4781

But then you wouldn’t have Schnottz or the great Brann/Harrison oneupmanship!

Plus Gnomepocalypse.

4782

First off, sorry for barging into the forum like this people. I can’t post a new thread and cant pm you so this is the only way I can reach you Bigweather.

This will be long and I hope not in vain. I found your discussion on trying to make an ultima remake. To my surprise and reading further, you mentioned many things that kind of put us in the same boat. I’ll tell you a little about me. My lifelong dream is to remake Ultima V with many aspects of 4 and 6. If i recall it was back in 1984, My Brother and I sat in front of his C64 playing ultima 4 for hours on end. He also had the games on cassete for 1 thru 3, but this one was different for the added tension in the music and what was to happen next. Let’s see I was about 9 or 10 at the time. When he went off to fix something to eat or the bathroom, I would play a little (he didn’t know it ;) and place the little guy back where he was when he left. in 1988 I bought a tandy 1000hx and taught myself to program in GWbasic. A kid my age thinking I was gonna make a game like that…How hard could it be…I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. To say the least, I have attempted many times to try and figure out how to make an ultima game. Many downloads and purchases of game makers and such always led me to problems that I would go beyond the scope of what they all could do. The last one was Gamemaker7.0 pro. Problems with layering items on the map. Sure make an array but then the graphics. Even had my little guy up and walking around. I trashed the project and now have started learning C# and XNA (well it’s free so what the heck!) Any how, now the I’ve dispensed how I got into computers and how much I love the game, are you still interested or have you already done it or are doing it. Your project that is…I’m not looking for profit either. I’m just looking to accomplish one of my childhood dreams and be able to close the door unless there’s further promise down the road of course. So Lemme know what ya think. Let’s not forget to add the trolls under the bridge and the algorithm for a percentage of all funds! LOL I also used to be an avid D&D (Basic) player. No, I didn’t act it out but I’ve always had an imagination to make a good story. I also have most of the books that we could pull info from. I just joined to be able to send you this msg. I hope to hear from you soon.

4783

REPORTED.

4784

At least twice.

Also, slogging through the Outlands to vainly try and catch up with your friends that are in 85 heroics still sucks as much as it used to suck.

4785

People need to get off their duffs and discover the instances. I ensure those that I group with on the same server make the effort to discover all that they can before we fill the remaining spots.

Not sure what the complaining is about.

4786

It’s just not a very interesting idea, and the game does a horrible job of leading you to them anyway. What’s the point? To discover it so you know where to go if you die and have to ghost back? In most cases by the time I had to do that, I did not remember anymore.

4787

Every dungeon should have had a quest on the Warchief’s Command Board (or whatever the Stormwind version is, for the silly Alliance people). It should direct you to the entrance of the dungeon, so you discover it and get a bit of gold/xp for doing so. Kind of like the quest in Mount Hyjal that teleports you to BRC so you discover it… but better designed than that one, where if you walk into the instance and complete the quest, you can’t use the teleporter to get back to the zone. That was a brilliant design, right there.

4788

All the dungeons do have breadcrumbs, they’re mostly near the end of the zones, though. I think Hyjal’s is the exception, althoguh I think the one to stonecore is about 1/2 way through the zone.

4789

I think you’re right, but many of the breadcrumbs appear quite a bit later than when you can first queue for the dungeon, so most people are, in effect, forced to make a special trip to find the entrance to them. Extremely poor design.

4790

Uh, queues were long for dps at the end of wrath because fewer people were bothering to run heroics with Cata coming out or just not interested. My mage hit 80 a couple of months before Cata and I lost interest in gearing him out after a couple of icc pugs I snuck into. Queues were usually 10-20 minutes on my server (high pop server granted).

At this point, I’ll only be leveling my pure dps alts for the cash and to top out their crafting skills. I doubt I’ll run any instances leveling up either, not usually worth the time or hassle.

4791

I have 5 85s, I really don’t want to have to do that for each one.

4792

You’ve levelled 5 characters to 85 and you think it’s too much work to amble over the instance entrances? Blimey.

It’s not like you can’t discover them as part of your levelling…

4793

Yes, it’ll take less than an hour to discover all of the entrances. The biggest annoyance is the entrance to the Vash instance. If you haven’t done the zone, you want to do at least enough to get underwater breathing, and possibly the seahorse, then you have to go up to the surface, fly to another subzone, then swim down and down for quite a long time.

I do agree with the general principle, though. I’ve always thought that if you discover a flight point on, say, 3 or 4 characters, you should just have it on all your characters.

4794

How does that work, exactly? With no bonus exp at all I hit 85 on my druid after Vash + Deepholme + 2/3 of TH. If I’d gone to Hyjal and tried to level and then uldum too, I’d be well out of levelling range.

I’d say that you should be able to random queue for any normal, and only queue for a heroic after you’ve earned the norml achievement for a dungeon once. It would make at least a bit more sense than the current bizarre locking mechanism of “Find the summoning stone, that’ll prepare you!”

