Cracks starting to show?

[Paelos]

Ingmar, there's no way to shine this turd. People don't want to create raids to pvp. It's just the way it is. They need to give it up and move on.

[sinij]

If SC2 could have individual "team" ratings and use them to put together "random rated team" why can't WoW? Sure, you need to take care of "healer/deeps" ratio. Logistics is what killing rBGs and going into Cata Blizzard was clearly told by PvP community that this is going to happen.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There's no reason why they can't in wow, they just won't.  They seem to think that by enforcing larger groups they can foster more community and retention of their game.  Just look at the arena, it was already woefully underused and people were gravitating away from the larger 5 man teams because they just wanted points.  Of course instead o seeing that and realizing people didn't want to set up groups to pvp, they decided to make enforced grouping with the battlegrounds.

[Merusk]

The claim has always been that it's not just a simple win-loss like SC2 or any other Single-Entity vs Other game.  In those all mistakes are the sole blame of the lone individual who lost. You were simply outmatched, so your rating is a direct reflection of you.

However, since BGs are a team sport, indivdual ratings based off win-loss screw those who get unlucky enough to be grouped with idiots running into walls for free honor, or cap & run or fight in the middle to pad their HK count or camp the flag spawn in EOTS while the opfor holds it at a node without capping becuase they have 3x towers.

Not that I don't think it's a BS claim but I can see where coding rules & awards for it acceptable vs unacceptable behaviours will get out of hand.  Plus, the playerbase will eventually min/max the system and only focus on those goals that net them the best personal rating.  Wether it's HKs or Flag caps or defense.  It's still worth giving a shot at this point, however, because not enough of the playerbase are intersted in biting that particular apple.

[Rokal]

Ingmar, there's no way to shine this turd. People don't want to create raids to pvp. It's just the way it is. They need to give it up and move on.

The point you're ignoring is that even if 90% of the game population loved rated battlegrounds, they could still have a tech issue that inflated queue times. The recent news blurb you're talking about isn't about how unpopular rated BGs are, and what effect that has on queue times. The people complaining in the thread Blizzard responded to were people that did rated BGs last season and noticed a huge queue time increase a week later when S2 started.

[Paelos]

Ingmar, there's no way to shine this turd. People don't want to create raids to pvp. It's just the way it is. They need to give it up and move on.

The point you're ignoring is that even if 90% of the game population loved rated battlegrounds, they could still have a tech issue that inflated queue times. The recent news blurb you're talking about isn't about how unpopular rated BGs are, and what effect that has on queue times. The people complaining in the thread Blizzard responded to were people that did rated BGs last season and noticed a huge queue time increase a week later when S2 started.

If 90% of the population loved it, it would have been hotfixed in a day. Blizzard hotfixes world first kills as they are happening.

[Rendakor]

The claim has always been that it's not just a simple win-loss like SC2 or any other Single-Entity vs Other game.  In those all mistakes are the sole blame of the lone individual who lost. You were simply outmatched, so your rating is a direct reflection of you.

However, since BGs are a team sport, indivdual ratings based off win-loss screw those who get unlucky enough to be grouped with idiots running into walls for free honor, or cap & run or fight in the middle to pad their HK count or camp the flag spawn in EOTS while the opfor holds it at a node without capping becuase they have 3x towers.

Not that I don't think it's a BS claim but I can see where coding rules & awards for it acceptable vs unacceptable behaviours will get out of hand.  Plus, the playerbase will eventually min/max the system and only focus on those goals that net them the best personal rating.  Wether it's HKs or Flag caps or defense.  It's still worth giving a shot at this point, however, because not enough of the playerbase are intersted in biting that particular apple.

IIRC SC2 has personal ratings for 4v4, 3v3, and 2v2, and allows you to PUG them.

[Paelos]

In FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! I bring you the sad case of Snuggies, who forgot how to capitalize anything...

[Ingmar]

Ingmar, there's no way to shine this turd. People don't want to create raids to pvp. It's just the way it is. They need to give it up and move on.

Who is shining anything? They had queue time problems, you all went 'derp derp lol nobody is queueing', but that's not actually true. I'm just correcting you. I don't want to form raids for BGs anymore than any of the rest of you, but making incorrect assumptions doesn't make the case any better.

EDIT: Note the hotfix applied to arenas too, it was their entire matchmaking system that had the problem. It just wasn't as evident in Arenas because the ratings don't go as high - the rating method they use for RBGs has a wider range of numbers.

[Paelos]

 

Thanks for correcting us. No use joking about something being broken that nobody is actually using.

They might as well make blue posts about how they are fixing that elevator in the back of that random 10,000 ft. warehouse where only one guy is storing a sofa.

[Ingmar]

You're welcome!

[Ashamanchill]

I know it's only anectdotal, and it's not hard numbers or anything, but trade on my server has recently become filled with LFG RBGs, or LFM RBGs of late. I even took part in one: they suck and they are not even close to worth the time and logistical effort involved.

[Merusk]

I know it's only anectdotal, and it's not hard numbers or anything, but trade on my server has recently become filled with LFG RBGs, or LFM RBGs of late. I even took part in one: they suck and they are not even close to worth the time and logistical effort involved.

Isn't that because of the recent change requiring a certain # of RBGs to get your full amount of Conquest points?

[Fordel]

The ideal RBG group comp is something like 50% healers, 25% Frost Mages, 5% Smoke Bombs and SolarBeams and the rest melee train filler.

[Paelos]

Today in FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! Arbsmasher discovers the formula for fail!

[Paelos]

Today in FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! Damedraven goes into full Hamlet melodrama about quitting.

