Cataclysm

[angry.bob]

That's the stupidest sh@t that I've read here in a long time. So after taking the layer of paint you put on that turd, you're mentally ill and see everything as a constant competition even if the only person competing is you. And based on the other stuff you wrote in this thread you get annoyed when other people don't treat it as serious business. Listen to yourself, you've really got some issues and really are trying to compensate for soemthing. You need to smoke some weed and relax or something before you eat the barrel of a gun because couldn't fold your laundry TOTALLY AWESOME TO THE MAX AS AWESOME AS LAUNDRY CAN BE FOLDED.

Once again, normal people don't give a sh@t, playing the "most perfect" WoW is stupid and meaningless, and right now you're either lying to yourself or to us.

[Rasix]

You're allowed to swear here, bob.

[Margalis]

As Margalis points out, there's other games far more adept at testing skill if that's what you're really about.

Not just other games - other MMOs.

I don't buy that if you want to play a challenging game you should only play competitive games, there is something to be said for hard single-player or PvE games. It can be fun to play a game that requires some mastery and also has cool places to visit or whatever. But WoW has always been an easy game. That's just WoW.

It's funny to say that some encounters have "skill tests." Does that mean that every other part of the encounter has no skill requirement? The idea that "skill tests" are periodic discrete things in WoW, like "at this part the 'test' is to move out of the pool of fire!" really says a lot. I don't think you'd say that Megaman 9 has "skill tests" - more that the entire game is skill-based.

WoW is a game where instead of learning how much threat you generate with various skills and developing an innate sense of threat levels you just install a mod that says "hey dispshit that enemy is about to attack you." Instead of developing a mental model of buff rotations and timings you just install something that says "PRESS 2 NOW!" And again, there's nothing wrong with that (though it's not my cup of tea) but that's the bed that's been made.
---

Now one thing I do sympathize with Malakili about is the lack of MMOs that are genuinely challenging but also let you accomplish a lot in short play sessions. AFAIK there aren't many games like that. But it doesn't make sense to turn WoW into that game. That ship has sailed.

[Shrike]

stupid angry shit

Dude, did you go back and read this? Seriously? You may want to take your own advice and grab something and chill out. I recomend a good IPA or three, but, geezus palomino, take a break.

[Typhon]

did you read his name?  The first part of it is "angry".

[caladein]

That's the stupidest sh@t that I've read here in a long time. So after taking the layer of paint you put on that turd, you're mentally ill and see everything as a constant competition even if the only person competing is you. And based on the other stuff you wrote in this thread you get annoyed when other people don't treat it as serious business. Listen to yourself, you've really got some issues and really are trying to compensate for soemthing. You need to smoke some weed and relax or something before you eat the barrel of a gun because couldn't fold your laundry TOTALLY AWESOME TO THE MAX AS AWESOME AS LAUNDRY CAN BE FOLDED.

Once again, normal people don't give a sh@t, playing the "most perfect" WoW is stupid and meaningless, and right now you're either lying to yourself or to us.

I know full well that that's not what most people pay $15 for each month nor a meaningful way to spend my leisure time.  That out of the way, I assume you read too much into the "how PvE can be competitive" replies to sinij and Lakov and so I'll take this opportunity to be needlessly introspective.

A few games, mostly MMOs, are fun for me because I can spend time figuring out their systems.  The application of that knowledge is secondary.  In a small game like Fallen Earth or The Matrix Online I get to figure out a lot of stuff on my own so that desire to understand (which I do have, I'm constantly looking stuff up) is directed at dissecting the game.  This is also true to an extent in the comparatively black-box-y LotRO.  In a game with a public analytic(s?) community like WoW, the game's kind of figured out for me so it becomes more about seeing how I can apply this or that new piece of information to my game or to what my group's working on.  Part of that becomes stupid Hunter tricks, another a raid postmortem.

[WindupAtheist]

Why does this matter at all? They still include gear upgrades when most people hit lvl 85, and it's still something to do with your friends. Hell, they still give you a method to get 346 gear too. I can understand the complaint that there aren't enough at level 85, but if you don't really care about the challenge I don't see why it matters. Running normal Throne of Tides at 85 would be stupid easy, but isn't that exactly what you want out of group content?

Yeah I'm gonna sit around grabbing people out of guild or chat and manually group for level 83 normals. That's a totally cool endgame. I should pay money for that.

Retard.

[Rokal]

Your ideal content was:

They should make a series of devastating nerfs until all five man content is utter faceroll.

