World of Warcraft: Current Year

counterpoint: oculus. In wrath, it was a fucking insanely hard dungeon and few lfd groups ever finished it. It became laughingly common for 3/4ths of the party to just drop the group when they ported into Oculus (this is all before it got nerfed hard to the ground). So, as an MMO designer, when you are faced with data that shows less than 10% completion rates for one of your dungeons, that most people just take a 30 min deserter buff at the beginning, etc what do you do? Hope people man up and get better (which didn't happen even after 6 months) or say fuck it, people want shitty 15 min McDungeons so I'll give it to them? Even now, I notice tons of people drop if they get the dungeon with the bugs and the hive at the start, not because its hard but because every other dungeon is ~12 mins and that one dungeon is maybe 18 mins. SIX MINUTES LONGER.

Remember, right now there are 9 challenge mode 5 mans (18 if you count silver/double), and I suspect 99% of the wow players haven't even TRIED a single one. Including almost every poster here.

spronk_sl said:

counterpoint: oculus. In wrath, it was a fucking insanely hard dungeon and few lfd groups ever finished it. It became laughingly common for 3/4ths of the party to just drop the group when they ported into Oculus (this is all before it got nerfed hard to the ground). So, as an MMO designer, when you are faced with data that shows less than 10% completion rates for one of your dungeons, that most people just take a 30 min deserter buff at the beginning, etc what do you do? Hope people man up and get better (which didn't happen even after 6 months) or say fuck it, people want shitty 15 min McDungeons so I'll give it to them? Even now, I notice tons of people drop if they get the dungeon with the bugs and the hive at the start, not because its hard but because every other dungeon is ~12 mins and that one dungeon is maybe 18 mins. SIX MINUTES LONGER.

Remember, right now there are 9 challenge mode 5 mans (18 if you count silver/double), and I suspect 99% of the wow players haven't even TRIED a single one. Including almost every poster here.

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siege, shado-pan and scholo are atrociously annoying to get when you want to get quick valor because they take assfucklong to complete. I disliked the same dungeons on challenge mode as well, because every attempt took a fairly long time

btw 27 gold split on 3 tanks, I figured there's bound to be a couple challenge players here

Dom_sl said:

It was within 24 fucking hours of it happening, of course I remembered it. I'm talking about nostalgia and the significance of shit staying with you, not something that fell within a timeframe that a goldfish could remember.

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In a years time I guarantee that you'll remember that during your first tour of MoP, you did you first dungeon, no-one talked until someone bitched about threat. You won't remember what dropped (I bet you don't even remember that now), you won't remember who started shit with who, and you might remember which zone it was, but won't remember which boss.

That's got ZERO to do with the game, and everything to do with the human behind the keyboard. By the time you've done that dungeon 20 odd times it'll blur, no matter how interesting or engaging the zone or the company you were keeping. It's natural to bleed out the tiny details over time, sometimes even minutes.

The difference you fail to recognise or accept is that "nostalgia" (the longing for the past), has bled out as well, you probably remember very select things about those experiences, but not all of them. Some of which will be good memories, some with be ones that make you rage, or feel guilty. You won't remember the minute by minute and spamming /who all zonenamehere when you waited for a group in EQ, or ran around in circles in Org reading Chuck Norris jokes in tradechat, that gets removed and only decent bits get remembered. When we see these new dungeons we look at them with a massive load of back story and experience, and the accumulated knowledge of hundreds if not thousands of dungeon runs. When I get into a heroic these days and nobody says a word and shit gets ploughed I thank my lucky stars I got a good group. The best groups I get are the silent ones that end with "gg everyone".

The Horde side Ony chain would be pretty easy to do these days with more flight points, more teleports, and flying mounts. It wouldn't be such a chore like it was way back. That's what makes it "nostalgic" because the original experience cannot be replicated. The current experience (even though it's gone completely), would be one of alot less frustration and time wasting. These are the things we've bitched about for years, and they have fixed a large majority of them. It's far from perfect, but it's a shit load better than it was.

Yes, we pushed our carts up hill, in the snow, both ways on a Sunday. Let the new generation think they've got it tough and we'll continue to chuckle about it.

Whatever happened to Rexxar anyway?

He's chilling in Outland.

Ukerric_sl said:

The problem with Resist Gear, and the backlash against it was that resist gear was 1) valuable only for its resist, 2) obtainable only by grinding trivial content (barring the very rare resist from world bosses).

At the time, there was no real alternative to do resist gear, but the WoW arsenal is a bit bigger, and you can nowadays design "resist gear". It's simple: add a conversion mechanism that let you convert gear to resist gear and back. And you have two such conversion mechanisms: enchantments and gems. Have your resistance gems be prismatic, and design specific gear with 3 yellow sockets (ok, not these days with MoP, where yellow is the new red for a lot of classes, due to double whammy on secondary gem stats). This gear is the new "resist gear". Lots of sockets for resistance (and less base stats). And if you're no longer raiding this? Put standard gems back in and you can still use it for the next tier (or replace the resists because we're moving from Fire resist needed to Disease resist this tier).

(of course, some people will complain that they "need" to swap gems between combat. Well, duh, bring two sets of gear like before?)

But I don't think Blizzard wants specialized gear anymore. They're more of in a +gooderer design rut...

