Cataclysm

[Maledict]

Um, not really. Counting the patches doesn't really work for TBC due to the way the content was released.

See that's not true. Content in the game means content that was previously worked on and dubbed at least partially if not fully ready for the population. Did it work due to the attunements? No, but as far as development time goes, it was basically done. They didn't have to patch it in. It shipped with the game. It wasn't being "worked on" like Firelands or Black Temple.

That's all I care about when comparing apples to apples. "Tiers" are only important to raiders and how much content they use. I could care less about that metric. What I'm looking at is if Blizzard is slipping on their development cycles and when they are releasing content (which I believe they are) and how that plays into their future plans to release content.

I don't think you understand. Hyjal was not actually *in* the game - whilst the patch had BT in it, it also unlocked a working Hyjal. so that tier defiinitely had 14 bosses in it not 9. Hyjal was basically half a zone, and that's it - they ahd to alter the geometry and everything went it went live, it wasn't just a switch they were flipping to put it on. Also, SSC and TK required substantial work on them to get them functional - it wasn;t a case of changing attunements, the boss fights went massive changes following launch to make them work. (e.g. Morogrim used to have different waves of adds including water elementals, Kael'Thas bosses used to have random abilities very different to what they now have etc.)

Tiers weren't invented by raiders. It's something Blizzard have been using since the original game - they were the ones who spoke of AQ40 as being "half a tier above BWL". Arguing that we should be using a different term for tiers based on some arcane knowledge of what Blizzard does and doesn't have prepared doesn't make much sense - ultimately, as a consumer and customer, 7 bosses in one tier, in the first major patch more than 6 months since launch, is pretty crappy.

[Paelos]

Dude, I've played since release. I know what was and wasn't playable. That's not what we are measuring here. I'm measuring time and releases, and what was in those releases.

You can make the argument that Hyjal was part of it, you can also make the argument against it. I don't really want to engage in the debate over that, so we'll just say it's 14. It helps my point anyway. The bottom line is that we're seeing a content release fuckup from a company as they've gotten more successful, when you'd expect them to be overloading the players with options due to their available funds. We can both agree that 7 bosses in one tier is insulting compared to their past history.

It's another nail in the coffin for detractors and it's getting harder for the defenders to tow the company line. Hell, even Rokal is voicing dissatisfaction at this point. They are losing the playerbase, and they simply don't seem to get it or care.

[Maledict]

Heh, why are we arguing then if we're coming from the same line? :)

And yes, there's huge and widespread dissatisfaction. I stoped raiding (and playing) last month, and when I left the majority of my guild quit the game as well. I don't agree with the reasons people in this thread often ascribe to WoW's decline (ghostcrawler, difficulty etc), but one way or the other WoW is clearly on a downhill slope now.

[Ashamanchill]

If Sinijed and WUA, Maledict and Paelos are all agreeing that this game is falling apart, then it's in the hurt locker.

[Ingmar]

Every time we've had a "small" content tier raid-wise - SWP, ToC, Firelands - it has been accompanied by a new quest hub. This one looks like it is much more extensive than ToC's for sure, and probably bigger/more complicated than Isle of Quel'danas as well, so there's that at least.

[Rokal]

Dude, I've played since release. I know what was and wasn't playable. That's not what we are measuring here. I'm measuring time and releases, and what was in those releases.

The data files were in for SSC/TK/Hyjal, but the raids were by no means complete. It would be like Blizzard declaring that Firelands was live now because you could technically access the area in the game and there were things there to fight, but it required killing Sinestra and they weren't going to bother to patch the fight until they finished tuning Firelands fight. Most of the data files are done, it would be an easy change to make the zone accessible. 'Launching' the content when it's not ready and then gating it behind something broken is dishonest, and I'm glad they moved away from it even if it means that content gets 'released' slower, in this case. I want them to release Firelands soon, but I'm glad they didn't patch it into the game 2 months ago in a broken state gated behind a broken boss and say "look Rifters, Firelands is in the game!"

