Cataclysm

[Rokal]

The last microtransaction item they introduced (companion pet version of the lion mount) was BoE and only unlocked the pet for the character that used it. It was a gold-selling experiment by Blizzard. Given that I never see these lions in the AH anymore, I'm guessing it wasn't a very successful one.

[Selby]

For some reason I thought the sparkle pony was single character.  I didn't buy one but only ever saw mains on them, never alts.

Nope!  All my alts love theirs ;-)

[Sjofn]

My alts all use their sparkleponies too, unless I get a mount that I like for them better.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I got a sparkle pony thinking that on my undead shadowpriest that shadowform would transform it into an ethereal harbinger of doom.....alas, I still sparkled.

[Azazel]

They had datamined that model some time ago but no one knew how it would be obtained, some were thinking heroic dragon soul achievement.  I'm glad I can just buy it instead, that's amazing, might be too big for my liking though so I'll have to see them in game.

If I were to put on a tinfoil hat I would have to note it is asian looking, was probably meant for MoP and was pushed ahead to make some cash now though.

It's the Year of the Dragon - as of only a few weeks ago. I'm sure that had something to do with it. Note they released it right after all the other bullshit died down as they had 3 events running at once (Lunar Fest/Valentines/Darkmoon) - but just as the final one of those events started to wind down, but with players still heavily concentrated in the capitals for the dailies - this made the new mount introduction the centre of attention.

edit - all of the ingame crap in their store is BOA - and you get one for each character on the account. Make a new Goblin (or Panda) and bang - in the letterbox you'll instantly have a Sparkle Pony, a Lava Lion, a baby Griffin hatchling, a moonkin, etc etc..

The only exception to date is the 1-per BOE shitty baby Lava Lion pet - which just guarantees I won't buy it, and I'm not averse to buying pointless digital goods at all... So far my wife and I both have sparkle ponies, lava lions, baby griffs and windriders - We've also bought a friend the lava lion mount and boomkin pet - this year I'll probably get him the sparkle pony for his birthday. 

[Merusk]

Just as a FYI: If you get a survey in your email asking you to answer some questions it seems legit.   I ran it here at work just in case, though. 

They're really aching for some feedback on why their numbers have plummeted.  Lots and lots of pages of "What's your Most & Least Important feature from this list." questions.

Then a, "Have you heard of MoP," section.  Highlighted questions: How does your anticipation rate vs. previous expansions?  How highly are you anticipating <X> feature.  (Pandarans, Monks, New Zones, New Dungeons, Pet Battles, Scenarios, Challenges)

Then a, "Have you heard of <this game>," section.   Followed by a "will you buy <this game>" section and then a, "Will playing <this game> reduce/ increase/ replace Warcraft" section for thsoe games you said you were going to buy.   Games included; Diablo III, Torchlight 2, ToR, ME3 and 3-4 others that aren't on my radar so I don't remember them.

Asks a few questions about account security (Have you been compromised, how do you feel about AS).

[Wolf]

I wish they'd do that with active subscribers also, but I doubt they will.

[Merusk]

Active subscribers:

1) Are showing they support direction or are generally satisfied by continuing to subscribe.

2) Have the /feedback or forums options to air their dissatisfaction.

They do surveys of active subs from time to time - I'd gotten one years ago, too - but if you've lost really long-term subscribers they're the ones you ask questions of.  I'd had a WoW sub since release day that only lapsed twice and never for more than 2 months prior to Cata's release.  Since then I've let it lapse a total of 7 months. That's unusual.

I'm probably also marked as some sort of Blizzard core customer, having just about every Blizz game on my account.

[Soulflame]

The survey doesn't list GW2?  That's about the only MMO-like game on the horizon that piques my interest at this point.

[Wolf]

I have things to say about the game and I'm not going to the forums to fight the kids. If they ditch the stacking buff again or undertune heroic content so more people can do it faster I'm going to rage :)

[Merusk]

The survey doesn't list GW2?  That's about the only MMO-like game on the horizon that piques my interest at this point.

Know what, now that you mention it; it did.  I'm also totally disinterested in GW2 because GW1 put me to sleep with my apathy for it.  Still haven't taken a character past level 10.

