non raid gear is not crap and in fact is pretty good gear, especially for the effort required to get it. You can solo in several varieties of pvp and get gear that is on par with raid grear. Not only that, but you can continue that same aspect of play with better gear and the difficulty never goes up, but the rewards do each "season". Yes it is on par with raid gear. You can run heroic dungeons for badges and get fantastic gear, which you are calling "crap left overs". You can get raid level gear without doing half the difficulty of raiding. Also if blizzard holds true to their previous expansion that gear will get upgraded every with every new raid tier dungeon for the exact same level of difficulty to run the same heroic dungeons.
Face it, raiding is harder than solo pve play. Right now developers lack a meaningful way to make solo/small group gameplay as difficult as raiding, so the rewards are better for raiding. Removing those rewards and placing them easier content would just eliminate raiding as a playstyle, because currently is impossible to make solo content that would reward ultra casuals and not be drastically easier than raiding. You may not realize this, but what you are asking is for one playstyle to die so that you can have those rewards. While I don't agree with the views you have about being denied something due to your choice to not participate in content the game offers, what you ask for is not only selfish in nature (intentional or not), but it causes more problems than it potentially solves.
Nothing is stopping casual players from banding together for an hour or two a night whenever they get a chance to run a 10 man raid. Even at that schedule it is possible to clear raid dungeons. It just takes a little more effort to do and is much harder than complaining about not getting treated equally.
I'm really not sure what pvp gear you're referring to that you can solo to get that's on par with raid gear. Battleground gear is far below raid level gear and arena pretty much requires you to be certain classes to get the best gear that is about on par with raid gear since the gear requires certain arena ratings, anyways, in either case no one is going to be soloing for the gear.
This entire discussion has been done to death, and its basically just about two things: Being able to do content NOW, as opposed to later when you outlevel it usually means its really about getting the REWARDS now. Casual Players who use this argument frequently really just want the items, or the other guys not get any items for themselves. Its not any more complicated than that. The other thing is attention. People want more and more attention given to their playstyle. Whenever something new comes for any MMORPG, the playstyle that did NOT get it whines because valuable resources were given to the enemy. Its not about getting anything, its about getting as much as possible out of the limited ressources available. Its really like kids asking for attention of their parents: Its not enough to get some, its important to get more than others. Raid Content is actually quite effective if you put it somewhere middle-of-the-road in difficulty. The current Ulduar, maybe a bit tougher, is a good raid dungeon in terms of development time vs. game time. Also, some content doesnt really do any damage to the game other than leaving people wanting it to be gone or turned into stuff for their playstyle. PvE-Raids dont upset balance. Its just about attention by the Devs.
Raid content doesn't upset game balance? Are you on drugs? Raid gear allows players to trivialize the rest of the game's content. If you didn't want it to upset the balance, then developers would only allow raid gear to be used only in raids. They'd have to switch to their regular PvE gear once they leave a raid. This is the imbalance in PvE. The PvP ramifications are even worse. Blizzard has helped to alleviate this to some extent, but raid gear still outstrips PvP gear in stats and effects, the only thing that PvP gear tends to have more of is resilience, but you can still get enough resilience outside of PvP to be more than effective.
This is in no way analgous to a parent and child scenario, vying for attention. This is a business model that caters more to one subset of it's consumer base at the expense of another. What's worse is that that subset is the minority, which really begs the question of What's the more sound way to do business? Cater to the larger subset for larger returns or cater to the smaller one that may or may not stick around longer thanks to their addictive personalities and god complexes.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
Its a game for christ sake. You do not lose your arm or your whatever if you failed to grab that piece of purple epic.
Fact is, you are almost as good a dps-er, with 2k dps or 2.2k dps. If you know when and where to nuke or shoot, you contributed your part. A max dpser who shoot the wrong boss/mob at the wrong time could screw everyone up. Imagine you have the debuff fighting the paired patrol in OS and you go out maxing dps. Good grief.
I play 60% solo, I level up maxed alts, maxed crafting and doing it when i feel damned pleased. I need not join a raid, until I feel i got the time and mood for that evening. If I feel that I am stressed to do something against my will for a game, I will log out. It is foolish playing a game in which I suffer.
As for seeing the end raid, well that is only part of the gameplay. If you do not enjoy levelling process, interacting with people and doing the great variety that WoW offers, you stripped yourself of many facets of the game. Take a step back. Look at the game like it is, it is a game. If you do not find fun in it, do something else, or cancel the sub.
I really don't think at this point that either of us will convince the other of anything, but I am stubborn so I will try to make a final point. In a well-designed game, experiencing the content is it's own reward. If they have to add a chance to get some "uber" item in order to get people to spend time on content, it must not be content worth spending time on. So while I would disagree with your characterization of my argument as being opposed to all MMO mechanics, it is fair to say that it is opposed to MMOs using primarily gear focused mechanics, if grinding of any kind is required to get to that gear. The very fact that something is referred to as grinding means a there is a common perception that it is not fun, because when you are having fun, it doesn't feel like a grind. So yes, you are correct in pointing out that my basic argument attacks the overall WoW model, not just the raids. I never claimed it was a problem in a cosmic sense, but it is certainly a problem if you happen to be one of the players who likes for games to be enjoyable for most or all of the time you are playing them, not just when you reach specific goals occasionally, whether it be every few hours, days, or even longer. So to reiterate and close, you shouldn't need a reward to play a game. Playing the game should *be* the reward.
You are right, but you do not apply that same logic to your viewpoint of the discussion.
If the content is its own reward, then there is no need to worry about what rewards raiding offers. Go play the parts of the game that are enjoyable and ignore that which isn't. The only thing being complained about here is people who chose not to raid desiring the rewards of raiding. Covering it up in some twisted logic of removing rewards proves there is a problem is just false.
To the point in red, where is the problem if people are only playing the parts of the game they enjoy? Other than gear envy what is the "problem" that makes the game unfun? To me it reads like a nothing more than desire for loot detracting from gameplay which is what you say the root problem of raiding is. I think you are purposefully being selective in how you apply your viewpoint and draw your conclusions.
Everything about the situation applies equally to both gameplay options, but one you call a problem and the other you don't.
We casuals outnumber you elitist pricks, which means most of our subscription money goes to creating YOUR raiding content, taking away from ours and adding insult to injury by giving us crappy rewards to boot.
Lets just estimate the raid content of wow as 10% of the entire game. Now I'm fairly certain that far more than 10% of wow players take part in raiding, so lets not pretend casual players fund 100% of wows developement costs.
To be totally honest you are coming off as the elitist with how you chose to make your points. Blizzard caters to far more than just casual players and there was no sticker on the box that said "for casual players only".
Raid gear doesnt upset balance in modern MMOs except in SOME instances of badly-done PvP. Why? Because below the raidgame there is nothing that isnt a surefire win/success even with non-raid gear anyway. Difficulty levels are so extremely low you dont fail/die/lose except for lag or really bad playing either way.
When was the last time you broke a sweat in a WoW heroic instance? BC, right? WotLK is a joke with non-Naxx gear already. Lets not even talk about solo.
The 1k more hitpoints, or armor, or the 50 more DPS that raid gear gives you dont mean jack for balance, since the only area where they count, again discarding bad pvp systems that beg for it, are raids. Everything else is autowin.
The problem with creating content in proportion to the playerbase is that you have no way of figuring out your playerbase at all. And people change playing styles a lot.
So, if there was (and there isnt) a usable definition of casual, and you find out 80% of your playerbase is that, that doesnt guarantee at all that making content for them is better than making content for the raiders. The existence of a higher goal is a motivating factor, whether people play through all of it or not. Players do not have to actually beat the top raid boss to be affected, motivated and ultimately subscribed by it.
Solo content, on the other hand, is insanely ineffective in creation once you go beyond "kill 10 wolves" over and over, and usually due to balance issues has to be tuned to such low difficulties that it doesnt last at all. Which is why the good solo content is usually part of the intiial release/expansion.
Nowadays, MMOs already release with 99% casual content anyway, meaning the entire game minus the very last few instances/raids, and usually these are perfectly doable by casual gamers too, once they manage to organize themselves.
