NYT interview and some info on the next time sink.

[HRose]

I feel bad for those new to the genre, but nobody here is.

The fact that we are used to it doesn't mean that it's okay to accept it.

The "wrong" part with raiding is not because it's wrong to have big PvE encounters in a game. But it's when these raids become mandatory to compete and be part of a guild. The need to "catch up" or be left out from the game. Getting excluded. The social outcast.

I've seen the MAJORITY of the guilds on my server collapse and get cannibalized by bigger guilds because that's where the artificial appeal of the game is. Or you adapt to it and are able to satisfy those requirements of time commitment and able to join the catass guilds, or you are out and are left watching. Those players will be encouraged to leave if you cannot offer them access to the same uber stuff and remain in the game.

I'm sure that the great majority of the players would like better to stay in their smaller groups and guilds and play with their friends. To find that type of game "viable" instead of ridiculed by the insane, exponential power creep that sets differences of "second citizenship".

I really don't know why it's unreasonable to reward raids in other, different ways instead of just highly unbalanced power differential that consequently becomes YET ANOTHER accessibility barrier to the content.

The problem IS NOT because there's this type of content available. Noone would complain about this.

The problem IS that this content is selective and mandatory.

One destroys the guilds and an healthy social fabric, the other destroys the balance and the natural competitiveness of a MMO.

What pisses me off it's not because they are adding a new raid zone. But because I already imagine what sort of crazy stuff those 18 bosses will drop. And what Blizzard will give to all the other players? A brand new Tier 0.5 armor set to clean the shoes of the uber guilds.

[Fabricated]

There's also general game balance to consider. If they allowed 5-mans to get the same gear, even eventually, as 40-mans, then people wouldn't need to put up with 40-mans.Greater influx of uber gear.

And from when a more flat power curve in a MMO that brings the players together instead of apart is bad?

It isn't, but everyone ends up looking exactly the same then.

The only "easy" solution I see for this problem in WoW if they did focus on 5-10 manners would be to make many more of them, and have the gear be designed for very specific specs. The "much more content" thing is what hurts the most. Spreading gear sets out amoung many instances and having 2-3 sets for each class to try and get is simply for making it take more time to get geared up, but at least you could LFG and get in the instances in fairly short order.

[HRose]

And from when a more flat power curve in a MMO that brings the players together instead of apart is bad?

It isn't, but everyone ends up looking exactly the same then.

Great. You wrote exactly what strengthens my point.

Offer loot in raids that looks different and adds more variance. Without the huge power differential.

Give raids a *different* functional purpose, without this mudflation silliness.

We always forget that these games should be fun and interesting for other reasons than the pointless power growth.

[Margalis]

There's also general game balance to consider. If they allowed 5-mans to get the same gear, even eventually, as 40-mans, then people wouldn't need to put up with 40-mans.Greater influx of uber gear.

"Put up with" is the key phrase here. It's a game. I don't want to 'put up with' shit. It sounds to me what you are saying is that 5 man groups are more fun, and if they dropped the same gear people would never bother with the 40 man groups. Even if they dropped the same gear much more slowly. Because 40 man groups are just that much more sucky.

So the goal here is to force people to take part in the less fun activities. Wonderful.

I'd like to think that some people actually *like* 40 man groups and find that sort of gameplay more fun than 5 man groups, at least as a change of pace. If that isn't true then the entire concept is retarded. Let's make the end game activity one that most people don't like, even when a viable obvious alternative is available.

If it's a question of forcing people to run 40-mans 100 times or 5-mans 1000 times, if people prefer the 5-mans 1000 times then make that viable.

[Modern Angel]

One of the interesting (as interesting as general forum retardation gets) suggestions I've read is to make raid drops uber for more raiding. Give the feral spec druids, the mortal strike warriors, the enhancement shammies THEIR uber drops in five and ten mans. Draw a definite distinction between raid gear (+healing, massively more mana, tanking) and more generalized epics from smaller dungeons.

[Fabricated]

One of the interesting (as interesting as general forum retardation gets) suggestions I've read is to make raid drops uber for more raiding. Give the feral spec druids, the mortal strike warriors, the enhancement shammies THEIR uber drops in five and ten mans. Draw a definite distinction between raid gear (+healing, massively more mana, tanking) and more generalized epics from smaller dungeons.