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The players don't want resist gear anymore, not Blizzard. Resist gear is a gimmick that rarely goes over well for the exact reasons you just listed. I remember stacking up resist in EQ and thinking ok, so I have all this badass gear that I built up so that I could be viable on raids and here I am raiding with crafted resist gear shit that I am only going to wear for this fight. Sure, you could reforge, gem, whatever but when it comes straight down to it, it's just a time/gold sink to have to do that in preparation for that one encounter and then change back afterwards. AQ basically broke up a lot of top vanilla guilds because they said fuck this Nature resist is just about non existent without running the fuck out of Mauradon. At least the fire resist that BWL required could be easily rounded up without running boring and trivial content.

+gooderer, yeah it's not that interesting but MMOs with stat based gear have been at that point for a long time. It either has stats that you need or it doesn't. Blizzard just did us a favor and did away with gear that no one winds up wearing because the stats are all sorts of retarded for any class. Crafted helm anyone? My warrior needed that Charisma so bad because he was a troll and not that charismatic.

I kinda liked putting on my fire resist gear and wading into molten core packs.

I'd rather build up a resist set than do dailies and I agree repeatable content should only be for mounts / getting more gold.

Not sure what misconceptions I have pals and I'd rather play scores of old games (oh no bad graphics) over this new WoW raiding model.

At this point doesn't wow count as "oh no bad graphics?" Then again, I noticed last night that outside of Link, most of the new Zelda has worse graphics than wow...

So is Raiding a cakewalk now and can be done in a flash? I'm a dad now and I don't have time to be awesome. I need to roflstomp some demigods and feel like my dick is big, pronto.

Yep,mode called Looking for Raid now, in 15 minutes or less pretty much queues you up with 24 other people to kill 3-4 watered down bosses in the raid instances. Pretty much impossible to wipe, but hey at least you still see the fights sort of. Gear is obviously a step below normal loot you get from normal raid level.

So if I haven't played in over a year because of work and other RL committments, what is the best way to get back into the game? Just level to max and LFD/LFR my way through?

Dungeons are pretty much useless right now, justice point gear is a step down from what drops from the heroics and takes dozens of runs to farm one piece. In fact you will probably have what you need out of heroics before getting enough points for your first piece, though I rather just run scenarios. First thing I would do is get a group for Sha, its a world boss that spawns about every 10 minutes, pug/zerged down 2 minutes later, first kill will give you a quest item for epics boots. Then hit the AH buy few BoE epics and then run scenarios, faster queues dps and less chance of dealing with a shit group. On top of that you can get better loot than out of heroics.

Once you get 360 iLevel, start queuing up for LFR and doing a fuck ton of dallies.

Played till Cata, and I have to say that I found it funny how at the beginning people cheered that WoW wasn't as much of a grind. By Cata it was one pure daily grind... Anyone have an opinion on Panda? Anything compelling in the gameplay?

Ennya Dragonslayer_sl said:

By Cata it was one pure daily grind... Anyone have an opinion on Panda? Anything compelling in the gameplay?

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I would love MoP to have the daily grind of Cata, you can do something like 48 dallies a day in MoP.

Ukerric_sl said:

That's about it. Progression is:

- Get 90 (and flying)
- Do the Arena (Gurgthock) scenario for an ilvl 450 weapon
(if you use Polearms, do archeology to get the ilvl 463 polearm, if you use staves and have inscription, make an ilvl 476 staff)
- Do the Sha of Anger once for ilvl 476 boots
- Look at the AH for crafted ilvl 476 torso and wrists (I think). You need one or two reputations grind to craft these yourself.

then,

- Do random heroics and need on any piece for which you don't have 463 or better.
- Start doing dailies for the Golden Lotus. If you haven't found them, head to the Temple of the White Tiger north-east of Kun-Lai, and do the quest there to open the gate properly (I had a number of guild members who managed to get into town and all that, but never opened the gates)
- Do the Sha of Anger weekly for a 20% chance of a 483 (soon to be nerfed to 476) pvp item or 496 class set item.

then, once the LFR opens up at ilvl 460

- Queue for Mogushan Vaults

then, once the next LFR opens up at ilvl 470

- Queue for Heart of Fear and Endless Spring

meanwhile,

- Continue doing Golden Lotus dailies until revered
- Do random heroics or random scenarios to fill up your VP
- Finish all the quests in Dread Wastes
- Once you've finished Golden Lotus, start doing one or two (or, if you can stomach them, all three) of Klaxxi, Shado-Pan or August Celestials to revered
- Optionally, raise Golden Lotus to exalted for an ilvl 489 ring
- Optionally, raise Klaxxi to exalted for an ilvl 489 neck

Of course, your best option, when you're about to enter LFR is:

- Get in a mid-range raiding guild, raid once/twice weekly the Vaults, Heart and Terrace, and forget about LFR, LFD, dailies, and spend your valor to upgrade your raid loot

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Don't forget to run shieldwall/dominance offensive dailies for higher ilvl valor items. From honored -> revered you get 496 rings, boots and I think belts.

Also, scenarios now have a potential to drop 476 loot, but I have no idea what the chance for that is

I must be the only person who truly hates the Scenarios. I had expected to really like them, but they seem to be more effort than running a dungeon but with less reward.