If you use 80% of your budget to create soloquests, do you REALLY think the casual crowd will like it? How many Fed-Ex do you want to patch in daily?
Originally posted by jusomdude I'm really not sure what pvp gear you're referring to that you can solo to get that's on par with raid gear. Battleground gear is far below raid level gear and arena pretty much requires you to be certain classes to get the best gear that is about on par with raid gear since the gear requires certain arena ratings, anyways, in either case no one is going to be soloing for the gear.
I admit that I am not very well versed in a direct comparison of pvp to pve gear, but I know there is plenty of pvp gear that is very nice. I also know that raiding, dungeons and pvp have all become far more casual friendly.
As for solo content getting the same rewards I have no problem with it as long as it isn't the current solo content in the game. The problem isn't raiding, the problem is that solo content is beyond easy and super fast. There is so little challenge to solo gameplay in current mmos that offering the same rewards would trivialize the entire rest of the games group based content. This is not an insult, but it is the truth.
When I said solo I was also including joining scenarios, pugs for dungeons or raids, arenas, etc. If someone wants to truely solo and never play with other players in a massive multiplayer game, then fine, but why complain about not getting compensation for chosing not to partake in all of the games content.
This whole converstaion is like complaining about not getting ranked in a national marathon website when somone only jogs by yourself everyday.
I believe I admitted earlier in the thread that for me it is a more a philosophical question of fairness than a personal desire for change in this particular game. One does not have to care about getting loot in order to have his experience hampered by the game's focus on loot. If the part of the game you enjoy the most is PvP, and you value being effective in PvP, you will have to raid in order to get the loot to do so, because in WoW the skill of the swordsman is largely irrelevant, it is all about the quality of the sword. If you don't PvP at all, and don't want to raid, it really doesn't matter at all, because you only need functional gear to do solo/small-group PvE, not good or great gear.
But this game really does say that if you want to PvP and not lose most of the time, you have to raid, and as a matter of principle that just isn't fair. My argument about the gear focus being the root of the problem wasn't really directed at raiding specifically, but rather the mindset that causes the original debate of this thread to occur in the first place. If the game wasn't reward focused, there wouldn't be anybody arguing about where the best rewards should be. They would find something else to argue about instead, since no game is perfect and a place inside every player thinks all games should change to suit his or her personal tastes.
As for what makes the game "unfun" for me personally, it is my viewpoint that the experience of content should be it's own reward, because in WoW, more often than not, the content just isn't very well written, and is kind of a bore to play. They can get away with low quality, because most of the player base doesn't care what the story of what they are doing is, they just care about getting to the end and getting some cool loot. If you gave them a mini-game with a 1 in 5,000 chance of winning a random purple item at their level every time they hit the enter key, there are probably many who would just sit for hours, repeatedly hitting enter.
So in short (too late, I know) my only problem in regard to the actual topic of the thread is that it isn't fair to force people who just want to PvP to spend immense amounts of time raiding in order to be competitive, because the two should have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
In regard to the points about solo content in the last couple posts, solo content doesn't *have* to be all lame fed-ex and kill ten whatevers quests. Lame and uninspired quests are a choice most MMOs make, not an inevitable thing they have to do. At this point in time it would be valid to say there isn't much point in WoW making interesting solo content, because most of their player base doesn't seem all that focused on the content of the quests anyway. Of course, the real question is whether they don't care because they wouldn't enjoy a well developed interactive story, or whether they don't care because WoW is their primary gaming experience, and they just think quest content can't be anyway other than boring and contrived.
Edit: And regarding the argument that casuals are most of the playerbase so it isn't fair that the raid players get more new content, from a business standpoint it makes perfect sense. Just guessing here, but the type of players who are avid raiders are probably also the type to triple-box an MMO and have three concurrent subscriptions running. So while casuals might be the majority in terms of players, the most steady and lucrative on a per-customer basis population probably is the raiders.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
It makes me wonder if some of the people complaining have been playing the current end-game in WoW.
EVERYONE PUGS!! on small servers just like big servers nax-voa-os-maly are constantly spammed to join if u have appropriate gear.
Crafting gear along with a few heroic drops can EASILY get u ready for Naxx. The crafted gear is everywhere. and u can always fill gaps with pvp gear. WG is an easy alternative to Bg's. i hop in when i get the chance and im close to maxxing out my honor just from doing the WG dailys and winning(or losing for that matter). WG offers gear = to last season arena and its cake to get.
I have quit playing 3 times since Wotlk has come out and each time was a month or more. i have 3 epic geared 80 toons. I have PUGGED all of it. I have never been in a real guild as me and my wife play together and prefer to keep in our own guild we have had for over 2 years. It is a bank/alt/quiet guild -if u play u know what i mean-. To be honest we have recently moved out a couple of our toons and joined what we thought was a good active guild. alas it seems to be breaking but w/e. i dont care cuz I CAN PUG.
of course to progress succesfully into teir 8 and later on 9 it will most likely require us to be scheduled raiders but even so my mage won a ring from Flame Leviathan (in 25 man Ulduar) in a random pug i jumped into last monday.
did i even mention that with embelems gained from downing heroic bosses u can purchase TIER GEAR!!!!!!!!
i mean how much easier can they make it for u. i laugh all the time at how much of a joke it is to gear a toon in WOTLK compared to BC (yes my main was a 54 when BC relesed)
on the other hand. dont try to belittle people who dont have time to play a video game. its understandable. but anyone crying about not getting good gear is funny. yes in comparison they may be entry lvl epics but its still good gear and if u sat with that gear and never raided guess what??? u will never need anything better cuz there is no solo content in the game that requires u to have gear equal to high end raid boss drops.
Get your crafted. run heroics. fill some gaps with pvp gear and if thats not your thing either then im failing to see why a person would pay a sub for a online mmo if they dont enjoy 5 man group content or random pvp. consider they are already acting like crafting is useless.....what else is in a mmo.
u want to kill 5/5 bears all day with the best of the best gear?
Thoes of you arguing gear should not be the primary goal can stop that argument right now. WoW is by far the most gear centered MMO out. Raid or not you HAVE to upgrade your gear to continue on in the game. I'm not going to argue if thats a good thing or a bad thing. Thats up to each individual.
If I remember right the OP asked why players say its "content we will never see". In his next post he made a complete ass of himself and completely trashed the guy who gave an honest awnser. Troll post anyone? You dont ask a question then be a jackass when someone tries to awnser. Anyway, regardless of what the OP thinks about other people lives and how they live it there are alot of people out there that dont dedicate there time to a game. They play to have fun. The part some of them dont understand is there will ALWAYS be content in EVERY MMO that they wont see. No reason to get pissy about it, its just fact. I am no casual player but I dont raid either. I dont expect to see the gear rewards from raids either. Doesnt really bother me. Others it would bother because they feel entitled to the same rewards as someone who does do the content.
Really it all boils down to rewards in MMO's are just like real life. The more time you invest in something the more reward you get for it. Untill some understand this or untill some MMO finds a way for both sides (raiders and non raiders) to feel like they arent getting hosed this argument will never die. Since thats likely to never happen you will always have one side thinking they are right and the other is wrong.
Thoes of you arguing gear should not be the primary goal can stop that argument right now. WoW is by far the most gear centered MMO out. Raid or not you HAVE to upgrade your gear to continue on in the game. I'm not going to argue if thats a good thing or a bad thing. Thats up to each individual.
If I remember right the OP asked why players say its "content we will never see". In his next post he made a complete ass of himself and completely trashed the guy who gave an honest awnser. Troll post anyone? You dont ask a question then be a jackass when someone tries to awnser. Anyway, regardless of what the OP thinks about other people lives and how they live it there are alot of people out there that dont dedicate there time to a game. They play to have fun. The part some of them dont understand is there will ALWAYS be content in EVERY MMO that they wont see. No reason to get pissy about it, its just fact. I am no casual player but I dont raid either. I dont expect to see the gear rewards from raids either. Doesnt really bother me. Others it would bother because they feel entitled to the same rewards as someone who does do the content. Really it all boils down to rewards in MMO's are just like real life. The more time you invest in something the more reward you get for it. Untill some understand this or untill some MMO finds a way for both sides (raiders and non raiders) to feel like they arent getting hosed this argument will never die. Since thats likely to never happen you will always have one side thinking they are right and the other is wrong.
