If you are a casual player who doesn't want to invest time why do you want to clear the heroics? You finish the normal and you're donne. Every game have the hard and nightmare modes but not everryone wants to go with it.
/agree
------------------------------------------------------------------- waiting for ... nothing..
Couldn't help but notice the OP saying he wanted his T11 gear after 1 day of heroics. Sorry but thats not how this game was meant to be played. Sure its awesome to get new gear but why should you be able to buy T11 after afew heroic runs? To me that was the big problem with the pervious expansion.
I joined a raiding guild just before i hit 80 and when i did i started to do some heroics to get gear. 2 days later I was already in ICC helping out with raids cus i got most of my gear already.
When the raiding content takes months to be patched in i don't mind if it takes a month to gear up for them (it's about 2-3 weeks of heroics to get the right gear) as it means we wont get bored as we where in the last expansion.
Anyway thats just my opinion and i know for a fact there are plenty of people who dislike the increase in difficulty. I expect blizzard to come up with a solution that (at the very least somewhat) pleases all parties involved.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Wanting a game to take 12 months to get to raiding doesn't make someone mature and anyone who doesn't want to play that way some sort of child. Comments like these seem a little childish to be honest.
No because anyone who wants something NOW is a kid. Only a mature adult knows that you must work at something to achieve something. If your an adult and want to play a game that you can finish in a few days then play a console game. MMO's were designed to be played over a long period of time. Anyone who started with MUD's or even BBS games like BRE understands this.
Raiding should be for people that have experience. Understanding your class and others. Understanding the mechanics of the game. Understanding how to work with a large group of people. Unfortunetly a large population of wows community does not understand any of those things.
Good post.. however I would like to add to it if you don't mind.. I'm not sure I would generalize as kid vs. adults.. I've seen alot of bad adults and have seen a few really good kids.. My oberservation is, the game plays 2 different ways.. It's 99% solo play focused from 1-85, then group grind at end game.. Personally I think that is part of the problem.. Blizzard trains the players to play in a bubble.. Everything they kill is theirs.. They loot everything and never have to share it, nor do they really have to interact with anyone during this whole time.. Then come end game, you ask players to change their whole mentality to do what is best for the group.. But even then, that fails because 50% of the end game mechanics still force the playing community to be selfish.. People needing on loot left and right, especialy in pugs.. Why? because they need gear score for everything.. I need the best gear for my primary spec, and secondary spec..
Most of the end game is a dog eat dog world.. In my opinion the mechanics of the gameplay foster community problems since day 1.. No wonder so many issues spawn up repeatively.. Is there a true FOCUS on what the game is?
I agree its cool to be casual but it doesn't make sense to raid if you want to be casual. So enjoy the game's content and if you want to see endgame content prepare to learn your class.
If you don't raid, there is no reason to play this game.
Excellent observation.. I agree 110%.. The end game is basically esport "raiding" or "arena".. Rather it's PvE or PvP, the focus is the community competing against themselves.. I always thought PvE mmo meant the community vs "the game", not each other.. Instead of revamping all the 1-60 zones.. Why not be innovative and try something new to the table.. I would love a few end game zones that was PvE contested end game zones.. Zones that entice the community to work together to defeat the PvE open world.. Keep "instancing" out of it.. Make it the community against the game.. There are many ways this could of been done, if the devs really wanted to do it.. However to do so is a 180 away from esporting..
Doesnt' Bliz realize that esporting is niche.. Look at Starcraft II.. Sold a ton of boxes, however once everyone completed the story and end game esporting was all that was left, 1/2 the buying customers quit playing it.. Why? maybe cause esporting doesn't appeal to many on a 24/7 basis.. Now if Blizzard would come up with "dynamic" zones, and social PvE end gaming, I might give them another look
I have to agree 100% with you on this thread, usually I would be in someone's face finding fault with their post defending WOW, but I tell you, this game is done "stick a fork in it".
I just cancelled my account along with my son and his 4 friends, WOW has had it's day, it is just monotone routine now.
I have to agree with this.
Seriously, look at BC and the time to level for the avergare player, then all the rep grinds to get into Heroics, it took a good number of months to even feel you had made any progress. Then they had all the tiered raids and imo Kara was a delight.
Compare that to Cata which has almost zero drawing power. Im hearing people are bored of the content already, after what, less than 1 month.
Doesnt' Bliz realize that esporting is niche.. Look at Starcraft II.. Sold a ton of boxes, however once everyone completed the story and end game esporting was all that was left, 1/2 the buying customers quit playing it.. Why? maybe cause esporting doesn't appeal to many on a 24/7 basis.. Now if Blizzard would come up with "dynamic" zones, and social PvE end gaming, I might give them another look
The only games that are in the top 10 of PC games played on Xfire are all games about PvP and on line multiplayer.
The fact that WC3 is still very high in replay value is because it has that multiplayer competition value. Just look at the COD series.
Doesnt' Bliz realize that esporting is niche.. Look at Starcraft II.. Sold a ton of boxes, however once everyone completed the story and end game esporting was all that was left, 1/2 the buying customers quit playing it.. Why? maybe cause esporting doesn't appeal to many on a 24/7 basis.. Now if Blizzard would come up with "dynamic" zones, and social PvE end gaming, I might give them another look
The only games that are in the top 10 of PC games played on Xfire are all games about PvP and on line multiplayer. True.. based on Xfire, which doesn't say much.. because Xfire is very niche themselves.. There are plenty of console games and PC games played that aren't shown on Xfire.. Xfire is voluntary, and it's primary audience is the PvP gengre for the most part..
The fact that WC3 is still very high in replay value is because it has that multiplayer competition value. Just look at the COD series.
So I dare you: who in the fuck would question their replay value? Who's replay value? WoW?
I remember they had around 60% after Wotlk. So they must be doing something right. Right ?
