5.4 - Needs more kitchen sink

[Paelos]

Do you really think that many people will drop their sub because they feel betrayed that Blizzard implemented XP boost potions?

No, they won't. They'll get pissed and drop their sub if they start selling gear or gambling boxes though. I think there's a very bright red line in microtrans that's involved when selling gear.

[Merusk]

Do you really think that many people will drop their sub because they feel betrayed that Blizzard implemented XP boost potions? Does Blizzard think that? Maybe that is true but I think the vocal userbase is either just vocal and won't cancel, or too small of a minority to make much of a dent.

*I* don't believe it, but the way Blizzard couched the XP potions and won't just convert right now says they do. Plus the forum-warrioring surrounding any discussion of it (on multiple sites/ locations) indicates they'll at least threaten to, even if they don't ultimately cancel.

In addition, the current meme among the gaming populace is "when games go free they turn to shit."  I've seen this in STO, LOTR, TOR, and TSW chats. "Man this game was great when it wasn't free.  Now it sucks."  Which is demonstrably not true for each of those, but the sentiment is there.  Plus you're seeing "I'm glad this isn't free" surrounding ESO.

While it makes better business sense to do F2P with microtrans right now, there's a blow-back brewing in addition to a segment of gamers who simply hate the model and wish some games had a sub to keep the rabble out. (Locally, Nebu has said before he's among them.)  They've got a point.  You can ban someone enough times they run out of credit cards to use, but there's always another e-mail account 30 seconds away.

[Mithas]

If Blizzard is listening to that group then they haven't learned anything. They listened to them when they cried about how WoTLK was too easy and we see how that turned out.

I don't think they are going to be going FTP anytime soon. They will end up doing limited micro-transactions and requiring a sub.

[Merusk]

If Blizzard is listening to that group then they haven't learned anything. They listened to them when they cried about how WoTLK was too easy and we see how that turned out.

I don't think they are going to be going FTP anytime soon. They will end up doing limited micro-transactions and requiring a sub.

What in the past 3 years makes you think they've learned their lesson? Nothing I've seen, certainly. Not from WoW, SC2 or Diablo-land.

Microtrans shop is even in question because of the crying about the XP potion.  We'll see it in Asia before the US/ Europe, if we ever see it in those regions.

[Paelos]

Speeding up leveling isn't going to make mass numbers quit. That doesn't ruin the game in any way at the top end. They have to keep their RMT away from anything that affects direct gear end-game, and they will be fine.

[Merusk]

Uh,  I'm not saying it would.

What I'm saying is the mere fact the item showed up caused enough crying from the US/ Euro players that Blizzard went out of their way - multiple times - to say "Oh hey, hey. This is only exploring things for Asia. Be cool.  It's ok, guys."  Fact, not speculation, not prediction.  It doesn't matter that it doesn't ruin the game or anyone's experience at the endgame. The notion that someone could speed-up the already inconsequential process of hitting 90 by spending some cash caused enough player rage that Blizzard goes in to 'calm the beast' mode whenever anything about it is discussed.

They're still listening to that group of idiots on something as minor and stupid as an XP potion. They're not going anywhere near bigger stuff more than a snails pace, even if it's inevitable. They're also going to make sure they're prepping the masses for it well, well in advance now.

[Paelos]

I was agreeing with you. However, slow or not, money talks and BS whiners don't actually walk.

[Draegan]

Depending on the cost and the amount of XP boosts, I would actually resub for the first time since WOTLK. I always love speed leveling. Have they said what the boost will be? (assuming it's really a thing)

[Mithas]

The item said 100% boost for 1 hour. I'm not sure it has made it past the testing phase and was apparently only available in Asia.

[Fabricated]

The whiniest of the hardcore said they'd quit Wrath because it was so "easy", they didn't. They said they'd quit if they nerfed the heroics in Cata, they didn't. They said they're quit if they nerfed raids in Cata, they didn't. They said they'd quit if they turned the loot fountain back on at the end of Cata, they didn't. They said they'd quit if LFR gear eventually outpaced even the lowest tier of normal/heroic raid gear, they didn't.

