World of Warcraft: Current Year

malaki_sl said:

My point about combat mechanics is that they've added a few dimensions to make rotations more challenging, and even require more thought than just your normal damage rotation to defeat an encounter. Purely a positive for the modern game, I agree it's better than hogger.

But if I was making a new game, I would slow down the pace, increase the grind in a challenging way, and generally bring back the sense that leveling is difficult rather than an entitlement. Nobody plays to level anymore, they level to play; I think that's a problem with the genre.

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Some really good stuff in this post.

Hybrids, are exceedingly good at the leveling game because of their massive array of tools to deal with situations. You mentioned you popped Ascendance to kill some triples, if you had not have done that, would things gone for the worse? Nobody likes corpse runs, and giving skilled players the option of beating an encounter by using the right tool at the right time to prevent deaths?

I killed Hogger solo on a paladin at level 11. Sure, I had to pop every single one (lol 3) of my cooldowns and a potion to do it, but it was possible. I remember soloing General Angerforge in BRD on my 60 warrior for the trinket. Big fucking deal, it's been done countless times before, and greater skilled players than I have done far better. As to no equivalent in MoP, I'd get cheeky and say the hidden daily for the Klaxxi that requires two people to summon the boss. It's impossible to solo that, only due to the fact you can't be in two places at once. =D

Mobs respawning before you can clear 3 in a cave system sounds more like a problem, or a feature of the emu you were playing, in vanilla that shit didn't happen. You could walk from one end of the Dead Mines to the other without seeing a respawn during primetime a few months after release. The most barren of cave systems never had that problem either. Back then, there was no scaling of respawn times (not until TBC).

Questing speed, it's one of those things you need to look at from everyones perspective. At release, questing speed was perfect, we didn't know the end game, and we were enjoying the experience. The second and third times we leveled that same content we knew what to do, where to go, some of us even bought (lol, pirated) leveling guides to make it faster. It became a chore, because we knew what the end game was and why we wanted to get there. I played a rogue on a barren server that I knew no-one on until the mid thirties and the game felt like a frontier survival game. Trying to scrap cash together for bags, Fiery enchants, traveling half the known world to get all the pre-quests done so I could get the uber swords from Razorfen Downs and Scarlet Monastery. Good times, and I think of them fondly, but I don't wish for them to revert all the changes to go back to the system. There's other games out there that will cater to this, at least until you repeat the cycle of knowing the score and it becomes old hat again.

The game has and always will be "the game begins at 60". Although, every one of us would wish the "the game begins at level 1 and ramps up to fucking awesome at 60" instead. So the observation that people level to play is 100% accurate, it's also how the game was designed from day 1,vanilla. The lower levels have been dropped in XP requirement, quests give more xp, the gear is better (anyone remember cloth belts with agi and str on them?) and it all aids in leveling speed. For those of us with heirlooms and RAF accounts, shit is fast and furious, so if we want to play a shadow priest this season, we don't need to spend a shitload of time getting there, we've already seen it.

The only thing I miss about early WoW was that I was coming from EQ when I did it. Killing some random ass mob out in the middle of nowhere and it dropping an upgrade fucking floored me. "Wait...that wasn't a rare...and it dropped something useful? THE FUCK."

Hah, that's great.

Seananigans_sl said:

This is 100% untrue. In Vanilla there were plenty of areas or situations where you would move quickly through an area and still be met with respawns on your way out. In fact no time in my WoW career have I noted an absolute "fix" to this. Still occasionally I'll come across a respawn rate that seems wonky.

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The respawn rate has ALWAYS been dependent on the amount of people in the area.

homer2324_sl said:

The respawn rate has ALWAYS been dependent on the amount of people in the area.

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This. That's why whenever a xpac launches, the intro zones seems to have instant respawn on everything.

The respawn rates were iffy at times. There were plenty of places like one of the loch modan islands that would have instant respawning crocs, even if you were the only person in the zone.

Sabbat_sl said:

Jade Forest in MoP was pretty cruisy, by the time I hit Townlong Steppes, shit started to hit hard, real hard -- and pulling more than 2 meant cooldowns had to be used to prevent a death (depending on class and spec), my Blood DK just gives no fucks and pulls everything, my Arms warrior the same, my rogue had to be selective, and my warlock had to have the right pet out for the task.

