I haven't actually set foot in Ulduar yet. I have my warlock copied over to the PTR, but have been furiously leveling the priest in an effort to get her to 80, and onto the PTR. The warlock is fun, but I've kinda really hit a groove with the priest, and want to try a raid with her. So I haven't even logged onto the PTR yet, but was talking to a druid in a PUG 5 man last night that apparently has. The conversation was a little amusing, in the way it played out...
I wish I had screenshotted it, or had one of those chat log chache things, but the general gist of things is good enough to get the point across, so here goes the dramatic re-enactment:
Ixo: you guys copied any toons over to the PTR yet?
Warrior: wats tht?
DK: I have my druid on the pvp, ally on a diff server
Ixo: Public Test Realm, lets you try out patches before they hit live. Ulduar is up on it now, you can test it out
Warrior: o
DK: yeah, my druid is 5/5 Valorous
Ixo: yeah, I got my t7 lock over on the pvp, but haven't even logged it yet, trying to level this priest ;)
DK: yeah. it's pretty hard. 2nd boss two shotted my drood, bastard hit me for like 20k! XD
Ixo: lol, that's what I like to hear! people have been QQing about naxx being too easy, good to see a tough raid in the works
Warrior: can u gys summon? afk a few min
DK: yeah, I don't think anyone is going to beat Ulduar until it gets nerfed, that place is crazy
Okay... so. First, while this DK was obviously a PUG, and I can't vouch for his druid, he was mentioning maly, running sarth 3d, and basically having naxx on farm (which unto itself is pretty whatever). So he's a raider. That's established. But the PTR has been live for... what... a week now? And there he is, already talking about a nerf. He wasn't a jackass, and we actually ran a few dungeons last night as a 5 man. He DPSed one run, then when the tank had to bail, he had absolutely no issues switching to a tanking role for the next run. That alone gets huge points in my book, as most DPS will instantly quit a PUG if the T word is brought up.
This is obviously only one guy, too, but it's pretty representative of the problem with WoW, when taking a sample of one person out of the millions who play: Naxx is too easy, we want something harder. But if we die, it needs to be made easier. This is an endless cycle, and no one is to blame for 'the cake walk that is Naxx right now' but us as players. This is what we want. We love to complain about it, but it's what we asked for. BT was too inaccessible. Hyjal was too annoying if you wiped on Archimonde and had to reclear the entire event to try him again.
There's no tidy resolution at the end of this post, except to say I REALLY hope Blizzard punishes the players with Ulduar for a good month AT LEAST. Even saying 'for a good month' just sounds pathetic. I'd prefer an impossible dungeon that never gets beat, and to taste the sweet sweet tears of 'teh hardcores' for a while. Make the fights completely unbeatable, and when people cry, just IGNORE them. Don't put any blue posts out at all, except for one, 35 days later, being like 'oh, hmm? we thought naxx was too easy? cry moar plx? kthxbai?'
<3
Friday, February 27, 2009
Nerf Ulduar?!
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14 comments:
Being a raider in 3.0 means jack all, Ixo. There isnt really a difference between casual and raiding players.
The difficulty treshold to what is currently endgame raiding is so low that the majority of players who used to give up on the 3rd wipe in BWL or any TBC raid can now most of the time be successful.
I dare wager that the fellow you spoke to calling for nerfs falls into this category, but on the other hand if he isnt and Ulduar really is that hard, we probably have some pretty good fun ahead for the next content patch :)
Fingers crossed!
I hope Ulduar is so difficult that at least 25% of the casuals stop playing. Also, people have become too spoonfed. Easy epics, content is a joke, nothing is exciting. The patch hasn't hit yet, he wants it nerfed. Obviously he's a casual - raiders would enjoy the difficulty and the fact that casuals won't be able to achieve anything.
When I played, the tears of 14 year old boys and slanderous insults due to their lack of playing ability made me enjoy the game that much more.
I'm such a bastard. I hope they make it harder. I'm all for the original 1.0 style of "We'll make the fights initially next to impossible, followed by a nerf two months later, and repeat until 10% of the player base has conquered this, then release a new patch." The "Scaling difficulty" doesn't sit right with me. Make it fucking hard, and if people can't beat it, tune it down some. Don't give people the option to tune it down as needed.
This game needs more wipes. How else is the insane amount of gold going to be worth a fucking cent?
