a not so grand last hurrah

[luckton]

They need to wrap up MoP so we can get back to Outland already.  I need moar space goats 

[Paelos]

Well the logical progression of taking dailies out and replacing them with dungeons is that people do move to alts. Many, many people enjoyed that type of progression. Spend a couple months on one toon, move to the next, move to the next. The fact that reputations were the alt stumbling block is the most egregious error, and I think we all agree to that. In this case, they added something that hurt the subscriber base, because instead of moving to an alt, they realized what kind of effort it would take and said FUCK THAT.

They did do a lot of stuff right in this xpac. They didn't focus on hardcore only content. They did add a lot of fluff and flair stuff with pets and the like. However, they dropped the ball with their rigid progression model, even in LFR, and the reputation stuff with dailies and alts.

[Simond]

I'm telling you, account-wide reputation is the way to go. Pretty much everything else is account-wide nowadays, so why not?

[Paelos]

I'm telling you, account-wide reputation is the way to go. Pretty much everything else is account-wide nowadays, so why not?

I actually agree with that as well. The days of grinding out reputation in any form more than once are over. There's no reason why they can't tie it to your "family name" akin to the SWTOR legacy system.

[luckton]

I'm telling you, account-wide reputation is the way to go. Pretty much everything else is account-wide nowadays, so why not?

+1.  Although the devil's advocate in me would like to say "just another segment of the slippery slide to the point where leveling/grinding is meaningless and we should just start off with max level characters in raid-ready gear"   

[Rokal]

They did make leveling alts more friendly with rep changes in 5.1/5.2, and with exp changes coming in 5.3. I'm speaking from my own experience here, but I leveled a shaman to 90 and just lost interest almost immediately at the level cap. It was a struggle to get there even though I hadn't played a shaman in years. It wasn't because the road to 90 was too long or that rep factions were too much of a hassle, it was because I didn't want to run dungeons/raids/level on an alt again. I've been leveling, running dungeons, and raiding on alts for years. Just as dungeons/raids are less thrilling on your main after 10 years, so too is repeating dungeons/raids on an alt.

If I wasn't in a normal raid guild right now my sub would be inactive, and I actually loved the expansion! Dailies were my least-favorite part of MoP, but they aren't what would have made me quit. Each expansion pack gets diminishing returns on the activities that made the game so addictive for me in the past.

[Ingmar]

SWTOR has account wide rep and it's great. Of course it also has rep that is not necessary to farm for anything but cosmetic stuff for the most part, which is also great. I fully expect WoW to steal the first part of that soon.

[Merusk]

All I do is run dungeons, raids and alt.  It's like my primary reason for playing MMOs of the RPG-type. 

I don't have 900+ hours in CivilizationsIV and nearly 200 in V because I get bored of repetition.

[Mithas]

They either need to implement account wide rep, make it less of a cock punch to level rep, or bring back the tabard system.

[Paelos]

They also need to not gate reputation. If you want to punch yourself in the dick for 10 hours straight to exalted, that should be an option. Making everything a math problem in terms of lockout days is not a good solution.

[Mithas]

I don't know why they are so afraid of people only running dungeons to get rep. I am fairly casual and loved running dungeons over and over again for rep. Felt like I was getting somewhere. I know the whole 'we want people out in the world' but some of the zones feel empty already and I don't come across players all that often except at daily hubs. Make it so you can only gain rep through the tabard system once you hit max level.

[Merusk]

You're forgetting they wanted to gate and slow-down people getting to the item level caps.  They didn't like that you could hit heroics within hours of hitting the level cap.  For some bizarre reason.

[luckton]

If anything, the tabard system to me was sort of a door-prize for re-running dungeons over and over, esp. if there was a piece of gear/achievement I was trying to get.  If I didn't get said gear/'chieve, at the VERY least I got rep up to unlock gear and swag on the outside.

[Paelos]

You're forgetting they wanted to gate and slow-down people getting to the item level caps.  They didn't like that you could hit heroics within hours of hitting the level cap.  For some bizarre reason.