Indeed WoW is a game where gear matters a lot. Without enough hp, you will die to certain boss AoE, no matter how good you are. Period.
That does not stop you from enjoying the rest of WoW. There are some of everything, and if your gear does not measure up to a certain boss fight, do something else. I have a couple degrees myself, but I know I will fail if I try to take the accountant's qualifier. I am not up to it, so what? stick with something I can do, and try studying accounting, or give up. I know I am not going to do good in French too, so what? I cannot do everything good in life, or game, and with the few hours I got to spend in the game, I am happy I cannot see everything, or that game is too shallow.
riginally posted by CazNeerg As for what makes the game "unfun" for me personally, it is my viewpoint that the experience of content should be it's own reward, because in WoW, more often than not, the content just isn't very well written, and is kind of a bore to play. They can get away with low quality, because most of the player base doesn't care what the story of what they are doing is, they just care about getting to the end and getting some cool loot. If you gave them a mini-game with a 1 in 5,000 chance of winning a random purple item at their level every time they hit the enter key, there are probably many who would just sit for hours, repeatedly hitting enter. So in short (too late, I know) my only problem in regard to the actual topic of the thread is that it isn't fair to force people who just want to PvP to spend immense amounts of time raiding in order to be competitive, because the two should have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
When you make comments like those above it really brings your experience into question. By that I mean it sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about with current warcraft gameplay or are holding some carryover of gameplay that existed years ago, but has changed and you have no idea about it.
For example, you do not have to raid in order to pvp. In fact, pve raid based gear isn't good for pvp at all. PvE gear does not have stats that are important for PvP. On the flip side PvP gear works just fine in PvE. You are working so hard to create situations that do not exist in an attempt to validate your opinion and I am sorry to say it just doesn't exist. No one is being forced to raid pve to partake in pvp. I have exceptional pve gear, but almost no pvp gear on my main character. Even people with poor pvp gear can soundly beat me, because they are properly geared for the content and I am not.
As for the story content, have you even tried lich king? Sure the stories might not be NYTime best seller material, but they are very engaging stories with twists, turns and mechanics that actually effect the game for your character. Low quality is something that does not describe the story content of wow. It may not be suited to your personal tastes, but overall it is widely accepted to be high quality for an mmo.
Also the gear that the expansion slathers players with is counter productive to the mentality that you think exists. Lich king litterally hands out so much gear that you really won't care what you are chasing after, because it is everywhere. You can't take a bird flight without getting some item reward handed to you. You will have bags full of duplicate items for every slot.
In regard to the points about solo content in the last couple posts, solo content doesn't *have* to be all lame fed-ex and kill ten whatevers quests. Lame and uninspired quests are a choice most MMOs make, not an inevitable thing they have to do. At this point in time it would be valid to say there isn't much point in WoW making interesting solo content, because most of their player base doesn't seem all that focused on the content of the quests anyway. Of course, the real question is whether they don't care because they wouldn't enjoy a well developed interactive story, or whether they don't care because WoW is their primary gaming experience, and they just think quest content can't be anyway other than boring and contrived.
Solo content is limited by balance issues and game mechanics, nothing more. Mechanaically mmos have little ability to track players actions in an effecient way. They can check if they killed something, interacted with an object, travelled to a certain position and a few other things. That is why there has been so few choices in quest styles, kill x, fed ex, escort, go to X/Y, etc.
Balance wise, how to you make content that can be soloed by 10 different classes with 3 spec line each and not exclude anyone? They could use current in game mechanics, but the more you add the more you exclude. Add a difficult poison to an encounter and you remove any class that has no healing or remove poison ability. That is just one example.
How would you propose to change solo content to be something more than it currently is? Even if you add harder mechanics solo play is the most basic of strategies that almost boils down to the same 3-4 button pushes. How would you make it harder than it currently is with the available mechanics and still keep it balanced so that all classes can enjoy it?
As I have said before, when some creative developer comes up with that solution they will have a significant advantage over other mmos, but as things are I don't think game designers are being lazy. I just don't think there is some magically simple solution to make engaging solo content that devs are just to lazy to put into games. There is a reason solo content is easy.
I must say that balance got nothing to do with the content before Wotlk...everything in there can be done in pug's with group setup of anything that has 2 fingers in both hands and can move a mouse...simple as that.
Juts grab a gear from 70-80 quests and head back to those raids in tbc and same goes with the raids like AQ.ZG,MC etc....if peeps aren't able to group up with others it's not the games fault. This is not a solo game "thank god" even it is really vanilla easy peazy lame atm. And that new content..ermm...can't even listen to anyone that can really call it too hard to handle.
In regard to the points about solo content in the last couple posts, solo content doesn't *have* to be all lame fed-ex and kill ten whatevers quests. Lame and uninspired quests are a choice most MMOs make, not an inevitable thing they have to do. At this point in time it would be valid to say there isn't much point in WoW making interesting solo content, because most of their player base doesn't seem all that focused on the content of the quests anyway. Of course, the real question is whether they don't care because they wouldn't enjoy a well developed interactive story, or whether they don't care because WoW is their primary gaming experience, and they just think quest content can't be anyway other than boring and contrived.
Solo content is limited by balance issues and game mechanics, nothing more. Mechanaically mmos have little ability to track players actions in an effecient way. They can check if they killed something, interacted with an object, travelled to a certain position and a few other things. That is why there has been so few choices in quest styles, kill x, fed ex, escort, go to X/Y, etc.
Balance wise, how to you make content that can be soloed by 10 different classes with 3 spec line each and not exclude anyone? They could use current in game mechanics, but the more you add the more you exclude. Add a difficult poison to an encounter and you remove any class that has no healing or remove poison ability. That is just one example.
How would you propose to change solo content to be something more than it currently is? Even if you add harder mechanics solo play is the most basic of strategies that almost boils down to the same 3-4 button pushes. How would you make it harder than it currently is with the available mechanics and still keep it balanced so that all classes can enjoy it?
As I have said before, when some creative developer comes up with that solution they will have a significant advantage over other mmos, but as things are I don't think game designers are being lazy. I just don't think there is some magically simple solution to make engaging solo content that devs are just to lazy to put into games. There is a reason solo content is easy.
Before getting to this post, a bit about your previous post: if there is good writing in WotLK, that is refreshing. My only experience with that (pretty much new) expansion is doing to free trial part so I could play the Death Knight intro. Which no, was not well written. Maybe saturday morning cartoon level. Not even 80s Saturday cartoons, modern ones. As for whatever else they may have introduced in Northrend, it is an extremely high level zone, and I don't recall hearing that the expansion upgraded the writing quality and quest structure of everything that was in the game prior to its addition.
As for solo-content being solely about balance issues and game mechanics, BS. There is nothing stopping them from implementing quests where once acquiring an item, you don't have to give it the original quest-giver, you could give it to an interested 3rd party, and depending on who you decided to give it to you opened up a different quest line and took your story in a new direction. MMOs are supposed to have replay value, you don't get a lot of that from every quest being exactly the same for every character that plays it, unless the experience of going through the quest is just staggeringly astonishingly fun. Not something you see much in WoW.
In regard to your next argument, you don't have to make every quest in the game balanced for all the possible specs of every class. The experience doesn't have to be completely homogenized, it is not only ok but desirable for there to be class, or even race exclusive content. Perhaps a whole lot of it. The fewer types of character a given quest is designed for, the more interesting and tailored they are able to make the gameplay experience of the quest. Exclusion in a particular quest is only a bad thing if they make a large number of quests for one class or race and none for another.
