Mists of Pandaria

[luckton]

Getting closer to release. 5.0.1 is about to hit the PTR 'soon'.

We will soon begin public testing of patch 5.0.1 of World of Warcraft, a patch that will precede the Mists of Pandaria release, and includes many features and functions that are new to the game.

We encourage all players who wish to test patch 5.0.1 with us to take careful note of the following:

It will not be possible to access the 5.0.1 PTR realms with a game account that accesses the Mists of Pandaria Beta.
If a game account has been flagged with a Mists of Pandaria Beta license, it can only be used to enter Beta realms.
This limitation is on each World of Warcraft license, and is not Battle.net account-based.
While testing 5.0.1, players will not be able to access zones or content that is a part of the Mists of Pandaria expansion.
Thank you for your continued support of our testing and tuning process. We look forward to seeing you in-game.

So for you non-beta and/or rich multi-boxers, you can play around with the new stuff pretty soon.

[Hutch]

Another item in the "Just in time for MoP" folder:

Get Vanilla through Cata for $30

That's the Battle Chest (Vanilla + BC) for $10, LK for $10, and Cata for $10.

[Merusk]

I should really play the MoP beta a bit more.. but I just can't ever bring myself to waste lots of time spoiling content and wasting time that could be spent getting more money and mats for the next alt.

Still, from the little time I've spent I'll say the class changes were by and large positive.  I'm even OK with Paladins losing their auras, because I realized I never swapped out of the one I picked other than to ride faster.

[Simond]

I don't know who Draztal is, but I like him already: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/228883-we-consume-content-too-fast/

[Paelos]

Give that dude a raise and kalgans job, stat.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, that's some high class response, right there.

The way he deals with the 'But They're Getting Epics They Don't Deserve' prick is classy.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This is a videogame, not a job.

Should be on the login screen every single time.

[Ironwood]

I mean, anyone can play basketball, yet I know that the only thing in common I have with Michael Jordan when it comes to basketball skills is that he's also a human being.

...

Yeah, who is this guy and who do I make the Cheque out to ?

[Merusk]

He'll be fired within a month after finally flipping out.

Still, good luck trying to explain how invalid and pointless those arguments are to people who have nothing else in life and are clinging desperately to game achieves as validation of a life otherwise wasted.

[Fabricated]

I dunno if it's a good sign or not but you don't see much of that kind of posting anymore on the official US forums.

I am however frustrated I can't post on the EU forums and earn my permaban from posting on Blizz's boards by telling those people to kill themselves.

[Fabricated]

I make the case that permabanning all of the posters in that topic would dramatically increase the quality of the game.

[Rokal]

I dunno if it's a good sign or not but you don't see much of that kind of posting anymore on the official US forums.

Funny you should say that. When reading the CM responses it felt like a series of CM posts we'd already seen on the NA forums. I hesitate to give Draztal much credit because it seems, as usual for the CMs (but especially the non-NA CMs), like he/she was just regurgitating corporate-approved responses.

[Fabricated]

Well, that's all CMs really to be honest. Anyone who really broke that mold tended to go crazy and quit.

[Hawkbit]

As someone who spent entirely too much time in customer service/community management, one must either learn to hate everything or simply not give a shit.  To care about the job and be positive will lead to certain destruction.

[tmp]

Another item in the "Just in time for MoP" folder:

Get Vanilla through Cata for $30

That's the Battle Chest (Vanilla + BC) for $10, LK for $10, and Cata for $10.

Was that some limited time offer? Because when i click on this link now, it says "$20 for battle chest", "$20 for LK" and "$40 for Cataclysm" for a nice $80 total, minus $0.03

[Trippy]

Yes, it expired yesterday.

[Merusk]

Dratzal continuing to be awesome.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4879017939?page=59#1168

Posted by Avalanch
Sometimes players shouldn't be able to get the BiS gear and they shouldn't complain about it, since only a few people with decent/high skill should be able to.

Why? I mean, why with objective reasons. Not because some people need to be able to brag about the awesome gear they have that noone else can but dream of acquiring.

like the example someone gave and you decided to ignore

'We don't ask rooney, messi,... to play worse, so mike from next door can come play in the WC football'.

I ignored it because it's twisting my example just to try to make it sound unfair. Read my wording on that post. Would you enjoy being told that you can't play football because you can't perform at the level those football players do? Probably not.