[Draegan]

I quit in WOTLK because the game become a boring string of hallways with loot at the end and no fun. It was fun for a week or two, then it got boring and retarded. I might of stayed longer if they had LFR.

These days the combat is stale and the classes are boring to me. Especially with the new talents and stuff. I just can't really do hotbar/tab target combat anymore I guess.

[Merusk]

It's not hotbar/ tab-target problem to me.  You have that in every game with hitpoints.  I'm not bored with The Secret World.  People are still enjoying GW2.  Even NWN feels more fresh than WoW.

For me, with WoW, it's the homogenization of classes.  Each one feels too similar to another. "This is my rotation priority. This is my interrupt.  This is my "oh shit" card.  This is my "every 5 mins" DPS cooldown.  I do them at range as a h/m/w/pr, or up close as a r/w/pa/dk or some variant as a shaman."

Meh.

[Nevermore]

It's not hotbar/ tab-target problem to me.  You have that in every game with hitpoints.  I'm not bored with The Secret World.  People are still enjoying GW2.  Even NWN feels more fresh than WoW.

For me, with WoW, it's the homogenization of classes.  Each one feels too similar to another. "This is my rotation priority. This is my interrupt.  This is my "oh shit" card.  This is my "every 5 mins" DPS cooldown.  I do them at range as a h/m/w/pr, or up close as a r/w/pa/dk or some variant as a shaman."

Meh.

But..  but...  what about all those 'interesting choices'?!?

[Mithas]

The problem for me is that I just want to log in, see the content, and have fun. I don't take anything too seriously. I actually enjoy running dungeons. Even repeatedly. Since I don't necessarily have my rotation down perfectly (especially for a class I don't play often) dungeon running isn't so great. I swear to Christ if one of these fucks ever gets pissed at me for my low DPS but we haven't wiped, I'm going to lose it.

I think they really nailed it with the leveling content this time around. Unfortunately I do not want to do it again after seeing it once. This doesn't leave much for a 'casual' like me besides LFD and LFR. Having to worry about how much DPS I am doing does not make it fun for me anymore. I would guess a lot of people who are like me (which probably made up most of the lost subscribers) have a lot of the same frustrations. Not sure how they fix that.

[Simond]

Hahaha, free tip: If anyone gives you shit about DPS in LFD or LFR they are insufferable pillocks and can be safely ignored. I mean I've seen people doing less damage in LFR than just using autoattack would do (no, really) and no fucks were given. The only time people start bitching about DPS are a) epeen contests from morons with recount (ignore) or b) wipes which, in most cases, means someone else screwed up so again ignore.

[Mithas]

Oh I know they are idiots. It is just bothersome because I waited in queue for 10 minutes for this garbage? Then if I bail, I get the deserter debuff and then wait another 10 minutes to get in again. With the limited time I have, a lot of times it isn't worth it. That's why I think xp potions would be huge for people like me who just want to do the content and play with some friends along the way. The exact people who are giving me shit about my DPS are the ones who complain about how the casuals ruined the game and would threaten to quit over it. Blizzard just needs to get a clue and stop listening to them.

[Lakov_Sanite]

So I'm playing the free trial and man, FUCK that pvp item that turns you into a disciple of ordos(sp).  Essentially it turns you into an npc capable of being attacked by players which is nice and all but one of my abilities will invariably jump from the boss I am trying to kill onto some douche who is flagged which will then flag me and I'll be dead before I realize what happened.

[Zetor]

So... is there anything to this island other than getting drops for alts? It's not very fun to play hide-and-seek on a pvp server, even if the enemy faction mostly stays put during boss kills... and the entire zergy boss fight thing is just a weaker version of what I can get in GW2 (or even RIFT) right now. Ditto for the jumping puzzle chests.

OTOH, the proving grounds are sorta amusing, especially the healer version... though one of the hotfixes managed to break some of the "party NPC" AI and removed their ability to AOE, which makes endless mode quite a bit harder.

