Is there a boredom tipping point that's being reached?

[Yegolev]

My prediction, and feel free to write this down, is that it will take somewhat longer but WoW will spawn an incarnation of lumthemad the likes of which not even God has seen.  It will happen in AOL and MySpace, using Unicode fonts, and their king-queen shall be legion, but it will come to pass as surely as the heavens doth wheel.  Beneath its sandals will be crushed to dust a thousand Shadowbanes and a thousand-thousand Auto Assaults, choking the Neo- McQuaids and Anti-Kosters on the bone-dust of the corpse of online gaming itself.  The wailing of The Bowman shall pierce the veil, unleashing hell on copper.  Those left alive shall witness the Final Days before Korea becomes self-aware, and nanoseconds later become enslaved by towering and cruel avatars shaped as a large and moving Flash Object.

And lo, it was scribed.

[Modern Angel]

Lots will be back for Naxx in all likeliness.  Hardcore guilds on my server have had some churn, but from what I've seen, a lot of the churn seem to play alts on PvP servers or somesuch. 

EDIT: Really though, the hardcore guilds are having fallout because AQ's itemization is a tad off from what a lot expected.  It's essentially filled with itemization that was otherwise lacking, such as druid feral gear.  This caters to a minority; the vast majority of raiding players are not interested in loot from the first half of the instance.  Where the items start getting interesting (increase in ilevel) is at the twin emperors, but this fight requires more coordination and skill than what most BWL guilds are used to.

So, the super hardcore guilds are capable of progressing past the emps and getting some rare upgrades.  The lite hardcore guilds (the vast majority) have a lot of trouble getting to this point, and since the loot isn't there, a lot lose interest.  Either that, or they find or form a guild that can get to this point.

I see it as the raiding playerbase coping with how the top raid game is now structured.  When BWL was at the top end, it offered upgrades that were really far more accessible in comparison.

In my opinion, Blizzard is being too careful about mudflation.  They're adding to the end extreme of the raiding spectrum rather than shifting the entire thing forwards.

Good points. I think AQ may have been the tipping point. I know of only a few people who are interested in AQ. For some it is the loot but I don't think that's all.

Alot of folks ground their asses off to get the gates open and I think it was just such a let down. The bugs and their storyline aren't terribly interesting. The server crashes at opening, I think, put some people off of the whole thing. The big, number one reason I keep seeing, though, is that the raid guilds were forced to grind Maraudon to get the requisite nature resistance. Seems like a fairly trivial thing but when you're the big kid on the block and you're forced to go back to a bluebie instance to get your NR on? Right or wrong that has to blow.

The main raiding guild on my server (quick question: I see guilds citing precise standing in worldwide raid progression. Is there some site I'm not aware of that tracks this?), top ten or fifteen in the world, cleared AQ. And THEN they largely broke up. They just said, "Fuck this. AQ sucks. The items suck, no nature resistance sucks, etc."

[Rasix]

I don't think anyone's "cleared" AQ40 yet.  I believe Ouro and C'thun are still waiting to be killed.

The loot blows ass for the most part though, especially the first 3-4 bosses.  It is a let down.  AQ20 is a hell of a lot more fun than 40, but it suffers the same itemization issues also.

Raiders don't want to spend the time learning new instances for loot side-grades.  Ohh well, priests finally get an upgrade over Benediction. Woo hoo.

[Modern Angel]

Ah, my mistake then. Looking over at their progress thread I know they did the big green slime guy who's apparently the source of ALOT of bitching.

[Rasix]

Ah, my mistake then. Looking over at their progress thread I know they did the big green slime guy who's apparently the source of ALOT of bitching.

Viscidus (sp?).  A mob that requires tons of nature resist and drops.... nature resist gear. GG.

[El Gallo]

PvP is what makes the PvE raid game sort of suck with sidegrade after sidegrade.  They need to scale gear in battlegrounds or we'll be stuck with PvErs bitching about sidegrades and PvPers bitching about getting pwnz0r3d by purpalz forever.

