I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I felt this must be mentioned.
ADDED: answers to common criticisms.
NOTE: this is a long thread, if you don't want to read it all skip over to solutions sections. Please make all posts constructive.
Dungeon finder was a great idea, being able to que up for dungeons battlegroup wise, joining forces and tackling a heroic as quickly as possible. But, its not as simple as that. It has been mentioned many times that the new system for gearing up is flawed, repetitive and unexciting. Everyone who does heroics now knows how much of a grindfest it is, doing this repetitive, no brainer, tedious dungeons over and over and over again just so you can skip the first three tiers of raid content and jump directly into ICC. Complaints have been made far and wide, but here I will establish my primary criticisms of this system.
1. Takes away from Epic feel of the game. In vanilla, and less so in BC, but still present, the majority of your items came from defeating huge bosses or bosses with otherwise cool mechanics. You'd wipe in Karazahn sometimes cause a hunter couldn't kite the right guy in the Morose fight, or in Vanilla cause no one could properly handle the last boss in UBRS. But, we all persevered and we were rewarded with a pocket watch or mongoose enchant or a dungeon set chest. But now, there is no more real epicness, the items dropped by the bosses are quickly replaced by items you...PURCHASE?? there is no more dynamic fighting or different interesting strategies that one had to come up with, dungeons are just a means to an end, they are spammed, quickly beaten, never though of again, I don't have any memorable moments in Wotlk instances, But i can remember a few from Shadow halls that really tested my skill once i got to 80.
2. It doesn't value skill, it values excessive time and also leaves on unprepared for the real thing (in this case raids). If i were to go out and buy this game now, unbeknown to how the game worked in the past. I'd be pretty much forced to just spam heroics and gear up and go do ICC. What happened to naxx? ulduar? or ToC? how do heroics test my skill? but most importantly, as a designer or artist, i have no idea why you would purposely want someone to skip you're "old" work (when in fact almost all heroics are older than ulduar or ToC) for ICC. and even worst, the game seems designed to encourage this skipping of old content. I don't mind skipping out on old raids from older expansions. But there is no sense of progression, its just heroics>raid>heroic raid.
3. My last complaint with this system, ironically, is how systematic it is. You don't make decisions anymore. Think about it. Back in Vanilla/BC i remeber seeing people with some token gear, some heroic gear, some raid gear, some pvp gear, some crafted gear. It was all dynamic and one was motivated to explore and tackle different objectives and explore new lands for long quest chain rewards or whatnot. Now, almost all you're gear is one place, a little vendor in Dalaran. Reputation rewards are the same.. just buy the tabard and spam instances. No more need to get to know the lore of said reputation. Heck, you don't even have to know who the hell they are, just stop at their village, buy their tabard, spam instances, come back buy your shoulder enchant and you're set. What kind of adventure is that? what kind of roleplaying is that?
Now look I'm not here to say we have to go back to the "good ol' days" but what I am saying is that WoW has become a machine that is no longer experienced, but rather worked on. There is no more " go to this place, do this quest, it will lead you to this dungeon quest, beat the dungeon and get a reward", it is no predictable, uninteresting, and easy.
But, i am not here to solely complain, I have some solutions that I think would help make the process less systematic, and more epic.
1. Make older content have more tires per week, In other words, every time a new raid tier is introduced make the tier before it become available more often. So, for example. Naxx 4 times a week, ulduar 3 times a week, ToC, 2 times a week, ICC once a week. Now yes, this is systematic, you would probably just spam as many as you can or to get the best gear. But I'm talking about cata, and in cata Blizzard has stated there would be more raids and less gear tiers so that the difference between the older tier and the newest tier won't be as profound as in Wotlk. Also in this system people would be forced to learn strategies, become more aware, and actually THINK, where instead of being forced into thoughtless repetitive heroics one would have to take different approaches to reach goals. Also, this would help make the game more epic by instead of just buying the best gear from a vendor, one would actually get rewarded for defeating a boss, tokens would still exist, but they would be supplementary.
2. Create an aura for older raids as new tiers are introduced to encourage doing them. For example, Naxx would have an aura saying "the inhabitants of naxx have become weak after countless assaults, their damage and health has decreased by X% " Not only would this help alleviate the learning curve for people who just dinged 80, it would make completing these raids a bit faster, as to appeal to casuals. So instead of being forced to do tons of heroics, one could start doing these older raids with an instant advantage, but of course would not receive the best rewards, since it is an older tier. This way Heroics won't be weeded out either, but 80 will become a balance between older raid content and heroics.
If you think the system is fine as it is please post why you think so, If you agree please post why. If you think the system is flawed, but don't agree with my solutions, post your possible solutions.
Common criticisms:
1. people shouldn't have to do old content. OR people won't see the newest content, they will be stuck in ulduar.
My response: I DONT WANT PEOPLE TO STAY ON OLD CONTENT!!!!!!!!! I want people to get into naxx with a buff so they can experience it, even if its easier. i want people to go into ulduar next with a buff and experience that too. I want people to experience the whole game, not just the NEWEST content. Right now the number of raids in the game are: ICC Ruby and vualt. thats it , the rest of the raids are unused. What kind of "World" is this? I want people to do older content with a BUFF so its easier, but they still experience it right.
Right now, old content is unused, in fact, we are forced to do even OLDER content (heroics) to get items better than or equal to more than HALF the raids in the current expansion.. WTF?
2. Wotlk is almost over and cataclysm is coming..
My response. This is why im posting this, i hated the wotlk raid system, so far i like the cata one. I dont want it to become like this, I want newer raids to be the main focus, but have older raids become easier through a debuff/ more tries per week. I want to encourage people to actually play the whole game, not just the newest content. I want people to become experienced in a raid environment. I DON'T want a level 80 6k gs paladin doing a naxx run and not knowing what the boss does. I DON'T want older content to offer better or equivalent gear to newer content. I want old content to be there, have a purpose, be experienced, enjoyed, and then people can move on. to newer things. and most of all I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO SPAM OLD, mindless, repetitive, easy content, when I am already two tiers ahead of it , AKA I dont want to spam heroics.