Tol Barad Issues
I'll try to answer for you what little I can. As I'm sure you've seen, we've made some smaller adjustments to Tol Barad to help some right now, but we know that these changes are just that, minor. That said though, we spent a lot of time developing Tol Barad and want to make sure that it is utilized and enjoyed as originally intended. We are continuing to discuss ways in which we can do this, but it's going to need additional development time. We do have some plans that we'd like to put into play, but I can't enlighten you on what those are as of yet and can only say that they will be done in the future at some point. Unfortunately, I can't give a better time table than that. I know that seems lacking, but Tol Barad is not "out of sight, out of mind for us." (
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No LVL 85 Food/Water on Mammoth mount vendors
The multi-seater mammoths have a very Northrend-specific feel to them, so we don't necessarily want to just straight update their vendors. We like the idea of having mounts with usable vendors in general, though, and are looking into the possibility of adding new ones in the future (ones that would provide higher level food and drinks). There are already a few ideas incubatin', but nothing that we can reveal just yet.
[...] Your gold wasn't spent needlessly. The multi-seater mammoth mounts still have a fast run speed, can hold up to three passengers, and allow nearby players to sell and repair their items. That functionality is available to everyone, regardless of when the mount is or was purchased. (
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Cataclysm Questing is too Linear?
For Cataclysm, we wanted to create more immersion with better storytelling, and we wanted your characters to feel connected to ebb and flow of Azeroth. This was something we hoped to accomplish through a number of mediums including quests.
Overall, we think we were successful in achieving those goals and making the leveling experience more story-driven, but we realize we may not have hit the nail perfectly on the head. For example, we've received a lot of feedback that suggests we made questing a bit too linear this expansion, and we're not in total disagreement. It's cool that your character has a visual impact on the world and can watch as key events unfold, sure, but sometimes it can feel a bit awkward when you're unable to explore content at your own pace because you're still locked to a particular phase. We also hear your concerns about cut-scenes, tradeskill nodes, and the effects phasing has on groups.
We're taking all these criticisms in stride and will be using them to improve the questing experience for future expansions and, to an extent, future patches. When it comes to questing, it's matter of finding a good balance between story and gameplay, and that tightrope can be a hard one to walk. Your feedback keeps us from swaying too far in any one direction, though, so we greatly appreciate threads like this one. Keep it up. (
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LFD Tool Long Queue Times
There's a false perception that we don't want to change things or iterate on things regularly. This is not true. We are always looking at ways to improve the game and the systems within it. Finding the right solution though doesn't always happen as quickly as some would like, and when trying to account for human nature, things get a bit more difficult to predict. We can only provide the tools, see how things go, iterate on them, and see if things improve for you. But, these things take time and there's an awful lot of differing opinions out there.
No one is saying, "This is it, take it or leave it", we're simply saying, "This is our intention. Here's how we designed this to work/play out. Try it out and let us know how it goes."
We're still going to keep pushing to do better, to make things as balanced as possible, and to provide an epic and entertaining gaming experience. We just won't be able to do it overnight.
The Looking For Dungeon queue times are understood to be of issue for some people. If/when we find a better way to get you in to a dungeon quicker, we'll let you know. (
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Dungeon Difficulty
That's a pretty heavily stacked way to ask the question, but I'll see if I can provide a satisfying answer anyway.
As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Realistically, I recognize that a lot of the concerns that have been brought to bear address issues beyond dungeon difficulty alone, so, on that basis 'learn2play' isn't a particularly valid argument by itself, no.
Conversely, (and I think this is what those arguments are really getting at) we're coming from an expansion where, through much of its existence, whole swathes of class abilities - crowd control, certain types of heals - went virtually unused. We've gone from there to a place where if a group doesn't use crowd control, or otherwise employs reasonably good play overall, their chance of success dramatically decreases. We want to reward good gameplay, so the tuning on dungeons is less forgiving than it was. Despite that, as average gear quality and know-how increases, it is inevitable that more and more players will have easier and faster runs over all.
On the other hand, maybe things have come too far in the other direction. While we're seeing that player assembled groups have very good success, Dungeon Finder groups are having significant issues. That's something we're planning to address.
The World of Warcraft development team and Blizzard as a whole aren't composed of a single kind of player. We're players of all sorts, we suffer from the same issues (and enjoy the same triumphs) that you guys do. We’re keeping an open mind and taking into account all perspectives as we move into 4.0.6 and beyond. (
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