The comparison to your example in WoW terms would be asking Paragon to play worse so that Mike can join their guild, which is not what I suggested. Not. even. close.

The whiners in that thread would have loved EQ.  The arguments about 'wasted development resouces' on old content are rehases of arguments 5-7 years old now.

[Paelos]

It's not really shocking that they feel that way. Cataclysm was probably the bees knees to those people before they started to nerf it back to the stone age and put in LFR.

Then again, the whiners are the "wanna-be" raiders. The guy who bring up Messi, Rooney, etc is hilarious because he could never compete at the level he's purporting. He didn't clear any of the heroic content in any of the original raids released with Cataclysm. In fact, the only heroic content he's done if the watered-down version of Dragon Soult in mid-May, 6 months after it's release.

[Rokal]

It's not really shocking that they feel that way. Cataclysm was probably the bees knees to those people before they started to nerf it back to the stone age and put in LFR.

I don't think it's quite that easy. There are complaints about "bad players seeing all raid content" and then there are complaints about "content being disposable". The later is, iirc, the origin of the conversation with Dratzal on the EU forums, the former is what it turned into.

I agree that disposable content isn't best for the game. My guild is now inactive, but one of the last fun things we did was some Cata launch 5-man heroics to get achievements and guild rep for someone that wanted heirloom gear for MoP. The challenge had mostly been removed from the 5-mans since we were doing it on overgeared characters, but it was still really refreshing to do something besides DS or the 3 4.3 dungeons. I think it sucks that, as soon as a new content patch arrives, everything before it becomes completely useless. Running the same narrow slice of content for 5-6 months isn't something to cheer about. I know my guild probably would have gotten tired of DS a little less quickly if we had a real reason to run other raids and got to experience some variety.

I think it's pretty clear that we can't go back to the linear gear progression from TBC because the barrier to catch up was simply too high and led to a lot of 'stepping-stone' guilds. I do think there is a happy medium to be reached somewhere. Bringing back weekly quests for older raids that all players would have a reason to run, similar to what Rift does, would be a good place to start.

[Merusk]

It's not really shocking that they feel that way. Cataclysm was probably the bees knees to those people before they started to nerf it back to the stone age and put in LFR.

Then again, the whiners are the "wanna-be" raiders. The guy who bring up Messi, Rooney, etc is hilarious because he could never compete at the level he's purporting. He didn't clear any of the heroic content in any of the original raids released with Cataclysm. In fact, the only heroic content he's done if the watered-down version of Dragon Soult in mid-May, 6 months after it's release.

Shit.. you should post to the forum and point that out.  I hadn't even thought to check the armory of these whining faux-hardcore 'raiders.'

[SurfD]

It's not really shocking that they feel that way. Cataclysm was probably the bees knees to those people before they started to nerf it back to the stone age and put in LFR.

Then again, the whiners are the "wanna-be" raiders. The guy who bring up Messi, Rooney, etc is hilarious because he could never compete at the level he's purporting. He didn't clear any of the heroic content in any of the original raids released with Cataclysm. In fact, the only heroic content he's done if the watered-down version of Dragon Soult in mid-May, 6 months after it's release.

Shit.. you should post to the forum and point that out.  I hadn't even thought to check the armory of these whining faux-hardcore 'raiders.'

That is generally treated as a form of "naming and shameing" on the official boards, which is usually frowned upon (regardless of how much the wanna be hardcore asshat deserves it)

[Pennilenko]

Besides you never know if that's an alt or something he just happens to have selected on his armory drop down, any one of those people could have other characters that consumed every ounce of hard content there was. Naming and shaming with could end up making you look like a giant ass if he pulls out a hard core alt.

[Simond]

That is generally treated as a form of "naming and shameing" on the official boards, which is usually frowned upon (regardless of how much the wanna be hardcore asshat deserves it)

Which, of course, only matters if you care about what the official board denizens think about you. 

[luckton]

Besides you never know if that's an alt or something he just happens to have selected on his armory drop down, any one of those people could have other characters that consumed every ounce of hard content there was. Naming and shaming with could end up making you look like a giant ass if he pulls out a hard core alt.

All fine and dandy until MoP and account-wide achievements go live.  THEN THERE WILL BE NO PLACE TO HIDE YOUR SHAME!   

[Merusk]

Won't even take MoP, it'll take the 5.0 patch which is much closer.

