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  1. #601
    Quote Originally Posted by Grocalis View Post
    they were brutal starting out compared to WOTLK.
    Yes, but we weren't comparing them with LK ones were we? What i did in Cata ones in my Warrior with 330ilvl i only managed to do it in my druid tank with almost full T5, i'd say the different was still huge.

  2. #602
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    Quote Originally Posted by muchtoohigh View Post
    This is just ignorant. Yes, TBC was more casual than Vanilla, by a factor of about 5. Wotlk upped that to a factor of 100.
    Indeed, anyone who actually grinded the badges for a 150-badge item in 2.4.x would know better.

    I have seen a number of posters make claims about their accomplishments in tbc that are so absurd as to be laughable. One guy said he completed ALL tbc heroics in 6 hours.

    It leads me to believe that at least some tbc critics are judging the game-state of tbc based on how easy tbc content was in either wotlk or cat, and have no direct experience playing in 2.x.x.
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  3. #603
    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    It was?

    Where were the challenging Heroic dungeons?
    Where were the attunements?
    Where were the original and filled with lore raids?
    Where were the high quality crafts?
    Where were the magic resistance requirements for some bosses?
    Where were the rep requirements to enter heroic dungeons?
    Where was the economy drive due to the several consumables you could and should use?

    The only thing i saw was an expansion full of rehashed content that apart from Sinestra and Rag HC had nothing noteworthy, tbh if it was an attempt it failed miserably. Or maybe you didnt even played during BC to be able to produce this statement.
    All of those things make a game tedious and time consuming and get in the way of me actually playing the game.... Blizzard is trying to get me to play a game not have a 2nd job and I for one applaud that.

  4. #604
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    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    It was?

    Where were the challenging Heroic dungeons?
    Where were the attunements?
    Where were the original and filled with lore raids?
    Where were the high quality crafts?
    Where were the magic resistance requirements for some bosses?
    Where were the rep requirements to enter heroic dungeons?
    Where was the economy drive due to the several consumables you could and should use?

    The only thing i saw was an expansion full of rehashed content that apart from Sinestra and Rag HC had nothing noteworthy, tbh if it was an attempt it failed miserably. Or maybe you didnt even played during BC to be able to produce this statement.
    I said difficulty. Not raid or atunement design. The raids were definitely hard, especially the dungeons. The rest you've listed are just tedious things that tbh nobody really liked and attunement in particular made playing the game much harder as it made finding a guild far more troublesome.

    Again I repeat, the difficulty was ramped and people left because they weren't having fun smashing their faces against the wall. If you didn't find them hard then I dread to think how much damage your idea of hard would have done to the subscriber count.
    Last edited by Scummer; 2012-08-08 at 03:27 PM.

  5. #605
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    Speaking personally...

    I'm a casual gamer who plays MMOs to be online with specific friends. I put my account on hold for the first time ever in December of last year. The game was not "fun" any more. It was just work. It felt more like an obligation or a chore than a pleasurable pasttime. Having to set aside evenings for raids was a pain and I just wasn't getting much pleasure from it. The 'work to fun' ratio had reached a point where it was more work than fun. So I stopped.

    Now -was the GAME any worse than from Vanilla? Heck no. In many ways the game was far better for a gamer like me. Daily quests, LFG randoms, Heroics, and raids were such that even my casual guild could do the 10 mans with some reasonable level of commitment. In most respects the game was far more ideally designed than ever.

    But you can only play the same game for so many years before it gets boring no matter HOW much new content they pack into it. I think people are quitting because they're just bored with the thing. It's been around for years and years. It's tough to keep a game fresh and interesting for so long. Doesn't surprise me at all that they are sloughing subscriptions like crazy from that factor alone.

    But couple it with the "free to play" model that is taking over the MMO genre, and WoW is behind the times and expensive to boot. Why would people want to pay $15 a month to play a game they've been playing for years and years when they can cancel the sub and play all kinds of MMOs for free? There's all kinds of new games out there to fiddle with, and you can do it without tying yourself to a subscription model. That's strike two against WoW I think. Not that it is a bad game or anything. Just that there are a lot of 'good' games out there that are free to boot.

  6. #606
    If we really want to debate this then you need to consider how Blizzard's target audience with WoW has changed.

    Back in Vanilla and TBC it was mostly people who enjoyed RPG's, previous Blizzard products, and other seasoned gamers. Gradually however the audience has become more mainstream - gamers from different genres and gamers who aren't traditional gamers. This is a success in one respect; the mass appeal of WoW. In another respect it has been its downfall. Like a raiding guild that houses both casual and hardcore players (and trust me, because I've been in one) - the leadership is constantly pulled in different directions.

    Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), the more this debate is focused on subscriber numbers the more traditional gamers will find they lose out. If Blizzard is aiming WoW for mass appeal, then that mass appeal becomes more important than a niche market. Unfortunately further, by using subscriber numbers as a basis for determining the success of a game, it is the 'mass appeal' of a game, not its actual quality as a computer game, that is being measured.

    TL: DR We have to accept that Blizzard is going to cater for mass appeal over quality (not always strictly the same thing, I hope you will accept). Depending on what side of that division you find yourself in any given argument, you will either like or hate this.
    Last edited by Peacemoon; 2012-08-08 at 03:28 PM.

  7. #607
    Quote Originally Posted by Scummer View Post
    I said difficulty. Not raid or atunement design. The raids were definitely hard, especially the dungeons.

    Again I repeat, the difficulty was ramped and people left because they weren't having fun smashing their faces against the wall. If you didn't find them hard then I dread to think how damage you idea of hard would have done to the subscriber count.
    Then why do you explain the biggest sub rise we have ever seen when HCs like Shattered Halls and Company were around. How can we possibly establish a direct conection between hard content and the few thousands that left early Cata.

  8. #608
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    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    Then why do you explain the biggest sub rise we have ever seen when HCs like Shattered Halls and Company were around. How can we possibly establish a direct conection between hard content and the few thousands that left early Cata.
    The game has changed and so have it's playerbase.
    I don't care how many subs TBC may have had. Wrath had more, and in my books that makes it more successful. Cataclysm has seen the biggest loss in subscriber count because it got off to an abysmal start because of difficulty.

  9. #609
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    Quote Originally Posted by Faithshield View Post
    I think what players "want" is not always what players would actually "enjoy".

    Console games. You give a player the option to cheat and get to the last level and many will opt for that route - despite the fact that completing the game through that route will offer less enjoyment and satisfaction.

    I see no difference between that and WoW. Of course players want to advance further, farther, faster - but that doesn't mean you just hand it to them on a plate; consumed like fast-food. No. It is up to Blizzard to design a fun gauntlet in order to achieve this - one that is not too long and hard (hopefully we have enough of that in real life), but not too short and easy either (who ever strives for that?!).

    Surely its only logical.
    this is a good point. there is a blue post somewhere where the poster states this too - that it is blizzard's responsibility to define the limits and methods by which players will interact with the game. players left to their own devices would invariably collectively wish themselves super-powers.
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  10. #610
    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    It was?

    Where were the challenging Heroic dungeons?
    Where were the attunements?
    Where were the original and filled with lore raids?
    Where were the high quality crafts?
    Where were the magic resistance requirements for some bosses?
    Where were the rep requirements to enter heroic dungeons?
    Where was the economy drive due to the several consumables you could and should use?

    The only thing i saw was an expansion full of rehashed content that apart from Sinestra and Rag HC had nothing noteworthy, tbh if it was an attempt it failed miserably. Or maybe you didnt even played during BC to be able to produce this statement.
    I had a player comeback recently who wanted to gear up and get in an LFR before MoP launched and even we pug'd a cata heroic dungeon, even though I was over geared and one other pug member was over geared we still wiped three times in Grim Batol. Even though the fights were explained and the two pro's were making up for the 3 noobs lack of experience and skill we still failed to down the boss. Since my guildie just needed a 333 weapon to move on to Twillights we farmed the regular dungeons for a better weapon and skipped the heroics. Twillights in comparison were far less frustrating.

    I dont want to farm for magic resistance gear that only works on a handful of bosses, I dont want to play the armor change dance every time I get to a boss.

    Attunements were a great example of horrible game design. They were so mind crappingly frustrating to complete that once a guild accomplished attunements they would never go back to help someone else get attuned. If a guildie asked in guild chat for help getting attuned suddenly everyone would disapear because thier grandma needed her foot corns gnawed off. To get attuned you had to go into a dungeon and hope someone didnt drop party after getting thier quest item or you would have to start all over and hope no one dropped again. Then you had to go to dungeons that required attunement in another dungeon that required attunement from another dungeon. The only people who liked attunements were people who had 16 hours a day to play the game and wanted to keep non-basement dwellers out of thier content. "Oh woe is me, I am no longer a special snow flake if someone else has a star on thier belly too!!!"

    I think the raids are just as original and filled with lore as before, if not more. Look at the raid with the blind dragon, hell you get lore scenes that play out right in front of you in there.

    I like the fact that you don't have to trade in 280 linen cloths to get rep to get into a dungeon. Ilevel can be the same grind as a rep grind if PVP gear couldn't be used to jump the ilevel gates.

