If you learn to be sloppy for so long, it's hard to change habits. We'll see how this attitude remains, when the subscriptions inevitably start to drop.
How many has predicted a "drop of sub" for WOW for 6 years now and it has yet to happen?
Spot on. It's funny seeing so many people with absolutely no sense of business try to talk and forecast like they are PhD economists.
Saw some garbage post about how they are going to let WoW die because they want their new MMO to succeed and from a business sense it doesn't make to have two competing products out. I sincerely hope that guy was not a business major. Yeah so Pepsi owns only Pepsi because they don't want to have it compete with other sodas or drinks in general right? lol so clueless.
Problem is mommy and daddys make their little pumpkin feel like they are the center of the universe. When pumpkin doesn't like X game anymore they feel like the game is going downhill and they are going out of business.
Of course Blizzard is not going to let Wow die because they want their new MMO to succeed. Indeed those stating this are not very intelligent.
The problems I see though are 2 fold:
1. Does Blizzard have enough resources to build 4 excellent games and offer them on BattleNet with the usual quality that we expect from Blizzard. Wow- SC2 - D3 - Titan.
Like I said, I ve seen things in Cata that were incredible hi tech programming techniques (phasing) , NEVER seen before in any MMO's previously. Phasing is not even an instance, it is background loading of alternate realities tracked to each individual avatar (and proximity) and what he did in past quests. Words fail to describe what this means in flow charting / programming / tracking etc...
At the other hand we have seen things like the underdevelopped pitched battle of Tol Barad which really is NOT the Blizzard I've come to know in all of its history and together with it some very odd decisions about draining mana on healers were taken in a game where the most important class for GROUP play is the healer.
It shows an odd mixture of quality leaks and checks, which (despite what the usual hating trolls say on this site) was never really an issue in Blizzard games. Never. So explain the Tol Barad fiasco... I can't .
2. It is obvious you can't target the exact same playing public for 2 MMO's you publish at the same time. In this view there are only 2 possibilites. a. Replace an old succesfully proven MMO with a new one with the same players (doubtful in view of the commercial success of WOW) b. Go for the other public in the MMO field.
So offering one game with more hardcore elements (in pure video game play with fast eye hand coordination) and a second catergory with more typical MMO elements (with time sinks and typical non video gameplay, odd the >MMO crowd considers this hardcore while in video gaming it means playing with easy eye hand coordination).
Cata shows that Blizzard indeed tries to up the challenge - both in a eye hand coordiation competition as in an intelligent advancing through challenge/grind, so I think their new MMO will feature more easy hand coordination. At the very least Wotlk showed a lot of players liked the easy/relax gameplay.
The bottom line though is ... can all 4 games equally be supported with the same quality we were spoiled with in the past.
And if the leaked plans are true, there might even be a fifth (SC2 variant) and sixth (Computer Wow CCG) in the works.
I rather see the best quality then see a regression to more games with mediocre polish and gameplay (because I already have had more than enough of those).
Not sure where this 'can't offer 2 gameplay' is coming from.
Heroics are suppose to be hard. 5mans and raids.
So if you can't do 'hard' 5mans, do normal 5mans. Problem solved.
I am horrible at Dragon Age so I play that on casual difficulty. Same thing, no?
This is my line of thinking too.
Normal mode dungeons are for casuals.
Hard Mode dungeons are for the more active player.
Raids are for the serious hardcore players.
PvP is for...PvPers.
People seem to think they have to have access to everything, regardless of their playstyle. I think there has to be a line drawn somewhere that seperates people depending on their playstyle. One form of content wont please everybody.
I play single players games and just finish the main stories...i skip all the side quests and extras. I miss out on content because i often find that content is too time consuming and repetative. Its pretty much the same thing with WoW (and MMOs in general).
Whats the new direction? All that blog is saying is learn to play.
I believe that is the new direction. For people that played through the WotLK content, excluding dungeons, WoW instances seemed a bit too easy. When you teamed up with other players in your Battlegroup for the first time when the DF tool came out there were quite a few in raid gear and absolutely roftlstomped the dungeons, even the heroics. With the DF tool people finally had the chance to easily gather to play and learn to play co-operatively, however they really didn't need to learn because of the expectation that one had to be overgeared to handle the content (read: people wanted and expected to faceroll heroics).
