Patch 5.2: Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thunder King Ho!

[Fabricated]

Proudmoore is the place to be if they ever bring back massive coordinated grindfests like Quel-Danas and the AQ War effort; we fucking stomped face on those. Only missed opening AQ first because a shitload of stupid people made level 1 alts to go try and watch or actively crash the server as we tried to open the gate.

[Fabricated]

Also according to an interview linked through MMO-Champ there are no more 5-mans planned for MoP.

Ahahahahah, god, fuck Blizzard.

[Merusk]

 

LFRs are the new 5-mans, dude! Gear progression paths are AWESOME! 

[Fabricated]

I literally am gobsmacked at how much Blizzard doesn't get it.

I hope subs fall into the fucking toilet when 5.2's shine wears off.

[Merusk]

They will.  The last-minute Free D3 subs can't cancel until April, so Bliz is covered for this quarter.

Next quarter, however, should be a bloodbath.  I hope they aren't pinning all their hopes on SC2 pt3: The rake.

[Zetor]

They'll just add the Titan alpha to the yearly Blizzard pass. 

[Merusk]

Their next "big announcement" wasn't supposed to happen until June, I thought.

[Rokal]

They've hinted that the 'big feature' for MoP (similar to LFR from Cata) will be a way to play older content, so maybe the 5.4 replacement for new 5-man content will be the ability to do older 5-man content at 90 but with an updated reward system. Everyone likes recycled content so what could go wrong?  

I still believe they'll have new 5-mans in 5.4 though, even if they're saying the opposite right now.

[Soulflame]

LFRs are the new 5-mans, dude! Gear progression paths are AWESOME! 

Gear resets are not consistent with Blizzard's vision of allowing new players, and new characters of current players, the privilege of playing multiple times through every raid prior to the current raid.

 

I simply cannot believe how far away Blizzard has gotten from Wrath.

[Merusk]

This is the pendulum swinging the other way.  Folks need to vote with their wallets on it, hard.

Though I had a fight in the Neverwinter beta chat this weekend with folks who felt that EQ was the best design ever and more games should follow the paradigm of time invested > gameplay. 

After all you're rewarding loyal customers that way instead of giving things away to the slackers who only come online a few hours a week.

[SurfD]

I thought they were hinting that specialized scenarios were possibly going to be takeing place of new 5 mans (with the potential of having specific loot tables for them makeing it even more so).

[Paelos]

The player wants more 5 mans to play with friends. Blizzard responds by lowering the cap on raids. The player doesn't really want that, they want more five mans. Blizzard gives them LFR. The player doesn't enjoy running with random idiots, they want to play WITH THEIR FRIENDS. Blizzard responds by saying have you seen our LFR?

[Fabricated]

I'm not going to shit on LFR since it actually provides something resembling an endgame to people who don't have a highly coordinated guild or set play times. Yeah it's random jackholes but welp, thems the fucking breaks.

The problem is that it doesn't mean you can just toss 5-mans aside. TBH I didn't think scenarios were that bad of an idea (repeatable super-quests basically) but looking at it they're honestly kind of a solution in search of a problem.

[Merusk]

Scenarios suck because there's no decent reward structure for them.  You don't get VP or JP for boss kills in the instance and completing one gives you the same as a Heroic.  Yeah you're not waiting on the queue as a DPS, but they take almost as long as a Heroic to complete. 

So unless you're blowing through one while waiting on a 'real' queue they're pointless.  But if you're using them to ignore queues, you aren't doing your bazillion dailies.

There's a TON of content this expansion. There's no cohesive approach or structure to the damn thing, though.  It's just shoved out in a "well.. HERE" kind of way.  Instead of complimenting or replacing each other in a larger lattice, it all competes.

So players get confused/ frustrated thinking they HAVE to do it all.  A better system would be one where a player would think, "Well.. I don't feel like doing dailies, let me do a scenario then a heroic and that'll get my VP for the day done.  One step closer to that Vp gear."  or   "I think I'll run a raid today and bang out some dailies while doing it. Maybe I'll get lucky."

Instead we get, 'Oh fuck I still have 15 more shadow pan dailies before running of to do the warfront.. then if my Heroic queue pops in the middle of that bombing daily at the yaks I'm going to be pissed.  FUCk I forgot to do raid instance 4 this week and it's Monday night. Goddamnit guess I'm not sleeping early... "

[Rokal]

Scenarios suck because there's no decent reward structure for them.  You don't get VP or JP for boss kills in the instance and completing one gives you the same as a Heroic. 

