Posts with tag mists-of-pandaria

I did a post this week about raiding in previous expansions and in vanilla WoW, and how people often say those raids were harder and my opinion that it is easily demonstrable that current raids are if anything more complicated than they have ever been. I frankly believe there is almost no room for comparison between the game at 60 and today in terms of raid complexity and difficulty. Part of this stems from the many different variations on what the word hard means in this context. Something can be harder because it is conceptually or executionally more complex (the difficulty can stem from how much is required to successfully complete its mechanics) or it can be hard because it is laborious and/or time consuming. Was raiding with 40 people in classic WoW more laborious? Absolutely it was. It wasn't mechanically harder, but it was more time consuming and took a great deal of effort to organize and plan. It's the difference between working out a complex multi-stage math problem and carrying five thousand pounds of rocks from point A to point B.

But there were some points worth addressing. It absolutely has never been easier to level, even without heirlooms, than it is right now. Vanilla leveling to 60 took more time and effort than leveling to 90 does today. Even without heirlooms, one can easily and without much stress reach level 20 in a few hours, level 40 in less than two days, and be level 60 within a day of that, and this isn't spending all day staring at the screen either. This is a fairly casual leveling pace. I leveled a blood elf warrior to 35 in two days of rather casual play, an hour on followed by a half hour reading websites or having a snack or even going for a long walk.

It's also far easier to do the following things:

1. Get a dungeon group. You can queue for dungeons at level 15, and from that point on, all you ever have to do to run a dungeon is hit that queue. If you're playing in the tank or healing role you can effectively chain dungeons all day, and even leveling as DPS there are stretches where you don't even need to quest or do anything but dungeon.
2. Run a battleground. While you could argue that doing well at BG running as you level up and at max level takes some time and effort, if you want to risk queueing in whatever gear you have, it's simplicity itself.
3. Getting ready to raid at max level. The game now has catchup mechanisms in place for players who start later. If you just got your alt to 90 and are switching to it for raiding, deciding to give raiding a try for the first time, or what have you it's not the case that your raid group is compelled to run you through previous raids for attunements and keys, much less gearing you through older raids to get ready for the current content.
4. Find something to do. You could even argue that there's too much to do, or that it feels too mandatory. But you can't argue you don't have options - if you don't want to run dungeons, raid, or PvP there are pet battles, daily quests and scenarios you can do.

So the question then becomes this: is it better or worse for the game that these things are easier? For that matter, are they easy enough?

If the words 'casual' and 'hardcore' ever had a useful role in determining the differences between players in World of Warcraft, and I am not convinced they ever did, they no longer do. A player who wants to have an alt of every single class at max level and makes that happen is not playing the game casually even if she never raids. A player who collects several hundred pets and levels many of them through pet battles, or has a similarly high number of mounts, or determines to go out and get every cooking recipe in the game (including Dirge's Kickin' Chimeraok Chops which you can't even get anymore but somehow he finds a way) is playing the game very seriously indeed.

Quite frankly, despite the fact that I raid a set schedule, I often feel like I'm significantly more 'casual' than many players who never raid at all. I know I play a lot less - I definitely do not log on every day, I don't run LFR unless I missed a boss in normal (because I want a shot at my Secrets of the Empire off of that boss) and I don't do pet battles, farm, or even do daily quests anymore. So with my roughly fifteen hours of WoW a week, 12 of it spent inside a raid and the other three futzing about older raids for transmog gear, am I casual or hardcore? And does it matter?

Ordinarily I'd explore the answer in the paragraphs to come. But frankly, the answer is no. It doesn't matter. It is so far from mattering that the light from it mattering won't reach us for fifty thousand years. What matters is finding out what players want to do with their time and letting them do it.

I was reading twitter as I often do... no, really, it's for work, I'm not just wasting time posting jokes about wearing a crown roast as a helmet... when I saw Nethaera post this tweet, which led me to this forum thread. While perusing the thread I eventually found Neth's response to it, and that got me thinking about the concept.

Nethaera - Could we get a PvP battleground?

Battle grounds have always been missing an important part of world pvp.... PvP. Make it like a big arena but not so big that people can't hide. 10 to 15 players forced into all out pvp. First to so many kills or 10 minutes, whichever comes first, wins the round.

No need to even create an area for it. Just make a copy of Blackrock mountain in an instance.

That is PvP I would actually like... its the reason I liked AV so much back before it was turned into race where pvp sometimes breaks out.

