World of Whorecraft: Battle for Asseroth

[Lacrymas]

What are you people talking about? Vanilla/TBC wasn't like that at all. I just said that once you are geared from dungeons (and that doesn't take too long and kinda depends on your luck) there is *nothing* to do except raid (or arena) and you can't dump days into that. Arena is objectively based on your win ratio so it's skill based in a sense. Dumping days into losing won't get you anywhere. I have no idea what Artifact Power is, but it doesn't sound like anything in vanilla/TBC. Maybe the honor grind in vanilla, but that was excruciatingly bad, that's why they removed it.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

What are you people talking about? Vanilla/TBC wasn't like that at all. I just said that once you are geared there is *nothing* to do except raid (or arena) and you can't dump days into that. Arena is objectively based on your win ratio so it's skill based in a sense. Dumping days into losing won't get you anywhere. I have no idea what Artifact Power is, but it doesn't sound like anything in vanilla/TBC. Maybe the honor grind in vanilla, but that was excruciatingly bad, that's why they removed it.

A few months after the game released WoW turned into a race to max level. There really wasn't much to do except solo quest until you were 60 because all the group/multiplayer action was happening at level 60. People report an average of around 15 days /played time before they even hit 60 in vanilla.

That means it would literally take over a month of 8 hours per day grinding to get to max level. And once you were at max you still needed to grind rep for gear and all sorts of other bullshit before you could participate. Also pray to god that people would be nice enough to carry you in current tier shit or else you'd never catch up.

Seriously think about it. You need to dump 360+ hours into the game before you could even start playing the game? That's RIDICULOUS. Unless you actually somehow enjoy 400 hours of soloing "collect 30 bear hide" quests.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's a gross misrepresentation, you never NEEDED the rep for anything (with a few exceptions where you needed honored for attunements, but getting to honored was very fast, hell, I ran Scholo and Strat once and got honored with AD. Argent Dawn, Cenarion Expedition and the Sha'tar are the only reps with raid attunements attached as far as I can remember. Just by going to their dungeons to gear up would suffice to get to honored). I don't need exalted with anyone in vanilla now and I didn't need it in TBC where I was on a server first Kael/Vashj kill. Not to mention that you could buy your way to exalted in most cases. The fastest /played time for vanilla is 4 days 20 hours (world record) and most people level to 60 on private servers at around 7 days (while not rushing and leveling up profs at the same time). Getting to current tier wasn't a problem because of 20/10 man raids (Zul'Gurub, AQ20, Zul'Aman, Kara, they were constantly being run because even top tier guilds needed stuff from there, I remember running Kara every week even after we killed Vashj and Kael) and catch-up mechanics (in terms of badges) that were introduced. Not to mention that there were always enough people to run at least one "not-current" tier of content so they could gear up, you weren't the only special snowflake with no escape. I remember running MC with my guild when Naxx came out because that's when we all started playing.

Yeah, vanilla and TBC leveling were kinda slow, but it wasn't as dull as you make it out to be. Leveling was fun and it was part of the process. Low level dungeons were also fun. You can always find a group for lower level dungeons because, once again, you weren't the only special snowflake who was leveling at any one time. Alts also count. I don't know what else to say.

 

[Wilian]

and a lot of that had to do with the fact that people already knew Naxx mechanics.

That's a really weird way to put it. TBC had entire T4 and T5 open from Day 1 - that's Kara/Gruul/Mag and TK & SSC - that's five raids. Well, Gruul & Mag were pretty short so let's call it four raids. So the pace was entirely up to the guilds. I really can't see the comparison here, with ZERO raids open on Day 1, ONE raid coming in 3 weeks and the SECOND raid coming in 5-6 months.

The comparison is that people weren't doing TK and SSC until about a month into TBC. I know. I played then and was in a top 20 or so US guild. And even then Kael and I believe even Vashj were slightly buggy and nigh unbeatable for several weeks. On Kael specifically one of his advisors, Thaladred I think, would actually blink step to his target and one shot them. Karazhan was a ten man raid, very casual and not at all difficult.

TBC launched in January 16th 2007, world first kills on the FIRST boss in SSC weren't until February 20th. World first Vashj kills weren't until the end of March/May.

Is there less raiding content than before? Sure, that's been true for awhile now. But you're grossly exaggerating the whole 'zomg can't do a raid for three weeks' issue. I know you're a huge private server shill, but your memories of the 'good ol' days' are rose-colored at best.