And watch that graph: No 70% drop in its first month like the last 5 year launches either.
Right ?
So you think esporting is a majority genre? I'm not following you.. Even if you want to use Xfire numbers, WoW had a hard time going over 200k.. But soon as Cat came out it peaked to close to 350K.. almost a 75% increase in play time.. That wasn't new customers, that was expansion spark, which will die off in months to come once the PvE play because boring again..WoW hasn't gone over 300k in a couple weeks.. And this was during Xmas holiday when playtime is going to be it's highest..
But I wouldn't put much faith in Xfire.. if you ever looked at the "live" feeds, it's hardly ever PvE play.. it's basically PvP.. Xfire players are primary PvP genre, so why isn't it surprising that most of the top games listed are PvP Esport games? That would be like analizing which foods do college students eat most.. I suspect it would be fast food.. and for good reason..
So both of you have a point but here is where the problem lies. With WOW moving away from the large 25-40 man groups, the 10 man groups don't have the room to *carry* people like they used to. Granted I enjoy just raiding and seeing new content but some people judge their enjoyment on how much they can accomphlish in a short time they have to play. When you say that "Raiding should be for everyone" thats like saying everyone should be a doctor and get all the money like a doctor without doing the work or knowing your profession. Its just not true.
I stopped playing WOW when I realized I didn't have the time to be hardcore and raid. Its not the games fault or Blizz's. Lets be honest, raiding takes structure, gear, and teamwork. Casual is fun but if you want to raid you should know by now that you have to do some work because nothing worth having should come easy.
That is a terrible analogy. No one is saying everyone should be the most successful, skilled, educated and most compensated person in the hospital. There are plenty of other employees at the hospital that make it function. There is nothing wrong with janitors, nurses, transcriptionists, food services, laundry, etc all working at a hospital, but now we are talking about hospital staff and not a video game.
There is nothing wrong with giving people to opportunity to try raids. Some will excel at hard mode end zone bosses (doctors) and some will struggle with entry level normal mode bosses (support staff).
Thing is.. most raid bosses are designed and tailored for the use of addons.. Just many casual players that raid here and there never use those addons, so the odds are stacked against them.. I've seen dozens of "raid" videos on youtube or any other sourse and NEVER saw a successful raid that didnt' use addons... Your so called professional raiders are only as successful because of those addons.. take them away and I bet 90% would FAIL..
Thing is.. most raid bosses are designed and tailored for the use of addons.. Just many casual players that raid here and there never use those addons, so the odds are stacked against them.. I've seen dozens of "raid" videos on youtube or any other sourse and NEVER saw a successful raid that didnt' use addons... Your so called professional raiders are only as successful because of those addons.. take them away and I bet 90% would FAIL..
They arent tailored for the use of addons. Anyone with a brain knows that the use of addons makes it a lot less confusing and stressfull. If the game allows addons, then its basically apart of the game, and not really considered a 3rd party add in like many think it is.
What does "hard" actually mean? Is it like in the early days? You had to actually use cc and wasn't able to AOE through everything. This would be an improvement actually.
Excellent observation.. I agree 110%.. The end game is basically esport "raiding" or "arena".. Rather it's PvE or PvP, the focus is the community competing against themselves.. I always thought PvE mmo meant the community vs "the game", not each other.. Instead of revamping all the 1-60 zones.. Why not be innovative and try something new to the table.. I would love a few end game zones that was PvE contested end game zones.. Zones that entice the community to work together to defeat the PvE open world.. Keep "instancing" out of it.. Make it the community against the game.. There are many ways this could of been done, if the devs really wanted to do it.. However to do so is a 180 away from esporting..
Doesnt' Bliz realize that esporting is niche.. Look at Starcraft II.. Sold a ton of boxes, however once everyone completed the story and end game esporting was all that was left, 1/2 the buying customers quit playing it.. Why? maybe cause esporting doesn't appeal to many on a 24/7 basis.. Now if Blizzard would come up with "dynamic" zones, and social PvE end gaming, I might give them another look.
How exactly is the community "competing againt themselves"? How does any other guild fighting the same exact boss as me have any impact on my gameplay? There is no competition and no one wins a trophy at the end of the night. The last time I checked every group fighting in a raid or dungeon is fighting against the game and not each other. Tossing out buzzwords doesn't make your point very strong.
How does having a contested zone foster community working together. How many times have we seen this type of gameplay do the exact opposite of what you suggest it will do? Contested content turns games into community vs community as they compete against each other for the limited content. This combined with the point above it really demonstrates how out of touch with the subject you really are.
So wows endgame is niche and doesn't appeal to "many" people? Isn't that a rather absurd statement to make about a game that if 100x larger than most of its competitors?
People need to stop looking to blizzard to innovate and redesign the core concepts of wow. That is what the competition should be doing right now and I understand how frustrating is is that they are not. However, it would be beyond stupid to completely redesign a product that is dominating the market and has no real competition. What possible argument could be made to suggest that would make good business sense?
I'm certain blizzard is content to not redesign wow into some everquest hack just to win back you and "many" of your friends. Really, world of warcraft is doing just fine without you and as long as the competition keeps turning out piles of garbage there is a very high chance that "many" of your friends will simply return to wow as they have been for years.
Thing is.. most raid bosses are designed and tailored for the use of addons.. Just many casual players that raid here and there never use those addons, so the odds are stacked against them.. I've seen dozens of "raid" videos on youtube or any other sourse and NEVER saw a successful raid that didnt' use addons... Your so called professional raiders are only as successful because of those addons.. take them away and I bet 90% would FAIL..
Dewey defeats truman by a landslide!
Funny how tech savvy people who can record, edit, upload, comment and narrate a video all might be clever enough to install and configure UI mods.
