#3 guild in the US quits WoW.

[Dren]

There is a common opinion out there that none of the "big" bosses should have been killable anyway.  I kind of subscribe to that.  Where is the lore supposed to go now that all of the worst bosses evaar are now dead?  I suppose they could use the old soap opera come-backs, but that is pretty lame.

"You didn't really kill boss xxyyzz.  That was his clooooone!!!!"

It would have made more sense to just allow certain events to take place that either took those bosses out or at least "banished" them.  For instance:  Clear a path to allow evil boss A to get after evil boss B.  Once done, watch the fireworks fly!  Hey look, evil guy B lost and left this big chest of goodies behind.

Another example:  Set up the right conditions so good guy A can banish/trap bad guy B.  Oops, bad guy B left behind a lot of items in his footlocker!

[Modern Angel]

There is a common opinion out there that none of the "big" bosses should have been killable anyway.  I kind of subscribe to that.  Where is the lore supposed to go now that all of the worst bosses evaar are now dead?  I suppose they could use the old soap opera come-backs, but that is pretty lame.

"You didn't really kill boss xxyyzz.  That was his clooooone!!!!"

It would have made more sense to just allow certain events to take place that either took those bosses out or at least "banished" them.  For instance:  Clear a path to allow evil boss A to get after evil boss B.  Once done, watch the fireworks fly!  Hey look, evil guy B lost and left this big chest of goodies behind.

Another example:  Set up the right conditions so good guy A can banish/trap bad guy B.  Oops, bad guy B left behind a lot of items in his footlocker!

I've always thought that WC4 will come out once they wipe out the current lore bosses by letting you kill them in WoW.

Re: turn around time on their content. I remember getting to 70, checking out the five mans, heroics, seeing how much raid content was in the game and thinking, "Blizzard is SO smart and so disciplined! There's pretty much *exactly* one year of content here at all levels so people can just head right into their next expansion!"

So they got that part right: make one year of content which should be dying off just as you're ready for a new expansion. Except the new expansion never came.

[waylander]

I personally think that the Badges of Justice for certain types of gear upgrades was a good idea. There are tons of casuals who can't raid, and their game would effectively end at level 70 without a continued way to progress. What I don't like is that the badges require playing on heroic mode, and the heroic dailies drop very few badges. 

On the raider side, not every guild has a ton of time to put into gaming. I think its good that everyone's got an equal shot at these raid dungeons now without having to deal with time consuming side quests just to gain entrance.

While LotD isn't as high ranked as these guys, we're in the top 10% of US ranked guilds and hovering around the top 5%.  I know how much time our guys put into this game, and all the dumb restrictions that set us back as we replace retiring members with new recruits. I think we'll enjoy being able to access BT before the next expansion because without these changes, we'd probably never see it.

[Ratman_tf]

There is a common opinion out there that none of the "big" bosses should have been killable anyway.  I kind of subscribe to that.  Where is the lore supposed to go now that all of the worst bosses evaar are now dead?  I suppose they could use the old soap opera come-backs, but that is pretty lame.

"You didn't really kill boss xxyyzz.  That was his clooooone!!!!"

In a world full of rezzers, I would find it strange if anyone stayed dead.

[Mrbloodworth]

Blizzard no longer cares about the hardcore gamers, be that the raiders or the pvpers. Well, we're done with it. It wasn't just one thing really. While we were all excited to get some tier6 for our freshly 70 alts from this new badge gear, there's a part of you that just has to feel some pain when you look back at all the time you spent farming instances...for nothing.

I polish my shitty quest greens with his tears.

LMAO.

[Chimpy]

If I was Blizzard I'd just design Arthas in a way that he was literally impossible to kill but so it looks like he is totally killable if you would just play perfect enough. The uber-guilds would happily beat their heads against him for months until you decided enough time has passed and made some subtle adjustments to make him killable.

C'Thun was that way for a total of about 3 weeks.

Then Xi and the Death and Taxes drama patrol got ahold of someone who understood math better than they did and figured out that it was impossible with the game mechanics and gear of the time to kill him the way he was and cried like a pack of little girls who had their lollies stolen until Blizzard "fixed" it. Then they cried even more when Nihilum got the world first kill because "blizzard hot patched it when Europe still had cleared instances".