My prediction, and feel free to write this down, is that it will take somewhat longer but WoW will spawn an incarnation of lumthemad the likes of which not even God has seen.  It will happen in AOL and MySpace, using Unicode fonts, and their king-queen shall be legion, but it will come to pass as surely as the heavens doth wheel.  Beneath its sandals will be crushed to dust a thousand Shadowbanes and a thousand-thousand Auto Assaults, choking the Neo- McQuaids and Anti-Kosters on the bone-dust of the corpse of online gaming itself.  The wailing of The Bowman shall pierce the veil, unleashing hell on copper.  Those left alive shall witness the Final Days before Korea becomes self-aware, and nanoseconds later become enslaved by towering and cruel avatars shaped as a large and moving Flash Object.

And lo, it was scribed.

I think I'm in love.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, Viscidus. The one that requires the nature resistance which doesn't actually exist in game.

[Morfiend]

I don't think anyone's "cleared" AQ40 yet.  I believe Ouro and C'thun are still waiting to be killed. 

Im pretty sure C'Thun has been killed. I dont know about Ouro, but I was told C'Thun was the major end boss of the dungeon.

[Rasix]

I don't think anyone's "cleared" AQ40 yet.  I believe Ouro and C'thun are still waiting to be killed. 

Im pretty sure C'Thun has been killed. I dont know about Ouro, but I was told C'Thun was the major end boss of the dungeon.

C'thun has been taken to his second or third stage.  No one's downed him yet unless they're keeping it on the down low and that just doesn't happen on WoW's forums. 

Ouro is an optional boss (like Viscidus).  Supposedly ridiculously hard and currently bugged (shocker!).

[Hoax]

My prediction, and feel free to write this down, is that it will take somewhat longer but WoW will spawn an incarnation of lumthemad the likes of which not even God has seen.  It will happen in AOL and MySpace, using Unicode fonts, and their king-queen shall be legion, but it will come to pass as surely as the heavens doth wheel.  Beneath its sandals will be crushed to dust a thousand Shadowbanes and a thousand-thousand Auto Assaults, choking the Neo- McQuaids and Anti-Kosters on the bone-dust of the corpse of online gaming itself.  The wailing of The Bowman shall pierce the veil, unleashing hell on copper.  Those left alive shall witness the Final Days before Korea becomes self-aware, and nanoseconds later become enslaved by towering and cruel avatars shaped as a large and moving Flash Object.

And lo, it was scribed.

Flesh this out a little and I will be more then willing to subscribe to your writing on this subject as a religion.  Seriously, I think a doomsday MMO gaming religion is something the world needs.  I'm sure as high priest you can get some kind of tax write-off.

[Tale]

That was great, Yegolev.

And Modern Angel, yes, two years for an expansion is pathetic. But they can get away with it in the current market, like they get away with incredibly poor server performance and queueing on many realms. I am pretty sure the majority of WoW subscribers are MMOG noobs, not just a couple of million, obsessed for the foreseeable future. And WoW remains the most polished and accessible MMOG for anyone else starting out.

It still has plenty of momentum and subscriber numbers will continue to grow. Post-expansion will be a high point, like post-Kunark in EQ. If they manage to turn around another expansion within 12 months of the first, they will retain returnees like EQ did with Velious. They've begun to address the non-raiders' issues with things like the dungeon set 2.0 armour quests, and they've shown they can make raiding more accessible in ZG. The gap between the kind of stats on MC gear and the stats on Dungeon 2.0 gear still has plenty of leeway for more non-raider quests.

It's still a very well-positioned game, with many opportunities to recapture people who have left it, and many new accounts still joining. Just as long as the expansion actually lives up to the hype.

[Modern Angel]

It sounds as though I'm completely slagging on the game, at least in a roundabout way, when that's not really the case. I still play. Alot. And my experience since leaving Lothar and my old zerg guild has injected a bit of fresh life into the game for me. All the same, I'm ready for new stuff. Doing MC with a guild that has their shit together will be a breath of fresh air but it's still doing MC. The expansion can't come fast enough so I can swing some new shinies.

What the game has for me is polish. I never thought polish mattered much; I dabbled in most of the MMOGs that came out but I was largely a turn-based strategy grognard. I didn't give a shit if my games were hex maps with barely animated counters on them so long as they had SUBSTANCE. Polish, graphics? Fuck all that. Those were for other people. Boy, was I wrong. For every thing that another game does better than WoW that game lacks that polish that I used to sneer at.

That said I (and I suspect a decent handful of people) will be out of there in a second if we can get our depth AND polish. Give me Shadowbane without the bugs, bullshit and stationary spiders, for instance, and I'll be there with a quickness.

