Cataclysm

[AutomaticZen]

Are the trees out yet?

I'm quite happy as I'm rerolling a Goblin Shaman, and my Orc Shaman was originally Enhancement leveling.  Which was quite lame early on, as it played mostly like Elemental.

Not having access to Improved Ghost Wolf or Spirit Tap until 70 if you aren't Enhancement or Shadow, respectively = not so awesome.

Eh, early Elemental basically killed the target before it got there.  Or Earthbind helped.  It was Enhancement that needed to run away quickly.

[Ingmar]

Trees aren't available anywhere yet from what I've seen.

[Minvaren]

Summary:

• Less skills on the trees
• Less skill points awarded
• Less choice of where to put skill points
• Needed skills (likely) available sooner

...did some people get moved from the Diablo team to the WoW team recently?   

[DLRiley]

someone is making wow shit in their own backyard.

[Ingmar]

someone is making wow shit in their own backyard.

HELP CHANGE IS SCARY

[koro]

Ha.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Ha.

So Azuregos is the deadpool of wow?

[Slyfeind]

Nice. More dragons need to be bored and sarcastic.

[Ratman_tf]

I like that you're getting class-defining abilities at level 10 now; however, I don't like the decreased diversity in builds this will lead to. The odds of there being even a few free talent points to spend beyond the core "build" for most specs are pretty slim.

It's been heading this way for a while now. Next stop: drop the talent fiddling and just pick one of the trees. Done-done.

[Sjofn]

I mostly like the talent tree change, but between this and the "abilities scale with level automagically now" change, they're going to wind up with an awful lot of "empty" levels, I would think, and I don't think people will like that very much.

[Draegan]

They did say you'd get a talent point every other level and an ability all the other levels.  Or at least for a while I suppose.

[Sjofn]

Ah, did they? I must've glazed right over it, my apologies. It's good they realised the same thing though. 

[Nightblade]

In particular I find the random dungeon finder has really transformed the level-up process - I group far more than I ever did before while leveling up now that I can queue up and go back to questing instead of having to wait around in a LFG channel and drum up interest to get anywhere.

You find a group, but that's all it is. A group of strangers you'll likely never see again.

[Rasix]

You're a sad, sad little man.

[Lakov_Sanite]

And you have my pity.

[Nightblade]

You're a sad, sad little man.

I'm not the one playing WoW.

[Sjofn]

Rasix isn't the one who apparently needs to form a Lifelong Bond with anyone he braves Deadmines with.

[Nightblade]

Rasix isn't the one who apparently needs to form a Lifelong Bond with anyone he braves Deadmines with.

Yes, because that is precisely what I was talking about.

[Sheepherder]

You're a sad, sad little man.

I'm not the one playing WoW.

I'm not sure trolling the subforum of a game you hold your nose at scores you points.

[Nightblade]

You're a sad, sad little man.

I'm not the one playing WoW.

I'm not sure trolling the subforum of a game you hold your nose at scores you points.

I'm not sure you know what trolling actually is.

All I was trying to say was that the measures put into place hinder the communities the game's individual servers used to have. If you're going to make everything a cross server individual instance, what's the point of having persistent world servers in the first place?

[Ingmar]

All I was trying to say was that the measures put into place hinder the communities the game's individual servers used to have. If you're going to make everything a cross server individual instance, what's the point of having persistent world servers in the first place?

Ah that would be those awesome communities that couldn't form an instance PUG for anything below level 70 before the heat death of the universe, right?

[kildorn]

Vanilla WoW only had select communities that are still together anyways. You had the PVP crews and the raid crews. Everything else was a guild or something out of game entirely. You still have that, you just have less focus for them to talk about (PVP crews are no longer HWL trading, so there's no need to be tight knit. Raids are more accessible and less focused on poaching players because you need X class/spec/gear to progress)

There's never really been a tight knit trade spamming for groups community. If you start to form one, you friend each other and stop trolling trade for groups.

Basically, I'm calling bullshit on the community being lesser in any form: WoW was never a gather your realm and retake a keep kind of game. There was never a reason to make some massive community. LFG essentially took the issue of a dead server under the level cap and removed it.