Blizzard addressed that with Cataclysm and is being very polite about saying something to the effect of 'quit your bitching and learn to play the game at that level if you really want to play Heroics and Raids.' After WotLK that really is a new direction. I feel for the Blizzard staff though, they're getting pounded by the people that expect facerolls or content that can be easily ran through with, apparently, the bare minimum of skill.
The need for skill instead of Gearscore, Recount and all that nonsense is coming back to Azeroth, it's a good thing.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain. (2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
New? All I can see are a few tactics and a plea that players use their brain. At its best its a slightly different approach on the same old everything thats already there. Come again when a third neutral fraction, appearance tabs or maybe even player housing gets announced when talking about something NEW.
Not sure where this 'can't offer 2 gameplay' is coming from.
Heroics are suppose to be hard. 5mans and raids.
So if you can't do 'hard' 5mans, do normal 5mans. Problem solved.
I am horrible at Dragon Age so I play that on casual difficulty. Same thing, no?
The problem with this philosophy is that everyone wants the best loot. (need is irrelevant). This design limits that. Personally, I don't even like that the loot is limited to 'group-up-or-you'll-never-get-it'. But then, that's why I quit some time ago.
After reading that I really do find it amazing that Blizzard seems to be just realizing some of the concepts they mentioned in their article. Namely winning being a foregone conclusion and healers ability to counteract colossal screw ups. GG Blizzard for finally pulling your head out of your arse and accepting some people, at least, would like to employ strategy and not just button mash their way to epics!
my new direction for WoW game - garbage bin, no sub anymore.
game is boring time consume to me, I don't have good reflexes to run heroic every day (only if I'm rested in real life), beside I don't see what to win out of these efforts.
whole game before lvl 85 is too EASY but after lvl 85 is pretty HARD, how hell we can learn to play if whole game runs you through without any effort? and what to do after lvl 85 if you can't even run HC or BG.
I think they should split realms by difficulty and offer to folk free transfer of character to hard core / casual real, this way every one can win his place. But main time they need to adjust difficulty level for each type of realm PvE hard/easy, PvP hard/easy to attract as much customers as they can.
Beside: fix bug for all, add content for all, add mana to healers for all;
and hell why nerf whole game if it was easy enough even before? they need to bring back some challenges in WoW, not make it just boring run through for alts.
game as it now worth nothing to me, beside I'm not appeal to play reaction games (it not tactic or use brain as many tells, but pure & high reaction, depending not only on your capacity to be fast but on your computer speed & Internet connection).
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises. Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
There's still plenty of easy (yet fun) things to do in the game. I am geared for 85 heroics but I don't run them very often because they are usually too stressful for me. But I enjoy running the normal modes still. I find them challenging because most of the players in the queue are not overgeared and are just learning the dungeons. I'm glad they are putting some harder stuff in the game still. Not that I will rush to get to that level. I prefer to take my time and run my own race.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Not sure where this 'can't offer 2 gameplay' is coming from.
Heroics are suppose to be hard. 5mans and raids.
So if you can't do 'hard' 5mans, do normal 5mans. Problem solved.
I am horrible at Dragon Age so I play that on casual difficulty. Same thing, no?
Yes, except that if you don't have the skill/time/guild mates for anything above normal 5 man, then your journey basically ends there (well, and non-rated BGs I suppose). No more content for you. So it's either roll an alt and watch the same movie again with a little change of scenery and actors or just outright unsubscribe. That's kinda poor planning when your income is based on people playing for as long as possible, no? What's even more funny is that Blizzard has stated in the past that they want as many people as possible to experience the raid content. Their new direction goes directly against that. So they say one thing, change their minds and do something else without warning people. End result is that we now have people sitting there with characters that they have invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in and the play style they've come to love is no more. Meanwhile, we have people cheering on the sideline rubbing salt into the wound. It's no wonder that some people are upset.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
oh my, I had no idea there were so many doctors playing WoW! I for one, am very thankful that all these medical experts on hand-eye co-ordination are here to teach us how your reaction motor-skills terribly deteriorate after your 14th birthday! All those married, 40-something hardcore raid guild LEADERS I had must be using bionic implants, they sure fooled me lol!
Not sure where this 'can't offer 2 gameplay' is coming from.
Heroics are suppose to be hard. 5mans and raids.