You get 50 VP for the first scenario of the day, 200 rep with whatever Pandaria faction you'd like, and a random item from a chest. 463 items are pretty common from the chest too. It also takes ~5-10 minutes max and has the same queue time for dps.

At this point, I run scenarios more consistently every day than dungeons.

[Miasma]

I don't like scenarios because I'm a healer, which aren't used there, so I have to go dps which I don't bother to fine tune or use seperate gear so I'm kinda low on the meters.

They would be crazy not to add new dungeons (even though I don't bother running them anymore) so the idea that this new system will level up old ones makes sense.

The new failure buff where you get 5% more health, dps and healing each wipe turned day one of a new lfr tier from "utter frustration where raid groups break up over and over" into a much more tolerable "we will get this eventually even if we just suck at it".

I wonder how many people do those challenge modes, I wish I could just delete that blue exclamation quest from the challenge npc so I don't have to see it every time I'm in panda city.

[goishen]

Their next "big announcement" wasn't supposed to happen until June, I thought.

Well, possibly.  But then there will be an uptick in WoW's numbers again.   I certainly say this with a bit of apprehension, but Titan may suck.  Then, you're stuck with an alpha that nobody wants to play and a year's subscription to WoW.  Of course, Titan'll have the Apple effect.  Everybody'll buy it and say, "Yay! Titan's out!"   Then a month later, "Yay, Titan." 

[Setanta]

TBH I didn't think scenarios were that bad of an idea (repeatable super-quests basically)

Scenarios are fucking awesome - when GW2 does them. Jump in, follow the scenarios around, pick up lootz that are either awesome or can be broken up. Alternatively solo "storyline" instances that are fun etc.

I'm really not sure why Blizzard didn't get this. Last week with the GW2 patch people were being pushed into overflow over GW2 chest-scenarios on YAk's Bend. This week it's not as bad but there are easily 40+ people there to take down a scenario.

Sure it's unlikely that the group will wipe etc, but it's fun and there's loot for all.

Oh... that's right... fun.

[Fabricated]

I can totally see Blizzard doing a, "Get beta access to Titan with a year WoW sub!" deal.

[Miasma]

And then they will annoy people by capping it at level ten so that you can't get burned out over the year long beta.

[Rendakor]

And then it'll be unplayable at launch, and disappointing at endgame...

[Miasma]

Just watched the videos for the three new bosses that will unlock in lfr tomorrow.  Unless they seriously nerf the mechanics I don't see how the first and third, Durumu and Dark Animus, will be possible in lfr.  They need some serious co-ordination and any random person can screw things up at any time.  The second boss, Primordius needs everyone to manage their own stacks correctly too.  I think there will be a lot of frustration tomorrow.

Edit: I guess these bosses don't actually unlock in lfr this week, they will next week.  Then another two weeks for the last lfr set.

[Miasma]

Yeah, it took four hours to do the latest lfr wing.  Eight wipes on durumu.  Scary thing was that the group was actually pretty good, that maze is almost impossible to see with all the crap on the ground.  Dark animus wasn't as bad as I had worried, seems lfr (or maybe just 25man) uses all the robots so you don't have to try and decide which to activate.

[Paelos]

Four hours for LFR?

That can't be working as intended.

[Simond]

Durumu's fight basically goes: Cakewalk - cakewalk - cakewalk - EVERYBODY DIES!
It's going to get nerfed into the ground in a hotfix.

[SurfD]

Durumu's fight basically goes: Cakewalk - cakewalk - cakewalk - EVERYBODY DIES!
It's going to get nerfed into the ground in a hotfix.

I cant believe anyone actually thought Durumu in an LFR environment was a good idea.  I mean, christ, I remember raiding AQ 40 as current content, and there was almost always someone who would die to the Rotating Beam of Death.  Put the Death Beam into an LFR AND add a maze on the ground to navigate?  Yeah, that will slaughter most LFR groups cold.

[Zetor]

Yea, my lfr beat Durumu after 5 stacks. Most of the DPS (and one of the tanks) died to the maze, so we ended up switching 4/6 of our healers to DPS (I was one of the healers staying as a healer, but still spent most of my time spamming lightning bolt and flameshock/lavaburst). Managed to down him like 5-10 seconds before he'd start another maze phase


e: basically it's just like the instakill on lfr ultraxion, only you actually have to walk around in a hard-to-see maze instead of just push a button, and it affects EVERYONE, not just the tanks. So yeah, good times.

[Simond]

Picked up one of these for my rogue today: http://www.wowhead.com/item=94154/survivors-bag-of-coins
I am now Mistborn!