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World of Warcraft: Emblem and Dungeon Finder System
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller takes a look at two of World of Warcraft's newest systems, discussing both emblems and the dungeon finder system.
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World of Warcraft has proven to stand the test of time in the MMO industry. The game is now five years old and still sits atop the MMO pantheon. Other games have tried to reach Mt. Olympus and failed. Now a new crop of MMOs coming out in 2010 and 2011 are looking to tumble WoW's dominance of the industry. In the latest Patch 3.3 WoW has taken its end game character advancement to a more casual friendly approach for players. As games get faster and more player friendly, the days of hardcore MMO grinds are soon coming to a close and WoW's Emblem and Dunegon Finder systems are examples of how MMOs might evolve in the future.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Oh first.. nice write up.
A few things I would of licked Blizz to add where
I've always disliked the queue system. Personally, I would prefer a lobby-style interface such as they do for Diablo or Starcraft for instances. The random queues are cool, but the being a DPS queueing for a specific dungeon can be futile.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Sometimes I too feel like I would lick Blizzard. They're just so damned nice to me sometimes...
=]
I think my only complaint is that you can't que for a bg or raid while in the instance que...so i can't go bg while i wait on a group or possibly get into a raid while i'm running a heroic
I've always disliked the queue system. Personally, I would prefer a lobby-style interface such as they do for Diablo or Starcraft for instances. The random queues are cool, but the being a DPS queueing for a specific dungeon can be futile.
Not in my experience. I queue up for H HoR & H FoS almost daily and never failed to find a group. It may be a little longer wait but still it never fails. And the beauty is that i can do other stuff while waiting.
Yeah, I actually miss the global LFG channel also. I liked seeing what groups were being formed on my server, even if I was in a group or Battleground already.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I've always disliked the queue system. Personally, I would prefer a lobby-style interface such as they do for Diablo or Starcraft for instances. The random queues are cool, but the being a DPS queueing for a specific dungeon can be futile.
Not in my experience. I queue up for H HoR & H FoS almost daily and never failed to find a group. It may be a little longer wait but still it never fails. And the beauty is that i can do other stuff while waiting.
That's true. But try being a level 37 rogue queueing for RFK. Its not a huge deal though because there is still plenty to do as you say.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
+1
Although I suppose it's a software limitation, since they probably use the same queue servers or some such.
The system is what it is, and it kind of sucks.
It lets you run the same heroics over and over until you die of boredom. Unfortunately, this brings out the griefer population trying to spice things up. I've seen ppl kicked from the group because they did too little damage, ppl kicked because they criticized the tank, ppl kicked just to keep them from getting the last boss done, and so on. I haven't found the need to use the kick button myself, so maybe it should just be removed unless someone is more than 50 yards away from the group, afk or disconnected.
If you are a dps class, you will wait 15-30 minutes in queue each time. Tanks and healers have no wait.
Because the wait for DPS is so long, alternate specced healers and tanks that aren't geared for it show up and make the whole process just miserable for everyone else. This is especially true if the new heroics come up.
Almost everyone quits when Occulus comes up and many now quit Culling of Strathholme, Halls of Stone and Halls of Reflection because they are hard or take too long. If you're a DPS class and the group dissolves, you waited up to 30 minutes to get the group, have a debuff that won't let you join another group for 15 minutes, and have to wait up to another 30 minutes in queue again for a group. You lose over an hour of playtime just because some instances and Blizzards queue systems suck.
<p>Pretty good write up. I quit after the very boring crusader's coliseum content patch. The system seems like a decent if flawed idea. I really hated the badge system at first (damn the casuals!), but it became a good way to gear alts, so I came around to excepting it in the end. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are some mistakes with regard to level caps in the article. For example, during Molten Core days the cap was level 60. I think there were one or two more instances where the article says level 80 but they meant either level 60 (classic wow) or 85 (next expansion).</p>
Yeah, I actually miss the global LFG channel also. I liked seeing what groups were being formed on my server, even if I was in a group or Battleground already.
