Cataclysm

[Paelos]

The confirmed today the the Justice Valor point conversions won't happen until 4.2

[Lightstalker]

I disagree with what you said.

I would say only a select few have still beaten cho'gall and nefarian, or even gotten to see them.  Releasing firelands in a couple months  is premature.

The logical solution shouldn't be to hold thing back from a regular proposed timetable if the players aren't progressing fast enough through your content. That should be a big flashing "WARNING, YOUR CONTENT IS OVERTUNED! YOUR PLAYERBASE WAS NOT PREPARED!" sign.

The facts are literally smacking them in the face at this point. They need to make the right call, nerf down the content, and plan on releasing at a quicker pace. Otherwise, just giving people more time won't do diddly shit. A lot of people just gave up already.

I almost made a "they are releasing (firelands) too early" post last week, then I really looked at http://www.wowtrack.org/encounters.lua and did the math and realized 30% of the raiding playerbase has killed Cho'Gal.  So I thought to myself, maybe this isn't actually too early.  If Hard Modes are optional and not required end-game participation, something to keep the hard core busy with while new content for the rest of the world is under development, then this is about the right time to get a new tier onto the PTR for a late spring release.  The last hard mode has fallen for 25-man raids and the heroic modes are notably more difficult in 10-man.  By the time Firelands releases (if it were in 4.1) it would be pretty well timed.

Then I looked at the 10-man vs. 25-man difficulty levels by mode and noticed that almost all normal modes are fairly well tuned for 10-man vs. 25-man raids.  We can see things go off the rails for hard modes, but I think they are taking a stupid tact on hard modes anyway so this deviation isn't a surprise (10-man Sarth +3 was much harder than 25-man at appropriate gear levels, remember).  So, can't really bitch here either, given that the heroic modes are just there to distract hard core raiders long enough to get another tier ready for the masses.


So I didn't post, since I really un-convinced myself when I took a look at things objectively.  Frankly, I think they are just tossing the 'not progressed enough' rationalization out there to cover the more likely "Not Done Yet" or "Not Fun Yet" root causes.  Maybe even the "Looks bad relative to Rift" angle as well, since Rift is pretty and WoW is cartoony and overdone (having itself to blame).  Rift is also easier on the hardware than WoW, in their zeal to compete on the pretty they may have pushed their system reqs out of the acceptable range (I'd say they are already out of acceptable given how much better Rift does with fewer system resources).  This last paragraph is just to 'contribute' to the conversation, it is highly unlikely that Firelands will show any influence from a game that released this week.

[Lakov_Sanite]

the raiding playerbase

This is a not a lot of people.

[SurfD]

I almost made a "they are releasing (firelands) too early" post last week, then I really looked at http://www.wowtrack.org/encounters.lua and did the math and realized 30% of the raiding playerbase has killed Cho'Gal.  So I thought to myself, maybe this isn't actually too early.  If Hard Modes are optional and not required end-game participation, something to keep the hard core busy with while new content for the rest of the world is under development, then this is about the right time to get a new tier onto the PTR for a late spring release.  The last hard mode has fallen for 25-man raids and the heroic modes are notably more difficult in 10-man.  By the time Firelands releases (if it were in 4.1) it would be pretty well timed.

Right, except that we dont know exactly what blizzard's standpoint is on the relationship between Hardmode content and endgame activity level.  Using that link of yours, you can see that hardmode kills compared to normal mode kills just plummet in the percentages.  All the End Bosses of current raid content Heroic have a less then 1% kill rate.  I would imagine blizz considers that really REALLY low.

Also, while 35% of guilds overall have killed Normal Cho, only 18% have killed Normal Neff.

Personally, I would say sticking ZG /ZA with slightly lower Ilevel Purples inbetween Firelands is probably a good move, since it will allow some of the struggling guilds to get the gear they need to pick up their pace in the current raids and maybe get a few shots in on heroics before the next tier launches.

[El Gallo]

Rift is also easier on the hardware than WoW, in their zeal to compete on the pretty they may have pushed their system reqs out of the acceptable range (I'd say they are already out of acceptable given how much better Rift does with fewer system resources).

