Why was World of Warcraft dumbed down that much?

[Chrysia]

Because any gear in MoP ilvl 476 or above is epic. Simple enough answer.

Yup, and color makes no difference anymore. The stats are based entirely on ilvl now.

If your that concerned with someone wearing armor that looks like yours, but is worse, then you'd have to have them remove all but the highest version of the tier.

[Deleted]

Yup, and color makes no difference anymore. The stats are based entirely on ilvl now.

If your that concerned with someone wearing armor that looks like yours, but is worse, then you'd have to have them remove all but the highest version of the tier.

I dont wear pve armor, I only do PvP this expack.

You still didn't answer. What would the LFR heroes say if the gear was blue and different skin ? (like dungeon skins). Well you know I ask you that, but I already know the answer. This would create a shitstorm of epic proportion and you know it.

Ilvl doesnt matter much. You have blues that have higher ilvl than epics, in the same expack.

[RicardoZ]

Exactly. They're called walkthroughs because they're supposed to walk you through the game and make it easy. Blizzard has had to amp up the difficulty to remain challenging despite the fact that everyone will have read walkthroughs before experiencing it. And then they wonder why "true" gamers who prefer to play and figure things out in-game without reading through a walkthrough get turned off in today's climate. When I was a kid they called walkthroughs for what they were: cheating. These days they're required reading.

I couldn't agree more. The game was so much better before theorycrafting and Tankspot and all that stuff. Too bad it's pretty much required now to know every detail of everything, there's no sense of discovery when you get a cool piece of loot or find a cool new item. You know ahead of time everything you "have to" get and then you just go about following the way to get it just as was pre-planned months before the content came out when you read about it on WoWhead.

There really isn't much adventure and discovery left. Shame

[SamR]

I dont wear pve armor, I only do PvP this expack.

You still didn't answer. What would the LFR heroes say if the gear was blue and different skin ? (like dungeon skins). Well you know I ask you that, but I already know the answer. This would create a shitstorm of epic proportion and you know it.

So if Blizzard broke their ilvl model just to specifically single out LFR gear to make it blue instead of epic(unlike ez crafteds which are still epic), how would LFR players feel? I figure they'd be mad. Just like if you made all crafted items blue even if they're ilvl 500+, crafters would be mad as well.

What does that prove exactly? What if you made all normal raid drops blue? I'm thinking normal raiders would be mad.

Instead, Blizzard has a consistent ilvl system in place where you know what color something will be based on the ilvl which satisfies everyone except for the epeen wavers who get mad at what color someone else's gear is.

Ilvl doesnt matter much. You have blues that have higher ilvl than epics, in the same expack.

Let me repeat this again, all gear ilvl 476 and above in MoP is epic.

[Chrysia]

I dont wear pve armor, I only do PvP this expack.

You still didn't answer. What would the LFR heroes say if the gear was blue and different skin ? (like dungeon skins). Well you know I ask you that, but I already know the answer. This would create a shitstorm of epic proportion and you know it.

Ilvl doesnt matter much. You have blues that have higher ilvl than epics, in the same expack.

I honestly wouldn't mind about skins, since I play for fun, not looks. But that won't realistically happen. It's more work for Blizz.

[Dangg]

Moreover some so called epics are crappy ilvl 65. Whereas pve guys were running in 80+, up to 90 ilvl of godlike mode. so anyway.

And now you can get 'godlike mode' gear without raiding?

[Deleted]

And now you can get 'godlike mode' gear without raiding?

there is no such thing as godlike mode in pvp anymore (well, since 5.3 there is, but only in duels and world pvp).

[ComputerNerd]

Now, why is LFR gear not blue ? You think lfr heroes would be ok with that, even if the ilvl was the same as today ? Try to answer honestly.


(And I mean. Blue with basic skins, not the same as normal and heroic skins).

And if you must call them "LFR Heroes", then your question does not deserve an answer due to being obviously biased.

[Pascal]

and what's with dying not reducing your exp? and other people can't loot your corpse? bullshit.