Tragedyx,
What you wrote just now a big deja vu to a discussion I had on the whole raiding difficulty thing, and what we ended up on was that the vanilla raid content was a lot more rewarding just for that reason. It took a heck of an effort to beat it, people felt damn proud and rightfully so able to say they bested the worst WoW could pit them against. And those who couldn't were filled with envy and admiration (yeah its lame but true) to those who could.
It doesnt measure up against what raiding and "hardcore raiding" the game offers today. Imo we should do away with this term, Hardcore Wotlk=Casual raider TBC.
Damn, I sound like a whiny old senior complaining that things were much better in the old days, don't I ? :D
yeah, but while I can appreciate the zeal, that isn't goign to happen and you know it.
you can be upset, or curse about casuals, but this is
1) a game
2) a business venture
people want a challenge, but no one wants bugged, broken bullshit.
the elitist thing is over, it's just a fact. I'm over it, and actually wasn't really on board with it in the first place. I'd still be just fine to run naxx 25 for a good few months, because I've only actually done a full clear like... once. Our guilds keep falling apart, and my timezone sucks. I've still never even set foot in Malygos, and have only tried sarth with 2 drakes at most, and it was a huge (PUG) failure. Hell, I haven't even beat sarth with one drake up.
VOA and sarth no drakes are laughably easy, and naxx isn't HARD, but bosses don't just fall over when you zone in.
I hope Ulduar poses enough of a challenge, but mostly to just make people shut the fuck up for a month about how lame naxx is, because we get it.
when the new game blizzard is working on gets launched, one of two things will happen:
1) it will be some hardcore, that all the "casuals" will stay in WoW as the MMO with training wheels.
2) all those casuals will move to (and be catered to) the new game, at which point, wow becomes a ghost town full of wow diehards. Maybe at that point they'll be like fuckit, and crank the hardness up to 19, but there's no way they're going to crap all over the MAJORITY of their subscriber base to appease the Nihilums of the world.
Vads, you're probably the first intelligent person aside from Ixo that's ever responded to one of my comments.
It feels nice to have someone else back you up on something you're quite nostalgic about. I stopped playing because I didn't feel that sense of pride anymore. When epics are free, what's the point of having them?
Vanilla wow was awesome. Less people, the baddies were outcasts, ninjas and farmers were hated, the game was glorious. I miss the glory days of wow.
Ixxo, I know it's a business thing, which is why I hate it. I've always valued the opinion of the few and the elite over the many and retarded. Bad people causes bliz to make the game easier, otherwise they cry as bad people do. Good people usually cry when things are too easy and casuals get rewarded for almost nothing...then they quit playing, as alot of them have. Soon enough that cascade failure is bound to happen, player base sharply curving downward, and when it does I'll smile. They reached peak subscription after creating some of the most difficult content ever, then released an expansion that could be navigated through and conquered by someone who hasn't hit puberty. It's just sad.
You know how I feel. I hate scrubs. You aren't a scrub, you just have a real life, so you haven't been able to ever be hardcore. You could have been though, and you'd totally understand what I mean by all of this. I bitch alot, but it's a justified bitch. After 4 years, it all means nothing because everyone's on the same field again.
I agree with you Trag, if now someone who is anonymious matters.
i been raiding since pre-tbc, was one of the first ten priests or something to get anathema/Benediction and i loved the "fame" you got. The first kills of big bosses, like raggy or Nefarian, the screams on vent when they died, i miss that. Now, there's just a small "yay, we killed the boss that every guild on the server who can pull together 21 persons can kill".
I hope Ulduar becomes a punch in the face, for casuals and hardcore raiders alike, no more killing bosses on the first try with 22 people in the raid without consumables. i want nights of whipes and whines.
"you can be upset, or curse about casuals, but this is
1) a game
2) a business venture
people want a challenge, but no one wants bugged, broken bullshit."
So what you're saying is that in the interested of making money, everything should just be dumbed down to the point of playing online bejeweled multiplayer games all day every day and people should be happy with that?
Then again, I guess if 10 million people play bejeweled, that's gotta be the right way to play games, right?
I'm so sick of the "it's a company and they need to make money" angle to defend Blizzard's dumbing down of the game as a whole.
You know what? Football is a game. High schools have Varsity squads, and they have JV squads. Rather than dumb down football and take passing out of the game, because throwing and catching is too hard, they just have shit for people who aren't as great at it, and a place for people who are better/good/great at it.
A good MMO that wants to cater to casual players should have shit for everyone TO do, not shit everyone CAN do. If they keep dumbing it down, as soon as a company comes out with a real game that's not ALSO dumbing everything down to be a WoW clone (cough WAR cough) Blizz will lose a decent number of players, because gamers want competition, not The Sims Online + AOL chatroom.
