Cataclysm Post Mortem - Dungeons and Raids, Darkmoon Faire Issues, MMO Report

[Melilithia]

I always found it strange that the first dungeons were more difficult than the later ones...

[Biggiej]

God I hope they never design another fight like spine of deathwing, all that fight involved was waiting on something to happen instead of being able to just make it happen, I've done heroic and normal, as the blood tank and as a dps and I can say that fight, is lame and I think they put way too much time and energy into developing it. And I also think they could have done something simpler in design/better.

[Aveyax]

IMO Grim Batol was a failure in comparison to Wintergrasp

EDIT: I was thinking of that prison

lol You mean Tol barad? Not the same thing.

[tusker]

I don't normally comment on these post mortems, but when I do.... Lol, okay you get the idea. But really, this one was pretty terrible, though. He basically said, "Yeah, we did a good job," but in many words.

[Malthurius]

This is exactly why I don't play WoW anymore. I don't like where the game is going, therefore I don't play. What they call "Too hard" I call "Just right", what they call "Just right" I call "catering to bads". In my honest opinion. The MMO-Report made me want to renew my Rift account, it's amazing how much they've added to the game in 1 year and I wish it was more popular than it is.

[Scarzi]

That guy in the grey shirt with glasses on the MMO report has to be fucking high, I lol'd.

[Idletime]

Q. What do you think worked best? I think the fact we were able to drive away many hardcore raiding guilds within a few months of release and also eliminate approximately 2.5 million other accounts proved to work exactly as planned. Since these were mostly players that took the game too seriously and made it difficult for us, no big deal. For MoP we intend to drive away at least 50%, if not more, within the first two months. Eventually you will be mailed current tier items with each patch, something we never could have gotten away with as long as "those people" were around.

I keep saying this. The problem with the developers at this very moment is that they are casual gamers, not actual raiders or PvPers, if they even play the game at all. The old guard were serious gamers. Tigole and Furor ... holy crap. These were people that fed on the tears of the general public. They had to throttle their own guild back just to allow others to get world first kills. Game's too hard? HA! Go farm 250,000 Stranglekelp. Don't have your attunements? Tough. Compare these two legends to where we are today. Mercer was allowed the encounter lead in Wrath, so I ask you... how's that working out?

[gracfuldeath]

Spine was considered one of their best? Sure, it was an awesome idea. Flying on the back of a dragon, being able to roll it which lead to making sure you didn't roll it by accident. As for the actual fight? Worst fight ever. The most class stacking designed fight ever.

[Kaleredar]

Five hour Deadmines at Cata launch?

I always took that as the price for having better gear. A matter of "You want to progress in the game? put in some extra time and effort." Even then, I rarely had any terrible experiences in Heroic cataclysm dungeons. Ever.

I don't really find the three new heroics ANY kind of fun. At all. I actually had a better time of it running ZA/ZG for months. End time is the only one of the new dungeons I can tolerate, as it's the only one that actually requires anything requiring effort to complete. Well of Eternity would have been better if it weren't so repetitive, and Hour of Twilight... I see very few saving graces about it. At all. If I wanted to run around Dragonblight, I would.

In my opinion, if Blizzard feels heroics need to be "easier," they should make end level normal dungeons that are of that "easier" difficulty, and maintain heroics as being more difficult. I honestly don't see anything wrong with this model. Heroics taking too long or are too challenging? Continue gearing up in normal dungeons until you're good enough. The "entry barrier" present in raiding is a non-issue for normal to heroic dungeons, as you don't need a "heroic dungeon guild" to do heroics. You get a nice queue mechanic that sticks you right in a group. And like I said, if someone wants the better gear, they need to stick it out. It's more a question of commitment than skill as it is.



As for raids in general, a lot of their effort seems to go into designing actual boss mechanics, which is fine... it just seems that raid "depth" tends to suffer in turn...

[Comis]

The one problem with Cataclysm he was able to cite was that heroics were too hard? Really? Early heroics were one of the very few good things about this expansion.

[Maruka]

they tuned the FOUR raiding difficulties well?