No that one thing i will never miss,
As for the new system i find it cool as my druid healer she has good enough gear for all the 5mans and about a max 2mins wait , not so good for my DK tank her gear a little out of date since i had a 5 months away and people just moan these days if you not 40k+ even though i have tanked them all before max wait 10secs and my rogue i just forget about even trying he ok gear but the wait can be a long time and i get bored before then
i love this new system the people bitching are losers who have no freinds if you wanna be social so badly go outside i just want my badges and gold:P
For the most part it has been good but then again my paladin is a tank. Though I have not been criticized for having less than 40k hp as others mentioned. I have noticed when playing my alts that many of the lower levels have no ideal how to play their class or know anything at all about the dungeon. For instance a warrior in a Sunken temple group with my wife's hunter kept insisting that the statues did not have a specific order and that you just had to keep clicking them.
Nice read, but one thing you forgot to mention was the downtime traveling back and forth between dungeons is gone. The teleporting stait to a dungeon when your qued is awesome. Then when your finished, taking you right back to where you were. I can see new players loosing the exploring of WOW, but this seems to work really well with lvl 80's. Also, my wait in the que has only been 10-15 minutes, and I'm DPS. Even when players drop or get kicked, it doesn't take long to get more players. And it's much faster than the previous LFG way. Even if I did have to wait 30 minutes I wouldn't mind. I still have plenty of acheivements to do......
I've always disliked the queue system. Personally, I would prefer a lobby-style interface such as they do for Diablo or Starcraft for instances. The random queues are cool, but the being a DPS queueing for a specific dungeon can be futile.
Not in my experience. I queue up for H HoR & H FoS almost daily and never failed to find a group. It may be a little longer wait but still it never fails. And the beauty is that i can do other stuff while waiting.
That's true. But try being a level 37 rogue queueing for RFK. Its not a huge deal though because there is still plenty to do as you say.
Oh .. certainly the wait time is longer for lower level dungeons just because of the demand. I have no trouble queuing my 75 pally tank for some N WOTLK dungeons though. There seems to be a high demand for that.
I haven't tried queuing with my lower level toons yet .. may be i will do that soon.
Yep my bad on this. I had written the word eighty so many times it was stuck in my skull.
Should be fixed now.
Thanks for the read!
This new system has totals changed the way me and my friends play Wow. We were mostly questers in the game, only leveling by doing the quests. Now with this system were are doing more dungeons then quests, and OMG I did my first 25 man raid ever. Thank you Blizzard.
I've seen people kicked for many and various reasons, but one of the upsides of the new system is that the leader cant just kick people, but it's a vote. Depending on group that can make a world of difference.
Having characters of all 3 roles there's a damn difference between the queue times. Which mostly proves that tanks and healers are in rather short supply. One small difference and upside of the old Anarchy Online is 6-man groups, usually meaning 4 dps/group, instead of 3 like in wow, making it easier for dps.
/Y
The article says the days of MMO grinding are over but that's exactly what the badge system is, a grind.
You do 10 heroics for an epic, then 10 more, etc...
I used to play hardcore and now i play pretty casually and i wouldn't call getting badge gear casual. It's easy and accessible to soloers but that's a different thing, it still takes a lot of time.
And let's not even talk about the "casual" raids. "Whisper achievement and gearscore" and all that nonsense.
Wondering will they turn to PQ style and totally drop the instances raid system...
RIP Orc Choppa
WoW new LFG system is nice, still it would hugely benefits with a few enhancements as topping:
1) Be able to chat and add players to our friend list cross server wide.
2) Be able to play a specific character while queuing an alt for an instance
3) Be able to trade more than summoned food with others characters.
As for 1) I met some really nice players lately I wish we could hook up again, too bad they are on others servers...
While I do like the new Dungeon Finder system, it is very easy to be griefed.
Example: I tanked an instance to the end, then the other plate wearer booted me before the last boss so that I could not roll on plate
And still Zorndorf will tell you, it is the best system ever :P
There are always going to be people exploiting the system for their own greed. I've read of people getting in with a pug group that was all guildies and after the last boss was down, before the boss was even looted, he was kicked from the group. It is griefing and should be reported. The system is pretty good but some of the people are not so good. If you get into a group with people from the same guild or even same server I would record their names down on a notepad. And if this griefing happens again then report them. A lot of people will drop a pug group now if they see 3 or more people from the same guild or server in it just so they can't get griefed.
I didn't say it was widespread but it does happen. Don't believe me? Read this thread, even a community manager posted here and said they know it's an issue.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22049524721&sid=1