Forum Post of the Day: Burning Crusade constructive criticism
by Daniel Whitcomb 
May 23rd 2008 at 2:00PM
With Burning Crusade winding down as we get closer to WoTLK, Scarpa of the Bleeding Hollow server had the bright idea of starting a thread to do a little bit of post-mortem on the Burning Crusade: Praise the stuff you liked, and offer constructive critcism on stuff you didn't like, in hopes that it can be improved in the expansion. There's a lot of good commentary in there on raids, arenas, badge gear, and other stuff.
Some of my favorite criticism included Quaesitor's observation that a lot of reputation gear becomes automatically obsolete, because by the time you have the reputation (or the special tokens) to purchase it, you're too high level for it and probably have something better from a quest or dungeon anyway. I also tend to agree with many that they could tone down the trash a bit in raid dungeons. It's hard to clear the same trash over and over again every raid when you want to get to the generally much more interesting and lucrative boss fights.
As far as likes, I like that the reputation PvP sets mean you can get a good hand up to start PvP, then gradually work your way up through Honor gear and into the Arena sets. I am also glad to see many in the thread were big fans of badge gear. I've always liked the concept, it makes for a good reason to run dungeons and means I always feel like I'm working toward something instead of waiting forever for one certain thing that won't drop.
It's a great idea and a good positive thread that has even gotten some blue attention, so I'd say it's a perfect change for you to head in and deliver your own critiques and praises before BC is just a speed bump on the way to level 80.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, The Burning Crusade, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
npm May 23rd 2008 2:33PM
Raids take too long! I feel like the limit to my raiding enjoyment is right around 2.5 - 3 hours. 4 hours and my bottom is burning from sitting too long and I'm irritable and tired.
I would like it if raid instances were less serial. For instance, you have to raid 3 hours to get to the Nth boss. If you could unlock wings of a raid instance by doing earlier wings, I think that would be neat. For instance, once you've conquered Boss X and Y in wing A, you are allowed to go into Wing B and start working on Z. Then each wing could reset on whatever schedule and you don't have to completely start over. The next week you could start on Wing B if you wanted.
I'm not sure exactly how the flagging would work, maybe 75% of the raid force would have to be flagged, something like that.
I'd like instances to be short too, but it sounds like Blizzard is doing that in WoTLK (yay!). I think people would run instances more if they could jump in and get it done within an hour. I know that was one reason I always loved Black Morass, it was quick!
Shorter corpse runs on instances would be nice. The corpse runs for Coilfang... not fun, the corpse runs for Mech were great comparatively.
Agree about rep gear being obsolete by the time you have the rep to buy it!
kain May 23rd 2008 2:25PM
this game have become so boring.. moving to AoC
kr3wman May 23rd 2008 2:28PM
*cough*Constructive*cough*
h8rain May 23rd 2008 2:34PM
For the most part I will agree on rep gear for druids, except for bears. Earthwarden is such a great weapon, until you start getting in 25 man raids, it is the best you can get (which if you are a bear, you prob won't be in that 25 man, unless you do).
I have looked at the other rep gear, and nothing that I can remember is much better than what I already have. What is annoying is the PVP gear is fairly easy easy to get and helps with raids, but its not always the best.
I do however love the badge gear. Its something that you can easily determine how much effort will be required (ex 25 badges = 13 bosses down (or less with daily heroic)).
mark May 23rd 2008 3:28PM
The druid tank's drive for Earthwarden showed how badly-designed the reputation system was in BC.
If you actually wanted a rep item, you had to carefully plan your path, read websites for strategies, do things backwards, skip helpful quests until you were way beyond the quest reward item level, and still be stuck with countless runs of SteamVaults (which drops nothing useful for you)
Saelorn May 23rd 2008 3:21PM
I agree with the rep grinds being too unproductive. I had this great idea to grind rep with Consortium to pick up their gun, but by the time I'm halfway through friendly I've already picked up something better in Kara. Most of the rep quests for Consortium are in Netherstorm, which I generally don't reach until I'm already level 70 and at which point I generally have something better to do with my time.
It looks like they're fixing things, though. SSO took a concerted effort over time (with more effort or more time, to taste), and it rewarded you over the whole course of the grind as well as having a worth-while reward for exalted.