[Ingmar]

Yeah the realm forums were never anything like those for DAOC or even WAR (for better and for worse.) To me that says the idea of a tight server community in WoW that was 'damaged' by all these changes is mostly BS. There was a little bit of rivalry/action around when the servers had their own battlegrounds, and that's about it.

[Sjofn]

Even when the BGs expanded to battlegroups, there was a little back and forth, it just changed to "Doomhammer? More like NOOBHAMMER LOL" instead of "lol alliance has no ohner."

[Nightblade]

Vanilla WoW only had select communities that are still together anyways. You had the PVP crews and the raid crews. Everything else was a guild or something out of game entirely. You still have that, you just have less focus for them to talk about (PVP crews are no longer HWL trading, so there's no need to be tight knit. Raids are more accessible and less focused on poaching players because you need X class/spec/gear to progress)

There's never really been a tight knit trade spamming for groups community. If you start to form one, you friend each other and stop trolling trade for groups.

Basically, I'm calling bullshit on the community being lesser in any form: WoW was never a gather your realm and retake a keep kind of game. There was never a reason to make some massive community. LFG essentially took the issue of a dead server under the level cap and removed it.

Maybe my server was the only one who had an active community in the vanilla days. Tarren mill, Crossroads, the widespread chaos that followed the introduction of the honor system, and even the early days of the battlegrounds. Now, the only time the world is active and rife with players is when the latest expansion goes and wipes out the progress the players were working the past year or so towards. Are you suggesting that the WoW's current condition is identical or even similar to the way it was during the Vanilla days?

[Rasix]

 

[kildorn]

Vanilla WoW only had select communities that are still together anyways. You had the PVP crews and the raid crews. Everything else was a guild or something out of game entirely. You still have that, you just have less focus for them to talk about (PVP crews are no longer HWL trading, so there's no need to be tight knit. Raids are more accessible and less focused on poaching players because you need X class/spec/gear to progress)

There's never really been a tight knit trade spamming for groups community. If you start to form one, you friend each other and stop trolling trade for groups.

Basically, I'm calling bullshit on the community being lesser in any form: WoW was never a gather your realm and retake a keep kind of game. There was never a reason to make some massive community. LFG essentially took the issue of a dead server under the level cap and removed it.

Maybe my server was the only one who had an active community in the vanilla days. Tarren mill, Crossroads, the widespread chaos that followed the introduction of the honor system, and even the early days of the battlegrounds. Now, the only time the world is active and rife with players is when the latest expansion goes and wipes out the progress the players were working the past year or so towards. Are you suggesting that the WoW's current condition is identical or even similar to the condition that it was in the early days? Back when people actually did world bosses and attacked capitals?

They still do the latter (there's an achievement for it!), the prior are good to be gone (non instanced raid targets were essentially a grief magnet, at least on the servers I played. It was bad enough that Blizz had to put in a no interference policy that essentially made them instanced for all intents and purposes. You'd eat a ban if you mucked with another raid's pull.)

TM wasn't a community, it was just the Only Thing To Do. It was the Emain of WOW. Once BGs got off the ground, people had something else to do with their time. Basically, the community you're talking about was shit raiders did when waiting for raids to run.

WoW's current condition is the same as it used to be, with more actual gameplay happening, and less wasting time. They've been steadily removing the grindy bits and the boring bits and accepting that at it's core, it's a fun game. And people will play it for being a fun game. So I don't recognize the pug mage in my group anymore. It's not like I ever talked to him beyond "seriously, sheep that" or "no seriously, stop trying to fucking tank" in the old system, now I just have a faster time getting to the actual GAME.

[Nightblade]

They still do the latter (there's an achievement for it!), the prior are good to be gone (non instanced raid targets were essentially a grief magnet, at least on the servers I played. It was bad enough that Blizz had to put in a no interference policy that essentially made them instanced for all intents and purposes. You'd eat a ban if you mucked with another raid's pull.)

TM wasn't a community, it was just the Only Thing To Do. It was the Emain of WOW. Once BGs got off the ground, people had something else to do with their time. Basically, the community you're talking about was shit raiders did when waiting for raids to run.