That doesn't sound especially cool to me either. My point was that if you just wanted to slam through content with friends, you can do that right now and still be rewarded for it.

You don't need to find people in trade either, you can manually queue for any normal mode dungeon from Cata at level 85. If you and your friends just want to blaze through a dungeon and aoe everything down without paying any attention, you can queue for level 81 Throne of the Tides or any other normal dungeon right now and do just that. You aren't doing this of course, because content that is that easy isn't satisfying for anyone, and playing with friends apparently isn't enough if you're only being rewarded with good gear instead of awesome gear.

In your version of WoW we would be able to kill Deathwing a week after the expansion came out by PuGing 4 other players, queuing for a 10-minute long dungeon, and having your entire group randomly press buttons for 15 seconds until Deathwing died. Nobody would pay money for that 'cool endgame' either. Also, 'retard'? Really? You should check out the official WoW forums, you'd fit right in.

[Rendakor]

Honestly, if they put in a version like you describe where, for example, you go in to fight Deathwing with the help of uber NPCs who trivialize your role in the fight but still allow you to SEE the content, I think a lot of people would like that. Maybe a level below normal, but above "wait til next expansion and solo it on your DK alt". Hell, it doesn't even have to drop loot.

[Tannhauser]

That's a pretty radical idea, but it's fun to toss about.  It could be like a tutorial where you go in solo with 'iconic' characters who warn you what's going to happen and how to avoid/mitigate it.  No loot of course.

The point being is that it could teach you the raid so you can join a real raid and not make them wipe.  Plus you get to see the content and a tutorial might make you want to make the effort to do the real raid.

This let's them keep the raids tough and makes the endgame a solo player experience like 95% of the game is anyway.

[Malakili]

You need to smoke some weed and relax or something before you eat the barrel of a gun because couldn't fold your laundry TOTALLY AWESOME TO THE MAX AS AWESOME AS LAUNDRY CAN BE FOLDED.

Yea, you've really got me figured out.

[Paelos]

That doesn't sound especially cool to me either. My point was that if you just wanted to slam through content with friends, you can do that right now and still be rewarded for it.

No, you can't. The reason people were quitting was because they couldn't get to the raid content with their friends. And yes, raid content is supposed to be for everyone. Being successful through all of it isn't a guarantee, but gating it by setting the bar too high for your playerbase to handle it on "regular" mode is a waste of resources.

[Rokal]

No, you can't. The reason people were quitting was because they couldn't get to the raid content with their friends. And yes, raid content is supposed to be for everyone. Being successful through all of it isn't a guarantee, but gating it by setting the bar too high for your playerbase to handle it on "regular" mode is a waste of resources.

WindupAtheist never indicated that he wanted to raid. As far as I can tell from his/her previous posts, he/she was doing 5-mans without any intention of raiding. Not every player ultimately wants to raid, and heroics don't serve solely as a stepping stone to raids. Back in Wrath I didn't have any desire to raid, but I was disappointed with the 'end-game' content that was available for me. I think it's a good thing that there are rewarding challenges out there for people that don't want to raid, I just wish there were more dungeons.

You may have stopped playing because heroics were a barrier to raids, but again: heroic 5-man content has been thoroughly nerfed and people that ran heroics a few weeks after Cata launched but haven't since don't really have an accurate picture of what running a heroic is like today. If this was really why you and your friends stopped playing, you would be playing again now since your complaint had been resolved. The reality is that you and your friends were probably burnt out and needed a break from the game.

[Paelos]

I love that the defense of a bad mechanic, or that things should be opened up more to the customers, is, "you must be burned out."

It can't possibly be that Blizzard made a clusterfuck of the game. It's our fault as players that nothing was going to satisfy us? I disagree completely. It was very easy to satisfy my friends. The status quo was extremely satisfying and kept us entertained and subscribed for years even with the ebb and flow of changes.

Cataclysm lives up to it's namesake. It's a radical shift of gaming philosophy and it's alienating a chunk of the playerbase. I don't really think you can argue it's not.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I think it's a good thing that there are rewarding challenges out there for people that don't want to raid

This statement has mulled in my head a bit and makes me think. Are there challenges in cataclysm? Definitely. Rewarding? Well, not so much. I think the risk vs reward system got thrown out of whack a bit.

[Rokal]

It can't possibly be that Blizzard made a clusterfuck of the game. It's our fault as players that nothing was going to satisfy us? I disagree completely. It was very easy to satisfy my friends. The status quo was extremely satisfying and kept us entertained and subscribed for years even with the ebb and flow of changes.

