1.) There was supposed to be a minimum players allowed value in these zones for all severs. There isn’t. It’s either bugged or Blizzard ninja-changed it. If there was an appropriate minimum value, the defender couldn’t grief. It’d be 1:1 with enough players to cause the battleground to work as designed. The battleground is not designed for 3v3. Such a low player count gives an amazingly unfair advantage to the defense.
2.) Blizzard said they’d be looking into realms like my own on a by-case basis, presumably because of the very issues I’m describing. They haven’t yet, but I hope they do.
So did you.
When I joined a long time ago, there wasn’t a 1:1 rule, so this point is largely irrelevant.
Nah. It’s a griefing issue. When the Alliance are in control, they intentionally set up 3v3 games. They actually discuss and plan it out on the forums. It’s not like everyone who wants to do Tol Barad rushes there anyway except there’s only 3 Ally that show up, instead they’re intentionally exploiting game mechanics to make the BG almost unwinnable.
The one or two times the Horde had it, surprise surprise, a ton of Ally eventually showed up and “fair” fights happened.
Why can’t the Horde do the same thing? We have too many people. It’s easy to organize a 3v3 when you have ~30 level 85s who all know eachother and 27 are happy not to queue to ensure the scam continues. It’s impossible when you have 300 who largely don’t know eachother and queue because they want to see the new BG. Even if they Horde did that, it would result in the exact same problem we have now: 6 players get to see the battleground per hour.
Whining is boring. Unless it’s whining about the goddamn cutscenes, which are terrible and should be removed from the game ASAP with few exceptions. Very few of them do anything that you couldn’t do within the game itself. Also, never fucking lock me out of my UI, pricks. Grr.
Anyway, 5-mans are awesome again. It’s like I have a whole new set of the excellent ICC dungeons to run, except they’re not all blue and I’m not months behind the gearflation curve. Tanking has been freaking great; DKs definitely did not get the short end of the balancing, at least through heroics.
I do wish more healers would learn their revamped mechanics, though. The skill differences apparent in LFD are freaking huge. There was one paladin I ended up with who ended just about every boss fight in H HoO at 60% or better mana with nobody dead except for maybe the idiot mage who refused to not stand in the fire or at least have the courtesy to iceblock through it if he insists. It’s definitely not a gear thing, because nobody’s got much of anything better than 346 so far.
Glad I don’t play a DPS DK, though. With all the splash breaking CC and no CC of your own, you’re not the best class to take into heroics at the moment. Sadface. Furthermore, I’m liable to slap the next priest who insists on mind controlling something when they don’t actually know how to do it well, or who fucks up the pull with it.
The biggest thing that I like so far in the 85 game is how they’ve structured JP/VP rewards. JP won’t get you anything better than a few slots of 346 blues (which are great, mind you; they’re as good as anything in heroics), and the only VP you can get out of 5-mans is your daily 70 from doing a random heroic. So there’s no grind, really. Unless you really want to hump for the 359 epic rep rewards at exalted with Cata factions, but those go relatively quickly and we’ll all have most of what we need in a month anyway.
Mostly I just need more Bears to hit 85 so I don’t have to pug so many idiots ;)
I got my first rare item from archaeology yesterday: a Clockwork Gnome pet. It’s starting to get kind of tedious though, so hopefully I can move on to Outland digs soon (almost at 300 skill now).
markv
3724
My big complaint with the cut scenes is that they’re not all voiced over. Having to read giant chat bubbles is moronic and I’ve no idea why they didn’t spend the day or two in a studio it would have needed to have the voice actors hammer out those lines. It really kills any immersion that they had going for it in my books
My issues with dungeons is just how stupid CCers are. Guys I will pull with CC K?? Yeah, I don’t think so, threat on the pull = key for the tank when trying to shift things out of the pile that is CC’d. CCers need to learn how to be up front with the tank to cast as the pull happens and then quickly book it back. I’ve been slowly teaching my friends how to be on the ball and not half afk as they were used to with WOTLK and being carried.
Also once you’re done your rep grind and JP grind for your 346s there’s nothing to spend them on, meaning there is no reason to actually do heroics once that’s done. At this pace I’ll be done by this week with heroics and not need to set foot in them at all except once a day to get my daily out of the way and although I enjoy doing heroics for the challenge, I’d also like doing them knowing I have some sort of reward down the line that I can spend my points on.
sluggo
3725
I have the quest achievement for Deepholm and have completed all the dailies as well. I just didn’t like the zone whatsoever and couldn’t wait to leave it.