What you're asking for is a straight Death Match type of Battleground. I'm not sure it would be compelling as you think. I'm a big fan of DM as well, at least in FPS', but for an MMO like World of Warcraft, I question how enjoyable it would be in the long run for people. I think for players who feel very comfortable with their abilities, straight head on PvP like that would be fun for them, but for others, I'm not sure it would have the same appeal.

That said, I'm not killing the discussion. I'm just interested in how you feel this would work or appeal to a wide enough audience for it to be worth creating.

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I have in the past advocated a deathmatch style BG because I do understand the original poster's point. But let's really take a look at what a deathmatch BG would have to entail.

Reading the forums (like I do) I came across a response by Daxxari to a forum thread that got me thinking.

Daxxari - Oh God, 5.3 don't come!!! QQ thread!!

Item budget is weird and crazy. Seriously. It's actually worlds better than it used to be, but still needs to be a lot more clear so people can understand it. Blizzard is bad at getting some really core information like that across.

Fair enough. There's a huge amount of information to relate about World of Warcraft, and we can always communicate better and more clearly. We've already stated that PvP stats don't count toward a given item's ilevel, and we released the PvP Gear in Patch 5.3 blog that we hoped would dispel some confusion.

What do you think is missing, and what else needs to be communicated clearly so players can make informed gearing decisions?

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This got me to thinking about what I'd like expressed more clearly and concisely someplace easy to find in game, and it's how stat ratings work. This has greatly improved in that the character window pane will calculate out how much actual hit percentage, or critical strike percentage, you currently have on gear but I really think the game could benefit from a means to work out what changing X or Y will do to your stats without having to go to an outside site.

So what about you? What do you find confusing and think Blizzard could explain better? Item levels? How PvP stats work? The difference between content tiers? If it bugs you, tell us how you think Blizzard could explain it better.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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@stephenreis123 Hmm. I'd say two things off the top of my head. 1) We wanted to offer options but didn't offer *enough* options (e.g. GL).

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 24, 2013

@stephenreis123 2) As many difficulty levels as we offered, it wasn't enough.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 24, 2013

@stephenreis123 I said 2, but also we didn't do a good job of providing direction at L90. Also wish we had added some dungeons in maybe 5.3.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) April 24, 2013

Firstly, one of the great things about Ghostcrawler is how readily he owns up to the team's mistakes here. There's no shame in getting things wrong, but maintaining that you're infallible is both irritating and generally untrue.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

As the expansion rolls on, we are lurching towards something that we've known was coming since the beta for Mists of Pandaria -- Garrosh Hellscream's downfall and the Siege of Orgrimmar. Yet what we didn't know that day that were were informed of the expansions focus, is just how the new Warchief's reign would end. And as the patches have continued to roll out, we have more of an idea and a solid picture of both the Alliance and the Horde's place in this conflict. Make no mistake, Hellscream has made far too many enemies in his short reign, both within and without.

Yet there are those who point out Garrosh's actions and the possibility that his actions may not be under his control. That perhaps he's been corrupted by the Sha while searching for power in Pandaria. Or perhaps the bones of Mannoroth that Garrosh uses as his throne still have some vestige of darkness that lingers within. Or that perhaps the Old Gods have been slowly leeching their influence into Garrosh. Regardless of the methods behind it, there are plenty of people all wondering the same thing -- is Garrosh Hellscream corrupt? Are we going to fight the Warchief, only to discover a far greater horror waiting for us?

Nois, a dwarf warlock, posted this neat thread to the forums asking that very question: how would you design a raid boss? It interests me for a variety of reasons. One, I like seeing what players would do if called upon to design aspects of the game. For another, it gets me thinking about raid design, boss fights, and how they've evolved and changed over the years. It's hard to believe that once upon a time Razorgore or Vaelestraz were considered enormously difficult mechanically complex fights when pretty much every boss fight in Throne of Thunder has so many moving parts and elements to consider (the Iron Qon fight, for example, is a four phase fight with different mechanics for each phase).

I'm also interested because this finally gives me a chance to share my Cakearon the Frosting God raid boss strat I wrote back in Firelands of all places. People here at WoW Insider have been regaled with tales of the epic battle with Cakearon for two years now, and finally, I get to share the master of Icingdeath with you all.

