    Don't agree with the difficulty of raiding, normal mode is easy and LFR is a joke. Heroic is good, with both easy and hard fights.

    PVP has also always been bad in this game.

    Should probably add in the levelling, it's boring for alts, only 2 dungeons every couple of levels, very linear, gets boring very fast as you go the same route (I know it's possible to skip a lot).

    The 5 man heroics were far too easy, I don't think they should be hard, as LFG would just be horrible, but the way they were at launch made them very boring because you could just faceroll them.
    Last edited by Tekkommo; 2013-04-08 at 10:25 AM.

  4. #4
    Warchief Felarion's Avatar
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    Good Things in my opinion.

    -Raiding. No more lol content with seven bosses for nearly year. However my guild don't have any problem with clear normal modes, we slowly progress through heroic which are very hard and challanging i'd say (at least for my guild, so far we down 11/16 in t14 and only jin'rokh in t15, tried tortos this wekk but it was a mess, goin to try horridon in next reset)

    -Blizzard release patches fast, so there is always something to do.

    -Scenario tech, but it's good thing lore-wise, becuase they can tell story via this. Also i think in future scenarios gonna replace 5-man heroics, which is good and bad thing. Good because que will be very fast, as you don't need tank and heal to complete. Bad because....exacly the same you don't need tank and heal to complete them

    Neutral

    -Pandas I feel like pandaren story is really unintresting, and tbh there isn't so much about them so i can get on with it.

    Bad

    Dailies,at least at the start of the expansion. There was so much of them and they felt mandatory to get exalted, to boos your raiding gear

  5. #5
    Moderator chazus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tekkommo View Post
    Don't agree with the difficulty of raiding, normal mode is easy and LFR is a joke. Heroic is good, with both easy and hard fights.
    I disagree. Coming from a raiding guild that has completed all heroic content while it was current since Wrath started, up through the end of Cata... Normal Mode was MUCH harder at first. It was the first time in ~5 years that new raid tiers were coming out before we had gotten to the heroic mode of the previous.

    Furthermore, I have alts in 'casual' guilds who were previously progressing steadily through Normal content before (they didnt bother with heroic). Now they can't clear any raid on normal at all, and are pretty much now just running 'guild LFR runs'. The only thing Mists has done to those groups is cause people to A) Stop raiding or B) Stop playing. Progression for the non-hardcore has been a demoralizing process, if little else.
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  6. #6
    Challenge Modes
    To me Challenge Modes have been the best and most fun new feature in the game for many years, I love them. I'm done progressing gold in all of them, now I want to progress better times. Just need to find a good group for it since a lot of my guildies are on a tight schedule that wont allow them to play much, so they are happy with just gold.

    The only bad thing with CMs are the class balance. Blizzard need to improve on it in future CMs.

    Raiding
    As a raider in a small casual raiding guild I must say that we absolutely loves the challenge normal mode gives us. It's more fun when you finally downs a boss after more then one night of wiping then when you down it the first time you see it. We still haven't down all the bosses on normal, and that's a good thing, this tier will last for a couple of more months and it would be kind of boring if we already had downed all the bosses.

    As for raid finder I don't have much to say, wouldn't cry if it got removed.

  7. #7
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Glad to hear you’re enjoying pet battles, Xuk, I’m a bit like you – enjoyed it when I eventually tried it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tekkommo View Post
    Don't agree with the difficulty of raiding, normal mode is easy and LFR is a joke.
    I’m not going to argue about this, your opinion is valid, but I’d caveat what you said with two words:

    For you.

    Statistically, the numbers killing normal bosses have nosedived since WotLK and I don’t believe that’s good for the game. I accept other people view it differently, though, and their opinion is no less meaningful than my own.

