5381

This is pretty much modern WoW, word for word. Great post.

What’s funny is how polarizing the two sub-games can be. People who love World of Leveling tend to hate World of Instances, and vice versa.

I think Blizzard’s really painted themselves into a corner with the WoL/WoI design. They can’t go back to the original model of each instance being a challenge. They’ve trained their playerbase to be mediocre and, like I said above, I really don’t think they’re capable of designing challenging and yet enjoyable content anymore. Those two things are related, btw.

(Oh, and I bolded that because I think you meant WoI, not WoL. Leveling is trivial to the point that when I went back on a new character, totally naked with no BoA, I was incapable of finishing a zone’s storyline without the quests going green/gray).

5382

Oops! You are right, of course. Just a typo.

5383

You know, it’s really only a natural progression. “No Configurable Difficulty” has been a Twinkie Denial Condition for years, and MMOs, by their very nature, cannot have configurable difficulty. The parts that you don’t voluntarily opt into must necessarily be easy if you want to maintain your base of millions upon millions of players. The best solution to that problem is to only make you go through the leveling process once, and I suspect that’s where we’ll end up at one or two expansions from now.

5384

Questing in WoW was never difficult. There used to be more group quests, but that’s about it. The only real aspect of leveling they’ve changed is that it’s not nearly as tedious as it used to be in terms of traveling and quest flow. The pace of the questing is much too fast, but other than that the level of actual difficulty in completing quests is pretty much the same. Perhaps those of you who find it to be too easy should factor in the number of times you’ve leveled through the game before. Surely that has quite a bit of impact on the matter.

5385

I am specifically referring to the lack of group quests and elite mobs which, as someone pointed out, were all removed around 2.3. There were lots of these back in the day. Taking just STV: the ultimate quest for each animal type in the nesing chains and then King Bangalsh himself. the big ape on the island north of the pirate ships. The Ogre Cave in the middle used to be all elites with an elite boss inside. The giant in the water along the coast north of the pirates. The heads of the troll tribe up in Zul’Kunda. The murlocs around the sunken city northwest of Grom’Gol. The Stranglethorn Fever quest. and probably some that I am forgetting.

I admit that a not insignificant part of the excitement of those was the constant threat of players from the opposite faction thrown on top, which is also gone. But the quests stood on their own.

5386

Having said that, I don’t disagree with you. All of these were easy to skip. And they were simple enough with an appropriate sized group. Many saw them as a cock block to the solo player. I found them to be the best part of solo (or duo) leveling.

5387

If queuing as a group with a tank or healer, and the tank or healer drops group (or is kicked) soon after joining, those that queued with them will also be removed from the dungeon.

no more cheesing your way into queue now.

5388

That’s interesting because i’m now leveling a new character(level 30 now) with BOA pieces giving me 25%+XP and with the guild XP thingie giving another 10% and i still haven’t found a zone where anything went gray.

Then again, talking out of your ass seems to be a regular thing for you.

5389

Eh, JJ is pretty much correct on this. I decided to forego the heirlooms on my Worgen Warlock so I wouldn’t completely outlevel every zone I went into.

5390

As I recall, I outleveled some zones, but not all, while doing the 1-85 thing recently. I think it was a minority I outleveled.

5391

Except he’s saying they went grey without any XP boosts.

5392

I think it might be somewhat exaggeration. I never seen quest going gray, green, but gray is somewhat pushing it,

if you enter a zone at the correct intro quest level, then quest goes green not gray at end.

5393

Time was, all the trash around instances was elite too. So you had to fight your way through 20+ elites just to get to the instance entrance.

In its own way, that was a hell of a lot of fun. So was taking four hours to do a full clear of Blackrock Depths, or having Alterac Valley matches that lasted literally for days. The game is different now, though. (And remember that by comparison with the market leader of the time, EQ, WoW at release was some kind of Yohoho Puzzle Pirates casual gamer paradise)

Last night I was lazily flapping around the old world on my wyvern, digging up the odd relic and picking herbs to learn the dark secrets of sungrass/dragon’s teeth, popping in to do a BG every 20 min or so - it was hugely pleasant. I wouldn’t want to go back.

5394

It can go grey if you happen to do the relevant instance in the zone. It was even easier before they nerfed the quest xp inside instances. I know, when I was leveling my ret paladin recently in Westfall, two small quest areas went grey on me.

Rested xp just makes that easier, especially if you play only once or twice a week. It probably also depends on the zone. Not all zones may have this problem. Since they fixed the instance xp rewards, it wasn’t a huge problem for me though.

5395

I couldn’t complete Silverpine or Hillsbrad without both going gray before the finale. I know why – I ran a couple instances – but still, it was disappointing.

And I’m glad to see you’re in your regular angry, irrationally defensive form when it comes to me. It’s like your wellbeing depends on my opinion of World of Warcraft.

5396

aah that’s makes sense.

I don’t do anymore low level instance unless finishing quest, and I usually wait until I have all the quests before doing the instance.

5397

I think one of the reasons the game feels “easy” now is simply being able to fly everywhere. Old school WoW, you had to walk/ground mount everywhere. Get waylaid by random things. Have wandering elites sneak up and stomp you. Try to get to Menethil Harbor without being eaten by a crocodile. But now, you just fly over it all and land two feet from your quest objective.

Having played since the start, I personally don’t care that it is easier now. It was fun back then. I wouldn’t have as much patience now - guildmates are waiting at 85 to run instances! The thought of coordinating 40man raids like the old days? 10-15 days /played to raise an alt? Bwahahaha.

Quests go grey before you’re done in a zone? Then move on - no reason to hang around unless you are playing to read the lore or get loremaster. In which case, who cares if it went grey? WoW IMO has aged well for the population it caters to.

5398

Has anyone seen Magmaw being bugged in 4.06? We went in there tonight and he is throwing random melee attacks around after Massive Crash. We’ve never seen this happen before and it wiped our raid multiple times tonight when he just decided to up and eat a healer. The weird thing too was that we had people scatter out of rage and he still seemed to be able to melee them.

5399

There’s an aggro reset on Magmaw after his head is exposed. So there’s an instant where he’s actually going to be smacking people if the tank doesn’t spam their moves on it the moment he stands up.

5400

That’s very strange; we have never seen that before.