I have trouble believeing this.  Rift looks like utter ass on low settings; WoW just looks like a slightly blockier cartoon. 

[Miasma]

So when 4.2 comes out and the valor items go to justice will the new valor boots be BoE and thus sellable as well?  I'm trying to figure out how much I'd be willing to pay for the current boots...

[Rendakor]

I wouldn't count on it; the first tier of LK had a BoE (bracers) but none of the following tiers did. There isn't even a guarantee that there will be new valor boots since they tend to shuffle around which slots are available on the vendor with each tier of content.

[Yegolev]

Seems forty pages of this thread have appeared since I last visited.  Is there some thread where the casual jerkoffs discuss basic shit that normal people deal with?

Anyway, I went back to WoW after some time away due to thinking it looked and played like ass.  I had more fun this time, going from lv2 to lv6 with the goblin and getting from the town where the dragon came up to the Lost Isles.  I like the isles better than the city, for sure.  So far I'm enjoying it, particularly the UI since it's a sight better than the LotRO UI.  Simple things, like a real-world clock, amuse me so maybe I'm special.  But who doesn't like options?

[Merusk]

Casual Jerkoffs and normal people stopped playing 2-3 months ago. 

[Miasma]

Yeah, judging by the latest dev blog they still don't "get it".  They keep saying that they are basically happy with where things are, that seems like a very subjective metric that a lot of other people have a very different opinion on.

[Malakili]

Yeah, judging by the latest dev blog they still don't "get it".  They keep saying that they are basically happy with where things are, that seems like a very subjective metric that a lot of other people have a very different opinion on.

What should they be doing? 

[sinij]

Yeah, judging by the latest dev blog they still don't "get it".  They keep saying that they are basically happy with where things are, that seems like a very subjective metric that a lot of other people have a very different opinion on.

What should they be doing?  

Who cares if half of the multi-million player base leaves because lead developer got to resurrect his hardcore EQ nostalgia? After all, who counts small-nation-GDP worth in revenues when Ghostcrawlers e-peen is on the line.

What should they be doing? Make a public example by firing lead developer, revert most Cata changes and promise it won't happen again, then publicly repent and give everyone free month.

[Simond]

Getting the people who originally made WoW back from project Facebook-Twitter-cash-in-MMO would be a start.

[Sheepherder]

So far I'm enjoying it

Don't concern yourself with the endgame.  In fact, don't even acknowledge it's existence.  The game your enjoying ends at 85, possibly as early as 60, and is replaced with a new game which just so happens to be a leaping cock dropkick performed by the wraith of Bruce Lee.

[Malakili]

Yeah, judging by the latest dev blog they still don't "get it".  They keep saying that they are basically happy with where things are, that seems like a very subjective metric that a lot of other people have a very different opinion on.

What should they be doing?  

Who cares if half of the multi-million player base leaves because lead developer got to resurrect his hardcore EQ nostalgia? After all, who counts small-nation-GDP worth in revenues when Ghostcrawlers e-peen is on the line.

What should they be doing? Make a public example by firing lead developer, revert most Cata changes and promise it won't happen again, then publicly repent and give everyone free month.

I wasn't aware 1/2 the playerbase left.  I guess if thats so, they should change things.  Cataclysm has been more fun to me as a casual player than Wrath was, don't know what to tell you.

[Paelos]

I wasn't aware 1/2 the playerbase left.  I guess if thats so, they should change things.  Cataclysm has been more fun to me as a casual player than Wrath was, don't know what to tell you.

I logged in yesterday at primetime. My guild had nobody on. We had no guild points to speak of. Most of our regulars hadn't logged on in a few days. The guild is all but dead or dying and people have moved on to Rift or something else.

That's just a consequence of it happening slowly over the last month. I think the player that has done some raiding in the past but never made it a job from my alliance are mostly lost. Some are powering through it and joining up with larger guilds. Some just threw their hands up and quit.