And it isn't about whether the content is easy or hard. That is irrelevant when discussing whether or not it is well-written and presents an interesting and dynamic story. By creating more tailored experiences, rather than the lazy and generic one-size-fits-all approach, they can make the gameplay itself far more engaging. By hiring writers with actual talent, and creating branching quest structures (which can easily be done in dialogue trees, with no need for any gameplay mechanic) they create a more immersive and individual experience that lets the player feel like he is choosing his own adventure, rather than just charging down a linear and generic rut with only one beginning and one end, and no depth or choice.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
You are wrong just like you were about people being forced to raid so they could pvp. Just like you are wrong about the quest structure (styles/phasing/vehicles/etc) not changing. You seem to have no current experience so it is nearly impossible to make a point with you, because you just see things in a manner that fits your conclusions, even when those things are untrue. Almost everything you have been grinding against is no longer the case and you seem to just change issues after each one is shown to not be true how you originally presented it.
For example: now you are talking about story writing as if that is the solution to some problem? How exactly would better stories eliminate the problem of solo content being easy or raids or quest rewards?
Consider this, wow has 10 class each with 3 specialization trees and on top of that there are 10 races. All of which can take part in thousands and thousands of quests and stories. Not including dungeons, raids, etc.
Now to implement your theories of exclusion, the devs would either need to increase their efforts by a factor I couldn't even begin to compute just to offer the same amount of content or they would have to scale back available content by a considerable margin. So despite your best efforts to say there are not technical and balance issues, there certainly are. Not to mention the havoc such exclusion would cause on grouping, but that isn't a consideration when solo gameplay is being presented as the only important option in a discussion.
Even if you do tailor quests for individual classes, solo content would still be easy. Just for example: how can you really challenge a protection warrior with a quest, let alone hundreds of them?
The current mechanics of mmos don't support difficult solo gameplay and they do get more difficult with the more players you involve.
You are wrong just like you were about people being forced to raid so they could pvp. Just like you are wrong about the quest structure (styles/phasing/vehicles/etc) not changing. You seem to have no current experience so it is nearly impossible to make a point with you, because you just see things in a manner that fits your conclusions, even when those things are untrue. Almost everything you have been grinding against is no longer the case and you seem to just change issues after each one is shown to not be true how you originally presented it. For example: now you are talking about story writing as if that is the solution to some problem? How exactly would better stories eliminate the problem of solo content being easy or raids or quest rewards? Consider this, wow has 10 class each with 3 specialization trees and on top of that there are 10 races. All of which can take part in thousands and thousands of quests and stories. Not including dungeons, raids, etc. Now to implement your theories of exclusion, the devs would either need to increase their efforts by a factor I couldn't even begin to compute just to offer the same amount of content or they would have to scale back available content by a considerable margin. So despite your best efforts to say there are not technical and balance issues, there certainly are. Not to mention the havoc such exclusion would cause on grouping, but that isn't a consideration when solo gameplay is being presented as the only important option in a discussion. Even if you do tailor quests for individual classes, solo content would still be easy. Just for example: how can you really challenge a protection warrior with a quest, let alone hundreds of them? The current mechanics of mmos don't support difficult solo gameplay and they do get more difficult with the more players you involve.
I'm not sure why you keep coming back to the ease vs. difficulty thing in your responses to me. I already said, multiple times, I really don't care about the difficulty level. At all. The only way I would care is if something that was supposed to be soloable wasn't.
As for the fact that every character can take part in "thousands and thousands of quests," so what? Every character has the *exact same* quests, so one character (two really, alliance and horde) could do almost every quest in the game. Why bother to ever make a second character on the same side? You seem to making making a quantity argument, as if quality can simply be inferred from quantity. By reducing the total number of quests available to a given character, they can vastly improve the quality of the experience within each given quest. You would really rather do 10 poorly written quests that you forget as soon as you finish them than 1 engaging quest that provides you with a memorable experience? Under that logic, why bother with quests at all, just increase the kill xp from defeating enemies and remove that pesky "interacting with NPCs" thing. Just interrupts the grinding anyway!
Even if there is new and interesting content in Northrend, which I have only your word for at this point, a player would have to spend dozens of hours playing through the same tired old boring experience in order to have a character ready to enjoy that content. Works out great if you happen to have such a character already, but if you have a character that high in WoW, you probably weren't looking for a story driven experience in the first place.
And I never said story writing had anything to do with solo content being easy or raids or quest rewards. I was never arguing about how hard solo content should be at all. You asked in a prior post what made the game unfun, so I told you my perspective. I never claimed the answer to that question had anything to do with the original topic of the thread. The only "problem" that would be solved by better writing and a branching quest structure would be the problem of much of the content not being enjoyable for it's own sake.
As for the "havoc" that would be caused to grouping, come on, there have always been quests that are basically solo, quests that need groups, raid quests, etc. etc. You don't need to make every quest solo in order to make those quests which are a more tailored experience. As for people who think they need to be in a group constantly, even if they are just killing ten wolves, I think it is time they take the pacifier out and leave the blankie at home.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Originally posted by CazNeerg I'm not sure why you keep coming back to the ease vs. difficulty thing in your responses to me. I already said, multiple times, I really don't care about the difficulty level. At all. The only way I would care is if something that was supposed to be soloable wasn't. As for the fact that every character can take part in "thousands and thousands of quests," so what? Every character has the *exact same* quests, so one character (two really, alliance and horde) could do almost every quest in the game. Why bother to ever make a second character on the same side? You seem to making making a quantity argument, as if quality can simply be inferred from quantity. By reducing the total number of quests available to a given character, they can vastly improve the quality of the experience within each given quest. You would really rather do 10 poorly written quests that you forget as soon as you finish them than 1 engaging quest that provides you with a memorable experience? Under that logic, why bother with quests at all, just increase the kill xp from defeating enemies and remove that pesky "interacting with NPCs" thing. Just interrupts the grinding anyway!
You single me out for inferring quantity = quality (which I do not by the way) and then in the very next breath you infer that reducing quantity will somehow improve quality. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Apply the same standards to the discussion please and not only when it reinforces your opinion. There is nothing to show that fewer quests or more exclusive quests would somehow be than general quests. That is a giant assumption. It is just as likely that quests could come out convoluted, bland and forced due to the class restriction.
My argument wasn't about quantity for the sake of having many, but doing what you suggest could drastically reduce the amount of content players could access. Most likely to the point of not having enough to do where as right now there is enough that can be avoided to make a fairly good trip a second time around.
The quests are already split in half between the factions. Further splitting them another X times for all the different class combinations (depending on how fine you take it 5? 10? 30?), would require vast amounts of developer resources to make a comparable leveling experience to what is currently offered or needing to reduce the amount of content to players. I don't think you get the logistics of that. Nor the reasoning why famer wiggins would refuse the help of someone just because they are not a paladin or something. *shrug*
As to why I keep talking about difficulty, it is simple. This whole discussion was started about solo players not getting the same rewards as raid players and that it was somehow a problem. One which I showed has been made so casual friendly it really isn't a problem anymore unless people simply refuse to ever play with anyone else. You have revised your claims several times from forced raiding to pvp into the quality of storytelling in the game.
I think it is pretty clear to me now that no matter what information I give you, you are determined to find some problem to complain about. Even if it is based on outdated information or does not directly relate to what is being discussed.
Unfortunately no one has really answered the question why casuals whinge about "content they'll never see" when virtually all raid content IS STILL IN THE GAME.
I gave you the two examples of a world boss and a raid instance being removed from the original location and re-tuned for higher lvls (Lord Kazzak and Naxxramas).
Never saw the legendary c'thun? Grab a few friends and run into AQ40. Its all easy except Twin Emps that requires a degree of not sucking and using your brain (ok ok ok, I know that using your brain is "hardcore" and evil)
If you didn't see content at lvl 60 or 70 then get a few friends and go do it. IT IS STILL THERE. THEREFORE CLAIMING YOU'LL NEVER SEE CONTENT IS MORONIC.