    As for LFR… It has endemic problems because of how it’s currently being used, rather than the setting in and of itself.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tekkommo View Post
    Should probably add in the levelling, it's boring for alts, only 2 dungeons every couple of levels, very linear, gets boring very fast as you go the same route (I know it's possible to skip a lot).
    I think Pandaria is okay, it’s Cataclysm that really kills me. Well, and everything before it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tekkommo View Post
    The 5 man heroics were far too easy.
    I can get on board with that. I welcomed the return of easy heroics but you’re probably right; they started off just a bit too easy.
    Quote Originally Posted by chazus View Post
    I disagree. Coming from a raiding guild that has completed all heroic content while it was current since Wrath started, up through the end of Cata... Normal Mode was MUCH harder at first. It was the first time in ~5 years that new raid tiers were coming out before we had gotten to the heroic mode of the previous.

    Furthermore, I have alts in 'casual' guilds who were previously progressing steadily through Normal content before (they didnt bother with heroic). Now they can't clear any raid on normal at all, and are pretty much now just running 'guild LFR runs'. The only thing Mists has done to those groups is cause people to A) Stop raiding or B) Stop playing. Progression for the non-hardcore has been a demoralizing process, if little else.
    That quite eloquently sums up my feelings on the topic. Again, that's not to invalidate those who hold a different view - it's just my personal take on why raiding numbers have plummetted.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post

    1) PvP has been… Interesting. From the ridiculous early burst of warriors and hunters, to the strength of healers, to the absurd amount of control in the game, it’s been something of a mess. Nothing has been done to break up age-old compositions and, in some cases, the issues have been exasperated. All that said, the new battlegrounds are interesting and something a bit different, while 5.3 shows the new man at the helm is willing to mess with something as fundamental as resilience in order to make PvP more fun and inviting.
    First Seson of Every expansion was never Balansed in every expansion got 1-3 classes that were totaly facerolling othrs at start but always middle seson was cool and Tiranical looks promising and 5.3 changes looks realy good for PvP, alsow i realy like 2 new BGs


    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    3) Challenge modes haven’t gripped the imagination, either. As with scenarios, the idea is probably sound, but it’s hard to see past the fact that most players won’t put themselves through this type of content without rewards at the end. That’s fair enough, and is part of the design intent, but the other major flaw is just how powerful certain classes are in five-man content; it’s skewed some of the results, no question. The reason this is in the “bad” section, however, is because they’ve been pretty successful with some players, so they’re not a write off. Hard to see any development potential, though.
    Point of Challenge mode was that not everyone will do them so far as i remember conception was to give content for hardcore players who like 5 Mend some challenging content and to make them fore like 5-15% people, for me they suit they task
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    4) The class redesign hasn’t added any spice to the game as intended. The new talent system has a lot of supporters, but has it added anything legitimate to the gameplay? Not really. Behind all the bluster and commentary, there are still some talents that are obvious and some that are close to useless. All that effort, all that PR and all that convincing has left us with something of a damp squib at the end of it all.
    Meby but styl with thous tallent trees yuo got a lot more choices then with old one , then got lots of points to spend but realy meby 1 or max 3 choces to spend talents somewher else and some clasess even didnt have this you just got 1 build and 0 choice so sorry but no, with old talents trees for example 99% of furry warriors was using the same build now you may have some choice whit depend from you game play or encounter or enemy team on arena



    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    1) Dailies. How could I have started this section with anything else? We get that some form of repeatable content is probably necessary in the game these days, and we get that some folk like dailies. But making them mandatory, allied to kicking off with the double gate of the Golden Lotus, disillusioned a huge number of players because there was no way around the issue. Domination Point and the Isle of Thunder have been streets ahead of the initial batch, but that still doesn’t escape the fact that players who want their extra roll on raid encounters are stuck with dailies.
    Exept Golden Lostus on start when they feal a bit to mandatory Dallys werent mandatry at all oyu just decidet you do them or not simple you coud get VP throu Dungeons Scenario Raids and LFRs beside VP items wernt any mega good and chance to get bonus loot from coin was realy los so i dont see anything mandatory jsut source for a smal addional rewords and gold from doing them

