[1.Local]: The word from the back room
by Lisa Poisso 
Mar 14th 2009 at 6:00PM
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.
Until next week!
 |
What 3.1 means for casual players What's the future of five-man instances, in the face of Patch 3.1? "I think the biggest news for casual players is what isn't in 3.1: more Emblem of Heroism gear," said dcisko. "Instead, we're getting Emblems of Conquest dropping in heroic Ulduar, with associated high-level gear. Unlike BC, there won't be much point to running heroic five-man instances after raiders move on, and even casuals will get everything they want before too long. I'm worried about what this means for the five-man game." "I also worry about the future of the five-man," agreed yellow. "Leading a small guild of friends, we just cant get Naxx going with seven. In BC, we ran heroics to get badge loot and got through all of Kara and four bosses into ZA. No chance to do that this time. Raiders whined about us getting BT/Hyjal loot without putting in the time. Believe me, 300+ badges? We put in the time." As expansions and patches march onward, how important is five-man progression to you? |
 |
Who's the boss? C'Thun, Keristrasza and the Karazhan Opera event nabbed a lot of votes for favorite WoW boss in this nostalgia thread. Many plucked bosses out of much older content. These old-school players went deep: "Van Cleef," declared Raptor with fervor. "I would slaughter a hundred bulls in Blizzard's honor if they would make an Heroic Deadmines." "Wholly agreed," affirmed MusedMoose. "Deadmines was the first instance I ever did, and taking down Van Cleef with a PUG was the first time I ever felt like I'd done something truly epic." Who's your (favorite) daddy? |
 |
Is resilience failing in Wrath? PvE gear for PvP fighting, PvP gear for PvE raiding ... Does what's intended work as intended? "I can't stand PvE, so I went ahead and crafted the Frostsavage set before I even tried setting foot in Battlegrounds at 80," laments buenoexcellente. "It was a complete waste of time and materials. I might as well have been wearing tissue paper and lace underwear, for all the good it did me." Angus chimed in: "This means most people are going into the season cold with no PvP gear at all and trying to succeed. I wonder if the scene would be a little different if people actually used the blue gear and got a little bit of resilience going. "I was in Wintergrasp and had a 1v1 with a Rogue that just couldn't hurt me. I'm a raid tank. I was in raid tank gear and spec. After the fight I checked the Armory -- blue crafted PvP set. His crafted did jack for him. Negligibly less crits and not enough dropped from crits to reduce my SotR below 6K are not enough to bother a person sporting much higher iLevel gear." Lemons offered a rather ringing reply to the headline's question, "Did resilience fail in Wrath?": "Yes! Resil failed horribly! Basically Blizz has set up a gear hierarchy that, knowingly or unknowingly, heavily favors hardcore raiders. The raiders who were able to quickly get at the Naxx epics dominated the Arenas, and now those are the people you see rocking out the full deadly set. "Meanwhile, if you tried to use Savage gear/whatever you could get out of VoA, you couldn't compete with person in full Naxx epics, so once again Blizz favors hardcore raiders over everyone else. And now the damage is done, they've got their lead and there's not way in hell they're giving it back. I'm going to enjoy flailing around hopelessly in the arenas for the rest of WotLK." If you're playing in the Arenas, what are you wearing and why? |
 |
The hard mode mambo The Achievement system has thrown a monkey wrench into the works for some guilds. "... Sarth 3D is exactly the kind of achievement I hate, but for some reason I actually care about," lamented Manatank. "I don't want the achievement because I care. I only want it for my guild because other people care. Not having it is a huge black eye for our guild and hurts recruitment because for some reason, these gimmicks are considered part of progression now. "I really hate that despite all of our preparation and hard work, we didn't have an ideal group for Sarth 3D. I've had to switch mains because of this one gimmick fight. I used to be our guild's main tank on my Paladin. Paladins are completely worthless as a main tank on this fight (there should be an extra achievement for using something other than a DK as the Sarth tank) and the least ideal tank for any of the other tanking duties in the fight (though completely sufficient). So, I've switched to my Resto Shaman to help our healing corps. "You see, we have seven or eight healers, but only two great healers. We didn't really see the consequences of this until we got to Sarth 3D/Maly, since Naxx 25 can pretty much be healed by three or four people. So here we are, all of the normal content in the game is down and easily on farm, and now we find out that some of our players just can't cut it. 'Sorry guys, we are going to have to give you the boot so we can get an achievement.' It's brutal. It's demoralizing and for some reason seems less legitimate than booting someone because we couldn't down a boss." Is your guild achievement-hungry, or have you put the brakes on achievements? |