A big part of it is that I just don’t care about the overall story arc. I’ve always found WoW’s lore somewhat goofy, so if my enjoyment of a zone depends on me getting into the story line, I’m boned. Beyond that, I didn’t like the monochromatic palette of the zone, or the architecture, or the characters (is there an uglier NPC in WoW’s history than the Stonemother?). And the quests did nothing for me, either: until the final battle at the temple and the drake-to-drake chase, I thought the first 100 quests were boring as hell. I find it hard to think of anything I enjoyed about Deepholm.
Compare that to Uldum, which is a bright, colorful zone, broken up into distinct areas each with their own character. Tom complained in a recent blog post that he hates when WoW makes pop culture references, but I love stuff like the Indiana Jones jokes. I enjoy WoW more when it doesn’t take itself that seriously, and I’m willing to overlook bugs in 5 cutscenes when I see Burly Guy chopped up by a propeller or I get to roll a giant flaming pinball over 1000 gnomes. It’s not even a contest for me.
And as for Vash’jir, I’ve run through 90 quests on my rogue, and I just don’t like the underwater play. I understand that I have water breating and higher swim speeds and a special mount, but I still feel trapped and claustrophobic most of the time. Like Deepholm, it may have some really cool stuff at the end, but I can’t wait to wrap it up and get out of there.
I need more Bears to nut up and do instances instead of telling me they’re too hard! Just last night I got some sob story about Stonecore, so I went and pugged it. First try! What the hell!? I heard the same thing about Blackrock Caverns last week. I pugged that too!
I’m starting to think it’s me…
Rywill
3727
Right, but the problem is that even if things were your way, the battlefield wouldn’t be working as designed. You would win all the time, which I understand you would like, but it’s designed to be a big epic battle between two large sides, and instead you would be steamrolling the other side 50 to 10 all the time. We all understand that Blizzard changed it to require 1:1 parity, which is good for the large majority of realms, but not yours because your population is so unbalanced – the issue is whether that’s really a problem Blizzard needs to spend a lot of time rectifying with special dispensations for servers like yours.
When I joined a long time ago, there wasn’t a 1:1 rule, so this point is largely irrelevant.
I think it is, though. I understand that this specific rule wasn’t in place, but the point is that you rolled on a PvP server that was 95% owned by one side. I don’t think it’s an accident that you rolled up on the dominant side; I think you probably wanted to be on a PvP server where you were always kicking ass and taking names because you’d have a huge force advantage. Right?
Just understand that from the outside, it looks like you’re upset because what you thought would be a constant steamroller instead is getting screwed up because of the 1:1 rule and now you can’t play the content at all. It’s difficult to feel a ton of sympathy for that. If you wanted fun PvP combat I don’t understand why you didn’t roll on a more balanced server to start with. And like I and others have said, you still have the option to move to one if seeing the PvP content is really that important to you. I get what you’re saying about the Alliance basically griefing your side by not queueing for BGs, but if that counts as “griefing” it’s hard to draw the line and say that the Horde owning 95% of the server and trying to have 50-on-10 matches (and ganking people in the overworld, and everything else that goes along with 95% dominance) is not griefing. It’s hard to look at your situation and go “Wow that guy’s getting screwed,” rather than “Well that’s what happens when you roll on a PvP server with absurdly unbalanced populations.”
Fair enough. Different strokes, I guess. I loved the zone art of Deepholm. I didn’t think it was monochromatic at all, and it felt entirely like I was in some jewel zone reserved for the denizens of earth. Even down to the littler touches like the troggs actually being made of stone down there. The whole world pillar is far more impressive to me than Icecrown Citadel or Wyrmrest Temple or, well, anything else I’ve run into in the game.
The Stonemother is indeed ugly. But I suspect that’s intentional. It bears a lot of resemblance to a number of demi-plane of earth critter types from AD&D, IIRC. (Not sure why she looks like that compared to all the other giants, mind, but…)
Athryn
3729
She also looks a lot like neolithic goddess figurines.
I read Sluggo’s post and thought he was crazy. Hyjal better than Deepholm?! No way! If I think about the actual quests, though, they’re practically the same zone. In Hyjal I helped a bunch of Great Spirits. In Deepholm I helped a bunch of Earth Lords (or whatever they were called). I get sent to the dude, I do some quests, I get sent to the next dude. I fight some battles and collect some crap. Repeat.
The major difference for me, I guess, is the atmosphere of the zones. Hyjal didn’t really do anything for me because it’s a pretty generic outside zone. Hills, trees, buildings, nothing new. Deepholm is neat because I hadn’t seen anything like it up 'til now. I thought the colors, gravity-free floaty pillars and stuff, and feeling of being deep underground are pretty cool. In Hyjal, I was like, okay…I’m outside. Deepholm was, like woah.
