Patch 4.2: Firelands Now Live!

[Nevermore]

I'm withholding judgement until I try the raid for myself, but it will be interesting if it is that easy. I expect the next major content patch is another 5-6 months away. If we kill regular Rag in a month, that's probably it for me until the next expansion. Honestly, this patch needed to come out a month or two ago, and it needed to come with a new 5-man.

The Thrall quest was pretty cheesy, but it was still better than I expected. It would have worked better with goal being something other than "kill elementals till this bar fills", and without other players in your phased instance. It's this highly scripted event and it's made to seem like you are the only one that can help Thrall, but that illusion is shattered pretty quickly when there are 40 other players around you tagging every mob as soon as it spawns. It reminded me of the LOTRO Epic Book quests, which also would have been pretty stupid if they took place in a public instance.

Not much to say about the dailies until people start getting enough tokens for the second quest hub. Thus far the quests have all been "Kill X enemies that pose no threat" or "collect Y". We'll see if there are any innovative quests when we get further in (something like how bombing runs felt when you first did dailies in TBC)

From Iraqi Information Minister to 'I'm quitting until next expansion' in just two short months! 

[Rokal]

I actually really liked the Cataclysm content at launch. The dungeon content was great, the raids were great, I liked most of the class changes. The new 1-60 was nice, not that I really benefited from it much. But man...  you can only go so long without any substantial new content, especially when the level cap had less content than previous expansions. I still think Cataclysm's end-game model is the right model for the game (per my tastes), but the live-update team is either lazy, incompetent, or under-staffed.

We've only heard of content they've cut out, not content they're adding soon. We haven't gotten any good build-up for Deathwing that would make him seem like an enemy worth sticking around to fight. It was basically "he caused a bunch of teraforming omgz" and then straight to "old gods are fucking everything up again". Where is Deathwing holed up? Why are we all doomed if we don't defeat him? It seems like he is satisfied just flying around to random zones killing players.

Instead of getting some peeks at what is around the corner to keep us excited, we get news that another piece of content they announced has been cancelled. When long-awaited content does finally arrive, it's full of enormous speed-bumps meant to spread a week's worth of content into 3 months.

I'm fairly certain the Firelands raid content will be something I enjoy, but I have absolutely no faith that they will start releasing patch content at a reasonable pace after Firelands.

After beating Rag, I can either pay my sub for another year and a half and probably see one more raid cluster and one more set of dungeons, or I can save ~$270 in sub fees and check out a reasonable amount of new content when the next expansion comes out.

[Paelos]

[Rendakor]

Finally got some attempts at Shannox with the guild group tonite; we had him to 18% and wiped. Then the trash repopped and we only got in two more half-assed attempts before raid time was over. They're doubling the respawn time on the trash (4h instead of 2) and nerfing Rapeface in a hotfix tonight, so I'm confident we'll kill him tomorrow.

We were doing the fight totally wrong yesterday with my friend's guild; they were trying to tank swap instead of luring Riplimb into freeze traps.

[Hutch]

They're doubling the respawn time on the trash (4h instead of 2) ... in a hotfix tonight,

Glad to hear it. We made good progress on Shannox last night, but then the trash started to respawn, and we were close enough to our usual end time that we decided to call it. Without the respawn, I think we'd have given it at least another couple tries.

[Rendakor]

Got Shannox after 3 tries tonite. They didn't nerf Rapeface's damage too much, but he no longer stuns.

Working on Beth'tilac now; half an hour left on our raid time so hope we can down her.

Edit: We got Beth on our last attempt, pretty easy fight overall.

[K9]

Second week out and a load of guilds are already at 6/7 heroic?

[Paelos]

Well define "loads"?

Currently 18 guilds are at 6/7H. However, over 1100 guilds have a heroic kill so far.

The way WoWprogress is tracking these kills though, the numbers seem way down so far. The pool of guilds that had a kill on T11 content was roughly 63,000. The pool of guilds with a kill so far in this content is ~18,000.

Compare that to the tracking on WotLK where there were ~88,000 guilds in T9.

[sinij]

So did they made Firelands even harder or is there that fewer guilds trying to raid?

[Paelos]

I would say from what I've seen given the numbers, the sample size is smaller and more dedicated. That makes it more difficult to speculate is the content is "harder" other than the fact that that several guilds are already blasting apart heroic content.

I think the thing to take away from the analysis is that the content is most likely easier to those who are still playing it, but could possibly still be considered punative to those who already left. There are without a doubt fewer guilds successfully dabbling in the 4.2 raiding content. Almost 80% less than WotLK.

[Amaron]

I'm curious how the hard mode difficulty compares?  Sounds like it's easier than WotLK hard modes.   Of course with the crappy lockout system hard modes use I'm not sure it matters.

[sinij]

There are without a doubt fewer guilds successfully dabbling in the 4.2 raiding content. Almost 80% less than WotLK.

Why are we not seeing 80% less subscriptions? What are those players doing if not raiding as part of the guild?