 |
Darters and chickens for the Horde Av proposes this idea to even out the number of vanity pets available to each faction: "Here's an idea that Blizz could consider. How about a neutral vendor at Darkmoon Fair that sells the Ally/Horde-only recipes or pets? Make them limited to one an hour (or whatever) and BOP." "Yes!" agreed Balius. "Darkmoon Fair can be a monthly vendor camping event!" What do you say: new vigor for the Darkmoon Fair and better distribution for oddball pets and recipes? |
 |
Is Wrath too easy, or are we just better now? Nikkodemus shared a lengthy analysis of how WoW has changed in the Wrath era: "There is a third dimension which Mr. Gray has failed to account for, which is a much lower bar with regard to attunements and time sinks. Compared to BC, there is no barrier in Wrath for the average player except reaching level 80. "In BC, even Karazhan had a somewhat involved quest chain that required both solo play and groups running heroics to gain access. The raids beyond that also had increasingly involved attunements. Just to get access to Heroics required Revered reputation with a number of different groups (per dungeon basis), although that was eventually reduced to Honored. Gear was more difficult to acquire, with Badges of Justice coming sometime after BC's launch with a blue Dungeon Set 3 designed to cover casual advancement. Trade skill epics were almost universally BoP and required maintaining the trade skill. "Compare that to Wrath. The only attuned raid is Malygos, and that is a raid-wide key. Heroics are accessible to anyone at 80 regardless of rep, and the championing system allows us to manage our own rep advancement easily. There is no Dungeon Set 4, but rather the raid Tier 7 is the natural casual progression gear. "With emblems available at launch, anyone putting in the effort with heroics could in theory get two pieces of Tier 7 before ever setting foot inside Naxxramas. Or even more with the simple and PUGgable Vault of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum providing additional emblems and tier pieces. Trade skill epics are now almost universally BoE and do not require maintaining the trade skill to use them (with exceptions like Engineering). Rep epics are more readily available via championing and the large number of quests and daily quests available in Wrath. "Yes, Wrath is probably easier and yes, we as a player base are getting somewhat better. But the real cause in this case is that the angle of transition between casual and raider has been smoothed out so as to be indistinguishable. There is no longer a casual Dungeon Set X track; everyone is put on the same raid gear track from the start." What "track" are you on, and how's it suiting your play style? |
 |
Should high achievements earn rewards? Quite a few players would like to see Achievement points award some sort of tangible reward. "While I don't want to see them as currency," noted Aykwa of achievement points, "it would be nice to recognize people's different broad achievement levels. Someone who has 6,000 achievement points has obviously done a lot more in the game than a fresh 80 DK that has only a few hundred. "It would be nice to have something noticeable to set the players apart who have done more in the game. Maybe a new unique mount for every 1,000 points above 4,000 or something like that? Or maybe titles or tabards, or even all 3? Right now when I'm walking around in Azeroth I can't really tell who has 5,000 points and who has 500 unless I want to compare achievements with every person who walks by. Would be nice to easily see who has a ton of achievements done." What do you think would be an appropriate reward for players who've passed certain achievement milestones? |
 |
Vanilla WoW servers Are "vanilla WoW" servers as fruitless as Blizzard and some players seem the think? "I disagree with Zach that a vanilla or classic server is not in Blizzard's best interest," said DrowNoble. "When Mythic did this with Dark Age of Camelot, those servers were very popular and typically have populations on par with the most popular normal servers. They could bring back those people that got disillusioned with the direction of the game since BC, while not affecting those that are content with WoW as it stands now. Win/win for players and Blizzard alike. "Blizzard's excuse that WoW isn't for 60's anymore, to me, strikes me as a bit lame. You can't tell me they don't have disc copies of original WoW and would not be able to install on a vanilla server. Please, Blizzard, if Joe Casual can do that on a private server, you can too." Could you? Would you? In a vanilla WoW box? |
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
riven Mar 14th 2009 6:38PM
Leading a small guild of friends, we just cant get Naxx going with seven. In BC, we ran heroics to get badge loot and got through all of Kara and four bosses into ZA. No chance to do that this time.
LOL you did Kara and ZA with seven people?
AyaJulia Mar 14th 2009 6:50PM
Honestly, the comments on the resilience-failure post brings to mind a much bigger issue here.
