World of Warcraft: Current Year

Dandai_sl said:

Ghostcrawler's stated reason for no player housing was that players tend to hang out in their house instead of in public areas in games with player housing. He said an empty Stormwind/Orgrimmar wasn't conducive to an epic mmo community feeling.

Clearly the winds have changed on that philosophy, so I wouldn't be shocked if we got guild houses at some point (maybe even this expac).

Click to expand...

If Farmville is what it takes to get people in that 3d chatroom, so be it!

The problem with garrison is that there isn't much of a reason to leave it aside from raids because you know you'll need to go back in 12 hours to do your daily chores there so might as well just log off in front of the missions table. I rarely ever go to ashran, and even my hearth is still in pandaria because for some reason all of the city portals are still in shrine. I really am not a fan of WoD's garrisonville in general, and I feel like most players barely leave theirs because ther's not much to do in draenor once you hit cap.

That's the problem with creating zones just for leveling. Even the extra dailt areas give shit rewards and are boring.

Tol_sl said:

The problem with garrison is that there's very little reason to leave it aside from raids because you know you'll need to go back in 12 hours to do your daily chores there so might as well just log off in front of the missions table. I have very little reason to ever go to ashran, and even my hearth is still in pandaria because for some reason all of the city portals are still in shrine. I really am not a fan of WoD's garrisonville in general, and I feel like most players barely leave theirs because there is so little to do in draenor once you hit cap.

Click to expand...

I think that's a problem with the fact that there's no content that's really rewarding besides raids. I mean, not saying any particular way is strictly superior, but compare to the AC/Diablo model of 'run out and murder shit for random drop loot'... in that paradigm you are always out in the world because that's literally where everything is.

On the topic of brewmasters - we are in fact ridiculously strong now, especially if you stack up on mastery. I would say that we are so strong that all other tanks pale in comparison, mainly because there are so many abilities that you can stagger, but you can't block, dodge or parry. I can take maybe 5 stacks on Kromog by myself without dying, unless I play like a dumbass and get gibbed. Obviously not ideal but I pretty much solotanked it on normal mode for shits and giggles.

We will for sure see a nerf right after progression has ended for maybe 5-6 guilds. Like, give it a week or two after 6.1 and suddenly you'll see the stagger buff reverted or something similar

Garrisons should have been guild content, as it would've been a really good feature for the game if properly fleshed out. Give us a huge castle to play around with to be honest. But WoW is a single player game though, so it needs to cater to the utmost casual.

Second tank died with Gruul at 45%, I solo tanked it until the end thanks to a rampage phase where I could reset the stacks. Monk is (and always was) in a very good spot and high mobility helps a ton when I doze through fights and wake up because I have to position quickly.
On the other hand, I'm fucking bored by WoD already... I don't think I'll finish BRF, after 2 bosses I was falling asleep. Maybe I'm just sick of this "raid or nothing" gameplay. Garrisons could hold my interest for 3 or 4 weeks, after that? Snorefest.

It was good fun until it lasted, too bad it lasts less and less with each xpack.

The common complaint from my friends is no interesting/challenging solo content. They're well-aware of what WoW is and what MMOs are all about; they're just dissipointed that they either raid on schedule with a guild or PUG.

I wish Bliz would hurry up with a Timeless Isle 2.0 -- I feel like that's the answer we need for a lot of people.

Tol_sl said:

The problem with garrison is that there isn't much of a reason to leave it aside from raids because you know you'll need to go back in 12 hours to do your daily chores there so might as well just log off in front of the missions table. I rarely ever go to ashran, and even my hearth is still in pandaria because for some reason all of the city portals are still in shrine. I really am not a fan of WoD's garrisonville in general, and I feel like most players barely leave theirs because ther's not much to do in draenor once you hit cap.

Click to expand...

It is interesting as this is the first expansion I have had almost no reason to ever go back to the main capitol cities. The love is in the air stuff is the first time I went back to stormwind with any of my level 100s since WOD was released.

The answer for casuals and semi casuals alike is to really open LFR with no locks and just stick a shit load of gear on it and make it like Diablo 3. Farm and farm until your heart is content and try to get some wacky combinations. Maybe even stick a rare possibility for higher ilevel gear (not mythic) and put out some wacky combinations where the stats might actually be really good stuff.

I don't really see how that would upset any balance and it'll give people something to do when they aren't raiding.