[Simond]

http://www.wowhead.com/news=219459/wowheads-guide-to-the-timeless-isle

[Zetor]

http://www.wowhead.com/news=219459/wowheads-guide-to-the-timeless-isle

A simple 'no' would've sufficed  

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this zone is trying really hard to emulate GW2 in several aspects -- but I'm already playing (and enjoying) GW2! Also, playing on a WOW pvp server sucks, film at 11.

[Fabricated]

The cross-server zones thing is the funniest thing they've added to the game in years.

Forever after BC dropped and Tarren Mill raids became a thing of the past I wanted to maybe join another guild; like a goon guild or the hardcore raider guilds a few of my other online friends were in. Of course, they were all on PVP servers and I think PVP is boring/annoying so I always ended up saying no. The #1 thing I heard from literally all of these people:

"Oh nah man, there's no real world PVP anymore, it's just like a PVE server. You won't really ever get ganked except maybe in some specific areas where people like to farm end-game mats."

Well, cross-server zones have made it on some server groups where you can't level 1-85 without getting ganked consistently, or in a lot of people's cases, completely shut out of zones. Lots of QQing, so to speak, is coming from these same people who scoffed at 'carebears' because they got the kind of world PVP actual PVPers expect.

[Draegan]

It's not hotbar/ tab-target problem to me.  You have that in every game with hitpoints.  I'm not bored with The Secret World.  People are still enjoying GW2.  Even NWN feels more fresh than WoW.

For me, with WoW, it's the homogenization of classes.  Each one feels too similar to another. "This is my rotation priority. This is my interrupt.  This is my "oh shit" card.  This is my "every 5 mins" DPS cooldown.  I do them at range as a h/m/w/pr, or up close as a r/w/pa/dk or some variant as a shaman."

Meh.

I consider games like Wildstar and GW2 to have different combat to me.

[craan]

The cross-server zones thing is the funniest thing they've added to the game in years.

Forever after BC dropped and Tarren Mill raids became a thing of the past I wanted to maybe join another guild; like a goon guild or the hardcore raider guilds a few of my other online friends were in. Of course, they were all on PVP servers and I think PVP is boring/annoying so I always ended up saying no. The #1 thing I heard from literally all of these people:

"Oh nah man, there's no real world PVP anymore, it's just like a PVE server. You won't really ever get ganked except maybe in some specific areas where people like to farm end-game mats."

Well, cross-server zones have made it on some server groups where you can't level 1-85 without getting ganked consistently, or in a lot of people's cases, completely shut out of zones. Lots of QQing, so to speak, is coming from these same people who scoffed at 'carebears' because they got the kind of world PVP actual PVPers expect.

I played on Barthilas for a little while and leveled to 80 without seeing a bit of world PVP.  But when I went to Hyjal a massive group of Alliance from 3? different servers had the beginning quest area locked down.  My toon was feral so I could sneak around but it didn't help.  The amount of Alliance (About 30) and the length of time they stayed made going to Vash enjoyable.

I went to Illidan and was ganked maybe once every level, usually by a 90 flying by or something.  It wasn't until I got to the Blasted Lands quests that I got stomped every other minute.  But as Horde we seemed to have people that just chilled in the zone helping lowbies like myself and I guess camping the portal to Outlands.  So while there were more interruptions at least I had the (small) satisfaction that other people were getting revenge for me.

I didn't have a problem at 80 in Hyjal like I did on Barthlias.  The next set of problems started when I got to Pandaria.  Doing the quests from 85-90 I would be constantly ganked by 90 rogues.  And followed by them as I did quests and ganked again.  I felt like I was a node to be farmed and they had a loop they were doing hitting all the questline areas looking for levelers.  Every few minutes *dead* by a rogue and they'd vanish.  To be fair, we had a lot of Horde players that would go out of their way to try and help us levelers but the stealth gankers would just stealth and that was that.  Then a few minutes later *dead*.

I never again saw a huge mass of cross-realm people like I did on Barthilas, though.  And not much world pvp interest in any of the guilds I was in.  it was always RBGs or Arenas, all day every day.

