Patch 3.0.2 tomorrow

[Merusk]

Were you mass pulling?  We started off only doing traditional 1-2 mob pulls, but as we got towards Sulf/ Golemagg and began to gel as a group I just begain picking up 2-3 packs as did the druid.  That was entertaining, as I recall vividly how bad it used to suck.

It still stucks getting tossed up onto one of those walls in Rags room and dying, though.  Whoops, no LOS to rezz!

[Phred]

Wasn't it always like that? I could swear a few folks in my guild are already set up like that.

Ya it's always been 10.

[Sjofn]

It's always been ten and I swear to fucking God if they don't up the limit next time they add a class I'm going to knife someone.

[Calantus]

10 character slots has been since pre-TBC for sure. Don't know if it was in at start but know it's been around for the 2 years I've been on and off playing.

I'm 100% sure it was not in at least until some time after the WotLK announcement. I know this because there was a heated argument about there not being enough slots for people to have every class and Blizzard said they were not expanding it.

[Ingmar]

10 character slots has been since pre-TBC for sure. Don't know if it was in at start but know it's been around for the 2 years I've been on and off playing.

I'm 100% sure it was not in at least until some time after the WotLK announcement. I know this because there was a heated argument about there not being enough slots for people to have every class and Blizzard said they were not expanding it.

The heated argument you're talking about I think was "what if they add ANOTHER class". I've had 10 names reserved on my server since release day.

[DraconianOne]

I'm 100% sure it was not in at least until some time after the WotLK announcement. I know this because there was a heated argument about there not being enough slots for people to have every class and Blizzard said they were not expanding it.

I had 10 characters - 1 of each class and a bank alt - on my last server.  I haven't been on there since shortly after TBC came out and well before the WotLK announcement.

Also, a change like this can be easily googled if it ever happened recently. This gamespot news article about realm transfers from 2006 explicitly mentions the 10 slot availability.

[Calantus]

Weird. I would have bet good money on being right on this one. /shrug

[Fordel]

Zombie got your brain maybe 

[Sjofn]

In case you were wondering, you also have a cap of 50 characters for your entire account. And back at release, it wouldn't properly reset if you deleted a character, so you could hit the cap without actually HAVING 50 characters. I spent a lot of time chatting with friendly GMs about that one. 

[Lantyssa]

And I thought I liked making a lot of alts...  Of course that might be tempered by wanting to keep all my alts on the same server.

[Righ]

In case you were wondering, you also have a cap of 50 characters for your entire account. And back at release, it wouldn't properly reset if you deleted a character, so you could hit the cap without actually HAVING 50 characters. I spent a lot of time chatting with friendly GMs about that one. 

It also wouldn't properly register you as having a character if the server wasn't in the selection screen for some reason. So you could have more than 50. I had substantially more than 50 for a while. I had to delete over a dozen of them when I wanted to make a new character once.

[Chimpy]

So did the 30% nerf hit old world raid bosses too? 

No.

But the scaling from 60-70, especially with the power of new itemization and the new talents like LOLRET make early raid stuff seem so much easier than before. MC was tuned to be doable with a 40 person raid rocking the poorly itemized blues from Stratholme/Scholomance/and Blackrock Spire (and later Dire Maul). As itemization got better, the power curve went up a lot. Personal DPS of 300-400 was rockin the top of the charts in the MC days, by Naxx it was 2 and 3 times that. Golemagg still has 800k Health, but when you are running a 10 man group that puts out 3x the DPS that a 40 man level 60 group would have, and you have tanks with up to 3x the health and 3x the armor they would have had at 60, the balance shifts a lot.

[Nebu]

That sounds identical to what happened when Kunark and Velious expansions hit EQ.  Funny how things change yet stay a bit the same.  I guess it's just the diku mechanic: make a boss hard by increasing his dps and maxxing his hps.  Sooner or later the power curve catches up as expansions release.

It would be refreshing to see an MMO expansion come out that didn't immediately render all old content useless.  Yes, I know it's been done... it would still be nice to have it be an extension of the existing game rather than a new game built on top of the old game.  Marketing, moneyhats, and all that kind of make it impossible, I guess.

[Lantyssa]

You already said it.  DIKU makes it impossible.  It is very difficulty for any level-based game to prevent mud-flation.

We spent a month cleaning out the DB to re-itemize our MUD, and it would be miniscule in comparison to current games.  The downgrade was also not as extreme as what would happen in something like WoW.

[Sjofn]

And I thought I liked making a lot of alts...  Of course that might be tempered by wanting to keep all my alts on the same server.

I wanted Horde and Alliance characters, but not on the same server (a leftover habit from DAoC, I suppose) and I was reeeeeally indecisive about race/class combinations in the beginning when I was making my Horde people. But I do make a lot of alts anyway. And I level those bitches, which is why I will seriously storm Blizzard's gates if they don't expand how many characters you can have per server if they add more classes. I have a grand total of one character left that is under level 40 (a level 12 mage ... I suck at leveling mages) on my Alliance server. I can't delete one after I get a Deathknight. I can't.

