Bitch Thread for Warlords of Draenor

[Jeff Kelly]

It could have been if the garrison wasn't just a fancy (and very lazily executed) roadblock to delay people from going through all of the content too quickly.

Everything in Draenor is pure RNG and on timers. You can't even break/boost anything by farming, grinding or throwing resources at it anymore. If I log in every day I will mostly achieve the same milestones at the same time as a hardcore player that spends many more hours on it than me. Most mechanics in WoD and especially the garrison are just content cockblocks but not even enough of a mechanic to qualify them as mini-games.

[SurfD]

It could have been if the garrison wasn't just a fancy (and very lazily executed) roadblock to delay people from going through all of the content too quickly.

Everything in Draenor is pure RNG and on timers. You can't even break/boost anything by farming, grinding or throwing resources at it anymore. If I log in every day I will mostly achieve the same milestones at the same time as a hardcore player that spends many more hours on it than me. Most mechanics in WoD and especially the garrison are just content cockblocks but not even enough of a mechanic to qualify them as mini-games.

Rather true.  I am still a bit mystified as to why every crafting material for the "big" recipies is BoP, except for Alchemy and Enchanting.  I can't send hexweave from one alt to another, but I can have every single one of my alts cranking out Temporal Crystals via work orders to send to my enchanter.   My enchanter hit 700 skill on like the 4th day, meanwhille my tailor took almost 3 weeks to get to the same place....  Also, I would like to shoot whoever decided that blingtron 5k would have a chance to drop engineering daily mats.   I now have half a dozen gearspring parts that are pretty mucch vendor scrap beccause I keep getting them on toons that are not engineers...

[Jeff Kelly]

Is there even a way to sort/filter your followers by ability/trait? I'd kind of like to know who to spend retraining certificates on without clicking on every guy and writing things down on paper.

[Zetor]

Use this: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/master-plan

[Setanta]

and this... both work together nicely.

I'm running missions over 11 garrisons... these 2  addons cut my time down quite nicely.

Edit - forgot the link

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/garrison-mission-manager

Lets you refine the percentage completion

[Ironwood]

link ?

[Setanta]

Fixed sorry :)

[Tannhauser]

Use this: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/master-plan

Thanks for the link, I really like this addon.

[Ironwood]

Aha, that's the one I use for my missions, it's really good.


That was directed at Setanta

[KallDrexx]

Weeee.

Bought the expansion and boosted a Shaman to 90 (My 74 Monk I'm trying not to level too fast to keep it with my friends, and he's a healer so he can level up in no time).  Time to try some of the new stuff out. 

[Jeff Kelly]

It's embarassing that a mod like masterplan runs circles around the in-game UI

[Paelos]

It's embarassing that a mod like masterplan runs circles around the in-game UI

I would wager my house that you could compile a much more competent team from the fans of this game to design it than you could on the actual WoW staff that's left.

[Ironwood]

Well, certainly a team that cares a great deal more, which counts for a lot.

[Hutch]

It's embarassing that a mod like masterplan runs circles around the in-game UI

It's more like par for the course. Blizzard provides a bare-bones UI. Their army of unpaid third party programmers writes something better. Blizzard co-opts.

[Zetor]

Yep, mods running circles around the in-game UI is the same as it ever was.

See also: ctraid / vuhdo / healbot / etc that were pretty much mandatory until cata/MOP finally made blizz's own raid frames semi-usable. Also scrolling combat text before blizz implemented its own (wotlk?). I'd also say that a unitframe/hotbar mod is mandatory, though the default unitframes are at least movable now...

[Merusk]

It's embarassing that a mod like masterplan runs circles around the in-game UI

It's more like par for the course. Blizzard provides a bare-bones UI. Their army of unpaid third party programmers writes something better. Blizzard co-opts.

Of course. Why on earth would you spend resources on something players will do better, faster and cheaper anyway?

You guys are terrible capitalists.

[Paelos]

Except I can likely show where having a solid UI is a value-add in a game like this.

[Merusk]

Yeah but the game designers can't, so what happens given that lack of information?

The same thing that always happens when designers are project managers. 

[Tannhauser]

Is there a mod that tracks rare mobs?  I got a hunter mod and it shows where they spawn not if it's actually there or not.  I'm too lazy to wade thru the Curse mods to find out (It's slow and kludgy for me).  I was wanting to tame some rare pets.

[Rendakor]

There certainly was one; it would even make a noise if you went near one, mark it with an icon and try to target it for you.

Fakeedit: Here it is.

[Cadaverine]

NPCScan is the one I use.  I primarily use it for vignette mobs, and apparently Blizzard changed the way it caches mobs, so it doesn't autodetect pre-MoP mobs anymore, so I don't know how much good it would be for hunter pet gathering.

http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/npcscan

[Hawkbit]

Taladite Recrystalizer can go fuck itself directly.  A week's worth of mats and I still don't have a functional piece. 

[Ironwood]

The Difference in difficulty between LFR and even the starter normal raid is fuck scary and frustrating.

I would rather they upped the difficulty in LFR so that the mechanics matter and that way you'd know what the fuck was up with the 17000th wipe.

[KallDrexx]

It's really dumb that to level my followers I have to log in or hearth back to my garrison every hour to send them on missions if I want to feel like I'm not wasting time....

[Ironwood]

One of the bodyguards has a portable table.  Also, there are tables at all the garrisons in the zones.