That's a really good idea, but at least in the case of warriors, you can be an MS warrior and be a raid tank.

[Modern Angel]

One of the interesting (as interesting as general forum retardation gets) suggestions I've read is to make raid drops uber for more raiding. Give the feral spec druids, the mortal strike warriors, the enhancement shammies THEIR uber drops in five and ten mans. Draw a definite distinction between raid gear (+healing, massively more mana, tanking) and more generalized epics from smaller dungeons.

That's a really good idea, but at least in the case of warriors, you can be an MS warrior and be a raid tank.

You can with the proper gear but most MS warriors that I've grouped with could give two shits about Might because of allt he tanking stuff on it. They pass and then they're paper if they need to step up to the plate for some emergency tanking because OMG 1% TO CRIT! If figure it would work the same: put the crit gear in five mans, tanking in raids and spread the weapons between both.

[Dren]

Here is what I know:

- I do NOT like to sit around watching chat for hours while 40 people figure out what they want to do and how they want to do it.  I do not pay good money for that activity.  It bites!
- I DO want small instances with a small group (5-10) that is VERY challenging.  Yes, wipes will occur, but when the instance only takes an hour when done right, it isn't a big deal.  You can pick yourself up and hit it again pretty easy.
- I DO want a reward for my group every time we go into an instance.  If only 20% of my group gets what they want, I'll still be happy.  Do not make it so I have to go through instance with absolutely no "good" drops throughout.
- I DO want instances that build on themselves more than just "gearing up."  I want the lore to make sense from one step to the other.  Make it so your guildmates can work together to both gear up and finish out quest steps together easily.  Make it so it isn't a complete waste of time for those that have already done the instances 10 times.  If they are challenging and people get nice items everytime, then the experience will still be rewarding to them. Plus, an hour isn't too much to ask most of the time.  It seems like most people in my guild are just waiting around for something to happen and currently that is 10+ content.

I pay money to be entertained from the moment I log in to the moment I log off.  No, no MMOG has done this yet, but some are closer than others. (The journey to 60 in WoW is pretty close IMO.)  40 man content goes in a completely opposite direction to this goal.

[Spinlock]

The real problem as I see it is not phat l3wtz or even "casual vs. raid". The problem is that Burning Crusade is 6 months away and we're wiling away the time trying to make the game fun. Which mean you're either pining away for better loot, or trying to experience the content that raids experience.

EQ2 has it right - they're already putting out their 2nd expansion in the time that WoW has taken to just announce details on one. Chalk it up to experience on SoE's part - they know the cycle - they know that expansion packs - not non-raid dungeons - keep the gamers coming. Just look at EQ 1. still going strong after a billion years and tons of expansions.

We will not care about MC 40 mans or AQ catasses when the expansion comes out because there will be new content to explore. A new world, and that's really what captures attention - the never ending quest for "something new". It doesn't matter if you get a new 5-10 man dungeon because in 1 months time you'll have mastered it, completed your hawt armor set, gotten that uber sword and be right back where you started. Bored, at 60.

Waiting for the expansion. Waiting to see a new world, new content, new weapons to lust after. No one will care at level 70 that you have full purplez because everyone will be lusting after full orange with a red weapon. The key to this rat race is to give something new, often and big - and that's done when you pull out your wallet to buy that nice cardboard box labelled "expansion pack".

[Ironwood]

Lurk More.

[Rasix]

The key to this rat race is to give something new, often and big - and that's done when you pull out your wallet to buy that nice cardboard box labelled "expansion pack".

Yah, lagging on that front is hurting WoW big time.   

[kaid]

The funny thing is I just don't get why people think those of us who love 5 man instances don't like teamwork. When my group of 5 friends are going and doing UBRS with just us that requires a HELL of a lot more team work than raiding. I have done raiding in eq I have no desire to be a cog with 39 other people. That game play is neither fun nor interesting to me.

When people need to do constant parsing to make sure everybody on the raid is awake thats a big problem.

In a 5 man group you know god damn well that everybody is there and playing or you all croak.

I am a very social person in that I don't play mmrpg to solo. I also don't play mmrpg to be a no named grunt with 39 other people 5 of which may actually need to pay attention.

