World of Warcraft: Current Year

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MattEnth_sl

shitlord
27
0
I'd say that Cata's heroics wereslightlytoo hard, if only because there was no way to gear up for them. It was a loop of "to get geared enough to do heroics effectively, do more heroics." They needed some real 85 normal-modes if they wanted to keep them that difficult, or at least some way of progressing and gearing up. This all loops back into "there was a lack of content at max level."

If you haven't done challenge modes...Challenge Modes are amazing. I was very skeptical at first because "who wants to wipe in a 5 man for hours on end for no real gear?" But I'd say that they have been some of the most fun I've had in WoW, period. The harder ones (Brewery, Monastery) give you quite a rush, and executing complex group-mechanics well is extremely rewarding. Even with all of the guides out there, there's still an element of "figuring it out" for your group comp.

At this point, I honestly hope that they don't give more rewards to challenge modes and keep them as brutal as they are. If they start giving tons of rewards to them, then they'll start getting pressure to "balance Challenge Modes" and "nerf them" for the casual crowd - both of which would be huge mistakes. In my opinion, the rewards now are fairly compelling - the teleports are insanely useful, and the gear is pretty nice.
 

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
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Eeeentadasting:

MMO-Champion_sl said:
  • An item level squish is likely for the next expansion and is already being tested internally.
  • The team size has increased 40% and another 40% increase is planned, which will hopefully allow for a new content patch every month, a new raid tier every three to five months, and an annual expansion.
 

kudos

<Banned>
2,363
695
MoP didn't even get a whole pvp zone. It was just an expansion of grinding dailies and boring raid content with a shitty Asian theme. Pandas still look dumb.

To clarify, the moba pvp zone basically got cancelled because blizzard fucking sucks.
 

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
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rrr_img_41578.jpg


And just like that the thread quality improved 80%.
 

spronk

FPS noob
23,353
27,212
if thats true they must be really worried about wow retention rates and competition. all good things for gamers though, a content patch every month and an annual xpac would probably bring me back for a while. definitely not what I've seen of 5.4 on mmo-champ though, boring stuff
 

Toxxulian_sl

shitlord
227
0
Really? 5.4 looks boring for you?

I dunno, SOO looks fantastic, lots of bosses, great looking raid encounters, etc. Timeless Isle is going to be something we've never seen before, a more free formed experience similar to GW2.

This is (for me at least) one of the greatest looking patches of content we've seen in a long time. Lots of great changes and some really cool additions. The only issue I could see is depending on how long the next xpac is out we could be looking at another ICC (12 months of content) but i'm confident that they learned from the last time they did that, and considering all the raiding content this xpac has been released at a great rate I don't see a reason to doubt them.
 

Juvarisx

Florida
3,888
4,089
Considering how hard my raid team had to work on Lei Shen heroic, I have high expectations for Garrosh 25 heroic, which has not and will not be put on public PTR. Blizzard has done a very good job adding a small tweak or a minor mechanic to fights to make them ridiculously harder and very different rather then heroic = more hp type encounters. While Ra'den might have not lived up to expectations (it was a bug that they just let go in the interest of being fair to raiders), I saw what they tried to do and it would have been a lot harder then Lei Shen was. I think Dark Animus is the best example I can think of when it comes to the above, it being active from the start makes that fight SO much different and harder.
 

SimSimSalabim

Molten Core Raider
874
351
The only issue I could see is depending on how long the next xpac is out we could be looking at another ICC (12 months of content) but i'm confident that they learned from the last time they did that, and considering all the raiding content this xpac has been released at a great rate I don't see a reason to doubt them.
They learned their lesson so well that they repeated the exact same thing with Dragon Soul.

Considering how hard my raid team had to work on Lei Shen heroic, I have high expectations for Garrosh 25 heroic, which has not and will not be put on public PTR.
I too want to be optimistic about H.Garrosh, but I have to wait and see because last expansion they hit the jackpot with H.Ragnaros, then followed up with a Deathwing encounter that, while amazing visually, was far from memorable mechanically and a pretty 'meh' fight for an end expansion boss.
 

Tmac

Adventurer
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
9,975
16,997
So, I bit the bullet and got a 12 day free trial for MoP.

I logged onto my lvl 80 Deathknight, hovered around Stormwind for about 15 minutes and never logged back in.