[Sniperpally]

So if Blizzard broke their ilvl model just to specifically single out LFR gear to make it blue instead of epic(unlike ez crafteds which are still epic), how would LFR players feel? I figure they'd be mad. Just like if you made all crafted items blue even if they're ilvl 500+, crafters would be mad as well.

What does that prove exactly? What if you made all normal raid drops blue? I'm thinking normal raiders would be mad.

Instead, Blizzard has a consistent ilvl system in place where you know what color something will be based on the ilvl which satisfies everyone except for the epeen wavers who get mad at what color someone else's gear is.




Let me repeat this again, all gear ilvl 476 and above in MoP is epic.

Actually if epics werent so easy to come by thanks to LFR, quality blues by crafters would be in demand. LFR should be green gear and it would fix almost everything. Casuals still get to see content and the entire game is not undermined like it is currently. Maybe you remember an item called the Arcanite Reaper?

[Chrysia]

Actually if epics werent so easy to come by thanks to LFR, quality blues by crafters would be in demand. LFR should be green gear and it would fix almost everything. Casuals still get to see content and the entire game is not undermined like it is currently.

How the fuck is the entire game undermined by allowing a catch-up mechanism and alternate path of progression for those that can't commit to a raid schedule?

[Rehija]

Classic was cool in its own way and i enjoyed most of it, but speaking frankly, most of us "Classic Players" wearing Pink Goggles when it comes to reminiscing these old times. Raiding wasn't really challenging ( a few exceptions exist in every add on and Tier ), it was a huge time sink where the whole Raid had to support a few Key-Classes and / or get massive amounts of Magic Resilience Gear for a couple of Bosses to progress further. Once you learned the mechanics and knew what and when to do it was almost done.

It was "smaller", the roles of mostly every Class were well defined ( except a few raids like mine ) and it was more unforgiving. Not because it was harder, because the mechanics weren't made so well like today. You playing a Druid, then Heal. You want to play Kitty?, good joke but if you want to see Ragnaros then specc Resto and Heal. Unless you were in a Raid like mine were the benefits of a few uncommon speccs were acknowledged you had to go with a specc / Role your Raidlead defined if you wanted epic gear.

Remember Cthun or Thaddius ? When a ping of 300 from one player could cause a wipe ? Latency check before the Pull ? Huhuran ? Well Fire Mages, hop thru your Portals, get to the Trainer and specc Frost, after Huhuran the same game and specc Fire again. Run every week the same T1 / T2 raids again because rng. fucked your MT and that damn Shield / Trinket / Whatever did not drop in 30 cleared Lockouts ? In Naxxramas most of our Healers were running in AQ40 / Rank13 Damage Gear because we had really bad drop luck when it came to Healing Gear but our dps had 3rd equip for different enchants. I remember a Friend of mine who played Rogue and ran AQ40 in 4pc T0,5 and 4pc T1 because in his raid Rogue Tier drops were only a legend.

The only thing i recall a lot better was the community, and that's the biggest Point when it comes to all of these "Classic was so much better" Threads. It was all Server intern and reputation was almost everything. Players behaving like a idiot happened from time to time, but it made the round really quick and almost everyone avoided these players afterwards. Ninjalooting a Blue drop like the Baron Cape caused more then one player to lose their raid spot. Different T1 / T2 Raids supported one or two Raidgroups that were in AQ40 or Naxxramas with Materials so they could progress further; all for the sake of a Server / Battlegroup / Europe First or the prestige of a Legendary.

mfg, Rehija Whitefeather

[Sniperpally]

How the fuck is the entire game undermined by allowing a catch-up mechanism and alternate path of progression for those that can't commit to a raid schedule?