Now if it was like eq1 and you never interacted directly vs the raiders it would be no big deal. Unfortunatly the end game as it stands for non raiders is pvp. And the more 40 man epic dungeons that get added with no additions for weapons/gear for non raiders will make the level 60 bracket totally pointless and frustrating.

It isn't so much that purple gear is a ton better than blue gear. Level vs level they are better but not hugely so. The problem is in raids people are getting like level 70 or 80 gear compared to the max level 60 quality blues non raiders get.

It would not be so bad if by pvping you could more reasonably get the blue or purple rewards. I am getting damn close to the class specific blue gear but jesus its hard to keep progressing if you ever do anything other than just pvp 24/7.

I wish the pvp rewards were more like the LODN rewards were you could over time build up points to buy the gear you want. This way eventually if people did it enough they would get gear decent enough to not get blasted.

kaid

[Nebu]

Easy solution: Offer titles/trophies from raids. Offer unique armor skins or dyes.

People that care about epeen crap can get their "Dragon Slayer" title and some unique armor skins to show off.  More casual players can get the same stats without having to catass hours with 39 other leet kiddies.  It gives motivation to the hardcore while allowing the casual to enjoy content.  It also decreases the impact of raid gear on PvP.  The DAoC classic servers got this right.  A group of 5-6 people could outfit themselves in great equipment augmented by crafted gear.  I had a great template on the Gareth server and got all of my loot with small groups or from player-crafters.

My alternative is to create a game where the best items are made through crafting.  The problem is that most games make crafting so boring that it's not a minigame in itself.  Add some skill to high end crafting and player-crafted gear would not only be valued, but the players may actually enjoy making it.

[Righ]

My experience of raid teamwork was that I worked in a team of 15-25 people on most nights, while the rest got stoned and fucked around on teamspeak making animal noises while largely oblivious to what was happening in the game. This was merely annoying in MC as it slowed down what's already a nightmare weekly grind, but it basically made BWL nearly impossible. Even stuff like Onyxia was tougher than it should have been. To be fair, less folks jerked around in BWL because it wasn't quite as boring, but it only took a handful to make it pointless.

The 40 person raids are not interesting enough to retain most people's attention for several hours at a time, and its tough to find 40 people single-minded enough to knuckle down on a regular basis despite it being boring as hell. I can do that, but then I've worked for a living for half my life. Most WoW players haven't been subjected to such soul crushing misery and weren't planning on a game to be their first experience of it. Good for them, to be honest.

Expansions or not, the problem will continue to be that in any MMOG that you catass your time away in there will not be enough original content. If the content requires many hours of dedication, restraint and self-sacrifice there will only be a small number of people willing to do it. Where WoW goes horribly wrong is that the raid content undermines the rest of the game, and redressing that would undermine the raid content. EQ created a lot more content for non-raid folks after the game was launched than WoW has. EQ also had less focus on PvP. Assuming you won't raid, once you've burned through all the non-raid instances in WoW and PvP on your server has become overly dominated by people in full epic sets there's little to do but start another character. And the quest variety really only allows scope for two characters per faction unless you want excessive repetition. That's been enough to keep churn rates low in WoW for quite some time, but it will pick up. Fortunately, WoW still has good word of mouth reviews, so it hasn't hit saturation yet. Expansions are typically a barrier to entry to new players, not an attraction.

I think Blizzard would do well to look at creating a lot of non-raid content. It will be hugely expensive and consume an army of developers, but it will allow them to retain a much larger proportion of what is a staggeringly huge player base. That's not important now, and probably wont be for another half year to a year, but WoW will hit market saturation at some point, and raiders and high-level expansions won't retain the numbers.

[Modern Angel]

Where WoW goes horribly wrong is that the raid content undermines the rest of the game, and redressing that would undermine the raid content. EQ created a lot more content for non-raid folks after the game was launched than WoW has. EQ also had less focus on PvP. Assuming you won't raid, once you've burned through all the non-raid instances in WoW and PvP on your server has become overly dominated by people in full epic sets there's little to do but start another character. And the quest variety really only allows scope for two characters per faction unless you want excessive repetition.

Nailed right on the head. And you start to think why should I level another alt if it's goingto be the same endgame. The best part is that the more they rely on faction grinding then the less you're able to invest time in an alt because there are fifty things you have to grind faction for.