Oh no.. whining dorks on Blizzard forums will think I'm a dick when I point out the chief whining dick is angry because his terrible performance in a video game was exposed to all.  Man, I bet that will reflect badly on my next performance and salary review. 

[Paelos]

Besides you never know if that's an alt or something he just happens to have selected on his armory drop down, any one of those people could have other characters that consumed every ounce of hard content there was. Naming and shaming with could end up making you look like a giant ass if he pulls out a hard core alt.

I drew 5 posters at random from the thread.


1- OP - He's done all the heroic content. BUT WAIT! He didn't kill heroic Nefarian until 4/29/12. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure those kills happened for the REAL raiding guilds a year prior. In fact, he went back and killed Nefarian after he'd killed heroic Deathwing.

2- Random Poster on Page 3 (Saphiramoon) - "Ppl made pugs since the dawn of time on wow, be them 5 mans mostly in older expansions and starting with more and more raids. It is a system that works and it doesn't force blizzard to nerf content to be accessible via any combination of bad players."

She must not be referring to the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Nefarian on 4/26/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Al'Akir on 4/19/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill heroic Deathwing on 4/1/12.

3- Random on page 10 (Darkangle) - "You effectively took all the challenge out of the game, leaving a game without reason to log. You're welcome to look at my user account history to see my activity since this game went live...No challenges left"

Oh really? According to your records, you've never even killed Heroic Ragnaros? Maybe you were just taking your time? Oh and heroic Nefarian is missing. Hmmm. Perhaps they aren't nerfed enough yet?

4- Random on page 19 (Zhizz) - "Therefore you should at least acknowledge that players that actually killed the bosses when they were actually hard with something special. If you do the the same kind of nerfs/buffs in the future as with the Power of the Aspects - you should at least reward people for actualy completing the instance without the buff."

Intersting. Because you're posting on your LFR alt. At least I hope that's your alt. Oh and your guild has never completed a damn thing in heroic. Congrats on your normal kills without buffs.

5- Random on page 34 (Arad) - This dude has has a heroic kill within the top world 200 of Ragnaros, top 500 of Madness. I'd probably qualify him as one of the actual hardcore posters. Imagine my surprise (or lack thereof) when he chastises the other whiners.

First off, to all those of you thinking you speak for the top raiding guilds when you cry to have TBC or Vanilla return, I need you to realize something. You don't. I've been in a few, I know people from quite a few more, and very few of the top20 or better raiding guild players ever want to return to Vanilla/TBC.

So why is that? Well, let's break it down.

Content is better now.

Vanilla had a lot of really bad raiding content. There's hardly any bosses which ever come up when discussing good content design. It's just a handful of annoying bosses which are remembered.

TBC you never hear any mention of any fight outside of the last 2 of SWP. Oh and maybe Vashj, but she wasn't exactly hard because of good design. Fun fact, most weak Cataclysm HC raid bosses could be placed in SWP and people have praised them to the high heavens. Same goes for WotLK.

I think Ulduar is one of the most beloved instances among HC raiders atm. It not only contained some of the best designed bosses (Firefighter is one that I know many healers greatly enjoyed, myself included), but it had a good overall design and it showed us a promising feature. Quite a few also name ICC as their favourite, and this is heavily driven by LK HC being a very good encounter.

Cataclysm certainly has had it's ups and downs, but it's also produced a lot of very good fights. Not every fight is naturally tuned to "our" level, but the concepts of many of them were interesting to see, and a lot of top raiders appreciate that effort, even if they realize not all bosses can be aimed at them alone. In general, I think Firelands was the standout tier of content for this expansion, and I expect most would agree on this. The difficulty progression could have been better, but Ragnaros 25 HC is one of the best encounters ever designed, and certainly regarded as the hardest ever designed, by some margin. DS was a bit of a weak note to end everything on, mainly since the two-part Deathwing fight wasn't particularly great, just a class stack fight with some RNG(not much, but still) followed by a pushover boss.

Overall though, there's more good raiding content for top tier guilds in Cata and WotLK than there was in TBC or Vanilla.

Balancing is better now.

I'm not sure I even needed to say this, but there is it. In general, the game is better balanced, for all that we strive to take advantage of every slight discrepancy.

Most mechanics are better.

Most people don't want content balanced around having resistance gear, or world buffs.

On the whole, it has gotten better every expansion, and it'll hopefully keep on getting better with MoP. Every horror story you ever hear from raiders is about the "good old days".

