Cracks starting to show?

[Hawkbit]

Ahh, ok.  Missing shoulders isn't terrible, but what are folks doing for weapons now?  Does honor allow weapon purchase in any way?

[Ingmar]

I'm not sure that even that is the case anymore.

[Fordel]

There are 3 sets of PvP gear avaliable.


Honor Gear - Currently the shitty blue pvp items. Missing slots. Purcahsed with Honor Points.

Arena Gear - The Purple PvP items. Fills every slot, including weapons. Purchased with Conquest Points. (Which come from Arena/Rated BGs)

Arena Rating Gear - The Purple+ PvP items, better then the plain arena gear but nothing too dramatic atm. Cost Arena/Rated BG points AND have rating requirements.

[Ingmar]

You left off crafted, which are a half tier below honor gear.

[Threash]

The rating required armor has the same exact stats as the non rating required, it is just a slightly different color.  The weapons are upgrades though.

[apocrypha]

Well the hotfix to Tol Barad has returned to it's previous, old broken state, instead of it's more recent, new broken state.

Defenders now always win, nobody queues for attack any more. It was 10v10 this morning. Pointless.

[K9]

40 minutes for 180 honour is totally worth it. 

[Nebu]

40 minutes for 180 honour is totally worth it. 

When I played WoW, honor was something I got while having fun.  I'd play all the BG's and wintergrasp a few times and BANG!  I'd have honor. 

Apparently I was playing the game wrong?!?! 

[K9]

That would only be true if Tol Barad was actually fun though.

[apocrypha]

^^ This.

Tol Barad isn't fun. It's just zerging whichever base the herd are all going for at that moment. Not that you can get much of a zerg going with 10v10....

But there's no other way to get into BH. So, it's going to be dawn premades to take control of it, and then defenders hold it all day. Awesome.

[Fordel]

The issue with honor is that you still need a baseline of PvP gear on most (if not all) specs to actually have 'fun' in PvP. Walking around with zero resilience is pretty much the opposite of fun still.

The way resilience is setup now it's even more crucial, it's just a flat damage reduction. No Res, full damage. Decked out in Res? 20-40% damage reduction.



Each piece of Honor gear costs 1500-2500 honor points. Each 10-30 minute BG win is about 50 points. Losses are about 25 points. The first random BG of the day you do will net you about 150 points in bonus. If you are horde, you add on another 10-30 minutes of queue time due to participation imbalances (if your alliance you get instant queues  ). Unless you are a poopsocker supreme, its going to take a long long time fro the average dude to get his honor gear in order, time spent waiting then dieing then waiting some more.



WoW PvP is magical.

[Ingmar]

A boost to kill honor in TB would help drive some more participation I bet, but still doesn't solve the core mechanical problems with it.

EDIT: The starter pvp crafted set served me well enough in terms of getting rolling on resilience.

[kildorn]

The crafted pvp gear is a good step forward, but honor gain rates seem.. gimpy at best compared to conquest point gain rates.

[kildorn]

They severely upped the drop rate of cloth from the horde infantry. One ownership of TB, and I farmed up 15 stacks of embersilk.

[Ingmar]

They upped cloth drops for tailors for everything, it went from a 25% chance to a 50% chance to drop bonus cloth.

[Merusk]

When did they do that? Crap, I'd just been buying low cloth at 5g and reselling it at 7g, guess I can actually level tailoring now.

[Ingmar]

DecJan 3 hotfix I think.

[kildorn]

Yeah, looks like yesterday's notes. I like it, it let me skill past the irritating end of tailoring. 10 bolts/8 volatiles a combine, woo! All for pvp gear nobody wants!

On the up side, another few days and I'll start making my tailoring epics. I don't think I'm going to waste the money on my volatile air dreamcloth though. That's what, 1200g in volatiles?

[Azuredream]

When I was making gear for myself, I farmed/bought the airs for the dreamcloth, but now that I'm just selling anything I make with the dreamcloth I don't bother, way too expensive.

[Threash]

40 minutes for 180 honour is totally worth it. 

It's actually like 10 minutes.  Even losing beats most bgs for honor gain.

[Ingmar]

40 minutes for 180 honour is totally worth it. 

It's actually like 10 minutes.  Even losing beats most bgs for honor gain.

A losing attack takes about a half hour, since the towers always get knocked down. And like 95% of games are losing attacks now that there's no incentive to win trade for the defender.

[Ashamanchill]

Yeah this current system is the most broken of all the latest iterations of it. For fucks sakes, Blizzard should either nuke this one from orbit (as has been suggested by many before me), or just make it so that the zone auto flips every two hours and thirty minutes, and everyone online at the time gets 500 honour. It can't be any worse than their latest attempts at making this competitive or relevant. Seriously.... Tol Barad is systemically not working....dicking around with the honour gain is not going to 'fix' it.