[Righ]

If they wanted me to reputation grind, they would have had to have given me a reason to do so. I'm grateful to the folks who did and who can make the +15 agility enchantments and so on, but that's about all that's useful. If gear is your thing (and frankly, its all that WoW is about) then you're better off in a raid group than grinding rep. And, lets face it, grinding rep is even more soul destroying than raiding.

What's funny is that the whole balance of power based on items thing has undermined many smaller raiding guilds, since they have filled up with PvPers who need gear. Unless the items the PvPer needs drop on a particular night, they'll blow off raiding to grind PvP honor, meaning the smaller guilds need to either be extremely hardcore and require absolute attendance, or expand to a much larger size to accomodate folks PvPing. From the PvPer perspective, its hard to find good raid guild that will tolerate raiding being second to PvP and which will accomodate spending DKP on items that are ideal for your PvP but better for other classes PvE. Fun stuff.

[kaid]

The reputation grind currently is kinda funny. I am a blacksmith and currently there are a few good items you can get from the old rep grind but most of said items require you to raid to get the lava cores and various other bits. So this means that the items I would really want to grind to get still are not accessible to make.

Currently other than pvp in things like altarac valley there is not much for me to do when I log in at 60. I am pretty fully geared with diremaul and other instance stuff and the current top end blue set valor is a downgrade over what I am currently using unless I have the full set and even then its highly questionable.

The problem with PVP in the 60 bracket is as time goes on it becomes more and more pointless to try to fight due to mudflation of the raiders. This problem is basically going to keep escalating until only the hard core raiders will be allowed to pvp and generally if you are hard core raiding you are likely not a hard core pvp person.

kaid

[Modern Angel]

If they wanted me to reputation grind, they would have had to have given me a reason to do so. I'm grateful to the folks who did and who can make the +15 agility enchantments and so on, but that's about all that's useful. If gear is your thing (and frankly, its all that WoW is about) then you're better off in a raid group than grinding rep. And, lets face it, grinding rep is even more soul destroying than raiding.

What's funny is that the whole balance of power based on items thing has undermined many smaller raiding guilds, since they have filled up with PvPers who need gear. Unless the items the PvPer needs drop on a particular night, they'll blow off raiding to grind PvP honor, meaning the smaller guilds need to either be extremely hardcore and require absolute attendance, or expand to a much larger size to accomodate folks PvPing. From the PvPer perspective, its hard to find good raid guild that will tolerate raiding being second to PvP and which will accomodate spending DKP on items that are ideal for your PvP but better for other classes PvE. Fun stuff.

But that's why ZG and AQ are so great! Raids AND faction grind! Two taste sensations in one!

[Righ]

Yes. As an aside, you might want to quote less, especially for one-liners, before the notoriously intolerent folks round here form a torch-bearing angry mob.

[Modern Angel]

I'm just trying to be really gregarious so I can sell you guys on my products, is all.

[MrHat]

We’ve been hard at work at Patch 1.10 and I’m excited to bring you a small sneak preview of some of the content. We’ll be offering a series of quests for maximum level players so they can obtain a really good, class-specific armor set. This should prove to be a great way for non-raiding players to upgrade their gear. Here are some highlights:

• Characters follow a new quest line to obtain an armor set
• The armor sets contain 4 rare and 4 epic pieces
• Some of the pieces can be obtained by soloing (including one of the epic pieces)
• The most difficult pieces to obtain require a UBRS level group
• We are adding new bosses to existing dungeons
• Some of the existing dungeons are being re-itemized

Edit: apparently, you upgrade your blue sets from UBRS, Scholo, etc.  So you still have to grind for those.

[Margalis]

It's just mudflation.

Right after this they will add another dungeon with even better loot for raiders. The real problem here is letting people use that equipment in PvP, especially in battlegrounds.

I am not one of those types of people that has to have everything. I play at my own pace. I'll probably never have the best possible equipment and I don't care. But it's lame that structured PvP is at the mercy of raid-level equipment.

In FFXI the PvP instances are level restricted. The max level in-game is 75 and the max level for the big Ballista (PvP) tourney is 60. (If you are over the cap you are just de-levelled temporarily) So all the super-loot you get at level 70+ doesn't matter at all. Simple, elegant solution. Of course that doesn't work for open PvP but it works fine for structured PvP like battlegrounds.

They really need to decide if battlegrounds are supposed to be a test of skill or a test of loot and a way to farm items and such.