If I remember right the OP asked why players say its "content we will never see". In his next post he made a complete ass of himself and completely trashed the guy who gave an honest awnser. Troll post anyone? You dont ask a question then be a jackass when someone tries to awnser. Anyway, regardless of what the OP thinks about other people lives and how they live it there are alot of people out there that dont dedicate there time to a game. They play to have fun. The part some of them dont understand is there will ALWAYS be content in EVERY MMO that they wont see. No reason to get pissy about it, its just fact. I am no casual player but I dont raid either. I dont expect to see the gear rewards from raids either. Doesnt really bother me. Others it would bother because they feel entitled to the same rewards as someone who does do the content. Really it all boils down to rewards in MMO's are just like real life. The more time you invest in something the more reward you get for it. Untill some understand this or untill some MMO finds a way for both sides (raiders and non raiders) to feel like they arent getting hosed this argument will never die. Since thats likely to never happen you will always have one side thinking they are right and the other is wrong.
I trashed the guy's answer because it was the typical cliched riddled, banal arguments that people have parrotted for years. Basically I trashed it because it deserved to be trashed. Myths need to be exposed. I didn't personally attack the guy or say anything nasty about him as a person. He/she might be the nicest person you'll ever meet. But it doesn't change that his/her arguments were weak.
And besides your personal insults towards me I like what you wrote. But you, or should I say "you and I" are in the minority. Non hardcore players who dont want everything handed to us. But this could also be a generational thing. The instant gratification, XBOX HALO, ADHD ritalin generation just expect everything to be instant and done with no effort. And why not? That is all they have known. They have never known a time when the internet was pretty basic. They have never known a time without SMS or when mobile phones were expensive and not used as a toy. They have never known a time when music and entertainment was not available at a push of a button. Why should WoW be any different?
Contrary to myth the 8.5 million people that were playing at the time when Burning Crusade were not hardcore players. Infact, the VAST majority were casual.
You make a good point about there always going to be content you'll never see in an mmo. But WoW has got so big that the vast majority of people joining have never been part of an online community, let alone a mmo. They pay $15 a month and therefore the game should be catered to his/her demands. If you paid money for a brand new single player game and the last 1/3 was only playable on nightmare mode that was impossible except for those with freakish talent you'd be pretty annoyed. Unfortunately that mentality has drifted into WoW and mmo's in general.
And thats why WoW resembles a single player game so much these days. Because the people Blizzard are attracting to WoW have only ever known single player games and they expect that an mmorpg should function in the same way.
im very sorry. i dont wanna name call......but some of you are idiots.
if there was soloable content to get the best of the best gear ppl would CONSTANTLY be spamming for help to do them so they could hurry and get their epic. it would only be solo content to the few ppl who enjoyed 'playing ' the game and not just showing off. Showing off is like 85% of your WoW pop.
Again. MMO does actually stand for something. Massive multiplayer. think about it and quit crying. maybe u should stick with one player games .
The main thing i wish they would implement is 2-3 man dungeon experiences. Sure they wouldnt b as complicated and i WOULD NOT expect = rewards to high end raid content......but i think it would be fun since most the time the only person i care to speak with in the game is my wife. Of course alot of ppl would say it isnt worth their time. bbut i think 2 man dungeons is all i would ever do if i could still progress.
im very sorry. i dont wanna name call......but some of you are idiots. if there was soloable content to get the best of the best gear ppl would CONSTANTLY be spamming for help to do them so they could hurry and get their epic. it would only be solo content to the few ppl who enjoyed 'playing ' the game and not just showing off. Showing off is like 85% of your WoW pop.
Make a death knight or ret paladin. Do dailies, argent tournament and rep grind and you can get good gear. Alternatively you can play AV for a couple of weeks straight and get high level gear as well.
All without ever grouping.
And then theres the achievement grind. Hell, a few weeks ago I got my Loremaster title. All solo. Ok, I lie. I had to group for a couple of Icecrown quests.
I'm currently working on getting 75 pets. Guess what, thats solo too.
also the story line has improved as far as quest involvment goes.
In Azeroth you do peopls chores.
in BC you learn about outland tibes.
In wotlk almost every quest i did (im also picky) was intimatly intertwined with the struggle with the Lich King.
In BC i never saw Illidan nor felt his influence in outland. in Wotlk u cant get away fromArthas. he is everywhere and if that isnt improvment then what would be?
ive played alot of video games and i can honetly say the normal fantasy game be it rts or what it has usually pretty basic shitty storylines. WoW takes ur basic story recycles them like everyone else BUT puts a twist to it that i have yet to see other companies do. I love WoW lore. its one of the only reason i play.
Name a fantasy game with just such a badass story. frankly ALL of them bore the shit out of me ...so i ROLE PLAY........u kids have no imagination.
Wow has a kick ass story everytime i play cuz i bring my own into it wothout conflicting with the overall [plot the game already offers.
let me c......
og chrono trigger had a good story
the legacy of Kain games had good story
other than that i dont play videogames for writing and if u do then u should try reading novels. it is more rewarding the the same old predictable 'we sealed the portal and the demon lord is banished once again'
MMOs shouldn't be about single player quest .. that is reason I hate where the genre is going. Before WoW there wasn't quest you did given to you buy some npc. You made your own adventure in an online world. You mind as well save yourself 15/month and play a single player game with some instant message chat room running. There you go, same thing you guys love.
Now all you have are single player online GAMES with some grouping at the end.
Comments
I'm really not sure what pvp gear you're referring to that you can solo to get that's on par with raid gear. Battleground gear is far below raid level gear and arena pretty much requires you to be certain classes to get the best gear that is about on par with raid gear since the gear requires certain arena ratings, anyways, in either case no one is going to be soloing for the gear.
Raid content doesn't upset game balance? Are you on drugs? Raid gear allows players to trivialize the rest of the game's content. If you didn't want it to upset the balance, then developers would only allow raid gear to be used only in raids. They'd have to switch to their regular PvE gear once they leave a raid. This is the imbalance in PvE. The PvP ramifications are even worse. Blizzard has helped to alleviate this to some extent, but raid gear still outstrips PvP gear in stats and effects, the only thing that PvP gear tends to have more of is resilience, but you can still get enough resilience outside of PvP to be more than effective.
This is in no way analgous to a parent and child scenario, vying for attention. This is a business model that caters more to one subset of it's consumer base at the expense of another. What's worse is that that subset is the minority, which really begs the question of What's the more sound way to do business? Cater to the larger subset for larger returns or cater to the smaller one that may or may not stick around longer thanks to their addictive personalities and god complexes.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
Its a game for christ sake. You do not lose your arm or your whatever if you failed to grab that piece of purple epic.
Fact is, you are almost as good a dps-er, with 2k dps or 2.2k dps. If you know when and where to nuke or shoot, you contributed your part. A max dpser who shoot the wrong boss/mob at the wrong time could screw everyone up. Imagine you have the debuff fighting the paired patrol in OS and you go out maxing dps. Good grief.
I play 60% solo, I level up maxed alts, maxed crafting and doing it when i feel damned pleased. I need not join a raid, until I feel i got the time and mood for that evening. If I feel that I am stressed to do something against my will for a game, I will log out. It is foolish playing a game in which I suffer.
As for seeing the end raid, well that is only part of the gameplay. If you do not enjoy levelling process, interacting with people and doing the great variety that WoW offers, you stripped yourself of many facets of the game. Take a step back. Look at the game like it is, it is a game. If you do not find fun in it, do something else, or cancel the sub.
Its a game.
You are right, but you do not apply that same logic to your viewpoint of the discussion.
If the content is its own reward, then there is no need to worry about what rewards raiding offers. Go play the parts of the game that are enjoyable and ignore that which isn't. The only thing being complained about here is people who chose not to raid desiring the rewards of raiding. Covering it up in some twisted logic of removing rewards proves there is a problem is just false.
To the point in red, where is the problem if people are only playing the parts of the game they enjoy? Other than gear envy what is the "problem" that makes the game unfun? To me it reads like a nothing more than desire for loot detracting from gameplay which is what you say the root problem of raiding is. I think you are purposefully being selective in how you apply your viewpoint and draw your conclusions.
Everything about the situation applies equally to both gameplay options, but one you call a problem and the other you don't.
Lets just estimate the raid content of wow as 10% of the entire game. Now I'm fairly certain that far more than 10% of wow players take part in raiding, so lets not pretend casual players fund 100% of wows developement costs.