It sounds like the invested a bunch of effort into this elaborate Hyjal daily system, so maybe that minimized the dev resources they were going to throw at Firelands (though, frankly there could have been a ton of overlap on assets from teams where it mattered (like art), so that would be a pretty shitty excuse). Or, yeah, maybe they really do just have less people working on WoW now than they did back in the Vanilla/TBC days.They are wondering why the Hyjal dailies aren't generating buzz, it's because people aren't ever going to get excited about a blatant rep-grind where you complete the same series of 5 quests every day for 2 months and then get a mount.

Every time we've had a "small" content tier raid-wise - SWP, ToC, Firelands - it has been accompanied by a new quest hub. This one looks like it is much more extensive than ToC's for sure, and probably bigger/more complicated than Isle of Quel'danas as well, so there's that at least.

ToC daily hub (the first version anyway) was included with the Ulduar patch iirc.

[Rokal]

The CMs are claiming that the quality of these fights are much higher than previous large raid tiers. If they somehow manage to make 7 fights are all as fun and fresh feeling as Atramedes, instead of giving us slight variations on boss mechanics we've already seen before, maybe the reaction to Firelands when it goes live will not be disappointment and a deflating raid scene. I really have my doubts about them managing to make 7 fights that are that good though. They've never done it before and there are plenty of fights in the current raid cluster (Maloriak, Nefarian, Elementium, V&T, etc.) that are fairly average, and would be disappointing if they were one of only seven fights in the raid cluster.

As for the new daily quest hub: part of the appeal of dailies back during TBC was that people finally had a way to get gold that wasn't a) leveling a new character, b) farming mobs with good loot tables mindlessly, or c) buying gold. Flying mounts were also very expensive, and getting epic flight speed on all of your characters gave you a pretty deep money pit that still felt rewarding. Aside from re-forging, Blizzard doesn't really have any good gold sinks in the game at this point in its lifespan. That's a large part of the old appeal of daily quest hubs removed, which leaves only loot rewards to entice people to run them. It's just not going to be enough for me to do these quest hubs every day for such a long amount of time. I don't want another cosmetic mount that bad, especially when Blizzard still hasn't managed to make achievements account-wide. Some of the meta-game stuff that I otherwise would probably really be into (collecting all the mounts, tabards, pets, doing all the holiday events) lose all of their appeal because I already did a lot of that shit on an older character that I am not really playing this expansion. Any appeal in working on those achievements on the character that I am playing for this expansion also vanishes when I realize all that progress will be lost if I decide that next expansion I want to play a different class instead, etc.

At this point there is no turning back, and we're only getting one raid in 4.2. I think they could probably fix this, if they really wanted to (which it sounds like they don't even think they need to do), by handling itemization well and releasing a smaller companion raid with maybe 4 bosses not too long after Firelands.

Firelands normal mode should drop gear that is slightly worse than BWD/BoT/To4W Heroic mode, and should be tuned around everyone wearing 359 (BWD/BoT/To4W normal mode or Hyjal daily questing) gear.

Something like:
BWD/BoT/To4W Normal - 359
Firelands Normal - 368
BWD/BoT/To4W Heroic - 372
Firelands Heroic - 381

This way if your guild was not capable of getting very far in BWD/BoT/To4W Heroics, you'll have more content to do after you've finished Normal Firelands, and those heroics will be a little easier this time around since you're wearing 368 gear instead of 359 gear. This doesn't really help the guilds that are 13/13 right now, but it'll give the rest of us some more content worth doing and maybe will make up for the fact that we didn't have the right class composition or weren't good enough to do it in 359 gear.

Additionally, they could keep Firelands loot table slim, so that you got your 5 piece set bonus and weapons, but didn't get upgrades for jewelry/boots/trinkets there. This has the added benefit of keeping the loot tables of Firelands smaller so that there would be less RNG angst (especially in 10-man guilds) compared to if you tried to fit an entire cluster worth of gear onto 7 bosses. Then, if they release a smaller companion raid a few months after Firelands that had jewelry/boots/trinkets, people would have more bosses to run and reasons to kill those bosses without that companion raid needing to be large enough to also include an entire tier worth of gear.

Imagine if ToC had managed to not suck, but was also a companion to Ulduar rather than a total replacement.

