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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard: Run Oculus, win fabulous prizes
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jan 5th 2010 at 2:00AM
But they're not removing it from the system. Instead, they're incentivizing it -- or, if you prefer to be a bit more pessimistic, turning final boss Eregos into a loot pinata in the most direct way possible. Zarhym's announced that those who happen to get Heroic Oculus with the random dungeon finder and stick it out to the end will find their own personal loot bag in Eregos' cache. The bags will contain two extra Emblems of Triumph, rare gems, and a chance at the Reins of the Blue Drake, formerly the rare mount drop from 10-man Malygos. To make up for the switch, the Reins of the Azure Drake will have a chance to drop from both 10-man and 25-man Malygos.
Will this staunch the exodus from Oculus? Will the lust for yet another pretty dragon mount inspire people to tough out the dreaded vehicle mechanics? Or will people just tough it out until they get their drake and start group dropping again? It should be fun to see what happens.
Filed under: Items, News items, Instances, Bosses
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 12)
talitha3k Jan 5th 2010 12:46PM
@Apis:
untrue. that's only the case if someone doesn't *accept* the randon dungeon when it pops up, not if they accept it, see that the random dungeon is Oculus, and drop group.
Tj Jan 5th 2010 2:26AM
It's faster than cos, so I never complain. I hate when Blizzard rewards us for QQing about something.
oniryuujin Jan 5th 2010 2:32AM
Well this was a little bit different than the normal QQ I think, instead of drowning the forums with QQ people kinda just said "Occ sucks" and just stopped running it. I don't think there ever was any effort to get it changed.
Michael Taylor Jan 5th 2010 2:26AM
tbh i think most of the people bailing out probally dont know of the nerfs. i now dont mind occulus since this nerf.
Furlover Jan 5th 2010 3:06AM
Personally speaking - it was never the difficulty of Oculus - it was drake mechanics. They nerfed what was already easy in there but something more welcome would have been having just one drake like in the 'Aces High' daily instead of three so more experienced players could cover up for the newbies that make mistakes.
The drake mechanic has nothing to do with playing the toon you levelled and is yet another reason some people hate that encounter. I think that until that last encounter is changed significantly with regards the drake system, Oculus will simply always be the least liked dungeon in wotlk.
Although not being able to skip Arthas yapping in CoS is a contender too when you've run it enough times. :P
Irem Jan 5th 2010 8:03AM
An RL friend of mine absolutely panics on flying vehicles. She's fine with flying mounts, because that's just trying to get from one place to another, but she can't fly and fight at the same time. I had to take her keyboard and finish the frostwyrm quest at the end of the DK starting zone for her, she avoids Eye of Eternity completely, and she finally finished Occulus after months of avoiding it--but she was practically in tears, she was so frustrated.
She's an awesome mage and a great player, but some people are not built for aerial navigation. Instances and raids with flying mounts take those people out of the area where they're competent and they -know- they're competent, and stick them in a situation where they're tripping over their feet and at the mercy of the rest of the group, who might do fine at it and not understand why they can't keep up.
Irem Jan 5th 2010 8:03AM
An RL friend of mine absolutely panics on flying vehicles. She's fine with flying mounts, because that's just trying to get from one place to another, but she can't fly and fight at the same time. I had to take her keyboard and finish the frostwyrm quest at the end of the DK starting zone for her, she avoids Eye of Eternity completely, and she finally finished Occulus after months of avoiding it--but she was practically in tears, she was so frustrated.
She's an awesome mage and a great player, but some people are not built for aerial navigation. Instances and raids with flying mounts take those people out of the area where they're competent and they -know- they're competent, and stick them in a situation where they're tripping over their feet and at the mercy of the rest of the group, who might do fine at it and not understand why they can't keep up.
Irem Jan 5th 2010 8:04AM
Whoa, comment system is wonky today.
Ringo Flinthammer Jan 5th 2010 2:27AM
I don't mind Oculus, in theory, it's just that I get it EVERY DAMN DAY. And I know that Zahrym thinks it's hi-larious that people would suggest that the "random" instances are weighted, but Ghostcrawler has already confirmed that to be the system. They need to look at how the system chooses what instances to put people into -- I've got ICC/Trial gear and my perky pug, and I've never gotten into the ICC dungeons randomly, nor about half of the total list of Northrend dungeons. That's awfully improbable.
And honestly, I don't need Triumph badges any more, so free ones don't impress me; I'm close to running out of heirloom gear to buy for alts that will likely never be made.
Reexamine how the dungeons are weighted instead of incentivizing the ones some of us have to see every single day. It could be the best dungeon ever and I'd still be sick of it.
ohnonono Jan 5th 2010 5:46AM
I've run well over 100 random HCs by myself now and they are all the exact same 6 instances (UP, Nexus, CoS, Oculus, GD, and OK). After quite a bit of back-and-forth with Blizzard Europe and escalating the issue myself to a Senior and then the Lead GM, my experience was finally added to their internal bug tracker for investigation at some point.
Before anyone says the "it's random" line, the chances of having the same 6 heroics (and only these 6 when I queue up myself) is so unlikely that it's hard to meaningfully quantify. It's less than 1 in a number followed by a hundred zeroes. Imagine I pick up any grain of sand on the planet. You're more likely to correctly guess which one 4 times in a row than only have these 6 instances after so many runs in a random system.
If you have run a very large number of heroics (50+) and only had a very small number of instances, I would urge you to report it, and to keep escalating it if GMs insist there is nothing wrong. Some people will see odd patterns in a random system, but equally some things are far too unlikely to be chance.