[david0925]

I'm amazed that they still pride in their Spine design. 95%+ players only see a 6 by 8 rectangle space that gradually increase. You can't see anything else unless you glitch or jump off

[Metta World Peace]

End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

You know come to think of it, I don't think I've ever wiped once in the new dungeons with super pugs. To be quite honest, I think I wiped more on that 2nd boss in Blackwing Caverns with super pugs than any of the newer dungeons.

As for spine and madness. I think majority were expecting to fight deathwing in his dragon form. Not the tendons and the corruptions.

[Skroe]

Blizzard is so completely disconnected from reality it's appaling.No one finds LFR fun. No one. You know this by the fact that it's carried by a handful of people, its flooded with bots, and people bring as many friends as they can to help roll on gear, even if they don't need it, to use it to trade later in the run. It's not some opportunity golden land. It's a shark tank of pack hunting sharks swipping food from solo sharks.The reaction to spine of deathwing has been so overwhelmingly negative, I honestly thought that Daelo here was trolling. From a technical , the fight is an interesting concept. From an execution standpoint, it's a mess. Entire classes rendedered useless by mechanics. Fighting mobs, not deathwing himself. Closure? Closure fighting what... tentacles, elementals and slimes? This quote is as delusional Corey Stockton's love letter to WoW's outdated quest design last week. Grim Batol is epic? The "epic" scale of it? Please... Hilarious post from a talentless game designer trying to protect his job. Cataclysm was a clusterfuck no matter if you were a casual, a hardcore raider or something in between. The Baghdad Bob act never actually works.

[mklovin]

I constantly hope this game finds its magic again, but then I read a comment saying they think Spine of Deathwing worked...

[Depravitty]

O.......They still think spine was a good idea, must be trollin.

[Idletime]

This is exactly why I don't play WoW anymore. I don't like where the game is going, therefore I don't play. What they call "Too hard" I call "Just right", what they call "Just right" I call "catering to bads". In my honest opinion. The MMO-Report made me want to renew my Rift account, it's amazing how much they've added to the game in 1 year and I wish it was more popular than it is.

This is the No BS comment so far. Loved Rift, renewing that account. The thing I loved most about Rift was the failure penalty - this is unfortunately why it's not as popular however. You run the wrong way in a raid and you get 2 shot. It's a know wtf to do or get clobbered thing. Hey! Like Classic! Although PvP in that game is pretty fair. A level 50 beating up on lowbies can get hammered if enough lowbies get together. That would be a concept lost on Warcraft players who would scream if a bunch of level 50's wrecked their 85 Blood DK.

[nekobaka]

Maybe the developers meant the zone for the spine fight was fun? As far as the fight went it was bland IMO.

I note that T11 raids was noted as favorites and well as far as this expansion goes they are mine as well. Sadly though I thought there was room for improvement in overall zone designs and yet things went downhill.

To me making that shift from a year of face roll two year old dungeons being tanked by dps and ignoring fight mechanics to requiring CC and punishing players for ignoring fight mechanics was definitely a shock for players and even more so when the RDF system is involved. What I find issue with is how they feel the current dungeons are at the right level, especially for the last set of dungeons of an expansion, couldnt they at least be as difficult as the ICC five mans?

Oh and to those who say "casuals" couldnt raid during t11 because it wasnt too hard, I call BS. I PuGed T11 raids pre nerf and PuGs got as far as 9/12 to 10/12 dependant on gear, skill and willingness of players to bother to work together as a team. "Casual" does not mean selfish player who expects team mates to carry them. It took almost a year for PuGs on my realm to get that far in ICC and that was with a nerf. In my years of PuGing the biggest reason I have seen PuGs stop short is because of the selfish players who are looking for a carry and have no intentions of puling their weight.

[Ryme]

I thought the last Post Mortem was somewhat fair, if a little off centre. But this is just shocking and makes me wonder how in touch the developers really are with their subscribers, plus the fact they feel they have never been held back and can make any dream dungeon they want and then ship out Firelands followed by Dragon Soul?

Jesus. This is really scary, I'm actually for the first time concerned for the end game content in Mists.

[nyc81991]

I think that he answered thoes questions with a script. How can they possibly think that the Spine of Deathwing is an epic fight? You are just standing around waiting to kill mobs... This guy is ether in denial or is just saying BS.