The argument that hard modes makes raiding in wow challenging is ridiculous. Imagine there would be hardmodes in pacman which only 0,01% could beat, would that make pacman difficult and challenging??? I guess not
And of course in any ranks you have the top 5 that consists of a small percentage of the player base....even in pacman you got only 0,XX% of the players that could beat level XX.
Hardmodes is just the cheap way that blizzard went. Instead of designing 2-3 instances of different difficulty levels you just got one that serves all.
I wonder what comes next ? patches that consists only of new hardmodes of existing raiding content ? I bet wow-fans would cheer at that as well
The argument that hard modes makes raiding in wow challenging is ridiculous. Imagine there would be hardmodes in pacman which only 0,01% could beat, would that make pacman difficult and challenging??? I guess not And of course in any ranks you have the top 5 that consists of a small percentage of the player base....even in pacman you got only 0,XX% of the players that could beat level XX.
I would say that if only .01% of people playing could beat something then yes it is challenging, how could you possibly say its not.
You forget a thing Zorn, about 75% of them(yes I pulled this number out of my ass, but looking at the 3 realms I play on, it's kinda true) just grind welfares in battlegrounds 24/7 and never touched Ulduar(maybe with a twist of fate, in a /2 pug, but otherwise no).
Algalon isn't my definiton of excellent game design: just like M'uru, it's a boss that deals a shitload of damage, almost like an AoE Patchwerk. They are very hard indeed, but they are based on high numbers, not on amazing individual skill.
The hardest boss in WOTLK was Yogg Saron 0 Heroic pre-nerfs. It was done by far less people than Algalon 25 and it needed amazing skills from everyone, plus certain luck from a RNG gods. But the amount of timing, reaction and class knowledge(hunters needed to do a perfect kite for example) needed for YG025 beat Algalon 25 by far.
So everyone can choose how he gets a purple these days. Everybody pleased. However ....
Like you say: those purple pixels only serve to go further in the game and gain those mounts and titles (which are far more timeless). Altough even these rewards will age, but far less so than the early epics of WOW 2005 of course.
I do NOT mind people can gain two or three vaulable pieces in the game doing easy Heroics. People can have good gear. I don't mind.
But a GOOD designed MMO (which WOW is btw) allows everyone for him/herself to set a goal within THEIR possibilities. And WOW simply gives this choice. I will never gain a Gladiator title, no matter how hard I could try, but I am pleased with other titles and mounts in the game within MY (limited) gaming skills.
That's the problem: everyone thinks he IS Carl Lewis, but everyone has to face sometime their own limitations.
So if you CAN do all the hardest modes: no problem: grtz : you deserve that mount.
So if you CAN NOT do all the hardest things in the game: meet your limits/ but you are awarded less.
Sound principle. and like some say here: this IS a game (ok played in a great background world), but it IS just that.
I stopped looking at MMOs as a game a long time ago, they're rather full-time hobbies who need a lot of devotament. Otherwise, you'll have more fustration than fun. Not even those people who enjoy BG grind casually can say WoW is fun in greens, or when they meet a WSG premade with everyone having T2 weapon+full furious 3 times in a row. For fun games there is TF2 or CS, games which gets you in and out quite fast and where you play on an equal field, unless you get too hooked.
Those being said, BC had plenty of options as well with the release of BT ilvl badge epics and starter bosses of Hyjal and BT were doable even by casual guilds, who couldn't put time in exercising too much on bosses like Ilidan. Everyone was pretty happy: you got BT-like epics from grinding heroics/Karazhan/Zul'Aman or you were doing Sunwell, wiping for weeks on M'uru and Kil'jeaden but still having a lot of fun and even becoming a better guild.
However, there was a sense of progression. A serious raiding guild had all attunements done and almost finished SWP. There used to be a single guild on my server who even touched Twins in SWP and they were pretty cool people in real life but still resepcted in-game. SWP was the nightmare-mode of BC and the other raids could be done by any guild(bar end-bosses).
WOTLK is easier, no comment about this. Most of the hardmodes are easier than than some bosses in SSC/TK and that says a lot. There are harder bosses like YG 25 with 0 keepers, Freya and Mirmiron post-nerfs and Algalon but 4 hard hardmodes is still a lot less than how many hard bosses were in BC. Taking the hardmodes apart, even simple aspects of the game are easier: dailies in Ogri'la were a lot harder than current dailies, heroics were harder, PvP was "harder"(aka WOTLK nerfed a lot of specs' complexity and arena system was remade for getting 1800 even with more losses than wins. Example: In BC, having 1850 weapon made you already a very good player, in WOTLK people under 2300 are called scrubs).