So if you can't do 'hard' 5mans, do normal 5mans. Problem solved.
I am horrible at Dragon Age so I play that on casual difficulty. Same thing, no?
Yes, except that if you don't have the skill/time/guild mates for anything above normal 5 man, then your journey basically ends there (well, and non-rated BGs I suppose). No more content for you. So it's either roll an alt and watch the same movie again with a little change of scenery and actors or just outright unsubscribe. That's kinda poor planning when your income is based on people playing for as long as possible, no? What's even more funny is that Blizzard has stated in the past that they want as many people as possible to experience the raid content. Their new direction goes directly against that. So they say one thing, change their minds and do something else without warning people. End result is that we now have people sitting there with characters that they have invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in and the play style they've come to love is no more. Meanwhile, we have people cheering on the sideline rubbing salt into the wound. It's no wonder that some people are upset.
Blizzard isn't stupid, they know this move is going to turn WoW into a niche game. Keep in mind that they are well into working on their new MMO, and you'll realize that this step is obviously because they're gearing WoW down for semi-retirement. They changed the game to keep all the die-hards subbing (there's a lot of die-hards still playing Diablo II) and their new MMO is going to wear the face that today's generation of MMO gamers want it to wear. You didn't really think Blizzard wants WoW to impede potential subs for their new title did you?
If you learn to be sloppy for so long, it's hard to change habits. We'll see how this attitude remains, when the subscriptions inevitably start to drop.
On the other hand, the reason the 'easy' Lich King expansion was a great success, and attracted and kept millions of new players. Cata heroics are a frustrating laborious chore. I already have enough frustrating, laborious chores in my life.
Blizzard isn't stupid, they know this move is going to turn WoW into a niche game. Keep in mind that they are well into working on their new MMO, and you'll realize that this step is obviously because they're gearing WoW down for semi-retirement. They changed the game to keep all the die-hards subbing (there's a lot of die-hards still playing Diablo II) and their new MMO is going to wear the face that today's generation of MMO gamers want it to wear. You didn't really think Blizzard wants WoW to impede potential subs for their new title did you?
This logic is so hilarious.
Let me get this straight, they purposely want to kill their single biggest (financial terms) game?
You know a company called 'Coca-Cola'? Yeah, did you know that they are going to make Coke really really bad cause they have this new drink called 'Fanta' coming out? /Sarcasm
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Not sure where this 'can't offer 2 gameplay' is coming from.
Heroics are suppose to be hard. 5mans and raids.
So if you can't do 'hard' 5mans, do normal 5mans. Problem solved.
I am horrible at Dragon Age so I play that on casual difficulty. Same thing, no?
Yes, except that if you don't have the skill/time/guild mates for anything above normal 5 man, then your journey basically ends there (well, and non-rated BGs I suppose). No more content for you. So it's either roll an alt and watch the same movie again with a little change of scenery and actors or just outright unsubscribe. That's kinda poor planning when your income is based on people playing for as long as possible, no? What's even more funny is that Blizzard has stated in the past that they want as many people as possible to experience the raid content. Their new direction goes directly against that. So they say one thing, change their minds and do something else without warning people. End result is that we now have people sitting there with characters that they have invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in and the play style they've come to love is no more. Meanwhile, we have people cheering on the sideline rubbing salt into the wound. It's no wonder that some people are upset.
Having a skill cap in a game is nothing new last I checked.
Most games (excluding 'social games' like Farmville) have some sort of difficulty.
If you are bad in FPS, you won't see the ending in most FPS games. Unless you cheese it like 'quick save' every 2 steps or so.
Having 'easy' raid content is 'bad raid content'. Look at Wrath, it lost a lot of people who grew tired of easy content.
All throughout Cata, it was 'Heroics and raids are hard again'.
If a player 'invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in' a character I expect the player to understand game mechanics and do 5 man heroics (at the minimum).
Like 'Move out of the bad (Fire, poison, gas, spikes, ice traps, lazer beams etc) stuff'
'Kill this add/CC this add/Burn this add'
Gdemami - Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Once the more casual folk can buy 359 epics by running heroics they will be happy. Once everyone is in 359 gear, heroics will get easier. Once they can buy 372 epics by running heroics they will complain that heroics are faceroll. When Blizzard releases new heroics that are hard, they will complain that they're too hard. Once people can buy 385 epics by running heroics they'll complain the hard heroics are faceroll. By this point they'll be pugging the first two tiers and will complain that those are faceroll while at the same time complaining that they can't raid the current content because it's too hard.