WoW's current condition is the same as it used to be, with more actual gameplay happening, and less wasting time. They've been steadily removing the grindy bits and the boring bits and accepting that at it's core, it's a fun game. And people will play it for being a fun game. So I don't recognize the pug mage in my group anymore. It's not like I ever talked to him beyond "seriously, sheep that" or "no seriously, stop trying to fucking tank" in the old system, now I just have a faster time getting to the actual GAME.

So people actually do city raids again? Does the server still implode each times it happens? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just curious.

Either way, I can see what you're saying. and I agree with streamlining  the more annoying bits of the game; I just think they went a little too far in removing the parts that made the world actually feel like one. However flawed some of those aspects were, I actually liked them. Now, all you seem to do in the game is sit in town and wait for a lobby to pop. I can do that in games I don't have to pay a monthly fee for.

[pants]

So people actually do city raids again? Does the server still implode each times it happens? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just curious.

Not really - the server doesn't notice.  Because everyone is in Dalaran, so the populations of even Stormwind and Org are nowhere near as high as they used to be way back when.  And the other capitals are ghost towns.  Its unusual for defenders to even bother if they hear a raid is on, especially if its in buttfucknowhere like Silvermoon or the space goat city.

"Cmon guys, the alliance are raiding Silvermoon!  Help us kill them"
"Bah, who cares, let em have it"

is the normal discussion in trade chat.

[Ingmar]

We save Magni from the horde all the time on Doomhammer!

[AutomaticZen]

Yeah, the raids happen weekly because of the Achievement.  Defense? Depends on the city.  Orgrimmar, nope.  Stormwind, sorta.  Ironforge...yes, since you go directly through the center.   

[Fordel]

City Raids happen like once a week, if not more often. The servers handle them just fine, your video card might not, but /shrug



WoW has plenty of community, it's just incomprehensible and retarded to most of us. All those morons spamming ANAL [FIREBALL] in trade chat? They all know each other, have their own cliques, groups, friends and drama. Instead of shitting around in IRC, they all shit around in Vent. Instead of flaming each other on old forums, they flame each other in blog-comments and twitter and that reverse twitter thing.


It really hit home how alien the community was to me, the last time I went on a City Raid ironically enough. I was hoping the retards would just be able to brute force their way through it after enough attempts, but I was very surprised. The Raid leader/organizer, was talking like a total E-Thug, but at the same time, he wasn't berating anyone, or being particularly vulgar or anything. Once I was able to parse what the shit he was saying, it turned out he actually had a solid plan, with a bunch of guys buying into it, organized, executed and most surprisingly, done with TONS of patience.

[Pantastic]

I like that you're getting class-defining abilities at level 10 now; however, I don't like the decreased diversity in builds this will lead to. The odds of there being even a few free talent points to spend beyond the core "build" for most specs are pretty slim.

How is that different than now? Most classes have 2-4 PVE builds that maybe have 5 points you can shift, unless you just want to gimp your character. There isn't any real diversity in builds, you either pick one of a few or choose to play badly. And lots of the talents are just boring - sure getting 5% more damage on your main nuke is useful, but spending 5 levels picking up +1% damage at a time is not interesting. I think they can actually provide much more variety if they take out all of the 'must have' stuff that provides basic abilities or major damage/healing/tanking boosts and just put stuff you don't have to have into the talents you pick.

I'd gladly exchange the occasional odd leveling talent build for actually playing like an arms warrior, enhancement shaman, or assasination rogue while leveling. Most of the not-one-tree leveling builds are there either for one ability that should probably be baseline (like spirit tap for priests) or to compensate for not having any good stuff at low levels.

[Nightblade]

...it's just incomprehensible and retarded to most of us. All those morons spamming ANAL [FIREBALL] in trade chat? They all know each other, have their own cliques, groups, friends and drama.

Yes, well; the type of idiots that troll trade channel aren't exactly the type of the community I'm referring to; but I see what you're saying. Still, every thing is just kind of isolated now... Though as the game grows; it might actually be for the best.

[Fordel]

I don't see why you would think they are isolated.


Most of "us" isolate our selves from them, because we are all old and cranky and want them off our lawns. We also isolate ourselves from each other because we can't stand each other either anymore. 




We weren't any different when we first hit the MMO scene or whatever you want to call it, and I'm sure the older generation playing with us thought we were all crazy too. I can't throw stones at the people making trade chat jokes when we had 'New Patch' thread and stuff.