Vanilla WoW actually had people in different teirs of gear, and even if you were wearing AQ40 gear you still respected the guys getting their MC gear because you knoew the pangs of learning and defeating those encounters.
The everyone is the same no matter what WoW takes now is driving away their fans that seek anything resembeling a challenge. If 2007-2009 hadnt been full of fail MMO's WoW wouldnt have continued to grow.
LOL .. i gather you don't like TBC.
But do you know that WOW grew a great deal of subscription after TBC? If WOW is "killed" with 11M subscribers, i am sure every single MMO on the planet wants to be "killed".
Why is it that whenever anyone talks about 'fun' it is only THEIR version of 'fun' that is valid?
So race drivers competing to be first don't have any fun? Atheletes don't have any fun? No sports players have fun?
Your version of fun is not the only fun to be had, and it isn't better then anyone elses fun either.
I would put it like this.
Do you think the footballer in the 3rd division of english football is having any LESS fun then the footballer in the 1st division?
So how come when you ask for tiers in an MMORPG all of a sudden you are spoiling social interaction, ruining the game and taking out the fun?
I completely agree with you that there are different versions of fun. What I was trying to say is that you don't have fun playing WOW but you have fun when you become en elite player - that's not the fun of playing but the fun of accomplishing something. Let me take your example of race drivers. There are drivers that enjoy racing even if they don't win and there a racers for whom racing is just hard work and they enjoy only when they win.
There is nothing wrong having fun your way and If you like it you should play it your way. I think that a MMORPG game should have players like you, because you are playing a specific role in a RPG game. But If almost all the players are playing your way then it isn't a MMORPG anymore but it becomes more a competition where everybody wants to win. Maybe we should call this games MMOC (massive multiplayer online competitions) to distinguish them from MMORPG games. And again I have nothing against MMOC games, I'm just against mixing them with MMORPG games.
Some other thought. You would like to put some kind of leveling into the endgame. The idea is that you should level through the dungeons. Now WOW is divided into leveling from 1 to 80 and the endgame. For a lot of players the leveling from 1 to 80 is just a nuisance and the real game starts with the endgame. If you put leveling into the endgame than the endgame becomes part of the leveling process. And for most players leveling through the dungeons would become just a nuisance like the leveling from 1 to 80. And where would then start the real game. The real game or the new endgame would be the last and most difficult dungeon - some 8 hours of playing. And people would then complain that WOW has only 8 hours of endgame that WOW has no end content.
The problem is not the game itself (wow), it's the model (raiding for gear).
Your EQ point is not valid. Everyone coming out of North Tov looked the same, it was just a matter of time till everyone had leggings, breastplate, and a weapon/epic; EQ characters became "different" when armor dying became available, not before.
As for WoW, Blizzard just did what had to be done: allowing every player to taste the purpler gear, because there is nothing left to do at max level to retain players.
As for raiders clearing dungeons within a week, blame it on beta testers leaking the strategy: raids should be tested inhome by the developpers; also, after 10 years of raiding experience carried on from EQ to WOW, it's no surprise that players developped a very quick grasp of a situation and almost raid robotically.
My addiction History: >> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore >> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual >> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
This clear raids in a week might have been valid once upon a time but you cant use that anymore, it took a great amount of time for guilds like Ensidia, Method and other high end guilds to clear to Algalon and even longer for them to clear all the harmodes in there. People can think whatever they want about this new hardmodes system but i personally like it and I dont count a raid instance cleared until the hardmodes are beaten.
And getting gear through high end raid content or lower lvl 5-10 man instances thats just your opinion, i would call that very casual, despite that its not like you need to raid to get good gear, you can pretty much get the second best teir of gear in the game with only doing smaller raids and gather emblems from 5 man instances. Its not like people are forced to do the 25 man versions to get good gear only to get the best which is the way it should be.
One point that i feel WoW Devs should try to implement somehow is to make people look diffrent, it dosent bother me very much but it would be very cool to customize your own gear. And it wouldnt be very hard either, just say instead of a boss dropping Teir 9 armor tokens , they drop tier 9 stats token, and with that token you go and pick whatever sort of item you want to put it on, would be so awesome for me as a shammy atleast to still have the Teir1 gear when i heal=D. That would atleast make people look diffrent.