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Were you fighting naked? As a shadow priest I could chain pull non stop in a mixture of heroic and regular Cata gear during the entire leveling process and I never once came close to dying. Every phase of PvE in this game pre heroic raid encounters is laughably easy.

I dunno, I felt like when my DK was frost, he'd get beat up pretty badly as time went on in MoP. Blood, yeah, no sweat. I never died but I felt like I had to at least pay attention if I was frost. Blood was watch porn time.

My Ret seemed to cruise as did my lock though. I typically went affliction and mowed mobs down while using a blueberry.

Yeah. Leveling ret is pretty much seal of light/pull zone/hotr. I wish I would have taken my time leveling though. Pounded through 85-90 in early December. And now it's almost February. In full 496+ gear all reps done, most battle pet achievements, and really can't find a reason to log in except for mount farming on Tuesday :/. My own damn fault I know though. There's plenty of content and I crushed it all too early. Guess it's just time to wait for 5.2

I agree with the post about 'leveling to play'. It feels like they want to encourage (or force) you to daily grind when you reach 90 and I can't stand that. I've done enough questing to get to 90, and 87/88 on a couple other characters, to not have to ever do a quest again. I know the quests are mostly designed to level/time sink but reaching 90 and having to do more questing (dailies) to be able to unlock loot that I have to buy with badges sucks. I'm not saying throwing a tabard on and dungeon grinding is better, but I think it is. It's a two birds with one stone thing for me as I can gear out for both specs and earn rep (play with guildies etc). Either way, I'm bored with questing.

My only guess is they wanted to implement a time sink? None of that sounds sensible in the typical WoW model. Either way, I'm enjoying my monk enough to level it but once I get it to 90, I'm not sure what I'll do or if I'll keep playing. What is the timetable for 5.2?

meko_sl said:

My only guess is they wanted to implement a time sink? None of that sounds sensible in the typical WoW model. Either way, I'm enjoying my monk enough to level it but once I get it to 90, I'm not sure what I'll do or if I'll keep playing. What is the timetable for 5.2?

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PTR bosses are just starting and there are still only 28 US 25 mans that have cleared the content. It's not something right around the corner but I also wouldn't imagine it's incredibly far off. I would guess late March but that is 100% pure speculation on around a 6-8 week PTR time span from past PTRs.

I'm enjoying going back and getting all the achieves and shit I missed out in cata and wrath. Just finished glory of the firelands this week after 3-4 runs, doing glory of cata and dragonsoul now. Its great with multiple 90s since you can knock out different parts of the meta. The only legendary I have is thunderfury from soloing MC for weeks, mulling over getting them all - firelands is tough, just getting 25 eternal embers is a bitch when pugging stuff. I wonder how much of the Lich king axe legendary can be solo'd, the infusions are going to be a bitch. That should be Sam Deathwalkers goal, getting every legendary by himself.

leveling battle pets is a lot easier once you have a good stable of 25s, you can go do all the daily pet battles in pandaria and level a pet from 10-25 using 2 ringers. The shitty thing is figuring out which combo of pets against each trainer, if you use the Pet Battle Teams mod you can setup a different team for each one and never be forced to look it up on wowhead again.

taimaishoo_sl said:

Were you fighting naked? As a shadow priest I could chain pull non stop in a mixture of heroic and regular Cata gear during the entire leveling process and I never once came close to dying. Every phase of PvE in this game pre heroic raid encounters is laughably easy.

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Getting all gold on challenge modes is at a pretty good difficulty level before you get heroic raids.

I really wish WoW had another sub option, like pay by the hour or let you buy a block of hours. I know if I broke down got MoP & subbed for a month I'd blitz through stuff for a couple of weeks then not even think to touch it for a good long while. I would be okay with that if I just could buy the Expac & get a couple weeks of free time. But that extra for the sub makes it cost more than it's worth to me.

Obviously some F2P option would be even better but they are a long way from needing such a thing, though I still think they could probably make more money with a system similar to GW2's.