[MrHat]

I'd be perfectly happy if they changed it to counterstrike buy-out method in the instances.

You have three or so kits per class in WSG/AV/AB and you got to chose.  Everyone uses the same kits and then it becomes more skill/organization based.  Or some shit.

Doesn't matter, will never happen.  Maybe they could release that option on test with the next BG.

[Calantus]

I like gearing up for PVE/PVP and I really don't get everyone's beef with it. People don't start off games with advantages, because the game doesn't start when the "you are eligible to enter blah blah blah" gump pops up. It starts at level 1, when we all have the same shitty, shitty gear. When someone with twice as many purples than you but less pvp skill beats you down, they beat you in the raiding/gearing aspect of the game.

Actually I lie, I do get people's beef with it. You don't have enough time, or don't like raiding, or couldn't get into one of the uber guilds. Now I can understand and appreciate that, but to me you're asking for an entirely different game when you want for gearing up not to matter.

[Paelos]

Actually I lie, I do get people's beef with it. You don't have enough time, or don't like raiding, or couldn't get into one of the uber guilds. Now I can understand and appreciate that, but to me you're asking for an entirely different game when you want for gearing up not to matter.

No you don't, and you sound like a condescending douchetard, so please stop telling people how they feel. Thanks.

[Margalis]

But like I said it doesn't matter (much) in FFXI and people like that.

it comes down to lack of design goals and a lack of clarity of purpose. Blizzards needs to decide what battlegrounds are actually for. Are they a test of skill? A test of grinding? They could make battlegrounds of different level caps and let people choose.

It seems to me the idea was that the PvP servers gave open PvP, and battlegrounds more structured, competitive PvP. You can't drive a tank in an NFL game because you saved up and bought one in real life.

I'm not going to claim that that is how it HAS to be. Some people want BGs to be a test of equipment as well as skill. Some don't. My point is that they need to *decide*. Or they could easily support both and make everyone happy!

Right now the concept of BGs is a mess. They are competitive yet raid-level equipment matters, there are quests and things you can do in them and items you can get that have nothing to do with the BG, etc.

They should just make a battleground that has no quests or fish or items or any crap like that, start everyone even and have a true test of skill. It wouldn't be hard.

But for some reason (as evidenced by War3) they now feel the need to mix all these things together. War3 was a worse game than SC mostly because of all the stupid side-crap like farming mobs that detracted from the main point.

On these boards we've gone through the "player skill vs. player resources" debate many times, there is no need to rehash - there is a difference, and some people don't want player resources to be part of the equation. It would be *easy* to make these people happy.

It's *especially* important when you see that the 2 end-game activities are described as PvP and raiding. You don't have to PvP to raid - making people raid to PvP effectively is silly. Part of the point of PvP endgame is to please people who DON'T LIKE RAIDING.

Again in FFXI there are people that raid a lot, and people that PvP a lot. Some people do both but you do tend to see it appealing to distinct groups. Keeping distinct groups of players happy is a good thing - pissing off a distinct group for no reason is a bad thing.

Now I can understand and appreciate that, but to me you're asking for an entirely different game when you want for gearing up not to matter.

No, what people are asking for is literally 20 hours of coding to bring a feature up to par with a similar feature that already exists in a competitor. Adding a level or equipment cap to a battleground is *hardly* an "entirely different game."

[Calantus]

I'd be perfectly happy if they changed it to counterstrike buy-out method in the instances.

You have three or so kits per class in WSG/AV/AB and you got to chose.  Everyone uses the same kits and then it becomes more skill/organization based.  Or some shit.

Doesn't matter, will never happen.  Maybe they could release that option on test with the next BG.

I guess I should have hit the quote button instead of the reply one. My last post was directed at what MrHat said in the post above me. What he is asking for is to take the whole gear advancement section out of BGs, and I don't see why that should be at all in a MMOG game like WoW.

If you guys want to make gear brackets that's fine with me. Force preset groups to fight preset groups to fight? Fine with me so long as the variety of opponents and que times don't suffer (ie. cross-server BGs). I don't honor grind so I don't need to crush people who have no chance of fighting back. That is fun for a little bit, but it gets old fast. I can see how it would suck even more from the other side of the gear coin. But to take gear out of the equation altogether? What if my equal-level, equal rarity suit is better than yours? Should I not be rewarded for having chosen my gear appropriately? I just don't see why you would want to do that.