[Brolan]

I bailed on the game about two months ago.  My primary character was 60 for about four months and the raiding game (MC & ZG) just wasn't fun.

Of course, one of the reason it wasn't fun was the assholery of guild politics.  One might say guild politics are not part of the game, but since you need 100-200 people in a guild to field a 40 person MC raid, that is simply not true.

The revamping of the old instances like Strat and Scholo is tempting, but it really was a relief push back the mouse and keyboard and get away from the game.  I don't need to watch my fat ass getting any fatter.

[Triforcer]

I'm not bored.  I just leveled a druid to 35 and have devoted the last couple days to lvling engineering, and I one-shotted a 60 mage with a 4k Death Ray crit.  Life is beautiful 

[Zetor]

Yeah, the second half of AQ40 seems to be a huge vael-style NR cockblock. It's amusing, since I remember tigole saying that they'll not make any more resistance-heavy dungeons after MC and BWL. But at least they made green dragons spawn constantly (might've gotten fixed in last saturday's hotfix)... I remember watching a guild take Taerar down twice in one hour, that's a lot of NR lovin'.

I don't raid, and so far the 1.10 patch seems "ok". A lot of the previously crap blue/green instance drops are actually useful now, balanced out by the lowered instance caps. (BTW, friends don't let friends do 10-man pickup UBRS. It burnssss us.) I still get wtfpwned by BWL-geared folks, but AQ20 actually has comparable gear (compare http://www.thottbot.com/?i=40736 to http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52789 and http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52666 to http://www.thottbot.com/?i=39255 ), etc. I really dig the mini-ZHC dropped by Drakk, too.

Oh yeah, tier 0.5 doesn't seem worth getting for most non-raiders... my DM/strat/scholo blues and crafted blues/epics are better in most cases than the items from the quest line (which is both hideously expensive, takes a lot of time to complete, and plenty of luck/preparation for stuff like the 45min baron) except for the bracers, which is thankfully easy enough to procure. Not to mention running undead strat 50000 more times to get my dreadmist leggings? Eff that noise.


-- Z.

[Azazel]

I can totally see how people would get burned out, but I also don't want to see the mudflation that I saw in EQ, such as more and more vanilla content and crap like AAs.

Especially AAs, I hated that shit in EQ. I got disgusted when I couldn't get into a decent guild because my rogue didn't have an extra 5% to stamina and dodge.

Heh, for me it's the inverse. The lack of something meaningful to do at 60 if you're not hardcore PVP or raiding made me wish for the days of EQ and it's AAs and LDON/Dragons of Norrath style gear you could work on a bit at a time without it being a big-ass faction grind for the colour purple. Gold for quests is a step up, but still gold isn't very meaningful in comparison to being able to work a little on your characters' gear or innate abilities or on augments (ie diablo gem-slotting). My experience is more like Fabricated's as far as content level goes.

My schedule doesn't allow for regular raids, and even when it did I wasn't interested, cos, you know, been there, done that, got the EQ t-shirt (and somehow the raids in EQ were more fun for me, despite the game's other issues.

Result of all this? Stopped playing about a year ago after playing from near-release. Restarted in November, account has been inactive again for a month or so and instead I'm finally working my way through Far Cry.. hurrah!

[Telemediocrity]

I've never done WoW raids, but the way people describe them makes them sound interesting.

If all of WoW's raids collected together were released as a singleplayer game, with the rest of your raid counterparts played by reasonably competent scripted AI, would it be fun?

[Xanthippe]

So the people who are getting bored are the people who have finished all of the high end dungeons except AQ?

Why should this surprise anyone?  Few can maintain that level of guild/time commitment over years.  Months, sure, but eventually people realize that their time is better spent elsewhere.

I don't understand the whole "blame Blizzard for slow content" theme.  Unless you're hardcore, the content isn't slow, and why should Blizzard cater to the extreme top end?  Doesn't make sense.

It's not the game.  It's the nature of the catass achiever to rip through content quickly and grow bored.

[HaemishM]

One might say guild politics are not part of the game, but since you need 100-200 people in a guild to field a 40 person MC raid, that is simply not true.

When talking about raiding guilds, guild politics IS the game. The raids are just the "reward" for dealing with all that politicing shit.

EDIT: Yes, raids are the Jack Abramoff of Guild Politics.