    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    2) The difficulty of raiding is… Well, it’s all over the place. Heroic raiding has probably been as challenging as it could be, but the settings for normal raids and LFR have, painfully, continued from Cataclysm and compounded the ostracism casual guilds received as a result. Normal mode raiding should allow stronger players to carry weaker ones as they could in WotLK, but that’s simply not possible anymore and players are simply not afforded any mistakes. I think Blizzard need to take a long, hard look at the WotLK model, realise why that worked so well, and start moving back to it before casual raiding guilds just give up wholesale. Alas, LFR has compounded this problem rather than be the solution it’s often sold as.
    You got to be kiding me Difficulty of MoP Raids is one of the best thing in this expansion, you wona paly a game where you just go for Raid pull boss do some randoms stufs and dont know how boss die and you just get loot from it and that all? zero entertaining in boss fight at all jsut kill him and ignore what he do? after like 3-4 resets most people woud finish content and jsut said that they see no poin in Raiding if boss die just be they presents there,

    so No just No MoP raid are awsom people are jsut unable to get some cordination focus or to cooperate with other people or spend like 10 MIN to read full guid how to kill boss



    I total disagre with msot of you complay of MoP , game itself is great onli big realy BIg isue of this game are People who play it , most of them are inmatur or are totaly ........ who cant spend some time to lear something jsut expect to every one do what they want or are not able to learn anything
    So problem isnt game its self its people who play it , thats why i realy prefer to do most of stufs with my gild or IRL mates who paly this game insted of random people from game


    (sorry for grama)

  9. #9
    Bad:
    The Throne of Thunder raid in general.
    Difficulty of normal raids in general to high and the difficulty is very schizophrenic. Elegon and Garalon was waaaay higher difficulty level then the bosses around them for a long time, and now we have the insane difficulty jump of Jin'rokh -> Horridon.
    To some extent dailies at the beginning of the expansion.

    Everything else is good, but in particular:
    The Island of Thunder dailies, enviroment, all the stuff you can do on the island.
    Questing is basically as good as you can possibly get with the WoW system.
    Faster release schedule, although it does not work with the high difficulty since most raiders can't even clear the raid once before the new one is out.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Noorri View Post
    Difficulty of normal raids in general to high and the difficulty is very schizophrenic. Elegon and Garalon was waaaay higher difficulty level then the bosses around them for a long time, and now we have the insane difficulty jump of Jin'rokh -> Horridon.
    I agree with the first part, Elegon and Garalon were far too difficult considering their position in the tier (though Elegon sits as my favourite t14 fight).

    Where I differ is this point:

    and now we have the insane difficulty jump of Jin'rokh -> Horridon.
    I'd like other people's opinions on this since my guild didn't actually do ToT until after the Horridon nerf, but he was actually a pretty easy boss for us. Took a total of 3 wipes before we killed him. If I recall, the only change was a 10% nerf to the adds' health. Maybe it was our comp, but I actually found Horridon to be overall a bit easier than Jin'rokh (healer perspective). For reference we managed to get 4/16H in t14 before 5.2 hit, so we're above average but by no means good.

  11. #11
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Your English is agonising, kubuntu, so I apologise in advance if I've misunderstood you.

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    First Seson of Every expansion was never Balansed in every expansion got 1-3 classes that were totaly facerolling othrs at start but always middle seson was cool and Tiranical looks promising and 5.3 changes looks realy good for PvP, alsow i realy like 2 new BGs
    I agree, I think PvP has its best to come for this expansion. I also happen to think you're right in general.

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    Meby but styl with thous tallent trees yuo got a lot more choices then with old one , then got lots of points to spend but realy meby 1 or max 3 choces to spend talents somewher else and some clasess even didnt have this you just got 1 build and 0 choice so sorry but no, with old talents trees for example 99% of furry warriors was using the same build now you may have some choice whit depend from you game play or encounter or enemy team on arena
    This is what Blizzard say, but it's not exclusively true; I played a warrior in Cataclysm and had far more choices then than I do now. Too many talent choices are irrelevant too often. You can say "you had no choice" under the previous system (not objectively true), but at least your talents did something.

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    Exept Golden Lostus on start when they feal a bit to mandatory Dallys werent mandatry at all oyu just decidet you do them or not simple you coud get VP throu Dungeons Scenario Raids and LFRs beside VP items wernt any mega good and chance to get bonus loot from coin was realy los so i dont see anything mandatory jsut source for a smal addional rewords and gold from doing them
    I'm sorry, but this debate has been had; the launch dailies were mandatory because you couldn't spend valour without doing them.

