Breakfast Topic: If you could redo features in Wrath, what would they be?
by Zach Yonzon 
Mar 3rd 2010 at 8:00AM
Another area that the developers felt lacked a little more polish was the emblem system, which they described as "clunky". Of course, they admit that in hindsight there happens to be quite a number of things that they'd like to redo, pointing out that they are their own worst critics. I'm sure we've got our own ideas about what could have gone better, so let's have at it. Personally, I'm quite happy about their plans to improve Battlegrounds play in Cataclysm, so I guess I'll kick it off with that. What about you guys? If you could ask a favor of Chromie and her Bronze Dragonflight cohorts, what things would you have done differently about Wrath?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Gamer am I Mar 3rd 2010 8:07AM
I would ask Chromie for some way for heroics to scale with gear once everyone started outgearing them to a ludicrous degree. If they weren't so boring, this tank would still be running them. Perhaps Blizzard could have added extra heroic modes: regular heroic mode would drop emblems of heroism, valorous mode could have dropped emblems of valor, conquestial (?) mode could have dropped emblems of conquest, and triumphant mode could have dropped emblems of triumph. Each mode would scale in difficulty just a bit so that there could be a sense of progression, and it would still allow people to get good gear through heroics without flooding the world of heroic-exclusive players with amazing gear that trivializes the content.
joff_graham Mar 3rd 2010 8:44AM
The word you're looking for is 'Conqueror'
Potvorka Mar 3rd 2010 8:57AM
it would do only that you will need to wait for tank even longer :)
I dont have any problem with boring HC, they are not boring? Are they easy? Yeah, they are much more easy since I dinged 80 with my first char in blue :) It was like 40 min or more for one run.
Is it boring now? No! I try to run trough them fast as possible - range is 10-20 min depending in group and HC. Runing them slowly can be boring - but they have so much challenge how you want :) Just do bigger and bigger pulls for faster and faster runs trough :)
Addons like InstanceTime will show you how fast you are :)
Candina@WH Mar 3rd 2010 9:45AM
When the whole heroic mode idea came out, and the whole tiered badge thing started, I said from the beginning that there should be...
Heroic
Valorous
Conqueror
Triumphant
and... Frosty? hmmm...
Levels of difficulty for heroics with each level of badge. But then the complexity of balancing it all would take developer time away from NEW content, so I shrugged and accepted what I got.
Cyrus Mar 3rd 2010 10:59AM
I agree with you on the problem, but I'd offer a different solution: I think they should have toned down gear scaling. Judging by item level - and I haven't done the math by adding up and subtracting the stats themselves, but I'm pretty sure it would work out the same way - the difference between Naxx-10 and ICC-25 is just as big as between level 70 and level 80. That's a huge difference, especially considering that, unlike the endgame raids in vanilla or BC, ICC-25 is pretty accessible.
To be clear, I agree with that part, I like their current approach of making some version of the raids available to everyone and having the real challenge come in hard modes. But this approach has problems of its own, mainly the one you mention where current raiders can so ridiculously outgear content that was the beginning of the endgame at level 80. I don't think there should be so much gear progression within the endgame. (This would also mean that some encounters should have been tuned differently.)
I remember going into DM west one time back in vanilla WoW with a group of guildies, being cocky and getting sloppy because our guild had cleared most of AQ20 and BWL and some of us assumed that a five-man instance should be easy, and getting stomped once or twice until we started paying attention to the basics again. In vanilla WoW, no gear except for maybe the absolute best of the best could make up for not paying attention or knowing what you were doing. That's partly because things were designed differently, but mostly just because gear and stat progression was more gradual. Same for heroic instances in BC. In WotLK, though, all else being equal, one dps class in gear from ICC can literally do the work of two who just hit 80, and one tank can do the work of more than two. I hope this trend doesn't continue.
hiphophomies Mar 3rd 2010 12:25PM
You don't make an old instance more interesting by giving the mobs bigger numbers. It's still the same instance, you've still done it a dozen times. It doesn't become more interesting, at worst it becomes frustrating. You don't want to make grinding emblems harder just for the sake of making it harder.
Creating entirely new, tougher dungeons with new boss fights is the way to go. And it's the way they went. And it was pretty cool. I still enjoy tanking tyrannus and finding ice patches over which he can hit me.
pixelrevision Mar 3rd 2010 1:19PM
YES! For me it is hard to get on consistently enough to raid regularly so I miss a lot of that part of the game. Back in vanilla 5 mans were kind of their own progression and were big enough and hard enough to really keep you occupied for a good long time even though there was less of them at end game. BC did the right thing with introducing heroics, but the heroics now are sooooo easy that it makes me feel like I'm grinding.