Content length is fine, and most of us don't give a damn about nerfs.

The obvious bit is that we see the content before it gets nerfed, so why would we ever care? If it's nerfed later on so we have an easier time farming, all the better, especially on the fights where hardcore class stacking was originally required, just frees people up to play their mains.

Nerfs also make it easier for us to level up new alts and gear them, which most top level raiders are glad to see. Switching mains happens a lot more these days, and from our perspective, the ease of doing so is a very good thing. Nobody wants to slug it through t11, then t12 in order to get to t13 raids.

The most controversial point is probably content length. The thing is, while casuals might want to run about for 6 months raiding 5 days a week, most hardcore raiders would probably quit at that point. T11 was almost too long, and if anything there is a fear that t14 will be a repeat of T11. About 6 weeks of HC raiding followed by 6 months of slack is probably about the right balance for most of the HC raiders. It's one of the big selling points of HC raiding. You have time to have a life, most of the time. Just take a few weeks off to pursue a hobby, and then go back to being a mostly normal person.

The actual concerns?

The actual concerns of HC raiders are more about bugs and exploits ruining the race, inconsistencies in enforcement policies (most of us want that crackdown, so nobody is forced to make a choice between exploiting and falling behind), greater balance (there's never enough balance), more interesting raid designs (never enough of this either) and a better difficulty curve (usually the curve is too easy at the start, and really hard at the end, while we'd like to see more of a steady ramp-up for each tier).

I'm hardly a spokesperson, but I know a lot of the top raiders will be able to agree with most of what I've said here. So the next time you wish to speak for the hardcore, think twice. Our view of the world is quite different than that of casuals and semi-serious raiders.

Brilliant.

[Rokal]

1- OP - He's done all the heroic content. BUT WAIT! He didn't kill heroic Nefarian until 4/29/12. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure those kills happened for the REAL raiding guilds a year prior. In fact, he went back and killed Nefarian after he'd killed heroic Deathwing.

2- Random Poster on Page 3 (Saphiramoon) - "Ppl made pugs since the dawn of time on wow, be them 5 mans mostly in older expansions and starting with more and more raids. It is a system that works and it doesn't force blizzard to nerf content to be accessible via any combination of bad players."

She must not be referring to the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Nefarian on 4/26/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Al'Akir on 4/19/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill heroic Deathwing on 4/1/12.

Heroic T11 was never nerfed. The results of your armory audit aren't even as bad as I expected them to be. I'd ask whether you had better things to do with your time then review random armory profiles to look for posting contradictions but given your history here I already know the answer.

[Fabricated]

1- OP - He's done all the heroic content. BUT WAIT! He didn't kill heroic Nefarian until 4/29/12. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure those kills happened for the REAL raiding guilds a year prior. In fact, he went back and killed Nefarian after he'd killed heroic Deathwing.

2- Random Poster on Page 3 (Saphiramoon) - "Ppl made pugs since the dawn of time on wow, be them 5 mans mostly in older expansions and starting with more and more raids. It is a system that works and it doesn't force blizzard to nerf content to be accessible via any combination of bad players."

She must not be referring to the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Nefarian on 4/26/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Al'Akir on 4/19/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill heroic Deathwing on 4/1/12.

Heroic T11 was never nerfed. The results of your armory audit aren't even as bad as I expected them to be. I'd ask whether you had better things to do with your time then review random armory profiles to look for posting contradictions but given your history here I already know the answer.

I don't mind someone spending 5-10 minutes to helldump a really shitty stupid poster with bad opinions, speaking from his ass.

[Ingmar]

1- OP - He's done all the heroic content. BUT WAIT! He didn't kill heroic Nefarian until 4/29/12. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure those kills happened for the REAL raiding guilds a year prior. In fact, he went back and killed Nefarian after he'd killed heroic Deathwing.

2- Random Poster on Page 3 (Saphiramoon) - "Ppl made pugs since the dawn of time on wow, be them 5 mans mostly in older expansions and starting with more and more raids. It is a system that works and it doesn't force blizzard to nerf content to be accessible via any combination of bad players."

She must not be referring to the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Nefarian on 4/26/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill Heroic Al'Akir on 4/19/12. Or the nerfs that helped her kill heroic Deathwing on 4/1/12.

