Hiring People from the Elitist Jerks site was a mistake.

[Frozenbro]

Done! I tried it on the free trial, and just bought SB.

I'll decline your generous offer to gatekeep what I can say here though. But thanks.

Good, have fun in FF, you have been waiting over 7 years for the game to change and remove the content for the high end, its not happening, so it was time for you to leave already

[rogoth]

Check your whatnow?

Maybe he didn't do any work on Ulduar, which came out in April 2009, but will have been in development for a good while. But he certainly didn't join Blizzard "well after wrath ended".

Josh's guides were published by Tankspot.

i'll respond to your reply since it's the first one of a few who have failed to understand my statement, he had next to zero input on any content during the WOTLK expansion cycle, the entire content created during release and ulduar was done before wrath shipped, the 'old guard' finished off the remaining content shortly before activision completed the acquisition of blizzard from their previous parent company, the only thing that he may have worked on was some of the filler bosses in ICC, i remember during PTR testing lord marrowgar was gonna be a giant vrykul and not the multi skulled abomination he ended up being.

in regards to him being hired, i'm fully aware of that since there was a massive song and dance made about it on the EJ forums back then, and like i said, probably ~95% of the content of wrath was built and done way before he was hired, hence my comment the earliest he will have had any real input would have been during cataclysm dungeons/raids design process.

as far as the tankspot guides, they were all hosted on the EJ homepage and given their own space on the EJ forums, that's where i saw them show up, lore also plugged them on the podcast he used to be a part of on justin.tv which later became everyone's favourite (t)hot tub streaming platform.

[Revamp Man]

My bad, according to wowhead it's 5%, not 1%, my point still stands though.

It doesn’t though
I mean we’ve never been told drop rates at patch launch before and it’s still possible both numbers could be wrong

[Malkiah]

1. Just bring back server identities and server rivals.
2. Create "guild leagues" to generate the same sort of inter-guild PVE tension.

3. pay attention to your own server and build/maintain those relationships with other guilds.

you're making the mistake of blaming game design for a social problem - humans will only socialize to the extent that they are required to, and as soon as the system no longer mandates they interact with each other they'll stop doing it.

the only thing that happened to ruin your nostalgic concept of social raiding is that the option was given to not be forced into doing that anymore, and literally everyone immediately took that opportunity and ran with it to the furthest extent possible.
nothing has ever prevented people from maintaining server community, they just quit doing it because once you're no longer forced into it nobody gives a shit about it.

[Doffen]

Talking about Ion Hazzikostas, a quick google search of "Ion Hazzikostas ulduar" provided me these suggestions:

ion hazzikostas armory
ion hazzikostas fired
ion hazzikostas elitist jerks
ion hazzikostas greek
ion hazzikostas is bad
ion hazzikostas sylvanas
ion hazzikostas ruined wow
ion hazzikostas email

Ion Hazzikostas is bad/ruined wow are my favorites. Because internet is such a positive, happy place.

Though, me personally will always think nice of him seeing he was the one that wrote this quote:

I remember you... In the mountains…

[Merpish]

What year is it?!

[Palapop]

They should had hired from casual communities like pet/mount collectors and stuff so they keep the game more user friendly to new players and absolute newbies so it grows organically and not by keeping hard core players that were already getting old.

I liked the Elitist Jerks website because I wanted to be optimal at raiding but those people banned you for the slightest excuse so it was a huge mistake respecting that for a game that first became successful for being "user friendly Everquest".

Guess who was part of Elitlists?