[Righ]

Chosen your gear appropriately? Heh. I think rather more people who play WoW are capable of doing the min-max sums than the number who raid Neferian. If you want to test peoples' gear choices, you might as well make every item in the game available for lease at the battlefields, and people can build their ultimate fighting machine before they enter. I suspect that most people of a class would be rather similarly equipped. Even if they're all more stupid than you, they can probably read cheat sites.

Face it, the raiding game is currently breaking the PvP game, and things are moving downhill fast for the bulk of players who do not (for whatever reason) raid. As somebody who is a hardcore raider, you may find this to be a most welcome state of affairs, but it is not a successful formula for the game's continued growth.

The problem is not that there are folks with better gear fighting against folks with poorer gear. The problem is that there is a gulf of such extreme proportions between raid gear and everything else, and it permeates every aspect of the game. As each week passes, it becomes more the case that if you do not wish to spend most of your time end-game raiding, there is little on offer in WoW long term. That's not somewhere Blizzard should want to go with under 10% of their user population regularly raiding.

[Calantus]

I wasn't implying that it's an uncommon ability to put together a good suit of gear, but you always see people run around with gear that is inferior to other items in that tier that they could be wearing instead. Whether that is because you just haven't been lucky enough for it to drop for you, or because you simply don't understand the gear choices well enough, some people will have better gear than others inspite of having the same sources. I like putting together a suit and going out to gather it. I like to see it coming together making my char stronger, picking up a few upgrades to use as placeholders til the best item drops, etc. To me that's the core of the gameplay. When I go to DM North I'll have fun doing it, but a big part of why I do it is what it will get me (or the others in the party). Maybe you'll see it as bizarre or being a loot whore or whetever, but I just wouldn't see a point in instancing if they didn't get me phat lewt. I didn't play Baldur's Gate thousands of times, because the first time through was largely sufficient. I did play singleplayer Diablo 2 quite a lot though because there was always teh shiny to gather.

What would be so wrong with giving each color of rarity a multiplier and applying it to the level of the item, then adding up all the items on a person for their gear total and then basing brackets off that? You could have a bracket where it was naked through to all blues with 4-5 MC/ZG/honor/BG purples, and another bracket where it was 4-5 MC/ZG/etc purples all the way through to full BWL/AQ gear. Seems to me that it would be a solution that wouldn't take the whole point out of gearing up. Sure you'd have people who sit right on the edge of the gear limit, but that'd be like level 29s in the 20-29 bracket when you're like 26-27 (and not like 29s with full blues/high greens and high lvl enchants in the 20-29 bracket like it is now).

EDIT: Plus they are looking to put in more non-raider gear. Between BG rewards, BoE epics, craftables, and the new solo-to-small-raid gear I don't think there would be much of a chasm unless you're talking people who just do not play enough at all (when I say not enough I look at people who play less than an hour a day over the course of a week). I'm in the camp that people shouldn't be able to just do an equivalent 5-man and gear up like a raider over a longer time. But I see no reason for a combo of 5-mans, craftables, etc to add up to near what a raider can expect to have.

[Zetor]

I don't think you can expect people to get BG rewards with a less-than-insane time investment.

(Neutral->Exalted is 42000 rep)
AV: This one is actually doable (I have exalted on 1 char and revered on 2 and I've not leeched rep at all). About 1-2 months unless you really grind away at it.
AB: You get 10 rep per 200 points and 50 per 3 marks of honor. On my server, horde wins 80% of the time, meaning I'll get an average of 100 rep per AB. This means 420 AB battles until exalted. At 20 minutes a game (shorter battles mean less rep) and 15 minute queues, that's 245 hours of nothing but AB or waiting for AB. FWIW, after 4 months, I'm still only halfway through honored.
WSG: You get 14 rep per flag capture and 50 per 3 marks of honor. Assuming a 50/50 battle without turtling (optimistic), you'll get around 60 rep per WSG. That means 700 WSG matches, at 10 minutes a game that's 116 hours of WSG plus the queues (which are non-existant on WSG holiday, but forget about it otherwise). I'm not even at friendly with WSG, though that's mostly due to me disliking the BG altogether.