Heroic T11 was never nerfed. The results of your armory audit aren't even as bad as I expected them to be. I'd ask whether you had better things to do with your time then review random armory profiles to look for posting contradictions but given your history here I already know the answer.

It wasn't nerfed directly but it sure as hell was made easier with the availability of later tiers of gear.

[Paelos]

Feel free to ignore the main point of the post, Rokal. You're good at that.

You know, the part where the actual heroic raider points out the people complaining are fucking morons.

[Rokal]

Feel free to ignore the main point of the post, Rokal. You're good at that.

You know, the part where the actual heroic raider points out the people complaining are fucking morons.

The point of your post was to show what frothing hypocritical nerds 99% of the posters in the thread were. I'm guessing the number is more like 70%, but you picked bad posts as examples and I still have to question your sanity when you waste time reading the official forums and stalking armory profiles.

As for the poster that actually had HC experience, like every other individual he doesn't speak for all players that participate in the content. Just as my opinions and desires for content do not reflect his or yours. While I disagree with his assessment that TBC had only a few hard fights, and think he missed the point about why people continue to reminisce about it, I fully believe that most highly competitive guilds do not care about nerfs. Like he said, they complete the content before it gets nerfed and then the nerfs just make content easier for them to farm. They still get exactly the experience they want out of new raid content because they clear it so quickly. It's the guilds that aren't moving so fast that might get a different experience than they want.

Speaking personally, my guild barely killed normal Ragnaros before they zone-wide nerfs hit. We would have been unhappy if we had gotten so close to a kill on our casual schedule only to have victory handed to us by a nerf. Even though we beat the fight before the nerf, the normal mode that had seemed well-balanced for us become an uninspiring cake-walk. We never got to that stage were we were just perfecting our kills and farming bosses because the nerfs caused enough angst and boredom in the guild to push us into hardmode fights. As we've covered a few times in WoW threads: fights just aren't quite as appealing the second time around (or 3rd, with the introduction of LFR).

I don't want to get tied down arguing about whether 'content should never be nerfed' because it's not something I strongly believe in. I think the DS nerfs were a bit too fast and I'd like to see Feats of Strength to encourage people to eventually try the fights without the % debuff, but that's about it. I care more about the disposable content model where we run only a narrow slice of content for months everything else is immediately worthless. While the CMs addressed some posts about that earlier, basically saying "it is what it is", the discussion has moved away from it at this point. That's really the only discussion I'm interested in having though.

[Tannhauser]

I enjoyed Paelos' post, especially the true hardcore raider reaction.  So there.  It had that good 'ol f13 snark.

I just hope he never finds my armory profile, my shame would be too much to bear!

[Merusk]

Hard fights in TBC by my recollection:

Kael, The shadow/ demon hunter in steamwhatever, Vashj, Akama, Gorefiend.   That's, in fact, a handfull.   Though I recall a few in Sunwell were supposedly ball-breakers I can't recall them.  The twin chicks and the dark floaty crystal dude IIRC.  Still, that's a list of very few and only about 2 per raid instance.   The rest took time to learn but weren't truly hard. (lol, at all the other bosses in Kael's instance.)  

Hell, even my semi-casual group of mostly-ok players was able to get through the majority of TBC content (never got past Gorefiend) and we only raided 3 nights a week (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) from 8pm until midnight because 90% of us were old farts who had jobs.  

We were so non-hardcore that if we wiped 5 or 6 times in a row we'd call it for that night because we knew things weren't clicking.  Not like a real raid guild where you keep going no matter how many wipes because - practice dammit!   If a guild like that can get past content it's not 'zomg so hard.'  It just had shitloads of cock-blocks and unlocks and 'you must kill this first.'  Which - as the real raider points out - just means you're fucked if someone wants to switch to an alternate character.

I recall vividly how much bitching the HCs did about having to back-raid new members or new alts.  

[Paelos]

but you picked bad posts as examples and I still have to question your sanity when you waste time reading the official forums and stalking armory profiles.

I picked posts at complete random. There's no such thing as "bad" or "good" it simply is. Could I have gone through there and cherrypicked posts for my POV? Yeah, but what's the point? Besides, I do it because I find it amusing, and it's the summertime.

Do you know what CPA's do in the summer? Jack and shit. Hell I'm on 4 day weeks right now.

[Ashamanchill]

Ah, it's good to see the ol' Paelos Rokal dichotomy is back, not that weird bizzaro world of the Diablo thread, where their roles were reversed.