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    You got to be kiding me Difficulty of MoP Raids is one of the best thing in this expansion, you wona paly a game where you just go for Raid pull boss do some randoms stufs and dont know how boss die and you just get loot from it and that all?
    No. This is a terrible straw man.

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    so No just No MoP raid are awsom people are jsut unable to get some cordination focus or to cooperate with other people or spend like 10 MIN to read full guid how to kill boss
    Normal mode raiding, especially early doors, should not be anywhere near so punishing on individual mistakes. Again, this is my opinion, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't paint my argument into:

    "I think normal mode is too rough = I want bosses to just fall over".

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    I total disagre with msot of you complay of MoP , game itself is great onli big realy BIg isue of this game are People who play it , most of them are inmatur or are totaly ........ who cant spend some time to lear something jsut expect to every one do what they want or are not able to learn anything
    So problem isnt game its self its people who play it , thats why i realy prefer to do most of stufs with my gild or IRL mates who paly this game insted of random people from game
    That's an appalling generalisation, and one I don't support. Yes, the community has its flaws, but arguing that Blizzard has none is fanaticism that I don't want to see in what I hope will remain a constructive thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noorri View Post
    Bad:
    The Throne of Thunder raid in general.
    Can I ask what you specifically dislike about it?

    Quote Originally Posted by kerumilas View Post
    I'd like other people's opinions on this since my guild didn't actually do ToT until after the Horridon nerf, but he was actually a pretty easy boss for us. Took a total of 3 wipes before we killed him.
    The drop between guilds killing Jin'rokh and Horridon was pretty vast, particularly pre-nerf. Some raids have reported simplicity itself with the encounter, others have had nightmares. I think I fall in between but after killing up to Megaera, it's the worst we've dealt with to this point.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    2) The difficulty of raiding is… Well, it’s all over the place. Heroic raiding has probably been as challenging as it could be, but the settings for normal raids and LFR have, painfully, continued from Cataclysm and compounded the ostracism casual guilds received as a result. Normal mode raiding should allow stronger players to carry weaker ones as they could in WotLK, but that’s simply not possible anymore and players are simply not afforded any mistakes. I think Blizzard need to take a long, hard look at the WotLK model, realise why that worked so well, and start moving back to it before casual raiding guilds just give up wholesale. Alas, LFR has compounded this problem rather than be the solution it’s often sold as.
    I would agree that there may have been some slightly overtuned encounters, but not by and large. But really the only thing I disagree with is the idea that weaker players should be able to be carried through normal raids (when the raids are still new, that is). LFR is really the only place that a particularly weak player shouldn't be a liability. LFR is easy, Normal should be challenging (which is the typical expectation of a video game's normal difficulty), and Heroic should be hard. While normals shouldn't require pitch perfect strategies and top-flight performances, I really disagree with what appears to be your philosophy on player contribution. Since normals are expected to be run by guilds (or at least pre-made, coordinated groups), it should come with the expectation that players are going to be at least expected to pull weight.

  13. #13
    All of this is opinion.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    All very informative. Thanks.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    That's an appalling generalisation, and one I don't support. Yes, the community has its flaws, but arguing that Blizzard has none is fanaticism that I don't want to see in what I hope will remain a constructive thread.
    Meby but its the greates true about this game , WoW its self is great amount of content it difficulty and others thing to do in game are on great level best from all other witch i palayed or about witch i heard , but problem is that people tu much take thing like "I had to do it" " It's mandatory to ..." or like
    " its only valiable combo for my class for arena " etc and they start whining with out even trying to do it or realy cheak if its true and that problem
    The biggest whiners are people who are lazzy and cant learn anything more and they just expect to get stuf done with out effort and after content that they can facerol its over and they have to think a bit they start whining and do rage post about game or how game sux after they live ( i personal happy that they did that)

    And that serius proble and Blizz cant do anything abut that becous it imposible to sort thous people problem , they shoud just ignore them and focus on people who care

    you can got any opiniot you like to but you wont change fact that most people are ass holes

  16. #16
    Interesting post for sure. I can't agree with #3 though, maybe it's just personal preference but I just really don't like the Pandaren. I think a lot of this is that I really don't feel like they belong in the Horde. Especially after the storyline with the Crane temple like... how could any Pandaren possibly be okay with that?

