Bitch Thread for Warlords of Draenor

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

Won't happen because you'd still need a basic means (and willingness) to coordinate and debate tactics after a wipe or attempt. This won't happen ever in LF(R/D) though and even if it did would be a haslle with chat, so LFR groups will always fail as soon as the bosses get hard.

[Ironwood]

Aren't you a little ray of sunshine.

[Jeff Kelly]

As someone who extensively played WotLK heroics via LFD I speak from experience.

The only requirement is iLVL so you won't know who in the group knows the fight from first hand experience, who at least has read up on it and who just hit the LFR button to get "easyprplz please". So you get a group of people where some know the fight, where some at least know about the fight by reading strats or watching videos and some that don't even know which instance they'e in. You also have no formal raid leader and no effective means to infodump strats to people that have no clue and probably won't pay attention to the chat anyway.

When I did LFD heroics I always had a TS server I could direct people to because even with 5 people some fights are hard to coordinate, especially when someone hasn't played a particular boss yet.

Given that it seemingly hasn't changed in years I don't really feel positive about people suddenly getting better because of a change in mechanics.

[Ironwood]

Seriously.  Green text.  I need to make it happen.

Yes, Jeff, I know.  A bloke can fucking dream, eh ?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Can someone explain why the fuck someone at blizzard thought it was a good idea to have all their games offline the same time each week because they are all married to the same service?  I can imagine there is a huge number of hearthstone/diablo players who do not give two fucks about world of warcraft and as the stable of blizzard online games increases it's only going to get worse.

[Ironwood]

Well, the same thing happens with steam.

Oh wait, it doesn't.

[Paelos]

Well, the same thing happens with steam.

Oh wait, it doesn't.

Snap.

[Ironwood]

Lakov has a good point tho, so all I got is snark.

Bringing down everything at the same time is stupid.  It's always been stupid.

[Jeff Kelly]

I never really got why Blizzard needed 7 hours for 'server maintenance' each week anyway. If your setup isn't crap then you'd maybe need a reboot and even database maintenance scripts or the occasional fsck shouldn't take hours.

[Hutch]

It's not every week. It's usually the 15 minute reboot thing.

Also, Diablo has been making noise about Season 1 coming to a close soon, so they might also be doing that today.

[Jeff Kelly]

Yes, Jeff, I know.  A bloke can fucking dream, eh ?

The biggest way Blizzard fucked up - ok maybe not the biggest but still huge - is that they didn't integrate voice chat or gave people a better way to communicate than that fucking terrible tiny shitty chat window on the bottom left of the screen. They can copy boss mods et al all they want, they can write themselves silly designing in-game guides for boss encounters and they can increase or reduce the difficulty all they want. One of the main problem will still be that there is no easy and convenient way to communicate with random players, default, built-in.

Yes, text chat is good if all you say is 'hi', 'k', 'kekekekeke' or 'gratz' but for communicating anything more complex than that it's shit and since the Blizzard default chat UI is bad it's even more shitty. Yes LFR groups are shitty but it's one thing to yell "don't stand in shit and btw. kill those adds" in a microphone and another to tell people complex boss strategies via Blizzards bad chat UI. Teamspeak or Skype is no replacement because most people won't have it installed anyway.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's not every week. It's usually the 15 minute reboot thing.

Also, Diablo has been making noise about Season 1 coming to a close soon, so they might also be doing that today.

Prior to MoP or Cata(?) it has been weekly maintenance from 5 am to 11 am. So for the better part of six or seven years they shut down their service for 7 hours each week to do 'maintenance' qwhere they never could quite explain why and how. They only relaxed the schedule one or two add-ons ago.

[Kail]

It's not every week. It's usually the 15 minute reboot thing.

Also, Diablo has been making noise about Season 1 coming to a close soon, so they might also be doing that today.

Heroes of the Storm closed beta starts today, and with that they're introducing ranked play for the first time, so that might be part of it.

[Merusk]

Voice chats been built into the wow client since wotlk.  Nobody uses it

[Jeff Kelly]

Since September of 2007. During Burning Crusade actually.

I feel rather stupid now. I never even knew that feature existed even though I was still playing then. Maybe that speaks to its lack of quality though.. Unfortunately that kind of invalidates my point.Chat still sucks though.

[dd0029]

The ingame voice thing was terrible when it showed up. We tried it once for about a minute and a half before going back to whatever we were using at the time and never tried it again. It may very well be better now.

[Paelos]

The problem with voice chat in LFR would be that it's LFR. It's Barrens chat but in living color.

[Merusk]

X-Box live, really.