How exactly is the community "competing againt themselves"? How does any other guild fighting the same exact boss as me have any impact on my gameplay? There is no competition and no one wins a trophy at the end of the night. The last time I checked every group fighting in a raid or dungeon is fighting against the game and not each other. Tossing out buzzwords doesn't make your point very strong. Really? You don't see it? People competing to get spots in raids is rampid.. It's all about your toon being better then the next guy to get that slot in the 10 or 25 man.. To deny that is disingenuous..
How does having a contested zone foster community working together. How many times have we seen this type of gameplay do the exact opposite of what you suggest it will do? Contested content turns games into community vs community as they compete against each other for the limited content. This combined with the point above it really demonstrates how out of touch with the subject you really are. Ahhh I think you missed some keywords my friend I said "PvE" contested.. NOT PvP.. HUGE difference.. There is no dynamic PvE zones in WoW.. Closest thing to explain what PvE contested is what GW2 has planned.. The NPC's try to take over the zone.. It's your job as the community to stop it.... Have fun.. A constant tug of war of players vs. NPC's zonewide..
So wows endgame is niche and doesn't appeal to "many" people? Isn't that a rather absurd statement to make about a game that if 100x larger than most of its competitors? More selective nit picking.. I said wow's esporting is niche.. NICHE doesnt' mean small or large.. FYI.. It means it is narrow in scope.. Perhaps you might want to read the definition of niche.. Niche = a distictive segment of the market.. Incase you didnt' feel like googling it..
People need to stop looking to blizzard to innovate and redesign the core concepts of wow. That is what the competition should be doing right now and I understand how frustrating is is that they are not. However, it would be beyond stupid to completely redesign a product that is dominating the market and has no real competition. What possible argument could be made to suggest that would make good business sense? Really.. Blizzard has redefined the game more times then Clinton had interns.. Does Cataclsym REVAMPING of 1-60 and respecing talents in direct contradiction your statement.. YEP, it sure is.. Raids went from core 40 man to 10.. etc etc.. There are numerous examples of WoW redesigning itself..
I'm certain blizzard is content to not redesign wow into some everquest hack just to win back you and "many" of your friends. Really, world of warcraft is doing just fine without you and as long as the competition keeps turning out piles of garbage there is a very high chance that "many" of your friends will simply return to wow as they have been for years. But they just did with Cataclysm.. LOL ty for your opinion
I agree. Blizzard should have made up their mind and choose which kind of players they want to have. Now they have a hybrid that is too easy for some and too hard for the others. Neither group is happy.
Pretty much. They went super easy with wrath allowing everyone to feel special and powerful. They dialed it up a little bit, and it was still super easy so the good players still don't notice a difference from wrath, but the mediocre and worse are having issues even in 5mans while the good and better are flying through raids like it's nothing.
(1)Really? You don't see it? People competing to get spots in raids is rampid.. It's all about your toon being better then the next guy to get that slot in the 10 or 25 man.. To deny that is disingenuous..
(2) Ahhh I think you missed some keywords my friend I said "PvE" contested.. NOT PvP.. HUGE difference.. There is no dynamic PvE zones in WoW.. Closest thing to explain what PvE contested is what GW2 has planned.. The NPC's try to take over the zone.. It's your job as the community to stop it.... Have fun.. A constant tug of war of players vs. NPC's zonewide..
(3) More selective nit picking.. I said wow's esporting is niche.. NICHE doesnt' mean small or large.. FYI.. It means it is narrow in scope.. Perhaps you might want to read the definition of niche.. Niche = a distictive segment of the market.. Incase you didnt' feel like googling it..
(4) Really.. Blizzard has redefined the game more times then Clinton had interns.. Does Cataclsym REVAMPING of 1-60 and respecing talents in direct contradiction your statement.. YEP, it sure is.. Raids went from core 40 man to 10.. etc etc.. There are numerous examples of WoW redesigning itself..
(5)But they just did with Cataclysm.. LOL ty for your opinion
Have a great day toodles
1)
How can people be competiting with each other when you just said in other posts that raid spots are static. There is no change and no way for people to get into established raids. You can't keep changing your points every time you want to complain about something. You were talking about the gameplay being an esport, now you are trying to talk about fighting for raid spots. Hows that for being disingenious?
2)
I did misunderstand you and that might be interesting. I think it still has the same potential for pitfall, but for sake of discussion we will assume your idea works.
3)
You are playing the dictionary game and talking about me nitpicking? Come on. You said wows endgame was esport and then you said the esport was niche and something "many" are not attracted to. Those are your words, not mine.
4-5)
Again, we are not talking about the natural evolution that all mmos go through as they update their systems, but the drastic radical changes that make games something totally different than they were the previous patch. You seem to have difficulty seperating those two things.
Furthermore, wow today still plays basically the same as it did over six years ago, despite all the changes. The design works and has proven to be successful beyond reason. The cold hard reality is that blizzard does not need to drastically alter the core gameplay in some attempt to win you or your "many" friends back. They are doing just fine growing the game and breaking sales records without having to gamble the entire 12 million playerbase by changing the core of the game so that you might deem them worthy of trying the game again.
That is were other companies should be coming in. They should be answering the question of what is missing/wrong in the genre right now and creating games to fill those voids so people like yourself have a decent game to play that appeal to your desires. It seems that since so many companies are not doing that, people are putting those expectations on blizzard as if it is their job to revitalize the genre, change wow into something it is not and retool the game into something other companies are incapable of giving.
That's just it though. People don't expect World of Warcraft to be hard, and its fanbase enjoys the ease in which they can obtain gear and the low barrier to entry in the raid scene. It's a casual game, and not everyone derives fun out of back breaking challenge. WoTLK was made for those people, yet Cataclysm appears to try to appease both groups by making leveling stupidly easy and the endgame far more difficult, but I fail to see how that appeals to anyone. Hardcores will scoff at how easy leveling is and probably quit while casuals will quit because gearing up for raiding has become such a painful experience.