[apocrypha]

Yeah this current system is the most broken of all the latest iterations of it. For fucks sakes, Blizzard should either nuke this one from orbit (as has been suggested by many before me), or just make it so that the zone auto flips every two hours and thirty minutes, and everyone online at the time gets 500 honour. It can't be any worse than their latest attempts at making this competitive or relevant. Seriously.... Tol Barad is systemically not working....dicking around with the honour gain is not going to 'fix' it.

This. No question. Having BH access dependant on something so fundamentally broken is retarded beyond belief.

[Hawkbit]

I tried really, really hard to tell myself this xpac was going to be awesome.  It's just not. 

I've leveled 4 80s.  I don't want to level another to see the old stuff.  Even though it's "new", it's still old to me after four times.  That's a huge part of this xpac that is wasted on me. 

Getting to my 80 pally, the game is so disjointed - first I'm attacked by a sea monster under the water and 160 quests later we finished there.  Next I'm sent to mt hyjal, 20 quests in and I have no idea why I'm there, or why i should care.  I'm killing 10 of this and collecting 10 of that, though.  Neither of the two zones have anything to do with each another, other than what NPCs are telling me about the cataclysm from Deathwing. 

The whole experience is so utterly homogenized and unfun.  Add to the list that I'm not fond of the pally changes (my main) and I'm not seeing a reason to play anymore.  It's a damn shame, because I hate to leave my dad behind - the game was something that actually brought us closer together six years ago.  But I just can't really stomach it any longer. 

/gah

[Margalis]

With a guy named Deathwing as the main baddie you would think it would be the greatest story ever told.

On a more serious note, the idea of refreshing starting areas just seems really weird to me. In FFXI they tried to give people reasons to go back to old zones with level capped battles, the alternate past versions, campaign (fighting hordes of strong enemy invaders) etc, but those were all focused on trying to make existing players make use of older areas on their existing characters.

The thing I fundamentally don't understand about Cata is they redo a bunch of lowbie zones but you aren't a lowbie anymore. You're supposed to re-roll just to see the changes? It's like someone doing me a favor by sprucing up the apartment I moved out of 3 years ago.

[apocrypha]

It's almost as if they're trying to pull in more new players. 

[WindupAtheist]

I have a feeling that a few years down the road a lot of people will be thinking of WOTLK as the game's peak. It's biggest flaw was Blizzard allowing nigh-unrestricted paid transfers to drastically unbalance some server populations, but other than that everything basically worked and was worth participating in.

[Fordel]

With a guy named Deathwing as the main baddie you would think it would be the greatest story ever told.

On a more serious note, the idea of refreshing starting areas just seems really weird to me. In FFXI they tried to give people reasons to go back to old zones with level capped battles, the alternate past versions, campaign (fighting hordes of strong enemy invaders) etc, but those were all focused on trying to make existing players make use of older areas on their existing characters.

The thing I fundamentally don't understand about Cata is they redo a bunch of lowbie zones but you aren't a lowbie anymore. You're supposed to re-roll just to see the changes? It's like someone doing me a favor by sprucing up the apartment I moved out of 3 years ago.

You would be amazed at how many honest to goodness "I just got the game yesterday" people there really are. Even now some 5-6 years later.

[Ingmar]

It also incentivized me to make a ton of new alts, and I'm really enjoying the 1-60 leveling on them personally.

[Maledict]

I tried really, really hard to tell myself this xpac was going to be awesome.  It's just not. 

I've leveled 4 80s.  I don't want to level another to see the old stuff.  Even though it's "new", it's still old to me after four times.  That's a huge part of this xpac that is wasted on me. 

Getting to my 80 pally, the game is so disjointed - first I'm attacked by a sea monster under the water and 160 quests later we finished there.  Next I'm sent to mt hyjal, 20 quests in and I have no idea why I'm there, or why i should care.  I'm killing 10 of this and collecting 10 of that, though.  Neither of the two zones have anything to do with each another, other than what NPCs are telling me about the cataclysm from Deathwing. 

The whole experience is so utterly homogenized and unfun.  Add to the list that I'm not fond of the pally changes (my main) and I'm not seeing a reason to play anymore.  It's a damn shame, because I hate to leave my dad behind - the game was something that actually brought us closer together six years ago.  But I just can't really stomach it any longer. 