Raid content seems about as difficult as it was for the majority of Wrath. Sure, Wrath T1 was easy, but for 1.5 years the raid content out there for players was about as tough on average as Cata raiding imo. Heroic 5-man dungeon content is more difficult than it was in Wrath, but after the nerfs it's not more difficult by much. WoW is still pretty much WoW, it's understandable if Cata wasn't a magical panacea that completely refreshed a game you had been playing for over 6 years.

This statement has mulled in my head a bit and makes me think. Are there challenges in cataclysm? Definitely. Rewarding? Well, not so much. I think the risk vs reward system got thrown out of whack a bit.

I think the risk vs reward system is in a good position. The 346 gear you get from heroics is a pretty nice upgrade over 333 items. In that sense, there is a significant reward for completing heroic content. I think it would have been better for the health of the game to have a) had more level 85 normal dungeons and b) make the gap between heroic and normal gear smaller. Have normal mode dungeons drop 340/342 gear and heroics drop 346 gear. That way, you are rewarded for doing heroics, but it would be more reasonable to do raids in normal mode gear if you really didn't have any interest in heroics. Of course, people would complain that heroics didn't reward players enough and that risk/reward was out of balance for heroic content, but I think it would have been for the best.

[Malakili]

It's a radical shift of gaming philosophy and it's alienating a chunk of the playerbase. I don't really think you can argue it's not.

Well, its definitely a radical shift from WOTLK, but over the life of WoW as a whole it isn't particularly unprecedented.  It definitely is alienating a chunk of the playerbase though.

[Paelos]

Raid content seems about as difficult as it was for the majority of Wrath.

I'm questioning the point in making any further arguments with you if you have your head this far into the sand. That statement is false.

[Rokal]

The biggest raids in Wrath were Icecrown, Ulduar, and Naxx. Naxx was easy, Ulduar and Icecrown had plenty of normal-mode fights that are as hard as Cata raid content. I really don't think the difficulty for raids has changed much overall, it's simply that Cata T1 is much harder than Naxx was. But if you happily played the raid content in Wrath while it was current, you were probably did plenty of Ulduar and Icecrown, in which case the difficulty should be pretty much what you were used to when you were first learning those Wrath fights. If you waited until after the content was nerfed by Blizzard or gear inflation, you're still in the same boat in Cata as you were in Wrath.

Edit: Keyword was "the majority" of Wrath, to be clear. Naxx was only the first ~6 months of Wrath, the fights from the major raids for the 1.5 years after that were fights roughly on par with Cata raid difficulty.

Edit 2: I think Cata raid content might seem more difficult because we are doing 3 small raids instead of one big raid. If the first third or forth of the fights in Icecrown or Ulduar were pretty easy, it should seem like the first couple fights from BoT, To4W, and BWD should be easier than they are too. Because the raids are split up, you only have one easy fight per location instead of three.

[Typhon]

It's a radical shift of gaming philosophy and it's alienating a chunk of the playerbase. I don't really think you can argue it's not.

Well, its definitely a radical shift from WOTLK, but over the life of WoW as a whole it isn't particularly unprecedented.  It definitely is alienating a chunk of the playerbase though.

Over the life of WoW the move has been to make things more accessible.  The strongest message the devs have ever sent (in my opinion and my paraphrasing) was, "holy shit, only 1% of our player base are actually seeing inside of our raids... that's fucked up".  Cataclysm essentially throws that thinking out the window.  It's not at all clear to me what caused that sea change in thinking.  I definitely feel like it was a step backward.

[Paelos]

Edit: Keyword was "the majority" of Wrath, to be clear. Naxx was only the first ~6 months of Wrath, the fights from the major raids for the 1.5 years after that were fights roughly on par with Cata raid difficulty.

No my friend. 50%+ of guilds at some point in time were completeing bosses in all 4 major raids of Wrath. Naxx was certainly the easiest, but they added numerous buffs to ICC to help people move along in the content. Ulduar probably had the least success rate.

Out of 160,000 tracked guilds, only 27% have killed any boss in any raid. 5% of them have killed Nefarian on regular.

The heroic numbers are laughable. 4% of guilds have killed Halfus on heroic, after that, the numbers start dropping below 2%. 174 guilds in the world have finished Sinestra. That's .11% of your playerbase that beat all your content. Yeah, that's healthy.

[Ingmar]

Wrath is the only expansion where anyone in my guild killed the final boss (unless you are counting Ruby Sanctum, I don't know if anyone ever even tried that one.)

