So, item levels are getting spiked for no reason. Again.

[Elias01]

Agreed, but I would say at least since end of TBC, with a higher tier entry raid (ZA), new dungeon with higher ilvl (MT) and badges - together with a new raid.
The factions introduced earlier in TBC also had some useful items. WOTLK just made it more consistent.

And, of course, TBC was in itself a massive catchup mechanism.

The people who dislike those mechanisms should have quit at that time and not start complaining now, I know one that did quit due to the hysteria surrounding badge-gear.

How can you consider gear from vendor back in TBC catch up when it took about 10 000% more time and effort than now? Like what is this? There is vendor with couple of items at power level of t5 = catch up? So you telling me that vendor what force you to do dungeons and old raids like Karazhan is catch up? I would rather say it is simple vendor what rewards you for doing content and nothing els.

Catch up is something like when you join game you get instaly geared for upocoming new content which is something what wasnt happening in ¨TBC. You bought 1 or 2 items top if you played casualy after farming weeks in heroic dungeons and Karazhan thats hardly catch up. Compare this to afk warfronts, or afk LFR, or hero raid items raining on you doing world quest.

And people were not careing that much becouse raids were still exclusive with no difficulty levels. Boss kills had actual value. You could get geared as much as you want from vendor it would not change fact you still have T5 or T6 to clear. Than Blizzard made raids accessible. So only thing what was exclusive about doing challengin heroic raids was gear. Now they removed exclusivity even from gear to let everyone one catch up and get geared doing trivial or easyer cointent like mythic+. At this point they could also just remove raiding on top of making all effort and time investment completly devalued by bumping up itemlvls from all sources.

[lappee]

Except M+ is not old content, it is constantly new because of its ifinitly scaling nature
example wotlk all dungeons even the ones at the launch gave badges, even emblems of frost, meaning icc teir gear

M+ gets a seasonal affix, its rehashed old content. WQ's, N & HC dungeons, emissaries are all old content that have scaled rewards and scaled difficulty.

Emblems of frost (and other kind in different expacs) were given out for doing the old content that wasn't scaled (read, it was the same difficulty) and dropped the same gear as it used to (read, it was the same gear as it always was). The amount of emblems for doing it was low, doing just the old content would take you more than 20 weeks to just get the normal difficulty tier set not to even mention how long it would take to get full gear. Now you could lower that time by actually doing current content (ICC) and it worked more to off-set RNG than work as a catch-up.

If you think the two are equal in any meaningful way then you either didn't play, don't remember or don't understand the systems

[FelPlague]

M+ gets a seasonal affix, its rehashed old content. WQ's, N & HC dungeons, emissaries are all old content that have scaled rewards and scaled difficulty.

Emblems of frost (and other kind in different expacs) were given out for doing the old content that wasn't scaled (read, it was the same difficulty) and dropped the same gear as it used to (read, it was the same gear as it always was). The amount of emblems for doing it was low, doing just the old content would take you more than 20 weeks to just get the normal difficulty tier set not to even mention how long it would take to get full gear. Now you could lower that time by actually doing current content (ICC) and it worked more to off-set RNG than work as a catch-up.

If you think the two are equal in any meaningful way then you either didn't play, don't remember or don't understand the systems

so like how in tbc and wotlk with badge gear it was rehashed old content.
also yes it was scaled, because it was heroic, and heroic was always heroic.
idk if you know, but mythic dungeons, mythic plus raids, they are not scaled, if you have better gear, you will do more damage...

also no it was not low, doing your daily heroic you could earn 14 emblems of frost, while a full icc clear gave 25.
and yes you say "it will take you more then 20 weeks just to get the normal dififculty teir"
yes it would also take you 15 weeks if you ONLY raided icc and ruby sanctum...
so really not that much of a difference...

[Ztranger]

Increasing ilvl on dungeons/world quests is good, because it allows catch up without going through old raids.

[Forogil]

How can you consider gear from vendor back in TBC catch up when it took about 10 000% more time and effort than now?