If I try to think about anything I actually did in those zones, it’s a pretty vague recollection. I mean, shit, I just did Deepholm yesterday and I can’t remember much. I know that I like Deepholm about ten times as much as I liked Hyjal, though.
sluggo
3731
I think Hyjal was just OK, but at least I could remember stuff that happened there. There’s a nice callback to Geddon early on. There’s the Joust stuff, which was awkwardly implemented, but cute. You hit the inn in the middle of the zone for some quests. There’s a hub to the southeast where you disguise yourself among the Twilight and give a speech. I felt like I was steadily progressing through the zone, and then you wrap things up with Ragnaros, which was great.
But other than the final few events I mentioned above, and maybe the few quests on the airship, I can’t remember anything particularly memorable about Deepholm. I felt like I was just slogging along through one giant pile of rocks the entire way and couldn’t wait to get out.
But my point wasn’t to say “I’m right, you’re wrong.” It’s that I find it interesting that there seems to be little consensus about which zones are better than others. Some people loved Deepholm, others didn’t. Some people adore Vash’jir, others despise it. It’s fascinating to me. About the only thing I’ve seen everyone agree on is that Gnomebliteration* is the greatest quest of all time.
JM1
3732
I preferred Gnomebliteration.
jeffd
3733
Re mc: my friend ian saved us on a trash pull in vp; it was one with two healers. We were a bit dumb and didn’t realize that two mobs were healers and by the time we got a burn on one our healer was oom. So my spriest buddy mcd the other healer and proceeded to heal me through the rest of the fight. It was absolutely brilliant playing.
sluggo
3734
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Wrong name on my part. :)
rei
3736
Just got disconnected midway through BRC 1st boss fight, falling through the world/floor geometry and can’t get back on. I briefly see the blank 3D geometry and get immediately disconnected again.
I’ve enjoyed both Hyjal and Vashj’ir, but it’s very clear in my mind which was better overall . Hyjal felt scattered and disconnected - there were threads of an overall plot with the nature god recruiting and the battle with Ragnaros at the end, but it really didn’t seem terribly consistent. It’s also not nearly as visually impressive. I dug the bear cub quest and the Joust quests, but the rest? Not very distinctive to me. Vashj’ir was a pretty awesome storyline, a gorgeous, unique zone, and the battlemaiden visions and ancient quests were pretty darn keen. I think my impression would be entirely positive if it weren’t for that damn Tenebrous Cavern and the fricking 400m radius of dismounting. Extending up into the sky, as I found out late in my time in the zone. Fuck that place.
Uldum has forced me to finally get off my duff and get my 62 Rogue to 85 (and bypassing my 73 Lock – I just lost steam on that character). What a gorgeous zone. I can’t wait to adventure in it.
Of what I’ve seen of the expansion (which is mainly Worgen start, Archaeology, and much of the changes from the air) I’m impressed – my main disappointment is getting rid of Zul’Gurub.
I stayed around Geddon for 15 minutes or so, watching people do the quest to reduce his shield. The fatality rate was about 75%, despite the audible and text warnings to move. A bunch of us had a conversation going about it in General Chat, and yet people continued to stand in the fire & die. Glad to see Geddon’s still got it.
sluggo
3740
In 1994, I went to the second Woodstock, the fun one where it rained the whole time and everyone kinda embraced the muddiness. The whole place really was just one giant layer of mud. Way to the back, trying to get to one of the concession areas, there was this wide, sloppy downgrade that was extremely hard to get through without taking a nosedive.
We got across cleanly, but only by going waaaay off to the side, and we couldn’t help but stand there a minute to watch other people wobbling their way through the pit. Off to the side, there’s this dude smoking a joint trying to be helpful. “You gotta go right through the midde,” he’s telling people, “you’re gonna fall if you try to go off to the side.”
And one by one, people take his advice… and faceplant right into the mud. And this guy CACKLES.
So we watch him for a few minutes, and that’s all he’s doing. He’s just chilling out, acting helpful, telling people to go through the middle, and busting a gut as one person after another takes a mud bath. I have to admit, it was kinda funny to watch.
For some reason, the new Geddon quest reminded of this. Here, this item will help you kill him. Really! Just walk up to him and use it, chum! OH GOD THE BURNING WHY THE BURNING! It’s like that guy sitting on the hill at Woodstock got a job at Blizzard and came up with that quest. :)