    I actually really like Scenarios. I can run them with my 2 friends and we can all bring our DPS characters and get in immediately (unlike dungeons/LFR). Sure I'd like to see better loot but the valor reward is great and the achievements give some replay value. I don't even run dungeons anymore, but I will still do scenarios if I want to finish capping my valor or something.

    Brawlers/Challenge Modes -- Very reliant on class/spec. Unfortunately mine doesn't do well in those so I haven't even touched them. I might try Brawling on a DPS alt once they get more gear.

    As a player with many many alts, the alt-unfriendliness of Mists was probably my major complaint. But this latest patch seems to have fixed that -- it's now fairly easy to get an alt to LFR level and to get elder coins to boost their chances for loot. Also the rep commendations and the fact that you can mail the Kirin Tor/Sunreaver items is great.
    No surrender! 70 Vanguard - The Star Forge

  17. #17
    I'm very happy with (and this is the only thing I wanna add to this) how much feedback Blizzard has been listening to the community about, especially with Dailies and PVP.

    Something just feels great about their attitude toward the community more-so than any other time with the game.

    I dunno, call me wrong or something, but it feels like they're truly listening, admitting when they're wrong, and fixing the game when it needs to be fixed.
    Quote Originally Posted by Princess Kenny View Post
    Avocado is a tropical fruit , south seas expansion confirmed.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    2) The difficulty of raiding is… Well, it’s all over the place. Heroic raiding has probably been as challenging as it could be, but the settings for normal raids and LFR have, painfully, continued from Cataclysm and compounded the ostracism casual guilds received as a result. Normal mode raiding should allow stronger players to carry weaker ones as they could in WotLK, but that’s simply not possible anymore and players are simply not afforded any mistakes. I think Blizzard need to take a long, hard look at the WotLK model, realise why that worked so well, and start moving back to it before casual raiding guilds just give up wholesale. Alas, LFR has compounded this problem rather than be the solution it’s often sold as.
    I'm in 2 minds about this. Our little casual team had no real issues in the previous tier - I think we had some problems with Shek'zeer (took about 10 wipes) but everything else fell over on normal modes. We'd occasionally try some heroic modes during MSV but, when raiding for a maximum of 2 nights a week I think most people wanted it clear. All in all tier14 seemed pretty easy on normal, even Garalon/Elegon.

    Tier15 seems fairly difficult. This could be because it is, or it could be because we've lost members (healers/tanks) and they've been replaced with less experienced/worse geared people. We literally got Dark Animus down for the first time last night so that's 4(or 5?) resets without a full clear yet and it's starting to sting a bit. Hopefully we can push upto Dark Animus again during tomorrow's reset and Lei Shen might drop by the end of the week.

    Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. We're a casual team, I don't expect us to push it over in the first week and we're all still making steady progress gear-wise. Technically I've won nothing from drops yet but, because of valor/bonus rolls/LFR I'm about 8 ilvls higher than I was when the tier was released.

    I've also enjoyed watching people run into the Durumu death-beam on LFR :-D

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by RabidHexley View Post
    I would agree that there may have been some slightly overtuned encounters, but not by and large. But really the only thing I disagree with is the idea that weaker players should be able to be carried through normal raids (when the raids are still new, that is). LFR is really the only place that a particularly weak player shouldn't be a liability.
    I see what you’re saying and I’ve maybe been unclear. I’m not arguing that normal modes should see swathes of bad players getting clears on the back of better players, but relatively casual teams with a couple of underperformers just can’t be made up for by high performance everywhere else and it’s causing significant frustration. The amount of promising pulls we’ve wiped to because of some pretty slight errors is too high, and the output demands are a bit steep in the gear normal raiders from the previous tier are likely to have.