There's no win-win scenario for Blizzard here, so they're doing what they feel is right. Lots of people are going to be pissed, and lots of people are going to be happy, but you can't make everyone happy no matter how hard you try.
It's not a new "direction" for the game though. WoW is still WoW, but it just got a little bit more challenging. Besies, they already started nerfing almost every heroic, so yeah... so much for that new direction.
Yes, except that if you don't have the skill/time/guild mates for anything above normal 5 man, then your journey basically ends there (well, and non-rated BGs I suppose). No more content for you. So it's either roll an alt and watch the same movie again with a little change of scenery and actors or just outright unsubscribe. That's kinda poor planning when your income is based on people playing for as long as possible, no? What's even more funny is that Blizzard has stated in the past that they want as many people as possible to experience the raid content. Their new direction goes directly against that. So they say one thing, change their minds and do something else without warning people. End result is that we now have people sitting there with characters that they have invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in and the play style they've come to love is no more. Meanwhile, we have people cheering on the sideline rubbing salt into the wound. It's no wonder that some people are upset.
Blizzard saying they want everyone to see raid content, did not mean they wanted everyone to see all the raid content in the first month of the expansion. The next expansion most likely won't be out for 18-24 months and in that time, even the most casual of players can level multiple toons, run dailies for rep, run normal 5 mans for rep and gear then move into heroics and finally raids.
Cata has been out right at 5 weeks and PUG raids are now a nightly occurence, very few people CC in normals anymore and heroics now take about 40 minutes to an hour. Dungeons will progressively get easier and more people will get to see them as well as the raids.
Making people gear up in normals before running heroics is not some drastic direction change by Blizzard, it's actually a return to the way we did it in TBC. We couldn't even step foot into a heroic at lvl 70 without being Revered which pretty much guaranteed you ran the normal version numerous times. Now we don't have to be revered, but we do need to run the dungeons numerous times to get the appropriate gear before moving into Heroics.
Played Wow for a few years, quit just before WOTLK. Had 7 max level chars. Until Blizz offers me soloable progressive content for progressive loot, they won't see me back.
Probably never happen.
"Until Blizz offers me soloable progressive content for progressive loot,"
Played Wow for a few years, quit just before WOTLK. Had 7 max level chars. Until Blizz offers me soloable progressive content for progressive loot, they won't see me back.
Probably never happen.
"Until Blizz offers me soloable progressive content for progressive loot,"
How do I describe myself,I played Assassin's Creed on normal well actually that was the lowest difficulty. I played Mass Effect 1and 2 on normal that game had a casual mode too and Dragon Age on normal too. I think I could manage but the thought of having to run the lower daily or daily grinding rep has really turned me off and reading what you need to do to gear up I honestly could not do it which is why I stopped in The Burning Crusade at level 64.
After reading this thread I do not think the difficulty lies in the actual running of the dungeons since I managed Veeshan's Temple and Plane of Hate in Everquest and I thought that was hard content . Here the difficulty for me would be grinding up the rep and gearing up via running the lower areas daily. Mind boggling how people could play like this. Sorry I am not trying to be rude or judgemental just in slight horror.
How do I describe myself,I played Assassin's Creed on normal well actually that was the lowest difficulty. I played Mass Effect 1and 2 on normal that game had a casual mode too and Dragon Age on normal too. I think I could manage but the thought of having to run the lower daily or daily grinding rep has really turned me off and reading what you need to do to gear up I honestly could not do it which is why I stopped in The Burning Crusade at level 64.
After reading this thread I do not think the difficulty lies in the actual running of the dungeons since I managed Veeshan's Temple and Plane of Hate in Everquest and I thought that was hard content . Here the difficulty for me would be grinding up the rep and gearing up via running the lower areas daily. Mind boggling how people could play like this. Sorry I am not trying to be rude or judgemental just in slight horror.
Well, how can I tell you (a player who didn't even touch WOW for 4 years now).
You are mistaken. Rep grinding can be done with simply putting a tabard up in dungeons. Rep grinding is arund 10% of what TBC had in mind.