  11. #611
    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    Yes, but we weren't comparing them with LK ones were we? What i did in Cata ones in my Warrior with 330ilvl i only managed to do it in my druid tank with almost full T5, i'd say the different was still huge.
    We kind of are, because when comparing the various levels, Cataclysm was way closer to the TBC side of difficulty, thus why it gets compared at all in posts like the ones you quoted. You can't take just one expansion version of heroics and compare them without taking into account why that comparison exists. Blizzard themselves said they were making the heroics closer to TBC before Cataclysm was even released.

    In the end, I only even mostly posted because I highly disagree with the question "Where were the challenging heroics?" Cataclysm Heroics were very challenging for what they were, and I knew a lot of people that quit in 4.0 because of them. It was one of their biggest blunders this expansion.

  12. #612
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    Quote Originally Posted by Faithshield View Post
    If we really want to debate this then you need to consider how Blizzard's target audience with WoW has changed.

    Back in Vanilla and TBC it was mostly people who enjoyed RPG's, previous Blizzard products, and other seasoned gamers. Gradually however the audience has become more mainstream - gamers from different genres and gamers who aren't traditional gamers. This is a success in one respect; the mass appeal of WoW. In another respect it has been its downfall. Like a raiding guild that houses both casual and hardcore players (and trust me, because I've been in one) - the leadership is constantly pulled in different directions.

    Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), the more this debate is focused on subscriber numbers the more traditional gamers will find they lose out. If Blizzard is aiming WoW for mass appeal, then that mass appeal becomes more important than a niche market. Unfortunately further, by using subscriber numbers as a basis for determining the success of a game, it is the 'mass appeal' of a game, not its actual quality as a computer game, that is being measured.

    TL: DR We have to accept that Blizzard is going to cater for mass appeal over quality (not always strictly the same thing, I hope you will accept). Depending on what side of that division you find yourself in any given argument, you will either like or hate this.

    I don't doubt that accessibility to more and more people has been a goal of wow since wotlk release. I do question how successful that strategy has been, based on the public data regarding subs trends (particularly western sub trends) from late 2008 on.

    The irony is that I don't think blizzard can internally choose to erect barriers to player progression ever again in wow - so their only option for most content, when in doubt - NERF.
    Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.

  13. #613
    A large amount of subscribers left at the beginning of cataclysm following the rise in difficulty found in heroics (specifically healing.) I believe that this may have been a cautionary tale to blizzard to make sure that they do not do this again.

    I personally believe that we need to have content as difficulty as BC available, but not make it the only way to see the content. Make hardmode and normal mode raids as difficult as you want them to be for those who want that sort of challenge, but keep LFR in the game for those who just want to sit back, relax, and see all of the content on their characters. Kind of like how a shooter game would have an easy setting for people who just want to shoot stuff, a normal setting for those who want a slight challenge with their shooting, and a hard mode for those who are here only for the sake of challenge.

    However, I feel like taking away casual players' abilities to see the content in order to make hardcore player's experiences 'more meaningful' would be a bad idea. Sitting around in BC without enough time to raid while a small percentage of people on my server were raiding one of the most beautiful raids to ever be released (the sunwell) was a real bummer, and I can't say I'm dissapointed that I can now experience any raid I want to.

  14. #614
    Quote Originally Posted by DeadmanWalking View Post
    I had a player comeback recently who wanted to gear up and get in an LFR before MoP launched and even we pug'd a cata heroic dungeon, even though I was over geared and one other pug member was over geared we still wiped three times in Grim Batol. Even though the fights were explained and the two pro's were making up for the 3 noobs lack of experience and skill we still failed to down the boss. Since my guildie just needed a 333 weapon to move on to Twillights we farmed the regular dungeons for a better weapon and skipped the heroics. Twillights in comparison were far less frustrating.

    I dont want to farm for magic resistance gear that only works on a handful of bosses, I dont want to play the armor change dance every time I get to a boss.

    Attunements were a great example of horrible game design. They were so mind crappingly frustrating to complete that once a guild accomplished attunements they would never go back to help someone else get attuned. If a guildie asked in guild chat for help getting attuned suddenly everyone would disapear because thier grandma needed her foot corns gnawed off. To get attuned you had to go into a dungeon and hope someone didnt drop party after getting thier quest item or you would have to start all over and hope no one dropped again. Then you had to go to dungeons that required attunement in another dungeon that required attunement from another dungeon. The only people who liked attunements were people who had 16 hours a day to play the game and wanted to keep non-basement dwellers out of thier content. "Oh woe is me, I am no longer a special snow flake if someone else has a star on thier belly too!!!"

    I think the raids are just as original and filled with lore as before, if not more. Look at the raid with the blind dragon, hell you get lore scenes that play out right in front of you in there.

    I like the fact that you don't have to trade in 280 linen cloths to get rep to get into a dungeon. Ilevel can be the same grind as a rep grind if PVP gear couldn't be used to jump the ilevel gates.
    You missed the point or you just don't want to read.