Playing: CO, C&C and WoW. Played: Tabula Rasa, AoC, War, Aion. Regret Playing: Hellgate: London, EVE.
Remove PVP gear outside of Arena/Battlegrounds. You play at a certain rank in Arena, you were a uniform of appropriate level. You fight in a Battleground, you wear the uniform of the side you are fighting for.
Forget trying to balance PVP around classes and realize that it needs to be done based on a 3v3 comp. If you want to go outside that tank/dps/heal comp - that is on you, have fun.
Things like this will never happen in WoW as it caters to crybabies that are happy with their Fisher-Price World of Bejeweled.
It could be an awesome game instead of just being a casual time sink.
He wants to go back to Vanilla WOW and separate the men (and Orcs) from the boyz.
Blizzard doesn't want elite players feeling special, they want hordes of casual players feeling equal and believing the game is "fair" and of course, paying boatloads of monthly subscription fees.
Looks like their strategy is working flawlessly.
hehe its so true :P dam them commies at Blizzard (joke) . The thing is Blizzard are a buisness and recognised we live in an i want it now culture rather than i want to save ane work hard to achieve something one . I dont blame them for exploiting it but like all such cultures they hit a depression sooner or later be they global or virtual .
Please STOP saying that Blizzard now works better because it doesn't.I know SOOOOOOOO many ppl that quited wow cause of this casual that you all say here and ofcourse that happend first time with TBC. Maybe not so much as it is now but we all knew that they go there. Before TBC you actually have a goal. To be top or at least to drool at others gear. Now its just full purple to everyone. WoW became a hit before TBC, now its just another dying game. I'm really weird to see other MMORPGs from now on cause till now bit hits (WAR , AoC) failed. Aion is a hope atm.
Please STOP saying that Blizzard now works better because it doesn't.I know SOOOOOOOO many ppl that quited wow cause of this casual that you all say here and ofcourse that happend first time with TBC. Maybe not so much as it is now but we all knew that they go there. Before TBC you actually have a goal. To be top or at least to drool at others gear. Now its just full purple to everyone. WoW became a hit before TBC, now its just another dying game. I'm really weird to see other MMORPGs from now on cause till now bit hits (WAR , AoC) failed. Aion is a hope atm.
You know WOW GREW subscribers after WOTLK (before the china thing), right?
Just want to add, that I don't really feel you have to be an elitist jerk striving for e-peen to like tiered raid progression, hard raids, and a hardcore attitude.
Personally, I got nothing out of doing the Naxx of Wotlk. There was no challenge, no prequest, no epic feeling, no nothing. I like challenges, I want the boss to eat me alive and spew me out in a 100 pieces if my raid is not prepared enough. To me, it is detestful to get to max level in a game and the proceed to stroll right into the last dungeon of a game and say hello.... The easymode/hardmode 10man/25man concept doesn't really work either. "Yeah I killed the last boss". "Ok right, so which version of him did you kill?" *sigh*
So again, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with looking down on casuals, or anything like it.
Give raiders progression, make us fight for our right to be in the end game dungeons! And give non-raiders the opportunity to get decent gear from other dungeons or badges or whatever you want....
The principle problems with vanilla WoW content were:
1. Too many people
-the 40man requirement, just scaled the encounters unnecessarily. most of the MC fights could esaily scale down to 3-10 people. The difficulty was achieved by introducing more failure points but not actually making the fight intellectually more challenging
2. Not enough gear
-In order to progress guilds had to keep farming old content for months after they have beat it so they were geared for the next tier of raiding. That was just needless make work and burned out any casual raiders. If Ragnaros would drop like 20 pieces at a time, then the raid would have geared up for BWL in the time it took them to put MC on farm status and then they could have moved on
I am actually a firm believer in proper progression of content. I think that finishing all the heroic 5mans should have been a prereq for starting on Naxx and finishing Naxx should be a prereq for Ulduur. I just do not believe in pointlessly expanding the time that is needed for this. I believe in proof of competence and not proof of pointless grinding of content. (this is also my problem with how Sons of Hodir rep and most pre-WotLK reps are handled)
Gear is simply no longer a proper indicator of skill or competence and it never should have been made so.
