Things I would Personally Bring Back To WoW

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

If you can't find Challenge mode groups on your server, you are more than capable of forming a cross-realm group, especially through openraid.us or openraid.eu. You can also easily find tier 14 raids there. It's no one's fault but your own that you are on a bad server.

You're right, it is only my fault about this server. But that doesn't change a thing I said in reality. quoting three specific things is only a subtle way of trying to nudge people with my desires to the side. Why not make Heroics more difficult and then say "hey, casuals have normal modes!"

[Thage]

'Welcome to MoP" doesn't counter what I said.

I'm sure you will again say "too bad" when I mention things like this, but on my server many of these things aren't possible. There are very few Guilds, especially GOOD ONES recruiting. I've spammed chat for Challenge modes, but can;t get a full group. I'm not skilled enough to get to high-end arena.

And you've got my sympathy for that. Not sure where you got the words 'too bad' from my posts; a lack of sympathy isn't really part of how I operate. What I did was point out that Blizzard tried the hard 5-man thing in Cata and it exploded in their faces in such a way that in the postmortems for Cata multiple devs admitted it was a mistake and even the CEO said as much in an interview with Eurogamer.

Here is the real question, why weren't Normal Dungeons "good enough" for "casuals" since you know, I'm being told that timed challenge modes are "good enough" for me.

The main difference is Heroics offer valid gear upgrades, while Challenge Mode gear is there to prove you're good enough to tackle them. Blizz tried to pursue the 'Normals are good enough' philosophy in Cata, harkening back to BC. The only quarter that didn't see huge sub bleeds was 4.3, and even then it picked back up after Dragon Soul overstayed its welcome.

The thing is, "heroics" are now just a 5-10 minute aoe grind fest... where you just follow the tank to the boss, then AOE adds, then easily and without fear kill the boss. That is the epitome of grinding, yet people here are screaming "NO GRINDS NO GRINDS!"

In this case, bare bones you're 100% correct. When people are speaking out against grinds, we're talking about the sort of pointlessly-tedious grinding of... let's say Golden Lotus rep. And also note that the grindy nature of MoP rep factions has come under fire from many sources, and it's one I'm not going to defend because let's face it, that shit is boring. That's the sort of grind people like the OP are proposing to bring back and that's the sort of grind people are speaking out against.

[Mormolyce]

Your idea will likely never happen. People like you or me or the OP are a minority in the world when it comes to video games. As soon as a few "casuals" start playing, the game would get nerfed into the ground to suit their desires over ours. You can see that simple fact all throughout WoW.

My heart bleeds for you.

If you're really such a pro, you would've finished the content long before the nerfs come in. So what do you care?

From the sound of it though, you're not a pro, you're just a casual who wants Blizzard to give him some kind of medal for being better than the other casuals.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I can't imagine how sad you'd have to be that you get cut up that content you've already completed has been nerfed.

Did it ever occur to you that every single week content becomes easier regardless of nerfs because more gear becomes available? If you clear HM ToT a month from now it won't be remotely the same accomplishment as Method and Paragon clearing it now. That's the nature of the game, your QQ makes no sense.

Yes, i understand how gear works, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. And I have not completed any Heroic Scenarios, as they are not out yet.

[Belize]

With an attitude like that, I'm surprised you enjoy life at all to be honest. Well being overly sarcastic and whiny totally is a good way to debate or argue. I have no idea what to call players that have an opposing game desire as me. They seem to have adopted the term "casual' so thats what I go with. You don't need to quote it back at me in an attempt at condescension.

If you start dating someone that doesn't dress the way you like, who are you to try to make them change? You should probably just date someone that dresses that way in the first place. This is why I hate what WoW has become. Blizzard has sold out to accommodate a player base that didn't even seem to like anything about the original game.

Here's the thing though, they didn't sell out. The game was never difficult, it was just extremely grindy. I too would like to see heroics to be a tad harder, let's say like Cata beta hard, that was a good middle ground except for Grim Batol which was just stupid hard. But I just don't think we should make EVERYTHING in the game be a grindfest or require 10+ hours like the top raiding guilds put in to progress through.

There's a difference between making some parts of the game more challenging (not everything though) and making it so that only the people that spend their entire day playing WoW can get to the enjoyable parts.

[Belloc]

With an attitude like that, I'm surprised you enjoy life at all to be honest. Well being overly sarcastic and whiny totally is a good way to debate or argue. I have no idea what to call players that have an opposing game desire as me. They seem to have adopted the term "casual' so thats what I go with. You don't need to quote it back at me in an attempt at condescension.