EDIT: That said I don't think Sinestra should really be part of the conversation any more than Algalon should.

[Fordel]

What, You face the legions under my command guy totally counted! 

[Rokal]

They were completing those bosses after nerfs and gear inflation, yes. That's still a process that is going to happen for Cata. It's not fair to compare ICC with the 30% buff to Cata content that players have only had access to for ~4 months. Blizzard didn't even introduce the ICC buff until players had been in ICC for a few months, and the buff started small.

And yeah, my guild still hasn't killed Nefarian on normal mode. That doesn't mean the content is overtuned. I think if you are expecting most raid guilds to complete all the hard mode content, you are mistaken. For our guild, raid content will be 'done' for the most part after we are 12/12 on normal mode, which will probably be in a month or so.

Edit: All of ICC was open 3 months after the first wing became available. For comparison's sake, how many guilds had killed Lich King on normal mode in April of 2010 (4 months after ICC launched)? I'm guessing it's much closer to the current Nefarian normal mode numbers 4 months after Cata launched.

[Ingmar]

I did say FINAL boss, meaning Kel'Thuzad, Illidan/Kil'jaeden (take your pick), Arthas. If Cataclysm is starting out this way, I don't think the odds are high that we'll be killing Deathwing, especially given what has happened to people's motivation, we've had several cancellations already and even I am close to doing so myself. And I started out this thread defending everything the way you are.  

EDIT: Nobody is saying anything about hard modes, those can be as nut punchingly horrifying as anyone wants and nobody will care. I'm talking about normal Arthas.

[Paelos]

They were completing those bosses after nerfs and gear inflation, yes. That's still a process that is going to happen for Cata. It's not fair to compare ICC with the 30% buff to Cata content that players have only had access to for ~4 months. Blizzard didn't even introduce the ICC buff until players had been in ICC for a few months, and the buff started small.

And yeah, my guild still hasn't killed Nefarian on normal mode. That doesn't mean the content is overtuned. I think if you are expecting most raid guilds to complete all the hard mode content, you are mistaken. For our guild, raid content will be 'done' for the most part after we are 12/12 on normal mode, which will probably be in a month or so.

Edit: All of ICC was open 3 months after the first wing became available. For comparison's sake, how many guilds had killed Lich King on normal mode in April of 2010 (4 months after ICC launched)? I'm guessing it's much closer to the current Nefarian normal mode numbers 4 months after Cata launched.

Newsflash, most people that wanted to raid had killed Kel'Thuzad well before Ulduar was released (5 months after the expansion came out). Hell it was being pugged methodically. Compare apples to apples. This first tier versus that. Five percent of guilds getting down the final boss of regular isn't what I would call "well-tuned" after it's been out for over 4 months. It should be closer to 25%, and the number of people who've killed a boss in a raid should be closer to 50% instead of 25%.

[Rokal]

Newsflash, most people that wanted to raid had killed Kel'Thuzad well before Ulduar was released (5 months after the expansion came out). Hell it was being pugged methodically. Compare apples to apples. This first tier versus that. Five percent of guilds getting down the final boss of regular isn't what I would call "well-tuned" after it's been out for over 4 months. It should be closer to 25%, and the number of people who've killed a boss in a raid should be closer to 50% instead of 25%.

I realize Wrath T1 was easy. For the majority of the expansion you weren't doing T1, so it doesn't matter. If your guild worked on Ulduar and ICC, defeated bosses, and had fun doing so, the experience should be similar in Cata. The difficulty isn't that different, and it will get easier over time just like it always has.

If Cataclysm is starting out this way, I don't think the odds are high that we'll be killing Deathwing, especially given what has happened to people's motivation, we've had several cancellations already and even I am close to doing so myself.

We're still really early into the expansion, but my prediction is that any raid guild that wants to see and kill normal mode Deathwing will eventually be able to do so within this expansion. I wouldn't be surprised to see the ICC buff resurface for Deathwing's raid cluster, after the content had been out for a while. Has Blizzard ever stated that they thought the ICC buff was a failure? It seems like it worked out pretty well.

[Ingmar]

I saw tons of Naxx PUGs before Ulduar was out, yeah.

[Paelos]

I realize Wrath T1 was easy. For the majority of the expansion you weren't doing T1, so it doesn't matter. If your guild worked on Ulduar and ICC, defeated bosses, and had fun doing so, the experience should be similar in Cata. The difficulty isn't that different, and it will get easier over time just like it always has.

