I am unimpressed that people who have been playing the game for 5 years, or even "just" 1 year, find leveling to be trivially easy. That is basically non-information.
Meanwhile there is no meaningful content at any point in the game before max level, so why even bother with it? The leveling experience is sort of like your appendix. It's probably best to have it removed.
1. Make heroic dungeons the same difficulty as challenge modes
2. Remove all difficulties in raids, make them all like HC mode with the last boss incredibly hard compared to the rest of the bosses
3. Merge low pop servers until there's only 15 servers each language (EU)
4. Remove LFR and LFD, make server rep mean something
5. Buff mobs you fight while leveling, introduce group quests and requirements to defeat different quests.
6. Low level instances are now like they used to be in vanilla. You pull, you die.
7. Remove heirlooms, make XP required like vanilla.
8. Release new raid content every time a world first kill of last boss happens, (with the increased difficulty of the last boss, 2 or 3 months will pass until someone gets the kill)
There you go, game fixed. With all servers merged, nobody can use the "cant find people" as an excuse.
Honestly IMHO it is not about how hard it is. The problem is EZ mode Mid level diffucutly and ZOMG it is hard, are basically the same content just tuned different. People have no insentive to move onto harder content... they are not gonna see anything new. Okay so there is gear and that has some insentive. But it is not like "okay I want to get through LFR so I can go do the same thing only harder, and then when i finish that I can go see yet again the same thing, only harder", that is boring. Best time of raiding for me was when you had leveled progression that wasn't the same content.
Of course on the other side of the coin people complain that they cant see the content... but personally I am okay with that. No I did not see original Naxx. But the people that did had skill. Now everyone sees everything. They will never go back though. The gaming industry has changed, the player base has changes. Hell even as a player I know I have changed. Been playing 8 years... my life has changed how could it not.
The problem WoW faces is that difficulty has a major jump. The reason so many players feel that normal raids are hard is because nothing prepares you for it. Quests are nonsense easy. Heroic dungeons shouldn't even be called Heroic anymore. LFR doesn't even prepare you for normal raids.
First step is getting players to learn how to play their classes, and I believe that Blizzard should introduce quests specific to classes so they can learn how to play them. It's fun and the rewards can be interesting. Like how Paladins and Warlocks had to work towards getting their mounts. You know before Blizzard ended up just giving them away for a small amount of gold.
Next is to make dungeons and scenarios harder. This should be a learning curve for new players. There shouldn't be tank and spank fights and face rolling. Dungeons need mechanics and dps requirements. I would even go as far as needing crowd control again. The rewards should reflect the effort. Dungeons should drop set bonuses for dungeon tier armor. Gear that'll really get you ready for raiding.
Finally LFR needs to go away. Flex raiding should be it's replacement.
Last edited by Vash The Stampede; 2013-07-04 at 04:03 AM.
i like the idea of making dungeons harder- and making it basically a requirement that you'd need a competent group of 5 to do them
and it even makes sense, think about it, if your 5 man group finally progresses and finishes dungeons the next logical step is 10 man raiding, what's the best way of getting 10 people together? combine 2 dungeon groups. you get everything you need, 2 heals, 2 tanks, 6 dps (though maybe 3 heals 5 dps, it depends and that's kind of the way it goes I guess)
I could point out that you are so far removed from what the majority of the player base can potentially do that your experience is null and void. However you would probably ignore that and insist NO IT'S EASY GET BETTER. Well it's not easy relative to what everyone else can do. It's not even easy relative to other video games. Normal on stacraft or diablo is such a breeze... normal sc2 holds your hand so fucking much..
You're not taking a lot of things into account though. Theorycrafting wasn't at all like it is now back then. Back then there weren't 100 videos of how to successfully complete every encounter in the tier on YouTube 2 months before the content went live. There weren't class guides on every site and things weren't being datamined as much, so you didn't know exactly how to gear up months in advance.
Players today have so many more advantages than players did then. That's really more of the reason that content doesn't last as long, because people already know how to do it before it's even out. I guarantee you Kael'Thas would have lasted about two weeks in today's climate, if that.
Just break all addons. It would be funny watching people get so mad. I mean how did we ever play and raid in Everquest without addons? Oh yea we were just better.
Hah, what? Game is too easy? Like many others have said, have you even tried current heroic raiding? If not, this thread is moot.
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You're also ridiculously wrong. Back in the "good ol days" as you call it, bosses were horrendously buggy and unkillable and overtuned and half, if not more specs in the game were just useless. None of the bosses till MAYBE SWP were actually hard. Wrath brought actual difficulty to raiding. You're confusing overtuned/buggy with being hard and something tells me you not only didn't raid in previous expansions but have been talking to the wrong people.
Also, progression raiding is different from farm raiding. How long did it take you to fully clear the tier originally? You can't compare stuff on farm with stuff on progression.
tl;dr: Your argument is ridiculously flawed and you give hardcore raiders a bad name.
Pretty much all suggestions I've seen don't actually make the game harder. It makes the game more annoying. I play WoW to raid, I don't like leveling (past initial expansion release craze) and I don't want it to be increasingly more annoying. Grind doesn't equal difficulty. Taking away crutches doesn't make the game easier, it makes the game more frustrating.
And you people are increasingly forgetting one vital aspect. The game is geared towards the casual gamer, as are most games that want to have mass market appeal. If you truly want a challenge, gear your character and apply to a raiding guild. Otherwise, be content with what you have.
Also, BC was not harder than MoP or any other expansion. Maybe heroic 5 mans initially, but once you were raid geared, they were a joke. The raids were simplistic and easy as well. Take off rose tinted glasses.
Last edited by Brakthir; 2013-07-04 at 07:09 AM.