Just want to add, that I don't really feel you have to be an elitist jerk striving for e-peen to like tiered raid progression, hard raids, and a hardcore attitude. Personally, I got nothing out of doing the Naxx of Wotlk. There was no challenge, no prequest, no epic feeling, no nothing. I like challenges, I want the boss to eat me alive and spew me out in a 100 pieces if my raid is not prepared enough. To me, it is detestful to get to max level in a game and the proceed to stroll right into the last dungeon of a game and say hello.... The easymode/hardmode 10man/25man concept doesn't really work either. "Yeah I killed the last boss". "Ok right, so which version of him did you kill?" *sigh* So again, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with looking down on casuals, or anything like it. Give raiders progression, make us fight for our right to be in the end game dungeons! And give non-raiders the opportunity to get decent gear from other dungeons or badges or whatever you want....
That is just not going to work. Before WOTLK, only a few percentage of WOW's players get to see the end dungeons. That just make no sense when content is so expensive to create. And even now, NOT everyone has seen ulduar (like 1/3 or 1/2).
Hardmode & achievement is the way to go when dungeons are so expensive to make.
Plus, plenty of peopel wiped on Naxx of WOTLK too, particularly when you are not geared enough. If you want to wipe and wipe, go play hard mode, don't drag everyone down with you.
The easymode/hardmode 10man/25man concept doesn't really work either
Better than the alternative imo; waiting twice as long for content patches because the developers have to make twice as many new instances; one specifically for 10 man and one for 25 man Scaling and content sharing is way more practical.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
That is just not going to work. Before WOTLK, only a few percentage of WOW's players get to see the end dungeons. That just make no sense when content is so expensive to create. And even now, NOT everyone has seen ulduar (like 1/3 or 1/2). Hardmode & achievement is the way to go when dungeons are so expensive to make.
I suppose that is the case; which doesn't mean I will play games with this kind of raid setup. I'd be happy though, to have multiple different tier dungeons (i.e. spread out content over different difficulties) and only really having one very hard dungeon at each period/patch/expansion. But I get it, it's probably not going to happen (and we know for a fact it's never going to happen in WoW).
However, for me if you look at a dungeon in game that only perhaps 5% manage to beat fully (like vanilla Naxxramas): it adds a huge amout to every player's experience even if you never set foot in there (I didn't). There is lore there, the items are spread out and admired by players, the stories, videos, epicness and uniqueness brings alot to the game world that. And that's a big deal for me.
Also: Not everyone has done Ulduar, but I reckon everyone COULD if they bothered to apply for a guild. I mean, there are alot of players that never ever "enjoy" end game content because they just can't bother.
Comments
LOL .. i gather you don't like TBC.
But do you know that WOW grew a great deal of subscription after TBC? If WOW is "killed" with 11M subscribers, i am sure every single MMO on the planet wants to be "killed".
I completely agree with you that there are different versions of fun. What I was trying to say is that you don't have fun playing WOW but you have fun when you become en elite player - that's not the fun of playing but the fun of accomplishing something. Let me take your example of race drivers. There are drivers that enjoy racing even if they don't win and there a racers for whom racing is just hard work and they enjoy only when they win.
There is nothing wrong having fun your way and If you like it you should play it your way. I think that a MMORPG game should have players like you, because you are playing a specific role in a RPG game. But If almost all the players are playing your way then it isn't a MMORPG anymore but it becomes more a competition where everybody wants to win. Maybe we should call this games MMOC (massive multiplayer online competitions) to distinguish them from MMORPG games. And again I have nothing against MMOC games, I'm just against mixing them with MMORPG games.