There was none of the nostalgia that I expected. It actually felt bad logging in and all I could think of was 6 months of leveling & grinding raid gear with people I don't know, which actually made me feel sick.

Anyone else had this experience?
 
Probably because time trials are awesome.

Oh no wait, the other thing... tedious.
it has more to do with the fact that once you did them on Gold on got your gear and free teleports theres no reason to go back to them safe on another char but MoP wasn't very alt friendly until recently


It was just an expansion of grinding dailies and boring raid content with a shitty Asian theme..
the raid content is extremely well done this expansion if you do normals/heroics, LFR is as braindead as you expect it to be for 25 strangers
 

Ashin

Silver Knight of the Realm
190
46
They need to fix the hp and damage scaling, it just looks retarded with your spells hitting for 100k
 

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
17,087
13,610
Except when you solo old raids. I lol'd when I was able to one-shot some Molten Core bosses with Touch of Death on my monk ;P
 

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
5,918
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They need to fix the hp and damage scaling, it just looks retarded with your spells hitting for 100k
Not 10 posts above yours did I quote them saying they're internally testing item squish for the next expansion. Welcome to the forum.

Except when you solo old raids. I lol'd when I was able to one-shot some Molten Core bosses with Touch of Death on my monk ;P
They said they'd disable the squish or whatever when you zone into old raids.
 

RJ77_sl

shitlord
4
0
So, I bit the bullet and got a 12 day free trial for MoP.

I logged onto my lvl 80 Deathknight, hovered around Stormwind for about 15 minutes and never logged back in.

There was none of the nostalgia that I expected. It actually felt bad logging in and all I could think of was 6 months of leveling & grinding raid gear with people I don't know, which actually made me feel sick.

Anyone else had this experience?
Not sure how much nostalgia you were expecting from only hovering around Stormwind for 15 minutes. But if you're only level 80, then you have 2 full xpacs worth of content to experience. Might as well start running the cata quests and dungeons and see if you like it.
 

Ashin

Silver Knight of the Realm
190
46
Dandai;339810 said:
Not 10 posts above yours did I quote them saying they're internally testing item squish for the next expansion. Welcome to the forum.

Thanks. Mmm but I don't really trust them (lol), as if I remember correctly they said something along the same lines before Cataclysm was released. And well, that didn't turn out great in that regard.
 

DavivMcD

Peasant
404
37
I don't remember them specifically mentioning ilvl squish before Cata at all, just a vague acknowledgement about number inflation and a response of "We're looking into possible solutions."

Before MoP they gave the big blog post of the 2 most likely solutions: ilvl squish and MEGADAMAGE, but they said MoP was too far along in development and whatever solution they decided on would have to be implemented in 6.0 at the earliest.
 

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,003
714
It seems like they could just do a divide by ten type of thing for the presentation layer... but I'm no programmer so that might be all kinds of retarded performance wise. It would be nice to not be ilvl 750 and aiming for 400kdps next expansion though.
 

Dandai

<WoW Guild Officer>
<Gold Donor>
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In one of the interviews they said they would like the ilevel to be closer to the usable level (which I assume means level 88 quest gear will be ilevel 86-88 or something, maybe one or two levels added per raid tier - who knows?).
 

MattEnth_sl

shitlord
27
0
The only issue I could see is depending on how long the next xpac is out we could be looking at another ICC (12 months of content) but i'm confident that they learned from the last time they did that, and considering all the raiding content this xpac has been released at a great rate I don't see a reason to doubt them.
I think it's actually pretty easy to speculate that the next WoW expansion is Q2 2014, so you're looking at 8-10 months between raids.

It's basically a "given" that BlizzCon is going to feature the next WoW expansion. They don't have any other surprises left up their sleeve (though it has been a long while since we've seen Blizzard All Stars in public). With a reveal in November, it seems likely that everyone will know the patch 5.4 storyline, and thus it makes sense for Blizzard to start talking about the transition into the next expansion. I'm also going to guess that BlizzCon attendees get automatic beta access in their goodie bags, with the beta starting shortly after.

Activision-Blizzard is going to want a strong Q2 title next year. Legacy of the Void would be too soon. Hearthstone will already be out. Diablo 3 expansionshouldalready have been released (some news coming out that they're aiming by years end? maybe another annual pass deal?). Blizzard All Stars is free to play and won't make the splash that they want.