[Maledict]

The whiniest of the hardcore said they'd quit Wrath because it was so "easy", they didn't. They said they'd quit if they nerfed the heroics in Cata, they didn't. They said they're quit if they nerfed raids in Cata, they didn't. They said they'd quit if they turned the loot fountain back on at the end of Cata, they didn't. They said they'd quit if LFR gear eventually outpaced even the lowest tier of normal/heroic raid gear, they didn't.

The players who quit weren't the hardcore. They were players like me - the middle tier of raiding. Which from what I can see and from what I'm told basically no longer exists in WoW - the gap between casual and hardcore is wider than it ever was. Guilds seem to constantly form, raid then collapse like some form of primeval soup whic bubbles up every so often.

The hardcore will always raid and devour content in days - its what they do.

Casuals will consume content slowly - its what they do.

But the middle rank, the people who enjoy playing a game that pushes them but aren't willing to sacrifice life and family to do it - they seem to have totally vanished now. If you get half way through a zones heroic mode every time, and then get to see everything made pointless by the next tier? Well, whose going to stick around for that experience all the time?

EDIT: Oh, and heroic modes in generally utterly and truly suck if you aren't a hardcore player. Hardcore players don't care about the zone like a more casual player does - they want the challenge and the race and the satisfaction of winning. But for a slower guild that actually has to work through normal mode, and then work through heroic mode on a slower schedule - Heroics really are utter dross. I thought they were a brilliant idea when released and have done a complete 180 now. They are an incredibly lazy, shit means of design.

[Draegan]

I don't have the time these days to raid, but I look fondly back on my days as a middle tier raider.

The one thing I really disliked was WOW's trend towards having different difficulty settings. You went from one dungeon to having a Normal and Hardmode. Then you went to haveing LFR + Normal + Hardmode. It really seems to dilute the experience for me. I kind of like there being portions of the game that are really difficult to do and get access to. It gives the game a sense of mystery to me, and that's from a perspective that I'll never have to time to see that stuff.

If I were to have time to jump back into this game to raid, this whole difficulty thing would sour my experience I think. I really like the idea of shared experience and if everyone kills the big bad dragon, where one group has 5 people afk through it, and the other are a group of korean robots, it tends to cheapen it in my eye.

Anyway, I'd love to see WOW get rid of 10 or 20 mans and all the difficulties and just go right to FLEX for everything and just add bonus wings or different fight scripts if you meet certain thresholds. Like you get a bonus round against a boss if you win in 5 minutes or something. Tha tbonus round gives you prettier things.

Whatever. Not sure why I started writing this.

[Paelos]

I may use my email for 7 free days this Friday. I've been thinking about playing some anyway, most of the single player games I have are wearing down (I'm halfway through SR4).

[Ginaz]

Man, fuck that Timeless Island.  It was fun for about 30 mins.  After that, its a slog trying to compete with so many people for resources and mobs.  The island is way too small.

[Maledict]

Yeah, Blizzard don't seem to understand that GW2s zones are huge for a reason - same with Rift. If you want to run that sort of dynamic experience you need a lot more space to play in, especially given the fact SoW is still stubbornly clinging to the opposing faction system.

[Cadaverine]

Man, fuck that Timeless Island.  It was fun for about 30 mins.  After that, its a slog trying to compete with so many people for resources and mobs.  The island is way too small.

I didn't even bother competing for mobs.  I just ran the loop of chests, and along the way joined in on any nearby rare spawns, and geared out my DK in about 4 - 5 hours, plus got a fair bit of gear for my Druid, Paladin, and Mage.  It does depend a bit on dumb luck, though, as I did the same on the Druid the next day, and got pretty much all coins from the chests.

That just extends the fun for a few hours.  Once you've gotten geared up, there really isn't anything else to do, unless you want to grind out the 20K coins, or whatever it is for the mount.

[Azazel]

If Blizzard is listening to that group then they haven't learned anything. They listened to them when they cried about how WoTLK was too easy and we see how that turned out.