I have things to say about the game and I'm not going to the forums to fight the kids. If they ditch the stacking buff again or undertune heroic content so more people can do it faster I'm going to rage :)

Start raging now then. Difficult heroics are what Challenge modes are for.

[Wolf]

I'm talking about raids, I don't care about dungeons, in fact I prefer them easy. I've said as much before.

[Sjofn]

They're probably going to go with "easier is more gooder" this time around for raids. The people shrieking for harder raids just aren't that many people compared to "I want to do these things with my 9 derp friends."

[Paelos]

They're probably going to go with "easier is more gooder" this time around for raids. The people shrieking for harder raids just aren't that many people compared to "I want to do these things with my 9 derp friends."

They just need to understand that it's the recipe for success. They tried the hardcore stuff. It didn't work. Time to go back to what amuses the masses.

[Wolf]

the current model allows for both. The 9 derp friends will work great in the current normals. They can probably even try and do a couple of the easier heroics with normal gear and 10-15% of the buff. We're considering doing 1 fight on heroic on our casual run this reset, and that has at least 3 hardcore casuals on it.

[Lantyssa]

The 9 derp friends don't want to be stuck in normals.

[Paelos]

the current model allows for both. The 9 derp friends will work great in the current normals. They can probably even try and do a couple of the easier heroics with normal gear and 10-15% of the buff. We're considering doing 1 fight on heroic on our casual run this reset, and that has at least 3 hardcore casuals on it.

No offense, Wolf, because I know you play the game at a high level. You don't get it. Making the game less accessible will not work anymore.

I mean I just gave up on SWTOR. I'm literally RIPE for the picking by WoW if they don't fuck up in the next 6 months on their way to expansion.

[Wolf]

well I'm sorry but can there be a little game for me too? Or should we just bounce around the extremes every expansion?

Guys, you really misunderstand how the game and the difficulty levels work at the high end of the raiding spectrum. Lich king, the expansion you're looking to, had some of the most brutal bosses blizzard have ever made. And they were still playing around with the heroic raids concept. They got it right with the stacking buff in ICC, but for whatever reason they dropped it for the entirety of Cata, with the exception of Dragon Soul. This is the right model, and this one has stuff for everyone.

[Miasma]

well I'm sorry but can there be a little game for me too? Or should we just bounce around the extremes every expansion?

Guys, you really misunderstand how the game and the difficulty levels work at the high end of the raiding spectrum. Lich king, the expansion you're looking to, had some of the most brutal bosses blizzard have ever made. And they were still playing around with the heroic raids concept. They got it right with the stacking buff in ICC, but for whatever reason they dropped it for the entirety of Cata, with the exception of Dragon Soul. This is the right model, and this one has stuff for everyone.

They dropped it for t11 because they were still in their "ra ra let's make things hard" phase.  IIRC t11 heroics weren't nerfed at all when t12 came out, only normals.  They were clinging to "moar difficult!" when firelands was designed and launched but by the end realized they had made a huge mistake and made a knee jerk reaction to hit t12 with a massive nerf before t13 came out.

The stacking debuffs might only work for the last tier of an expansion, since it has so much time to be dripped out.

Edit: As a sucky normal mode raider I don't know if I like the stacking debuff since it only applies to bosses.  It's not going to help where we're stuck, on Blackhorn phase one adds.

[Ingmar]

The 9 derp friends don't want to be stuck in normals.

Actually I was perfectly fine with never seeing a hard mode raid, I don't mind that being there for the hardcore people at all.

[Wolf]

well I'm sorry but can there be a little game for me too? Or should we just bounce around the extremes every expansion?

Guys, you really misunderstand how the game and the difficulty levels work at the high end of the raiding spectrum. Lich king, the expansion you're looking to, had some of the most brutal bosses blizzard have ever made. And they were still playing around with the heroic raids concept. They got it right with the stacking buff in ICC, but for whatever reason they dropped it for the entirety of Cata, with the exception of Dragon Soul. This is the right model, and this one has stuff for everyone.

