World of Warcraft: Current Year

I think it dipped a bit faster back to the 7 million mark due to the 6.1 patch having really no content in it other than boosts for leveling alts. They better have another tier after 6.2 in their pocket or they better get that next expansion out asap cause I don't think tannan is going to last anybody 14 months.

Kreugen_sl said:

Regression time! Heh things were getting pretty chippy when it took two full nights just to get through the "farm" bosses. I managed to sit for all of one boss before I got jerked back off the bench. Glancing over the logs tells a sorry tale. I'm still in it for the dick jokes tho.

I think my original A52 guild is down to 4 of us.

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I told my guild I was going to let my account idle until the next raid is out in 6.2 and then come back.

Logged on later guildless and everyone in the guild who was a battlenet friend was removed.

Checking the guild website they are now recruiting 10+ spots for mythic. It looks like I wasn't the only one who didn't want to just push blast furnace and blackhand progression for months on end.

Wombat_sl said:

No, the "problem" is that Blizz has de-incentivized daily activities

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Remember when people were bitching about daily quests in MoP? Good times, man, good times.

And yeah, 6.1 was a big wet nothing of a patch so people have basically hit the "end of expansion burnout" stage early.

I love that many people seem to think that entertainment is a zero-sum game. Any suggestion that LFR is no longer entertaining is met with "well you should do a Normal raid instead" or something of that nature. As if making LFR interesting or a game that is engaging beyond logging in for the garrison for 5 mins a day would somehow hurt their heroic / mythic raiding experience.

SorrowsEnd_sl said:

I told my guild I was going to let my account idle until the next raid is out in 6.2 and then come back.

Logged on later guildless and everyone in the guild who was a battlenet friend was removed.

Checking the guild website they are now recruiting 10+ spots for mythic. It looks like I wasn't the only one who didn't want to just push blast furnace and blackhand progression for months on end.

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Well, they'll be spamming general chat 18 hours a day along with the other 20 guilds.

Pretty much don't care for any of the fights in BRF. To keep my guild rolling after being dead from end of LK to WoD launch is pretty much the only reason I log in anymore. At least I'm not paying real money to sub I guess.

Kreugen_sl said:

Well, they'll be spamming general chat 18 hours a day along with the other 20 guilds.

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No shit dude, it's gettin rough out there.

Qhue_sl said:

I love that many people seem to think that entertainment is a zero-sum game. Any suggestion that LFR is no longer entertaining is met with "well you should do a Normal raid instead" or something of that nature. As if making LFR interesting or a game that is engaging beyond logging in for the garrison for 5 mins a day would somehow hurt their heroic / mythic raiding experience.

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The playerbase that refuses to let others have fun at their own pace (fun includes loot worth getting) is probably made of idiots, but you can't help them. In a game where I can play without even saying a single word to everyone else and that over the years has become pretty much a solo/duo game for the vast majority of Blizzard customers (statistic pulled out of my ass), some retards think that they are entitled to all the goodies while the others must eat shit: others that they won't ever see, notice or care about in the least, others that just populate their servers. It's baffling.

The problem is that WoW actually has *hard* PvE content, which means maintaining some semblance of balance is critical and that leads to a lot of blandness. People complain about WoW balance where sometimes one DPS class can do 10-20% more DPS than another DPS class, but as far as MMO balance overall goes, the fact that this is the worst case means Blizzard is doing an amazingly good job at balancing. "Interesting" loot would lead to a shitload of butthurt as inevitably something would be overpowered and thus "required" to raid. Other MMOs don't have this issue because they're already in a balance state where literally half or more of the class/specs/roles/etc are basically worthless in the sense that they're strictly worse at everything that matters than another class. This balance issue then ends up not mattering anyways because the PvE content is so easy that it's all beaten within 24 hours of it becoming available. Having "interesting" stuff in those games just doesn't really matter in the face of that.

There is literally not one other MMO where the entire expansion's PvE content isn't beaten within 24 hours of it becoming available to players. Sometimes arbitrary timesinks are used to limit access to the content but it's still cleared within 24 hours of that timesink being removed.

A Blizzard designer said it sometime ago: killing players is not exactly hard, is letting them win with the illusion that it was "so hard" that is more difficult. Everyone could tailor their game to the most hardcore poopsockers in the world, it just doesn't work.
MMOs have always been (traditionally) more about the loot roulette than the kill by itself, because aside from the "mythic audience", very few give a fuck about raiding the same boss 250-300 times before getting a kill, numbers, again, out of my ass, I'm sure it's a lot of attempts on average to kill a mythic boss and a fuckton to kill the hardest one. Most players are content with killing stuff in one difficulty mode, which reflects the people they are surrounded with, from soloers in LFR to the MiniVan Rerolled crowd that goes mainly for heroic, to my last iper-casual guild that was happy with normal mode.

For me these games are fun because there are other people to interact with and because content is made to last more than one trip, also I like tab targeting, levelling, often the class design, etc. but the most funny shit in MMOs is the presence of other human beings, from jackasses, to funny guys, to attention whores, to loot bitches, to superheroes, to good guy Gregs and so on and so forth. I can play a male or a female, a pedorace or a furry race just because I like their models, not because it reflects my personality (in which case I'd be 100% pedo-gay-pointy ears-with some fur, batshit crazy and maybe I am and I don't know).