<sob>

[ClydeJr]

Were you mass pulling?  We started off only doing traditional 1-2 mob pulls, but as we got towards Sulf/ Golemagg and began to gel as a group I just begain picking up 2-3 packs as did the druid.  That was entertaining, as I recall vividly how bad it used to suck.

I imagine we were but I didn't get summoned in until right before the Majordomo fight. A lot of the guild (including me) have never seen these fights but we just treated them like a straight up tank-n-spank.

[Koyasha]

That sounds identical to what happened when Kunark and Velious expansions hit EQ.  Funny how things change yet stay a bit the same.  I guess it's just the diku mechanic: make a boss hard by increasing his dps and maxxing his hps.  Sooner or later the power curve catches up as expansions release.

It would be refreshing to see an MMO expansion come out that didn't immediately render all old content useless.  Yes, I know it's been done... it would still be nice to have it be an extension of the existing game rather than a new game built on top of the old game.  Marketing, moneyhats, and all that kind of make it impossible, I guess.

EQ expansions didn't really render old content useless.  Plane of Sky was tough in the Velious Age, and still had worthwhile drops, even though it was introduced pre-Kunark.  All the way until Serpent's Spine, which was the last I played EQ in, your non-cutting edge players were doing content 1-3 expansions old to gear up for the next expansion.  My guild was raiding the Demiplane of Blood and was just working on defeating Lord Mayong Mistmoore when Serpent's Spine came out, which was two expansions beyond Darkhollow.  We raided new bosses too, but the new bosses were basically the low-end of the next expansion content.

WoW instantly obsoletes old content because the quest drops and mob drops in the expansion are better than raid gear from the previous era, meaning that only the highest-end of the high end raiders have raid gear that lasts them all the way to the new max level.  Tier 1/2 gear was getting replaced before 70 when BC came out, some of it replaced as early as 62 or so - some of the Naxx gear was still useful at 70, especially sets, but only the top end raiders ever touched Naxx before BC.

There's upsides and downsides to both ways of doing things.  Lich King looks like it's going to strike a little more of a balance than BC did (the massive itemization revamp with BC was a lot of the reason for the instant obsoletion) but it's still going to make everything before it completely obsolete by the time you're 80. 

The thing I like about EQ's method of doing things however, is that it means that, unless you are cutting-edge, there is always a LOT of content for you to be doing.  Dungeons and raids from 2-3 expansions were all relevant.  In WoW, the amount of relevant dungeons, raids, and quests seems very very small in comparison, because only the latest stuff is useful.  That, combined with Blizzard's rather slow pace of content creation is one of the primary reasons I get tired of WoW often and wander off to play something else.

[Fordel]

The thing I like about EQ's method of doing things however, is that it means that, unless you are cutting-edge, there is always a LOT of content for you to be doing.  Dungeons and raids from 2-3 expansions were all relevant.  In WoW, the amount of relevant dungeons, raids, and quests seems very very small in comparison, because only the latest stuff is useful.  That, combined with Blizzard's rather slow pace of content creation is one of the primary reasons I get tired of WoW often and wander off to play something else.

This I honestly do not understand. You get tired of new content, but having buckets of old content you've already done adds longevity? 

[Nebu]

This I honestly do not understand. You get tired of new content, but having buckets of old content you've already done adds longevity? 

Old content to you may be new content to someone else.  Having old content remain relevent means that newer players have more choices.  In WoW, new content seems to render old content useless after a certain point. 

[Koyasha]

Yeah, there's enough total content that I didn't do all of it very often.  I may have done it a few times, but it's not like doing heroic Mechanar for the 3rd time this week.  There was enough to give me a ton of variety and so if I didn't want to, I didn't have to go to the same places more than once every couple weeks, and still have something to do every day.

[Fordel]

This I honestly do not understand. You get tired of new content, but having buckets of old content you've already done adds longevity? 

Old content to you may be new content to someone else.  Having old content remain relevent means that newer players have more choices.  In WoW, new content seems to render old content useless after a certain point. 

Everything is new to a new player though. I don't see many people going "oh woe is me, I only have 16 possible TBC dungeons to run" when they first start these days.

[Nebu]

Everything is new to a new player though. I don't see many people going "oh woe is me, I only have 16 possible TBC dungeons to run" when they first start these days.

While everything is new to the new player, not all content is worthwhile for advancement.  With the spread of fan and cheat sites, old content gets filtered by even new players if the old content doesn't aid in their advancement.  MMO's attract achievers generally. 

[Azazel]

There's also pain in the ass content. Maraudon and Uldaman are dungeons that apply here.