To summarize: if Blizzard doesn't fuck up itemization like they usually do, the smaller size of Firelands could work if they kept the raid that followed it small and didn't try to treat it like a total replacement for Firelands. Knowing how they usually do itemization, they will probably have 16+ different items that drop from each boss in Firelands and when you finally do beat the RNG game and win your shiny weapon after you have been farming Rag for 5 months, it'll be replaced the next week by one of the first drops your guild will see in the next raid zone. Oh, and 40% of your guild also quit because Firelands and its 7 bosses was the only raid content worth doing for 7 months.

[Maledict]

I can guarantee the loot will be the usual full tier ahead - normal Firelands loot will handily eclipse heroic BWD etc loot.

To be honest, I'm not sure what raiding game is *left*. My server now only has one steady 25 player raiding guild - *one*. We used to have 10+, plus all the smaller guilds doing 25 player stuff slowly. The raiding scene has disintegrated at an incredibly fast rate, for a variety of reasons I guess.

It will be interesting to see what they do over the next 6 months. I hate to rely on anecdotes, but everything I am seeing now over the last 2 months has shown the game crash massively in terms of player numbers and commitment. Heck, even I've quit.

[Tannhauser]

Well, I think Blizzards needs to...wait, I'm not in the 1% hardcore raiding population, Blizzard doesn't give a flying fuck what I think.

If they did, they should include an achievement that you gain the first time you log into the Cataclysm expansion.  Let's call it "Jumped the Shark"

[caladein]

Normal Firelands gear is within a level of Sinestra gear so one-half tier above current heroic gear.

As for the raid population, my server's always been a bit of a backwater but we definitely have a lot fewer 25m raiding guilds.  That said, a lot of guilds that were previously doing 25m, including mine, have been doing multiple 10m teams.

[Rokal]

Some of the Firelands loot was already datamined, so this is definitely the case. Even if you are in a 13/13 guild, you will be replacing your current gear with Firelands normal mode gear. Blizzard has an opportunity to keep older content viable for longer, without having the negative effect of making people run older content to catch up, but they're probably going to push ahead and itemize loot the same way they always itemize loot. Chances are we'll see another raid 6 months+ after Firelands, not 3 or 4 months, and it will replace all your Firelands gear regardless of its size. This isn't going to kill the game or my guild (hell, if the game can survive over a year of ICC, it can survive anything), but it's definitely the first thing about Cata that feels like a blatant mistake to me (except Archaeology, which proved you can still make a shittier profession than fishing in 2010 with hundreds of millions of dollars in dev funding).

[Selby]

You know... nothing has really changed on my server.  There are a few less guilds in the higher rankings, but there is still plenty of 25m action.  The big names that have always been there are still there and still progressing.  We just started doing 25m last week and are actually 1-shot'ing most of the content (if the weather would cooperate more...).  And my guild is one of the few, the proud, the 12/12 =P

[Nevermore]

Behold! It's the T12s!

I'll call this one...  the Fire Gimp!


And Hunters are.. er?  Pirate Fire Trees?  With built-in eye patch!  And helmets with their own earrings? 

[Sjofn]

The hunter is just wearing someone's head for a hat again, something they apparently love to do. Is there a giant basically-an-imp boss? That's probably his head.

I actually kinda like the paladin one. It's not nearly as LOLGIMP as that one rogue set. I always turn hats off anyway. 

[SurfD]

Pretty sure the hunter one is patterned off the Fire naga people (those snakey boss guys in Molten core).

[Simond]

The word everyone is desperately reaching for is 'salamander', by the way. 

[Lantyssa]

The boots are trying to invoke the imagery of hooves, so I'd say a demon of some sort.

[Miasma]

Why is the tier12 paladin wearing cloth?

[Nightblade]

Why does everything have to be on fire? For fuck's sake...

[Fordel]

The Paladin suit isn't spectacular, but it isn't horrible either.

[Merusk]

Why does everything have to be on fire? For fuck's sake...

If it's not, how will you ever know it came from the plane of fire? 

