News World of Warcraft: Cataclysm release date announced

The only way i'll be returning is if they release new servers, I wouldn't mind wasting another year of my life away.

 

Christ, that sounds more like a job then a game...

 

It's also nonsense. You don't need to do anything of the sort to see endgame content.

 

+1

That exactly the complaint for many people. There's so little challenge that these "high end raids" have weekly quests meant for all players to be able to complete. Maybe you won't be able to do the current best raid unless you dedicate a fair amount of time, but for everything under the current "top" end it's like candy. Blizzard's f***ed the item level system and badge system so badly that the moment something becomes less than bleeding edge it is suddenly worthless.

Speaking from my own 'hay-day' as a T4 raid guild leader in BC, one used to first get to 70, then do various level 68+ dungeons on normal mode to either get some Dungeon Set gear, then start out with easy heroics and pick up a couple heroic blues and epics, along with a couple badges. You repeat that until you're pretty confident on all heroics and have some fairly decent gear with a few epics, then start Karazhan. We're talking about an eight hour ordeal here with a fresh group, possibly broken up over a couple days if your group can schedule it. Assuming you manage to get through the whole thing you'll still only get an item or two, if anything. You'll have to repeat this process every week, with heroics in between, to finally gather a full T4 level set. Maybe you'll get lucky and get into a Gruul's or Mag's Lair group, but those are 25 mans and hardly drop any items so you'll probably get nothing. However, if you're a relatively casual player with a relatively casual guild such as myself (three hours a day or so) you probably won't get past T4. You are rewarded based on your effort, the game is not meant to be seen at all and is designed to provide fun even for those on the low end.

But then patch 2.4 decided to toy with that a bit. Not only did the patch bring the excellent Magister's Terrace, but it also brought the idea of badge items which surpassed tiers, allowing players to get items of a higher level than the content they were required to complete. That concept was blown way out of proportion and current dungeons provide players with badges that literally allow access to actual Tier gear. My 80 shaman, before I finally quit for good, had two pieces of T9 gear, yet I never once saw T9 items drop from a boss. My pretty casual effort had launched me to the second best level of play. There was no sense of accomplishment or pride, just wasted time.

 

All the "this game almost destroyed my life" comments are hilarious. It takes a special set of characteristics to struggle with game addiction and normally these are people that have a tendency to get chronically addicted to almost everything due to poor time management, no sense of reality, etc. Wake up - it is not the game.

I have started fairly late with WoW (started after WoTLK) but knew people that where pretty active and also talked and listened to a bit from my current raiding guildes. All I can say that most people spoil the game for themselves and still blame the game because they think they have spent 4+ hours every day to be the cool kid on the block. Trying to make up for something missing in your life or just plainly escaping it because ... well your life sucks that much (or at least that is your perspective) with something else in an age old story which will never go away (workaholics, alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts etc).

Saying that - the game is what I expect, of one form of gaming and I am experiencing end game content (at this point farming ICC HC) and levelling two alts (70 Paladin and 74 DK) playing maybe 6 hours a week. Really looking forward rolling a Goblin Warlock and getting the Horde guild mount and obviously experiencing the new content and mechanics.

 

I think it's naive to write off games as addictive, especially when you look at how they are designed from a psychological perspective. Sure some people are more vulnerable than others, and sure it's not something that can't be cured by just slapping a guy round the face and telling him to grow up, but it's still a problem. The thing with WoW, and many games like it but WoW perfected the formula, is that it eats spare time. As much time as you have to give, it'll take. You can devote yourself to it. And for those who enjoy it the game it is fun and rewarding, and that's cool. But I think people ought to be wary of how consuming it can be.

That said, if people enjoy it, so be it. I'd be insane to have any serious complaints about an almost entirely harmless hobby that keeps millions of people safely entertained.

 

Sloth, i agree.

I felt betrayed when they made the emblem changes in WotLK, to allow everyone to do easy heroics and receive the latest and best kind of emblems. I started playing during Burning Crusade, and I had a lot of fun building up my gear.

I haven't kept track of the changes Cataclysm will bring, since I quit WoW this spring. Is the third expansion going to revert to the old system of rewards?

 

Betrayed? Seriously? Do you actually hear yourself? Just because Blizz realised it was a bad idea making people slog through every dungeon/raid they'd released during vanilla in order to see the endgame and then do the same in BC to see the endgame there doesn't mean they betrayed you.

Believe it or not but WoW is a game, people don't want to have to run through dungeons/raids that everyone else has finished with just so they can attempt to catch up with gear, nor do guilds want to have to run through old dungeons/raids whenever someone leaves and they need to find a replacement.