Is BG participation up? What about Arena?

[Amaron]

There are without a doubt fewer guilds successfully dabbling in the 4.2 raiding content. Almost 80% less than WotLK.

Why are we not seeing 80% less subscriptions? What are those players doing if not raiding as part of the guild?

I think people forget that not all WoW subscriptions are equal for starters.    Blizzard is better than other companies but there's no way ALL their asian subscriptions can be considered "active" or whatever you want to call it.   Beyond that though there just aren't that many people who raid.   That was what the big stink over Cata heroics was about.     They basically screwed up the portion of the game that people actually PLAY.

[WindupAtheist]

Why are we not seeing 80% less subscriptions?

Because 100% of players aren't raiders? Ones so dedicated they'll quit rather than do something else? 

[Paelos]

I think the reality is that the players may actually be doing the older content if they haven't left yet. That, or they're pvping and doing achievements.

Example: Here's a guild 10 man that just got 10/12 on T11 in a week.

[Rendakor]

So there really ARE guilds that don't mind doing the older content now that it's nerfed!? 

I think the reason people are blowing through FL quickly is that it's the smallest unrestricted raid tier they've released in a while. Naxx and Ulduar both had more bosses, ToC was only 5 bosses but when it launched only the first one was accessible with a new one coming each week, so it took more than a month for people to even clear it. ICC they did something similar, where each wing took a few weeks to unlock. While FL is longer than any of the three intro Cata raids, there were three of them so it took longer for people to clear all the current content.

[Paelos]

So there really ARE guilds that don't mind doing the older content now that it's nerfed!? 

Indeed there are. I'm not really shocked by it. If I was still playing that's what I would try to do. I'd think, hey maybe if we get my group semi-coordinated on this shit, we might be ok!

In the case of the guild I linked, that was started by 2 dudes who were 7/13H on the Tier 11 content as of May. Their guild probably blew up and he started over with the patch. Now they are recruiting a few noobs, gearing them up, and are going in whole hog.

Another example guild called "Pixels in Motion". They have blown through 12/12 of the T11 content in a week. That one was created by a Hunter who left a 4/13H guild and started recruiting again. I think you'll find that most of these new raids doing the old content are actually previous raiders who are reloading guilds with non-raiders and gearing them up.

[Rokal]

The raid was released a couple days before July 4th weekend, and it's summer in general. My guild didn't start making serious attempts at bosses until last Sunday, at which point we picked up 3 kills in one night. Long Story short: expect the kill rate to increase pretty fast if the low kills were due to irl summer events like was the case in my guild.

Edit: Part of me is glad this raid tier is short and that normal mode doesn't have any lame cock-blocks (heroic is another matter apparently). We still have a smaller and less stable raid roster than usual due to the season. I'd have loved to get a heads up that the next larger raid cluster was in September or October though, when schedules were more consistent and the raid length would be a blessing more than a curse, but I don't see that happening.

[Paelos]

The raid was released a couple days before July 4th weekend, and it's summer in general. My guild didn't start making serious attempts at bosses until last Sunday, at which point we picked up 3 kills in one night. Long Story short: expect the kill rate to increase pretty fast if the low kills were due to irl summer events like was the case in my guild.

I will be keeping my eye on the headway made by the new guilds that reformed to see if we get more into the new content on a week to week basis.

[Ingmar]

We would certainly be doing the older content if we had the numbers, we're still down a bit. Our GM is so inactive I might have to take it back over. 

[apocrypha]

And 4.2 is the patch that's killed any desire I had to play.

Wasn't expecting it. I was really busy the week it hit the servers and didn't have time to play much. Logged on a few days afterwards, started the questlines on my "main" character and after 3-4 days of halfhearted dailies and a couple of failed guild attempts to get a single Firelands boss down I suddenly find I have no desire to log in again.

I mean, daily quest grinding? Again? Really? Thrall's in mortal peril, guardians of hyjal oooh arrgh help help etc, and you want me to kick some turtles into a lake and gather up a bunch of owls? Really? Bugger the fuck off.

[Lantyssa]

Welcome to the Dark Side, my young apprentice.

[Zetor]

Daily quests as implemented by most games atm need to die in a fire -- a very boring fire. Tedious crap taking up ~15-30 mins of precious daily playtime (often with additional downtime built in), presenting zero challenge... just so you could grind faction_x, or - even better - unlock another set of grindy daily quests? Fuck that noise. It was even worse in wotlk when you needed to grind hodir faction just to get shoulder enchants... on each char. /angryface

(this goes for a lot of non-wow games as well... rift is the most recent offender)

[luckton]

Well what exactly do you want them do to for the casual/single-player crowd, or for the raiders during times they don't raid?  Dailies, if anything, are still a huge improvement over previous MMO end-games which consisted of A) Raiding for hours B) PvP or C) F*ck off.

Sure, they can get tedious, but you can't knock 'em for at least trying to please everybody.

