thing is many of the great devs who used to work on wow have left after doing the ground work for cata to work on real games like the starcraft 2 xps, diablo 3 and Titan. that's why the new stuff is so meh since its the rookie devs doing it now that wow is just a cash cow
Actually if you look at the credits from cata and from vanilla, most of the key high people are the same. GC and Tigole are the two notable changes.. and honestly, Tigole would have ruined the game if every expansion had been like vanilla endgame. He was way too focused on raiding being the only way to advance your character... which left the vast majority of players with nothing to do. The last year of vanilla was the worst time in the game unless you were in a raiding guild.. there was simply nothign at all to do to advance your character. . GC installed the heroic system with currencies that allows all players to advance their character (thus the crack addict aspect).
Tigole was also the quest designer for STV, and personally created the quest where you had to collect 28 different pages.. which probably will go down as one of the infamously worst quests in the game.
GC is not perfect, but he understands that players need viable ways to advance their characters in order for them to keep playing. He also is the one that really understood that players need to be able to make progress in smaller chunks of time. The reason people don´t raid isn´t because they lack skill, it is because they can´t devote 3 hours of scheduled time to a game.
It is correct that people need to advance their characters to keep playing, but GC's influence meant that the effort involved to advance characters became negligable, and that ruined the long term playability of the game through gear inflation, not to mention the utter balancing mess that was caused by the constant stat changes. GC had his hand in the most of the following:
- Skill not valued: Blizz say, if you cant beat content we will reduce the skill required in regular tranches. If you were spending weeks working hard on a boss and you either just complete it or dont kill it in time before nerf then tough. Thats what broke the spirit of many raiders over time, 3 hours a day was not a lot, and historically the least it has ever been in wow. You spend weeks working hard co-ordinating effort to kill a boss, you proudly get your rewards and a few weeks later the dungeon is nerfed and everyone picks up the same piece but with no effort (and that fact that WOW is utterly gear centric in the first place just aggravates this issue) In fact this ruined it for genuine casual players as well who could actually use the raid extensions to extent the raid to suit their timescales, lazy assed players under the guise of being 'casual/oh i dont have time to raid oh ill pretend to ignore the raid extensions wanted instant rewards with no effort, and blizz see them as the cash cow regardless of game integrity.
- Gear homogenisation (tier gear compulsary, all looks the same)
- Removing all recognition for 25 raiders
- Balancing issues - constant gear stat inflation
- recycling old content (agin)
I agree with most of what you said. I am particular critical of GC for the constant rule changes that basically require you to study wow in order ot remember how things work. For instance, haste has changed for so many different specs, that as an alt-aholic, even thought I spend a lot of time readin website, I still can´t remember what all it does for different specs... not because it is hard, but because GC changes it every 3 weeks for different specs. Now they are looking at expertise and hit for tanks... and honestly, I had expertise on my druid tank, even though apparently it doesn´t help at all. It used to eliminate parrys, which gave the boss a speed buff. So either I am well prepared for the upcoming change, or else I am wasting stats on a useless stat.. I wish he would spend more time making crafting and archeology more fun, and stop changing rulesets every few months.
But I disagree with you about the zone buff for LK. They gave the top guilds plenty of time to beat the encounter and show off. My guild beat him weeks before anyone else, and LONG before the casuals were doing it. But the final fight against the LK was the main encounter in the expansion.. there was nothing wrong with them dumbing it down the last few months so that everyone got to see it before the new expansion came out. I honestly don´t think it is fair that only a few guilds would get to see the climatic battle against the main boss of the expansion. It is just such an epic moment.
Recycling old content? Is it really old content? Naxx was old content... SFK and DM are certainly not old content. I don´t remember argyl pistal barraging me at the end of my early SFK runs?.. The maps are the same, some of the names of bosses and drops are the same, but the fight mechanisms are completely different. I honestly don´t recall eating rotten food at the end of DM or having to swing by a rope off of a burning ship. When they first started doing heroic dungeons.. a LOT of players begged for them to go back and redo early dungeons and make them heroic. Naxx is a different story, it was wasted content because so few people ever had a chance to see it. Onyxia was a quick anniversary present.. but SFK, DM, ZA and ZG are not recycled content... not even the maps are completely the same and the bosses and mechanisms are completely different.