Some other thought. You would like to put some kind of leveling into the endgame. The idea is that you should level through the dungeons. Now WOW is divided into leveling from 1 to 80 and the endgame. For a lot of players the leveling from 1 to 80 is just a nuisance and the real game starts with the endgame. If you put leveling into the endgame than the endgame becomes part of the leveling process. And for most players leveling through the dungeons would become just a nuisance like the leveling from 1 to 80. And where would then start the real game. The real game or the new endgame would be the last and most difficult dungeon - some 8 hours of playing. And people would then complain that WOW has only 8 hours of endgame that WOW has no end content.
The problem is not the game itself (wow), it's the model (raiding for gear).
Your EQ point is not valid. Everyone coming out of North Tov looked the same, it was just a matter of time till everyone had leggings, breastplate, and a weapon/epic; EQ characters became "different" when armor dying became available, not before.
As for WoW, Blizzard just did what had to be done: allowing every player to taste the purpler gear, because there is nothing left to do at max level to retain players.
As for raiders clearing dungeons within a week, blame it on beta testers leaking the strategy: raids should be tested inhome by the developpers; also, after 10 years of raiding experience carried on from EQ to WOW, it's no surprise that players developped a very quick grasp of a situation and almost raid robotically.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
This clear raids in a week might have been valid once upon a time but you cant use that anymore, it took a great amount of time for guilds like Ensidia, Method and other high end guilds to clear to Algalon and even longer for them to clear all the harmodes in there. People can think whatever they want about this new hardmodes system but i personally like it and I dont count a raid instance cleared until the hardmodes are beaten.
And getting gear through high end raid content or lower lvl 5-10 man instances thats just your opinion, i would call that very casual, despite that its not like you need to raid to get good gear, you can pretty much get the second best teir of gear in the game with only doing smaller raids and gather emblems from 5 man instances. Its not like people are forced to do the 25 man versions to get good gear only to get the best which is the way it should be.
One point that i feel WoW Devs should try to implement somehow is to make people look diffrent, it dosent bother me very much but it would be very cool to customize your own gear. And it wouldnt be very hard either, just say instead of a boss dropping Teir 9 armor tokens , they drop tier 9 stats token, and with that token you go and pick whatever sort of item you want to put it on, would be so awesome for me as a shammy atleast to still have the Teir1 gear when i heal=D. That would atleast make people look diffrent.
Playing: CO, C&C and WoW.
Played: Tabula Rasa, AoC, War, Aion.
Regret Playing: Hellgate: London, EVE.
So there is no raid progression anymore in WoW? oO
No wonder so many people are bored to death content wise.
I do!!!
Stop giving everyone overpowered epics in 5 mans and off heroic vendors.
Bring back attunments, make people need to kill the last boss of a tier 8 dungeon to get a key to run tier 9.
Both vanilla and tbc had raid progression now people could skip the first couple raids due to heroic gear and 5 man drops and go straight into Ulduar.
A raid game that doesn't have a raid to raid progression means nothing.
I love WoW but what they've done to raiding just doesn't work as good as it used to.
With that said I love the 10/25 man regular and hardmode system I just wished they would bring back attunements.
Playing: WoW, EvE
Interested in: TOR, ER, GW2, WoD, Dust514
Bring back attunement and raid progression.
Remove PVP gear outside of Arena/Battlegrounds. You play at a certain rank in Arena, you were a uniform of appropriate level. You fight in a Battleground, you wear the uniform of the side you are fighting for.
Forget trying to balance PVP around classes and realize that it needs to be done based on a 3v3 comp. If you want to go outside that tank/dps/heal comp - that is on you, have fun.
Things like this will never happen in WoW as it caters to crybabies that are happy with their Fisher-Price World of Bejeweled.
It could be an awesome game instead of just being a casual time sink.
He wants to go back to Vanilla WOW and separate the men (and Orcs) from the boyz.
Blizzard doesn't want elite players feeling special, they want hordes of casual players feeling equal and believing the game is "fair" and of course, paying boatloads of monthly subscription fees.
Looks like their strategy is working flawlessly.
hehe its so true :P dam them commies at Blizzard (joke) . The thing is Blizzard are a buisness and recognised we live in an i want it now culture rather than i want to save ane work hard to achieve something one . I dont blame them for exploiting it but like all such cultures they hit a depression sooner or later be they global or virtual .