I think this expansion has been incredibly polarizing. Maybe that was inevitable and Blizzard feels this is the right way to go. They may feel they were bound to lose a lot of players no matter what decision they made, so they wanted to make what they believed was the best possible gaming experience. It unfortunately doesn't match what my guild wanted. It makes me a bit sad, but at the same time I understand it.

[Selby]

I logged in yesterday at primetime. My guild had nobody on. We had no guild points to speak of. Most of our regulars hadn't logged on in a few days. The guild is all but dead or dying and people have moved on to Rift or something else.

My old guilds were the same way, but they were also moving that way before Cata came out (maybe half the population ever showed up during the last 3-4 months before Cata).  Those who wanted to raid left the guild and went to active guilds and those who didn't care just stopped playing.  And yet I've never seen Stormwind\Orgrimmar so busy in years.  I'm not sure if that's because Dalaran\Shattrath aren't the "high end" cities to hang out in anymore though.  There sure are a ton of 85s running around and a good mix of lowbies running around too.

[Soulflame]

One of my friends in a 25 man guild on Lightbringer said basically the entire guild is trying Rift.

Anecdotal, with bonus "does Rift have enough stickiness to keep them", plus what are the odds at least half will end up back in WoW, but still.

From my perspective, Cataclysm is a huge stumble.

[Miasma]

Yeah, judging by the latest dev blog they still don't "get it".  They keep saying that they are basically happy with where things are, that seems like a very subjective metric that a lot of other people have a very different opinion on.

What should they be doing? 

They should make heroics and at least this first tier of raiding more fun by nerfing the black/white no room for error mechanics.

They may feel they were bound to lose a lot of players no matter what decision they made, so they wanted to make what they believed was the best possible gaming experience.

I think this is what they are doing.  They assumed they would lose players since the big fight against arthas couldn't really be topped so instead of blaming their current design they are just shrugging their shoulders and assuming people are leaving for other reasons beyond their control.  I really think a lot more people would still be playing if you didn't have to get drunk to tolerate queueing up for a heroic pug...

[Merusk]

My 25-man guild has been incapable of recruiting enough players to maintain a 25-man raid and has downsized to doing 10s with the core of remaining players.  They get 15-16 signups on raid days now where we used to get 27-32.  If they continue having to sit 5-6 players, I expect those players to wander off as well.

[Lakov_Sanite]

My 25-man guild has been incapable of recruiting enough players to maintain a 25-man raid and has downsized to doing 10s with the core of remaining players.  They get 15-16 signups on raid days now where we used to get 27-32.  If they continue having to sit 5-6 players, I expect those players to wander off as well.

When cat came out we had close to 100 members on daily. We started doing 25mans and things started slowing down, first we had 60 on a night, then 40, then we couldnt field 25mans at all. We dropped to 10mans and now we're lucky to field that on the farm content. I logged in sat, no one online but me

[Arrrgh]

It's standard MMO Dev inability to admit that they were wrong.

If they weren't wrong there was no mistake. If there was no mistake there is no possibility of learning from a mistake.

[caladein]

It's standard MMO Dev inability to admit that they were wrong.

If they weren't wrong there was no mistake. If there was no mistake there is no possibility of learning from a mistake.

There's a lot of things they've admitted to being mistakes and have changed in this expansion, you just have a different list of mistakes.

[Paelos]

There's a lot of things they've admitted to being mistakes...

Agreed. They do recognize some faults of their expansion.

and have changed in this expansion...

Not so much. Ghostcrawler has reiterated yet again that they are happy with the raid balance. In another thread, they admitted that having optional bosses in 5 mans was not a great idea, and they will use it for future content (current content remaining unchanged). They said they have no desires to update Outland quests, even though they are odd in the content. They don't make any comments about the healer population when it's referenced several times that it's becoming a barrier to content. They recognize that people aren't advancing as quickly as they like, so their answer is to delay content instead of easing up on the current batch.

Hell, one of the questions they chose to address in their Q&A was what Blizzard employees do in their off-time.  