It probably had something to do with their data to burnout. I'm betting they pulled that data from Cataclysm though, and not Wrath, and thus drew conclusions that may not have been correct.

[Merusk]

If anything, the tabard system to me was sort of a door-prize for re-running dungeons over and over, esp. if there was a piece of gear/achievement I was trying to get.  If I didn't get said gear/'chieve, at the VERY least I got rep up to unlock gear and swag on the outside.

Certainly how I looked at things.  "Well, no upgrades but at least I'm farther along x rep."

Without tabards all dungeon time without an upgrade as was wasted time and effort that should have been spent doing one of the other dailies.  Then tack-on the extra-special Fuck-you change of "you only get max VP for one dungeon a day, so you have to run them every day" and folks like me who have extra game time on weekends but not weekdays find other outlets.  I preferred running 1-2 a week and 3-4 on Saturday morning.

You're forgetting they wanted to gate and slow-down people getting to the item level caps.  They didn't like that you could hit heroics within hours of hitting the level cap.  For some bizarre reason.

It probably had something to do with their data to burnout. I'm betting they pulled that data from Cataclysm though, and not Wrath, and thus drew conclusions that may not have been correct.

"Wrong conclusions from the data presented," could be the title of their Masters Thesis in game design.

[Miasma]

I imagine by next expansion we will have account wide rep, tri spec and a GW2 type questing system where you are actually happy to see other people running the same quests as you are.

[Paelos]

Yes, daily quests would be a lot better if everyone in the zone got credit for them, instead of the other way around.

[Mithas]

I wonder if some of the group boss quests are a precursor to some of that. You just needed to have the quest and be near the objective. That is exactly how most of these dailies should have been.

[Azazel]

Subs dropped to 8.3M in WoW after Q1. That's a drop of 1.3M from the prior quarter.

This expansion is not working.

All those Annual Pass-D3 subs expired as well.

[Azazel]

The problem with LFD/LFR is coming up amongst my former guildmates. Seems a bunch of people left because LFR/LFD killed guild groups.
It's the reason I left during Cata, and didn't even pick up Mists.

I think that is more common than people realize, and the reason I don't like LFR.

Equally-anecdotal counterpoint: The advent of LFD and much later LFR sustained the interest of myself, my wife and several other friends long after they would have expired. Organised-time-committed regular raiding with 40 of my closest online friends hasn't been something I've been even mildly interested in since Gates of Discord. Having the opportunity to "just do" a dungeon, and later a raid was a godsend and kept me playing for literally years longer than I otherwise would have.

I could have done the organised-dedicated-love-my-guild thing like I did in EQ, but you know what? I don't have that much time to dedicate anymore, and my online MMO "friends" just scatter to the wind anyway. Now I can (and do) play on my own terms, whether that means catassing 12 hours a day or not playing at all for weeks on end.

[Azazel]

"You have lost 1.3 million subscribers because the game is to time consuming for us casuals. Bring back tabards. Dailies suck"


"We heard from A LOT of players in Cataclysm that they didn't have enough to do and got bored. It's a tough sweet spot to hit."

This is a very telling twitter quote in the that response to having more things to do = dailies.

Also the subtext from them: options for rep = bad

[Azazel]

If anything, the tabard system to me was sort of a door-prize for re-running dungeons over and over, esp. if there was a piece of gear/achievement I was trying to get.  If I didn't get said gear/'chieve, at the VERY least I got rep up to unlock gear and swag on the outside.

Certainly how I looked at things.  "Well, no upgrades but at least I'm farther along x rep."

Without tabards all dungeon time without an upgrade as was wasted time and effort that should have been spent doing one of the other dailies.  Then tack-on the extra-special Fuck-you change of "you only get max VP for one dungeon a day, so you have to run them every day" and folks like me who have extra game time on weekends but not weekdays find other outlets.  I preferred running 1-2 a week and 3-4 on Saturday morning.

You're forgetting they wanted to gate and slow-down people getting to the item level caps.  They didn't like that you could hit heroics within hours of hitting the level cap.  For some bizarre reason.