You don't even need to be exalted or something to run dungeons and ... attunements were gone since TBC...
So you are indeed misinformed ... and try to play before posting misinformation next time please.
How did Blizzard replace the attunement grinds from TBC? : play the game...
It's sad to see that most people cant understand that this "increased difficulty" policy is just a way to fool people into thinking that there is alot of content ahead to beat, when in fact this expansion is extremely poor in endgame since it was done has a revamp of the old world.
Comments
The masses of casuals can still level alts, run normals get achievements etc... I dont see the problem. WoW is much more fun now.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
damned if you do, damned if you don't. Make it easy, somewhat challenging, you're the HUGE CASUAL GAME BRINGING 1 BUTTON WIN TO THE MASSES.
Make it really challenging, you're an evil jerk who punches kittens.
Of course Blizzard is not going to let Wow die because they want their new MMO to succeed. Indeed those stating this are not very intelligent.
The problems I see though are 2 fold:
1. Does Blizzard have enough resources to build 4 excellent games and offer them on BattleNet with the usual quality that we expect from Blizzard. Wow- SC2 - D3 - Titan.
Like I said, I ve seen things in Cata that were incredible hi tech programming techniques (phasing) , NEVER seen before in any MMO's previously. Phasing is not even an instance, it is background loading of alternate realities tracked to each individual avatar (and proximity) and what he did in past quests. Words fail to describe what this means in flow charting / programming / tracking etc...
At the other hand we have seen things like the underdevelopped pitched battle of Tol Barad which really is NOT the Blizzard I've come to know in all of its history and together with it some very odd decisions about draining mana on healers were taken in a game where the most important class for GROUP play is the healer.
It shows an odd mixture of quality leaks and checks, which (despite what the usual hating trolls say on this site) was never really an issue in Blizzard games. Never. So explain the Tol Barad fiasco... I can't .
2. It is obvious you can't target the exact same playing public for 2 MMO's you publish at the same time. In this view there are only 2 possibilites. a. Replace an old succesfully proven MMO with a new one with the same players (doubtful in view of the commercial success of WOW) b. Go for the other public in the MMO field.
So offering one game with more hardcore elements (in pure video game play with fast eye hand coordination) and a second catergory with more typical MMO elements (with time sinks and typical non video gameplay, odd the >MMO crowd considers this hardcore while in video gaming it means playing with easy eye hand coordination).
Cata shows that Blizzard indeed tries to up the challenge - both in a eye hand coordiation competition as in an intelligent advancing through challenge/grind, so I think their new MMO will feature more easy hand coordination. At the very least Wotlk showed a lot of players liked the easy/relax gameplay.
The bottom line though is ... can all 4 games equally be supported with the same quality we were spoiled with in the past.
And if the leaked plans are true, there might even be a fifth (SC2 variant) and sixth (Computer Wow CCG) in the works.
I rather see the best quality then see a regression to more games with mediocre polish and gameplay (because I already have had more than enough of those).
Not sure where this 'can't offer 2 gameplay' is coming from.
Heroics are suppose to be hard. 5mans and raids.
So if you can't do 'hard' 5mans, do normal 5mans. Problem solved.
I am horrible at Dragon Age so I play that on casual difficulty. Same thing, no?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
This is my line of thinking too.
Normal mode dungeons are for casuals.
Hard Mode dungeons are for the more active player.
Raids are for the serious hardcore players.
PvP is for...PvPers.
People seem to think they have to have access to everything, regardless of their playstyle. I think there has to be a line drawn somewhere that seperates people depending on their playstyle. One form of content wont please everybody.
I play single players games and just finish the main stories...i skip all the side quests and extras. I miss out on content because i often find that content is too time consuming and repetative. Its pretty much the same thing with WoW (and MMOs in general).
I believe that is the new direction. For people that played through the WotLK content, excluding dungeons, WoW instances seemed a bit too easy. When you teamed up with other players in your Battlegroup for the first time when the DF tool came out there were quite a few in raid gear and absolutely roftlstomped the dungeons, even the heroics. With the DF tool people finally had the chance to easily gather to play and learn to play co-operatively, however they really didn't need to learn because of the expectation that one had to be overgeared to handle the content (read: people wanted and expected to faceroll heroics).
