Cataclysm

[Rendakor]

Nice. That fits well with hunters shaping up to be ranged Rogues rather than Mages in mail.

[WindupAtheist]

I know similar sentiments have been expressed a thousand times over the last couple years, but there had better not be one single god damned "Ride a giant around! Isn't that awesome? You can't see around your own legs! Have fun killing 400 mobs with two buttons and then dying for reasons you don't really understand!" quest in the entire expansion. I'm not even humoring them this time, those will be insta-dropped.

[Chimpy]

You died on the giant ride quest?

[Sjofn]

Man, the giant riding quests were the only vehicle ones I really liked.

[WindupAtheist]

The one in Sholazar with the 4 bosses that all do different shit, and the one guy has some near-instakill spell you're supposed to run away from, and blah blah blah. Like wow, yeah let me go look up each one of these guys and learn all their tricks, for some shitty random non-repeatable solo quest. Let me get really invested into this, this is worth learning.

Also I just can't fucking see around myself. I can either zoom into first person and feel like I'm wearing blinders, or have 50% of my screen occupied by a giant back and ass.

[Ingmar]

There's a console command that lets you zoom the camera out farther, it is really handy in a lot of situations.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Console_variables#Camera

[SurfD]

There's a console command that lets you zoom the camera out farther, it is really handy in a lot of situations.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Console_variables#Camera

Yeah, i have a camera range increase command hotkeyed to a macro that i hit every time i log in.  Problem is, at this point, letting us zoom out that far should be a base option, not an obscure command you have to manually enter every time you need more view distance.

[caladein]

You shouldn't need to redo it at all.  Either run TweakWoW or go to \World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\AccountName\config-cache.wtf and change/add these two lines:

SET cameraDistanceMax 25
SET cameraDistanceMaxFactor 2

The actual maximums for those two values are 50 and 4, but the game will just change them down to something equaling 50 when you log in.

[Chimpy]

There used to be a mod increasedcamerarange or something like that that made the changes and gave you an adjusted zoom slider.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The one in Sholazar with the 4 bosses that all do different shit, and the one guy has some near-instakill spell you're supposed to run away from, and blah blah blah. Like wow, yeah let me go look up each one of these guys and learn all their tricks, for some shitty random non-repeatable solo quest. Let me get really invested into this, this is worth learning.

Also I just can't fucking see around myself. I can either zoom into first person and feel like I'm wearing blinders, or have 50% of my screen occupied by a giant back and ass.

I read this as "I'm bad at games"

[Lantyssa]

Nah.  I hated it with as much vehemence for the same reasons.

[Azazel]

I'd also like to see fewer "gimmicky for the sake of gimmicky" dungeons. Especially with that bullshit vehicle mechanic. I'm thinking especially of Oculus and that Argent Tournament bullshit.

[SurfD]

I must be one of the few people on earth who actually LIKED the occulus.  Was a nice change of pace from the same old same old.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

It's just a bit too hard for some people to learn those couple new buttons along with the z-axis. But yeah, the ToC jousting was shit.

[Rendakor]

Oculus stopped being terrible when they put in vehicle scaling with gear; since then it's only mildly annoying.

[WindupAtheist]

I read this as "I'm bad at games"

That's because you're a cockholster.

There has been nothing in WOTLK with vehicles that was not markedly less popular than it's non-vehicle equivalents. From Blizzard having to bribe people into finishing Oculus, to looking at the battleground lists and seeing four Alterac Valleys popped versus one Isle of Conquest or less.

[Malakili]

I read this as "I'm bad at games"

That's because you're a cockholster.

There has been nothing in WOTLK with vehicles that was not markedly less popular than it's non-vehicle equivalents. From Blizzard having to bribe people into finishing Oculus, to looking at the battleground lists and seeing four Alterac Valleys popped versus one Isle of Conquest or less.

Indeed, vehicles are easily the biggest failure of the expansion.  The fact is (for me at least), I picked a class because I like playing that class.  Getting effectively dumped onto a new set of abilities and a gimmick quest to boot is utterly annoying.  Difficulty of the quests doesn't even really have anything to do with it.  Its just plain less fun than the "normal" stuff.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

Oh, the new words I add to my vocabulary from this website. Cockholster, windowlicker, and more!

[Rendakor]

I don't mind the Argent Tournament jousting dailies, because they break up the monotony that dailies otherwise are. However, those are only fun because they were well fleshed out: you do 3 days worth of "training" type quests, and the difficulty scales up gradually as you advance through the ranks of the tournament. By the last phase, they're not even difficult because you have considerable practice at them.

That said, I realize many people hate vehicles so I don't mind them existing only as optional, repeatable content. We don't need any more vehicle raids or BGs, kthx.

[Sjofn]

Nah.  I hated it with as much vehemence for the same reasons.

That doesn't change what Lakov said!

OH SNAP

ICE BURN

ET CETERA

I didn't find the Sholozar thing too hard to figure out, but I did have to do a little trial and error and didn't fill with rage when I failed at first. I may have been feeling zen that day, as I haven't done that quest line since (I tend to do the opening Nessingwary stuff, by then I'm 77 and I run off to Icecrown or Storm Peaks.).

I like the Flame Leviathan fight, but if I have to give up that sort of fight to never, ever, ever have another Malygos fight, I am totally cool with that.