Now, of course these aren't hard (or particularly accurate) numbers, there are some quests that alleviate the pain somewhat... but BGs are a horrid grind, your average "casual player" is very unlikely to make it past honored. Well, maybe in AV.


-- Z.

[Calantus]

Yeah I'll agree that that the BG grind is too much if you really tried to go at it, though I'll disagree on the AV being a hard one. On my server alliance haven't won AV's until just recently, but I still got up relatively high (somewhere in reverred) going to something like 1-2 a week since I was 60 (EDIT: it's a new server, I've been 60 for around 2 months). I already have guildies who are 1000/1000 exalted. It's the AB/WSG grinds that are terrible (I like to say "1*** rep to friendly!!" whenever people go on about how close to reverred they are in WSG :P). I was also pointing more to the non-raider specifically than the casual person, even someone who still plays a fair bit, so I wasn't really looking at how viable time-wise they were, just that the options exist. So if you wanna say it takes too long for the reward I'll listen and possibly agree, but the options exist is all I'm saying.

Funnily enough raiding has always been the fastest, easiest, and most painless way to get purples, even if you don't have a taste for it.

[Ironwood]

But for some reason (as evidenced by War3) they now feel the need to mix all these things together. War3 was a worse game than SC mostly because of all the stupid side-crap like farming mobs that detracted from the main point.

Gotta call you on this - that's your opinion.  And, in my opinion, totally, totally wrong.  I LIKED the enhancements and depth that Warcraft 3 added.  I played a fuck of a lot of starcraft and I had to have a bloody intervention to get me to stop playing wc3.

[Ironwood]

Incidentally, Mr Lum chimed in with an interesting and easy-read view on the matter over at Brokentoys.

[Dren]

I'm in the camp that people shouldn't be able to just do an equivalent 5-man and gear up like a raider over a longer time. But I see no reason for a combo of 5-mans, craftables, etc to add up to near what a raider can expect to have.

So it doesn't matter that it takes you 1000 hours of play to get your set and me 1100 hours to get mine.  It only matters what the size of the group is?  Nevermind that it may take me 4x longer (in terms of real time days, not play hours) to do it?

What you're saying is that 40 man is IT.  IT is THE only way you should get the best rewards.  Am I right?

If you say yes, I could not agree any less and that kind of design intent will eventually drive me from the game.

[Calantus]

Well the way I see it is this, if there is a way to get exactly everything I need doing just 5-mans, why the hell would I ever raid? Yes yes, I know where this is going to take us, let me continue. My point is, it doesn't make sense for something to be put into the game that is already narrow and then make decisions that marginalise it further. A 5-man dungeon is basically a raid in small scale, same way as with soloing is to 5-mans. Should someone be able to solo all the epics they would ever need? No, because then there's less people to join your 5-man-epic group when they can do all that without the added baggage of people? It's the same reason so many people don't instance on the way up, why should they when the rewards they can buy from the AH, quest for, or pick up are good enough? Some people do... but not really enough.

So really I think it's gotta be a combo. Doing it all the exact same way on the small-scale is not a good idea IMO, but doing 5-mans, farming mats/gold for crafted items, grinding some rep, grinding some pvp rep, etc to build up a suit seems fine to me. But even then it can't be the exact same power level as raiding gear or again, why raid for? If you wanna kill or further marginalise raiding then sure, go ahead, but it just doesn't make sense from the Blizz perspective considering how much work they've put into the raid instances lately.

Also yes, what I am basically saying is that while I do enjoy raiding, I sure as hell wouldn't find it enjoyable enough to deal with 39 other people's shit in a raid if the rewards weren't tasty.

EDIT: Also raiding it is very easy to fill content with. It's quite interesting how it works really. So much of people's time is spent dealing with the shit that comes with a whole bunch of people put together in a quest for phat lewt they can't fully share. Sorting out DKP, finding another druid to replace that fucker that blew up at people in guild chat all the time, dealing with another guild going on about some outside boss or your members talking shit on them, or your members ninja'd some POS item and you gotta make restitutions, etc. Then there's all the wiped I just refuse to tolerate in 5-mans. We wipe more than 2-3 times in an instance and I label it a "shit dungeon" and vow never to come back. I wipe 2-3 times on a single raid boss I've never done before and I'm like "shit that was easy". The farming for consumables... you get the point. It's a great filler, and whichever dev first thoguht of it was a fucking genious.