5781

Juan -

What helps a lot, in my experience, is playing with friends. For example, if you had the good fortune of having rolled a character on Moonrunner, you could play with the Drop Bears, who are good people! :)

5782

Hey Guppi that fel reaver thing, that’s the gigantic construct walking around the area yes? That thing totally stomped me like a bug the first time I encountered it (I was busy killing a pig, no kidding, and then got stomped on).
Mk56, I am having TONS of fun with WoW. I really have been missing out. I get the sad feeling that it’s near the end for the game, both from comments in this very thread and things I hear ingame, seems like lots of people leaving.

I absolutely love some of the quests. The one where you join forces with an orc warrior npc to steal alliance battle plans (heroes of the horde?), oddly touching for such a cartoony game. Or the time I popped out my madebymyselfiamsoproud gobling rocket launcher in a duel, thinking the other dude it’s at least gonna be surprised and then of course finding out that thing takes like half and hour to fire while the damn hunter is having a field day :)

In the bank I am saving my honorary gobsquad shield, and the pointy wizard hat that transforms me into something else, and the first goggles I made as an engineer, as well as the axe of the horde and the helmet of the horde. I am a sentimental old man.

I had NEVER heard of the “plants vs zombies” quest and it was a total, delicious surprise when I quite accidentally bumped into it, and still giggle when the sunflower sings. I decided that Garrosh is an ass and so in every instance when we meet the final boss I yell “FOR THRAAALLLL!!!”.

The other day a dude came into orgrimmar and npcs just went ballistic yelling at him, insulting him and throwing apples and shit. I followed him a good while just laughing my ass off and wondering wth was going on (even whisp to him but got no response) and later learned that’s how DK’s are threated when they first enter Orgri. I got exalted with Bilgewater and then of course pretended to race “Durotar 500” in my newly acquired goblin turbo charged trike.

Oh, and I ate some fish that I cooked some days ago, and it turned me into a pirate :).

I am in love with it so far. Only seriously dislike the “go kill 10 sick bears and bring me their guts” type of quests.

You know what’s kinda sad? All these WONDERFUL things in this game, I feel like running up to someone and sharing, and 9 out of 10 people go “oh, yeah, that. yeah, funny”.

Edit to add: it might not sound like fun, but I am a fairly driven dude, so mining while being seriously out of my depth, lvl wise, in an area, it was dangerous, I had to fight mobs for a lot of the nodes, and i loved it. In my mind, I am Zacariasfuri, Orc warrior, badass miner. The game allows me to construct my own inner epic story while I do stuff.

When my friend gave me the game he directed me to join the Quel’thalas server (latin) so that we could play together. I rarely see him, and otherwise I would have looked for the Qt3 server and join the Drop Bears.

Ah. Not playing EVE at all, been away for a while.

Edit: Aaron had’n seen your post. Yeah mate, In hindsight, I should have.

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Yeah, see I didn’t find them that much fun. Some of that is my fault for buying into blizzard’s ilevel notions. Ilevel 329 gear isn’t enough to have a stable run. Its raid level 5-mans. Doable for sure and I didn’t mind some tough fights but early on they weren’t fun, just frustrating. For content I’m going to be running a lot… I don’t find guild heroic groups fun anymore because they aren’t easy enough to breeze through in 25-45mins, most anyway. They’re all too long (sans LostCity maybe) and unforgiving, not everyone I run a guild group with is raider quality. Pugs are just worse. Some days, a random with 3 guildmates is good. I had a good stonecore run the other day, but they’re rare.

As for ghostcrawler and progression, his notion that folks will come back to tier 11 content when its easier after 4.2 comes out isn’t supported much by raid history. Although I’m more worried there just won’t be any interest left in my guild to run anything by 4.1 let alone 4.2. I honestly think raid progression would be better if heroics weren’t such a pain in the ass for many people to gear up. Its far far worse than LK was early on before LFD system was created. My guild would be more than 6/12 if I could get stable group of 10-13 people every week with a group composition that didn’t vary.

Juan, thanks for posting your adventures. Brought back some fun memories. I’ve not quested in the barrens for a long while but your tale reminded me of the infamous mankrik and his wife. Good ol’ barrens general chat… “Where is mankirks* wife?” “In my pants!”. I see he’s still around and they gave him some new quests.

*mispelling intentional :)

5784

Well, most of the jaded WoW vets (the vast majority of players at this point) only see the game as a bundle of mechanics with levels and challenges that let them put those mechanics to work.

My girlfriend rushed upstairs into my workroom one day in November of last year and said OH MY GOD you HAVE TO SEE THIS WOW VIDEO!! SO FUNNY! So I went downstairs to look at her laptop.