/gah

I dont want to sound cirtical, but if you don't know why you are in Hyjal you must have walked away from your computer for 10 minutes when you went to the zone. You get a fly by of the entire zone, and you see deathwing summon Ragnaros in front of you complete with burning spire and all. You then talk to the Green Dragon (Ysera?), and you see them attacking the World Tree. Hyjal could not be more clearly explained or signposted when yuo go into the zone, and every quets and NPC reiterates why you are there and what's going on.

Also worth noting that you shouldn't be doing Hyjal after Vash'jr - thats why the quest will have be green for you. It's Deepholme at 82, which follows on from Vash'jr / Hyjal in that you go and deal with the mess deathwing caused at the Maelstrom.

I don't think WotLK will ever be seen as Blizzards greatest expansion. It was routinely slated throughout it's life, by raiders and non-raiders alike. It had huge swathes of missing content and opportunities, and I think there's a huge amount of rose tinted nostalgia going on if you think it's incredibly better than Cata. So far, barring the monstrosity that is tol Barad and some of the..."wierder" professions choices, Catcaclysm as an expansion knocks TBC and WotLK out of the park. It's far more polished, complete in every way and the content is of a level of quality we havent' seen in WoW for some time.

[Ratman_tf]

I don't think WotLK will ever be seen as Blizzards greatest expansion. It was routinely slated throughout it's life, by raiders and non-raiders alike. It had huge swathes of missing content and opportunities, and I think there's a huge amount of rose tinted nostalgia going on if you think it's incredibly better than Cata. So far, barring the monstrosity that is tol Barad and some of the..."wierder" professions choices, Catcaclysm as an expansion knocks TBC and WotLK out of the park. It's far more polished, complete in every way and the content is of a level of quality we havent' seen in WoW for some time.

I found it shallow and pedantic. 

Seriously. I've posted about my gripes. I found Cata to be so disappointing in nearly every way. The few interesting bits just couldn't keep me from unsubscribing, and I haven't missed the game at all. I only miss raiding with my guild. 

[Hawkbit]

I have a feeling that a few years down the road a lot of people will be thinking of WOTLK as the game's peak. It's biggest flaw was Blizzard allowing nigh-unrestricted paid transfers to drastically unbalance some server populations, but other than that everything basically worked and was worth participating in.

This is pretty much my feeling on it as well.

I know I did the zone flyby in Hyjal, but I didn't see Deathwing attacking anything.  Maybe I'll send an alt there to review the flyby and it will make more sense.  I don't really want to be that disappointed in the game; going to try what I can to find the fun. 

[Setanta]

Having just gt my 3rd char to 85 I can say that the game is too damn scripted to be fun. Too linear in each zone and god forbid someone else is collecting the 10 rats you need to get to the next step or worse, a required mob bugs.

Normal instances were fun but for gods sake, heroics and their reliance on CC are boring. It was fun in BC but not now. Enhancement weapons (slow/slow) are few and far between and the professions feel far from useful, LW random starts are lol, BS are "meh" until you hit 525 compared to quest rewards and only engineering seems to shine for hunters - but god forbid you'd want to farm up all the earth needed for that bow you want.

WotLK told a far better story and AoE tanking/instances were fun. Not because they were a challenge (they weren't) but because they were a means to an end (points for gear). Smash, raaggghhhh, collect points and get gear. First time = fun, then diminishing returns kicks in. Fun is shinies. Sadly, I say that as someone who has played since release day 1.

PvP is ass - it sucks, blows and tries to pretend it's fun. It's not and with the exception of the original AV and Wintergrasp before pop imbalance made it one sided, the rest are exploit ridden bore-fests. Mind you, I'm not convinced newer players or even old players would queue for the old AV... but I would, god it felt like you had purpose and Kazzak owning you on the hill was funny.

I'm not feeling Cata. I love the new world but it's just more of the same but with a captive audience.

[Merusk]

I don't think WotLK will ever be seen as Blizzards greatest expansion. It was routinely slated throughout it's life, by raiders and non-raiders alike. It had huge swathes of missing content and opportunities, and I think there's a huge amount of rose tinted nostalgia going on if you think it's incredibly better than Cata. So far, barring the monstrosity that is tol Barad and some of the..."wierder" professions choices, Catcaclysm as an expansion knocks TBC and WotLK out of the park. It's far more polished, complete in every way and the content is of a level of quality we havent' seen in WoW for some time.

Cata is a big step forward in questing as story in a lot of ways.  If SWTOR plays out the same it won't be the crapfest I've been expecting. (caviat on stable gameplay vs buggy shit.)   I can understand some people disliking it because you're completly on rails through the whole thing.  No more "Man I hate this hub, I'm hopping over to xyz to do his quests instead" because xyz is locked until you complete hub tvw.   That rankles me on a level but at the same time makes it feel much more like an RPG than any other MMORPGs have over the last 15 years.