They dropped it for t11 because they were still in their "ra ra let's make things hard" phase.  IIRC t11 heroics weren't nerfed at all when t12 came out, only normals.  They were clinging to "moar difficult!" when firelands was designed and launched but by the end realized they had made a huge mistake and made a knee jerk reaction to hit t12 with a massive nerf before t13 came out.

The stacking debuffs might only work for the last tier of an expansion, since it has so much time to be dripped out.

Edit: As a sucky normal mode raider I don't know if I like the stacking debuff since it only applies to bosses.  It's not going to help where we're stuck, on Blackhorn phase one adds.

It's all mobs, trash included. You can see it it's called power of the aspects or whatever.

[Miasma]

Oh good.

[Xanthippe]

well I'm sorry but can there be a little game for me too? Or should we just bounce around the extremes every expansion?

Guys, you really misunderstand how the game and the difficulty levels work at the high end of the raiding spectrum. Lich king, the expansion you're looking to, had some of the most brutal bosses blizzard have ever made. And they were still playing around with the heroic raids concept. They got it right with the stacking buff in ICC, but for whatever reason they dropped it for the entirety of Cata, with the exception of Dragon Soul. This is the right model, and this one has stuff for everyone.

I think if that was really true, then more people would be playing.

[Rokal]

Still holding out hope that, once they have released an expansion with more to do at end-game for non-raiders (MoP), LFR will be the new 'easy mode' and normal/hard modes will remain unchanged for longer.

It feels like unless you're in a guild that's playing for more than 12 hours a week (more realistically 20 when content is new), you don't get enough time to work on fights before the nerf bat comes. Our guild that raids 7 hours a week barely had enough time to kill Rag/Deathwing normal before nerfs came. After killing H-Morchok, we've only managed to put a very small amount of time into Ultrax/Yorsahj Heroic, and now another nerf has hit before we got the chance to make serious progress.

That said, I can't say people are especially eager to progress in Dragon Soul. It's the last raid of the expansion, people have already burned themselves out on running it thanks to LFR+guild runs, and it's just kind of a shitty uninspired raid zone.

I do like that they let you turn the buff off, and I hope they keep this for MoP raids. I'd also like to see a Feat of Strength or something for beating the bosses without the buff, to give guilds some incentive to try it that way. Our guild isn't turning off the buff (I seriously doubt any guilds are, given the internal drama it would create), but it would be nice to have some reason to go back and do the 'un-nerfed' version of the fight, even if we cut our teeth on the nerfed version.

[Paelos]

well I'm sorry but can there be a little game for me too? Or should we just bounce around the extremes every expansion?

No, we shouldn't. Honestly, it's been a problem with WoW since TBC. You really, really have to beat the developers over the head to get them to ease up on the players, because they are by nature hardcore raiding fiends. They don't get why people wouldn't want a challenge. They don't get why harder modes would isolate a playerbase. They interact with the top tier to tune things, and then adjust down from there.

The problem is that they design a game for themselves unless the directors step in and say, "Hey dipshits, people are leaving because they hate this!" The reason you get the bouncing isn't because the developers want it that way. They are being forced to ease up by the powers that be, and the moment they hear some backlash, or get some sliver of hope that there are internal grumblings about EZ MODE, they take that to their bosses and ask if they can take the handcuffs off. That's how we got Cataclysm.

At this point, the highest ups need to ride these guys and never let up if they want balance. You have to beat them into submission or they will give into their darkest urges, create ballbuster content, and sit around jerking off while Rome burns.

[Wolf]

I'm happy with the speed the debuff is applying and we also raid a 7hr week, but that just goes to show how much depth there is within the people that raid. My whole point is that the people in this thread that are complaining against my comment over heroic raids are the same people that wouldn't touch a heroic raid with a ten foot pole. I honestly don't care what happens to the rest of the game, I'd just like to have a game to play too. Which is why I said I'd like to fill out a survey too. There is a game that has casual enough dungeons, that lead into LFR, that lead into normal raids, that still has sufficiently hard heroics.

edit: look Paelos, I'm not a hardcore raiding fiend. I'm happy beating the content Paragon managed in last tier's gear and perfect comp, two months later and with 5-10% nerf. I won't stay subbed for totc though.