Dude, pay attention. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. My guild did all that content, they hated the difficulty in this one, and they left. I don't care what it SHOULD be. It's very different because they slammed your dick in a door right off the bat. The first tier content is much harder in Cata and people bailed. It was a stupid thing to do on Blizzard's part.

Honestly, I'm not really understanding how you aren't getting this.

[SurfD]

I did say FINAL boss, meaning Kel'Thuzad, Illidan/Kil'jaeden (take your pick), Arthas. If Cataclysm is starting out this way, I don't think the odds are high that we'll be killing Deathwing, especially given what has happened to people's motivation, we've had several cancellations already and even I am close to doing so myself. And I started out this thread defending everything the way you are.  

I really hope you dont mean 40 Man Kel'Thuzad in there.  Considering that 40 man Naxx was widely considered the pinnacle of nut punchingly hard raid content when it was "current".  Hell, I play on Tichondrious, and when Naxx 40 was current content (ie, the level cap was still 60) I think there was only ONE guild on my server (Horde AND Alliance combined) who actually managed to get to him.  The first Horde side kill for KT didnt actually happen till after the level cap went up, and people could go in at level 62-63 with the little extra HP / Mana buffer to pull them through.   Illidan / Kil'jaden was much the same way.  As current content, I think we had 2, maybe 3 guilds tops on both sides who could successfully clear Sunwell before the next Expantion hit.   Wrath is definately the odd man out, considering that by the end of the expantion, there were probably at least 20 guilds on each faction who could kill LK on normal, and even Pugs who were capable of clearing ICC normal.

[Ingmar]

No, that is my point. Our guild never killed that guy. We did kill Arthas. We like the Wrath model better.

[Rokal]

Dude, pay attention. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. My guild did all that content, they hated the difficulty in this one, and they left. I don't care what it SHOULD be. It's very different because they slammed your dick in a door right off the bat. The first tier content is much harder in Cata and people bailed. It was a stupid thing to do on Blizzard's part.

Honestly, I'm not really understanding how you aren't getting this.

Halfus and Conclave of Wind are 'dick-slamming' hard? Yeah, okay.

Magmaw probably could have been a little easier to get the ball rolling for most guilds, but there are some damn easy fights for your guild to start on.

If your guild did Uldaur and ICC pre-nerfs and had fun, they shouldn't have gripes with the difficult of Cata raid content which is roughly the same. If they did most of that content months later when it had been nerfed, that part hasn't happened yet for Cata but it will eventually. If they had fun with that level of difficult for pre-nerf ICC, but are not enjoying the same exact difficulty for pre-nerf Cata T1, then something has changed in them, not the game. Burn-out.

[sinij]

They should make a series of devastating nerfs until all five man content is utter faceroll.

That doesn't sound especially cool to me either.

They should not only do that with heroic, but also with normal raiding. It all should be complete and utter faceroll. Why? Because most WoW subscribers are not into repeatedly sticking thier dicks into a meatgrinder. Small subset of players that enjoy such experience can suffer in hard-modes. It boggles my mind that I have to repeatedly re-state obvious facts like - DESIGN YOUR FUCKING CONTENT WITH AVERAGE BEAR IN MIND!

Designing PvE encounters to be LOST by MAJORITY of players is beyond stupid regardless how you look at it. You don't get to pick your player base past initial design phase, and you certantly don't try to change couple years after release (seee NGE for more details). If your subscriber base happens to be PEDOPHILES than as a developer you will have to design content that appeals to PEDOPHILES, regardless of how much you personally object to your player base demands. Otherwise you will have no player base left.

[sinij]

Honestly, I'm not really understanding how you aren't getting this.

Blizzard seem to be in the same boat - unable to differentiate between their "should" and average player's "would".

[Paelos]

If your guild did Uldaur and ICC pre-nerfs and had fun, they shouldn't have gripes with the difficult of Cata raid content which is roughly the same. If they did most of that content months later when it had been nerfed, that part hasn't happened yet for Cata but it will eventually. If they had fun with that level of difficult for pre-nerf ICC, but are not enjoying the same exact difficulty for pre-nerf Cata T1, then something has changed in them, not the game. Burn-out.

I give up. You have doused yourself in the Kool-Aid, bud. No amount of numbers or logic or timetables, or lack of pugs, or direct comparisons will sway you from the fact that things are exactly the same as in Wrath and the game is just fine.

Go work for the Blizzard PR department. You have a future trying to bury the truth with "shoulds".