Blizzard has to know who their audience is, and at this point, it isn't exactly filled with people who I think are all that thrilled about the recent changes. This is why I have to say that I'm not sure I understand the point behind making Cataclysm so much more difficult than WoTLK. Feels like the reverse of all the changes seen over the years in EQ2.
WotLK changed a lot of things about WoW and Cata is just fixing those issues. In BC people had the option of running casual friendly dungeons and if they wanted something a little more challenging they could run heroics. In WotLK they removed the challenge from 5 mans so you either ran super easy normal 5 mans or easy heroics...not much of an option.
Now with Cataclysm, we have options again. You can run fairly easy normal 5 mans or choose the slightly more challenging heroics. Having multiple options is a wonderful thing and part of the reason WoW has grown to the size it is.
I agree its cool to be casual but it doesn't make sense to raid if you want to be casual. So enjoy the game's content and if you want to see endgame content prepare to learn your class.
If you don't raid, there is no reason to play this game.
Maybe for you..but there are other reasons to play than to gear grind. Some poeple PVP, some RP, and there are some people that are toon freaks who like to reroll. Don't be so shallow. If you believe that raiding is the only thing left at the end of an MMO than good for you. Everyone is different.
I think you misunderstand me. I wasn't speaking for all MMOs, I was just speaking in refering to WoW. The end game is all about the gear grind. Even the PvP is about gear (with the honor grind). There is really nothing outside of that for other people to do.
The biggest disappointment I had after a few weeks of playing this expansion was the realization that the end game is exactly the same as it has been. I'm not sure why I thought it would be different but I thought it was a missed opportunity for Blizzard to swtich things up a bit. After all, they changed the rest of the world until you get to that level cap. I suppose I should have seen it before when they scrapped the path of the ancients (the AA they canceled).
I do know this. At the start of this expansion we had about 20 regular people logging in on average per night to play. After about 3 weeks, we are lucky if we have enough online just to run a 5 man dungeon.
Rerolling? In my opinion, the game is so on rails now that the game is not conductive to making alts anymore. I leveled two characters to 85. I had no desire to play any alts after that. There is hardly any freedom the way the quest system is setup now.
I don't think the game is "hard". How hard is it to press 3 buttons and move left to right? If that is tough, I would love to see you tackle lacing your shoes. I think a lot of people simply don't WANT to put forth the effort any more. How many times can you watch the exact same movie before it becomes boring?
WoW was fun, and if I was a new player to the game and could get past the social abortion of a community, I would probably have a lot of fun. I'm not a new player though. I've done the "hamster in a wheel" thing. It's simply a wore out and tired formula for me personally.
Cata's schizophrenic direction is a big reason why there is a lot of backlash from casual and hardcore players. Cata heroics are harder than BC heroics, but since you can possibly earn the rewards faster, it gives a false impression as it will take a while to gear up to properly run heroics for Cata. BC heroic design is better in my opinion, because while it was difficult, the pacing was adequate, and not misleading, in that it allowed a player to gear up slowly in preparation for BC heroics. Worse, the revamp of Cata leveling is too easy compared to BC, and WotLK, which leads to players being slammed when they hit 85. At least with BC, leveling wasn't easy, and it allowed players to prepare for the harder content at a gradual pace. The punctuated approach of Cata is a real turn off, especially towards those players that Blizz was trying to urge to hit level cap and a big target for their revamp of 1-60 content. But seeing that you don't need to buy the expansion to experience the revamp, the major selling point of the expansion ironically, I think that wasn't well thought out by Blizz. Most of these targeted players that roll alts, or are casual players, without a single toon at level cap, will probably not buy the Cata expansion. For the hard core players, Cata is very short on content compared to BC which is why even the hardcore players are fed up, so it is not just the casual players frustrated with the Cata direction which lacks a singular purpose at this point from my view point.
Tol Borad is an example of not learning the lessons of why Isle and WG were so popular in BC, and WotLK. The key is that there was MASSIVE participation, and that is frankly what people seek, in my view when you want to PVP in an MMORPG. Tol Borad is nothing but very small scale, and the number of participants is very tiny, and very exclusive to those who can que multiple times in the day. Contrast that to WotLK WG, where I would work late at night, and be able to come home and jump right into a WG battle by simply asking for invite, and the fun was a mere key strokes away. RBG's were extremely promising for massive guilds but the larger PVP BG's are not part of rated play, and there is no individual que, so the large hard core PVP guilds, and casual PVPer feel left out.
In summary, Blizz's focus on ten man guilds, raids, and RBG is almost an admission, that they are preparing for the bleeding of players, and that they don't think guilds larger than 15-20 people will exist if the player population continues to dwindle. Basically large guilds, and casual individual players are left out of what Cata is all about, but even those participating in 10 man content are starting to yearn for more.
Wanting a game to take 12 months to get to raiding doesn't make someone mature and anyone who doesn't want to play that way some sort of child. Comments like these seem a little childish to be honest.
No because anyone who wants something NOW is a kid. Only a mature adult knows that you must work at something to achieve something. If your an adult and want to play a game that you can finish in a few days then play a console game. MMO's were designed to be played over a long period of time. Anyone who started with MUD's or even BBS games like BRE understands this.
Raiding should be for people that have experience. Understanding your class and others. Understanding the mechanics of the game. Understanding how to work with a large group of people. Unfortunetly a large population of wows community does not understand any of those things.
It sounds more like you're talking to a subordinate at a corporation than some people about a video game. You must work something to achieve something? Whatever happened to it being a video game? Aren't they supposed to be fun and laughter, not blood sweat and tears?
Sure taking that long to get things done was cool back then, but I don't know about you, as a young adult I no longer have the time to commit to something like that.