Everyone who plays wow has a victim complex. Seriously. It's ridiculous! The Alliance thinks Blizzard favors the Horde because Thrall is always in their banners and the like. The Horde thinks Blizzard favors the Alliance because they botched some geography in AV or gave the Alliance an extra mount. The PvPers think Blizzard favors PvEers because raiding gear was more effective this season. The PvEers think Blizzard favors PvPers because things that aren't OP in PvE get nerfed for arenas. The hardcores whine that catering to the casuals means more of the game than they'd like is too easy. The casuals whine that the pull of the harcore means more of the game than they'd like is too hard.
Stop the madness and play the game, guys. :\
Trilynne Mar 14th 2009 7:57PM
xD So true. :P
Durango Mar 14th 2009 10:28PM
I couldn't of put it any better myself.
Olicon Mar 14th 2009 7:23PM
So Wrath hard mode actually is hard. Who'd have thought, huh? Apparently, those hard mode achievements is still not too accessible to casual players. I think Bliz is doing something correct here.
Sarakin Mar 14th 2009 8:39PM
I agree. It seems fine to me that the raids are easier since then more people can experience them. I do think the hard modes should be considered "hard" and actually take more time and effort.
Seems reasonable
Charlie Mar 15th 2009 12:40AM
I agree completley.
It gives the best guilds something to hold pride over, while still giving lesser guilds a chance at killing the boss.
Would you rather go back to Sunwell or the original Naxx, where most didn't even get to see inside the instance?
The thing about Sarth 3D is that its not insanely difficult. I mean, compare it to Kael back in the day. Now that was a hard fight.
Cat Mar 15th 2009 3:53AM
Hard mode achievements and their rewards are no more gimmicks than are Legendary weapons like Thor'idal.
Here's the definition of gimmick:
"A trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business."
What do the titles rewards for these achievements do? Attract attention. What does Thor'idal do? Attract attention.
These achievements are part of the progression because they're measurably more difficult than the things before them. If you don't care about Sarth 3d, then you do not care about the hardest encounter in the game. That's fine and dandy, but I'm with the people hurting your recruitment: it doesn't exactly say "Hardcore Raider, here!" to skip over the game's toughest instances.
Nathanyel Mar 14th 2009 9:30PM
Classic servers would be a bigger fail than anything those guys screaming for them whine about - "some" to "many" people might try them at first, but in the end, only a small amount of players would actually stay in a limited playfield with no updates to content.
conaan Mar 14th 2009 11:19PM
re the post on casual game players and gear. Having gotten my t7 on 2 toons and soon to have 2 on my other I am at a stopping point. It used to be 2k dps was good enough for Naxx but now 2k is too low. Everyone must know the fights etc. Soon the leet big guilds will have farmed Naxx out and moved on. Then maybe we will see PUGs running Naxx like Kara was run in the second half of TBC. I hope so. Right now I am burnt out on heroics and yearn for the fringe small guilds to start filling with pugs to let the casuals have their shot.
Charlie Mar 15th 2009 12:42AM
@Manatank.
I have a feeling your gonna have some trouble heading forward. Maybe not in 3.1, but eventually you're going to have to make your healers shape up, or get new ones.
Fridge Mar 15th 2009 11:42AM
who cares about 5-mans the game is so easy there really isnt any reason you cant raid, ppl pug 25 man naxx and clear it everyday on my server. we dont need anymore emblem gear, blizz doesnt need to be handing out gear to ppl thats incredibly good and all you have to do for it is run some easy sauce heroics, stop being lazy and do it a little work for gear, I'm sick of casual players ruining the game, if its too hard for you play a different game, although if wrath is too hard for you im not sure you could find a game you'd be good at cause right now wrath a joke and its ajoke cause of all the casual player who complain about having to get keyed, or a boss actually being a challenge, boohoo so what if you cant one shot it deal with it, wipe and do it again, blizz needs to stop handing ppl gear
Mohrlock Mar 15th 2009 11:54PM
/highfive
Completely agree with you here Fridge!
I think people miss-read that word "progression" somewhere and thought it said "hand everything to you on a silver platter".
You start at "A" and you want to make it to "Z" you just can't skip the whole alphabet in the middle. Well you could try, but big ol' "Z" gonna smash your face inside out and everyone else is gonna tell you to go learn that damn alphabet!
Level < Quest < Normal Instances < Heroic Instances < Badge Gear < 10-man Content < 25-man Content < Better Badge Gear
Just thought I better spell that out for those that don't understand "progression"!