[dacoolist]

EJ was a solid move imo, but you have to understand that the game revolves around multiple types of players: Not just dogshit terrible ones

Just because you aren't a glad doesn't mean the game HAS to be broken down like FF14remASStered, you can be bad like me and still compete at a decent level (I'm also a boomer so, theirs that)

The game is chill, but its also hardcore (people like rankjuan glads, world first players, etc) - Its tough to make a game thats good for everyone without pissing people off

[klogaroth]

i'll respond to your reply since it's the first one of a few who have failed to understand my statement, he had next to zero input on any content during the WOTLK expansion cycle, the entire content created during release and ulduar was done before wrath shipped, the 'old guard' finished off the remaining content shortly before activision completed the acquisition of blizzard from their previous parent company, the only thing that he may have worked on was some of the filler bosses in ICC, i remember during PTR testing lord marrowgar was gonna be a giant vrykul and not the multi skulled abomination he ended up being.

in regards to him being hired, i'm fully aware of that since there was a massive song and dance made about it on the EJ forums back then, and like i said, probably ~95% of the content of wrath was built and done way before he was hired, hence my comment the earliest he will have had any real input would have been during cataclysm dungeons/raids design process.

as far as the tankspot guides, they were all hosted on the EJ homepage and given their own space on the EJ forums, that's where i saw them show up, lore also plugged them on the podcast he used to be a part of on justin.tv which later became everyone's favourite (t)hot tub streaming platform.

it wasn't until well after wrath ended that he got hired
publishing guides done by josh (Lore)

Sure, backtrack now. What you said was that he wasn't hired until well after Wrath ended. Not work on wrath. He was hired before Wrath even launched. Got hired and started working on content for mean different things, but we'll also cover that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20121006...n-hazzikostas/

How long have you been working in your position?

I started just before Lich King launched, so I've worked on bosses in all of the raids and dungeons since then.

"Then" being "before Lich King (the expansion) launched".

Like you said in your post - during PTR testing Lord Marrowgar was gonna be a giant vrykul. This means that the boss was still being worked on right up until launch. As is the case with many bosses. Some have continued work for some time after launch.

You think they had work to do on bosses and just locked him in a cupboard and he wasn't allowed to come out until Cataclysm?

Also another aside, T11 and T12 had some great bosses. DS had some ok ones, but Deathwing sounded cooler on paper than it ended up being, and people will always remember that and the long farm.

[rogoth]

Sure, backtrack now. What you said was that he wasn't hired until well after Wrath ended. Not work on wrath. He was hired before Wrath even launched. Got hired and started working on content for mean different things, but we'll also cover that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20121006...n-hazzikostas/



"Then" being "before Lich King (the expansion) launched".

Like you said in your post - during PTR testing Lord Marrowgar was gonna be a giant vrykul. This means that the boss was still being worked on right up until launch. As is the case with many bosses. Some have continued work for some time after launch.

You think they had work to do on bosses and just locked him in a cupboard and he wasn't allowed to come out until Cataclysm?

Also another aside, T11 and T12 had some great bosses. DS had some ok ones, but Deathwing sounded cooler on paper than it ended up being, and people will always remember that and the long farm.

i'm not backtracking at all, i stated a fact, and simplified it since you and others didn't understand what i said, i'll break it down even simpler:

he was hired as an official employee of the company shortly before the expansion released, that's true, but the entire content path of the expansion was already done, the launch content and tier afterward was already fully built and shipped with the expansion, the 'old guard' as i'll call them had 'finished' all the other content of the expansion during ulduar which is when activision acquired blizzard as per their own admissions during various interviews on the subject as well as the documentaries when they talk about that time period, outside of some iteration on fleshing out some areas of the game the entire content of wrath was already pretty much solidified before it launched, as TBC had done beforehand, and by blizzards own admission they work ~2 years ahead meaning that 'wrath had already ended' by the time he would have any kind of real input on the game having his own content in the game and not putting finishing touches on somebody else's project.

it's like me designing a new car, i put forth the blueprint for how it should be built, what it looks like, and the list of internal components that it should have, the company i work for who will be making it is happy with it and wants it made, but then before it's finished i leave and someone takes over my role, they change the colour or some kind of aesthetic detail is changed, so sure, they had 'input' on it, but fundamentally it was done before they got there, that's the exact same situation as this.