    Perhaps we’re disagreeing on what we view as “bad”? To me, a bad player is someone who gets off about half (or less) the number of GCD’s they should, hits the wrong buttons and stands in things. I’d say “average” is a player who follows a rotation pretty well, invariably makes the right decisions but doesn’t necessarily try to maximise his performance on every pull. Those are the types of players that I reckon should get some leeway from better players, and the one-shot punishment should really be reserved for heroic content.

    Quote Originally Posted by SherbertLand View Post
    All of this is opinion.
    I’ve been pretty explicit about that fact, both in the OP and since. Do you have anything, you know, worthwhile to add? Or do you just think you’re intelligently trolling? I’m honestly not sure.

    Quote Originally Posted by kubuntu View Post
    Meby but its the greates true about this game , WoW its self is great amount of content it difficulty and others thing to do in game are on great level best from all other witch i palayed or about witch i heard , but problem is that people tu much take thing like "I had to do it" " It's mandatory to ..." or like
    " its only valiable combo for my class for arena " etc and they start whining with out even trying to do it or realy cheak if its true and that problem
    The biggest whiners are people who are lazzy and cant learn anything more and they just expect to get stuf done with out effort and after content that they can facerol its over and they have to think a bit they start whining and do rage post about game or how game sux after they live ( i personal happy that they did that)

    And that serius proble and Blizz cant do anything abut that becous it imposible to sort thous people problem , they shoud just ignore them and focus on people who care

    you can got any opiniot you like to but you wont change fact that most people are ass holes
    I think you’re trying to say a few things here:

    1) The community is a problem, and not one Blizzard can solve.

    I agree. I’m only trying to say that you can’t blame the community for everything, Blizzard does make mistakes (the double-gate of the Golden Lotus and mandatory dailies are probably the biggest mistake).

    2) Too many players feel entitled to rewards for no effort.

    This is where I become a bit sceptical. When people say things like “most people”, I find they need to be very careful about what they’re claiming. Yes, there is a percentage of people who want to log on for five minutes and get a reward; they’re probably the type of people who want their parents to bring them a present when they’ve gone no further than the toilet. And yes, there’s a percentage at the top of the game that believe nobody should get anything without sweating blood for it… Preferably for a month or two. But in the middle, there are a great number of people who simply want the rewards to fit the investment and are comfortable that they can’t have everything. I’m worried that Blizzard are listening to the extremes too much, rather than the middle ground that generally don’t post on forums.

    3) Most people are assholes.

    No. Just, no. Because someone views things differently to you, does not make them an asshole. Get a grip of yourself, man.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vajarra View Post
    Interesting post for sure. I can't agree with #3 though, maybe it's just personal preference but I just really don't like the Pandaren. I think a lot of this is that I really don't feel like they belong in the Horde. Especially after the storyline with the Crane temple like... how could any Pandaren possibly be okay with that?
    Yeah, I totally see where you’re coming from. There are guildies of mine (and game-playing chums) who despise the pandaren for many reasons, including your indictment of the Crane Temple storyline. I suppose what I’m really trying to say is that much of the early criticism of the new race has proven unfounded, and given how divisive the topic was, that’s no mean feat.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vajarra View Post
    I actually really like Scenarios. I can run them with my 2 friends and we can all bring our DPS characters and get in immediately (unlike dungeons/LFR). Sure I'd like to see better loot but the valor reward is great and the achievements give some replay value. I don't even run dungeons anymore, but I will still do scenarios if I want to finish capping my valor or something.
    Are you looking forward to heroic scenarios? I’m unsure if that’s the missing “x-factor”, but it could be.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vajarra View Post
    As a player with many many alts, the alt-unfriendliness of Mists was probably my major complaint. But this latest patch seems to have fixed that -- it's now fairly easy to get an alt to LFR level and to get elder coins to boost their chances for loot. Also the rep commendations and the fact that you can mail the Kirin Tor/Sunreaver items is great.
    This actually moves into the next poster’s comments:

    Quote Originally Posted by Destil View Post
    I'm very happy with (and this is the only thing I wanna add to this) how much feedback Blizzard has been listening to the community about, especially with Dailies and PVP.