Blizzard addressed that with Cataclysm and is being very polite about saying something to the effect of 'quit your bitching and learn to play the game at that level if you really want to play Heroics and Raids.' After WotLK that really is a new direction. I feel for the Blizzard staff though, they're getting pounded by the people that expect facerolls or content that can be easily ran through with, apparently, the bare minimum of skill.
The need for skill instead of Gearscore, Recount and all that nonsense is coming back to Azeroth, it's a good thing.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
New? All I can see are a few tactics and a plea that players use their brain. At its best its a slightly different approach on the same old everything thats already there. Come again when a third neutral fraction, appearance tabs or maybe even player housing gets announced when talking about something NEW.
The problem with this philosophy is that everyone wants the best loot. (need is irrelevant). This design limits that. Personally, I don't even like that the loot is limited to 'group-up-or-you'll-never-get-it'. But then, that's why I quit some time ago.
After reading that I really do find it amazing that Blizzard seems to be just realizing some of the concepts they mentioned in their article. Namely winning being a foregone conclusion and healers ability to counteract colossal screw ups. GG Blizzard for finally pulling your head out of your arse and accepting some people, at least, would like to employ strategy and not just button mash their way to epics!
my new direction for WoW game - garbage bin, no sub anymore.
game is boring time consume to me, I don't have good reflexes to run heroic every day (only if I'm rested in real life), beside I don't see what to win out of these efforts.
whole game before lvl 85 is too EASY but after lvl 85 is pretty HARD, how hell we can learn to play if whole game runs you through without any effort? and what to do after lvl 85 if you can't even run HC or BG.
I think they should split realms by difficulty and offer to folk free transfer of character to hard core / casual real, this way every one can win his place. But main time they need to adjust difficulty level for each type of realm PvE hard/easy, PvP hard/easy to attract as much customers as they can.
Beside: fix bug for all, add content for all, add mana to healers for all;
and hell why nerf whole game if it was easy enough even before? they need to bring back some challenges in WoW, not make it just boring run through for alts.
game as it now worth nothing to me, beside I'm not appeal to play reaction games (it not tactic or use brain as many tells, but pure & high reaction, depending not only on your capacity to be fast but on your computer speed & Internet connection).
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
There's still plenty of easy (yet fun) things to do in the game. I am geared for 85 heroics but I don't run them very often because they are usually too stressful for me. But I enjoy running the normal modes still. I find them challenging because most of the players in the queue are not overgeared and are just learning the dungeons. I'm glad they are putting some harder stuff in the game still. Not that I will rush to get to that level. I prefer to take my time and run my own race.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Yes, except that if you don't have the skill/time/guild mates for anything above normal 5 man, then your journey basically ends there (well, and non-rated BGs I suppose). No more content for you. So it's either roll an alt and watch the same movie again with a little change of scenery and actors or just outright unsubscribe. That's kinda poor planning when your income is based on people playing for as long as possible, no? What's even more funny is that Blizzard has stated in the past that they want as many people as possible to experience the raid content. Their new direction goes directly against that. So they say one thing, change their minds and do something else without warning people. End result is that we now have people sitting there with characters that they have invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in and the play style they've come to love is no more. Meanwhile, we have people cheering on the sideline rubbing salt into the wound. It's no wonder that some people are upset.
I'm a big ol' fluffy carewolf. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
oh my, I had no idea there were so many doctors playing WoW! I for one, am very thankful that all these medical experts on hand-eye co-ordination are here to teach us how your reaction motor-skills terribly deteriorate after your 14th birthday! All those married, 40-something hardcore raid guild LEADERS I had must be using bionic implants, they sure fooled me lol!
Blizzard isn't stupid, they know this move is going to turn WoW into a niche game. Keep in mind that they are well into working on their new MMO, and you'll realize that this step is obviously because they're gearing WoW down for semi-retirement. They changed the game to keep all the die-hards subbing (there's a lot of die-hards still playing Diablo II) and their new MMO is going to wear the face that today's generation of MMO gamers want it to wear. You didn't really think Blizzard wants WoW to impede potential subs for their new title did you?
On the other hand, the reason the 'easy' Lich King expansion was a great success, and attracted and kept millions of new players. Cata heroics are a frustrating laborious chore. I already have enough frustrating, laborious chores in my life.