[bhodi]

I've never done WoW raids, but the way people describe them makes them sound interesting.

If all of WoW's raids collected together were released as a singleplayer game, with the rest of your raid counterparts played by reasonably competent scripted AI, would it be fun?

I would. Especially if you could customize the AI for strategies, try out different tactics, see what works best. It'd be like all the fun of a guild without all the guild drama.
it'd get old faster, of course, ther'es not a lot of incentive to run MC for the 20th time, but I can see playing it and gearing up for the next dungeon. You'd burn through content even faster, but the content DOES stand on it's own. For a while, anyway.

I don't know why you think you need 100-200 people, my guild has just over 60.

[Zane0]

I've never done WoW raids, but the way people describe them makes them sound interesting.

If all of WoW's raids collected together were released as a singleplayer game, with the rest of your raid counterparts played by reasonably competent scripted AI, would it be fun?

Much of the entertainment derives from coming together, formulating a strategy, and having everyone do their individual part to triumph as a whole against otherwise impossible odds.  The encounters are very well designed by relative MMO standards, but they're mostly trivial after the learning phase. In addition to upgrading your character, you can parade around in the loot; a proclamation of your guild's solidarity and coordination, of sorts.

It's a unique, collective experience that you can't reproduce in a single player game, I'd say.

EDIT: Yes, guild drama is sorta incidental to playing the raid game.  You can get lucky though, and find a good group of skilled people.  My current guild has about 80 active accounts.

[Dren]

So the people who are getting bored are the people who have finished all of the high end dungeons except AQ?

Why should this surprise anyone?  Few can maintain that level of guild/time commitment over years.  Months, sure, but eventually people realize that their time is better spent elsewhere.

I don't understand the whole "blame Blizzard for slow content" theme.  Unless you're hardcore, the content isn't slow, and why should Blizzard cater to the extreme top end?  Doesn't make sense.

It's not the game.  It's the nature of the catass achiever to rip through content quickly and grow bored.

They've put out a ton of content, but it has mostly been towards the audience that DOES rip through their content faster.  As for me and the rest of the casuals, we are left with the same quests and instances we had before. 

I agree, there is a ton of content for 1-59 and I've done most of it with several alts, but after a year of doing this without any real additions to that portion of the game, the content additions seem to be slow to us.

AQ20 and AQ40?  I only liked that before they were opened I was able to sell all my crap for more money.  Now, even that has gone away so the raiders can prance their spoils in front of me.  They've catered to the catasses and once they've left, the casuals will be looking at the same content that was in the game for them over a year ago.

I'm still fine with it, but not because of any of the new content they added.  It just doesn't pertain to me.  I'll eventually get tired of rolling alts through the same stuff.  The expansion will add some stuff for me with that respect for a bit, but when the hell is that realistically coming out?

[Rasix]

If all of WoW's raids collected together were released as a singleplayer game, with the rest of your raid counterparts played by reasonably competent scripted AI, would it be fun?

Some raids would, yah. It could play out like a tactics game where you only have complete control of one major player. 

There's a quest early on in Ashenvale for the horde where you go along with a small strike force of Orcs to take back an outpost from some night elves.  It's a very cool quest and a concept I wish they'd implement a lot more in the game.  It's rather well balanced, also.  Very possible to lose the encounter unless you're making a difference.

[El Gallo]

I don't understand the whole "blame Blizzard for slow content" theme.  Unless you're hardcore, the content isn't slow, and why should Blizzard cater to the extreme top end?  Doesn't make sense.

It's not the game.  It's the nature of the catass achiever to rip through content quickly and grow bored.

I don't know about that.  This game came out almost a year and a half ago.  Plenty of non-hardcore people have been 60 for over a year.  You have Strat, Scholo, UBRS and Dire Maul.  Over and over.  For a year.  Blizzard's slow content generation isn't just a problem for raiders.

[Modern Angel]

Exactly. The problem for the raiders isn't slow content it's the QUALITY of content. Churn happens but I think it's been a bit more than usual due to AQ sort of sucking in the ways they enjoy.

[Jayce]

... AQ sort of sucking in the ways they enjoy.

...

I think that could be rephrased - I initially read it very differently from the way I think you meant it.

[Modern Angel]

I should rephrase that. :) Multitasking kills my English and typing skills.