I think there's hard, and then there's stupid hard. Just pumping up the damage that a boss inflicts doesn't make people think any harder about the fight, they just have less of a margin for error. So it's easy to see why that can lead to frustration.
Making stuff harder in the 'good' way where you have to think outside of the box a little more, is probably not applicable to the standard combat system found in most MMO's (and of course WoW). This is why I hate PvE in MMO's :/
I would really enjoy guild drama when the loot collection teams cannot make it and get no new loot. Suddenly the whole "guild", in WoW a term for a profit-oriented loot-collection organization, is at stake...^^
P.S.: WoW sucks.
P.S.: Raiding is the most stinky part
In whatever guilds I was in, I was either always the GM or a lead officer (After working my way up from the bottom), as well as either MT or top-DPS. I generally passed on most gear and was in no way concerned about loot. In all honesty, if loot was taken out of the game and instead players were given "Reward points" or something when they defeat a boss that they could distribute for upgrades, I would have been satisfied. New boss kills grant more, etc. In game DKP used for item purchases relative to the boss fought - everyone wins, and casuals still get dick.
I played for the enjoyment of new encounters. In vanilla wow, my guild had some of the most odd strategies that worked for first time boss kills. I loved that fights didn't have a "Right and wrong" way to do them. Now it seems like "Stand in spot X, cast Y, run to spot Z and wait for whatever".
Also, Khatib: "A good MMO that wants to cater to casual players should have shit for everyone TO do, not shit everyone CAN do." I couldn't agree with you more. That's the most logically i've heard it put. Unfortunately, it's the reason my subscription runs out in 2 days and i'm not renewing.
Which reminds me: anyone know of any sites that buy in game gold and are legit?
Bleh. Fuck this game.
There is an inflation to it all. All current epics should be labeled blue in my opinion and maybe soon like they did in my country some time ago, they will need to reduce the numbers down. It is causing an inflation. 2000 spell power? I cant remember the numbers but if you had like 100 spell power in AQ20 it was good. When something gets inflated or overproduced the actual value falls down. That priest with Benediction was worth more than todays epic decked 2k spell power priest. They are trying not to lose the player base which is in most cases people like me or Ixo. That has multiple accounts, pays for name and server change AKA Teh Casuals. On the other hand hardcore are the people that has the advantage of time in their hand. Mostly jobless or on welfare money (in Sweden and UK mostly) or students, in short people who can actually afford the luxury of spending their all time in this game. They can spend 18 hours of a day in front of the game. I just dont have that time. I would like to but I dont. Its like if you had a billion dollars you could own a private jet and travel around following summer around the world.I would like to but I dont have the money. Hardcore or no you can even teach a monkey to press certain buttons after zillion wipes. When you put it over your money vs mine its all the same and 8+million casuals owns 20k hardcore in terms of revenue. And do not get into the feeling that we play this game because Nihilum cleared BT in the first week or D&T downed Idontknowwhat. We play it for the sheer fun. Bliz is trying to do what hardcore was in good old D2. Everybody could play it right? But hardcore meant something, where your toon died it died. Here is similar in game terms. You can actually increase the difficulty. Most of the bosses in Ulduar will have a hard mode that comes along with title and mounts extra epics etc. Maybe t8 will drop off only from these hard modes. They do not want to lose 8+million and 20k hardcore. I always thought they could open hardcore-like servers where no-lifers could go and play with their Nihilums. Where you can not down Kel-Thuzad or Sartharion by PUG. This is similar in concept if not in actual technical reality.
I bet it still isn't as hard as Sunwell was. I suspect it will be more along the lines of BT in difficulty (except maybe Shade and Supremus).
People are used to easy raiding now; if it is too hard the backlash will be huge, and by too hard I don't mean original Naxx type hard, but Vashj/Kael/Council sort of hard, though even those are probably going to be harder than Ulduar.
Oh, and @Silkworm, please use paragraphs.
Wall of text hurts my eyes.
Why do people assume hardcore = having to be constantly logged in? I used to be in a guild that raided 3 times a week for ~3 hours a time, yet our guild killed Illidan and was well on our way to being geared up for SWP pre-nerf. Just because something is challenging doesn't mean you have to be unemployed and logged in 24/7 to beat it.
I stopped playing soon after I hit level 80 and realised what the game was becoming in terms of difficulty. I don't care that I beat something other people have or have not done - there's no attitude of wanting fame or being "elite"; all I wanted was something challenging.
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