• At patch 5.3, gear will simply be capped. During patch 5.4 the plan is for the cap to go up so that new gear will have a purpose in PvP.
• They are still considering ways to calculate the cap (one possibility being a cap based on the average of your gear rather than a flat cap). Elite PvP gear is intended to be a cosmetic difference.
• The goal is not to prevent PvE gear in PvP - would be simple to do just that, but rather to make it so players who are in full Conquest gear don't feel forced to run PvE for trinkets and other off pieces.
• Resilience changes are based around the idea that resilience was too necessary to have any chance in PvP - this way, you can gear to overcome it.
• PvP power on Conquest gear will mean a PvP geared player will have an edge on all but fully heroic geared PvE players in World PvP, and will be fairly even against them. World PvP is inherently less fair than structured PvP, part of its charm.
• They will be discussing other PvP rewards down the road now that Elite gear is cosmetic, other PvP rewards that aren't just gear.

So for all that plus a lot more, go give the Ask the Devs PvP edition a read.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Someone just asked me on Twitter if I thought humans in World of Warcraft are boring. I don't think that at all. I have several reasons for not thinking humans are boring, which I'll lay out for you now:

1. Humans had/have the most elaborate and interesting political backstory in the game. The conflict between the House of Nobles, the stonemasons and craftsmen, and the House of Wrynn over Stormwind's rebuilding has led to the existence of the Defias Brotherhood, the machinations of the Black Dragonflight and the collapse of Stormwind's outlying territories. Westfall, Darkshire and Redridge are all cut off and fractured, and the aftermath of the war with the Lich King and the Cataclysm only kept the pressure on. Stormwind, as the last remaining human kingdom now that Theramore and Gilneas are effectively gone and Kul Tiras is missing, totters on the edge.
2. Humans have a great tradition of loss and perseverance. The orcs lost a world, but they're the ones who destroyed it, so it's hard to sympathize with them. The humans rose from scattered refugees on an alien shore to seven mighty kingdoms that ruled much of the Eastern continent, and the loss of those kingdoms after the coming of the Burning Legion and the Scourge is a story of loss piled on loss, heartbreak piled on heartbreak. The refugees from Lordaeron that survived came to Stormwind, and it is that nation which has the lion's share of the burden of rebuilding from this staggering loss.
3. Every other race in World of Warcraft is just a metaphor for humanity.

I'll expand on point three now.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Alliance lore and the Alliance storyline in general have both been subjects of contention since some point early in Cataclysm, and the complaints don't seem to be getting any quieter. In the upcoming patch 5.3, the Alliance will be taking a direct hand in the events playing out near Orgrimmar, but not in the way you would readily expect. And oddly, this has Alliance players worked up in a near frenzy on realm and story forums, bitter and angry about the direction the Alliance storyline has been taking and repeatedly demanding more.

And it is incredibly difficult to understand just what all the fuss is about. There isn't a tangible moment that one can point to, there isn't a cohesive example of what has been happening. There's just a sense of unhappiness that is, to Alliance players, absolutely real. So this week, we're going to take a slightly different route for Know Your Lore. We're going to look at the nuts and bolts behind Mists of Pandaria, the Alliance, and the story so far. And we're going to do so in as analytical and constructive a manner as possible, to try and find that specific what-happened that seems to be bothering so many players.

Let's take a deep breath, dive in, and ask ourselves not "what is wrong," but instead, "what is the Alliance missing?"

Please note: Today's Know Your Lore contains some spoilers for patch 5.3 content. If you're trying to avoid spoilers, you may want to turn away.

It's just a fact that raiding normal or heroic raids is a communal activity. When you said "I cleared Heroic ToES before the patch" what you mean is "We cleared Heroic ToES before the patch" because unless you have a Martin Fury in your bags, you didn't solo it. Progression raiding is always about the group. You don't accomplish things we do. The same is true for arenas or rated battlegrounds - these bastions of elite PvP are group activities, and your success or failure is shared with others. World of Warcraft is an MMO, after all.

Even LFR or random heroic dungeons or scenarios are group dependent, it's just that in these cases the groups are assembled for you by the game. You may well queue up for each of these alone, and you may leave and go about your business afterwards just as alone, but the actual raid, dungeon or scenario will have other players in it with you. This is an inescapable, inseparable part of the WoW experience, and it is one of the things I enjoy about the game.

However, as much as I do enjoy group activities, as much as I love raiding and going into a dungeon or raid zone with a group, there are times I just want to be alone. And it is this desire to sometimes play at my own pace, to my own schedule, that has me reconsidering my expansion-long disdain for the daily quest structure of World of Warcraft.