    I didnt say it was better or worse, despite clealy thinking some of those things were clearly better.

    I was just replying to the poster that said "Cata was an attempt to make another tbc" and i just don't get it. I see nearly none resemblance between both.

  15. #615
    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    Then why do you explain the biggest sub rise we have ever seen when HCs like Shattered Halls and Company were around. How can we possibly establish a direct conection between hard content and the few thousands that left early Cata.
    Lets be blunt, please. Not all players like hard games. The playerbase we have now is not the playerbase we had with Shattered Halls - surely we can all agree with that. Perhaps the players who left at Cata launch did not like a challenge and perhaps that is why they left. The question then is - do Blizzard change the game to appease the most players possible or do they say "No, this is our vision of what a Blizzard game should look like, and if it doesn't please every Tom, Dick and Harry, then so be it."

    Personally I feel random dungeon finder created a hostile culture and aggressive atmosphere and was not best suited to difficult and challenging dungeons that required coordination, communication and patience. Hard and challenging dungeons didn't fail per se, it was the way in which Blizzard structured group dynamics. It failed because of player-social issues. I would say remove LFD and increase dungeon rewards by 400%, but I know that argument has been and gone.
    Last edited by Peacemoon; 2012-08-08 at 03:39 PM.

  16. #616
    They would listen to a MASSIVE call, yeah.

    Only this massive call to return to TBC style doesn´t exist.

    If anything, there is a massive call for acessibility, which is exactly what Blizzard is giving us.

    Of course this doesn´t please everyone, hence the complaints you see in the foruns.

  17. #617
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    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    You missed the point or you just don't want to read.

    I didnt say it was better or worse, despite clealy thinking some of those things were clearly better.

    I was just replying to the poster that said "Cata was an attempt to make another tbc" and i just don't get it. I see nearly none resemblance between both.
    You read what you wanted to read. I said "TBC style difficulty" and not simply TBC designed expansion.

  18. #618
    The Problem is not Raid progression. its the Fact the WORLD OF WARCRAFT has turned into INSTANCE OF RAIDCRAFT.
    in Vanilla and back again in TBC. it was all about adventure. lots of cool places to go and see. yes there was lots of dungeons and raiding in TBC. but it wasnt HUGE until the end. and Vanilla survived the longest with most people going "RAID What?".
    The current XPAC has made it were new Content is determined by a 6 month wait for 3 hallways you will travel down all week every week.
    Its boring.
    Making Content with a major focus on Raiding is locking this game into boredom. we chew content up so fast it will never last unless you make a new dungeon or raid every month.

    And if your not raiding your sitting in town trying to find a tank or two and a few healers for a run. This TRIAD HAS TO DIE. Also Locked Groups 5/10/25/40 HAS TO DIE!!
    Make it all dynamic. like the new challenge modes coming. make it a true BRING A FRIEND. You want challenge allow an all dps group to raid!! 5 tanks 2 healers raid. You have the technology. Other games are doing this now as we speak.
    Make content scale. so the Lich king will always be relevant. Tier gear is relevant to the type of fights you are doing. a new raid comes out. the Previous raid will drop higher Ilvl gear to your current set. so every raid will be fun and wanted. yes the BEST will be Current Figure or LORE. but second best gear is ALL OTHER RAIDS!!

  19. #619
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    Quote Originally Posted by Faithshield View Post
    Personally I feel random dungeon finder created a hostile culture and aggressive atmosphere and was not best suited to difficult and challenging dungeons that required coordination, communication and patience. Hard and challenging dungeons didn't fail per se, it was the way in which Blizzard structured group dynamics. It failed because of player-social issues. I would say remove LFD and increase dungeon rewards by 400%, but I know that argument has been and gone.
    As an exercise in illustration of this point, for those that played tbc -

    imagine using today's LFD to put together a NORMAL group for black morass, shadow labs, shattered halls....with all the rules LFD brings, such as kick timers, etc.

    Then imagine an LFD group for normal MGT.

    Now imagine LFD'ing HEROIC BM, SHalls, Durnholde, Slabs, and for fun, heroic magisters' terrace.

    LFD guarantees that content will never be hard again if LFD is available for it.
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  20. #620
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    Quote Originally Posted by voidillusion View Post
    No, my way isn't to revert to TBC cause even TBC had it's flaws. Actually the way you described, of more content as we've been promissed times and times again by blizzard, along with a bit more emphasis on dificulty and complexity on dungeons and the leveling process, taking more time to get gear through the badge system, and making crafting more complex but at the same time more rewarding would be just a few right steps imo.
    Yeah, let's make an even more time-consuming game, very good idea... oh wait.
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