[Lane]

Casuals leaving isn't going to produce more/better raid content, it'll probably do the opposite. LFR was introduced because they couldn't justify the resources going into raids with the low amount of people doing them. Whether you like it or not, making the game fun for casuals is a necessity. Were Blizzard smart they would've copied Rift's Chronicles years ago and reused raid resources for 1-3 player content. Unfortunately, I have a feeling they're going to look at Torghast as a failure and not bother with that type of content anymore. Just like garrisons, they took an idea (housing in that case), implemented it poorly, then when anyone brings it up again they say they tried it and it didn't work.

A lot of the casual content I've seen mentioned seems to rely almost exclusively on collecting things, which gets boring after awhile especially for anything with low drop rates. (Side rant: Not to mention the ludicrous amount of travel involved in going around to all the different legacy dungeons & raids because Blizzard refuses to implement fast travel). SL open world end game is particularly abysmal. Most people don't like the Maw and I personally can't stand many of the other zones because they're either visually unappealing or a pain in the ass to traverse without flying.

My opinion is WoW's lost its adventure. I think that's also the big appeal of FFXIV at the moment, 10 years worth of content that people who are just starting haven't seen. It'd be like someone picking up WoW for the first time, at least before the condensed leveling experience.

I'm just going to assume at this point that WoW's engine is incapable of doing dynamic events, it's the only MMO I've played that doesn't have them and I think they add a lot to the player experience. DEs, Chronicles, currency gear (not just vanity rewards), I think would've gone a long way to keep unhappy casuals entertained.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

i'll respond to your reply since it's the first one of a few who have failed to understand my statement, he had next to zero input on any content during the WOTLK expansion cycle, the entire content created during release and ulduar was done before wrath shipped, the 'old guard' finished off the remaining content shortly before activision completed the acquisition of blizzard from their previous parent company, the only thing that he may have worked on was some of the filler bosses in ICC, i remember during PTR testing lord marrowgar was gonna be a giant vrykul and not the multi skulled abomination he ended up being.

in regards to him being hired, i'm fully aware of that since there was a massive song and dance made about it on the EJ forums back then, and like i said, probably ~95% of the content of wrath was built and done way before he was hired, hence my comment the earliest he will have had any real input would have been during cataclysm dungeons/raids design process.

as far as the tankspot guides, they were all hosted on the EJ homepage and given their own space on the EJ forums, that's where i saw them show up, lore also plugged them on the podcast he used to be a part of on justin.tv which later became everyone's favourite (t)hot tub streaming platform.

I already linked the sources for him working on Ulduar and Toc the content wasn't done before launch.

Blizzard also didn't split from there old parent company until 2013.

On July 25, 2013, Activision Blizzard announced the purchase of 429 million shares from owner Vivendi for $5.83 billion, dropping the shareholder from a 63% stake to 11.8% by the end of the deal in September.[33] At the conclusion of the deal, Vivendi was no longer Activision Blizzard's parent company,[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard

[Queen of Hamsters]

Mmm, well, the game's never been more casual-friendly since MoP, Legion, BfA, SL... By that I mean, those expansions has had far more stuff tailored towards non-raiders, than any other expansion.

[azka]

They should had hired from casual communities like pet/mount collectors and stuff so they keep the game more user friendly to new players and absolute newbies so it grows organically and not by keeping hard core players that were already getting old.

I liked the Elitist Jerks website because I wanted to be optimal at raiding but those people banned you for the slightest excuse so it was a huge mistake respecting that for a game that first became successful for being "user friendly Everquest".

No, it wasn't. You are wrong, it was the right call.

[epigramx]

They should had also hired that dude that was making the fishing guides. So it's not wrong hiring from EJ but also hire from non-raiding elitists!

Mmm, well, the game's never been more casual-friendly since MoP, Legion, BfA, SL... By that I mean, those expansions has had far more stuff tailored towards non-raiders, than any other expansion.

I keep hearing this argument in this thread but it doesn't make any sense; the game was ALWAYS very casual if you know where to look for it and it was ESPECIALLY casual in Vanilla and TBC when it went to non-raiding stuff like pets or 5mans etc (you even have hard-core pet battles now for christ's sake); but I know why people have the opposite delusion (they were often kids back then or extremely inexperienced so everything looked hard).