4795

Well, I did Vash’jr, then Deepholm, then Uldum, and hit 85 in Twilight Highlands - that’s after a bunch of flowerpicking which gives XP as well. Regardless of that, you should be doing these zones anyway, the questlines give 333-level gear to prepare you for the endgame and lots and lots of rep for the relevant factions.

I’d say that you should be able to random queue for any normal, and only queue for a heroic after you’ve earned the norml achievement for a dungeon once. It would make at least a bit more sense than the current bizarre locking mechanism of “Find the summoning stone, that’ll prepare you!”

They just wanted to keep a little bit of control over players’ levelling experience. I don’t view having to fly to a dungeon entrance once as being some massive hardship. It certainly isn’t at all irritating compared to levelling 5 characters to 85!

4796

If I wanted to play WoW, I’d play WoW.

If I wanted to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’d watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Throwing a couple Indiana Jones jokes in there is funny. Remaking the whole goddamn movie with (quite frankly) amateurish machinima isn’t.

4797

It’s for silly RP reasons. Which would be tolerable if:

-Throne of the Tides was never created.

No one does Vash’jir, partly because of the atmosphere, partly because of the godawful 30-minute bullshit RP boat ride access “quest,” followed by another 10 minutes of RP just to not drown and swim reasonably fast, followed by another 30 just to get a fucking mount. Can you only play for three hours today? 1/3rd of it will be taken up just to access and become reasonably mobile in Vash’jir. Actually getting to the dungeon after you’ve done all this is a whole other issue as someone else noted.

A guy in my guild leveled a character to 85, have a 353 tank set, a 352 DPS set, the Drake of the West Wind from Tol’Barad, started raiding last week, and still hasn’t bothered to unlock Throne of the Tides. And I don’t blame him.

In the parallel universe where ToTT was never made, Hyjal would have the first instance instead.

-The Earthen Ring guy would actually teleport you to Uldum.

Maybe it’s a Stormwind bug. Maybe it’s a general bug. Maybe it’s just bad quest text. In any case, when you get the breadcrumb to Uldum from the Earthen Ring teleporter hub, the guy clearly states he’s ready to send you to Tanaris whenever you are.

Except… he doesn’t. He can’t. There is no option to say “Let’s go!” He just stands there and stares at you with those big, bovine, mysterious, probably buggy eyes.

And so you get to go to Tanaris by yourself. Are you Horde? Not really a big deal. Are you Alliance? Well, Tanaris may as well be the end of the earth. Have fun!

-You were sent to the dungeon entrances very early in zone quest lines.

I get it, the go-to-the-dungeon quest is typically an epic finale to a zone. But who stays in a zone long enough to do that? I did every single quest in Hyjal and walked out at ~83. That place didn’t even have a dungeon in it, so when I ran along to the next zone, Deepholme, I was there for all of a few hours before I hit 84. A trip back to Stormwind and I found a strange quest in the throne room which ended up leading to access to Twilight Highlands, which I jumped into and hit 85 at.

The problem? I never touched Vash, Uldum, or more than a quarter of Deepholme. If you want to see all the Cata content, you either have to leave each zone after a single level, or make an alt, or go do everything at 85.

I’m not the type to quest at 85 unless it’s a rep thing, and even then it’s just a grind til I can get the stuff I need. None of my friends or guildies like 85 questing either. It’s how we play. It’s our mentality. You hit 85 and you play the endgame. You don’t go back to 80.

I’m sure there are plenty of WoW players that will tear at their clothes and gnash their teeth at that statement, or tell me it’s all my fault, or blame me for playing the game “wrong” since I’m supposed to care about RP, but that’s not how I, or anyone else I play with, sees it. If you hit 50 and kill Baal in Diablo 2, do you then run back to Act 2 to soak in the atmosphere? No, you do some more Normal Baal runs, or start Nightmare, or make an alt, or quit playing. You don’t run back to now-trivial content. There’s no fun in that.

4798

Bit late to start complaining about WoW’s obsession with pop culture.

No one does Vash’jir, partly because of the atmosphere, partly because of the godawful 30-minute bullshit RP boat ride access “quest,” followed by another 10 minutes of RP just to not drown and swim reasonably fast, followed by another 30 just to get a fucking mount.

Every single point in that paragraph is wrong. Why must you do this?

4799

You’re crazy, Vash’jir is awesome. Also, getting to Uldum as Alliance isn’t a huge deal, as you can get a mage port to Theramore, or If you have a fast way of getting to Dalaran still, you can port to the Caverns of Time.

Even if you don’t, flying to Menethil Harbor and taking the boat is hardly a big deal. You only have to do it once.

And yeah, not finishing the zones is silly, not only from a monetary and rep standpoint, but from a guild rep standpoint. Most of the zones have daily quest hubs after you complete them, and the beast way to gain guild rep is to do high level quests and dailies.

4800

Wow, that’s some lazy bitching if you’re too lazy not to zone into the instance but moan about not getting any other instances in your random rotation.

Tanaris is a quick goddamn flight from Theramore (via a mage port) or teleport if you are an engineer.