By destroying the sense of achievement one gets from doing exclusive content and the community that is built around it to accomplish that. Takes the MMO out of MMORPG

What we have now is just an on rails single player game where everyone wins just for participating and it has totally ruined wow

I mean there's a thousand other games that are exactly that; why did they have to make WoW like that

Changes towards this end pretty closely coincide with the drop in subs too

[Chrysia]

By destroying the sense of achievement one gets from doing exclusive content and the community that is built around it to accomplish that. Takes the MMO out of MMORPG

What we have now is just an on rails single player game where everyone wins just for participating and it has totally ruined wow

I mean there's a thousand other games that are exactly that; why did they have to make WoW like that

Changes towards this end pretty closely coincide with the drop in subs too

Actually, the second biggest drop in subs coincides with the period of most difficult 5-man content in a while.

And exclusive content still exists. It's called heroic raids.

[Sniperpally]

Actually, the second biggest drop in subs coincides with the period of most difficult 5-man content in a while.

And exclusive content still exists. It's called heroic raids.

If by heroic raids you mean Ra-Den. Also Cata was terrible for its own reasons, but one of its shining moments was the enhanced difficulty of its release heroics.

[Deleted]

Cata t11 raids and heroics were in my eyes one of the best pve moment of wow's history. It was incredibly good.

But yeah. It got destroyed by noobs tears.

[Sniperpally]

Cata t11 raids and heroics were in my eyes one of the best pve moment of wow's history. It was incredibly good.

But yeah. It got destroyed by noobs tears.

Yup I loved blackwing descent and BoT when it was new. I had to quit the game because I was in the Army after clearing those raids and didn't come back till after Dragon Soul. Was pretty disappointed in the 180 the game took. Ironically because of the demands on my time at that point I should have been really into all the convenience of the new system but it just made everything feel incredibly bland and not worth the effort. Which is why I imagine raiding has shriveled up and died since then and WoWs sub numbers along with it

[Chrysia]

Cata t11 raids and heroics were in my eyes one of the best pve moment of wow's history. It was incredibly good.

But yeah. It got destroyed by noobs tears.

I liked it as well, since I was in a guild at the time, but the heroics were not tuned with LFD in mind. Random groups got destroyed.

[Crookids]

WoW is more complex than ever. The game has more abilities, more content, more competition and a greater range of difficulty than ever before.

The people who often complain the most about WoW being 'dumbed down' are the people who were able to access ressources like thottbot, elitist jerks forum etc. The knowledge of and ability to use those third-party ressources were often what separated the player with knowledge of the game from the ones without that knowledge. The latter were called 'Newbies".

So, you would go to the EJ forums to read up on your class and to thottbot for help with quests, items etc. Now most of this knowledge is either in the game client or easily deductible from reading tooltips on abilities and talents.

At the same time, the number of abilities available for each spec has grown a lot - and we have more classes and races than ever before. There are 34 specs, all of which are able to access all the talents for their class. On top of that, we have 11 races with different racial abilities. Back in Vanilla, you could have maybe 5-6 different ways to spec your druid - now, you have 4 different specwith 6 talents, which are independent of the choice of spec.

So lets say you meet a druid at lvl 15. He can be 1 of 4 different specs, and have chosen 1 of the 3 talents at the first talent tier. That's 12 different combinations already. At lvl 30, you have 36 different combinations (and I'm not even calculating the glyphs here!). In a BG at lvl 30, you will have 10 classes with 27 different combinations and 1 class with 36 combinations. That's over 300 different combinations - at lvl 30. Back in Vanilla, you would have had 8 classes, each with access to 3 different specs. Now, each of these classes would have chosen their specs by placing their 21 talent points somewhere in their talent trees - and hey! that seems like a lot of choice and complexity, right? Wrong, because the system was balanced, even back then. Also, you had to choose a lot of passive talent points to make your baseline abilities useful. So, for a druid at lvl 30, there were 3 different specs, with a few outliers. Lets say 10 different combinations at lvl 30. Today, we have at least 3 times as many combinations - and that's just at lvl 30.

Today, when you queue a BG at lvl 90, you can choose between 13 different BGs. Your team mates can be any of the thousands of combinations available - and so can the opposing team. On top of that, you have added layers of complexity from glyphs and even one of the professions (engineering). The same pattern for PvE. The boss fights are a lot more complex than back in Vanilla - and the disabling of certain mod functions available back in Vanilla (fx Decursive) adds more compexity as well.