You will never make the nerd-rage hardcores happy, regardless of how you tune stuff. They complain about everything for the sake of complaining about it and showing how much smarter they are than the people whose game they pay to play.

[Lightstalker]

You will never make the nerd-rage hardcores happy, regardless of how you tune stuff. They complain about everything for the sake of complaining about it and showing how much smarter they are than the people whose game they pay to play.

You don't have to try to make them happy, you just have to keep taking their money.

Apparently it is that second part that is letting them down here.



Personally, I'm pissed we can't get our shit together for bear mounts in ZA, stuck at 3/4.  I like badge loot, because N drops for M guys (M>>N) is just not very fun at all.  If you are going to give me a 'challenge' that is: designed to be beaten and easily beaten, don't waste my time making me come back an arbitrarily large number of times for the shiny because I won't do it.  Most players cannot perform to within 85% of their gear limit anyway so gratz epix is pretty hollow when you know it won't help the chaff you bring along not stand in fire any better.  I think every raid encounter in WoW just comes down to getting enough idiots to not stand in fire for 10 minutes at a time.  That's pretty depressing and why I'm pretty much only interested in timed ZA runs anymore since that sustained focus is still something that any chimp with a keyboard can't manage.  Oh, and I don't expect WotLK to be any different because one doesn't need to fix a cash cow... 


Today's nerd rage brought to you by the letter P and the number 9.

[Rasix]

*tears*

[Fabricated]

You will never make the nerd-rage hardcores happy, regardless of how you tune stuff. They complain about everything for the sake of complaining about it and showing how much smarter they are than the people whose game they pay to play.

You don't have to try to make them happy, you just have to keep taking their money.

Apparently it is that second part that is letting them down here.

Personally, I'm pissed we can't get our shit together for bear mounts in ZA, stuck at 3/4.  I like badge loot, because N drops for M guys (M>>N) is just not very fun at all.  If you are going to give me a 'challenge' that is: designed to be beaten and easily beaten, don't waste my time making me come back an arbitrarily large number of times for the shiny because I won't do it.  Most players cannot perform to within 85% of their gear limit anyway so gratz epix is pretty hollow when you know it won't help the chaff you bring along not stand in fire any better.  I think every raid encounter in WoW just comes down to getting enough idiots to not stand in fire for 10 minutes at a time.  That's pretty depressing and why I'm pretty much only interested in timed ZA runs anymore since that sustained focus is still something that any chimp with a keyboard can't manage.  Oh, and I don't expect WotLK to be any different because one doesn't need to fix a cash cow... 

Today's nerd rage brought to you by the letter P and the number 9.

The bear mount is retarded.

[Paelos]

He's sort of right but in that silly raider way. The one where all the arguments drip with boredom/apathy/hate/shame.

Making people run the same thing they've beaten constantly because of a random number generator unrelated to your skill is stupid. No other medium would force you to do such a thing. MMO raiding is unique in this fact, and it's all based on cashflows. They know as well as we do that when the rewards off something are gone, we stop giving a shit about it en masse.

[Phunked]

Guys, I know its fun to be all like "they was doing it wrong lul fuck em" and whatever, but you know they might have a point.

I was top 10 preTBC and top 25 postTBC until I finally said fuck it and stopped raiding. Largely because 2nights a week is too much of a commitment when no one gets anything out of it and largely because tanking the same shit is boring (to be fair, I also healed and DPSed that shit to death on 2 alts). 

They do have a point. If you play this game competitively, you run out content way too fast. Seriously, it's been 10 months since Black Temple hit and the new raid is up today. It'll be finished within 2 weeks and be old within 2 months. They really should put out more content, because otherwise people just bored as fuck.

It doesn't hurt casuals because they never hit the content cap. But a lot of people (many more than you'd think) are hitting the content cap. And at that point it becomes a useless grind. They make a lot of money, they should be able to give us more crap. Hell EQ released more content more regularly and they have like 100k people playing.

