The Queue: In which Adam will surely upset the vocal minority, again
by Adam Holisky 
Jun 8th 2010 at 1:00PM
A good question from Babaloo leads off The Queue today, one that I had fun answering. And then, how do you pronounce draenei?
Babaloo asked:
"Why are so many people pessimistic about Wrath's raid design? Everyone says that the raids don't feel the same as they did in other expansions, usually not being as developed and such. So my question is; what is it that separates Wrath from older raids from BC and Vanilla?"
Great question, and one that I'm sure a lot of people will be able to chime in on.
First, people don't like how the raids feel when compared to the raids in the past, particularly with regards to size, difficulty, and gearing requirements. This game has evolved significantly from the 40-man Molten Core raids of 2004 to the 10-man raids of Icecrown Citadel. The raids are nothing like they were. I doubt many ICC raiders today would be able to go back and do Ragnaros at level 60 in level 60 blues and epics. This isn't to say that old school raiders are better than current raiders; it's just to illustrate how different the game is.
This difference brings us down to a fundamental fact of human nature: change is hard, and people will resist change whenever possible. People resisted the raiding changes in BC, they've resisted them in Wrath, and they'll resist them in Cataclysm as well. However that resistance (or lack thereof) isn't the measure of success that Blizzard judges its raiding plan by -- they look at how many people are playing in their raid instances, and that's a helluva lot more today than it was five and a half years ago.
Secondly, there's been more outright communication about design intent and upcoming changes. This has lead to a lot of second guessing of Blizzard and the folks in Ghostcrawler's team. Because of this second guessing, everyone and their mother has a better way to design the raiding system. This leads to a lot of great and fruitful discussion (we've had plenty here on WoW.com), but it also leads to a sense that things are wrong, when in reality things are only wrong to a slight few...which leads me to my final point.
The number of people complaining are just a vocal minority -- albeit at times a very loud vocal minority. Most WoW players are okay with where the raids in Wrath have headed. Sure everyone can think of something they'd like done differently, but overall people like it. The players that don't spend a lot of time online complaining about it, posting about it, QQing, etc... That's not to say that their concerns are not valid (they are), but just that things need to be put in perspective. Ghostcrawler (WoW's lead system designer) and Zarhym (a community manager) do a particularly great job of this.
So while there are many reasons people are pessimistic, I don't think it's as widespread as your question assumes. You're just hearing what the very vocal people on this anonymous internet have to say. Taking raiding stats and participation as a whole (which is what Blizzard does), and the picture will look very different.
MDrules asked:
"I've heard that Blizzard is going to remove the rusted proto-drake in patch 3.3.5, but I have not found anything official saying so. Can someone confirm with a citation as to if this is going away 'soon'."
Blizzard has said they'll give us a month's notice before taking away a reward like the drake, and we haven't heard anything yet. So I'll go with this being unconfirmed until we hear otherwise.
Noah asked:
"What is the correct pronunciation of draenei?"
According to WoWWiki it's pronounced Dran-eye or drahn-eye, depending on where you put the stress.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW.com crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
Rawr Jun 8th 2010 1:07PM
Has Blizzard ever addressed how the issue of cower? Any plans to make it useful?
Kberot Jun 8th 2010 1:09PM
Bah how did that 'how' get in there?
Neirin Jun 8th 2010 1:41PM
The how is part of they Gibberish Syndicate, arch nemesis of the Grammar Police.
Zalvi24 Jun 8th 2010 2:16PM
"how" is commonly use in sentences like "How come there hasn't been a elemental Totem Talk since March 20? do you guys don't love us anymore?
Deathknighty Jun 8th 2010 2:28PM
The word "How" is also used in sentences such as
"How did AAFL go this time?"
"How is AAFL not apppearing, at all ever?"
"How come its been missing so long?"
"How can you neglect all the poor souls who come to WoW.com every Tuesday solely to see this week's AAFL?"
The first two examples were also instances of the word "how" being used incorrectly!
kingoomieiii Jun 8th 2010 2:35PM
Cower? The hunter pet ability? It's currently awesome.
Reduces damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds, 45 sec cooldown.
Doesn't share a cooldown with Shield Shell (turtle), which is 50%, 12sec, 1 min.
Grumblecakes Jun 8th 2010 2:40PM
I think the best example would be this: "How did this turn into people complaining about articles they haven't seen for awhile?"
Tyfo Jun 8th 2010 3:15PM
Kingo; I'm pretty sure he's talking about druid ability Cower, which is an ability that reduces threat. The problem with is that Cower reduces threat by a static amount, and is currently worse than simply not attacking for the duration of a global cooldown.
thegatherer Jun 8th 2010 3:19PM
@Kberot: how is simply a product of the improbability drive that powers WoW.com...
@Zalvi: thats because there isnt anything to talk about...*zing*
They did change the way cower works, it used to do something to the effect of either reduce the amount of threat the pet creates, or reduces the amount of threat the pet has, similar to FD, soulshatter, or fade....i forget which it actually did off the top of my head.
Now it is just that it takes less damage...which is more reasonable...if you were being attacked by some random animal and it began to cower for no reason, would you likely say "D'AAAAWWWWWW!! how cute, it was only showing its love for me by BITING MY FACE OFF", or would you immediately start attacking it seeing weakness?
Manadar Jun 8th 2010 3:38PM
>thegatherer
If it is a kitty then for sure. Who would be able to resist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZASt8w-KsQ&feature=related ?