[Rendakor]

It's a decent set for a Mage or a Lock, but a hood and a dress don't fit most definitions of Plate armor.

[Simond]

It's a decent set for a Mage or a Lock, but a hood and a dress don't fit most definitions of Plate armor.

[Merusk]

Yeah that was my thought when I first started seeing people tease about it.  T2 is widely regarded as the best and most iconic Pally armor, ever.  It appears they're trying to evoke that feeling out of the T12 set.

The priest set is almost lolbad. I don't know why they keep on with this neckbrace theme.

the DK set is the first disappointing one I've seen for that class. The body armor is pretty cool, as is the blue fire, but the wings on the helmet make me wonder if they get the power of flight now. 

[Sjofn]

The boots are trying to invoke the imagery of hooves, so I'd say a demon of some sort.

That's why I was going with "imp," they have big gaudy earrings in their ears like that helmet, too.

[Rokal]

It looks like the hunter set is modeled after this boss:

http://us.media3.battle.net/cms/gallery/H6E6E0DIZSB51304012895433.jpg

Who is apparently a hunter. Not sure about the random earrings though. I like how the rogue and mage sets turned out.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I like the rogue one, one day I will totally buy it for my pretty blood elf boy.

[Mattemeo]

T12...

Because Blizzard want you to raid seriously in clown shoes.

...on fire.

[Sjofn]

In case anyone cares and/or didn't know, there are new pets available for the Orgrimmar/Stormwind and TBC Children's Week quests. TBC added Legs the teeny fen strider and the other ones added Scooter the Snail.

[Setanta]

Got them both on my Shammy last night. Did Dalaran end up having a children's week? I think I got one of the pets there during WotLK

[Sjofn]

Yeah, there's a quest there, too. Got a little oracle orphan for my BE paladin. 

[Merusk]

Got them both on my Shammy last night. Did Dalaran end up having a children's week? I think I got one of the pets there during WotLK

It had it last year, too, it just was in the entirely wrong week.  They patched it in sometime in June, I believe.  It was when everyone was running around with the little oracles and wolvars.

I'm weak and resubbed for Noblegarden and Children's week.  I've already cancelled again, but goddamnit I was only 3 holidays away (noble, Children's and Fire Festival) on 3 different characters.  I'd have been more pissed if I went back later and didn't have the mount and free epic flying.

[Mattemeo]

I'd like to get the Purple 310% speed Drake, but I really do not know how Blizzard expects my L80 Shadow Priest to complete School of Hard Knocks. It was completely unreasonable back when the level cap was 80, now it's just nutty foo foo retarded, the gear levels are so far and beyond anything I own I simply don't stand a chance unless I luck out and find people willing to cooperate. Hahaha.

[Merusk]

You have to be persistant and sneaky.  I did all of them on my L85 Alliance priest yesterday and her gear level is only 341ish. 

AV was one of the easiest.  I  just ran up pointing to my orphan and the Horde let me cap the tower, then I left and they recapped it again.   I then went and returned the favor at one of our towers by doing the same thing. (running up, pointing at their orpahn. They got the picture pretty quick.)

AB is also pretty easy.  Run straight for stables out of the gate and click like mad.  If you miss that, then just run from node to node and hit the flag instead of the players. This is even easier if you're Ally because they regularly fail to not only fight on the flag but remember the flag is the reason you're there, so you're often the only one clicking.

WSG is the hardest, because it's so short.  Sometimes you'll get a reasonable team who'll see you there with the orphan, pick up and drop the flag in the room and let you return it.  Other times they're just assholes and kill you because they know you're free honor.  I just play the BG normally after the first flag grab by always going after the carrier, then clicking like mad when his health is low.

EOTS was a bitch because it was EOTS weekend and all the hardcore PVPers were in there doing nothing but bitching as everyone camped the middle.  If you get a decent teaor try earlier in the day, it's pretty easy going.  Evenings and prime time are pure suck, though. =\

[Azuredream]

I haven't played since month one of Cataclysm but what is so hard about that achievement? All four of those things happen with great regularity, you just have to be the one to do it. I usually PvP a fair bit and have good gear though, I suppose.