It isn't nerd rage. Rather these are people who are good at this game and want more content to be good at. It'd be like calling CS players who play a lot and get really good at CS morons if they claim that there's  no one to compete with. I realize that a lot of people here are not going to care if the top end raiding tier is bored. That's fine. But surely you want more than one 5 man every 6-8months? Because I don't know about you, but Heroic Warp Splinter can go fuck himself by now.

[Nebu]

They do have a point. If you play this game competitively, you run out content way too fast. Seriously, it's been 10 months since Black Temple hit and the new raid is up today. It'll be finished within 2 weeks and be old within 2 months. They really should put out more content, because otherwise people just bored as fuck.

I disagree.  Designing games for the hardcore is poor resource management.  Churning out content that only a small portion of the playerbase will see isn't a sound economic decision.  I hope that more game companies will adopt this strategy and develop their games with the casual player in mind.  I'm quite happy to see the hardcore players get bored and leave.  It means less e-peen waving and board trolling for the 95% of us that play the game for fun.   

[Valmorian]

But a lot of people (many more than you'd think) are hitting the content cap.

I've got 2 70's, finally, as of this week.  I've still only seen about 4 instances in the Burning Crusade.  I've hardly scratched Shadowmoon Valley and Netherstorm.  There's a TON of quests that I have yet to complete.  Never really done a raid instance since I tagged along on few Molten Core runs before the Burning Crusade.  Hell, there are instances in the OLD world I've barely stepped into.

There are a LOT of people who have done less than me, many more than you think.

Now here's the important part: I'm paying just as much a month as every hardcore player, and what's more, there are more of us than of them.

Really, which do you think they should be catering to?

[Chimpy]

There was this game once, designed by the ultimate hardcore MMO gamer.

It was designed with the "dedicated" gamer specifically in mind.

It was all about walking 400 miles in the desert heat while wearing a hair shirt.

That game was called Vanguard.

[Merusk]

As we've mentioned already, their content pace could be a little quicker for raids. It doesn't need to be pedal to the metal, because of gear resets. This is a good thing, imo.  There's plenty of guilds in the "mid range" for whom the current raid pace is still too fast or just right for.  Uber gets bored, uber should move on. Same as anyone does with any other game.  You've 'beaten' it, congrats, take a break and revisit later.

Nothing wrong with that but for some reason it's a concept MMO players just can't fucking get.  Get bored with FFXII, stop playing.  Get bored with CS, stop playing.  Get bored with an MMO? Bitch endlessly on any available forum about how the developers aren't caterting directly to you and your tastes.

 However, their development on the 5-man side is almost non-exsistant and really needs a kick in the pants...

[Ratman_tf]

There are a LOT of people who have done less than me, many more than you think.

I don't even have one level 70 character. 

[Paelos]

There are a LOT of people who have done less than me, many more than you think.

I don't even have one level 70 character. 

He's an idiot, move along.

And this is speaking as someone who raids. The numbers aren't on the side of the hardcore.

[Sunbury]

They do have a point. If you play this game competitively, you run out content way too fast. Seriously, it's been 10 months since Black Temple hit and the new raid is up today. It'll be finished within 2 weeks and be old within 2 months. They really should put out more content, because otherwise people just bored as fuck.

I disagree.  Designing games for the hardcore is poor resource management.  Churning out content that only a small portion of the playerbase will see isn't a sound economic decision.  I hope that more game companies will adopt this strategy and develop their games with the casual player in mind.  I'm quite happy to see the hardcore players get bored and leave.  It means less e-peen waving and board trolling for the 95% of us that play the game for fun.   

I don't understand why they don't set these instances up so they can 'have their cake and eat it too'.   Duh - they are instances - different copies could have different rules based on who enters them.  If you enter it solo, it scales to that, including lowering the uber loot.  Even have the boss not home that day - he's out raiding, and have the boss's son there for you to kill. 

It can't be that many more manhours to scale down content.   Now everything they add, everyone can see, more or less.  Uber raid guilds still get to experience the uber version.   I would have kept playing a lot longer if I could have visited more of them.