Jack Spicer Mar 3rd 2010 1:27PM
@Cyrus
That problem isn't because of gear. Its because of how much they simplified threat and tanking in Wrath. The idea of having more than 2 elite mobs beating on the tank seemed practically suicidal before AoE tanking took over.
Dmiri Mar 3rd 2010 2:24PM
I like the fact that the first post was not a "First!" post, that said, I couldn't agree more with your point. Content has been trivialized by the fact that we are overgeared for it, but I can also see this has helped plenty of us gear up for newer content alot easier which was blizzards intent. Come Cataclysm though I think your suggestion will definately go a long way in making players feel like they're actually making progress instead of just Farming the hell out of this easy heroic. Nowaday I'm just like you, Don't wanna run it cause I've already done it too many times.
Arkfang Mar 3rd 2010 8:09AM
not make Naxxramas a lvl 80 raid and Lich King should drop frostmourne 1 time each realm so its something like the black quiraj battletank :)
Ametrine Mar 3rd 2010 9:05AM
Lich King DID drop his gear. Bolvar won the Need roll for his helm.
Midgetman99km Mar 3rd 2010 9:19AM
Also there's a 75,000g repair bill to whoever dares pickup Frostmournes shattered remains.
dabias Mar 3rd 2010 10:02AM
Downvote Ametrine! Some people don't want to be spoiled!
busuan Mar 3rd 2010 12:38PM
No, Tirion won the Need roll.
But Bolvar protested in vent: it's obviously a DK helm, why a retardin need it?!
Tirion blushed and traded the item, leaving the group.
He then immediately recalled that Bolvar was a Protection Paladin!
Joshua G. Mar 3rd 2010 8:51PM
Bolvar than faction changed horde and changed his name to "Ner'zhul"
zandilar Mar 3rd 2010 8:07AM
I wish they would have released the underground zone they had plan. The lore and such with UK and AN just seems to be begging for more.. and these instances were alien but beautiful at the same time.
Ishammel Mar 3rd 2010 9:11AM
Full of bugs though...
......
Heilig Mar 3rd 2010 9:16AM
Let's make that a more general "I wish they had spent more time on Raid Content."
It's painfully clear that they gave us Naxx so they could have more time to polish Ulduar and did the same with ToC and ICC.
Trial of the Crusader is straight up the laziest thing I have ever seen Blizzard put out. Their joke about things being launched "soon" or "when they're ready" is clearly just propaganda. They threw together ToC in a matter of days and pushed it out so we wouldn't be waiting 8 months for ICC. I think nearly everyone that plays the game regularly would have rather seen all the development time that went into the exterior coliseum zone be spent on an underground Azjol-Nerub zone, even if it meant waiting longer or not getting as much filler loot.
TL;DR version: 2 great raids (Ulduar, ICC) don't make up for two really crappy raids (Naxx, ToC). Spend more time on development and polishing and just give us 3 great raids.
Wyred Mar 3rd 2010 9:37AM
Personally I'm still not sure why they pushed out TotC as quickly as they did. We seemed to have a lot more time in TotC (boooorring) than we had in Ulduar (holy crap that robot is Voltron!). So much time spent farming that raid, time that could've been spent back in lovely Ulduar.
Rob Mar 3rd 2010 10:40AM
I agree w/ this, one of the major disappointments was the lack of raid content. Naxx was cool but the strats already existed, so it wasn't a huge surprise. Heck i even had the BC dungeon book (which included naxx), and everything that i could see was identical. Ulduar and ICC were/are great, but most of us never got through ulduar since it was so tough to get through in the beginning. I wish they would have the heroics drop EoV and the first heroic drop EoC, then ratchet that up, so when TOC was out, have the heroics drop EoC and the first one drop EoV. The point is nobody runs Ulduar for the very reason that there is no loot in there, but its still damn hard for most raid groups. Even outgearing the content, my very casual guild hasn't made all that much progress in ulduar. The major reason that it's challenge level doesn't scale to the gear; you work very hard to learn the strats for gear you can't use. This happened pretty much as soon as TOC was out.
I think naxx was a good intro raid, and sarth was a really nice newbie raid, and ulduar by itself was great, but the timing just sucked. It was, what 6 mo. after naxx? Or some hidious long time, then TOC was released too soon, and ICC was released with the badge change and the lfd change.
I do think they did great with the adding lots of easily accessible badge gear, but for example if I wanted to dive into raiding right now (and not have a raid guild), most every guild is in ICC, but there is a huge gap between badge gear and ICC, you can't just get badge gear and expect to get into ICC groups. The hardcore may think that's fine, but after 5 alts, some of which are well into ICC, i want an easier progression path so I can get my alts in to ICC and not be carried (and you can't really carry anyone in iCC, not right now).