[Fabricated]

This expansion has pretty much killed WoW for me and the only thing keeping me subscribed is that last bit of OCD/attachment to my character. My guild merged with a larger one, then all of the people I originally played with for the last 5 years left for another server/started playing other games. One of my best not-on-the-internet friends who was in the same guild with me left with a few other people at the end of WotLK for a guild that could get content done. The 30% buff was huge but they still managed to get every heroic ICC boss but LK down consistently.

Now? No Nefarian kills, no Cho'gal kills yet for them. They have just enough tanks and healers to raid, and a mess of DPS clamoring for a spot. My current guild has a lot of people in it and only 3-4 are on at a time now compared to 40-50 at a time for like nearly over 2 months after cata dropped. No raids are going anywhere; my guild isn't raiding and the huge group of people I used to pug raids with have stopped because they can barely get enough together to do their own runs. NO ONE wants to heal. No one. Nobody seems to like tanking either despite it (at least to me) being even easier than it was in WotLK.

They're pretty much running the majority of their playerbase off, but I don't think it's an attempt to appease the hardcore players (because they left in the "badge" system they despise so much and even if they're a half-tier lower in quality 5-mans will once again give epics) so much as it is to cockblock people from really mowing through content. Blizzard seriously is unable or 100% unwilling to pump out content on a faster scale. They claim they're moving away from monolithic patches but instead they're just dribbling out the same amount of content over a wider period of time and calling that faster content production.

Unless some awesome guild swoops in and I can start raiding successfully, I just have better/more fun shit to do anymore. I got a new job and real life is being fucking ridiculous with all of the weekend-destroying horseshit so I haven't had time to do anything time-consuming when I'm off work. I've actually become one of those people who can only play games that you can pick up and drop quickly like Torchlight. WotLK let me jump in and do a heroic in 30-45 minutes practically a month into it; Cata will be a slog through hell with retards even 2 tiers from now if you get Stonecore.

[Paelos]

Just as a side note Fab, do you feel that while tanking has gotten easier, it's also much less important? I don't get the feeling at all that player skill from your tanks in raids really matters much at all, nor do I get the feeling that gear upgrades to your tanks will help the raid as much as they used to.

[caladein]

and have changed in this expansion...

Not so much. Ghostcrawler has reiterated yet again that they are happy with the raid balance. In another thread, they admitted that having optional bosses in 5 mans was not a great idea, and they will use it for future content (current content remaining unchanged). They said they have no desires to update Outland quests, even though they are odd in the content. They don't make any comments about the healer population when it's referenced several times that it's becoming a barrier to content. They recognize that people aren't advancing as quickly as they like, so their answer is to delay content instead of easing up on the current batch.

Hell, one of the questions they chose to address in their Q&A was what Blizzard employees do in their off-time.  

I meant that as previous mistakes corrected with this expansion.  As for mistakes created by and corrected inside this expansion, there's the upcoming raid cooldown homogenization in 4.1.  It's an important change in their approach to healer balance but it's not really germane to most people's complaints.  (I guess you could count nuking the 15v15 rated bracket which they're doubling down on by adding AB to the 10v10 playlist in 4.1.)

From my perspective a tank's ability in positioning and reacting to boss abilities (including interrupts) are still vitally important.  That said, a tank's gear is relatively less important than it was before in large part because everyone else's survival is nearly as important to the raid's success.

[Rendakor]

What raid cooldown homogenization?

[caladein]

What raid cooldown homogenization?

• DK's Raise Ally is now a proper battle rez.
• Resto Druids get a talent to bring Tranquility's CD down to three minutes. It also now has innate full pushback resistance.
• Divine Guardian is now on a three minute cooldown.
  
• PW: Barrier gets its CD bumped up to three minutes and drops from a 30% reduction to 25%.
• Holy Priests still get to respec to Discipline to use PW: Barrier (and both Hymns have innate full pushback resistance).
• Resto Shamans get:
  

  Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.

• Warriors get:
  

  Rallying Cry (new ability) is available from trainers at level 83. It temporarily grants the warrior and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost. It has no cost, no stance requirements, and is not on the global cooldown. It has a 3-minute cooldown, but also shares a cooldown with Last Stand.