To be totally honest you are coming off as the elitist with how you chose to make your points. Blizzard caters to far more than just casual players and there was no sticker on the box that said "for casual players only".
Raid gear doesnt upset balance in modern MMOs except in SOME instances of badly-done PvP. Why? Because below the raidgame there is nothing that isnt a surefire win/success even with non-raid gear anyway. Difficulty levels are so extremely low you dont fail/die/lose except for lag or really bad playing either way.
When was the last time you broke a sweat in a WoW heroic instance? BC, right? WotLK is a joke with non-Naxx gear already. Lets not even talk about solo.
The 1k more hitpoints, or armor, or the 50 more DPS that raid gear gives you dont mean jack for balance, since the only area where they count, again discarding bad pvp systems that beg for it, are raids. Everything else is autowin.
The problem with creating content in proportion to the playerbase is that you have no way of figuring out your playerbase at all. And people change playing styles a lot.
So, if there was (and there isnt) a usable definition of casual, and you find out 80% of your playerbase is that, that doesnt guarantee at all that making content for them is better than making content for the raiders. The existence of a higher goal is a motivating factor, whether people play through all of it or not. Players do not have to actually beat the top raid boss to be affected, motivated and ultimately subscribed by it.
Solo content, on the other hand, is insanely ineffective in creation once you go beyond "kill 10 wolves" over and over, and usually due to balance issues has to be tuned to such low difficulties that it doesnt last at all. Which is why the good solo content is usually part of the intiial release/expansion.
Nowadays, MMOs already release with 99% casual content anyway, meaning the entire game minus the very last few instances/raids, and usually these are perfectly doable by casual gamers too, once they manage to organize themselves.
If you use 80% of your budget to create soloquests, do you REALLY think the casual crowd will like it? How many Fed-Ex do you want to patch in daily?
I admit that I am not very well versed in a direct comparison of pvp to pve gear, but I know there is plenty of pvp gear that is very nice. I also know that raiding, dungeons and pvp have all become far more casual friendly.
As for solo content getting the same rewards I have no problem with it as long as it isn't the current solo content in the game. The problem isn't raiding, the problem is that solo content is beyond easy and super fast. There is so little challenge to solo gameplay in current mmos that offering the same rewards would trivialize the entire rest of the games group based content. This is not an insult, but it is the truth.
When I said solo I was also including joining scenarios, pugs for dungeons or raids, arenas, etc. If someone wants to truely solo and never play with other players in a massive multiplayer game, then fine, but why complain about not getting compensation for chosing not to partake in all of the games content.
This whole converstaion is like complaining about not getting ranked in a national marathon website when somone only jogs by yourself everyday.
I believe I admitted earlier in the thread that for me it is a more a philosophical question of fairness than a personal desire for change in this particular game. One does not have to care about getting loot in order to have his experience hampered by the game's focus on loot. If the part of the game you enjoy the most is PvP, and you value being effective in PvP, you will have to raid in order to get the loot to do so, because in WoW the skill of the swordsman is largely irrelevant, it is all about the quality of the sword. If you don't PvP at all, and don't want to raid, it really doesn't matter at all, because you only need functional gear to do solo/small-group PvE, not good or great gear.
But this game really does say that if you want to PvP and not lose most of the time, you have to raid, and as a matter of principle that just isn't fair. My argument about the gear focus being the root of the problem wasn't really directed at raiding specifically, but rather the mindset that causes the original debate of this thread to occur in the first place. If the game wasn't reward focused, there wouldn't be anybody arguing about where the best rewards should be. They would find something else to argue about instead, since no game is perfect and a place inside every player thinks all games should change to suit his or her personal tastes.
As for what makes the game "unfun" for me personally, it is my viewpoint that the experience of content should be it's own reward, because in WoW, more often than not, the content just isn't very well written, and is kind of a bore to play. They can get away with low quality, because most of the player base doesn't care what the story of what they are doing is, they just care about getting to the end and getting some cool loot. If you gave them a mini-game with a 1 in 5,000 chance of winning a random purple item at their level every time they hit the enter key, there are probably many who would just sit for hours, repeatedly hitting enter.
So in short (too late, I know) my only problem in regard to the actual topic of the thread is that it isn't fair to force people who just want to PvP to spend immense amounts of time raiding in order to be competitive, because the two should have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
In regard to the points about solo content in the last couple posts, solo content doesn't *have* to be all lame fed-ex and kill ten whatevers quests. Lame and uninspired quests are a choice most MMOs make, not an inevitable thing they have to do. At this point in time it would be valid to say there isn't much point in WoW making interesting solo content, because most of their player base doesn't seem all that focused on the content of the quests anyway. Of course, the real question is whether they don't care because they wouldn't enjoy a well developed interactive story, or whether they don't care because WoW is their primary gaming experience, and they just think quest content can't be anyway other than boring and contrived.
Edit: And regarding the argument that casuals are most of the playerbase so it isn't fair that the raid players get more new content, from a business standpoint it makes perfect sense. Just guessing here, but the type of players who are avid raiders are probably also the type to triple-box an MMO and have three concurrent subscriptions running. So while casuals might be the majority in terms of players, the most steady and lucrative on a per-customer basis population probably is the raiders.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
It makes me wonder if some of the people complaining have been playing the current end-game in WoW.
EVERYONE PUGS!! on small servers just like big servers nax-voa-os-maly are constantly spammed to join if u have appropriate gear.
Crafting gear along with a few heroic drops can EASILY get u ready for Naxx. The crafted gear is everywhere. and u can always fill gaps with pvp gear. WG is an easy alternative to Bg's. i hop in when i get the chance and im close to maxxing out my honor just from doing the WG dailys and winning(or losing for that matter). WG offers gear = to last season arena and its cake to get.
I have quit playing 3 times since Wotlk has come out and each time was a month or more. i have 3 epic geared 80 toons. I have PUGGED all of it. I have never been in a real guild as me and my wife play together and prefer to keep in our own guild we have had for over 2 years. It is a bank/alt/quiet guild -if u play u know what i mean-. To be honest we have recently moved out a couple of our toons and joined what we thought was a good active guild. alas it seems to be breaking but w/e. i dont care cuz I CAN PUG.
of course to progress succesfully into teir 8 and later on 9 it will most likely require us to be scheduled raiders but even so my mage won a ring from Flame Leviathan (in 25 man Ulduar) in a random pug i jumped into last monday.
did i even mention that with embelems gained from downing heroic bosses u can purchase TIER GEAR!!!!!!!!
i mean how much easier can they make it for u. i laugh all the time at how much of a joke it is to gear a toon in WOTLK compared to BC (yes my main was a 54 when BC relesed)
on the other hand. dont try to belittle people who dont have time to play a video game. its understandable. but anyone crying about not getting good gear is funny. yes in comparison they may be entry lvl epics but its still good gear and if u sat with that gear and never raided guess what??? u will never need anything better cuz there is no solo content in the game that requires u to have gear equal to high end raid boss drops.
Get your crafted. run heroics. fill some gaps with pvp gear and if thats not your thing either then im failing to see why a person would pay a sub for a online mmo if they dont enjoy 5 man group content or random pvp. consider they are already acting like crafting is useless.....what else is in a mmo.
u want to kill 5/5 bears all day with the best of the best gear?
Thoes of you arguing gear should not be the primary goal can stop that argument right now. WoW is by far the most gear centered MMO out. Raid or not you HAVE to upgrade your gear to continue on in the game. I'm not going to argue if thats a good thing or a bad thing. Thats up to each individual.
If I remember right the OP asked why players say its "content we will never see". In his next post he made a complete ass of himself and completely trashed the guy who gave an honest awnser. Troll post anyone? You dont ask a question then be a jackass when someone tries to awnser. Anyway, regardless of what the OP thinks about other people lives and how they live it there are alot of people out there that dont dedicate there time to a game. They play to have fun. The part some of them dont understand is there will ALWAYS be content in EVERY MMO that they wont see. No reason to get pissy about it, its just fact. I am no casual player but I dont raid either. I dont expect to see the gear rewards from raids either. Doesnt really bother me. Others it would bother because they feel entitled to the same rewards as someone who does do the content.