If you start dating someone that doesn't dress the way you like, who are you to try to make them change? You should probably just date someone that dresses that way in the first place. This is why I hate what WoW has become. Blizzard has sold out to accommodate a player base that didn't even seem to like anything about the original game.

Here's something a lot of people like you don't realize: A lot of the current players did, in fact, play vanilla WoW. We did, in fact, enjoy it. We have, in fact, enjoyed the game even more with nearly every expansion. People like you think that change is bad. People like me enjoy a lot of the changes that have happened.

I've played the game casually (1 raid night per week = heroic deathwing down with 15% buff) and hardcore (Realm First! Grand Crusader while ToGC was still current). I've raided in Vanilla and every expansion. I've had to form 5-man heroics without dungeon finder. I've had to pay a relatively large amount of gold just to ride a ground mount. I've gathered resist gear for resist fights. I've done attunements.

And after all of that, I still think that the game gets better and better with every expansion. Comparing Vanilla to the current game? You're damned right I don't like much of anything from the original! It was unbalanced, annoying, and plain old stupid. Hey, look, Paladins, Druids, priests and Shamans are healing classes! One progression raid night requires hundreds of flasks and perhaps thousands of potions! Bosses drop 4-5 pieces of loot to be shared between 40 people! Oh, and if a guildie quits, you have to run the replacement through every previous tier, despite the fact that you haven't run it in months, before they're worth anything.

I could keep going, but I doubt any of this will sink in.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

They aren't exclusive, you simply choose not to do them. Probably because they require organisation. Which is exactly the quality you need if you want to do challenging content.

They are exclusive in that there is a short list available of things someone like me can do. Your line here is exactly what I tell people about BC heroics. They weren't even that hard, or ACTUALLY exclusive, you just didn't feel like putting in the effort or time.

[Mormolyce]

You are delusional. Cataclysm tried to bring back heroic TBC style dungeons back. And they were actually easier then TBC ones. And your average player couldn't handle them so they took big nerf.

He's talking about raids.

If all you do is dungeons you can't really complain about difficulty because that's what raids are for.

[TCceen]

I did my time, raided hardcore up to start of cataclsym. I remember the days of raiding tier 1, 5 days a week took over 16 months to complete tier 1 on my lock. I remember spending 1 to 2 hours finding a full 10 man team for scholomance after it went from 40 to 10 man, then spending up to 5 hours to complete it, all for exactly 34 runs to finally get my tier 0 head piece to match the set. All this while working full time and helping a casual guild on my alt. I would never play a game like this again. Anyway, I stopped raiding when I lost my job and was unemployed for 1.5 years, then had to take up 2 jobs to get back out of the hole. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to do 'any' kind of raiding again when LFR came out, I had given up completely and only let myself do a little PVP and Arena up until then. I'm STILL working 2 jobs and almost caught back up, I miss raiding hardcore but WoW really should update it's graphics, options, models and find new features from newer MMO's to incorporate. There is never a reason to go backwards and punish players for sticking with the same game for going on 9 years.

[Mormolyce]

Yes, i understand how gear works, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. And I have not completed any Heroic Scenarios, as they are not out yet.

So you're, what, QQing in advance?

They are exclusive in that there is a short list available of things someone like me can do. Your line here is exactly what I tell people about BC heroics. They weren't even that hard, or ACTUALLY exclusive, you just didn't feel like putting in the effort or time.

Soooo... how are they not exactly what you want?

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Hes calling the ideas elitism, not the person. Forcing extra difficult or extra long grinds are stupid. Even Mists is way to overboard with grinds. If I can play as good as that hardcore person in skill, why should I not be able to actually try? All the OP is asking is for people with stupid large amounts of game time to be so over geared that gear means more than skill.

TBC had little to no true difficulty anyway, flying was easy, epic flying was easy (it was only slow on a fresh toon, any toon that had some build up gold from vanilla should have had no trouble getting it if they really wanted), dungeons/heroics were easy (the ones people chain ran anyway). T4/T5 except vashj/kael were easy and via Badges you could buy fairly top end gear (my pally had similar stat numbers to t6 progressed ones without ever getting drops from t5 and above). Most of the mechanics were either simple or badly designed, for some reason people keep putting that with hard.

Not sure where you get that BC did better than MoP, considering subs are higher now than any time during TBC. In fact the early BC which was when heroics were hard lost subs from vanilla and it was only much later that they came back fast - surprisingly when most people could AoE farm heroics fast.

As for Ony - Requiring a item which needed to be skinned from a boss - ie requiring over max level skinning (RNG for one of your skinners to get one of the 2 +10 skinning drop items) to raid another tier effectively was silly. As bad as the resist sets farms from Vanilla and TBC. Imagine today needing 3-4 sets of gear extra, no one would have the bag space.