However, once you're through all that it all falls apart.   Burning Crusade was shit for dungeon design and even Vanilla was more fun but the bosses weren't overly complicated.  Your casual players could get the hang of even heroic bosses easily and once they were geared up it was a-ok.  WOTLK had its problems in terms of AOE shitfesting but lack of fun wasn't one of them and some of the bosses were a little trickier than BC but you didn't get demoralized wiping on trash to get to them.

Cata dungeons feel like all the worst mechanics of Burning Crusade and WOTLK combined.  Tough bosses that require you to be on your toes combined with will-sapping trash that also requires you to be on your toes and geared to an appropriate level.  The catass factor won that battle at HQ, because the sentiment from Blizz so far has been "Go do normals if you can't hack it, scrub."   Since I'm not raiding anymore due to time constraints the whole thing feels pointless.  Why should I bother gear-leveling through this shit? It's not fun and once I plateau the chances of PUGs running raids when I'm able are slim to none.. in all it feels like time to unsub once all the alts hit cap.

[Kail]

You would be amazed at how many honest to goodness "I just got the game yesterday" people there really are. Even now some 5-6 years later.

I just resubbed to play with a friend who's playing for the first time.  He's having fun.  The only problem is that he's had the game for maybe three weeks and is already level fiftysomething.  The game goes up to 85. but for him it stops at 60 because otherwise he's going to have to shell out something like $80 for the expansions.  If Blizzard wants to attract new people, they need to look at that.

Personally, I'm not really feeling it this time through.  I logged on to my main, saw the phrase "your talent points have been refunded" accompanying a string of empty spaces on my action bar and groaned.  An hour later, I was still working on this shit.  Assign talents, save everything, fish the new skills out of the book and put them on the bar, switch specs, do it all over again.  But that's not all, since I also have a bunch of new stuff, like armor specialization, that I have to visit a trainer to unlock.  So I truck back to Dalaran, only to find that the portals are gone, apparently.  There are trainers there, but I can't get out of Northrend.  So I have to trek all the way back to the Howling Fjord and catch the zepplin there back to the Undercity.  Except that's apprarently the wrong city, I need to train my flying skill but the flying skill trainer is only in Orgrimmar as far as I can tell, so I have to get back on the Zepplin and head over to Orgrimmar.  While I'm there, I wander around and notice that Thrall evidently isn't leading the Horde anymore.  I don't know why, or anything, you'd think someone would have sent me a memo or something, but whatever.  Still haven't done any actual questing on the guy, maybe that'll come later.

Rolled an alt to play with my friend, and so far, it's kind of meh.  The new races are pretty interesting so far, but the old content "redone" is mystifying to me because it's like 75% the same.  I mean, it's been re-written and re-itemized, but the actual quests are basically the same quests.  Started a gnome, and had about five levels of Gnomereran (which was cool) before I hit Kharanos and started getting deja vu.  Go kill the yetis in the cave, go get supplies, find me some shimmerweed from trolls, clear out troggs from the quarry.  There are new quests in there, but they're sprinkled in among retreads of the old quests so the whole thing feels kind of half assed.

The new races fare a bit better, but a lot of their quests are starting to feel gimmicky to me.  Old WoW quest, you'd have to collect ten flowers or something.  A bit repetitive, but you at least knew what you were doing.  New WoW quest, you have to collect ten flowers, but you do that by using this item which makes flowers appear when your pet starts barking and then you have to fight the flower guardian or whatever.  And if you don't "get" the gimmick, you die.  Had to do a quest on my Worgen which was "sneak in to this place and assassinate some guy" and they gave me an infinite reuse stealth potion to help.  Fine, stealth in, kill guys.  But the guy I turn the quest in to was surrounded by enemies, and talking to him drops stealth and kills me.  So I spent a while clearing out enemies (why they gave me a stealth potion in the first place I'm not sure) and talk to the quest guy, and when select my reward, the guys who were trying to kill me become friendly to me.  Thanks, that would have been handy to know ten minutes ago.

Plus, the mechanics just seem dumbed down to me.  WoW was never exactly a super complex game, but now it feels lke a Facebook app.  Every other class has a Sinister Strike move now: Warriors, Paladins, Shamans, everyone.  Weapon skills are gone.  Guns don't take bullets, bows don't need arrows.  Which talent tree you use is more important than how you spend your points in it.  Every talent tree is clearly labelled with an icon so that even if you can't read the description which tells you it's for healing, you'll still be able to make an informed choice.  I mean, I'm not someone who thinks tedium=hardcore=better game, but this game feels like the Playmobil version so far.

I'm only a few days in, though, maybe it'll get better once I get used to it.