You're missing my fucking point in your championing for retail. In TBC those raids were all open and the progress through them depended on guilds, once bugs were fixed. You're the one who brought up a comparison, in order to somehow defend Blizzard.

But thats a blatant lie. Guilds werent free to do them. It took x amounts of weeks before enough guild members were even attuned to get into them. It might not be a blatant 'not open barrier' but it definately was gated behind game mechanic

 

[GarfunkeL]

Oh for fucks sake - are both you and Metro unable to comprehend what you're reading? I said that this launch is miserable for end-game content because there isn't a single raid open yet, only one will open in late September and a second one sometime in early 2017. Not behind attunements, not behind gear checks, literally unavailable. Somehow Metro thinks that Legion launch is comparable to TBC, where a buttload of raids were open and how fast guilds got into them depended solely on the guilds themselves. Yes, they had to do attunements and obviously they had to gather gear from heroics but that meant that progress was solely down on the guild itself and how fast or efficient they were in doing that. I cannot fathom how this is so difficult to understand.

A few months after the game released WoW turned into a race to max level. There really wasn't much to do except solo quest until you were 60 because all the group/multiplayer action was happening at level 60. People report an average of around 15 days /played time before they even hit 60 in vanilla.

Absolutely nonsense. New players constantly joined the game back then. You can check the subscription numbers from any source, they prove it without a shadow of doubt. As Lacrymas said, regardless of the time you joined, there were other new players joining and existing players were leveling alts. You weren't limited to solo questing.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I have fond memories of leveling during Vanilla; it certainly wasn't confined to solo play. I remember plenty of times when I found people nearby in harder zones and help was always appreciated - this was how friendships were forged in your server, you just grouped for awhile during quests and shit, and then grouped for a dungeon or two, etc. Sometimes this escalated to you joining a guild. It is an aspect of the game that I cherished and that is completely gone now, everyone plays their own phased sandbox and then queues in a bubble to race to the end of pretty boring dungeon content. No one exchanges a single word. Of course I'm not pining for the days of spamming LFG with Need tank for X/Y, but the ensuing group play was certainly more engaging than just pressing a button and having 4 other mute bots with you.

This is what turned me off during Wrath mostly, it wasn't even the ease of the content. I have fond memories of running Scarlet Monastery in vanilla and being scared to death of pulls in that fountain. I have fond memories of discovering how to do a tribute run in Dire Maul. Even the painful 8-hour long trash MC runs were fun. Yeah, everyone sucked ass, but the fact that information wasn't readily available about every single aspect of the game made it so you felt a sense of accomplishment with small things.

 

[Wilian]

Oh for fucks sake - are both you and Metro unable to comprehend what you're reading? I said that this launch is miserable for end-game content because there isn't a single raid open yet, only one will open in late September and a second one sometime in early 2017. Not behind attunements, not behind gear checks, literally unavailable.

I only responded to what I was quoting. I might revert my earliel stance from accusation of a blatant lie to being intellectually dishonest but that doesn't change factually anything. They were unavailable (Actual proper raids). Sure they were in game, just like all current raids are in game, just unavailable, mechanics of the unavailabilty differ.

Yes, they had to do attunements and obviously they had to gather gear from heroics but that meant that progress was solely down on the guild itself and how fast or efficient they were in doing that. I cannot fathom how this is so difficult to understand.

You only could attune X amount of people within a week in the team. It was an artificial time gating, just like releasing them at X date is artificial time gating, method of delivery differs. One has you run a place many times with weekly reset 'til there's actually enough people to get into the actual raid, another one has simply put a time-lock into it. You continue with the intellectual dishonesty by claiming that guild had any say on how fast they got to the actual raid. They didn't. It was physical impossibility to attune enough people until certain timeframe was met. At best, and with benefit of a doubt you could make an argument that guilds that weren't performing as well didn't get in within that timeframe, but that's a shallow argument to make as those who couldn't meet that timeframe are unable to this date raid at the similiar level regardless.