Player housing... we pretty much have what it is on our personal farms. Aside from moving it to a city and adding more gold sinks to it, its essentially what it is.

Hey man, I'm fine with resist gear not existing, that wasn't even mentioned until now, not by me, and not by the OP.

BC did better than MoP because of numbers I've read that had sources. Do you have any saying MoP did better than BC?

[Mormolyce]

We have more grinding in this expansion than we've had in the last two combined.

Everyone complained they had nothing to do in Cataclysm.

Also the daily grind is no worse than Molten Front or Argent Tournament. And even in 5.0, you didn't have to do them.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

And you've got my sympathy for that. Not sure where you got the words 'too bad' from my posts; a lack of sympathy isn't really part of how I operate. What I did was point out that Blizzard tried the hard 5-man thing in Cata and it exploded in their faces in such a way that in the postmortems for Cata multiple devs admitted it was a mistake and even the CEO said as much in an interview with Eurogamer.

The main difference is Heroics offer valid gear upgrades, while Challenge Mode gear is there to prove you're good enough to tackle them. Blizz tried to pursue the 'Normals are good enough' philosophy in Cata, harkening back to BC. The only quarter that didn't see huge sub bleeds was 4.3, and even then it picked back up after Dragon Soul overstayed its welcome.

In this case, bare bones you're 100% correct. When people are speaking out against grinds, we're talking about the sort of pointlessly-tedious grinding of... let's say Golden Lotus rep. And also note that the grindy nature of MoP rep factions has come under fire from many sources, and it's one I'm not going to defend because let's face it, that shit is boring. That's the sort of grind people like the OP are proposing to bring back and that's the sort of grind people are speaking out against.

If I could find a good group or cool cats to run Challenge Modes, I would.

I was asking YOU why Normals aren;t good enough for that demographic? I remember what happened and what was said and nerfed. I've never been given a good reason as to WHY. Whats the problem with making Heroics harder than the current "7 minute aoe grind" it is now?

[Mormolyce]

Hey man, I'm fine with resist gear not existing, that wasn't even mentioned until now, not by me, and not by the OP.

BC did better than MoP because of numbers I've read that had sources. Do you have any saying MoP did better than BC?

It's really sad how arguments on these forums often devolve into people throwing fiscal results at each other like that's what matters. How many subs a game has is not what makes it a good game.

In any case you can't compare, because the game was simply newer then.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

My heart bleeds for you.

If you're really such a pro, you would've finished the content long before the nerfs come in. So what do you care?

From the sound of it though, you're not a pro, you're just a casual who wants Blizzard to give him some kind of medal for being better than the other casuals.

I've never labeled myself a pro. Not once. So you can quit with your bullshit kthanks.

From the sound of it though, you are just a baddie who feel threatened by someone suggesting harder content. See? I can be overbearing and condescending too!

---------- Post added 2013-04-25 at 08:07 PM ----------

Here's the thing though, they didn't sell out. The game was never difficult, it was just extremely grindy. I too would like to see heroics to be a tad harder, let's say like Cata beta hard, that was a good middle ground except for Grim Batol which was just stupid hard. But I just don't think we should make EVERYTHING in the game be a grindfest or require 10+ hours like the top raiding guilds put in to progress through.

There's a difference between making some parts of the game more challenging (not everything though) and making it so that only the people that spend their entire day playing WoW can get to the enjoyable parts.

Hey, I never suggested everything be way way harder or grindier. I have only been talking mostly about heroics. I wasn;t in the Cata Beta. I just know that Cata heroics were great pre nerf. I had fun, and it wasn;t tough once I could understand the mechanics. I just have a huge problem with the typical ..."well you have challenge modes" response when someone says "Harder heroics please!

---------- Post added 2013-04-25 at 08:09 PM ----------

Here's something a lot of people like you don't realize: A lot of the current players did, in fact, play vanilla WoW. We did, in fact, enjoy it. We have, in fact, enjoyed the game even more with nearly every expansion. People like you think that change is bad. People like me enjoy a lot of the changes that have happened.

I've played the game casually (1 raid night per week = heroic deathwing down with 15% buff) and hardcore (Realm First! Grand Crusader while ToGC was still current). I've raided in Vanilla and every expansion. I've had to form 5-man heroics without dungeon finder. I've had to pay a relatively large amount of gold just to ride a ground mount. I've gathered resist gear for resist fights. I've done attunements.