Sunken Temple is the kind of place you want to do one runthrough of, mostly because of all the quests, but also because it's a fun run (once) and you get to kill dragons. Too long, however. ZF (or Z-whatever) in Tanaris is much the same, mostly because of the carrot and many quests.

Dire Maul is too far away from anything, and despite the wing design, is too confusing. Seperate names and a bit more differentiation a la the TBC dungeons would have been good, but that's a lesson learned. The level it's aimed at (low 50's) is also a poor choice. BRD has a similar issue with levels, but most people used to run at least part of it, though that may have been because of the Ony chain.

Most of the TBC dungeons on the other hand, are at least passably differentiated, and the addition of the heroic mode adds longevity to all of them. Having travel distances to all of them be short or trivial also helps a lot. (Strat/Scholo were successful despite the long flights up because they were the only games in town at the time aside from UBRS/LBRS, also Strat was and still is a damn fun, well-designed instance).

[Chimpy]

The inherent problem with dungeons and raids in TBC was that everything was front-loaded difficulty wise. The only thing that kept the number of Hyjal and BT clears down was the keying requiring you to clear both TK and SSC where even the earlier bosses were more complex fights than late BT and Hyjal fights. From what I hear, they are actually tuning WOTLK raids to be more progressive with Naxx 2.0 being on par with the pre-3.0 Karazhan and scaling up in difficulty from there. The addition of the Undying etc. achievements will make less tightly tuned instances more repeatable for the bleeding edge, while still accessible to the less so as going through an entire 10 man with no deaths in your entire raid is something that not everyone will be able to do.

I can only assume that the "hard wing" of each instance on Heroic is still going to be retardedly difficult without specific classes/overgearing at the beginning of the new expansion simply because Blizzard has a hell of a time tuning 5 man content all the way back to the beginning when Scholomance was 4 hours of pain and suffering.

[Ingmar]

There's also pain in the ass content. Maraudon and Uldaman are dungeons that apply here.

Sunken Temple is the kind of place you want to do one runthrough of, mostly because of all the quests, but also because it's a fun run (once) and you get to kill dragons. Too long, however. ZF (or Z-whatever) in Tanaris is much the same, mostly because of the carrot and many quests.

Dire Maul is too far away from anything, and despite the wing design, is too confusing. Seperate names and a bit more differentiation a la the TBC dungeons would have been good, but that's a lesson learned. The level it's aimed at (low 50's) is also a poor choice. BRD has a similar issue with levels, but most people used to run at least part of it, though that may have been because of the Ony chain.

Most of the TBC dungeons on the other hand, are at least passably differentiated, and the addition of the heroic mode adds longevity to all of them. Having travel distances to all of them be short or trivial also helps a lot. (Strat/Scholo were successful despite the long flights up because they were the only games in town at the time aside from UBRS/LBRS, also Strat was and still is a damn fun, well-designed instance).

Only the east wing was doable at sub-60 in Dire Maul - the west (at least Immolthar/Prince) and north wings were probably the hardest level 60 5 man dungeons available.

It is kind of interesting that the 2 dungeons you mention as being good ones (Sunken Temple, Zul Farrak) are two of my least favorite in the game, and the one you mention as confusing etc (Dire Maul) is one of my favorites - probably only dead side Strat was better originally from my perspective. Sunken Temple for me practically defines confusing in terms of dungeon layout, or would if BRD wasn't also hanging around.

[ajax34i]

Unrelated question (sorry for derail): 

Does anyone know if they've announced what kind of boxes they're releasing for WotLK?  Will there be a "full WoW build with all expansions included" or just the expansion itself?

My current predicament is that I don't have WoW installed on my current PC.  Got the 6 CD's for the original game, plus the couple CD's for Burning Crusade, and I figure that it will be sufficient if I install them in order (with no patching) and then install WotLK.  However, I will probably still have to download a huge patch for the Sunwell stuff, which I'd rather not have to go through.

So, have they said anything about a full build?

[Azazel]

The thing I like about EQ's method of doing things however, is that it means that, unless you are cutting-edge, there is always a LOT of content for you to be doing.  Dungeons and raids from 2-3 expansions were all relevant.  In WoW, the amount of relevant dungeons, raids, and quests seems very very small in comparison, because only the latest stuff is useful.  That, combined with Blizzard's rather slow pace of content creation is one of the primary reasons I get tired of WoW often and wander off to play something else.

See, the problem with that line of thought, is that if you're not cutting or bleeding-edge, there's the issue of "wait.. so why am I buying this expansion again? Oh, for the level/bank slot increase and the one token introductory zone. Great."

With WoW on the other hand, there's content that everyone can immediately access. And it seems they're taking this philosophy further with wotlk with the scaling instances. If you're not already decked out in Purples, you'll be able to use the dungeon drops, if you are, you'll replace them all a few levels in (75-77ish). Nothing wrong with that. You want to be wearing your level 60 armour forever and going through the instances forever saying "hmm.. pass" or "hmm.. sidegrade"?