Raiding should be for everyone. This whole elitist approach to it is so played out. The people that have experience and this and that are capable of doing more of the raids faster and they are able to tackle hardmodes and tribute runs. Seems about right to me.
This whole misconception that everyone needs to be as good as me to be in my endgame is quite silly and self centered. I played with some awful people sometimes in WoW, but they were cool people so ultimately it didn't really matter that they were slower or dropped the ball from time to time.
There were plenty of hardcore elite guilds where people had experience and a complete understanding with this and that. From my experience, those guilds were more often than not the most immature and childish guilds you could possibly imagine. All you have is a bunch of teens with some misplaced god complex because they read on elitistjerks.com how to setup their character properly.
So both of you have a point but here is where the problem lies. With WOW moving away from the large 25-40 man groups, the 10 man groups don't have the room to *carry* people like they used to. Granted I enjoy just raiding and seeing new content but some people judge their enjoyment on how much they can accomphlish in a short time they have to play. When you say that "Raiding should be for everyone" thats like saying everyone should be a doctor and get all the money like a doctor without doing the work or knowing your profession. Its just not true.
Come on man you didn't just seriously try to compare being a raider to being a doctor. I only hope for your sake that you can see the vast difference between the two. If not, maybe you're taking your raiding a little too seriously.
We're talking about a video game.
You missed the point. Do you get that I was trying to point out the amount of work it takes to be a doctor? Its comparabel in relation to effort. The point is if you want to raid which is supposed to be a challenge be prepared to work for it. Is it too much to ask to know your class? If you don't want to do these things then maybe you shouldn't raid.
So both of you have a point but here is where the problem lies. With WOW moving away from the large 25-40 man groups, the 10 man groups don't have the room to *carry* people like they used to. Granted I enjoy just raiding and seeing new content but some people judge their enjoyment on how much they can accomphlish in a short time they have to play. When you say that "Raiding should be for everyone" thats like saying everyone should be a doctor and get all the money like a doctor without doing the work or knowing your profession. Its just not true.
I stopped playing WOW when I realized I didn't have the time to be hardcore and raid. Its not the games fault or Blizz's. Lets be honest, raiding takes structure, gear, and teamwork. Casual is fun but if you want to raid you should know by now that you have to do some work because nothing worth having should come easy.
That is a terrible analogy. No one is saying everyone should be the most successful, skilled, educated and most compensated person in the hospital. There are plenty of other employees at the hospital that make it function. There is nothing wrong with janitors, nurses, transcriptionists, food services, laundry, etc all working at a hospital, but now we are talking about hospital staff and not a video game.
There is nothing wrong with giving people to opportunity to try raids. Some will excel at hard mode end zone bosses (doctors) and some will struggle with entry level normal mode bosses (support staff).
So lets think about this a minute. Because there are always people that help other's achieve (nurse and staff helping the doctors). So lets look at it as if surgery was a raid. Do you want a janitor helping the doctor raid? Or do you want the nurse helping? The point is as much as the janitor wants to raid he/she may not have the skill to do so and they should accept that. I would love to go to the moon but not willing to put the effort into being an astronaut. See the comparison. Its problably not the best I admit but I think it gets the point across.
The pve gear grind has absolutely nothing to do with a players ability to know their class. Take the arena folk Im guessing at a whim most of the top lot dont raid but I bet you they know their class.
In my humble opinion the length of time playing your chosen character(s) plus doing some research combined, are the largest factors in player skill. Fullstop end of, gear grinding has absolutely nothing to do with it. Sapping a mob in tbc is the same as it is now you just have new hoops to jump through for your gear.
Just for the record for those who misread, I do not want free t11. My original point was that some parts of t11 are only available in raids and are not able to be purchased at a vendor even if you were able to pug any aspect of the raid content for a few points. I also said in not so many words let the raiders have their glory and their difficulty. I also recollect that heroic mode raids were invented for exactly those types of players, they got better pretty coloured gear to flash off on the server.
A long time ago I was a hardcore raider but as time wore on I chose to play with more free time available to my life. WoW had become my after dinner chill out time and now apart from arena once a week with some friends there is little chill out. Tol Borod is a horrid PvE mess, what the hell was wrong with wintergrasp with the quests tied into the event. Rated bgs are a joke and to me the grind for items seems to have gone up quite alot with your earnings down.
Is it too much for people to understand that I had some enjoyment in vanilla, alot of enjoyment in tbc and wrath. I don't like cata's endgame so I'm out. Someone wrote it best I think something along the lines of I stopped playing because I could not raid hardcore anymore and thats where the point of the game is so I chose to stop.
In wrath specifically I talked to alot more people, I got involved with the community on my server for things like the weekly raid, I got to know people. In cata everything is about your guild and not whether you are horde or alliance and the people you may find friends in on a day to day basis.
I hope some wizard at blizzard is crunching numbers and seeing the fall in activities in the game like joining dungeons or people signing up for the pvp lake and so forth, they need this stick to smack the donkey.
Its too late for me playing some ps3, reading books and waiting for rift.
So lets think about this a minute. Because there are always people that help other's achieve (nurse and staff helping the doctors). So lets look at it as if surgery was a raid. Do you want a janitor helping the doctor raid? Or do you want the nurse helping? The point is as much as the janitor wants to raid he/she may not have the skill to do so and they should accept that. I would love to go to the moon but not willing to put the effort into being an astronaut. See the comparison. Its problably not the best I admit but I think it gets the point across.
but we are not talking about brain surgery here. It is a video game that doesn't require a doctoral degree, board certification and endless other training. It is a game that anyone can learn to be decent at, without taking out 250,000 in loans. This is a prime reason why analogies do not suit discussions like this.
Anyone can learn how to raid in an mmo in a month or two if they are taught. Again, this isn't surgery on the human body. Cast spells, stand in position X, move when it catches fire, etc. This doesn't mean any slob can jump into a hard mode heroic raid group and expect to defeat it. That is where you should look for your "doctors".