And after all of that, I still think that the game gets better and better with every expansion. Comparing Vanilla to the current game? You're damned right I don't like much of anything from the original! It was unbalanced, annoying, and plain old stupid. Hey, look, Paladins, Druids, priests and Shamans are healing classes! One progression raid night requires hundreds of flasks and perhaps thousands of potions! Bosses drop 4-5 pieces of loot to be shared between 40 people! Oh, and if a guildie quits, you have to run the replacement through every previous tier, despite the fact that you haven't run it in months, before they're worth anything.

I could keep going, but I doubt any of this will sink in.

I have AGAIN, never said everything about Vanilla should be resurrected. If I wanted that I would go to a private server. Many of the changes are great, but don;t pretend like they ALL are. Class balancing is great. being able to do anything other the heal/buff as a Paladin is great.

Please read more of my posts besides the first line.

---------- Post added 2013-04-25 at 08:10 PM ----------

So you're, what, QQing in advance?



Soooo... how are they not exactly what you want?

No, just countering your future QQ when H scenarios do come out. ' OH GOSH, I CAN'T BEAT THESE in 5 MINUTES OMG!

[Thage]

If I could find a good group or cool cats to run Challenge Modes, I would.

Wish the best for you in that regard; I'm planning to tackle them with my boss and District manager once my warrior's 90* for some of that tasty, tasty transmog gear.

I was asking YOU why Normals aren;t good enough for that demographic? I remember what happened and what was said and nerfed. I've never been given a good reason as to WHY. Whats the problem with making Heroics harder than the current "7 minute aoe grind" it is now?

It's gonna be a hard sell to the community, long story short. Very rarely has Blizzard been able to get away with taking an entire level of gameplay away from a chunk of the playerbase (the hardcores wasted no time in calling them out during Wrath for making easy 5-mans and making t7 easy on purpose, and casual players had no qualms about letting their wallets talk when Blizz made Heroics harder than they were in Wrath) for the enjoyment of a smaller subset of the player base (and keep in mind, just by being aware of and active on a fansite like MMO-C you and I are in the top 40% of all players by Blizz's numbers).

From a gameplay standpoint, it's generally not awesome to have this level of gameplay you have a blast in one expac and have it wrenched away from you the next because some dudes posting on the official forums you've never heard of weren't having fun. That goes for both sides of the coin which is why I'm so supportive of MoP's multiple-levels approach to PvE endgame. From a financial standpoint it's usually a really bad idea to piss off droves of gamers in a pay-to-play game, as Blizz learned the hard way in Cataclysm and even back during the Year of ICC at the end of Wrath.

*Apparently my brain's still stuck in Cataclysm level cap with all the references that've been made to it (mostly by me). Oops!

[La]

A lot of the things I wouldn't ever bring back. Mainly because I know that back then, if I had what I have now, I'd want it back then.

Seriously, I would of LOVED to fly anywhere back then, loved not to have to spend 10 minutes getting 2 people to a stone to summon, not having to, at first, only be capable of doing 2 heroics because the rest without a good tank were too hard (unless you did them with your guild). Seriously, heroics feeling heroic? Yeah, maybe I was the only one but I feel like the 'nostalgia crew' are the only people who say such things. in TBC you either hated not being able to do half of the heroics unless you were a raider (and not a kara raider all expansion) or you enjoyed the 'difficulty' where you did it with well geared players, or the only crutch was the games problems ie tanking shattered halls as a warrior. And for what? did you feel good because you could do heroics because you thought they were sooo harddd? Just for your emblems? You know the hardest thing about raiding in TBC? it wasn't the lack of websites telling you what to do. Hell, I don't remember ever visiting one, I remember youtube videos with text across the screen explaining fights. It was the mixture of a lack of knowledge about your class and about raids outside of kara, on top of how difficult it was to actually obtain gear outside of treating kara like a 5 man dungeon for 6 months. I just find people who talk about 'bringing out school difficulty' incredibly annoying when they don't seem to understand what made it so difficult.

If there is one thing I'd bring back it would be quick gearing through new 5 man heroics, so that I could have alt raids on the newest raid and gear alts up, in case people might like to switch mains. So sick of doing content I've had to do 6 months ago on an alt and spending a month or two doing it.

That being said I do very much like your ideas OP...a long with a few other peoples

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Wish the best for you in that regard; I'm planning to tackle them with my boss and District manager once my warrior's 85 for some of that tasty, tasty transmog gear.

It's gonna be a hard sell to the community, long story short. Very rarely has Blizzard been able to get away with taking an entire level of gameplay away from a chunk of the playerbase (the hardcores wasted no time in calling them out during Wrath for making easy 5-mans and making t7 easy on purpose, and casual players had no qualms about letting their wallets talk when Blizz made Heroics harder than they were in Wrath) for the enjoyment of a smaller subset of the player base (and keep in mind, just by being aware of and active on a fansite like MMO-C you and I are in the top 40% of all players by Blizz's numbers).

