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Topic: Bitch Thread for Warlords of Draenor (Read 496829 times)
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pants
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Posts: 588
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The legendary cloak quest in MoP was probably as close as they've come since Vanilla to making a quest line that was this complex, but it really didn't evoke the same feeling. It was too stream-lined, too much "progress this quest by doing stuff you were already doing".
The other one they did really well was the epic hunter bow questline. That was very well done, and damn hard, especially how they deliberately put in all the key skills hunters needed back then (kiting, wing clipping, trap dancing and aoe volleying). It had a real sense of graduating from hunter school to be able to get that way back when. Its a pity they didn't do more stuff like that.
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Malakili
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Posts: 10596
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I was already in a raiding guild at that point that had all of our members getting gear a lot better than tier .5, but a lot of people wanted to do it anyway because they were the type of people that wanted full sets of everything. It was a good addition to the game overall, although I think it failed somewhat to do what is what supposed to do. It was DAMNED HARD for people who weren't already well geared or who weren't well organized. Generally speaking if you could do the content to get tier. 5, you were in a position to do raids anyway or were already doing raids.
At least that is how it was on our server.
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Selby
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Posts: 2963
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Generally speaking if you could do the content to get tier. 5, you were in a position to do raids anyway or were already doing raids.
At least that is how it was on our server.
My server and group was the same way. Although getting 40 people together for MC was a challenge...
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Fabricated
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Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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The Tier 0.5 stuff was horrid considering that by and large the sets were terrible stat-wise. It was a big money and time sink and the Baron run was a complete unfun dickpuncher I did dozens of times for various people. The final boss of the series in UBRS was stupidly overtuned for the kind of people who should've been doing it to get upgrades.
It wasn't epic; it was a miserable grind for a neat looking but statistically crappy reward. It was less of a grind to run ZG, AQ20, or organize an MC run.
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Paelos
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Yep I organized several MC runs, but never did all the Tier 0.5 stuff. It started as MC trash runs and graduated into getting to Garr, then eventually clearing the thing.
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Merusk
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We farmed ZA and BWL and said fuck .5 as it came out around that time. It wasn't worth the time and organization effort to try vs those runs. The two or three people I knew who had it did so on their own on off days. Most were the type of player who could sink 8 hours into the game on a "short" day.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Zetor
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Posts: 3269
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The Tier 0.5 stuff was horrid considering that by and large the sets were terrible stat-wise. It was a big money and time sink and the Baron run was a complete unfun dickpuncher I did dozens of times for various people. The final boss of the series in UBRS was stupidly overtuned for the kind of people who should've been doing it to get upgrades.
It wasn't epic; it was a miserable grind for a neat looking but statistically crappy reward. It was less of a grind to run ZG, AQ20, or organize an MC run.
Well, YMMV and all, but I had the opposite experience. I've been (still am) in a non-raiding guild of mostly casual gamers. Pugging any raid on my server (except for maybe MC/ZG/AQ20 if you 'knew people', but there's no way in hell I'm spending 8 hours in a MC half-pug) was not an option, so we ran 5-mans (sometimes co-oping with another guild to run UBRS, and ZG maybe once or twice, though that was a scheduling nightmare), did some pvp here and there, and that was it. Yeah, the grind in some of the tier0.5 steps was ridiculous (like the ones in the overworld gathering 20 wotsits, and the summoning thing in Silithus), and the 45min Strat basically required a good group makeup AND near-perfect execution if you didn't outgear it. And yet, we still enjoyed it, because it was a huge challenge with some pretty fun parts (like the 'new' bosses in some dungeons, the BRD arena fight being one of the most memorable to this day). Valthalak was probably more mechanically complex than the entirety of MC and most of ZG/AQ20 *and* we had to reach into our friends list to fill out a 10-man raid to get him (twice!), but it was still good stuff. The rewards? Yea, they sucked (for the most part). Darkmantle was sorta ok because of the energy regeneration set bonus, but my paladin's tier0.5 is some sort of messed-up badly hybridized mess. Ditto with Heroism (IIRC), which tried to be an AQ40 'all around warrior set', only it was so low ilevel that it didn't actually work. Feralheart was decent I think, and the mage set was ok... maybe? Still, we didn't run it for phat loot, we ran it because it was THE thing to do unless you were in a raid guild. e: and it definitely wasn't as much of a time-waster than almost any of the other 'endgame' options. An average MC run you could get into on our server took 6-7 *hours*. We did every step of the t0.5 questline in a group at the pace of a few steps a week, spending maybe 1 hour a day on it a few days a week. This went up to 4 hours on a scheduled day (typically Saturday) when we could work on the next 'showstopper' like Strat 45, the Silithus farming run from hell, or Valthalak.
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« Last Edit: May 13, 2014, 08:37:24 AM by Zetor »
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Paelos
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Posts: 27075
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If there's one thing I wish Blizzard would emphasize more, it's the MC style of fights in an opening tier. Not necessarily the resistence crap that was awful, but the idea of some tank and spanks with 2 mechanics that aren't too complicated as your opening raid.
That would assist people in making the transition from LFR to normal that they seem to be desperately betting on.
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Simond
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"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."
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Paelos
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Posts: 27075
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Fang-gate NE edition.
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Simond
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"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."
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Rendakor
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Wtf is fang gate?
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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Merusk
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The first few comments of the preview had people up in arms about no fangs on the NE model. So Paelos dubbed it fang gate.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Rendakor
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Ah, thanks. I checked out the pictures but never read comments anywhere.