Getting back to the issue of game content being accessable to many people and not just "doctors". There is nothing wrong with that design and having content options that suit both is a win/win situation.
This is just speaking in general and not toward you, but why should raid content be restricted to only hardcore players? Would removing normal mode raids make the harder raids any more difficult or perhaps it is just an epeen thing?
but we are not talking about brain surgery here. It is a video game that doesn't require a doctoral degree, board certification and endless other training. It is a game that anyone can learn to be decent at, without taking out 250,000 in loans. This is a prime reason why analogies do not suit discussions like this.
Anyone can learn how to raid in an mmo in a month or two if they are taught. Again, this isn't surgery on the human body. Cast spells, stand in position X, move when it catches fire, etc. This doesn't mean any slob can jump into a hard mode heroic raid group and expect to defeat it. That is where you should look for your "doctors".
Regarding the underlined portion- I can't say I agree. There are people that want to play but just cannot succeed at either grasping the strategy and enacting it or perhaps they simply don't have the coordination to pull it off. Just because people are physically or mentally incapable of this level of coordination of gameplay doen't mean they aren't in the game already failing their way to cap due to almost nonexistant repercussions for failure. On top of that and more towards the second line there is a whole new generation of gamers (and I'll admit more than likely some old schoolers) that are just used to being carried by larger groups and aren't willing to take the time to learn. There's certainly evidence enough of that every time you see the argument "It's a game and I play it to have fun, I don't want to have to work."
Comments
/agree
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waiting for ... nothing..
Couldn't help but notice the OP saying he wanted his T11 gear after 1 day of heroics. Sorry but thats not how this game was meant to be played. Sure its awesome to get new gear but why should you be able to buy T11 after afew heroic runs? To me that was the big problem with the pervious expansion.
I joined a raiding guild just before i hit 80 and when i did i started to do some heroics to get gear. 2 days later I was already in ICC helping out with raids cus i got most of my gear already.
When the raiding content takes months to be patched in i don't mind if it takes a month to gear up for them (it's about 2-3 weeks of heroics to get the right gear) as it means we wont get bored as we where in the last expansion.
Anyway thats just my opinion and i know for a fact there are plenty of people who dislike the increase in difficulty. I expect blizzard to come up with a solution that (at the very least somewhat) pleases all parties involved.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Good post.. however I would like to add to it if you don't mind.. I'm not sure I would generalize as kid vs. adults.. I've seen alot of bad adults and have seen a few really good kids.. My oberservation is, the game plays 2 different ways.. It's 99% solo play focused from 1-85, then group grind at end game.. Personally I think that is part of the problem.. Blizzard trains the players to play in a bubble.. Everything they kill is theirs.. They loot everything and never have to share it, nor do they really have to interact with anyone during this whole time.. Then come end game, you ask players to change their whole mentality to do what is best for the group.. But even then, that fails because 50% of the end game mechanics still force the playing community to be selfish.. People needing on loot left and right, especialy in pugs.. Why? because they need gear score for everything.. I need the best gear for my primary spec, and secondary spec..
Most of the end game is a dog eat dog world.. In my opinion the mechanics of the gameplay foster community problems since day 1.. No wonder so many issues spawn up repeatively.. Is there a true FOCUS on what the game is?
Excellent observation.. I agree 110%.. The end game is basically esport "raiding" or "arena".. Rather it's PvE or PvP, the focus is the community competing against themselves.. I always thought PvE mmo meant the community vs "the game", not each other.. Instead of revamping all the 1-60 zones.. Why not be innovative and try something new to the table.. I would love a few end game zones that was PvE contested end game zones.. Zones that entice the community to work together to defeat the PvE open world.. Keep "instancing" out of it.. Make it the community against the game.. There are many ways this could of been done, if the devs really wanted to do it.. However to do so is a 180 away from esporting..
Doesnt' Bliz realize that esporting is niche.. Look at Starcraft II.. Sold a ton of boxes, however once everyone completed the story and end game esporting was all that was left, 1/2 the buying customers quit playing it.. Why? maybe cause esporting doesn't appeal to many on a 24/7 basis.. Now if Blizzard would come up with "dynamic" zones, and social PvE end gaming, I might give them another look
I have to agree with this.
Seriously, look at BC and the time to level for the avergare player, then all the rep grinds to get into Heroics, it took a good number of months to even feel you had made any progress. Then they had all the tiered raids and imo Kara was a delight.
Compare that to Cata which has almost zero drawing power. Im hearing people are bored of the content already, after what, less than 1 month.
The only games that are in the top 10 of PC games played on Xfire are all games about PvP and on line multiplayer.
The fact that WC3 is still very high in replay value is because it has that multiplayer competition value. Just look at the COD series.
Wow had today 68.3 % market in the MMO field (free to play ones included); http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/
So I dare you: who in the fuck would question their replay value?
I remember they had around 60% after Wotlk. So they must be doing something right. Right ?
And watch that graph: No 70% drop in its first month like the last 5 year launches either.
Right ?
That is a terrible analogy. No one is saying everyone should be the most successful, skilled, educated and most compensated person in the hospital. There are plenty of other employees at the hospital that make it function. There is nothing wrong with janitors, nurses, transcriptionists, food services, laundry, etc all working at a hospital, but now we are talking about hospital staff and not a video game.
There is nothing wrong with giving people to opportunity to try raids. Some will excel at hard mode end zone bosses (doctors) and some will struggle with entry level normal mode bosses (support staff).
Of course the multi player competition is the core of long term playing sessions.
That's why COD series and even WC3 are being played years after launch.
And by multi player play I also mean the "will to be there" and be better than other guilds or other dudes.
It has always been the driving force behind Blizzard games.
They didn't make one single player adventure game either.