WoW is probably the best game I've ever played from many points of view, but I didn't like much WoD. Considering that I loved MoP in almost every aspect (I'm heavily biased for martial arts and oriental stuff in general, that had something to do with it), I was surprised to say the least. Initially it was great, lot of fun, lot of people came back to play and Winter Holidays were an orgasm of funny Teamspeak sessions. Then we got Highmaul and then Blackrock. Sometimes inbetween all returning players disappeared, half the usual players vanished too, in the end I followed and to be honest I should have been gone at least one month earlier than I did.

I may jump in for the pre xpack patch sometimes next year, who knows? So far FFXIV is keeping me hooked well enough.

Mythic Dungeons sound kinda cool, especially since I haven't even run a single dungeon since hitting 100 outside of those needed for the Legendary quest. However I have a feeling that they will be like Challenge Mode dungeons in that they require you to bring your own 5-man party to the experience and are essentially only reserved for those who are in active raiding guilds. Their new "Adventure Guide" with timed events is pretty much the same as the the welcome page used by Cryptic in Neverwinter and Star Trek Online, which is a smart move since those both seem to be doing rather well at retaining players even with minimal content releases.

Miele most of what you said is exactly how I am. I prefer both FF14 and SWTOR(ducks) to WoW, but I really like the people who ride in the Minivan, so WoW it is. If only I could make a group of cool ppl like the WoW crew focus on either of those two games!

Oh don't tell me about that. People play WoW out of habit nowadays, leaving for unknown games is akin to committing human sacrifices in their eyes. The worst part is that they never stop complaining how bad the game is now and still they keep paying (often not even playing that much). Last time I asked if they wanted to play SWtoR with me, I got one of them buying it and never playing it (he's nuts) and another judging the game as not worthwhile at level 3, which is 5 minutes into the game.
I told my friends that FFXIV is good and they should pick up the 14 days trial, I doubt most of them will bother downloading it.

It's a WoW-slavery and addiction. Frankly I find it stupid, but to each their own.

Qhue_sl said:

Mythic Dungeons sound kinda cool, especially since I haven't even run a single dungeon since hitting 100 outside of those needed for the Legendary quest. However I have a feeling that they will be like Challenge Mode dungeons in that they require you to bring your own 5-man party to the experience and are essentially only reserved for those who are in active raiding guilds. Their new "Adventure Guide" with timed events is pretty much the same as the the welcome page used by Cryptic in Neverwinter and Star Trek Online, which is a smart move since those both seem to be doing rather well at retaining players even with minimal content releases.

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That is my fear with mythic dungeons as well. If they are just challenge mode MK2 then I still won't be able to do them because I don't have a consistent premade group to bang them out

The "zero-sum" crowd is not only stupid, but flat out wrong. I recently rerolled to a highly active server from a medium one. Having players with gear means that more pugs happen. Those pugs are often more successful, not because of better players but because the average ilvl is higher. Everyone gets more gear. It isn't just the pug scene either. All those free epics are what most of your guild recruits are wearing. Does anyone want to go back to the days of rerunning old tiers just to equip your recruits (or alts)? Stratifying the player base made sense in first gen MMOs where it was all world bosses. Now there is no reason not to allow as many as possible the opportunity to gear up.

Someone needs to make a recount category of DPS normalized for ilvl. I've had a sting of lazy fucks in pugs lately who are only doing enough to top the meters when they should be beating everyone by 10k given their gear.

kaid_sl said:

That is my fear with mythic dungeons as well. If they are just challenge mode MK2 then I still won't be able to do them because I don't have a consistent premade group to bang them out

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I flat out fucking hate challenge modes.

The second a group said leave the zone so we can reset and start over because of some timer bullshit I was like well fuck everything about this.

SorrowsEnd_sl said:

I flat out fucking hate challenge modes.

The second a group said leave the zone so we can reset and start over because of some timer bullshit I was like well fuck everything about this.

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Yup I did a couple and the whole process offended me so I never went back to the challenge modes. If mythic is on a lock out I don't see why it would need to be barred from group finder its not like you can chain run them but I am afraid that is how its going to work which will be disappointing. I really liked their dungeons in WOD but their item levels were so bad and LFR coming out hot on their heels there just was no reason to ever bother doing them once you banged out your toys from the inn and your legendary parts.

Miele_sl said:

Oh don't tell me about that. People play WoW out of habit nowadays, leaving for unknown games is akin to committing human sacrifices in their eyes. The worst part is that they never stop complaining how bad the game is now and still they keep paying (often not even playing that much). Last time I asked if they wanted to play SWtoR with me, I got one of them buying it and never playing it (he's nuts) and another judging the game as not worthwhile at level 3, which is 5 minutes into the game.
I told my friends that FFXIV is good and they should pick up the 14 days trial, I doubt most of them will bother downloading it.

It's a WoW-slavery and addiction. Frankly I find it stupid, but to each their own.

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I like FFXIV except the end game, 8 man Coil feels too small for end game raids. When we played we actually had a hard time keeping a static going since it's hard/impossible to have a bench for an 8 man. WoW's flex raiding is a great solution for that right now. As long as you have 10 you can play. Hopefully they follow suit with something like that, considering the advantage FFXIV has with its single character system which should be in every MMO.

Elsebet_sl said:

I like FFXIV except the end game, 8 man Coil feels too small for end game raids. When we played we actually had a hard time keeping a static going since it's hard/impossible to have a bench for an 8 man. WoW's flex raiding is a great solution for that right now. As long as you have 10 you can play. Hopefully they follow suit with something like that, considering the advantage FFXIV has with its single character system which should be in every MMO.

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The funniest thing about the multi-class one-character system is they pioneered that shit in FFXI and it was incredible, game-changing even. Then no one else picked it up..