Jorges Jun 8th 2010 5:05PM
@kingoomieiii
I think he's refering to the Cower ability of Feral Cats, wich is horrible. I'd like to ask the same question, any word on this issue from Blizzard?
Xeph Jun 8th 2010 6:28PM
I'm pretty sure he's talking about the druid ability Cower. It reduces threat by 3.4k, but due to it being affected by cat form's 30% threat reduction, it only reduces threat by 2.4k (a bleed tick does more threat than that). Plus it costs 20 energy, a GCD, and has a 10 second CD, which is actually more of a threat reduction than the actual ability.
I'm interested in an answer as well, though as far as I know, Blizz has said nothing about the uselessness of Cower. It's a shame, really.
uncaringbear Jun 8th 2010 7:49PM
But I love that emote! *starts trembling and shaking.
/cower
Influenza Jun 8th 2010 1:07PM
Also, raiding is a lot easier now since they made buffs (like totems and blessings) apply to the whole raid instead of just which ever group the class was put in. I personally welcome most of these new changes, yet sometimes I long for the days gone by, because 40 man raids were epic in their own right!
Ghrog Jun 8th 2010 2:21PM
I agree with you to a certain extent, but also wanted to note that Totems don't automatically cover the whole raid, the still have a range that they cover and totem placement is still important in certain fights.
DragonFireKai Jun 8th 2010 3:11PM
The big difference in raiding nowdays compared to BC, and especially Vanilla, certainly isn't the difficulty of the encounters. Wrath has had by far the most difficult encounters from an execution standpoint. Things like longer blessings and raid wide buffs are nice, but don't really change the difficulty of raiding any, it just cuts down on the annoyance. The big difference is the meta game. There are so many more effective resources for raiders to tap to up their game.
I disagree with the notion that most current raiders would be unable to kill rag in level appropriate gear at level 60. It's not a hard fight. Melee have to deal with a knock back, and the raid has to kill 8 adds every 3 minutes. The ranged DPS doesn't even have to concern themselves with aggro cause rag is stationary. Kologarn is more complex than rag. A raid that watches the tankspot vid on rag, and has the MC DBM module would sleepwalk through the fight.
On the other hand, if you were to take the best raiders from the Molten Core era, and fit them out with full 277 gear, and sent them in against Lich King Easy mode, they'd get torn limb from limb. Having to rely on Bosskillers and CTraid would leave them unable to manage the timers on defile or infest, or mark up the val'kyrs in time.
The encounters are getting harder, but the raiders are getting smarter. We have an understanding of the fundamental mechanics of this game that no one in the Vanilla era had. We have resources they couldn't dream of.
Draelan Jun 8th 2010 4:36PM
To quote Frostheim:
"If you spend some time listening to the old-timers talk about the good old days, you'll hear a lot of rosy stories about how things were better, when men were men, and women were men too, and our pets were next to useless, but they were also men."
alex Jun 8th 2010 4:42PM
Funny how any type of post containing praises to gameplay and welfare gear get thumbs up.
It's just like going on arenajunkies and saying beastcleave requires skill for +rep.
Randomize Jun 8th 2010 8:11PM
But using the example given here, realistically a 10 man raid would have difficulty upgrading to 40 man Ragnaros with the horrible crap of abilities that used to be in the game. I mean, seriously, Ragnaros was a lot harder when healers actually ran out of mana casting only a dozen spells. Aggro mechanics were terrible, and ranged dps could pull aggro off the tank in other Molten Core fights very easily. And guess what? Tanks had a decent chance of not being defense cap, if they even knew about that mechanic. Nowadays, it is very simple to get d capped, but in those times you sacrificed defense for fire resistance.
In comparison, really old school raiders don't have to worry as much about modern raids. Encounters do require more strategy, but that is matched with the availability of addons like DBM and better strategies, as well as more intelligently designed gear, talents, and abilities. Vanilla raiding and Wrath raiding are incredibly hard to compare because they grew up in different eras. Wrath raiding has a greater audience, and it has been trained accordingly in regular dungeons and heroics. Remember that most people didn't raid at all in Vanilla, and Wrath was the start of pug raids and easier barriers to entry.
Honestly, I'd say that Wrath raiding is better because you don't have to be in the top 1% of your server population to go see ICC, totally unlike MC, which most people really didn't see until BC because it was so damn hard to get into a raiding guild.
Grak Jun 9th 2010 5:56AM
I think the point about available resources for players is most valid. Back in vanilla I was raiding MC and ZG as a mage, and looking back now I was pretty hopeless; I had chosen my talents based on what sounded good, I didnt have a rotation I just used spells that seemed appropriate, my gear wasnt min/maxed it was just a collection of whatever I could get my hands on, and I hadnt read any mage guides (were there class guides back then?) What I knew had just come from leveling up and doing 5mans. And the thing is, the majority of players were like that back then, flying blind and playing however they 'felt' was right. Nowadays you would get laughed out of the dungeon finder for that level of play, let alone any casual raid. The sheer volume of information and theorycrafting we have today on class/specs/gear/tactics etc is exponentially higher than what we had back in vanilla.
Not to mention the crushing weight of all the 'downtime' preparation a raider had to do before stepping into a raid. Farming for all the different consumables, farming for gold to buy the consumables you couldnt farm, farming for fire resistance gear.. hell even just having to log in 30min before a raid just to sit in Ironforge conjuring all the water the raid would need.
Glad those days are long gone.