Really it all boils down to rewards in MMO's are just like real life. The more time you invest in something the more reward you get for it. Untill some understand this or untill some MMO finds a way for both sides (raiders and non raiders) to feel like they arent getting hosed this argument will never die. Since thats likely to never happen you will always have one side thinking they are right and the other is wrong.
Indeed WoW is a game where gear matters a lot. Without enough hp, you will die to certain boss AoE, no matter how good you are. Period.
That does not stop you from enjoying the rest of WoW. There are some of everything, and if your gear does not measure up to a certain boss fight, do something else. I have a couple degrees myself, but I know I will fail if I try to take the accountant's qualifier. I am not up to it, so what? stick with something I can do, and try studying accounting, or give up. I know I am not going to do good in French too, so what? I cannot do everything good in life, or game, and with the few hours I got to spend in the game, I am happy I cannot see everything, or that game is too shallow.
When you make comments like those above it really brings your experience into question. By that I mean it sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about with current warcraft gameplay or are holding some carryover of gameplay that existed years ago, but has changed and you have no idea about it.
For example, you do not have to raid in order to pvp. In fact, pve raid based gear isn't good for pvp at all. PvE gear does not have stats that are important for PvP. On the flip side PvP gear works just fine in PvE. You are working so hard to create situations that do not exist in an attempt to validate your opinion and I am sorry to say it just doesn't exist. No one is being forced to raid pve to partake in pvp. I have exceptional pve gear, but almost no pvp gear on my main character. Even people with poor pvp gear can soundly beat me, because they are properly geared for the content and I am not.
As for the story content, have you even tried lich king? Sure the stories might not be NYTime best seller material, but they are very engaging stories with twists, turns and mechanics that actually effect the game for your character. Low quality is something that does not describe the story content of wow. It may not be suited to your personal tastes, but overall it is widely accepted to be high quality for an mmo.
Also the gear that the expansion slathers players with is counter productive to the mentality that you think exists. Lich king litterally hands out so much gear that you really won't care what you are chasing after, because it is everywhere. You can't take a bird flight without getting some item reward handed to you. You will have bags full of duplicate items for every slot.
Solo content is limited by balance issues and game mechanics, nothing more. Mechanaically mmos have little ability to track players actions in an effecient way. They can check if they killed something, interacted with an object, travelled to a certain position and a few other things. That is why there has been so few choices in quest styles, kill x, fed ex, escort, go to X/Y, etc.
Balance wise, how to you make content that can be soloed by 10 different classes with 3 spec line each and not exclude anyone? They could use current in game mechanics, but the more you add the more you exclude. Add a difficult poison to an encounter and you remove any class that has no healing or remove poison ability. That is just one example.
How would you propose to change solo content to be something more than it currently is? Even if you add harder mechanics solo play is the most basic of strategies that almost boils down to the same 3-4 button pushes. How would you make it harder than it currently is with the available mechanics and still keep it balanced so that all classes can enjoy it?
As I have said before, when some creative developer comes up with that solution they will have a significant advantage over other mmos, but as things are I don't think game designers are being lazy. I just don't think there is some magically simple solution to make engaging solo content that devs are just to lazy to put into games. There is a reason solo content is easy.
I must say that balance got nothing to do with the content before Wotlk...everything in there can be done in pug's with group setup of anything that has 2 fingers in both hands and can move a mouse...simple as that.
Juts grab a gear from 70-80 quests and head back to those raids in tbc and same goes with the raids like AQ.ZG,MC etc....if peeps aren't able to group up with others it's not the games fault. This is not a solo game "thank god" even it is really vanilla easy peazy lame atm. And that new content..ermm...can't even listen to anyone that can really call it too hard to handle.
Solo content is limited by balance issues and game mechanics, nothing more. Mechanaically mmos have little ability to track players actions in an effecient way. They can check if they killed something, interacted with an object, travelled to a certain position and a few other things. That is why there has been so few choices in quest styles, kill x, fed ex, escort, go to X/Y, etc.
Balance wise, how to you make content that can be soloed by 10 different classes with 3 spec line each and not exclude anyone? They could use current in game mechanics, but the more you add the more you exclude. Add a difficult poison to an encounter and you remove any class that has no healing or remove poison ability. That is just one example.
How would you propose to change solo content to be something more than it currently is? Even if you add harder mechanics solo play is the most basic of strategies that almost boils down to the same 3-4 button pushes. How would you make it harder than it currently is with the available mechanics and still keep it balanced so that all classes can enjoy it?
As I have said before, when some creative developer comes up with that solution they will have a significant advantage over other mmos, but as things are I don't think game designers are being lazy. I just don't think there is some magically simple solution to make engaging solo content that devs are just to lazy to put into games. There is a reason solo content is easy.
Before getting to this post, a bit about your previous post: if there is good writing in WotLK, that is refreshing. My only experience with that (pretty much new) expansion is doing to free trial part so I could play the Death Knight intro. Which no, was not well written. Maybe saturday morning cartoon level. Not even 80s Saturday cartoons, modern ones. As for whatever else they may have introduced in Northrend, it is an extremely high level zone, and I don't recall hearing that the expansion upgraded the writing quality and quest structure of everything that was in the game prior to its addition.
As for solo-content being solely about balance issues and game mechanics, BS. There is nothing stopping them from implementing quests where once acquiring an item, you don't have to give it the original quest-giver, you could give it to an interested 3rd party, and depending on who you decided to give it to you opened up a different quest line and took your story in a new direction. MMOs are supposed to have replay value, you don't get a lot of that from every quest being exactly the same for every character that plays it, unless the experience of going through the quest is just staggeringly astonishingly fun. Not something you see much in WoW.
In regard to your next argument, you don't have to make every quest in the game balanced for all the possible specs of every class. The experience doesn't have to be completely homogenized, it is not only ok but desirable for there to be class, or even race exclusive content. Perhaps a whole lot of it. The fewer types of character a given quest is designed for, the more interesting and tailored they are able to make the gameplay experience of the quest. Exclusion in a particular quest is only a bad thing if they make a large number of quests for one class or race and none for another.
And it isn't about whether the content is easy or hard. That is irrelevant when discussing whether or not it is well-written and presents an interesting and dynamic story. By creating more tailored experiences, rather than the lazy and generic one-size-fits-all approach, they can make the gameplay itself far more engaging. By hiring writers with actual talent, and creating branching quest structures (which can easily be done in dialogue trees, with no need for any gameplay mechanic) they create a more immersive and individual experience that lets the player feel like he is choosing his own adventure, rather than just charging down a linear and generic rut with only one beginning and one end, and no depth or choice.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
You are wrong just like you were about people being forced to raid so they could pvp. Just like you are wrong about the quest structure (styles/phasing/vehicles/etc) not changing. You seem to have no current experience so it is nearly impossible to make a point with you, because you just see things in a manner that fits your conclusions, even when those things are untrue. Almost everything you have been grinding against is no longer the case and you seem to just change issues after each one is shown to not be true how you originally presented it.
For example: now you are talking about story writing as if that is the solution to some problem? How exactly would better stories eliminate the problem of solo content being easy or raids or quest rewards?
Consider this, wow has 10 class each with 3 specialization trees and on top of that there are 10 races. All of which can take part in thousands and thousands of quests and stories. Not including dungeons, raids, etc.
Now to implement your theories of exclusion, the devs would either need to increase their efforts by a factor I couldn't even begin to compute just to offer the same amount of content or they would have to scale back available content by a considerable margin. So despite your best efforts to say there are not technical and balance issues, there certainly are. Not to mention the havoc such exclusion would cause on grouping, but that isn't a consideration when solo gameplay is being presented as the only important option in a discussion.
Even if you do tailor quests for individual classes, solo content would still be easy. Just for example: how can you really challenge a protection warrior with a quest, let alone hundreds of them?
The current mechanics of mmos don't support difficult solo gameplay and they do get more difficult with the more players you involve.