[ajax34i]

I think it's because the length of time for a 25-person raid is different than for 5-person or solo content.  A solo instance where you go in solo but have to spend, say, 10 hours, before you see the end, sucks just as much, and for much of the same reasons, as a 25-person instance run.  And, basically, if you have the same map for a solo run and a 25-person run, then it will take equally long, unless it's designed so that the solo version has long corridors of empty space.  So they can't really set them up like you want, I think.

[Sunbury]

There would have to be areas with no mobs, unless they can save state so you can log off without respawning.  Then you can spread out your crawl over time.   Also I assume the reduced versions do not have 'tricky parts', again, those are saved for the uber versions.

[Ratman_tf]

There would have to be areas with no mobs, unless they can save state so you can log off without respawning.  Then you can spread out your crawl over time.   Also I assume the reduced versions do not have 'tricky parts', again, those are saved for the uber versions.

Diablo 2 did dat with the waypoints. That's just one thing (which waypoints have you marked?) for the game to keep track of.

[DarkSign]

If I was Blizzard I'd just design Arthas in a way that he was literally impossible to kill but so it looks like he is totally killable if you would just play perfect enough. The uber-guilds would happily beat their heads against him for months until you decided enough time has passed and made some subtle adjustments to make him killable.

This principle is spot on. In fact, applying this to a different arena, lots of MMOs should be designed to look "hardcore" but have the actual gameplay protect carebears in PvP.

[Gobbeldygook]

I don't understand why they don't set these instances up so they can 'have their cake and eat it too'.   Duh - they are instances - different copies could have different rules based on who enters them.  If you enter it solo, it scales to that, including lowering the uber loot.  Even have the boss not home that day - he's out raiding, and have the boss's son there for you to kill.

The lack of people running Zul'gurub tells me your idea would be a waste of time and effort that would be better spent making new content.

Blizzard has an extremely strong disincentive from making more solo endgame content: Retention.   Without friends and guildies around (They are often not the same thing), it's much easier to just get up and quit.  So it's in their best interest to force you to make friends so you'll stick around.

[Valmorian]

The lack of people running Zul'gurub tells me your idea would be a waste of time and effort that would be better spent making new content.

I would have run Zul'gurub at an appropriate level if I could have done it with 1-3 people.  I cannot get 5 people together, regularly, all at an appropriate level. 

[El Gallo]

I like challenging 5-man content. Me and my guildmates play a lot and are really good at 5-manning dungeons. We used to have a lot of fun playing WoW. But Blizzard is just not putting out nearly enough new 5-man content to keep us interested (or any other content, for that matter). Moreover, what 5-man content they are putting out is just not hard enough to challenge us. Therefore, we are not going to focus our play on WoW anymore. I am posting this on my website that lots of people (for whatever reason) visit for updates on 5-mans we've finished, strategies we've tried and loot we've gotten so those readers know not to expect to see any of that stuff anymore.

Seems sensible enough to me.  On f13, that post would get something between "meh" and a furious circle-jerk about how much Blizzard sucks. But drop in the word "raid" and the place immediately turns into the Vault.

Show me on the doll where Furor touched you.

[Ubvman]

And it's not just a matter of non-instanced content and competition, either, because much later, in the ages of Gates of Discord, Omens of War, and the newer EQ expansions where all this raid stuff was instanced and on a timer just like WoW's, things still played out like this, with top guilds taking several months to complete an expansion, not finishing until the next one is just around the corner, and 'average' raiding guilds being an expansion or two behind on content with much to look forward to at all times.

I was a Plane of Time raider that went into GoD (Gates of Discord) expansion - essentially that EQ1 expansion was designed for hardcore raiders like me. I can say with some authority, THAT expansion wasn't hard or good content. It was essentially BROKEN, BUGGED, INCOMPLETE AND UNBEATABLE. For Pete's sake, they released the damn thing tuned to level 70 but somehow "forgot" to raise the level cap along with the expansion. Whole swathes of the GoD expansion was unusable and with deliberate in-design cockblocks to slow down players so they couldn't reach the broken content. Hell, they even admitted that some zones like Uqua was impossible to complete (and deliberately so - it was designed and itemized over one weekend, untested with no QA so as to meet the release deadline and someone forgot to CC the dev about the level 70 cap not being lifted).