From a gameplay standpoint, it's generally not awesome to have this level of gameplay you have a blast in one expac and have it wrenched away from you the next because some dudes posting on the official forums you've never heard of weren't having fun. That goes for both sides of the coin which is why I'm so supportive of MoP's multiple-levels approach to PvE endgame. From a financial standpoint it's usually a really bad idea to piss off droves of gamers in a pay-to-play game, as Blizz learned the hard way in Cataclysm and even back during the Year of ICC at the end of Wrath.

I'm glad you at least understand why people like the OP make threads like this. When something is changed away from the way you were enjoying it, why can't you complain? Its sad the only replies to me are something like "QQ, UR A ELITIST!"

What you haven't answered is WHY? Whats wrong with harder heroics? Why don't people like more challenging content than the current 5-10 minute AoE "heroics?"

[Thage]

I'm glad you at least understand why people like the OP make threads like this. When something is changed away from the way you were enjoying it, why can't you complain? Its sad the only replies to me are something like "QQ, UR A ELITIST!"

Just because I don't necessarily agree with the OP and people like you doesn't mean I can't sympathize with why you feel that way. Might not always show it but it's there!

What you haven't answered is WHY? Whats wrong with harder heroics? Why don't people like more challenging content than the current 5-10 minute AoE "heroics?"

I can only speak for Callei the MMO-C poster in this regard: it's a combination of burnout and playing games to blow off stress. I raided hardcore in Vanilla for the tail end of Vanilla and got stuck in a Kara feeder guild in BC. I got burned out hard and barely touched raids at all in Wrath outside a bit of Naxx10 on my DK and funruns in outdated raid content. Prior to 4.3 I didn't really do any endgame PvE in Cata because the Heroics were hell on my PC and the raids required more gear and performance than my laptop could manage; in 4.3 I got a much better PC and went about doing the HoT 5-mans and LFR, and ended up falling in love with the game again (for much of Cata I basically came and went depending on how good the RP was on Wyrmrest Accord; that coupled with financial troubles didn't leave me with much room for WoW in the budget 'til things stabilized and I fell in love with the game again). Also worth noting, in 2008 I was in two car accidents that have measurably impacted my response time, so I was basically sunk in regards to even going into Normal raiding without being a body on the floor.

Sob story's over, on to the meat of it!

Come MoP, there's a lot I wasn't so jazzed about (aforementioned Golden Lotus rep, though oddly I had no problem with The Tillers, the ground mounts-to-90 thing, and the Alliance-Horde slugfest taking front and center stage after the initial 5.0 storyline). Scenarios are a blast to blow through. I'll be honest--I like the easy Heroics. I'm biased here and I'll be honest about that. But I was also glad to hear about Blizz's plans to bring in Challenge Mode for people that weren't jazzed about them. It was a good middle ground for both of us to have our cake and eat it. Between Scenarios, the easier 5-mans, and LFR, I've got my level of gameplay, and there are other levels for other players. If Heroics became harder again, that's 1/3 of my endgame gone and while that opens that portion of the game up to a new demographic, it leaves me in the dust, which brings back memories of BC and Cata (where I generally felt not-awesome and leveled a bajillion alts to kill time between roleplaying and, in BC, raid night).

[The Glitch]

I like the way the difficulty levels are right now, for those that want a bit more of a challenge in their raids, you can go do the Heroic version, for those that want a bit more challenge in their dungeons, you can do challenge mode, for those that want a bit more challenge in their scenarios you will have Heroic scenarios, for those that want more challenge in pvp you have Arena and rated BG's.

All the standard raids/dungeons/scenarios/BG's are great for those of us that prioritise our real life responsibilities over our hobbies (everyones different folks, some have more than others, no ones better than anyone else here!) We have content that is rewarding but not as time consuming as the more difficult content. Meaning we can progress without feeling we need to be online X hours a day to see the benefits.

I don't really understand why folks can't just enjoy the content thats there for them. People seem to want to make everyone do the same stuff and be able to put the same time/effort into the game, when thats just silliness and pretty much not gonna work, Some folks have alot of free time, some don't.

And you are rewarded differently for whichever path you choose. I'm fine with not getting the best gear/mounts/titles in game. But wanting to force everyone to put in more time into the game just because they have the time to do so is a little narrow minded imo.

Blizz are trying to make sure every playstyle has something and I'd say they are doing a good job, sure some tweaks could be made, but I'm happy with the road they are going.