I'm not sure why you keep coming back to the ease vs. difficulty thing in your responses to me. I already said, multiple times, I really don't care about the difficulty level. At all. The only way I would care is if something that was supposed to be soloable wasn't.
As for the fact that every character can take part in "thousands and thousands of quests," so what? Every character has the *exact same* quests, so one character (two really, alliance and horde) could do almost every quest in the game. Why bother to ever make a second character on the same side? You seem to making making a quantity argument, as if quality can simply be inferred from quantity. By reducing the total number of quests available to a given character, they can vastly improve the quality of the experience within each given quest. You would really rather do 10 poorly written quests that you forget as soon as you finish them than 1 engaging quest that provides you with a memorable experience? Under that logic, why bother with quests at all, just increase the kill xp from defeating enemies and remove that pesky "interacting with NPCs" thing. Just interrupts the grinding anyway!
Even if there is new and interesting content in Northrend, which I have only your word for at this point, a player would have to spend dozens of hours playing through the same tired old boring experience in order to have a character ready to enjoy that content. Works out great if you happen to have such a character already, but if you have a character that high in WoW, you probably weren't looking for a story driven experience in the first place.
And I never said story writing had anything to do with solo content being easy or raids or quest rewards. I was never arguing about how hard solo content should be at all. You asked in a prior post what made the game unfun, so I told you my perspective. I never claimed the answer to that question had anything to do with the original topic of the thread. The only "problem" that would be solved by better writing and a branching quest structure would be the problem of much of the content not being enjoyable for it's own sake.
As for the "havoc" that would be caused to grouping, come on, there have always been quests that are basically solo, quests that need groups, raid quests, etc. etc. You don't need to make every quest solo in order to make those quests which are a more tailored experience. As for people who think they need to be in a group constantly, even if they are just killing ten wolves, I think it is time they take the pacifier out and leave the blankie at home.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
You single me out for inferring quantity = quality (which I do not by the way) and then in the very next breath you infer that reducing quantity will somehow improve quality. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Apply the same standards to the discussion please and not only when it reinforces your opinion. There is nothing to show that fewer quests or more exclusive quests would somehow be than general quests. That is a giant assumption. It is just as likely that quests could come out convoluted, bland and forced due to the class restriction.
My argument wasn't about quantity for the sake of having many, but doing what you suggest could drastically reduce the amount of content players could access. Most likely to the point of not having enough to do where as right now there is enough that can be avoided to make a fairly good trip a second time around.
The quests are already split in half between the factions. Further splitting them another X times for all the different class combinations (depending on how fine you take it 5? 10? 30?), would require vast amounts of developer resources to make a comparable leveling experience to what is currently offered or needing to reduce the amount of content to players. I don't think you get the logistics of that. Nor the reasoning why famer wiggins would refuse the help of someone just because they are not a paladin or something. *shrug*
As to why I keep talking about difficulty, it is simple. This whole discussion was started about solo players not getting the same rewards as raid players and that it was somehow a problem. One which I showed has been made so casual friendly it really isn't a problem anymore unless people simply refuse to ever play with anyone else. You have revised your claims several times from forced raiding to pvp into the quality of storytelling in the game.
I think it is pretty clear to me now that no matter what information I give you, you are determined to find some problem to complain about. Even if it is based on outdated information or does not directly relate to what is being discussed.
Unfortunately no one has really answered the question why casuals whinge about "content they'll never see" when virtually all raid content IS STILL IN THE GAME.
I gave you the two examples of a world boss and a raid instance being removed from the original location and re-tuned for higher lvls (Lord Kazzak and Naxxramas).
Never saw the legendary c'thun? Grab a few friends and run into AQ40. Its all easy except Twin Emps that requires a degree of not sucking and using your brain (ok ok ok, I know that using your brain is "hardcore" and evil)
If you didn't see content at lvl 60 or 70 then get a few friends and go do it. IT IS STILL THERE. THEREFORE CLAIMING YOU'LL NEVER SEE CONTENT IS MORONIC.
I trashed the guy's answer because it was the typical cliched riddled, banal arguments that people have parrotted for years. Basically I trashed it because it deserved to be trashed. Myths need to be exposed. I didn't personally attack the guy or say anything nasty about him as a person. He/she might be the nicest person you'll ever meet. But it doesn't change that his/her arguments were weak.
And besides your personal insults towards me I like what you wrote. But you, or should I say "you and I" are in the minority. Non hardcore players who dont want everything handed to us. But this could also be a generational thing. The instant gratification, XBOX HALO, ADHD ritalin generation just expect everything to be instant and done with no effort. And why not? That is all they have known. They have never known a time when the internet was pretty basic. They have never known a time without SMS or when mobile phones were expensive and not used as a toy. They have never known a time when music and entertainment was not available at a push of a button. Why should WoW be any different?
Contrary to myth the 8.5 million people that were playing at the time when Burning Crusade were not hardcore players. Infact, the VAST majority were casual.
You make a good point about there always going to be content you'll never see in an mmo. But WoW has got so big that the vast majority of people joining have never been part of an online community, let alone a mmo. They pay $15 a month and therefore the game should be catered to his/her demands. If you paid money for a brand new single player game and the last 1/3 was only playable on nightmare mode that was impossible except for those with freakish talent you'd be pretty annoyed. Unfortunately that mentality has drifted into WoW and mmo's in general.
And thats why WoW resembles a single player game so much these days. Because the people Blizzard are attracting to WoW have only ever known single player games and they expect that an mmorpg should function in the same way.
im very sorry. i dont wanna name call......but some of you are idiots.
if there was soloable content to get the best of the best gear ppl would CONSTANTLY be spamming for help to do them so they could hurry and get their epic. it would only be solo content to the few ppl who enjoyed 'playing ' the game and not just showing off. Showing off is like 85% of your WoW pop.
Again. MMO does actually stand for something. Massive multiplayer. think about it and quit crying. maybe u should stick with one player games .
The main thing i wish they would implement is 2-3 man dungeon experiences. Sure they wouldnt b as complicated and i WOULD NOT expect = rewards to high end raid content......but i think it would be fun since most the time the only person i care to speak with in the game is my wife. Of course alot of ppl would say it isnt worth their time. bbut i think 2 man dungeons is all i would ever do if i could still progress.
Make a death knight or ret paladin. Do dailies, argent tournament and rep grind and you can get good gear. Alternatively you can play AV for a couple of weeks straight and get high level gear as well.
All without ever grouping.
And then theres the achievement grind. Hell, a few weeks ago I got my Loremaster title. All solo. Ok, I lie. I had to group for a couple of Icecrown quests.
I'm currently working on getting 75 pets. Guess what, thats solo too.
also the story line has improved as far as quest involvment goes.
In Azeroth you do peopls chores.
in BC you learn about outland tibes.
In wotlk almost every quest i did (im also picky) was intimatly intertwined with the struggle with the Lich King.
In BC i never saw Illidan nor felt his influence in outland. in Wotlk u cant get away fromArthas. he is everywhere and if that isnt improvment then what would be?
ive played alot of video games and i can honetly say the normal fantasy game be it rts or what it has usually pretty basic shitty storylines. WoW takes ur basic story recycles them like everyone else BUT puts a twist to it that i have yet to see other companies do. I love WoW lore. its one of the only reason i play.
Name a fantasy game with just such a badass story. frankly ALL of them bore the shit out of me ...so i ROLE PLAY........u kids have no imagination.
Wow has a kick ass story everytime i play cuz i bring my own into it wothout conflicting with the overall [plot the game already offers.
let me c......
og chrono trigger had a good story
the legacy of Kain games had good story
other than that i dont play videogames for writing and if u do then u should try reading novels. it is more rewarding the the same old predictable 'we sealed the portal and the demon lord is banished once again'
MMOs shouldn't be about single player quest .. that is reason I hate where the genre is going. Before WoW there wasn't quest you did given to you buy some npc. You made your own adventure in an online world. You mind as well save yourself 15/month and play a single player game with some instant message chat room running. There you go, same thing you guys love.
Now all you have are single player online GAMES with some grouping at the end.