Right now I log in and check the Garrison stuff and then log out. I don't even necessarily do that more than a couple times a week because there is nothing else to do after killing Rukhmar each week. I don't have the time to futz around with PUG raids since it takes a freakishly long time to set those up and get to the first boss only to wipe and disband and the LFR content has absolutely nothing I can use. At least in the MoP era I did daily dungeons, daily quests, and looked forward to clearing the LFR each week because there was a decent chance at a set piece or some sort of upgrade that I could make use of...not so in the current game.

I'm not even really sure at this point what the hell is the point of 6.1. It doesn't add any new Garrison Campaign stuff, it doesn't open a new zone nor a new raid. The only actual content I can see that it includes is the option to have summonable boss mobs attack your Garrison. Cool concept but since everyone on my friends list is similarly only logging in very rarely the chances of seeing people on to do said content is minimal.

Eidal_sl said:

The common complaint from my friends is no interesting/challenging solo content. They're well-aware of what WoW is and what MMOs are all about; they're just dissipointed that they either raid on schedule with a guild or PUG.

I wish Bliz would hurry up with a Timeless Isle 2.0 -- I feel like that's the answer we need for a lot of people.

Click to expand...

Timeless isle was boring for me, but I guess some people liked it. It had a bit of a lottery feeling with chests/nameds for 496 alt-friendly upgrades and it wasn't trivial mindless grinding, so it had something worth mentioning.

They did several mistakes in WoD (in my opinion): remove any form of challenge whatsoever from old raids, so instead of providing alternative content for soloers or small groups of friends, they made everything zergable up to and including cataclysm stuff. Making heroic dungeons pointless so easily and so quickly, the fact that my slaves in the garrison can bring me better gear than challenge mode runs give when completed, the segregation of the population in solo instances (garrisons), the removal of scenarios MoP style for multidps groups without tanks and healers, several decisions in game design that are frankly horrible (let's say at least debatable in several examples) such as healers mana management, in some cases excessive pruning of skills, neutering some mechanics that made certain classes more interesting to play (atonement) and so on and so forth.

Interesting and challenging solo content doesn't exist (anymore) and cannot be implemented, because the vast and I mean vast majority of the population can't solo its way out of a wet paper bag. I used to be an amazing solo hunter (self esteem inflation, sorry for this), even if several people in the world were way better than me, I nonetheless scored a couple kills (at level 80 most of them) that few people could do, for example Kael'Thas at 80 and Yogg'saron at 85 (never got Alone in the Dark solo tho, I think only a couple hunters made that). In the end nobody really cared, because it was working around old raids mechanics and loot was basically some gold and useless items, also it was so frustrating to learn the hows and whens that having the patience to do it over and over wasn't the cup of tea that could be served to the general population of an MMO and sell it as solo content.
Add to this that some classes are just solo gods, while others are pretty much shit. Without disturbing exceptional players like Mione, I bet that any of you can solo shit a lot easier on a blood dk rather than on a mage or a priest, am I right?

A good metric was the green fire quest in MoP: my lock has the title Of the Harvest and it took me a lot of tries (I mean a lot, I think I sunk more than 2000 gold in repair costs, probably over 60 tries), because I'm really not that good at warlock, certainly not an expert, but in the end I scored a kill with a shitty item level (496 or thereabout if I recall correctly). There were so many folks that couldn't do it in full 528 SoO raid finder gear and still a bunch of warlocks that couldn't do it even in 550! I did it again in 540ish and it was very easy, but I already had the necessary experience by then.
So yeah, I don't see solo and challenging content being a thing, ever, at least if they want to reward it with current items. They could technically rework that shitty damage buff on old raids and leave those as a source of fun for a bunch of people, but I guess it's not happening anytime soon.

For Blizzard what was in the past, stays in the past, until they need fast content and revamp and old zone.

About the only thing I am looking forward to with 6.1 is pretty much the heirloom stuff. Other than that there really is not much in it.

I wonder how long until Mythic Blackhand is down. I love "watching" the world first race

So, what's a good crit% to switch to fire, as a mage? With enchants/gems/feast I get to 33% buffed. Tried looking at various sites, but haven't really found an answer.

I wonder if they could do something similar to d3 greater rifts for challenge mode dungeons. X minutes to get to the end, random density of mob packs and over a decade worth of bosses scaled to 5 man with lots of random bullshit attributes, and every completion within the X minutes adds a new level with X% hp/attack. I like the idea because challenge modes are the only group content I've found passably interesting in wow recently. I'm one of those weird people that loved LDoN.

meh 6.1 next week and no assassination tweaks.