Add to the above the fact that all classes have more abilities available than ever before. Blizzard even removed a lot of never-used abilities in MoP, so now you actually have abilities that you use - and so you need to place them on your bars and find keybindings for them! I am way past 40 keybindings to play my Feral druid. Blizzard has also made actual tanking, damaging and healing rotations - and these typically have single-target or AoE variations. In Vanilla, you had 1 ability to do AoE - if you had one (a lot of melee specs didn't). Now, you typically use 2 different abilities, or spread dots or do some other, rather complex rotation to maximise AoE. It's the same with single-target - there is a rotation, loads of factors that can change your rotation and cooldowns/trinkets that you can weave in as well.

If anything, WoW has grown in complexity and variation. Back in Vanilla, you could do some small-scale PvE (5 man dungeon runs), large-scale PvE (raids), PvP or you could grind mats. Now, there are so many options that I hesitate to even start mentioning them - I will forget some of them, because I probably never really tried them.

I do miss a few things:
- Moving around in the world should be more dangerous (yes, that includes leveling). There should be danger when trying to kill mobs to complete quests. Now, its way too easy (until you reach lvl 85 - but even then its still fairly easy).
- Heroic instances are way too easy. I know, there are challenge modes - but it still breaks immersion when the HEROIC instances are so easy as they are. I enjoyed Cataclysm/TBC Heroics as well as BRD (doing BRD with all quests and attunement for MC could take a whole Sunday in Vanilla).
- I would like for attunements to return. They wouldn't have to be as difficult as TBC attunements for entering tier 5 and 6 instances, but forcing players to be social in an MMORPG should be ok and expected. I really enjoyed the Onyxia quest chain (Alliance) and the attunement for UBRS back in Vanilla. Those quests and fights were quite epic and memorable. There are a few of these today, but most of the more epic fights can be solo'd, with some kind of helping mechanic.

Great post. A shame people won't read it. They'll simply let their ignorance show in opinions labeled as fact and ignore any objective disagreement that makes more sense than their reply.

Then blame others for the change in community.

---------- Post added 2013-06-26 at 01:55 AM ----------

People have answered this question many times before but for some reason you refuse to listen.

It's impossible to do something when no one else wants to do it.

The people who don't want to do it don't want to because they can't. It's too challenging. So they make a thread full of excuses and blame the content. It's the same story IRL too. Hence the expression "the grass is always greener on the other side". It's what separates successful players (people) from achieving or failing.

It's easy to blame the content but difficult to grow and become a better player. People will always do what's easier.

[Aredyl]

Great post. A shame people won't read it. They'll simply let their ignorance show in opinions labeled as fact and ignore any objective disagreement that makes more sense than their reply.

I read it and found some flaws within the argument, but mostly to show how many "choices" we really had in vanilla.

As a Druid, if I wanted to raid, I had a choice of two different specs - Feral and Resto. You also had to be a special snowflake for guilds to pick you up as a Feral. (And the only reason you were brought along was for innervate and rebirth).

As a Paladin, forget about tanking or dpsing. You were in raids to cast buffs and throw out the occasional heal if you had the mana/time. If you were a special snowflake, you also got the opportunity to judge a boss - so people could wand for mana. (Ditto for Shamans, except you dropped totems instead of buffs - and you were there to rez everybody on a wipe).

As a Priest, you were Holy. Sorry, tough luck.

As a Warrior, you were tanking. You might go Fury if they were confident in running with only 4 tanks.

As a Warlock, you had the special role of casting Shadowbolt until your "1" key broke. Maybe you pushed "2" for a curse once in a while.

Rogues were awesome - they had choices in their specs... but since most servers were overloaded on rogues, good luck on a raid spot. (Ditto for hunters, except you were MM, period. BM did squat for damage and everybody thought Survival was a melee spec).

------

Honestly, I would hate to play classic WoW again. Raiding was simplistic due to archaic class design - as it had to be - to support a huge chunk of the raid doing the exact same thing for 10 minutes until a boss died.