[Fabricated]

Just as a side note Fab, do you feel that while tanking has gotten easier, it's also much less important? I don't get the feeling at all that player skill from your tanks in raids really matters much at all, nor do I get the feeling that gear upgrades to your tanks will help the raid as much as they used to.

I think that it takes more gear for it to really make a difference in Cata than it did in WotLK or even BC. If you're gemming/reforging right, you'll notice a pretty decent difference between being in full heroic blues and full normal-mode epics, but unlike WotLK/BC how much HP you have seems to mean precisely fuck all. Bosses on normal at least weren't nearly instagibbing me every other hit like they were in WoTLK but the buffer all the extra HP epics provide doesn't really mean shit to healers because they're bottlenecked by their regen/throughput way before my HP comes into the equation.

Hell, until you get to a certain point (or a shitload of mastery as a warrior at least...btw block mastery is broken) of avoidance you barely notice that as well in terms of incoming damage.

While epics certainly require effort to get right now, unless you're DPS they don't FEEL epic. You just feel like less of a detriment as a tank and as a healer you can now actually make it to the end of a fight with some mana left. Whooptie doo.

As for skill; I dunno why but people are treating it like cata is hard to tank when it absolutely is easier than WoTLK. Everyone has good utility for picking up and holding multiple mobs now, vengeance is so ridiculously overpowered that anything that can actually hurt you renders you capable of beating the DPS on the charts (and thus threat isn't an issue at all ever), and there really aren't many fights that demand a lot of tanks outside of maybe Nefarian? We have a hell of a lot less responsibility than the DPS or healers for almost every fight outside of popping CDs at the right time.

[Paelos]

The most complicated fights I've seen so far in Cata for tanks were: stay live, and make sure to taunt at the right time. 

[SurfD]

I would have to say that the only raid fights in cata that ever stress me out as a Bear Tank are Halfus (when you have the MS drake and the Haste drake), because it is pretty much the only fight where a bad taunt or poor cooldown management means the difference between a wipe and a kill, and Maloriak when I am on adds solo in 25 man because for some reason if they spawn on both sides of the room at once it seems to be a bitch to pick up all of them (once i actaully get all of them on me, keeping them on me is easy, its just getting them initially that seems to be a problem.)

[Shrike]

My 25-man guild has been incapable of recruiting enough players to maintain a 25-man raid and has downsized to doing 10s with the core of remaining players.  They get 15-16 signups on raid days now where we used to get 27-32.  If they continue having to sit 5-6 players, I expect those players to wander off as well.

This has been my personal experience. Our guild was down to one 10 man, managed to scrape up enough for another, but only during the week--which I couldn't attend. So I quit. Far as I know, they're back down to one 10 man team.

So. I app to a night-time guild on WW. I'm aware this guild is eyeing Rift, but I figure they're the premier night-time guild (not saying much) so what can go wrong? Well, shaman class lead is assigned to me, finally catch up with her, then she just disappears. Never saw her again. That was four weeks ago. Far as I know (or care, at this point) most of their core guild is in Rift. Every other night guild I've looked at is either on the skids or looking for HM turnkey players, which I ain't, since I can't get in any goddamned raid to begin with. 

So I'm down to logging in once a day for about 90 minutes to get my 70vp and that's it. I'm sorta wondering why I bother, but I am attached to my character--who still can pull 19k in a 5 man, but can't get a fucking raid spot. Yeah, this expansion is working out real well...not. I guess I'm willing to cling by my stubby little claws until 4.2 and hope for the best, but frankly I think it's just a matter of time before I cancel.

[Lantyssa]

Sounds like a blast.  Why pay them money for this?  You can resub if they actually add something you find fun back.

[Soulflame]

Sounds like a blast.  Why pay them money for this?  You can resub if they actually add something you find fun back.

This pretty much sums up my attitude towards WoW.  It wasn't fun while leveling, it looked less fun at the end game, and even though I had connections to get into two raid guilds, the one never ran a raid at all, and the other sputtered out running a 10 man raid while seating 6 because not enough showed up for 25.