Why has Blizzard become so obsessed with PUGS?

[Kipnis]

I don't wanna blame the problems you mentioned on PUGing as much as I want to blame the overall community in general. After years upon years of raiding, I've failed to find a guild on my server where the people are both cool, and good enough to get through endgame content. I don't raid much anymore, but when I do I now do it with very casual players, as the elitist pricks of the game ruined raiding for me, and many others

[Deleted]

was clearing BT in bc
wotlk everything
cata nothing to many of **** ppl runing around
i realy like this change,atleast something to do with alts coz nothing else can be done coz 10 n 25 share lockout

[Zorgen]

WoW Veteran here, been playing for 6 years.

I for one am happy about the Raid Finder. When I was younger and WoW came out I had all the time in the world to play, all my friends played and we all raided together it was great.

Now, at this stage in my life I don't have endless hours to devote to finding a guild I get along with, signing up for raids on a specific night and staying online for hours and hours wipe after wipe..

With raid finder I'll be able to decide when I get home from work: Do I want to log onto WoW and raid? or would I rather watch some TV or play console games. Never before have I been able to do that... It's always been either 1. I don't have a guild I can't raid.. 2. I signed up for tonights raid a week ago.. I HAVE to go or they'll gkick me..

I've re-subbed since the news of 4.3 and I'm sure others have/will as well. To anyone who does not like the Raid Finder then simpley don't use it, just like you don't use the Dungeon finder.

[Deleted]

Simple answer to your question:

Why does Blizzard make the game more accessible?

Cause it pleases a larger portion of the playerbase.

People who play the game hardcore like 6+hrs a day, 7-days a week are actually a financial loss to Blizzard compared to those who play 10-12hrs a week. Those who play heavily are getting alot more service usage out of the same financial payment. That alone makes it so that appealing to the masses is more of a financial benefit, to keep the larger part of the playerbase is happy with content to do.

Besides, if you haven't done it by now, almost 3 months since Firelands launched, you weren't gonna get to it anytime soon. Deal with it.

This. Well said, sir. For example if you are in a casual guild, you have a lot of real life responsibilities, work, family and so on, when you find time for the game you want to jump right into the action and all. That's why Blizzard is offering a lot of casual love the last few years. And do not dare to say that if people whant instant fun should go and play CoD or whatever. This is Blizzard's game and they think that the casual player base should be maintained. They bring the most money to Blizz anyway. Remember that better quality games such as EVE Online are less casual friendly and they target a more dedicated player base. WoW is not the case.

[vep]

Why has the community become so obsessed with casual players?

Not everyone has the time to devote the whole week solely to raiding. People have social lives, marriages, kids, work and whatever else. If you were one of those you would want some easier content for you to enjoy, too!

Besides, I don't remember ever reading "Boo-hoo, content is too hard, give us something PuG-able"... All I read is "casuals r baddies, i r 1337"... It's sad.

However, I always have thought that casual gear should be alot different than hard mode raiding gear. Not only in color but like whole sets. It's kinda demoralising when everyone has the same gear.

Anyways, give the casuals their share while you get yours and stop complaining please.

[stumpy]

Uhm, what..? You just "HAPPENED" to have 2 tanks with Nature + Frost resistance gear not saved to SSC and TK? I don't remember PuGing raids (except of Karazhan) in BC AT ALL.

I would assume that puggers skipped Hydross the same way a lot of actual raiders did.

[Deleted]

sounds great first

then im reminded of the people
unable to stay out of fire
unable to interrupt when needed
unable to not pull something unneeded

unless the bonus buffs are ~40% i see darkness looming ahead

[KaziOfTheSkies]

You really must be on a bad server for pugging... I pugged a lot of Kara/za in bc and pretty much all raids in wotlk (except Ulduar, or at least not more than 2-3 bosses).

[Djuntas]

Its fine with 3 modes. I dont know why blizzard likes pugging so much trough. But its fine over all for the game, has to have something of everything I guess. But I would like if they keep focus on guild raiding.