I hope you understand my point now. I don't say that certain hardmodes aren't hard, but the fun thing is, that there were about 10 guilds who did Kael pre-nerfs and again an extremely small amount of guilds who did M'uru pre-nerfs then Kil'jeaden. But spamming statistics isn't a good way to measure WoW's difficulty, we gotta look at WoW's overall difficulty, and BC was harder.
It's interesting tho, I doubt WoW would have lost any subscribers with BC's raiding and PvP design. They probably just wanted to move WoW to another difficulty.
Comments
The argument that hard modes makes raiding in wow challenging is ridiculous. Imagine there would be hardmodes in pacman which only 0,01% could beat, would that make pacman difficult and challenging??? I guess not
And of course in any ranks you have the top 5 that consists of a small percentage of the player base....even in pacman you got only 0,XX% of the players that could beat level XX.
Hardmodes is just the cheap way that blizzard went. Instead of designing 2-3 instances of different difficulty levels you just got one that serves all.
I wonder what comes next ? patches that consists only of new hardmodes of existing raiding content ? I bet wow-fans would cheer at that as well
I would say that if only .01% of people playing could beat something then yes it is challenging, how could you possibly say its not.
So everyone can choose how he gets a purple these days. Everybody pleased. However ....
Like you say: those purple pixels only serve to go further in the game and gain those mounts and titles (which are far more timeless). Altough even these rewards will age, but far less so than the early epics of WOW 2005 of course.
I do NOT mind people can gain two or three vaulable pieces in the game doing easy Heroics. People can have good gear. I don't mind.
But a GOOD designed MMO (which WOW is btw) allows everyone for him/herself to set a goal within THEIR possibilities. And WOW simply gives this choice. I will never gain a Gladiator title, no matter how hard I could try, but I am pleased with other titles and mounts in the game within MY (limited) gaming skills.
That's the problem: everyone thinks he IS Carl Lewis, but everyone has to face sometime their own limitations.
So if you CAN do all the hardest modes: no problem: grtz : you deserve that mount.
So if you CAN NOT do all the hardest things in the game: meet your limits/ but you are awarded less.
Sound principle. and like some say here: this IS a game (ok played in a great background world), but it IS just that.
I stopped looking at MMOs as a game a long time ago, they're rather full-time hobbies who need a lot of devotament. Otherwise, you'll have more fustration than fun. Not even those people who enjoy BG grind casually can say WoW is fun in greens, or when they meet a WSG premade with everyone having T2 weapon+full furious 3 times in a row. For fun games there is TF2 or CS, games which gets you in and out quite fast and where you play on an equal field, unless you get too hooked.
Those being said, BC had plenty of options as well with the release of BT ilvl badge epics and starter bosses of Hyjal and BT were doable even by casual guilds, who couldn't put time in exercising too much on bosses like Ilidan. Everyone was pretty happy: you got BT-like epics from grinding heroics/Karazhan/Zul'Aman or you were doing Sunwell, wiping for weeks on M'uru and Kil'jeaden but still having a lot of fun and even becoming a better guild.
However, there was a sense of progression. A serious raiding guild had all attunements done and almost finished SWP. There used to be a single guild on my server who even touched Twins in SWP and they were pretty cool people in real life but still resepcted in-game. SWP was the nightmare-mode of BC and the other raids could be done by any guild(bar end-bosses).
WOTLK is easier, no comment about this. Most of the hardmodes are easier than than some bosses in SSC/TK and that says a lot. There are harder bosses like YG 25 with 0 keepers, Freya and Mirmiron post-nerfs and Algalon but 4 hard hardmodes is still a lot less than how many hard bosses were in BC. Taking the hardmodes apart, even simple aspects of the game are easier: dailies in Ogri'la were a lot harder than current dailies, heroics were harder, PvP was "harder"(aka WOTLK nerfed a lot of specs' complexity and arena system was remade for getting 1800 even with more losses than wins. Example: In BC, having 1850 weapon made you already a very good player, in WOTLK people under 2300 are called scrubs).
I hope you understand my point now. I don't say that certain hardmodes aren't hard, but the fun thing is, that there were about 10 guilds who did Kael pre-nerfs and again an extremely small amount of guilds who did M'uru pre-nerfs then Kil'jeaden. But spamming statistics isn't a good way to measure WoW's difficulty, we gotta look at WoW's overall difficulty, and BC was harder.
It's interesting tho, I doubt WoW would have lost any subscribers with BC's raiding and PvP design. They probably just wanted to move WoW to another difficulty.