The changes to the badges/emblem system allow people to obtain the minimum level of gear they really need to be using in order to raid whatever the endgame raid instance is at any particular time. It doesn't however change the fact that if you want the best gear then you need to get into a guild and raid properly. I couldn't have got the gear my char has if I was doing nothing more than a daily dungeon and pugging ICC.

 

Well this might be in line with a very large portion of people using gearscores to a fanatic level. Image you have no interest getting involved in a raiding guild but still wanna casually experience end game content (and lore/story) but can't because obtaining the gear to actually take part in these raids means you have to do those raids that you cannot take part.

In WoTLK it still failed to a certain extend and that was the reason for me finally joining a raiding guild. Pugging was mostly consistent of raiding guild benchsitters and GS Zealots and of course the occasional loot horney ninja.

The emblem system in WoTLK was intended to allow you to gear up to a acceptable level that will test your characters ability in a positive way but as we can see that changed quickly as it all was too difficult for most people so most either posted YouTube clips on how difficult it all is, enter completly overgeared into dungeons (e.g. rock up in full set of armour and weapons on ilvl 264 in ToTC) or just quit because wiping for two months straight on Lich King tend to arise some interesting question weather the guild as a team is any good.

 

I think you got it all wrong. I always was a very skilled player, knew my rotations. played my class well stayed out of purple blobs of death and picked up boss mechanics fast.

However working full time and having life commitments I didn't and never wanted to dedicate 20+ hours a week of raiding so that I could slog through karazan 10x to get that one piece of t4 gear. Or find out that my piece dropped while I was at work. Or save up make believe dragon kill points to hopefully roll on something that some hardcore raider won't spend twice as much on as you. I thought the badging system as balanced offered a reward for SHOWING UP AND KILLING SHTUFF, not sitting around waiting on an item with a 11% drop chance off an optional boss to drop so you can progress to new content.

I think WOTLK did much more for making raid content accessible based on skill, not time input. If you had the skill you could gear up a character faster and be ready to raid in much less time than BC or vanilla. The only thing I wish they had did was slow the rate in which purples were acquired i.E knowing someone in all purps was skilled.

I think I'll reupp and play my chars to end game then call it quits again, I think the "hardcore" player who constantly bemoan that wow was better when you had to slog through hours of grinding 5 man content to be good enough to maybe raid a 25 man are like the people who complain that facebook was better when only harvard students could use it.

 

Krazeh, why do you find the gearing phase of the game so boring?
What I felt betrayed about was the fact that I worked for months to get some pieces of gear, put in the hours of wiping on the same boss or grinding for materials, consumables, gold, etc., only to see a patch come that would give everyone and their dog the same quality gear I had obtained the hard way.

For me, some content should not be experienced by every player. You need an incentive to get better, to show up for raids, otherwise it gets boring pretty soon.
Consider seeing new content as the incentive. Well, if I want to see the boss X encounter, then all I have to do is wait a few weeks for the next tier to be released and get some of that gear through easy heroics and quests and then go in overgearing the instance. Then what? Laugh at everyone that were wiping 20+ times a night on that boss a few weeks ago?
Now, if gear were the incentive, what's to make me show up and put an effort along with my guild mates, if in a few weeks all the rewards are going to be obsolete anyway?

Now explain to me how these changes are so awesome. How is it better that casual players putting in a couple of hours a week can see the content all the way to the end-of-expansion boss?

 

Rule of WoW success number one: Appeal to the casual players.

There are simpletons, children, hell probably even bot programs that can complete all the content in WoW if they put in the time to get the gear. What's hard is not the content, eventually everybody will be able to get everything no matter if they are Leroy Jenkins, the challenge comes from getting there as soon as possible.

I've played plenty of MMOs and you know what happens to the ones that don't coddle the new, casual or weaker players? They lose them, and suddenly you're one day after the first month from launch and 80% of the game population has checked out. If your game is all about good players pwning the weak then your game is looking at being the next APB; a game that was pretty much built around the false belief that casual players will finance their own pwnage.

WoW makes everything accessible. It's a very, very easy game designed to be playable by anybody. Some things are tough at first, but as you say, everything eventually comes to those who wait. I know plenty of people for whom WoW was pretty much their first game, yet they could manage to play it and thrive in it.

While most of the forum noises come from the hardcore the thing to remember, particularly with WoW these days, is that for every passionate, hardcore player trying to make himself heard, there are loads of casual players, and Blizzard (unlike some other companies) is aware of them and sees them as the priority. It's refreshingly non-elitist in that regard.

 

No offence to you in particular, but this is exactly my problem with this game. You've even admitted to it.

I still believe that WoW is a complete waste of time and money, regardless of how fun it may be.

 

hah, wow expansion on my birthday, wonder how many of my "friends" will be locked away in their rooms instead of enjoying the festive time i have planned?