[Raisei]

Done! I tried it on the free trial, and just bought SB.

I'll decline your generous offer to gatekeep what I can say here though. But thanks.

So you will now be haunting this forum every day and telling us how much WoW sucks and why FF is the best game in this world, because instead of enjoying that game you need to make sure that no one enjoys WoW anymore? Marvelous, get in line with the other haters, okay? I am sure there is a facebook group you can join. Maybe you can even strike a deal with Square like Bellular.

See I don't mind people voicing opinions, what annoys me is people voicing uninformed opinions and this forum has more then enough ex-players already that have no clue how WoW even works these days and are just spewing half-truths they picked up from streamers with a grudge.

So sorry if I am not extremely excited about your decision. I hope you enjoy FF.

[Aliven]

Mmm, well, the game's never been more casual-friendly since MoP, Legion, BfA, SL... By that I mean, those expansions has had far more stuff tailored towards non-raiders, than any other expansion.

Can you name them and compare then to those in previoous expansions to show clearly what you mean?

[epigramx]

So you will now be haunting this forum every day and telling us how much WoW sucks and why FF is the best game in this world, because instead of enjoying that game you need to make sure that no one enjoys WoW anymore? Marvelous, get in line with the other haters, okay? I am sure there is a facebook group you can join. Maybe you can even strike a deal with Square like Bellular.

See I don't mind people voicing opinions, what annoys me is people voicing uninformed opinions and this forum has more then enough ex-players already that have no clue how WoW even works these days and are just spewing half-truths they picked up from streamers with a grudge.

So sorry if I am not extremely excited about your decision. I hope you enjoy FF.

There's a 3rd solution: hate both ; I tried FF14 for a few days and it felt like playing a WoW clone with unimportant differences and a Lore that was so confusing to a newcomer (even if you read all text for days) that it was practically like playing a polished turd.
WoW can get you bored since it's mostly the same old but I doubt it has ever dropped much in quality; the quality it had in its best expansion is at most "~20%" different compared to its worst expansion; people pretend it's not true.
They find it hard to see the game objectively; they have the delusion their own life reflects the game itself; so when they are bored on MMORPG gaming in general they blame an expansion (and others support their delusion since Exoduses in this game come in waves (e.g. the Cata wave and the WoD wave and the BfA wave (which further creates the delusion of "Perfect MoP" and "Perfect Legion" and "Perfect Shadowlands" when they were nothing too special objectively)).

[PenguinChan]

WoW (And as it seems FFXIV is a topic too) are both casual, and increasingly so. Both games try their best to streamline many things while retaining simplicity to their best ability, while only introducing more complicated or convoluted things with the current expansion / end-game. Has always been this way and will continue to be this way for the foreseeable future.

As much as I hate Wow's time gating it's not like their casual progression system is actually bad - it's just forced down your throat with a wait system involved. FFXIV lacks a lot of those systems in favor of more focus on encounters and story. The weapon systems in FFXIV are grindy as fuck, but optional. I don't know about you but - both are casual, both encourage casual play and have really no incentive to play harder content except... If you want a higher ilvl. And maybe some unique modifiers to your gear.

[rogoth]

I already linked the sources for him working on Ulduar and Toc the content wasn't done before launch.

Blizzard also didn't split from there old parent company until 2013.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard

so you're saying that the interviews and documentaries of the old dev team where they said that they had finished ulduar and had pretty much got the rest of the content nailed down for the remainder of the expansion done were them just telling lies and fabricating stories?, as an aside, activision began their acquisition of blizzard during the ulduar time period, it was that acquisition that spurred the old dev team to get the content done before anybody could intervene (again based on their own words), you can find these whenever there's an interview about 'project titan' or the 'path of the titans' feature that was supposed to come with wrath but was cut content, they said they had to cut some things in order to have the time to finish off the remainder of the wrath expansion content, and it was around the time of the activision acquisition that the 'old guard' started to move to other teams or leave the company in general.