 

[Lacrymas]

The difference is that you feel more accomplished by doing attunements/gearing up and feels like a part of the game and world we inhabit. Just placing time stamps on content interferes with the much-lauded "suspension of disbelief" and are arbitrary. MMOs need to be full of smoke and mirrors to give meaning to the whole experience, otherwise it's like playing a facebook game, where the game prevents you from playing it and jerks you out of the whole ordeal. Despite the constant grind Everquest was, it still managed to hook a lot of players because of this sense of discovery and connection to the world. From an intellectual and artistic perspective, this is the ethos of the MMO, something to give credence and weight to the rhetoric presented to us as a game. As much as some people hate that notion, gaming is an artistic experience in a sense and needs the same aspects as other art forms to be successful, this is especially true to the MMO. Introducing gamey and number-based progressions (artifact power *cough*), disconnected time locks, instant teleports to places which don't make sense (LFG, LFR), too much UI info which turns the game into a carrot-chase holding you by the nose etc. etc., detract from that and it starts to show its stitches. Difficulty is also something to be explored, but that's a different topic.

 

[Coma White]

The difference is that you feel more accomplished by doing attunements/gearing up and feels like a part of the game and world we inhabit. Just placing time stamps on content interferes with the much-lauded "suspension of disbelief" and are arbitrary. MMOs need to be full of smoke and mirrors to give meaning to the whole experience, otherwise it's like playing a facebook game, where the game prevents you from playing it and jerks you out of the whole ordeal. Despite the constant grind Everquest was, it still managed to hook a lot of players because of this sense of discovery and connection to the world. From an intellectual and artistic perspective, this is the ethos of the MMO, something to give credence and weight to the rhetoric presented to us as a game. As much as some people hate that notion, gaming is an artistic experience in a sense and needs the same aspects as other art forms to be successful, this is especially true to the MMO. Introducing gamey and number-based progressions (artifact power *cough*), disconnected time locks, instant teleports to places which don't make sense (LFG, LFR), too much UI info which turns the game into a carrot-chase holding you by the nose etc. etc., detract from that and it starts to show its stitches. Difficulty is also something to be explored, but that's a different topic.

You pretty much fucking nailed the reason I don't play this game anymore. TBC and Wrath were both auto-buys for me day one. But starting with Cataclysm, this game went full decline -- decline which created heaving problems Blizzard is still trying to alternatively justify and fix even today.

Difficulty is, as you said, another factor aside from the cohesion of the world. But I think something else that's super important you didn't touch on in connection to OTHER PLAYERS in that world. The bottom line for me is: in WoW, I no longer feel any real connection to any other players. There's no need or reason to connect with them (aside from non-LFR raids, and that doesn't really count because it isn't an encompassing connection). If I can't connect and work with other players -- if I don't HAVE to -- then what's the fucking point of playing an MMO? You're better served giving up that player connection and searching for thrilling worlds elsewhere in the single player arena. Which is, sadly or not, what I've done.

 

[Lacrymas]

I didn't touch upon social connections because that's more or less tied to difficulty, you can only form a community if there's something to overcome together; if there is some kind of reflection of real life in MMOs it's that. You have seen the utter carelessness with which players run through dungeons in LFG, that's because the challenge is non-existent and every pug group can get over them. There is no need to form any communities or social interactions when that's the case. Yes, raids and arena are still difficult and all that jazz, but there's so much instant gratification that you don't feel any motivation to run those raids or pvp in arena. Coupled with the complete meaninglessness of the world and game, it was just a matter of time before people started leaving in droves. There are other issues of course - the genre shift between TBC and WotLK that started the decline, the writing, the meandering designs of Blizzard, the incompetence in balancing PvP, it's exhibiting a lot of gaming/RPG sins like scaling mobs, the fact that Blizz make more profit off of a card game etc. etc. At the end of the day retail WoW is a complete mess of unintelligible design decisions, misunderstandings of its audience, misunderstandings of its own genre, corporate meddling and strive to extract maximum revenue, abysmal creativity and many more problems that won't be fixed ever.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I guess Metro realized he can't defend his nutty position anymore and instead just goes around tagging my posts "dumb". Holy butthurt!

Yeah dude, that's EXACTLY the same thing. Sure, you needed attunements from T4 to T5. Doesn't change the fact that not only T4 raids (Kara, Gruulag) were in the game on DAY 1 but T5 as well. Legion brought exactly ZERO raids on Day 1. That was the fucking point that you butted your dick in. As for your excuses, they really don't fly:

You continue with the intellectual dishonesty by claiming that guild had any say on how fast they got to the actual raid. They didn't. It was physical impossibility to attune enough people until certain timeframe was met. At best, and with benefit of a doubt you could make an argument that guilds that weren't performing as well didn't get in within that timeframe, but that's a shallow argument to make as those who couldn't meet that timeframe are unable to this date raid at the similiar level regardless.