[Chimpy]

Malygos was fuckstupidly complicated by all kinds of ridiculous game mechanics thrown into one place.

Just thinking about how the ginormous dragon hitbox made my life hell on that fight makes me stabby a year and a half after I quit playing the game.

[Lantyssa]

That doesn't change what Lakov said!

I was wondering if one of you was going to take the bait.

[WindupAtheist]

I didn't find the Sholozar thing too hard to figure out, but I did have to do a little trial and error and didn't fill with rage when I failed at first. I may have been feeling zen that day, as I haven't done that quest line since (I tend to do the opening Nessingwary stuff, by then I'm 77 and I run off to Icecrown or Storm Peaks.).

Quest reward - (learning attempts * repair bill) = why bother?

I guess if I really needed one of the helmets it rewards... Or if I got naked before getting on the giant.

[Azazel]

It's just a bit too hard for some people to learn those couple new buttons along with the z-axis. But yeah, the ToC jousting was shit.

It's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of not fun. Also, I like playing my actual character.

[Malakili]

It's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of not fun. Also, I like playing my actual character.

This.  I, vehicles just totally disrupt the normal flow of the game for me, I like my druid and I don't feel like fucking around with some gimmick.

[Ingmar]

I loved and will always love riding around on that storm giant in Zul'Drak. I like the vehicle stuff in general though, it is usually a nice change of pace and they space stuff out well enough that you're not always doing vehicle shit or whatever.

The only exceptions are Malygos, because OTHER people suck at it which turns the fight into a frustration party (seriously it is not that hard argh) and the Defender type quests (go pick up a guy and fly back to town - there's an Argent one in Icecrown and an Alliance one in Dragonblight that come to mind) because there's no real interaction in those other than 'fly to guy, pick up guy' and the return points are annoyingly far away - they just take way too long.

Pretty much every other vehicle thing is in the acceptable-to-quite-fun range imo.

[Azazel]

While I don't enjoy the vehicle stuff, I can handle it in terms of dailies which are optional (grizzly hills, argent dailies) or one-off like the giant. It shits me up the wall though when it's all-too-often in the random daily quests. With queue times I find I can get 2 runs in the morning before work. This morning, I got the tournament followed by a confused group in oculus.
Bleh

[Sjofn]

Or if I got naked before getting on the giant.

Hot.

I dunno, I cheerfully ignore repair costs at all times. Having to run back to where I was is the rage trigger for me. Quest rewards are also usually a "whatever" for me, especially now that running instances is soooo much easier to do leveling up. I'm not saying you're wrong for hating that quest, it's just not something that ever bothered me. I think I am way more tolerant of vehicle whatnot than most of the people here anyway.

Also,  Lantyssa.

[Lakov_Sanite]

"I didn't know the fight mechanics before hand and thus had to pay a time penalty."

Sort of like dying in a single player game and going back to an old save?

I will agree, vehicles by and large sucked in wotlk, some though not all. However saying that encounters should all be facerolls with no possibility of failing? Cry me a river.

[WindupAtheist]

There are things worth going to wowhead and learning the mechanics of in advance, and then there are non-repeatable world quests. Unless you're saying I should just go with the "payout minus couple of mechanics-learning repairs = lol" formula and bask in the warm glow of having jerked around for fifteen minutes for a reward of nothing.

[Azazel]

See, I agree with you on the suckage factor, but I can much more easily get over it if it's a one-off non-repeatable world quest (or an easily-skippable daily)  than having them come up over and over again in random heroics.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get shafted into some shitty random heroic pugs. 

[caladein]

I like the vehicle quests for the exact reasons are lot of you don't: it takes you out of your normal routine.

The raid ones were good because they gave me a small new skill set to master.  The solo ones are generally tuned to very easy and are basically a small puzzle in "How do these abilities interact with each other?" which I think's fantastic.  The Arthas quests are a great example of these.

Some are poorly done of course, just like there are lots of poorly done non-vehicle quests, but in general I think they were a good upgrade from the Bombing Runs of BC.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I have no issue at all at being taken out of my class and into a vehicle for the most part. But I don't like it much in a group or raid situation (Flame Levi being an exception, I like that fight for some reason) because some people are completely terrible at anything involving a vehicle. Then their sucking usually has an impact on ME in a way I can't usually cover for (I have wiped so many goddamn times on Phase 3 of Malygos, waaaah), so then I go into a berserker rage and scare the cats.

[Paelos]

Malygos is undoubtedly the current low point of Blizzard's boss design. Since then, they made marked improvements to not pull those types of shenannigans again.

[Rasix]

I really liked Flame Leviathan.  That was some of the last raiding I did, and I thought it was a blast.  I wish something like that was available on a more casual scale (although it getting into a FL farm group isn't hard).  I'm also quite partial to the vehicles in Wintergrasp.  I always had fun playing around with that.   They really need to make some sort of Goblin hosted demolition derby using what they've learned from both encounters.

The ride a giant/worm/bomber/possess-some-dude stuff always comes across as a bother.  I don't like doing them.  I prefer actual vehicles that control decently, don't fuck with the camera, or rely on interupt-or-die gimmicks.

I wouldn't be sad to see generally less vehicle fights in Cat.