Because it was treated that way by players, and

So you telling me that vendor what force you to do dungeons and old raids like Karazhan is catch up? I would rather say it is simple vendor what rewards you for doing content and nothing els.

because it was added with the intention that people could do harder contents - that was also added.

The only change currently is that a larger part of the catchup was added before the raid was released - which means that people have something to do while waiting for it.

Than Blizzard made raids accessible.

Yes, attunements were removed together with the TBC-catchups.

[Elias01]

Because it was treated that way by players, and


because it was added with the intention that people could do harder contents - that was also added.

The only change currently is that a larger part of the catchup was added before the raid was released - which means that people have something to do while waiting for it.


Yes, attunements were removed together with the TBC-catchups.

No that badge vendor wasnt treated like this at all. And nobady start doing harder content beocuse of that vendor. That vendor gave you like 2 or 3 items max wich had barely any impact on your power as powercreep wasnt high at all. You still had to do T4 and T45 than T6. It didnt allowed you to skip content and even if you would skip it it will be content you didnt beat becouse TBC had no LFR so by you not doing that content you were missing out on TBC conetnt which was reason why people kept progressing in older raids.

[tikcol]

Yes but you're going all the fucking way back to BC before the isle badge vendor was patched in(which was the first time they had an ilvl soft reset). That has continued for literally every expansion since then. Acting like this is something only the more recent expansions have done is blatantly false.

Soft gear reset when new content releases... in other news water is wet.

Ok.. I raided ICC in naxx & ulduar gear and was somehow able to compete. Can't speak for cataclysm because I didn't slay any dragons there.

The inflation isn't debatable, especially by pointing out badges. That's missing the point entirely

[kubaje]

Revenue: 300,000 non-casual players/organized raiders who deeply care about the game and stay for 12 months (3.6 million player months/year) will still be swamped by two million casual players who subscribe for three months a year (6.0 million player months/year). Note that the months do not have to be all in a row. They can be spread out over a year. Do the math.

Is it better for Blizzard to design for the first group which is very unlikely to expand in any significant way or is it better for Blizzard if they design to keep that 2.0 million around for four months instead of three?

Whether the numbers are true or not this is something that people should think about. I'm sure it's something that Blizzard thinks about.

Your way of thinking is flawed. This is not how it works. You want those casual players to have something to aspire to, which makes them stay subbed longer. This and nothing else is the reason why you should always make a game with a core audience in mind (high ranked raiders/pvpers). Without anything/anyone to aspire to, there is no longevity at all.

[lappee]

so like how in tbc and wotlk with badge gear it was rehashed old content.
also yes it was scaled, because it was heroic, and heroic was always heroic.
idk if you know, but mythic dungeons, mythic plus raids, they are not scaled, if you have better gear, you will do more damage...

also no it was not low, doing your daily heroic you could earn 14 emblems of frost, while a full icc clear gave 25.
and yes you say "it will take you more then 20 weeks just to get the normal dififculty teir"
yes it would also take you 15 weeks if you ONLY raided icc and ruby sanctum...
so really not that much of a difference...

TBC and WotLK wasn't rehashed content, it was the exact same. If you want something to compare it to then current system of getting AP from random dungeons is closer to it, with the exception of now you can infinitely farm it.

M+ is rehashed content because its 95% the same with just one change AND the base difficulty being scaled. M+ is scaled by the difficulty key, you get more gear and you do more damage but the higher key you go the longer it still takes. Base Mythic dungeons, Heroic and Normal dungeons are being scaled up come Season 2 and they have increased rewards simply using the same content without even rehashing it - something that didn't happen in early expansions.

You got 14 emblems of frost if you did daily Heroic every day. Then you could get 5 more from old weekly raid and 2 from old Archavon bosses each (iirc) thats 23 emblems a week from doing old content.
Now doing current content, ICC gave 25 on both difficulties so 50 in total, then you had ICC raid quests for 5 each (10 in total) so now for just doing current raid you have 60 per week, almost three times of what you got for doing old content every day. Later we got Ruby sanctum with gave 5 on each difficulty
Now it would take you 1½ weeks to get one piece of tier in 3 weeks you could get two pieces for doing current content. It would take you 7 weeks to get full tier for full content but you probably got other pieces for actually doing that content already.