The intensity of EQ1's mentaility "You must be this tall to enter! Go back and farm those old dungeons before you can do these shiny new ones." Is not something I miss.

I understand WAR has just introduced such a mechanism though. 

[Merusk]

Unrelated question (sorry for derail): 

Does anyone know if they've announced what kind of boxes they're releasing for WotLK?  Will there be a "full WoW build with all expansions included" or just the expansion itself?

My current predicament is that I don't have WoW installed on my current PC.  Got the 6 CD's for the original game, plus the couple CD's for Burning Crusade, and I figure that it will be sufficient if I install them in order (with no patching) and then install WotLK.  However, I will probably still have to download a huge patch for the Sunwell stuff, which I'd rather not have to go through.

So, have they said anything about a full build?

Don't bother with your old CDs and all that swapping, go to account management and there is a link to download the latest full client. At the worst it's 1-2 patches behind.

[Azazel]

Only the east wing was doable at sub-60 in Dire Maul - the west (at least Immolthar/Prince) and north wings were probably the hardest level 60 5 man dungeons available.

It is kind of interesting that the 2 dungeons you mention as being good ones (Sunken Temple, Zul Farrak) are two of my least favorite in the game, and the one you mention as confusing etc (Dire Maul) is one of my favorites - probably only dead side Strat was better originally from my perspective. Sunken Temple for me practically defines confusing in terms of dungeon layout, or would if BRD wasn't also hanging around.

You misunderstand a little. I think Sunken Temple is a good dungeon to do once. This is because of all the quests in there, and also it's the first time you really get to kill dragons. Not something that's fun in terms of doing more than once though. Same deal with ZF, only less cool and fun (the pyramid event is cool though) and because you want ot get your carrot on a stick. Again, not somewhere to voluntarily return to.

What you say about DM illustrated my point perfectly. I didn't know all that, because noone was ever interested in travelling all the way out there to do the place. BRD is also confusing, but it's convenient to get to. (for Alliance at least). BC+ seem to be avoiding making the instances a pain in the butt to get to, and as a result everyone does them all.

[ajax34i]

Don't bother with your old CDs and all that swapping, go to account management and there is a link to download the latest full client. At the worst it's 1-2 patches behind.

The text on that page seems to indicate that after downloading the "Full WoW client" I will still have to apply the Burning Crusade CD to it.  But, anyway, I am trying to avoid downloading, if possible.  That's why I posted the questions.

[Fabricated]

Only the east wing was doable at sub-60 in Dire Maul - the west (at least Immolthar/Prince) and north wings were probably the hardest level 60 5 man dungeons available.

It is kind of interesting that the 2 dungeons you mention as being good ones (Sunken Temple, Zul Farrak) are two of my least favorite in the game, and the one you mention as confusing etc (Dire Maul) is one of my favorites - probably only dead side Strat was better originally from my perspective. Sunken Temple for me practically defines confusing in terms of dungeon layout, or would if BRD wasn't also hanging around.

You misunderstand a little. I think Sunken Temple is a good dungeon to do once. This is because of all the quests in there, and also it's the first time you really get to kill dragons. Not something that's fun in terms of doing more than once though. Same deal with ZF, only less cool and fun (the pyramid event is cool though) and because you want ot get your carrot on a stick. Again, not somewhere to voluntarily return to.

What you say about DM illustrated my point perfectly. I didn't know all that, because noone was ever interested in travelling all the way out there to do the place. BRD is also confusing, but it's convenient to get to. (for Alliance at least). BC+ seem to be avoiding making the instances a pain in the butt to get to, and as a result everyone does them all.

Except for Crypts.

[Selby]

The text on that page seems to indicate that after downloading the "Full WoW client" I will still have to apply the Burning Crusade CD to it.  But, anyway, I am trying to avoid downloading, if possible.

There is a full BC client as well, and yes, you will have to download.  Beyond that, I don't know.

[Gobbeldygook]

Except for Crypts.

Spoken like an ally.  Crypts is very popular for one run through for Horde because there's a long and interesting quest chain in Nagrand that cuts through Crypts.

I enjoy taking guildies through it.  It means the dicks will never try to get me to run it again just because "It's the daily!"

[Chimpy]

Crypts has two levels of retardation that make it annoying:

1) Only 2 bosses, one of which has a retarded -haste mechanic that makes healers want to stick icepicks up their urethras.

2) The stupid fucking bridge.

It is an easy zone, but even post 3.0, it takes us 2x as long to do crypts as we used to do Mechanar before the patch.

[Paelos]

The bridge is horrible. It's on par with the Tor Anroc map of WAR in terms of stupid knockback mechanics that can one shot you.