    Something just feels great about their attitude toward the community more-so than any other time with the game.

    I dunno, call me wrong or something, but it feels like they're truly listening, admitting when they're wrong, and fixing the game when it needs to be fixed.
    I agree. Particularly with alts, I could see where Ghostcrawler was coming from – they wanted to make main characters “main” again, not merely the toon you raided with. Getting the balance between making enough content for one character and being too unfriendly with alts was a tough one to find, and I think they’ve made the right changes all in all. Domination Point and the Isle of Thunder have been a blast, and not as mandatory as the early factions were; the commendations and work orders help smooth this out too, though.

    That said, sometimes they’re very slow to listen and, in some cases, pig-headed about it. Draztal from the EU forums, despite posting a lot, tends to antagonize people by misunderstanding or misrepresenting what he’s being told and just not being open to opinions that differ from his own. There’s work to be done, but I think the rate of change is about right.

    Quote Originally Posted by vmagik View Post
    Tier15 seems fairly difficult. This could be because it is, or it could be because we've lost members (healers/tanks) and they've been replaced with less experienced/worse geared people. We literally got Dark Animus down for the first time last night so that's 4(or 5?) resets without a full clear yet and it's starting to sting a bit. Hopefully we can push upto Dark Animus again during tomorrow's reset and Lei Shen might drop by the end of the week.
    I think tier 14 suffered mainly from being staggered, and the impact that had on guilds trying to catch up. If you were onboard for the start of the expansion, the staggering was a success because you could gear up in MSV prior to starting on the Heart of Fear. Coming in from the middle, however, was awkward because MSV was effectively a half-tier before the other two instances. It wasn’t unmanageable by any stretch, just a bit… Awkward.

    Tier 15 is too punitive on normal for my money, and its linear approach has put up more walls than it needed to. We’re going to start on Durumu this week which, if I’m honest, is far from bad going for a normal progression team that started the tier undergeared, but I think the learning curve is knackered. Jin’rokh, the Council of Elders, Tortos, Megaera and Ji-Kun are all easier than Horridon (in my opinion, of course), which puts Horridon in a nasty part of the instance.

    Quote Originally Posted by vmagik View Post
    Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. We're a casual team, I don't expect us to push it over in the first week and we're all still making steady progress gear-wise. Technically I've won nothing from drops yet but, because of valor/bonus rolls/LFR I'm about 8 ilvls higher than I was when the tier was released.
    I think that’s a great point, and it’s been made in other threads; if this tier has another, say, three months to run, where would your expectation be if you’re currently on the Council of Elders or beyond? I think that’s probably about right if you’re a normal-mode raider.

    Quote Originally Posted by vmagik View Post
    I've also enjoyed watching people run into the Durumu death-beam on LFR :-D
    Whoever came up with that deserves a special place in Hell. =D

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Tekkommo View Post
    Don't agree with the difficulty of raiding, normal mode is easy
    You see, the problem with this statement is that, for those that aren't stuck, you're most likely progressing into heroic mode raids where you both should and want to be. That's fine, nothing wrong with that.

    The problem is that many guilds are STRUGGLING, especially with the current tier, and so those guilds (and those players that wish to be in those sort of guilds) that don't smash through the content super quick begin to struggle, not only because they're not progressing as quickly and thus have less gear, but this also causes players to burn out much quicker.

    It's one thing to get stuck in the later part of a raid, but when a guild finds its stuck on one of the 1st few bosses....it starts to get old very quickly. And THEN as said guilds start to lose players, it becomes harder to recruit because said burn outs either guild hop for progression or just stop raiding.

    IMO, Normal raids should have an expectation that the difficulty isn't too much. Isn't that kind of the reason hard modes exist in the 1st place? IE: If I want the HARD content, I do the HARD difficulty.
    Sometimes I feel like some of the MoP raids are like a single player action game where I choose normal difficulty, but the game plays like I chose hard. One guy might relish the challenge, sure. But the majority? I'm pretty sure they just get pissed off and give up.

    (bear in mind of course that this is all IMHO)
    Last edited by Icaras; 2013-04-09 at 11:19 AM.
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