[Hursey]

I've been pugging since I started raiding in BC. Either LFG or LFM. But even so, that was basically guild groups missing 1 or 2 members not the complete pugs made from random trade spam we see now days. On the servers I play, that type of carry on started and the beginning of Wraith where anyone and his dog wanted to do VoA for the free loot, and then from there pugging Naxx wasn't really a big step up.

That said thought, that really did die down a bit at the start of T11, then again for T12

[Deleted]

dont pug its a headache waiting to happen

[TheDallman]

... I don't know about you, but I've been pugging for up to 3, 4 years now fairly regularly.

[Eliot123]

Because most people pug. Even people who raid with their guild, pug every now and then. I raid with my main char but I pug with my alts because we don't have guild alt runs (not enough people/not enough time/etc etc) and so do many others from my guild. Every guild I've been in actually. I personally think it was a lot of fun back in WotLK when I'd log onto a random (decently geared) alt, join the random Naxx/Ulduar/ToC/ICC pug being made in trade, raid until we defeat all bosses or until the group falls apart and log off.

That's also a reason I don't like merged raid lockouts. It was fun to do one lockout with the guild (mostly 10-man) then pug the other. So would get to Saurfang and the raid would fall apart, oh well, nothing lost and we had had fun. Now I'm raiding hard modes with my guild but I'd still like to pug normals. Also, I wouldn't call ''casuals'' just some people, if anything they make a huge part of playerbase. Lastly, I did not raid in Vanilla, I did not even have a level 60 char in Vanilla, but I do remember in late Vanilla Molten Core pugs being made in trade.

[yaij9841]

Its fine with 3 modes. I dont know why blizzard likes pugging so much trough. But its fine over all for the game, has to have something of everything I guess. But I would like if they keep focus on guild raiding.

Blizz likes what the majority of players favor. Guess what most players do? The second place action is pugging random shit. The first place action was sitting around town spamming trade chat.

[Deleted]

I pug ICC in first day it came out and we clear the first 4 bosses.


PUGing started for me in Kara, first raid I did was Kara with a PUG ( we only killed till curator) guildies weren't 70 that week only the week later, I remember farming MH and BT with guild and PUG Grulls lair.


WOTLK I puged nax, OS, Some bosses in Ulduar and OMG TOC the easiest shit ever.


BTW you never PUGed VOA???? since day 1?

[Meteos]

I remember people pugging MC/BWL back in late Vanilla, of course Kara pugs as well as SSC/TK after the attune nerf. Blizzard is just made it easier to PuG for those who don't raid with a guild, late night players, and lower pop servers.

[MarizzaDraenor]

I like the puging all the way to MH crap. After we got the 30 % buff all over the board maybe. But that was late in BC. Also we didnt had the attunements removed till relatively late so might wanna change the hero stories a bit.

Before that? GL puging 3-4 Kara bosses cause that was only thing getting puged. Vanilla raids like MC werent real raiding was more of an introduction to raiding.

The 1st wave of massive puging begun after the 30 % nurf on BC and the wotlk talent introduction. Thats when things melted and you could get trade pugs for pretty much everything. On Wrath raids where pug friendly since day 1 and Naxx. Ulduar was a but harder but many many realms had decent pugs going up to Keepers at least and on some occasions they did some HM's also and made a few legendaries aswell.ToTC was pugable as well as ICC ofc and thas when puging reached its pinnacle so to say.

Before wrath and the late BC nurf puging was non existant pretty much with just a few exceptions and if you remember differently you just remember wrong.

[Deleted]

Pugs are not new, my server was pugging everything after 2.4 and the leading pug got to 4/6 swp I believe.

[Sumatran]

1. This is a video game, why the fuck should anyone have to play a video game according to a preset schedule unless they are getting paid to play?

2. Guilds dont mean shit anymore, you can guild hop till your rep is trashed, change names, change factions or servers and start all over. Oh no you got kicked from a guild whatever shall you do? Join another one within the hour and continue raiding.

3. See #1

[SilkforCalde]

Wow OP, nice strawman. I've never seen a pug anything like what you mentioned. I have, however, been in guilds that had extremely rude and abusive officers. In fact, what you mentioned reminded me more of guild runs than the pugs I've been in! You're wrong bro.