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"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
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luckton
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Posts: 5947
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"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
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Lakov_Sanite
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Posts: 7590
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*Content
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~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
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Lakov_Sanite
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Posts: 7590
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I bet deathknight get a skull that ends up getting so big it envelops the dk making them one giant skull.
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~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
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Paelos
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Posts: 27075
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Not sure what they'd give warriors.
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Lakov_Sanite
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Posts: 7590
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A chance to reroll paladin?
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~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
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Typhon
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Posts: 2493
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An armored cod piece!
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
Auto Assault Affectionado
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Shoulder pads for their shoulder pads.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Rokal
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Posts: 1652
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They also implied that these minor cosmetic additions probably wouldn't be added to the game until the expansion after WoD. Look forward to having a quiver appear on your character again in ~3 years, because that is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a minor cosmetic feature.
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Paelos
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Heh, that's totally insane if they are planning that far out for something that should take a couple of months even by Blizzard coding standards.
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Merusk
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More like it's a bait and switch to get people to come back that will be forgotten inside of 3 months of release and never mentioned again beyond, "Oh what, you thought we were serious?"
Much like Dance Studio.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Paelos
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Seems desperate for a game that's supposedly got 7M subs. I wonder what kind of hit they take after this xpac flops.
The Titan thing still irks me. They obviously moved people off WoW which precipitated this decline, and we've seen nothing for it.
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Hutch
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Seems desperate for a game that's supposedly got 7M subs. I wonder what kind of hit they take after this xpac flops.
I'm predicting at least 2 million subs cancelled by this time next year. That's assuming that they let this expansion go live, without reversing their stance on letting players fly in the new zones.
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Plant yourself like a tree Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. The sun will shine on us again, brother
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Paelos
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I'm also wondering at what point Blizzard realizes that F2P is the only way to get the game back on track. Like what level of subs do they finally switch over? 2M? Less than 1M?
Or do they just go down with the ship and never convert?
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Hutch
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If they have 7 million subs right now, the game isn't off the tracks. F2P is only the answer if you believe that F2P games are actually competing with WoW.
They're not. Only one thing can bring down WoW, and that's Blizzard. In Cataclysm and (presumably) WoFWaB, they have made a point of kicking the players in the nuts, instead of just keeping the difficulty level at roughly the same position on the dial, and then adding activities for players, or adding choices to existing activities, like they did (more or less) in Pandaria.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall when the current dev team has to explain to the suits, how they lost millions of subs because they don't like the players they have.
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Plant yourself like a tree Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. The sun will shine on us again, brother
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Paelos
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That wasn't my question, though. My question was what level of sub drop does WoW go to F2P, if ever? I don't think WoW is off the tracks, I just think it's inevitably going to continue shedding subs. I wonder if F2P would reverse the trend. The only thing stopping me from playing WoW is the sub. I can't pay good money for what they are offering right now on a monthly basis.
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« Last Edit: May 20, 2014, 07:54:52 PM by Paelos »
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Setanta
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I know what you mean. For all its flaws, I find GW2 more attractive to WoW due to F2P (even though I did spend cash in the GW2 TP) and am not interested in Wildstar at all because it's subscription based.
Back in the day I happily paid my WoW sub but came to the conclusion it just wasn't worth it. If it went F2P I'd probably go back and check it out. I may do so anyway when the expansion hits but Cata and MoP have not faded from my memory.
To show how perverse I can be - I still maintain my Eve subscription.
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"No man is an island. But if you strap a bunch of dead guys together it makes a damn fine raft."
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Paelos
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See I don't mind paying for content packages. If WoW wanted to charge based on raid updates or whatever, that's fine. If I can play and get pet battles, then actually pay for when they put out content? That's going to encourage them to create stuff instead of just dicking around endlessly, or creating cock-blocks to extend subs.
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Hutch
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That wasn't my question, though. My question was what level of sub drop does WoW go to F2P, if ever? I don't think WoW is off the tracks, I just think it's inevitably going to continue shedding subs. I wonder if F2P would reverse the trend. The only thing stopping me from playing WoW is the sub. I can't pay good money for what they are offering right now on a monthly basis.
Fair enough. I think I was just looking for an excuse to rant.
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Plant yourself like a tree Haven't you noticed? We've been sharing our culture with you all morning. The sun will shine on us again, brother
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Rasix
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Do we actually have numbers for NA/European subs and metrics for top tier raid progression/participation (Asian numbers are weird, their method for calculating these always struck me as strange)? These are the numbers I'd look at if you're talking about a decline.
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-Rasix
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Paelos
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Posts: 27075
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I know of Wowprogress for NA and EU, but I'm unsure how reliable the numbers would be. I believe it goes off armory records.
From what it's saying about 36,000 guilds were raiding T16. It was about 48k in T15, 52k in T14 at the beginning of Mists.
64k at the end of Cataclsym in T13, 69k in T12, and 75.5k at the beginning of Cataclysm.
Supposedly it was 85k guilds raiding 10 mans during ICC according to their numbers.
So just using that frame of reference, there's been a 58% drop roughly in guilds attempting raids since ICC.
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Merusk
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Yes, Wowprogress uses armory so it's going to be the most reliable.
It aggregates participation based on achievements, so it's also not something you can fake. The flaw with it used to be that if a single member of a guild got an achieve, it counted that guild as having participated, even if it was one guy in a PUG. So it was more useful to look at "Number of <max level> raiding" than it was # of guilds.
They should have some info on their FAQ about how they count guilds. That's how I learned it in the first place. If it STILL counts things that way and the numbers have dropped that much its damning.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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