Please STOP saying that Blizzard now works better because it doesn't.I know SOOOOOOOO many ppl that quited wow cause of this casual that you all say here and ofcourse that happend first time with TBC. Maybe not so much as it is now but we all knew that they go there. Before TBC you actually have a goal. To be top or at least to drool at others gear. Now its just full purple to everyone. WoW became a hit before TBC, now its just another dying game. I'm really weird to see other MMORPGs from now on cause till now bit hits (WAR , AoC) failed. Aion is a hope atm.
less is more
You know WOW GREW subscribers after WOTLK (before the china thing), right?
Of course it is working.
Just want to add, that I don't really feel you have to be an elitist jerk striving for e-peen to like tiered raid progression, hard raids, and a hardcore attitude.
Personally, I got nothing out of doing the Naxx of Wotlk. There was no challenge, no prequest, no epic feeling, no nothing. I like challenges, I want the boss to eat me alive and spew me out in a 100 pieces if my raid is not prepared enough. To me, it is detestful to get to max level in a game and the proceed to stroll right into the last dungeon of a game and say hello.... The easymode/hardmode 10man/25man concept doesn't really work either. "Yeah I killed the last boss". "Ok right, so which version of him did you kill?" *sigh*
So again, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with looking down on casuals, or anything like it.
Give raiders progression, make us fight for our right to be in the end game dungeons! And give non-raiders the opportunity to get decent gear from other dungeons or badges or whatever you want....
The principle problems with vanilla WoW content were:
1. Too many people
-the 40man requirement, just scaled the encounters unnecessarily. most of the MC fights could esaily scale down to 3-10 people. The difficulty was achieved by introducing more failure points but not actually making the fight intellectually more challenging
2. Not enough gear
-In order to progress guilds had to keep farming old content for months after they have beat it so they were geared for the next tier of raiding. That was just needless make work and burned out any casual raiders. If Ragnaros would drop like 20 pieces at a time, then the raid would have geared up for BWL in the time it took them to put MC on farm status and then they could have moved on
I am actually a firm believer in proper progression of content. I think that finishing all the heroic 5mans should have been a prereq for starting on Naxx and finishing Naxx should be a prereq for Ulduur. I just do not believe in pointlessly expanding the time that is needed for this. I believe in proof of competence and not proof of pointless grinding of content. (this is also my problem with how Sons of Hodir rep and most pre-WotLK reps are handled)
Gear is simply no longer a proper indicator of skill or competence and it never should have been made so.
That is just not going to work. Before WOTLK, only a few percentage of WOW's players get to see the end dungeons. That just make no sense when content is so expensive to create. And even now, NOT everyone has seen ulduar (like 1/3 or 1/2).
Hardmode & achievement is the way to go when dungeons are so expensive to make.
Plus, plenty of peopel wiped on Naxx of WOTLK too, particularly when you are not geared enough. If you want to wipe and wipe, go play hard mode, don't drag everyone down with you.
Better than the alternative imo; waiting twice as long for content patches because the developers have to make twice as many new instances; one specifically for 10 man and one for 25 man Scaling and content sharing is way more practical.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I suppose that is the case; which doesn't mean I will play games with this kind of raid setup. I'd be happy though, to have multiple different tier dungeons (i.e. spread out content over different difficulties) and only really having one very hard dungeon at each period/patch/expansion. But I get it, it's probably not going to happen (and we know for a fact it's never going to happen in WoW).
However, for me if you look at a dungeon in game that only perhaps 5% manage to beat fully (like vanilla Naxxramas): it adds a huge amout to every player's experience even if you never set foot in there (I didn't). There is lore there, the items are spread out and admired by players, the stories, videos, epicness and uniqueness brings alot to the game world that. And that's a big deal for me.
Also: Not everyone has done Ulduar, but I reckon everyone COULD if they bothered to apply for a guild. I mean, there are alot of players that never ever "enjoy" end game content because they just can't bother.