The video? Leeroy Jenkins.

5785

This is pretty spot-on. They’re raid-level 5mans with smaller numbers (fewer people, less damage and healing). Even a lot of the mechanics have a lot more in common with raid mechanics than with old Heroics.

I enjoyed that, though. It helped that I was playing with a group of very good players, though even so, it was a hell of a struggle to get through Deadmines and Grim Batol, but I’m not going to deny that they’re basically 5man blue-gear raid instances.

As for ghostcrawler and progression, his notion that folks will come back to tier 11 content when its easier after 4.2 comes out isn’t supported much by raid history.

Hm, I don’t think I agree with you on this. A lot of Guilds were going back to Ulduar with TotC gear to finish up hardmodes, or finishing up ToGC with Icecrown gear. We could probably find the actual numbers for that, if we did some crunching, but I’m sure we’re both a bit too lazy. :)

At a guess, if Firelands is a large, easily-cleared instance on normal difficulty (Ulduar), then you’re right; people won’t be coming back to 4.1 zones. But if it’s either a solid challenge (in which case people will go back to farm more gear) (ICC) or smallish (in which case people will go back to work on hardmodes for lack of other stuff to raid) (TotC/ToGC), then I think you’ll see people going back to the current raiding tier.

I’m sorry to hear that your Guild is having trouble maintaining its membership. I just a few weeks ago logged on on a Monday to find that the Guild I was in had disbanded due to lack of players, and had to go hunting for a new group to raid with. So I think it’s not just you, at least; it seems that all of the Guilds out there are having trouble with their memberships, even the top ones.

5786

Well, I am a casual and I love Cata right now. The only problem is that between jumping into PUGs and questing, I tend to out-level zones/dungeons too quickly. Maybe being a tank is part of the problem; virtually no waiting for PUGs.

5787

If you aren’t at the level cap then you aren’t really experiencing the content people are complaining about.

5788

There are exceptions though. One of the server that I kick around on (Muradin) has a level capped guild that does run the old instances with level appropriate characters.

I have to admire them. I was in a raid group trying to kill Lady Vash a few weeks ago, and that was a bear with high level characters, let alone with level 70 ones.

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Juan? BTW: Word of advice since you’re having fun with the quests- head over to the Badlands and look for a trio sitting in the scar. If they start talking about Deathwing, you’ve found the right quest chain. It’s a fun one.

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oh YES. I stumbled upon them while, as usual, blindly trying to make my way towards Blackrock mountain. This is what I call “exploring” :)

I bitchslapped Deathwing like you wouldn’t believe haha.

Edit: btw, reason I wanted to go to blackrock mountain was that while running an instance the tank rolled, and got, both the spider egg and the worf puppy. I though it was cool and since I have been soloing instances to really appreciate them, I decided to try the place.

I think I spent 2 days in Black rock mountains total. There is a band there that plays at the bar, and took with me some blackrock rum. I did not have the patience to farm black iron for the rep, and the keymaster or something quest was bugged for me so I couldn’t open the black safe deposit box thing, but I had a great time in there, very nice place.

Again, it’s sadly a lonely adventure, most people just want to run the fastest way through instances and get out.

Edit 2: another fun moment, which came totally out of the blue for me, was in Winterspring (btw you wouldn’t believe the hard times I endured to get there). The snow yetis knocked me out, and when I opened my eyes I am hanging upside down in the ice cavern. I was laughing at the reference. “Use the force, Zacarias!”.

5791

Who knows Aaron. It may work out for blizzard but I’m not optimistic right now. I just found out a good healer from my raid group will leave the game in 2 months when their time card runs out. I don’t see my guild crashing and dying but I see us becoming a non raiding guild and then really the only players on much will be the ultra casuals.

5792

What I honestly suspect is that folks are tiring of the genre in general. They’ve done it, they’ve seen what there is to see, and any newcomers to the field are simply the same game with newer gfx and only slight twists. Starwars will draw in folks tired of fantasy, and GW2 will draw in folks because it honestly looks like it tries to do something new (and no subscription). I don’t think Rift (and its ilk) are going to kill WoW outright. Rather, I suspect MMO numbers will simply fall in general along with spreading out among a few top-tier games - at least until the next ‘evolution’ in MMO design.

While MUDs aren’t exactly ‘big’ anymore, some of the largest remaining ones are still surviving due to having no cap. You can level (or something equivalent) essentially forever, continually gaining power. At below a snail’s pace, granted, but incrementing none-the-less. When you can’t gain more power, you lose a lot of people.

5793

How does that apply to any active MMOs currently giving players ways to advance, though?

5794

You still could you know. You can have characters on different servers. If you want to roll and level a new character, that is.