The two systems are enormously different, now you ding and you're within a week at item levels of new tier normal, two to get to Heroic ilvl (assuming rather casual play, you could do it in just couple days because gear is infinitely farmable) just by doing launch content. In WotLK it took you months.

So again, If you think the two are equal in any meaningful way then you either didn't play, don't remember or don't understand the systems

[Forogil]

No that badge vendor wasnt treated like this at all.

It was. In case you missed it.

And nobady start doing harder content beocuse of that vendor. That vendor gave you like 2 or 3 items max wich had barely any impact on your power as powercreep wasnt high at all.

You missed that they added a new dungeon, and 10-man raid with higher item-level as well - for many other slots?

You still had to do T4 and T45 than T6. It didnt allowed you to skip content and even if you would skip it it will be content you didnt beat becouse TBC had no LFR so by you not doing that content you were missing out on TBC conetnt which was reason why people kept progressing in older raids.

In reality people did skip older raids, especially since the attunements were also removed. (And there were gradual nerfs all the time of the raids.)

[MoanaLisa]

Your way of thinking is flawed. This is not how it works. You want those casual players to have something to aspire to, which makes them stay subbed longer. This and nothing else is the reason why you should always make a game with a core audience in mind (high ranked raiders/pvpers). Without anything/anyone to aspire to, there is no longevity at all.

There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite.

- Greg Street/Ghostcrawler

https://twitter.com/ghostcrawler/sta...39865858396162

Playing video games is not an aspirational activity for most people. It's a way to relax. Have some fun with friends. MMO's designed to be amenable solely to highly skilled players don't stick around for long. Content is king.

[Forogil]

There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite.

- Greg Street/Ghostcrawler

https://twitter.com/ghostcrawler/sta...39865858396162

He did learn that after the failure of the cata-dungeons at launch.

[MoanaLisa]

He did learn that after the failure of the cata-dungeons at launch.

Along with everyone else at Blizzard.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's sad but it's true.

[Axxil]

It wasnt like this during vannila and TBC so quit lieing thanks.

It most definitely was. Stat values for gear increased each raid.

[kubaje]

There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite.

- Greg Street/Ghostcrawler

https://twitter.com/ghostcrawler/sta...39865858396162

Playing video games is not an aspirational activity for most people. It's a way to relax. Have some fun with friends. MMO's designed to be amenable solely to highly skilled players don't stick around for long. Content is king.

Nice quote, yet it has nothing to do with what I said AND it's Ghostcrawler lol.

You don't necessarily aspire to be the one to do hard content. Exclusivity creates Desire. Vanilla content wasn't difficult by any means. You saw people with Naxx or Sunwell Items in the capital cities and had one of two possible thoughts. Either "wow this guy is awesome, i really want to be like him" or "wow he has to have no life to have those items". In both cases it created the desire to get better and be more invested in the game. Today it's the opposite.

[MoanaLisa]

Nice quote, yet it has nothing to do with what I said AND it's Ghostcrawler lol.

You don't necessarily aspire to be the one to do hard content.

For PVE: Now you're arguing that you can design for high-ranked raiders and it not be difficult high-skill content? Come on.

[Kumorii]

Vanilla content wasn't difficult by any means. You saw people with Naxx or Sunwell Items in the capital cities and had one of two possible thoughts. Either "wow this guy is awesome, i really want to be like him" or "wow he has to have no life to have those items". In both cases it created the desire to get better and be more invested in the game. Today it's the opposite.

Isn't this contradictory?

[Elias01]

It most definitely was. Stat values for gear increased each raid.

Yeah but gear drop from other sources not from same older content.

[FelPlague]

Yeah but gear drop from other sources not from same older content.

Remember when the molten core gear got buffed?
remember when the gear from molten core literally got taken out, and added back into the next raid?
remember when diremaul a dungeon dropped better gear then the first raid?

[ArenaDk]

Soon we should have people complaining about every little thing.

Hey guys I think Tauren are bigger in bfa than in woltk. I don’t care what you say . It is this way.