So, you kinda don't ?

Also, eventually they'll all be on 8 hour missions anyway, so it stops mattering.

[Merusk]

The Difference in difficulty between LFR and even the starter normal raid is fuck scary and frustrating.

I would rather they upped the difficulty in LFR so that the mechanics matter and that way you'd know what the fuck was up with the 17000th wipe.

The mechanics are all there, so far as I can tell, they just aren't all as damaging or "insta wipe" as they are in Normal.  This still leads to wipes on the Mage guy and the last boss in LFR, because nobody knows what the fuck is gong on and there's zero coordination and never will be.

Both of the Emperor groups I did in LFR this week had wipes until someone started marking the adds that have to die. Otherwise it would have been a endless "Kill the boss, kill the boss, killtheboss" mindset, because most folks who run LFR are doing it exclusively and think "ezlootz" are abound. 

The prior two wings haven't done anything to teach people, "hey you might need to start learning," so this is to be expected.

Then again the game doesn't do a great job of training folks what to do in raids, but that's a separate, older, conversation.

[KallDrexx]

One of the bodyguards has a portable table.  Also, there are tables at all the garrisons in the zones.

So, you kinda don't ?

Also, eventually they'll all be on 8 hour missions anyway, so it stops mattering.

Dont' know what you mean by bodyguards, and I'm only one the 2nd zone, and didn't realize the garrison there had a table.  And even if I had, I'm not just sitting around at a garrison when playing, I'm usually out questing or in a dungeon and having to stop those activities just to go do missions to make sure I don't waste xp, gold, resource, and item potential.

I mean, they literally copied the mechanic from that stupid death star game and other mobile games, forgetting that the whole point of the mechanic is to encourage you to do IAP.  I'm not really sure why they thought it would be a good system for an MMO like WoW.

[Merusk]

You're trying to min-max too much if you're worried about that missed 10-15 mins. The questing sends you cycling back to your 'zone garrison' often enough that you can reassign them every time you circle back. Followers level-up at about the same rate as you, you're not going to 'outlevel' them by any real stretch. Even if you do, the ones you pick-up as you progress start at the level of the zone you get them.

The real cockblock comes at L100 when you have to gear them up. The missions for equipment come too infrequently to make a real progress doing missions only, so you'd better be building the Dwarven Garrison and Salvage yard as soon as possible. Both give paths to follower upgrades that would be an exercise in frustration any other way.

By bodyguards he means that some followers have a trait so they can follow you around the zones, like the KOTOR minions. There's only 5 minions that can ever get this trait, the first being the one you pick-up at the 'hub city' during your garrison tutorial missions. You assign them at the barracks building, if you have it at level2.

I mean, they literally copied the mechanic from that stupid death star game and other mobile games, forgetting that the whole point of the mechanic is to encourage you to do IAP.  I'm not really sure why they thought it would be a good system for an MMO like WoW.

Because WoW is a test platform for their other game ideas now. Yeah, it's something cool for WoW the MMO, but it's more useful for them to gather data, etc for future endeavors and test how things work in a live environment. Just like the zone instancing, server and auctionhouse consolidation and RealID/ Coss-world grouping.

[Paelos]

I'd agree with you about it being a test environment if they had any pipeline at all to put those results in. I'm not even sure what the hell they are working on anymore. Salvaging their waste of money with Overwatch?

[Merusk]

Good question and one we're not likely to know any time soon.  Heroes of the Storm hasn't even gone beta yet, and Overwatch just hit a pretty big setback with the "whoops, that name is already trademarked in games." 

Personal theory is they're in over the executive stagings head.   Gaming has changed a LOT in just the last 5 years alone and Blizzard continues to operate like its the early 2000s and they're 1/10th the size. Typical big company small mindset problems that any other sector deals with, but guided by guys still overly-concerned what jobless 20-somethings think.

[Paelos]

Meanwhile the stock that everyone was thinking could hit $30 a share is suddenly hitting major problems after Destiny came out MEH, and Blizzard's stuff is sliding away slowly.

ATVI is only trading today $1 ahead of its value a year ago. That's after hitting $24 on the bubble. There's problems with the company and they need to start producing or Blizzard is going to have major issues in 2016.

[Maven]

Hypothetically, what would ATVI issues have to do with Blizzard? Parent company tanks, decides to sell Blizzard asset to remain solvent or something? Blizzard has been one of the main financial struts of ATVI since the merger.

[Rendakor]

I think the point is that Blizzard doing bad is hurting their overall stock value.

[Paelos]

Hypothetically, what would ATVI issues have to do with Blizzard? Parent company tanks, decides to sell Blizzard asset to remain solvent or something? Blizzard has been one of the main financial struts of ATVI since the merger.

You're looking at it backwards. I think if Blizzard doesn't start pulling weight, the parent is going to jettison them.

The other parts of the company are actually doing great. It's just that Blizzard has been floating the boat with WoW subs for a long time, but now? They are debt-laden and not producing new product.

[Merusk]

I dunno, I see them forcing more executive level changes before actually jettisoning the company.  Some of the recent shake-up with whats-his-name, the Founder, leaving are probably directly related to ATV-level pressure.

I can see Morheim being shown the door in another year if HOTS and the last Starcraft fail to deliver. Especially after the Overwatch debacle, which is just plain fucking up due diligence, a basic business competency. THEN a sale of Blizzard, since WoW is still generating revenue, if not profit.