[Zetor]

I am one of those 'casual/single-player' people: I don't raid on any chars - other than very rare pugs - and don't have arena teams. I just do DF dungeons and random BGs in my WOWtime. If I get bored of that, I play an alt. If I get bored of my alts, I turn off my sub until the next expansion or major content patch.

Of course a lot of people do dailies in WOW (otherwise the game wouldn't have such a proliferation of them :p), but I still can't imagine where the 'fun' is in doing them, other than maybe some minigame-based dailies that become routine after the ~5th time or so. No real challenge and they're the exact same every time. Rift tries to 'mix this up' by randomizing which dailies from the hub are available every day, but the base problem is still there. Btw, mandatory dailies (HI HODIR!) can fuck right off.

You can do dailies 'right' -- in Guild Wars you get daily quests that are bounties for certain zones/missions. You may explore/finish these missions during your normal pay, and the daily quest just adds on a bit of extra reward (and/or an extra boss spawn) on top. I don't have a problem with daily skirmishes (lotro) or daily dungeon finder bonuses (wow, rift) either... those are a lot more varied and challenging than 'go here, click this, kill trivial mob, repeat 9 times'.

[Paelos]

I want more random quest generators for daily quests. Not the same old shit over and over again.

[caladein]

First of all, that turtle punting quest is awesome.

Secondly, I don't have a big problem with daily quests.  In some part because I don't actually do them all that often, but also because what they replaced was many times worse.  As a continuation of the solo leveling-up experience, they actually seem quite sensible in WoW.  LotRO tasks' are pretty shoddy, but they have solo content with skirmishes (which are really fun).

[apocrypha]

Well what exactly do you want them do to for the casual/single-player crowd, or for the raiders during times they don't raid? 

More 5-mans.

First of all, that turtle punting quest is awesome.

Once.

[luckton]

I can only see solo/skirmish content coming to WoW in a post TOR world.  A shame, as something like that 'would' give people much needed variety/challenge and give some more retention before everyone flies off to a galaxy far, far away.

Going back to current dailies, I admit I haven't played WoW since Feb. (just got back in this week out of Rift boredom), but at the time the dailies did give me a set list of things to do with my time in a set schedule.  They should improve upon the current system as it is, not just rip it out and replace it with something else.  More varied quests, different destinations or goals, etc.  Maybe even have a 'faction of the week' thing where all dailies done for that faction get bonus rep/monies/etc.

You can't expect though to have dailies be on something of the same level as raids.  There's single-player games for that.
 

More 5-mans.

I'm sure the refreshed AQ 20/40 dungeons will be in 4.3 

[caladein]

Well what exactly do you want them do to for the casual/single-player crowd, or for the raiders during times they don't raid? 

More 5-mans.

But that's taking one type of content and getting its development time stripped for another.  WoW's always had (PvE) stuff for solo players, stuff for pick-up small groups, and stuff for large organized groups.

Take out dailiy quests as a major thing and you've left that set with alts and grinding for rares.  (I'm intentionally ignoring ye olde style rep grinds as a possibility because those were dreadful.)

[Amaron]

Dailies are supposed to be for people who want solo content.    They keep fucking that up though by tying them into important faction grinds.   They'll probably have to implement some sort of per faction weekly cap to solve that though.   Then the raiders can just raid to get their weekly faction.

[apocrypha]

I don't mind if they have daily quests. I don't want them to take them out. I just want alternatives to them in order to advance my character. Cataclysm desperately needs more 5-mans, and not recycled stuff and not ones that take more than an hour to do either.

Bored of the 2 troll dungeons. There's 2 of them. Bored of the pre-4.2 dungeons, they're 8 months old. I raid twice a week with my guild and have no inclination to log on at any other time.

[Rokal]

First of all, that turtle punting quest is awesome.

Seconded. That was the only Hyjal daily quest I enjoyed doing.

I think a new 5-man (or 2!) would have been a better use of everyone's time than the Hyjal dailies, but there are some players that don't do 5-mans either, and Hyjal dailies gives them something to do.

[Sheepherder]

Well what exactly do you want them do to for the casual/single-player crowd, or for the raiders during times they don't raid?

Give them the money they'd normally get for doing dailies when they go quest on an alt.  It increases the person's investment in the game by giving them another high level character, gives them an alternative to eating a nerfbat and ragequitting, and gives them a variety of quests to do.

[Simond]

And 4.2 is the patch that's killed any desire I had to play.

Wasn't expecting it. I was really busy the week it hit the servers and didn't have time to play much. Logged on a few days afterwards, started the questlines on my "main" character and after 3-4 days of halfhearted dailies and a couple of failed guild attempts to get a single Firelands boss down I suddenly find I have no desire to log in again.

I mean, daily quest grinding? Again? Really? Thrall's in mortal peril, guardians of hyjal oooh arrgh help help etc, and you want me to kick some turtles into a lake and gather up a bunch of owls? Really? Bugger the fuck off.

You take that back. Mylune quests are the best quests.