And this is for a paid expansion. EQ1 free content released for raiders is released on a glacial pace far worse than Blizzards (the last one I think was the revamped Veeshan's Peak, but I've quit since then).

EQ is NOT a good example to point to  when discussing a good schedule for periodic content releases - for hardcore AND casual players. Hell, after the GoD debacle - players even threatened a boycott of the next expansion OoW in view of the bugs and broken stuff still unfixed in GoD. OoW was released 9 months later rather than the planned 6 months. EQ1's expansion release rate has been a big point of contention among the players. It does the game no good for expansions to be released at an arbitrary 6 months rate bugged, unfinished and inadequately tested. EQ1 expansions come at a yearly rate now - to the relief of the players.

So no, if you're looking bad in fondness at GoD, you came way (waaaaaay) later when they finally tuned the place (after OoW went live BTW). You do NOT WANT shitty half baked unfinished content released to the live server  just to keep a few hardcore idiots happy doing free QA testing for the devs.

[El Gallo]

GoD was a clusterfuck of epic proportions when released. The timing could not have been worse for EQ either, considering how close it was to WoW's release. You do not pound your hardcore raiders, your family guild raiders, your hardcore groupers, and your casuals up the ass as hard as possible on the eve of your competition's big release. Unless you are Smedley, of course.

That still doesn't change the fact that EQ put out expansions, even decent ones, much faster than WoW despite having oodles less money. 

As for Koyasha's point, I think a lot of the reason so many guilds in EQ are several expansions behind is because of the low population in the game now.  Bleeding edge guilds are more eager than ever to poach better mid-tier raiders, mid-tier raid guilds are more eager than ever to raid each other for members.  Mid-tier guilds keep re-flagging and re-gearing new members for shit as old as Anguish, making the longer-term members quit or move to the one bleeding edge guild still on the server.

[Valmorian]

I like challenging 5-man content. Me and my guildmates play a lot and are really good at 5-manning dungeons. We used to have a lot of fun playing WoW. But Blizzard is just not putting out nearly enough new 5-man content to keep us interested (or any other content, for that matter). Moreover, what 5-man content they are putting out is just not hard enough to challenge us. Therefore, we are not going to focus our play on WoW anymore. I am posting this on my website that lots of people (for whatever reason) visit for updates on 5-mans we've finished, strategies we've tried and loot we've gotten so those readers know not to expect to see any of that stuff anymore.

Seems sensible enough to me.  On f13, that post would get something between "meh" and a furious circle-jerk about how much Blizzard sucks. But drop in the word "raid" and the place immediately turns into the Vault.

Show me on the doll where Furor touched you.

Nope, that'd make me laugh too, actually. 

[Dren]

Whenever you guys start talking about EQ1 expansions and glory days, my eyes glaze over.  That game, from the beginning, felt hardcore in no way any other game has for me.  I'm even adding FFXI in that (I had to quit it too, but not as quickly as EQ.)  I just couldn't log into EQ1 and play.  I had to set aside at least 1.5 hours to feel like I got any play time in.  

It really comes down to the "casuals" not really being casuals.  They are probably like me.  A casual player with tendencies to want to be hardcore, but just realistically can't.  I'm not saying I want to poop in a sock.  I'm saying I thrive on the feeling of accomplishment and exploration and it drives me to want to play more.  However, that drive is not strong enough to make me forget about my family, friends, job, etc.

I actually didn't mind EQ and coming from UO it was a nice graphics upgrade.  It reminded me of what I'd always wanted, a graphical way to dungeon crawl with my friends.  It failed in many many other ways, but it was fine.  It was, however, the first game that made me stop playing because I was spending way too much time online.  Not in total, but in too large of increments.

I only mention all of this because I had to quit at like level 24.  So yeah, talking about anything past that just speaks to things I cannot even start to imagine.  It doesn't matter if they came out with content faster than Blizzard.  That's not even an argument that registers in my mind, because all I can think is that there was no way for me to play that game anyway.  Why would I care?  There are 9.5 million other people that are probably thinking the same thing.  EQ's expansion schedule doesn't matter.