[Tannhauser]

Should I bother doing the garrison missions?  I'm level 100 and just upgraded my garrison to level 3 and my motivation to play my maxxed out toon is low, though I'm enjoying the garrison and followers features.

[Merusk]

Gear, gold, resources via missions. Worth it to set 'em once or twice a day, IMO. Even if you've purpled all your followers

[Ironwood]

You can get easy 645 items from the Garrison.

[SurfD]

You can get easy 645 items from the Garrison.

well, easy if you also have a War Mill and Salvage Yard pumping you some follower upgrade kits, otherwise, it might take you a decent while to get a decent asortment of ilevel 645 followers to do the missions.

[Ironwood]

Since the Warmill and Salvage yard are two of the few useful buildings, I don't see why you wouldn't.  

Though, in fairness, eventually you WILL have those chaps one way or another.  I have 25 Epic Followers all at 655.  I'm literally at the 'what now, because this is all pointless' stage again.


EDIT :

Actually, I'm going to expand on this further.  When you hit 90 and get a Garrison, the FIRST THING YOU SHOULD DO is tear down that shitty fucking Barracks and put up a Warmill.  The boost you get from items alone makes it invaluable as you're leveling.

I know others have different views on what the 'best' building is to slot in there, but I don't find them at all persuasive.  The Warmill is just love.  And when you are of the right level to do the Salvage Yard questline, you should drop everything and do it.  When you have a Salvage Yard you should immediately tear down a level 1 building and PUT IT IN.

But that's just me, perhaps.

[Tannhauser]

I messed up.  I meant is it worthwhile to do the garrison quest line.  As for the salvage yard, yeah that's a nice building.  Haven't made a warmill yet, looks like I should.  I've been doing the tannery and I'm just not seeing what my leather follower expert provides aside from crappy tents.

[Jeff Kelly]

You need to do the quest lines to unlock more questing areas for the dailies. You'll also need to do the quest lines to unlock certain buoldings (Menagerie for example, Fishing Hut Lvl3 and others)

[Jeff Kelly]

You also need to do the quest lines to unlock the Garrison main building level 2 and 3 which is a requirement to be able to build other level 2 and 3 type buildings.

[Setanta]

Well, the same thing happens with Guild Wars.

Oh wait, it doesn't.

Fixed - I never get why WoW goes into extended downtime. Then again, it shits me when EvE goes into downtime in peak Aussie time ... on Oceanic servers.

Having said that, it gives me a chance to catch up on my backlog of games

[SurfD]

You also need to do the quest lines to unlock the Garrison main building level 2 and 3 which is a requirement to be able to build other level 2 and 3 type buildings.

Actaually, I think those landmarks also trigger off of raw character level as well.   You dont HAVE to do the zone stuff, as the blueprints / main building will unlock on its own at specific levels, but doing the Zone questlines for eacch garrison outpost will unlock them faster, and also save you a decent chunk off cash by rewarding you with blueprint vouchers for completion.  You can pretty easily have a fully upgraded tier 2 garrison by time you hit level 96 with only having to buy one tier 2 garrison blueprint.  Otherwise, you have to wait till level 98 for access to all the tier 2 stuff to unlock that way.

[Zetor]

I think the only building that you HAVE to do some quests outside your garrison to unlock is the Salvage Yard at 96 (the goblin questline in spires of arak). Which is kinda silly, but what ya gonna do.

[Ironwood]

Yes.  And it's hugely silly.

Also, the fishing dailies are hugely silly also.

[Jeff Kelly]

Everything about the Garrison is hugely silly, though

[KallDrexx]

Is there any point in me picking up a profession?

I mean, it's a 10 year old game.  I imagine the auction house is already flooded with the highest crafted gear you can make, which is going to be replaced anyway with LFR and raid gear anyways.  Unless I'm woefully misunderstanding things...

[Ironwood]

No.  Professions are pretty much useless.

Pick the 3 Warlords bit of gear that you want.  Build the Hut, or take the profession.  Get the gear.  Wander around never using the professions or huts ever again.

It's kinda sad.  Being an Armorsmith used to MEAN something.

[Paelos]

Yeah, you used to get the best chest piece and make Dark Iron Gear that people used to get through their needed fire resists for MC! Remember resist gear?

Honestly, I like reading this thread, because it reminds me what's going on. I haven't really felt the pull at all this time around. I'm starting to think there's little they could do at this point to do like I do with SWTOR and just sub for 2 months as a tourist.

[Ironwood]

Well, I still made some Dark Iron gear for my Belf so that he could look Blood Elf Knighty, but yeah.  It's all been washed away and doesn't matter.

What's hilarious is you get your 630-640 crafted thing, pop into the first raid and lo a warforged 651 drops.

What a waste of fucking time.