First, this is my introductory post so I welcome myself to the forum, I browse often (mmo-champion is among one of my many wow related and unrelated home pages, but it garners 'top-dog' status as being the one that appears first), and on the odd occasion I like to look at some interestingly titled forum topics. I see an array of opinions and clashing principles so I offer you an apology now in the event that your opinion differs with mine and this offends you.
In almost every post containing content about PvE (I skip PvP because anyone with 2 brain cells can understand this as worthless discussion based on the fact that everybody only roots for their own class), I see two very distinct groups. One group that is "Casual" one group that is "Hardcore", and let me begin by saying, I respect both. It takes a lot of courage to spend the hours many of the hardcore 'wowers's spend on 'just a game' and I respect that for them, this is an achievement: and so it should be. Synonymously I respect that, like the now casual gamer that I am, other people are unable or unwilling to spend as many hours and prefer to have more challenging and less time consuming portions of the game to spend their time playing. This is my belief so... in terms of opinion consider me jaded.
What I do not understand, is how the "hardcore gamers" can consider the tasks in previous iterations of raid content difficult? The difficulty curve is momentous, now Naxxramas and AQ40, had few difficult fights. Namely Twin Emperors, C'Thun and Thaddius (some may argue more, some may argue less, some may argue different bosses - these are the names most often vocalised by those flaming casual playerrs and how they have ruined 'their' content). Lets think for a moment what has changed:
Player base increased in size, and along with that - fanbase. WoW has the most successful and likely the largest fan following of any game ever made, and with this comes a much deeper and fullfilling understanding of game concepts. Theorycrafting, some like to call it, for those who consider themselves skilled to get the most out of their class. Fanbases also bring with them detailed tactics - describing how to do each encounter, regardless of difficulty.
Have the bosses tactics become more difficult to understand? Yes. In fact, you actually do have to be told something before entering a fight with regular bosses in regular instances throughout WOTLK. - The (possibly) first instance you arrive at (Im exemplifying Nexus) has many bosses with many different tactics for which to complete in order to accomplish the instance. Compare this to... BRD or Scholomance, or Stratholme - "similar" instances (in that they are not raids, not heroics and do not garner any loot you could consider 'epic'), and you will see a considerably HUGE difference between the tactics required. Infact, correct me if i'm wrong but, there is actually very little tactics in those instances at all. Perhaps telling your group to be swift during the Lyceum in BRD and grabbing the torches and lighting the braziers is about as far as tactics go for the whole of the instances.
What hardcore wowers think was hard content, was actually easy content - made difficult by this gigantic grind for items that had to happen before. All Blizzard have done, is removed this grind to favour casual gamers like myself - and have instead upped the difficulty within instances, which is marvelous.
However I have to say, the difficulty is not nearly hard enough. I was happy to reach 80 and be geared enough to tank naxx within 5 days however, naxx was not nearly as difficult as I had hoped in terms of tactics. I present a suggestion and wanted to trial it with you people first, we already have "Hard Mode" encounters that are 'apparently' (im not in Ulduar content yet as I quit and now rerolled) more difficult however I am still seeing complaints which leads me to believe yet another difficulty setting should be imposed.
First, tactics need to be made so difficult that even one mistake will throw the whole thing down the drain, perfectionism, not gear requirement - that is skill. I want to see more boss fights that require accurate positioning and movement - co-ordination between team members where one team member can ruin it for everybody. I want to see fights that involve less of a "tank and spank" architecture, fights that involve perhaps multiple bosses that hit for less, but can only be damaged when arranged in certain patterns, and that inflict certain movement penalties on those they attack so that tactics such as "threat cycling" have to be made, where by one dps lowers their threat to pass the boss onto anothe personso that they can continue moving the boss.
Now may ideas are outlandish but im certain that the design team or indeed the community can think of much more plausible ideas, the main point is - while I'm happy for gear to be good, I'm not happy that a simple faceroll accomplishes 4k DPS in naxx gear. Engage the people playing and make it so everyone must do something other than standing behind a boss hitting 1, 2, 3, 4 and then moving to hide behind an ice block.
And yes, I am well aware of the lack of understanding of some of the people that play the game, which is why I also think that each boss fight should come with a tactical "map" detailing what each person must do for the fight (a sort of 'in game wow-wiki') that describes to them their role within the fight (considering this is what 98% of guilds do anyway - let the first guilds down a boss then watch how they do it and copy).
This is just my understanding of the game at the moment, I also think that epic quality items should be turned to blue and that epic quality items should only be available in "hard mode" encounters, as currently I see purple everywhere and it has kinda lessened the impact of the word.
Thanks for reading, and I appreciate your replies. This is not a QQ, just wondering what you all think - whether or not my idea is a consideration that should be made when Blizzard design new content or whether I am just hoping for too much.