This is complete nonsense. Banal, shit, boring as they say. The attunements meant that a gap was formed between the good guilds and the bad guilds, just like gearing does to lesser extent. That's completely different from a situation where the fucking raid does not exist at all. I know you have a massive hardon for me for my part in showing your ridiculous lies about your precious Rebirth, but you're really just making yourself look retarded here. I mean, if raid performance does not matter - and that's the gist of your nonsensical gibberish that I quoted above - then what's the fucking point in the first place?

 

[Metro]

Since you're overly sensitive to emotes on an internet forum, have another. Anyway, it's short and to the point: you are, in fact, retarded. Bitching about an artificial wall that, when the game was 'good' wouldn't have even mattered. There's nothing to defend, I've already proven how hollow your 'point' is when compared to what ACTUALLY happened in TBC.

 

[Xor]

I'm not sure how the legion launch could possibly compare to the TBC launch in terms of raid content. You're comparing an expansion where there were raids available even if you ignore the content locked behind attunements versus an expansion where there won't be a raid available until several weeks after launch. You might as well try to compare Legion to the launch of vanilla because, sure, there were two raids available at launch, but you had to level up to 60 and do an attunement quest before you could do them, and that's just arbitrarily gating off content!

 

[Angthoron]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Blizzard is lending a helping hand to Mother Nature.

Some hardcore PvPers and raiders might get an aneurysm because of content gating keeping them from their favourite pasttime for weeks and weeks!

 

[Echo Mirage]

Reading the official class forums, both on the EU and US side makes it sound like its the apocalypse or something. Hardly anyone can agree on a good specs for any class beyond the prot paladin, fire mages, shadow priests, Marksman huntard, feral druid and perhaps a shammy spec or two.

I think at this rate I will wait until 7.1 before I even think about using my level 100 boost token.

 

[Angthoron]

I dunno, it sounded like it for sure, but I'm actually starting to get in tune with the new Ret, at least. Will have to see what it's like in proper endgame as I'm still levelling, but in the few dungeon runs I did it was only beaten by Demon Huntards, and those are intentionally OP at 100 - 109 so.

 

[Wilian]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

 

[Metro]

Reading the official class forums, both on the EU and US side makes it sound like its the apocalypse or something. Hardly anyone can agree on a good specs for any class beyond the prot paladin, fire mages, shadow priests, Marksman huntard, feral druid and perhaps a shammy spec or two.

I think at this rate I will wait until 7.1 before I even think about using my level 100 boost token.

They're all just waiting for whatever the equivalent of Elitist Jerks spreadsheet/forum to tell them what to spec.

 

[Metro]

I'm not sure how the legion launch could possibly compare to the TBC launch in terms of raid content. You're comparing an expansion where there were raids available even if you ignore the content locked behind attunements versus an expansion where there won't be a raid available until several weeks after launch. You might as well try to compare Legion to the launch of vanilla because, sure, there were two raids available at launch, but you had to level up to 60 and do an attunement quest before you could do them, and that's just arbitrarily gating off content!

Is there no equivalent to Gruul/Mag in Legion? As I said before, Kharazan was more of a glorified five man and mythic dungeons can arguably be substituted in its place.

 

[United Nations]

Why the fuck doesn't Blizzard just go ahead and greenlight WoW 2?

The visuals are ancient at this point.

 

[Caim]

Why the fuck doesn't Blizzard just go ahead and greenlight WoW 2?

The visuals are ancient at this point.

The graphics are potato tier so that WoW can run on low-end machines and more people can play it that way so Blizzard can make more money that way.

 

[Coma White]

Why the fuck doesn't Blizzard just go ahead and greenlight WoW 2?

 

[Lacrymas]

I wouldn't want a WoW 2 because it will contain the same design decisions as this one, probably even worse ones. I doubt there is a turning back for Blizz, I'm almost positive they are at a loss with WoW at this point. It might make a lot of money still (4 mil subs isn't something to sneeze at), but income =\= profit. Given that fact, and making more profit off of a card game, I doubt Blizzard are willing to make another MMO at all, ever.

 

[Angthoron]

Getting in tune with new ret is like getting accustomed to being ass plunged with a three-pronged dildo with spiked heads and barbed shafts.

Sure the damage is mediocare, we're not bottom of the tree but the rotation and abilities are so shit that even vanilla seal-judge paladins would lol at the dysfunctionality.

Still better than first half of BC!

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I'm almost positive they are at a loss with WoW at this point