[Ingmar]

I think it is possible that a few people saw you say "heroics" and thought you meant heroic dungeons? Otherwise I really don't get why anyone gives a shit if heroic raids are ballbusters.

[Rokal]

I'm happy with the speed the debuff is applying and we also raid a 7hr week, but that just goes to show how much depth there is within the people that raid.

You raid 7 hours a week now. Did you raid that little when 4.3 launched?

[Wolf]

We raid a 7hr week since december 2010. We've had a total of maybe 20 hours of raid extensions and additions since then. This is our best tier yet, and we're sitting at 7/8 since Thursday. I am the 1%

[Paelos]

I think it is possible that a few people saw you say "heroics" and thought you meant heroic dungeons? Otherwise I really don't get why anyone gives a shit if heroic raids are ballbusters.

As long as the spillover doesn't go into normal raids, I don't care. The fact is that in the past, it has. I agree that heroics SHOULD be harder and not available to the regular noobs, but there is usually a trickle down effect when the gear separation between the two isn't that deep.

[Fordel]

The thing with Blizzard and raid difficulty...


Blizzard, despite appearances to the contrary, never made a casual friendly game. They were trying to make a game that would "teach" casuals to be hardcore. That's why we get these cycles.

"Easy, Easy, Easy... OKAY, surely they've learned enough and we can start cranking the game up!" Working under the assumption that people/guilds/skills carry over through each expansion, or even content patch.


Which we all know, doesn't fucking happen for 90% of the player base.

[Rokal]

It wasn't even that the population didn't carry over between expansions, which is true. The model may have worked if there had been more then 3 normal mode dungeons at 85. As it was, you had a couple easier leveling dungeons, and then you dumped people into hard heroics. There wasn't a sufficient difficulty ramp up in the 5-man or the raid content when Cata launched. The normal mode dungeons should have been what taught players about dangerous attacks and what mobs to CC, not a fucking blog post a month after the expansion launched. There should have been as many level 85 normal mode dungeons as heroic dungeons, if not more.

Surprise surprise, remaking the entire old world in an expansion fucks over your ability to provide enough content at level cap. It's a shame that their experiment with challenging content also came in an expansion where they had such an anemic amount of level cap content. I get why they would think it was a good pairing, "the content will have longer legs which will make up for there being so much less of it!" Since people weren't given an appropriate ramp-up to hard content, it never really had a chance.

[Paelos]

That's actually a pretty well-put, realistic analysis of the problem.

Where I will diverge a bit from the conclusion that Blizzard may draw, it's that (as Fordel mentioned) most of their playerbase has no interest in being taught/ramped-up/transitioned for harder content. They still have to get over that mental hurdle of desiging what THEY want, instead of what the customer wants. And granted, that's tough, considering that designing content for the masses is probably fuck-all boring to the design boys.

[SurfD]

That's actually a pretty well-put, realistic analysis of the problem.

Where I will diverge a bit from the conclusion that Blizzard may draw, it's that (as Fordel mentioned) most of their playerbase has no interest in being taught/ramped-up/transitioned for harder content. They still have to get over that mental hurdle of desiging what THEY want, instead of what the customer wants. And granted, that's tough, considering that designing content for the masses is probably fuck-all boring to the design boys.

Of course, designing what the customer wants becomes rather difficult when you customer base covers a range from "Cant figure out talent builds even with a guide and google" through to "So hard core they faction changed AND server transfered in the same week so they could get 3 shots at heroic loot" type players.  No matter what you end up designing, you will never be able to please them all.

[Paelos]

I'll let you go ahead and put what you think the overall percentages of those two groups are. My guess is this:

1% - Players that worry about World Firsts
4% - Players that complete all heroic raid content
5% - Players that try heroic raid content.
10% - Players that complete all normal mode raid content
30% - Players that do normal mode raids with moderate success
50% - Players that just like 5 mans, alting, and goofing off with achievements and pvp.

In short, my guess is that 90% of your players don't give a shit about heroic raids, and half could care less what you do with raiding as long as you stay out of their 5 mans.