[March]

Today in FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! Damedraven goes into full Hamlet melodrama about quitting.

   I'm afraid I can't quite follow his banter:  "I feel its about time to move on, I mean total biscuit quit wow (for reasons I dont know) ..."

Is "biscuit quit" a cool new term (and if it isn't, it should be), or are we lamenting the previous exit of "total biscuit" (and should I know who that is)?

But, yes, love the existential angst of quitting here.

[Cadaverine]

Near as I can gather Total Biscuit is some internet celebrity at cynicalbrit.com that did a video series called Azeroth Daily on youtube.  He apparently quit doing the videos, and quit the game, back in May.

http://youtu.be/ndcysuEIqus

Could also be some weird British slang, like the whole enchilada.

[LK]

The quit messages reads to me like a wake-up call on what people are acfually doing with their time and the patterns they've fallen i to in the name of fun. How an emotional bond could make you take an irrational action. Kinda like what I went through!

[Paelos]

Near as I can gather Total Biscuit is some internet celebrity at cynicalbrit.com that did a video series called Azeroth Daily on youtube.  He apparently quit doing the videos, and quit the game, back in May.

http://youtu.be/ndcysuEIqus

Could also be some weird British slang, like the whole enchilada.

Yes, he's referring to the cynical brit dude. He meant it in a way such as, "I feel it's time to quit. Even a guy like Total Biscuit quit (for reasons I don't know) and he was extremely committed to the community."

He's lamenting the loss of his heroes. 

[jakonovski]

TotalBiscuit is pretty cool, I follow his videos regularly. Of particular note is the Terraria series where he plays the game with the rather hilarious Jesse Cox.

[Rokal]

I like all his "WTF is ___" videos, I've learned about quite a few great smaller PC games through them.

[Fordel]

TB is great as long as he sticks to reporting/casting.

His personal opinions on <topic> are usually derp  worthy and the man is incapable of ignoring his trolls or even identifying them.

[Lt.Dan]

He was also the guy that praised blizzard for making heroics challenging then wound up quitting because heroics were too hard.

[Fabricated]

He was also the guy that praised blizzard for making heroics challenging then wound up quitting because heroics were too hard.

I thought he claimed he quit because of the T11 nerf and badge system? Nevermind he never raided in Cata outside of the beta?

[Amaron]

I thought he claimed he quit because of the T11 nerf and badge system? Nevermind he never raided in Cata outside of the beta?

That's it sort of.   Basically he wants the TBC style normal mode raid progression system.   I think Lt. Dan is talking about how he praises difficulty but doesn't do heroic raids or something.    His comments on why people don't do heroic raids are truly derp award worthy.

[Fabricated]

He was dumb as shit on the WoW board on SA and we pretty much ran the guy off.

[Paelos]

Today in FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! Beavergoblin...yeah the name alone should give you an idea. Enjoy!

[Miasma]

I will put this here so as not to fag up the real thread.

[2.Trade] [Holyrot]: Congratulations to Amy Winehouse on being 48hrs sober!

Too soon.

[Paelos]

Today in FUCK YOU CATA, I'M OUT! Alejandra gives you the FULL reason for why she's quitting.

[Shrike]

Somebody was overthinking things. I recomend beer. A good IPA. Lots of it.

[Paelos]

Just some quick number comparisons I've been doing looking at the successful raider base (sweeping conclusions and generalities were made):

We are a little over 1 month into the 4.2 patch which put out the newer content. As of now, the number of guilds who have killed anything is ~23k. The number of available raiding guilds that killed anything before the date of 4.2 is ~60k, going a month backwards. By those numbers, we can guess that a third of the raiders who were successful in the last set of raids have killed something in this tier.

Also, using a lookup of the 20,000th guild to kill Magmaw, that happened on early on January 6th, 2011. That's a little short of a full month away from the December 7th, 2010 first kill of Magmaw. The Shannox kills span June 28th until July 16th when guilds hit the 20,000th kill.

So you're looking at 18 days versus about 30, including a holiday season. I think you could say that this 4.2 content is certainly easier tracking it by those standards. However, I think it's safe to say that ~60-70k guilds are the only ones raiding successfully at this point, which you could figure amounts to about 1-1.5 million characters. Assuming Blizzard's 11M sub number, that means only 9-14% of your players are killing the content consistently.

Also, comparing this to the ICC numbers, the amount of guilds completing content was between 80-90k. At those numbers, it's possible that Blizzard lost 25% of their raiders through this expansion. If that's true, I wouldn't be shocked to see WoW subscription numbers fall off sharply by the fiscal year close to less than 10M players.

[Merusk]

Your supposition is flawed.  One would expect the content cycle to be roughly half anyway, not due to difficulty, but due to not having to wait for guildies to level.

Bleeding-edge Catasses were killing in the first few days, that 20k guild had to wait a few weeks.  Not so much this patch.

[Rokal]

You're also saying that Blizzard has 11 million subscribers that even have access to Cata in their country, which is false. iirc Cata just launched in China late this month (or was it delayed again?). That's a huge portion of their '11 million subs' number. The NA + EU subs are X million subs, I have no idea how many, but that is what you should be basing your numbers on. This means that the number of their subscribers doing raid content is much higher than 9-14%, it's more likely in the ballpark of 40%+

[Paelos]

Your supposition is flawed.  One would expect the content cycle to be roughly half anyway, not due to difficulty, but due to not having to wait for guildies to level.

Bleeding-edge Catasses were killing in the first few days, that 20k guild had to wait a few weeks.  Not so much this patch.

True enough. The question is how many days you'd associate with that difference for guilds. In that case you could assume it's the on the same pace. I think we'd have a hard time saying it's harder, though.