Cataclysm as an expansion could have been a whole lot better in my opinion. The inconsistencies with some quests (Such as the really famous one in Barrens where the NPC asks if you were bitten by a Worgen even if you are a Worgen), the lack of any real notable presence from the new races (Worgen are almost non-existant in the game world and feel out of place), and the general "I've seen this before" mechanic of Cata raids. My quirks?
Lack of Race representation leaves players feeling out of place with the world. A lot more could be done for the Worgen that went beyond their starting zone.
One current raid and one upcoming raid features bosses that have already been in the game.
31 point talents are really subpar. Talents should be something you look forward to, not spending time wondering how you can work around them.
Tol Barad is too small and uninteresting once you've hit exalted, and unchanging enough that you really *want* to experience it once yoou've done it a few times.
The new PvP content is a duplicate of other Battlegrounds. Battle for Gilneas is just a re-skinned Arathi Basin for instance.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, but, that's my opinion anyway.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
Comments
I agree with most of what you said. I am particular critical of GC for the constant rule changes that basically require you to study wow in order ot remember how things work. For instance, haste has changed for so many different specs, that as an alt-aholic, even thought I spend a lot of time readin website, I still can´t remember what all it does for different specs... not because it is hard, but because GC changes it every 3 weeks for different specs. Now they are looking at expertise and hit for tanks... and honestly, I had expertise on my druid tank, even though apparently it doesn´t help at all. It used to eliminate parrys, which gave the boss a speed buff. So either I am well prepared for the upcoming change, or else I am wasting stats on a useless stat.. I wish he would spend more time making crafting and archeology more fun, and stop changing rulesets every few months.
But I disagree with you about the zone buff for LK. They gave the top guilds plenty of time to beat the encounter and show off. My guild beat him weeks before anyone else, and LONG before the casuals were doing it. But the final fight against the LK was the main encounter in the expansion.. there was nothing wrong with them dumbing it down the last few months so that everyone got to see it before the new expansion came out. I honestly don´t think it is fair that only a few guilds would get to see the climatic battle against the main boss of the expansion. It is just such an epic moment.
Recycling old content? Is it really old content? Naxx was old content... SFK and DM are certainly not old content. I don´t remember argyl pistal barraging me at the end of my early SFK runs?.. The maps are the same, some of the names of bosses and drops are the same, but the fight mechanisms are completely different. I honestly don´t recall eating rotten food at the end of DM or having to swing by a rope off of a burning ship. When they first started doing heroic dungeons.. a LOT of players begged for them to go back and redo early dungeons and make them heroic. Naxx is a different story, it was wasted content because so few people ever had a chance to see it. Onyxia was a quick anniversary present.. but SFK, DM, ZA and ZG are not recycled content... not even the maps are completely the same and the bosses and mechanisms are completely different.
Cataclysm as an expansion could have been a whole lot better in my opinion. The inconsistencies with some quests (Such as the really famous one in Barrens where the NPC asks if you were bitten by a Worgen even if you are a Worgen), the lack of any real notable presence from the new races (Worgen are almost non-existant in the game world and feel out of place), and the general "I've seen this before" mechanic of Cata raids. My quirks?
Lack of Race representation leaves players feeling out of place with the world. A lot more could be done for the Worgen that went beyond their starting zone.
One current raid and one upcoming raid features bosses that have already been in the game.
31 point talents are really subpar. Talents should be something you look forward to, not spending time wondering how you can work around them.
Tol Barad is too small and uninteresting once you've hit exalted, and unchanging enough that you really *want* to experience it once yoou've done it a few times.
The new PvP content is a duplicate of other Battlegrounds. Battle for Gilneas is just a re-skinned Arathi Basin for instance.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, but, that's my opinion anyway.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!