It probably had something to do with their data to burnout. I'm betting they pulled that data from Cataclysm though, and not Wrath, and thus drew conclusions that may not have been correct.

"Wrong conclusions from the data presented," could be the title of their Masters Thesis in game design.

Hooray for catching up on posts a week later. All of the above would have been ideal for me, as far as rep goes. 7/week rather then 1/day x7, tabards and dailies as options. I ran a lot of IC dailies long after max rep back in wotlk just for the cash, shits and giggles.

[Ratman_tf]

The problem with LFD/LFR is coming up amongst my former guildmates. Seems a bunch of people left because LFR/LFD killed guild groups.
It's the reason I left during Cata, and didn't even pick up Mists.

I think that is more common than people realize, and the reason I don't like LFR.

Equally-anecdotal counterpoint: The advent of LFD and much later LFR sustained the interest of myself, my wife and several other friends long after they would have expired. Organised-time-committed regular raiding with 40 of my closest online friends hasn't been something I've been even mildly interested in since Gates of Discord. Having the opportunity to "just do" a dungeon, and later a raid was a godsend and kept me playing for literally years longer than I otherwise would have.

I could have done the organised-dedicated-love-my-guild thing like I did in EQ, but you know what? I don't have that much time to dedicate anymore, and my online MMO "friends" just scatter to the wind anyway. Now I can (and do) play on my own terms, whether that means catassing 12 hours a day or not playing at all for weeks on end.

I refuse to believe that we have to choose between grouping with random chucklefucks OR friends. There's gotta be a better way than what Blizz implemented in LFD/LFR.

[Cheddar]

It had pandas.  And was serious.  Enough for me to skip.

Not trolling, being serious here.  May have skipped anyway, but definitely my tipping point.

[Draegan]

The last two expansions saw me playing a character to level 22 and then level 15 over the course of a day and never more than that.

[Mithas]

I've had the itch again and I decided I was going to do what I wanted. I started farming some mounts, did a little PVP, and completed some old achievements. It is much more fun to me than trying to keep up or catch up. Way less pressure and more fun. Too much time in Pandaria has crushed me.

[Paelos]

If I ever came back to play it would be to do pets battles and pvp. I don't want to bother with the PvE train anymore.

[Xanthippe]

All that interests me is the pet battles. When is Pokemon the MMO going to come out?

[Fabricated]

Just wait for a couple more bad quarters at Nintendo.

[Azazel]

I refuse to believe that we have to choose between grouping with random chucklefucks OR friends. There's gotta be a better way than what Blizz implemented in LFD/LFR.

My guild has four 10-person raid groups, who raid once or twice a week each in their 10-man groups, occasionally calling out for a rep or two from the main bulk of the guild. The same people also do LFR for gear upgrades. I mostly run (ran) LFR and occasionally came along with one group or another when they needed extras and I had the inclination and time to spare. If people don't want to run guild LFRs, don't blame LFR, blame the people. Then again, should they be "blamed" for not wanting to run in dedicated guild groups (7-11pm every Thursday night!) etc?

[Azazel]

I've had the itch again and I decided I was going to do what I wanted. I started farming some mounts, did a little PVP, and completed some old achievements. It is much more fun to me than trying to keep up or catch up. Way less pressure and more fun. Too much time in Pandaria has crushed me.

That's where LRD and LFR come in. (As long as you don't let them overtake your life). Feel like running a scenario, raid or dungeon? Press the button, and you're in shortly afterwards. No need to be in a guild, dedicate your X-day nights from Y-Zpm or upkeep 9-24 of your "closest internet friends".

[Setanta]

For me the problem became:
Scenario - poorly implemented and not interesting at all
Dungeon - stale
LFR - retards + RNG + lockout + do RNG LFR to do more RNG LFR with lockout.

Part of that is me, but the result was that I could either grind factions or be dissatisfied with the above.