It is this "competition" (casual or hardcore) that assures the long term playing value.
Thing is.. most raid bosses are designed and tailored for the use of addons.. Just many casual players that raid here and there never use those addons, so the odds are stacked against them.. I've seen dozens of "raid" videos on youtube or any other sourse and NEVER saw a successful raid that didnt' use addons... Your so called professional raiders are only as successful because of those addons.. take them away and I bet 90% would FAIL..
They arent tailored for the use of addons. Anyone with a brain knows that the use of addons makes it a lot less confusing and stressfull. If the game allows addons, then its basically apart of the game, and not really considered a 3rd party add in like many think it is.
What does "hard" actually mean? Is it like in the early days? You had to actually use cc and wasn't able to AOE through everything. This would be an improvement actually.
WOW,eq2,Vanguard,WAR,LOTRO,AOC,Rift Aion, SWTOR, TERA.
Currently playing GW2.
How exactly is the community "competing againt themselves"? How does any other guild fighting the same exact boss as me have any impact on my gameplay? There is no competition and no one wins a trophy at the end of the night. The last time I checked every group fighting in a raid or dungeon is fighting against the game and not each other. Tossing out buzzwords doesn't make your point very strong.
How does having a contested zone foster community working together. How many times have we seen this type of gameplay do the exact opposite of what you suggest it will do? Contested content turns games into community vs community as they compete against each other for the limited content. This combined with the point above it really demonstrates how out of touch with the subject you really are.
So wows endgame is niche and doesn't appeal to "many" people? Isn't that a rather absurd statement to make about a game that if 100x larger than most of its competitors?
People need to stop looking to blizzard to innovate and redesign the core concepts of wow. That is what the competition should be doing right now and I understand how frustrating is is that they are not. However, it would be beyond stupid to completely redesign a product that is dominating the market and has no real competition. What possible argument could be made to suggest that would make good business sense?
I'm certain blizzard is content to not redesign wow into some everquest hack just to win back you and "many" of your friends. Really, world of warcraft is doing just fine without you and as long as the competition keeps turning out piles of garbage there is a very high chance that "many" of your friends will simply return to wow as they have been for years.
Dewey defeats truman by a landslide!
Funny how tech savvy people who can record, edit, upload, comment and narrate a video all might be clever enough to install and configure UI mods.
Have a great day
toodles
Pretty much. They went super easy with wrath allowing everyone to feel special and powerful. They dialed it up a little bit, and it was still super easy so the good players still don't notice a difference from wrath, but the mediocre and worse are having issues even in 5mans while the good and better are flying through raids like it's nothing.
1)
How can people be competiting with each other when you just said in other posts that raid spots are static. There is no change and no way for people to get into established raids. You can't keep changing your points every time you want to complain about something. You were talking about the gameplay being an esport, now you are trying to talk about fighting for raid spots. Hows that for being disingenious?
2)
I did misunderstand you and that might be interesting. I think it still has the same potential for pitfall, but for sake of discussion we will assume your idea works.
3)
You are playing the dictionary game and talking about me nitpicking? Come on. You said wows endgame was esport and then you said the esport was niche and something "many" are not attracted to. Those are your words, not mine.
4-5)
Again, we are not talking about the natural evolution that all mmos go through as they update their systems, but the drastic radical changes that make games something totally different than they were the previous patch. You seem to have difficulty seperating those two things.
Furthermore, wow today still plays basically the same as it did over six years ago, despite all the changes. The design works and has proven to be successful beyond reason. The cold hard reality is that blizzard does not need to drastically alter the core gameplay in some attempt to win you or your "many" friends back. They are doing just fine growing the game and breaking sales records without having to gamble the entire 12 million playerbase by changing the core of the game so that you might deem them worthy of trying the game again.
That is were other companies should be coming in. They should be answering the question of what is missing/wrong in the genre right now and creating games to fill those voids so people like yourself have a decent game to play that appeal to your desires. It seems that since so many companies are not doing that, people are putting those expectations on blizzard as if it is their job to revitalize the genre, change wow into something it is not and retool the game into something other companies are incapable of giving.
Thats just a little to much to expect.
I think you misunderstand me. I wasn't speaking for all MMOs, I was just speaking in refering to WoW. The end game is all about the gear grind. Even the PvP is about gear (with the honor grind). There is really nothing outside of that for other people to do.
The biggest disappointment I had after a few weeks of playing this expansion was the realization that the end game is exactly the same as it has been. I'm not sure why I thought it would be different but I thought it was a missed opportunity for Blizzard to swtich things up a bit. After all, they changed the rest of the world until you get to that level cap. I suppose I should have seen it before when they scrapped the path of the ancients (the AA they canceled).
I do know this. At the start of this expansion we had about 20 regular people logging in on average per night to play. After about 3 weeks, we are lucky if we have enough online just to run a 5 man dungeon.
Rerolling? In my opinion, the game is so on rails now that the game is not conductive to making alts anymore. I leveled two characters to 85. I had no desire to play any alts after that. There is hardly any freedom the way the quest system is setup now.
I don't think the game is "hard". How hard is it to press 3 buttons and move left to right? If that is tough, I would love to see you tackle lacing your shoes. I think a lot of people simply don't WANT to put forth the effort any more. How many times can you watch the exact same movie before it becomes boring?
WoW was fun, and if I was a new player to the game and could get past the social abortion of a community, I would probably have a lot of fun. I'm not a new player though. I've done the "hamster in a wheel" thing. It's simply a wore out and tired formula for me personally.