This logic is so hilarious.
Let me get this straight, they purposely want to kill their single biggest (financial terms) game?
You know a company called 'Coca-Cola'? Yeah, did you know that they are going to make Coke really really bad cause they have this new drink called 'Fanta' coming out? /Sarcasm
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Having a skill cap in a game is nothing new last I checked.
Most games (excluding 'social games' like Farmville) have some sort of difficulty.
If you are bad in FPS, you won't see the ending in most FPS games. Unless you cheese it like 'quick save' every 2 steps or so.
Having 'easy' raid content is 'bad raid content'. Look at Wrath, it lost a lot of people who grew tired of easy content.
All throughout Cata, it was 'Heroics and raids are hard again'.
If a player 'invested hundreds or even thousands of hours in' a character I expect the player to understand game mechanics and do 5 man heroics (at the minimum).
Like 'Move out of the bad (Fire, poison, gas, spikes, ice traps, lazer beams etc) stuff'
'Kill this add/CC this add/Burn this add'
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Once the more casual folk can buy 359 epics by running heroics they will be happy. Once everyone is in 359 gear, heroics will get easier. Once they can buy 372 epics by running heroics they will complain that heroics are faceroll. When Blizzard releases new heroics that are hard, they will complain that they're too hard. Once people can buy 385 epics by running heroics they'll complain the hard heroics are faceroll. By this point they'll be pugging the first two tiers and will complain that those are faceroll while at the same time complaining that they can't raid the current content because it's too hard.
There's no win-win scenario for Blizzard here, so they're doing what they feel is right. Lots of people are going to be pissed, and lots of people are going to be happy, but you can't make everyone happy no matter how hard you try.
It's not a new "direction" for the game though. WoW is still WoW, but it just got a little bit more challenging. Besies, they already started nerfing almost every heroic, so yeah... so much for that new direction.
Blizzard saying they want everyone to see raid content, did not mean they wanted everyone to see all the raid content in the first month of the expansion. The next expansion most likely won't be out for 18-24 months and in that time, even the most casual of players can level multiple toons, run dailies for rep, run normal 5 mans for rep and gear then move into heroics and finally raids.
Cata has been out right at 5 weeks and PUG raids are now a nightly occurence, very few people CC in normals anymore and heroics now take about 40 minutes to an hour. Dungeons will progressively get easier and more people will get to see them as well as the raids.
Making people gear up in normals before running heroics is not some drastic direction change by Blizzard, it's actually a return to the way we did it in TBC. We couldn't even step foot into a heroic at lvl 70 without being Revered which pretty much guaranteed you ran the normal version numerous times. Now we don't have to be revered, but we do need to run the dungeons numerous times to get the appropriate gear before moving into Heroics.
WoW is hard...? Excuse me while I dry my tears.. >.>
"Until Blizz offers me soloable progressive content for progressive loot,"
That's interesting. What do you mean by that?
He didn't find the reputation vendors yet ...
How do I describe myself,I played Assassin's Creed on normal well actually that was the lowest difficulty. I played Mass Effect 1and 2 on normal that game had a casual mode too and Dragon Age on normal too. I think I could manage but the thought of having to run the lower daily or daily grinding rep has really turned me off and reading what you need to do to gear up I honestly could not do it which is why I stopped in The Burning Crusade at level 64.
After reading this thread I do not think the difficulty lies in the actual running of the dungeons since I managed Veeshan's Temple and Plane of Hate in Everquest and I thought that was hard content . Here the difficulty for me would be grinding up the rep and gearing up via running the lower areas daily. Mind boggling how people could play like this. Sorry I am not trying to be rude or judgemental just in slight horror.
Well, how can I tell you (a player who didn't even touch WOW for 4 years now).
You are mistaken. Rep grinding can be done with simply putting a tabard up in dungeons. Rep grinding is arund 10% of what TBC had in mind.
You don't even need to be exalted or something to run dungeons and ... attunements were gone since TBC...
So you are indeed misinformed ... and try to play before posting misinformation next time please.
How did Blizzard replace the attunement grinds from TBC? : play the game...
It's sad to see that most people cant understand that this "increased difficulty" policy is just a way to fool people into thinking that there is alot of content ahead to beat, when in fact this expansion is extremely poor in endgame since it was done has a revamp of the old world.