In all the ways that matter to the top end raider AQ falls short of what they enjoy.

[Xanthippe]

They've put out a ton of content, but it has mostly been towards the audience that DOES rip through their content faster.  As for me and the rest of the casuals, we are left with the same quests and instances we had before. 

I agree, there is a ton of content for 1-59 and I've done most of it with several alts, but after a year of doing this without any real additions to that portion of the game, the content additions seem to be slow to us.

I'm going to quibble here with your definition of a casual.  If you have done most of the content with several alts and played for a year, you're closer to a catass than a casual.  You don't have to be hardcore to be a catass.

As far as new content goes, there's more being added in the next patch, I believe.  Necropolis dungeon?

[Jayce]

They've put out a ton of content, but it has mostly been towards the audience that DOES rip through their content faster.  As for me and the rest of the casuals, we are left with the same quests and instances we had before. 

I agree, there is a ton of content for 1-59 and I've done most of it with several alts, but after a year of doing this without any real additions to that portion of the game, the content additions seem to be slow to us.

I'm going to quibble here with your definition of a casual.  If you have done most of the content with several alts and played for a year, you're closer to a catass than a casual.  You don't have to be hardcore to be a catass.

As far as new content goes, there's more being added in the next patch, I believe.  Necropolis dungeon?

Thank you for bringing this up, Xanthippe... I was going to say the same thing.

Consider as counterpoint my position:  played since release (with several month break). I have one level 60.  My highest alt is 27.  I raid ZG, AQ20, MC, BWL often (2-3x a week). I am geared in mostly purples.  I consider myself a casual (0-4 hrs weekdays, 0-6 hrs weekends).

edit: purples and one orange.

[Xanthippe]

I don't know about that.  This game came out almost a year and a half ago.  Plenty of non-hardcore people have been 60 for over a year.  You have Strat, Scholo, UBRS and Dire Maul.  Over and over.  For a year.  Blizzard's slow content generation isn't just a problem for raiders.

You also have 3 battlegrounds and two realms with almost completely different quests.  Reputation.

Of course, my perspective may be different due to taking 6 months off from the game.  I'm most definitely in the catass category when I am playing, and I burned out on both realms before they came out with the honor system.  When I first came back, it seemed like so much has been added to the game, as well as improved about the game.

I don't expect to not grow bored with a game within about 6 months or a year, if I catass away at it.  One of the best things about mmorpgs is the ability to drop out, then drop back in without losing a thing.

[Jayce]

I don't know about that.  This game came out almost a year and a half ago.  Plenty of non-hardcore people have been 60 for over a year.  You have Strat, Scholo, UBRS and Dire Maul.  Over and over.  For a year.  Blizzard's slow content generation isn't just a problem for raiders.

One of the best things about mmorpgs is the ability to drop out, then drop back in without losing a thing.

Unless they're... SWG was it?... and they give your character the axe a few months after you cancel.  I never understood that.

[Threash]

Its not catass vs casual its raider vs non raider.  Theres tons of casual raiders out there, it really doesn't take as much of a commitment as most people assume, theres also tons of catass non raiders.  I have friends with 4 level 60s in the best blue/purple gear avialable outside of raids and my guild if full of people who log in 6 hours a week and have full epic suits from mc and bwl.

[Telemediocrity]

Consider as counterpoint my position:  played since release (with several month break). I have one level 60.  My highest alt is 27.  I raid ZG, AQ20, MC, BWL often (2-3x a week). I am geared in mostly purples.  I consider myself a casual (0-4 hrs weekdays, 0-6 hrs weekends).

If you're playing more than 10 hours a week, you're not a casual player.  You're in some mid-range.  I'm not sure whether I'd argue 15 hours a week or 20 as the cutoff above which one is plainly catass, but it's somewhere in there.

[Margalis]

About FFXI, I'm not saying it's better than WoW overall. I'm just saying two things:

1: There are a variety of end-game activites.
2: PvP is level capped to avoid people bringing in insane drops they got in PVE.

1 is hard to copy, but 2 is so easy.

[Rasix]

How does level capping address discrepancies in gear?  Is it impossible for someone to have great gear at level x and another person to have poor gear?  How does this mechanic work in FFXI?

Edit: It would be possible (not sure on how hard to program) for WoW to level cap gear in regards to battlegrounds as every piece of equipment has an item level.