Cata's schizophrenic direction is a big reason why there is a lot of backlash from casual and hardcore players. Cata heroics are harder than BC heroics, but since you can possibly earn the rewards faster, it gives a false impression as it will take a while to gear up to properly run heroics for Cata. BC heroic design is better in my opinion, because while it was difficult, the pacing was adequate, and not misleading, in that it allowed a player to gear up slowly in preparation for BC heroics. Worse, the revamp of Cata leveling is too easy compared to BC, and WotLK, which leads to players being slammed when they hit 85. At least with BC, leveling wasn't easy, and it allowed players to prepare for the harder content at a gradual pace. The punctuated approach of Cata is a real turn off, especially towards those players that Blizz was trying to urge to hit level cap and a big target for their revamp of 1-60 content. But seeing that you don't need to buy the expansion to experience the revamp, the major selling point of the expansion ironically, I think that wasn't well thought out by Blizz. Most of these targeted players that roll alts, or are casual players, without a single toon at level cap, will probably not buy the Cata expansion. For the hard core players, Cata is very short on content compared to BC which is why even the hardcore players are fed up, so it is not just the casual players frustrated with the Cata direction which lacks a singular purpose at this point from my view point.
Tol Borad is an example of not learning the lessons of why Isle and WG were so popular in BC, and WotLK. The key is that there was MASSIVE participation, and that is frankly what people seek, in my view when you want to PVP in an MMORPG. Tol Borad is nothing but very small scale, and the number of participants is very tiny, and very exclusive to those who can que multiple times in the day. Contrast that to WotLK WG, where I would work late at night, and be able to come home and jump right into a WG battle by simply asking for invite, and the fun was a mere key strokes away. RBG's were extremely promising for massive guilds but the larger PVP BG's are not part of rated play, and there is no individual que, so the large hard core PVP guilds, and casual PVPer feel left out.
In summary, Blizz's focus on ten man guilds, raids, and RBG is almost an admission, that they are preparing for the bleeding of players, and that they don't think guilds larger than 15-20 people will exist if the player population continues to dwindle. Basically large guilds, and casual individual players are left out of what Cata is all about, but even those participating in 10 man content are starting to yearn for more.
You missed the point. Do you get that I was trying to point out the amount of work it takes to be a doctor? Its comparabel in relation to effort. The point is if you want to raid which is supposed to be a challenge be prepared to work for it. Is it too much to ask to know your class? If you don't want to do these things then maybe you shouldn't raid.
So lets think about this a minute. Because there are always people that help other's achieve (nurse and staff helping the doctors). So lets look at it as if surgery was a raid. Do you want a janitor helping the doctor raid? Or do you want the nurse helping? The point is as much as the janitor wants to raid he/she may not have the skill to do so and they should accept that. I would love to go to the moon but not willing to put the effort into being an astronaut. See the comparison. Its problably not the best I admit but I think it gets the point across.
The pve gear grind has absolutely nothing to do with a players ability to know their class. Take the arena folk Im guessing at a whim most of the top lot dont raid but I bet you they know their class.
In my humble opinion the length of time playing your chosen character(s) plus doing some research combined, are the largest factors in player skill. Fullstop end of, gear grinding has absolutely nothing to do with it. Sapping a mob in tbc is the same as it is now you just have new hoops to jump through for your gear.
Just for the record for those who misread, I do not want free t11. My original point was that some parts of t11 are only available in raids and are not able to be purchased at a vendor even if you were able to pug any aspect of the raid content for a few points. I also said in not so many words let the raiders have their glory and their difficulty. I also recollect that heroic mode raids were invented for exactly those types of players, they got better pretty coloured gear to flash off on the server.
A long time ago I was a hardcore raider but as time wore on I chose to play with more free time available to my life. WoW had become my after dinner chill out time and now apart from arena once a week with some friends there is little chill out. Tol Borod is a horrid PvE mess, what the hell was wrong with wintergrasp with the quests tied into the event. Rated bgs are a joke and to me the grind for items seems to have gone up quite alot with your earnings down.
Is it too much for people to understand that I had some enjoyment in vanilla, alot of enjoyment in tbc and wrath. I don't like cata's endgame so I'm out. Someone wrote it best I think something along the lines of I stopped playing because I could not raid hardcore anymore and thats where the point of the game is so I chose to stop.
In wrath specifically I talked to alot more people, I got involved with the community on my server for things like the weekly raid, I got to know people. In cata everything is about your guild and not whether you are horde or alliance and the people you may find friends in on a day to day basis.
I hope some wizard at blizzard is crunching numbers and seeing the fall in activities in the game like joining dungeons or people signing up for the pvp lake and so forth, they need this stick to smack the donkey.
Its too late for me playing some ps3, reading books and waiting for rift.
but we are not talking about brain surgery here. It is a video game that doesn't require a doctoral degree, board certification and endless other training. It is a game that anyone can learn to be decent at, without taking out 250,000 in loans. This is a prime reason why analogies do not suit discussions like this.
Anyone can learn how to raid in an mmo in a month or two if they are taught. Again, this isn't surgery on the human body. Cast spells, stand in position X, move when it catches fire, etc. This doesn't mean any slob can jump into a hard mode heroic raid group and expect to defeat it. That is where you should look for your "doctors".
Getting back to the issue of game content being accessable to many people and not just "doctors". There is nothing wrong with that design and having content options that suit both is a win/win situation.
This is just speaking in general and not toward you, but why should raid content be restricted to only hardcore players? Would removing normal mode raids make the harder raids any more difficult or perhaps it is just an epeen thing?
Regarding the underlined portion- I can't say I agree. There are people that want to play but just cannot succeed at either grasping the strategy and enacting it or perhaps they simply don't have the coordination to pull it off. Just because people are physically or mentally incapable of this level of coordination of gameplay doen't mean they aren't in the game already failing their way to cap due to almost nonexistant repercussions for failure. On top of that and more towards the second line there is a whole new generation of gamers (and I'll admit more than likely some old schoolers) that are just used to being carried by larger groups and aren't willing to take the time to learn. There's certainly evidence enough of that every time you see the argument "It's a game and I play it to have fun, I don't want to have to work."