Tabards fixed this in WoTLK as I liked running dungeons and felt I was getting something from it
Purples in dungeons with (sometimes) decent art fixed this because I liked dungeon running and felt I was getting something from it
New dungeons with new purple drops (ICC wings and Trolls) that I could tabard rep fixed this because I liked dungeon running and felt I was getting something from it
Being able to buy purples using dungeon grind points (honor/valor) fixed this because I liked dungeon running and felt I was getting something from it

In Pandaville it became a game of dailies and raid - for me. It felt like Blizzard had forgotten that dungeons were a viable alternative for those that didn't want to LFD or were running alts. It also felt like I was playing the game that was contrary to Blizzard's vision of how it should be played. In this situation there are 2 outcomes. Either I stop having fun my way and join their vision or I find another game that allows me to play my way and I wait in hope that Blizzard clues in.

This is where it becomes problematic. There are a wealth of games out there that fill the niche and I think Blizzard has forgotten that. they are not "WoW-killers" but they are fun and many of them don't require a subscription.

2 months before my annual pass ran out I'd stopped playing WoW completely. I wasn't blown away by GW2 when it released and lasted 4 weeks. I wen't back to it when I wasn't playing WoW the way that Blizzard wanted me to and realised I'd rolled an "unfun" class (ranger). Since then I have levelled 10 characters to 80 (I capped 3 chars in Pandaria before giving up completely), run dungeons for gear skins, run fractals, got out and done world bosses, PvP'd at level 20 minimum, gone exploring and am havng a blast. I'm also liking the regular content updates that they have started releasing). I can choose not to do them though and not be penalised the way that WoW penalises. It fills the niche that was once WoW's. It's not perfect, it's fun (as is TSW) and even though I'm not paying a sub, I buy gems every now and then for a few things that make the game more fun for me.

I have a feeling that I'm not alone in this. No game will be a WoW-killer. Blizzard is the only WoW killer.

I'd love to play WoW again, but there's nothing left there for me.


Apologies - I'm not sure how this got so long.

[Ragnoros]

All that interests me is the pet battles. When is Pokemon the MMO going to come out?

There are apparently several now. That is to say, people dumped the GBA carts onto a server and figured out how to get a bunch of people in the same world and a chat tab working. One of them had taken my coop over for finals. I could ask which one if you are interested. Here is a random video for one of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IfiaIPPfzCM

[ghost]

The only way I would consider playing WOW again would be if everything was soloable, if I wanted to do it so.  This would come back to Paelos' scalability ideas.  

I was also a big fan of the initial segment of Conan online.  Good story combined with progression of the character.  I'm not seeing much of that in WOW, to this day.

The problem for me, as a grownup, is that "endgame" just sucks.  There's no other way to rationalize it.  I don't have the desire or time to dick around with the gearing and grinding.  They have separate servers for PvP and Role Playing, why not have a ZOMG HARCOREZ RAIDZERS server or 10?  And then have a soloable content server?  The big issue that Paelos has been skirting around (yet not quite hitting it on the head) is that it's impossible to make everything accessible for every person.  WOW has been approaching it the wrong way.  They try to put different things on each server that might be accessible, but I would like access to everything there is to do.  I want to run through Karazhan by myself if I want (still my favorite dungeon) and actually get experience and decent, level appropriate drops.  I want to do Deadmines and Wailing Caverns and the Stockade and Razorfen Downs and every single dungeon solo, if I want.  What better way to do that than to have servers that allow you to do just that?  They would have to rethink some of the cross server stuff if they were to implement something like this (which they won't).  

[Miasma]

5.3 went live yesterday.  You can see that they are trying to get to a gw2 event model.  The entire zone (barrens) has a few different types of scenarios pop up.  You can escort caravans that spawn, loot damaged enemy caravans and kill champions.  They require people to do but not organized groups.  It's nowhere near as good as gw2 events but this looks like a basic prototype to start from.

Other than the initial quest and a weekly there isn't much to do in the zone though.  There aren't really any rewards worth grinding out either.  I think people might stop doing the events in short order because there is no goal.  Worst case scenario is that blizzard misinterprets this as "people didn't like the gw2 model so we won't be trying it again".