I, too, enjoyed the AQ event. I'm not a Scarab Lord, nor was I in a progression guild at the time (in-between phase for me, going from top guild on server (Critical Mass) to second-best (Death Jesters)) but I spent hours and hours farming and helping to open the gates and witness the event. Not butt hurt at all, I personally think that kind of content is excellent and is lacking. Individuality should be something that exists, even if it takes 'the whole server' to make one person an individual. It's the community effort that is the reward. I don't think I ever saw so many people in a video game working towards the same goal. I don't think a bug in Silithus lived for more than 10-15s before it was dead during the grind and to me, that was impressive.
World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
I really truly hope you do not develop games. Killing bugs in silithus for weeks was not exactly my idea of content.
McCheese
SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
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Well put. I think you explain the super casual player's feelings towards the event well, whereas LadyVex is explaining the Progression Guild Players' feelings. Both are valid, of course; it just depends on which group you fall into.
As a super casual player at the time I really enjoyed the AQ event. I didn't raidat all, let alone bleeding edge progression raiding, so for me the event was just a really cool, world-changing experiencing. I didn't give a shit if the zone opened or not because I knew I wouldn't be there any time soon. I loved seeing Orgrimmar gradually fill up with supplies and the NPC soldiers patroling through the streets in preparation for the war. It was one of the few times in my on-and-off years of playing WoW that I actually felt like I was in aworldand not just a game. Like Noodleface, I turned in tons of materials because (if I remember correctly) you got various mediocre item rewards for doing it, and some of them were actual upgrades for my non-raiding self.
I completely understand a raider not enjoying the event, but for the casuals it was a cool experience, even if ultimately somewhat meaningless.
But that was just a small part of the overall event. There was a ton of content associated with the opening of the gate, and one of the most involved questlines the game has to offer. I love my Black Qiraji Battletank, and its still my primary land mount to this day.
A quest line that only one person on every server got to do when it was relevant. The only reason Blizzard never stopped that back then was because people would do the questline, transfer to another server, and get the mount. At 25 bucks a pop, THAT'S what led to that content. (And the ability to continue tuning the raid content while you made every server open the fucking gates.)
spronk
FPS noob
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what really, really, really sucked about the aq event was that years later, for a few brief short weeks, anyone could complete a scepter and turn it in for full credit and mount. I'm not talking about doing it on new servers either, there was a 4-8 week window where anyone could grind out the rep soloing AQ40, do the quest chain, and get the mount. Someone then posted it on the blizzard forums and within like 3 days they hotfixed it
Even then, soon after MOP launched there was a way to xfer level 10s with the mount to new accounts and get the mount, so people were ebaying new scepter/alar/firehawk accounts for like $100.
So if you see someone on the bug mount, there is a good chance they didn't even get it legit.
So if you see someone on the bug mount, there is a good chance they didn't even get it legit.
Dalien
Registered Hodor
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This sounds awfully familiar, were you on Lightbringer by any chance? Just wondering if we may have been in the same guild at the time, heh (I was the mage chosen for my guild because of the Cenarion Circle thing, 2nd guild on the server had a human going for them also, we did contests with MC/BWL loot runs as a reward, etc.)
It was an insane grind collecting all the chitin stuff, and then doing all the war effort turnins. It was made worse on our server because Horde decided to give no fucks, so after we finished the Alliance turnins we had to spend a couple weeks farming all the Horde stuff and funneling it over with the neutral AH. Days were spent running between that mailbox and the turnin NPCs in Org.
Grinding aside, the actual scepter quest line was really fucking good and I wish they hadn't taken it out. It was full of interesting humor and lore, and had some good skill checks like the BWL speed clear. The major flaw being that it definitely took a guild effort to complete and only one person got rewarded at the end of it. In my case I'd say at least half of my guild deserved the mount and title for how much effort they put in. If they were to put a quest like this in the game again (spoiler alert: they won't), they would need to make sure that everyone who put in a certain amount of effort would get the end reward.
LachiusTZ
Rogue Deathwalker Box
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Flipmode
EQOA Refugee
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Well most PVP servers are like that anyways. But WoW is like that all the damned time. To be fair, almost every game is like this these days since reputation no longer matter. Bunch of anonymous douche bags with ADHD and no reason to be civil in the least.
I could totally say the same thing, but I won't resort to character attacks to reinforce my point.
You apparently missed the part about the community effort being the reward. You know, getting groups of players together that normally wouldn't associate in a friendly way (hello competing progression guilds cooperating to funnel mats into the war effort) to associate and work towards a common goal was by far the most outstanding part of that event. So what that the title was unique to the person who rung the gong? It's a title. It's not like it conferred advantages to the player that no one else could get. The mount, I agree with many before, shouldn't have been tied to the gong; that could've been the 'community' reward for people who participated in working towards the end-goal.
As for your comment about that questline being done by one person: If that's what you believe, any raid quest ever (Legendary items included) are done by one person, even if the guild participated in getting it. Did you enjoy farming Ulduar so one healer could get a mace 2-3 months in? One. Not multiple. One. By your definition, this is stupid. A guild (read: community) effort resulting in one player getting something. By the time most guilds completed their first Val'anyr, ToC was kicking off or about to and, while Val'anyr was still BiS for some healer specs up until ICC heroic gear, it wasn't the biggest bang for time spent in comparison to ToGC gear. The same could be said for any legendary prior to Mists, that it took a guild effort to get an item for one player that quickly outlived it's usefulness (with TF being the exception, it lasted until Kara weapons!) and typically by the time you completed one, the next content cycle was out and you were farming irrelevant content for it.