The release rate of content from Blizzard is just fine for me.  I have absolutely no issues with it.  I may have Hardcore tendencies, but I am missing one big part of their personality.  I couldn't care less about what other people do or accomplish in the game.  I do not measure myself based off of the failures or success of others.  So, I have no timeline I have to keep.  A good example of this is this latest patch.

I was like others and curious about the new area.  So, I jumped on a bird and flew out there.  I even took some of the quests to check it out.  After about 20 minutes of going through lag hell and fighting over MOB kills, I left to do other things.  I really have no interest in rushing through that content.  I will get around to it later at my own pace.  I really don't care if others get new items first or down new bosses first.  I'll be chewing on this latest content well past the launch of the next expansion.

I do have to say I'm loving the PvP changes for BG's and Arenas.  It is much easier to log in and spend small chunks of time and accomplish quite a bit.

[slog]

this is like comparing a Horse drawn carriage to a Ferrari.

[Mrbloodworth]

They do have a point. If you play this game competitively, you run out content way too fast. Seriously, it's been 10 months since Black Temple hit and the new raid is up today. It'll be finished within 2 weeks and be old within 2 months. They really should put out more content, because otherwise people just bored as fuck.

I disagree.  Designing games for the hardcore is poor resource management.  Churning out content that only a small portion of the playerbase will see isn't a sound economic decision.  I hope that more game companies will adopt this strategy and develop their games with the casual player in mind.  I'm quite happy to see the hardcore players get bored and leave.  It means less e-peen waving and board trolling for the 95% of us that play the game for fun.   

*claps*

Raiders have never been the target audience, not since MMOs became mainstream.

Also, LOTRO is adding 3 man instances. Someone knows what they are doing.

[Rasix]

Also, LOTRO is adding 3 man instances. Someone knows what they are doing.

That is very cool and something I'd love to have in WoW.  Unfortunately LOTRO didn't really click with me beyond the first couple weeks playing it.

[Dren]

Also, LOTRO is adding 3 man instances. Someone knows what they are doing.

That is very cool and something I'd love to have in WoW.  Unfortunately LOTRO didn't really click with me beyond the first couple weeks playing it.

Same for me.  I really wanted an alternative to WoW, but it just didn't have it for me.  I blame it mostly on the polish.

I would love to see them continue to push the envelope with things like 3-man instances though.  That will have to be their niche to continue to come up with and publish new ideas that most people have been asking for anyway.  It will keep them viable and you'll, more than likely, start seeing the more popular ideas bleed over to WoW.

[Koyasha]

I never said Gates of Discord was a good expansion.  I hated it too.  It was a lot better coming back once Omens of War had been released and we were at the level it had originally been designed for.  Even then it was a pain in the ass of an expansion that I and everyone I knew avoided as much as we could.  I mentioned it because it was the first EQ expansion with lots of instanced raid content (that was actually progression above Time level, unlike the LDoN raids that most guilds ignored due to shitty loot and other issues).

Low population is probably part of the reason why so many guilds are behind, but I suspect that even if EQ had WoW's population, its raiding guilds would still be spread out over three or so expansions rather than all in the most recent stuff.  The last time I played EQ was late '07, but I'm pretty sure that of the raiding population, even if it were considerably increased in total, a good percentage of it still wouldn't have defeated Mayong Mistmoore in the Demiplane of Blood by the time the Buried Sea was launched.

Sometimes EQ's expansions were shitty.  Sometimes they were good.  But in the last nine years, not a year has gone by that hasn't seen the release of an EQ expansion (or two), and that's with vastly less resources than WoW.  And it's not just that, but EQ adds content, WoW replaces content.

[Mrbloodworth]

Also, LOTRO is adding 3 man instances. Someone knows what they are doing.

That is very cool and something I'd love to have in WoW.  Unfortunately LOTRO didn't really click with me beyond the first couple weeks playing it.

I really think you should give it another go.