I don't think they are going to be going FTP anytime soon. They will end up doing limited micro-transactions and requiring a sub.

They're the same people now?

[Azazel]

In addition, the current meme among the gaming populace is "when games go free they turn to shit."  I've seen this in STO, LOTR, TOR, and TSW chats. "Man this game was great when it wasn't free.  Now it sucks."  Which is demonstrably not true for each of those, but the sentiment is there.  Plus you're seeing "I'm glad this isn't free" surrounding ESO.

Speaking for LotRO at least, when they started charging for things like UI improvements (The tokens tab, or whatever they called it) they really jumped the shark.

[Ingmar]

In addition, the current meme among the gaming populace is "when games go free they turn to shit."  I've seen this in STO, LOTR, TOR, and TSW chats. "Man this game was great when it wasn't free.  Now it sucks."  Which is demonstrably not true for each of those, but the sentiment is there.  Plus you're seeing "I'm glad this isn't free" surrounding ESO.

Speaking for LotRO at least, when they started charging for things like UI improvements (The tokens tab, or whatever they called it) they really jumped the shark.

That was pretty much just charging for a new kind of bag, I don't really see it as a red line that was crossed there. Charging for inventory space seems to be part and parcel of the whole F2P thing in just about every game.

[Shrike]

Man, fuck that Timeless Island.  It was fun for about 30 mins.  After that, its a slog trying to compete with so many people for resources and mobs.  The island is way too small.

This.

TI has to be the most boring, pointless thing they've done yet in the game. I was already geared past the drop item level and I could give a shit about my alts at this point.

The only reason I was out there was to see the thing (not impressed to put it mildly) and score a burden in case I need a set of 535 legs to replace the friggin' dress they keep sticking shaman in.

The censer was the poison pill. That thing is pure bullshit to have to endure on a PvE server. If I fucking wanted to do PvP I'd fucking well queue up for it. I don't want to be forced into that shit, especialy as a shaman, whose...ahh fuckit. It's bullshit. That's good enough reason to hate on this stupid moronic shit.

The cherry on top of this steaming pile is it absolutely runs like shit even on a 2500k/580GTX rig. I was routinely seeing sub 20 fps on a box that can usually run 40+ in the shrine at peak hours. I was planning on building a new machine in October anyway, but this just looks like piss poor optimization. Doesn't bode well for the new expansion.

The only fun I had was camping the frogs. At least their combat dynamic made you think a bit. Also, watching morons die to poison stacks right and left was mildly amusing, but not enough to get me out there again once I hit 20k coins.

[SurfD]

Wait, The Censor actually allows you to attack ANYONE on a PvE server?  Even people who are not flagged?  HAHHHHAHHHHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHHAHA. 

I dont know, I kind of like the island, but I really have to work to prevent my OCD from kicking in trying to kill all the fucking rarespawns.  They really took the Isle of Thunder thing and cranked it way past 11.   I mean, I am usually almost valor capped on my main by this time of the week, and now I have barely scratched past about 400, purely because I spend so much time chasing down rarespawns all over the island while doing the weekly chest spawns on my favourite alts....

On the positive side, I dont think i will ever need to buy another Sha crystal again, considering how many of those damned tokens I get that I can send to my Paldain to DE.

[Rokal]

A week after it released, it definitely feels like I ran out of cool stuff to do pretty quickly, but looking at a guide on wowhead last night showed me that I'd actually missed a lot of things.

The island is still a good source of lesser coins, and in that sense it's still way better than doing dailies. Spend an hour or two there each week doing the weeklies, killing rarespawns you find along the way, grabbing chests, and then killing each of the world bosses? Not bad.

The Shao-hao rep grind is nothing short of terrible though. Go from neutral->exalted by killing elite enemies that require a group (or take forever to kill solo for the few classes that can) and give ~22 rep a piece. No thanks. Fortunately most of the rewards are cosmetic so there's not a huge reason to do it unless you really want a sparkly gold MoP dragon, instead of a regular gold MoP dragon or the thousand other mounts in the game at this point.