First of all, I wasn't on Lightbringer. We were on Elune.
Second of all; legendary quests are completely different, because it was ONE PER RAID GROUP, not ONE PER SERVER. I should also mention that to this day it is still possible to get; in fact, correct me if I am wrong but the only legendary you can no longer obtain is Atiesh. It was also loot that gets upgraded eventually; that never happens with that mount. Everything to do with the legendary Ulduar mace was based on an instanced group, and NOT on an entire server farming to do it. Raiders could have opened the AQ gates without casuals; casuals could not have done the same.
Honestly, I'm sorry if you feel that was a dig, but it's true. If you can't understand the difference between a once per raid group and a once per fucking server, with 24 other people helping on the former and several hundred helping on the latter, than yes. I am very happy you are not designing raid content for a massively multiplayer game.
The issue isn't even that it's no longer obtainable, or how rare it was. It would have been nice to have certainly, and yea I want it, but it's not a huge deal. I do collect shit tons of pets and mounts so this is prodding me in my OCD, but I'm not fussed by it.
The major point is that the majority of raiders did very similar work; our mage had a bit more responsibility. He had to be online to loot things and receive things etc, and he also did rep grinding. But there were *a lot* of us who did relatively the same amount of work for jack all. On an instance the should have been immediately able to be zoned into!
Dalien
Registered Hodor
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To be fair, the AQ scepter quest was one per raid group, not one per server also. In hindsight there were probably 5-10 guilds that could have championed someone and had a scepter ready before we finished turning in war supplies and hit the gong. We had 3 people get it on my server, one of them being a dude who pretty much grinded out all the scarab chitins himself, with occasional help from a couple pals (which he then he got his guild to help him finish all the raid parts). The only difference really between this and a legendary quest is that there was only a 24 hour window to turn the quest in.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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I wasn't super-casual though.. I was in a bleeding-edge guild. I was a core raider that played 7 days a week (shitty life at the time).
I don't know, I just really enjoyed it. LadyVex just seems especially venomous about the ordeal.
I bolded that part for you. You must have forgotten you said that, but to make the statement " I should also mention that to this day it is still possible to get" after bringing in relevance is moot. None of the legendary weapons are relevant anymore, by a long shot. Dalien nailed it on the head for you; there was nothing stopping a person from completing a scepter themselves after getting a Head from BWL (which, after the first one went out to the 'dedicated' person, was free roll lolol~). On Stormrage, I think we had 5-6 Scarab Lords by the end of it all. Had we not rushed the gates open trying to be one of the first servers to do so, we could've had 20-30+ people get the title.
And I'm glad I'm not designing MMO content, thank you very much. I'd hate to have to pander to players like you're asking for.
gogusrl
Molten Core Raider
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Not sure why you bother, in her (not another shemale i hope) Dumar like rage she seems to have forgotten the fact that no one fucking knew what the reward was or how the whole opening the gates event worked until the first server did it and you got to read about it on the forums.
I was guild leader (Eredar horde) at the time of the event and without knowing what the rewards were (or the fact that they were unique) I passed on the opportunity because I didn't wanna grind all that crap. We managed to beat the main alliance guild to the race and I think it was us on horde and 2 guys on alliance to get it.
edit : holy crap, I found the guyhttp://www.wowwiki.com/List_of_scept...ders_by_server
I was guild leader (Eredar horde) at the time of the event and without knowing what the rewards were (or the fact that they were unique) I passed on the opportunity because I didn't wanna grind all that crap. We managed to beat the main alliance guild to the race and I think it was us on horde and 2 guys on alliance to get it.
edit : holy crap, I found the guyhttp://www.wowwiki.com/List_of_scept...ders_by_server
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What was your character name? Cause Critical Mass and Da'kor were the top two guilds and i was in both.
Kuro
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Testing is still being done on Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker as an offhand for Brewmaster Monks on high-physical damage bosses. It was pointless last expansion, when all tanks applied the Attack Speed reduction debuff that Thunderfury applies (Which was a direct stacking change put in place to get people to stop using Thunderfury, because with the introduction of Vengeance making ERMAHGERDPERFECTHREATFOREVER in Cata, there was scuttlebutt about using Thunderfury again), but that debuff was removed from the tank player abilities in MoP, so Thunderfury is back to being the unique source of high-uptime 20% boss attack-speed reduction. The only reason it's something "on the table" though, is because all of Monk's attacks scale off of your *mainhand* weapon, so sticking this rinky-dink outdated weapon in your offhand essentially means a small sacrifice in White DPS, and some stats, for a currently un-matched reduction in boss DPS. Monk bypasses the massive threat-loss a normal tank would take from equipping the weapon, becuase Monk sticks it in an ancillary slot for determining damage/threat output of abilities.
The problem with testing is, of course, monk being a new class, there's a very small set of players who actually have Thunderfury (or who even thought to go farming for it), and of that set, an even smaller number that have thought of using it/checked online discussion on it. I've been making sure to hit up MC every week since MOP came out and still only have the one binding.
Dual-wield tanking itself has some issues right now, due to bugs. The Healy-Balls Proc rate on dual-wielding is half of what it should be, so that's a direct impact to survivability for dual wielding *anything*, however that should hopefully be fixed at some point.
The value of Thunderfury is notedly higher in a single-boss, tank-swap fight, since it lets you contribute to mitigation when you are not the active tank (which, along with Ox Statue Guards, tends to make for happy healers with a Monk offtank). Coincidentally, that's what most of the fights this tier are.
It's also mildly bullshit that there is one class/spec that *might* be able to wield their old sweet looking Legendary.... and it's the one class you never see their weapons.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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