Phoenix Psaltery Jan 5th 2010 2:31AM
The PITA about Oculus for me (I've only run it once) was not being able to tell whether my party was above or below me.
In Second Life, the map shows people that are at a different level as a ^ or v. It'd be great if we could have something like that in WoW.
P2
Rabidlemming Jan 5th 2010 2:42AM
I'm a horrible person, I bail on Oculus the second it finishes loading. I, like everyone I'm sure, play this game to have fun. You know what doesn't sound like fun? Trying to teach 2-3 people in the group what drake to get and try to get them to follow you.
And trying to explain to the moron DPS who thinks he should be on the red drake too is like pulling teeth while repeatedly being kicked in the face. I would've ran Occ without this...buff? If Blizzard would just drop the respective reins into the players bags after the boss dies (Red-Tank, Green-Healer, DPS-Bronze). Leave the NPCs so if you want the achievement you can switch them out.
I never understood what was so freaking hard to understand about "Talk to the gnome I'm standing next to and get your Bronze/Amber Reins". I always have DPS that either ignore me completely, or go to the Gnome, stand there, and then go get a Red Drake.
Blizzard can do nothing about people's inability to follow another person on a flying mount, but that is still pretty frustrating. I'm sure I will run Oc now with these incentives, but I won't like it.
Farproc Jan 5th 2010 3:34AM
And why can't the dps be on the red drake? The drakes abilities have no association with the abilites of their rider. The only, ONLY aspect of the player character that comes through is their average gear level that multiplies the drakes health and damage/healing.
Given that the red drake is probably going to be taking the most damage, the toon with the highest gearscore - tank, dps or healer - should be flying a red. The next highest should be the heals and the orage the bottom 3 gearscore slots.
But screw it - youre worried over nothing. This encounter can be one shotted with almost any mix of drakes, on the first try, in a pug. All you need to explain to the nubs is, which button to spam, when to use the other button. And to follow the drake with the {star} on it when Eregos phases. Saving a timestop for when combat is resumed is handy as it lets the green riders get their dots up.
freeway8989 Jan 5th 2010 4:04AM
You misunderstood him.
I see this happen a lot too. For example, it's assumed that I'll be the tanking drake since I'm the tank, but then a dps will also pick up a ruby drake with no regard to its abilities.
I guess they just think, "Oh gee wiz, I get to fly a drake now. Hmm, a choice between a yellow, red or green drake? Well red is obviously the coolest color of the three, so I'll choose that one. Rofllcoptor!"
Rabidlemming Jan 5th 2010 5:59AM
Yes I myself understand the mechanics of how the drakes work. I was not implying that a persons role has any bearing on how their drake performs. But it makes it much smoother if people are just told what to do. Also, like I said leave the NPC there for those who know what they are doing or want the achievement.
I'm talking about simplicity here, keep it simple stupid (KISS), the less you tell the player what the hell they are suppose to be doing (or show them), the more you rely on each player's individual intelligence to figure out the vehicle mechanic. I'm sure we can agree intelligence is not something you always find in abundance in your average PUG.
Also the things you state all I need to do is the things that seem pretty hard for people to understand. I mark myself, then I tell them to follow me, then I fly 10 feet forward and 10 feet up. I turn around to make sure I'm being followed and find the DPS managed to either go to the bottom of Oc, the top of Oc, or haven't even gotten on their drakes.
I saw someone else post the fact that the only time you have to learn the drakes is while in the dungeon running it. The only other vehicle 5 man, ToC, at least gives players the chance to use the Jousting Mechanic somewhere other then the dungeon to learn them.
Aili Jan 5th 2010 1:59PM
We recently had someone like you who bailed almost immediately. I say "almost" because he did take the mana strudel I offered. Had he also taken 3 more seconds to be observant, he might have also noticed that the four of us he bailed on were in the same guild.
But his loss. We made sure to explain it carefully to his replacement before the timer started, and also got his replacement the [Amber Void] and [Make It Count] achievements.
You can't assume that the rest of the group doesn't know the instance just because you were pugged in.
Psiwave Jan 5th 2010 2:58AM
Oooh I like prizes, although the cynical part of me says; "this is just blizzard admi.. Ouch! Help! Stop it! Leave me alone the rest of psiwaves brain! Aaaargh!"
Blayzin Jan 5th 2010 3:01AM
Now all Blizz needs to do is add extra frost badges in CoS, a flying insect mount in OK, and some other incentive to make it worthwhile enough to do these terrible instances. Maybe something like a flying chicken mount. Yes. I'd like that.
Possum Jan 5th 2010 3:07AM
I hate vehicles, I hate the vehicle quests, I hate using them in instances. It's not that they're hard it's that they're clunky, irritating and restrictive. I really don't understand the hard on Blizzard has had for them this expansion.
RuzGofDI Jan 5th 2010 3:07AM
I think a large number of people just really hate vehicle combat of any kind in WoW. I've heard a lot of complaints from people in my guild over flying on dragons, jousting, and using catapults/demolishers. They'll do it if the reward's are good enough, but once they've got what they want, they don't go back.
If Blizz really wants people farming Oculus night and day, the bags should have a chance to hold a Battered Hilt.
But what really worries me is why Blizz feels the need to push Oculus. I have this fear in the pit of my stomach that we'll all be mounting up to face Deathwing come the end of Cataclysm, and Blizz wants to make sure we've had a lot of experince dragon riding before then.