Swiss May 23rd 2008 2:42PM
The Battle for Mount Hyjal. This was an incredible instance. It's gorgeous, the loot is great, and the waves certainly felt epic. The first time. Not so much the times after that.
I know there needs to be some sort of pacing mechanism in place for Hyjal to work, but wiping on a boss is downright painful when you think that you have at least 30 more minutes of trash before you get another attempt.
My biggest gripe with raiding in general are respawns- I know they're there to slow progression down and keep us playing, but reclearing trash is something no one enjoys.
Brokkn May 23rd 2008 2:44PM
I had just started playing WoW about 6 months ago, now i have a level 70 rogue, and i am doing BG's and Kara. so I cant compare the difference between before and after, but i will say what i liked about it, as a new player coming in. I love the badges, as stated above, if nothing drops for me on this raid, i still worked towards my badge goal, and in turn not wasted time. I really thought the rep-blue pvp gear was rather nice. I replaced it rather quickly, but it was a nice kick start. I like that there is a "harder" version of the instance with better gear (heroics). as for negitive items, I must agree the rep gear... is useless (most anyways), and thats about it.
Mike May 23rd 2008 2:57PM
Just a quick typo - don't you mean improved instead of approved in the first paragraph? Not to nit pick. :D
phisquare May 23rd 2008 7:14PM
Typo Police Unite! Paragraph four: change 'change' to chance
Fetialis May 23rd 2008 3:34PM
May only real complaint with BC was that the storyline for the 25man raids was pretty lame.
You had three leaders all growing unhappy with each other, probably only months from being at each others throats (at least Kael was undoubtedly going to make a move Illidan be damned).
Anyway, it just wasn't enough to motivate me to keep raiding the 25's. As opposed to the driving story with some urgency in it of Azeroth.
Northrend seems to have that urgency behind the story again of an impending threat that needs to be addressed.
Gralcene May 23rd 2008 3:38PM
You Americans are so freaking annoying its HONOUR NOT HONOR. repeat honOUr, honOUr, honOUr. honOr is direct from latin, its not English.
Anyway, i totally agree about trash, the BT supremus trash is just dire, especially after youve been doing it for several months. Same with pre-Azgalor trash in Hyjal. Trash is still important, just please tune it down a bit or i will end up ripping even more of my ever dwindling hair out...
makishima May 23rd 2008 3:52PM
At a place where comments such as
"OMGWTF! Dude dnt' post bout stuffz you don no nuthin about. L2P cuz you are terribad!"
are a regular occurrence, you chose to complain about honour? And technically, regardless of the words origin, Blizzard calls them "Honor" points therefore no one here is actually inaccurate by calling it honor. But thanks for playing! :)
alrdye May 23rd 2008 7:07PM
Blizzard spells it Honor, all Americans spell it honor. Get over yourself already. British and Americans don't spell everything exactly the same. This is an American game so it gets spelled the American way.
Stoneblade May 23rd 2008 5:23PM
Sorry, but I'm finding it rather difficult to be schooled in proper grammar by someone who seems to have trouble understanding proper capitalization, or who seems to lack the ablility to differentiate betwixt "its" and "it's."
Urthona May 23rd 2008 4:25PM
Favorite thing about The Burning Crusade:
Swift Flight Form questline.
Granted, this was a questline tailored to druids in a way no other quest has ever been, but the implementation combined lore and challenge in a spectacular fashion.
Worst thing about The Burning Crusade:
The Karazhan bottleneck. The dungeon itself was beautiful. But the verticality and immensity of the raid design prevented people from the options they were used to in the TBC dungeon philosophy: shorter commitment, choose any one of 3 doors. Weaker guilds fell apart under stress, stronger guilds had to cycle ravenous people through it. Even now after all the stress and difficulty is nostalgic, we continue to run Kara for the Heroic Badges. Karazhan can be fun times, but we shouldn't still be going there if you're done with that gear level.
Roaring successes from The Burning Crusade:
Shadow Priests, Protection Paladins, and Feral Druids. While itemization was still a massive kerfluffle, these three specs earned respect and a significant role in the game.
Screeching failures of The Burning Crusade:
Stat Explosion. Armor, Stamina, Strength vs Agility, Crit(spell or melee), Hit(spell or melee), Intellect, Mp5, Spirit, Defense and/or Resilience, Armor Penetration, Haste(spell or melee), Resistance sets. While there was a certain amount of fun in accumulating multiple items for a myriad of uses, the ridiculous amount of math and theorycraft meant calculators became an essential part of going out and killing stuff. One could assume this was merely the next iteration of gearing in a game like this, but it made progress, both personal and guild, far more complicated than it needed to be.
Surprises:
Cooking, the profession. To think a profession I took to kill time between BGs would become an essential part of optimizing yourself for the game was a unexpected prize. The variety of buffs that a bit of hunting and a stove can provide is great.
Gripes:
The forgotten Azeroth. Keeping trainers and Auction Houses in the Old World turned cities into airports and the worlds we used to live in just a wasteland of loneliness.
Bag Space. So much great stuff, nowhere to keep it all. And yes, I'm talking about Soulbound equipment.
Skinning. Herbalism gets buffs, motes, and a very high resale value. Not fair.
Teir Gear versus ZA Badge gear design. Teir gear looks great on Alliance while ZA badge loot looks amazing on Horde. Almost makes me wish we could choose the armor models our earned epic stats get put on.
Stoneblade May 23rd 2008 9:07PM
I have to agree... Quite possibly the biggest gripe that I had with the expansion was with Blizzard's infuriating "Move Forward and Don't Look Back" policy. I understand their motives for it, but it left them with a ton of decent, interesting content in the old world that's just collecting dust, when there was plenty of opportunities for activity in the form of heroics and what-not.
It's great that Blizz wants to continually expand their universe, but I'm of the opinion that they should look back over their collective shoulder at how once-teeming cities like Stormwind & Orgrimmar are little more than understocked convenience stores, where folks train and dump off their greens in the AH...
And to see the painful amount of dust contamination that has come to cover Rend Blackhand, Onyxia, C'Thun, Ragnaros, etc.
I think I could easily scrawl "Wash Me" in the dust on Rend's armor.
jlpknights82 May 24th 2008 12:23AM
I must agree with the Epic Flight Form quest line thing. With a Druid as my main, there was nothing more amazing than doing every part of that extremely well-designed quest chain. It made you travel all over, but it never got boring. It made you of ever form and class-defining talent a Druid can have. I didn't even mind respeccing for the one miniboss because it made sense to do it!
Fighting Anzu in Heroic Sethekk was a tough fight at that point, so early in my raiding career. Beating him was an accomplishment! And the rewards were sweet and well-deserved.
If there is one thing I truly hope for in the expansion it is that every class can have access to such a well-done and epic quest line that gives them a very useful and enjoyable ability (but isn't game-breaking if you can't do it). :D
Fattybear May 24th 2008 3:16AM
The worst thing about BC was that it made every old world dungeon and raid obsolete. You can easily get to level 58 and BC without even touching any of them. There is an incredible amount of wasted content and programming tied up in the old world and WotLK will do exactly the same to all of BC's dungeons and raids. To me that is a lazy lazy way of introducing an expansion, what it should have done was upgrade all of the old instances, faction rewards etc. to make them more attractive to level 70s.
niwaar May 24th 2008 9:34PM
It is not a lazy way to do an expansion, its just the realities of expansions.
The simple fact is that WoW itemization is based on progression. Items get better as you go along for a very distinct reason. Updating old world content to of use at our current level cap would be determental to the overall ability to put out new content.
Is it sad that Strat/Scholo/SFK/Deadmines and everything in between has been left to gather dust (and solo rogues trying to farm for a Baron mount.) Yet what do expect out of an expansion? Did you really think they were going to go and rebalance these dungeons for level 70 and itemize them? It takes an extreme amount of manpower just to create new content. While it would have been nice, its never going to be a priority.
I would love to see the continuation of the "Heroic" Mode in WotLK. I would love to see an "Epic" mode added to at least the BC dungeons for level 80, but that will not happen either. Outland will become just as vacant as Azeroth is now.
The biggest issue I have with BC as a whole is the added difficult to get groups interested in these instances and even the normal 60-70 instances. At this point a daily quest that can be completed in the heroic version of the instance and only at level 70 is ridiculous as an incentive to complete these instances. The worst thing they did was lower the rep requirements for heroic keys. It killed the available pool of people wanting to do these instances for rep.