5795

Advance how, though? For many people I believe, ‘advancing’ means being able to do more and more stuff ‘solo’. Raising your fishing skill or cooking or whatever doesn’t cut it. They want better gear, better skills, better stats. There are very hard caps on these things that only go away with new content, and when that new content is added it is available to ‘anyone’ - not just those who put the time in. Obviously, this is very WoW-focused. EVE I can see breaks this trend, as you are always advancing.

5796

Right, but again, how does that apply here? An expansion just came out in December, which added everything you’re talking about to the game. You said MMOs lose people when they can’t advance anymore, but I don’t think that really applies to any MMO (like WoW) that continues to put out expansions and new content that adds new ways to improve your character. I get what you’re saying, but the structure of MMOs like WoW are just not set up for infinite advancement. Eve is a different story because it’s basically freeform and is an entirely different type of game altogether.

5797

You are right, new content extends that cap. I think the issue is that once that cap is ‘hit’, people feel lost as to what to do until the next batch of content arrives. The potential for advancement isn’t all that smooth - you have a bunch of (granted, hardcore) folks bored “shortly” after each content pack because they’ve capped out. If there was a way to get something akin to infinite advancement, you’d see the interest remain for many of those that are showing burnout. How? Beats me.

As you say, MMOs like WoW aren’t set up for that. And you are seeing folks starting to tire of the genre. I think there might be a link there. Oddly enough, as much as people want to claim that games like WoW are all about the end-game, I really think the getting there is what people like whether they admit it or not (the whole ‘It is the journey and not the destination’ bit).

5798

Uh, Daagar, none of what you said makes any sense to me, because frankly, the vast, vast majority of WoW players never put in the time/effort to cap out.

Yes, you see a very, very small minority of hardcore people who cap out. Guess what? That number, right now, is less than two thousand, across the entire WoW playerbase. That’s the number of people who have killed Sinestra. We’re talking about one in a few thousand players.

And those players aren’t cancelling their subscriptions. They’re farming gear for Firelands, so they can compete for server- and world-first kills of more hardmode bosses.

So I think your argument doesn’t hold water.

5799

if your content requires other people to not only do it with you , but get along reasonably wile doing it, a vast majority of people will not be able to do the content

Maybe if computer games were released in the 50’s , but some how I doubt it. Human beings suck, they suck more when there is no significant consequence to their action. Ninja looting , and guild hopping have no long term consequences. Least none that cannot be solved with some money and time.

Wow’s system isn’t bad , what is wearing folk out is story fatigue. We killed the Lich king… the man is dead. Most of us didn’t expect to get to “him” til the last expac. Cata was interesting to live through but now what. From an rper’s point of view … the whole world is different now. I spent 6 years learning the lore as convoluted and insane as it was, now most my characters have no place in the new scheme of things. The inital driving forces are gone. There was a small bit of this rply back when Hakkar became dead. Many relied on him for troll lore and his death disrupted things for a bit.

So after 6 years I have to rewrite or at least rework my understanding and I am tired. I don’t want to do it. I would rather learn something new than try to squeeze one more backwards attempt at a story out of Wow. I still miss it, but I can’t bring myself to try to climb that particular hill one more time. I want to go over here and look at this other hill. I haven’t seen these rocks 60000 times yet.

Ok so my points don’t line up, what I mean is this
end game group oriented content as the only means to advance at cap, along with 6 years of being in this same environment equals fatigue.
It is very likely that with the release of the daily hub of firelands and the gear shift that will happen the general population will return. However, Rift gives that same mountain climbing feeling and the world is nicer to look at.

5800

The key problem is that Blizzard tried / tries to make the instances harder therefore requiring more time / dedication from people than in WoTLK.

Coming from vanilla and BC the playerbase was used to difficult instances / raids and had to be in decent guilds to kill shit.

Then WoTLK came and established PUG raiding (something unheard of apart from MC in the later days and Onyxia in vanilla. Good luck trying to find people insane enough to pug BWL or AQ40.
Even MC was not a real PUG as people were pre-screened and usually alts of good guilds + a few odd good players that were for some reason not running raids in their guilds).
Anyways so now being in a guild was not manadatory anymore as the 5 man stuff was pretty easy + raiding Naxx was possible by simply being online when a PUG formed and being decently geared.
People got used to that and a shit ton of old respected guilds died making way to dozens of new guilds no one ever heard of. 10 man raiding helped in this as well.

People like myself bitched a lot about this casulization of content but in the end we adapted by doing something else besides WoW as it didn’t require as much time / dedication as before.
In the end it was ok as other fun things were done and WoW only required 1 hour daily for the daily quests for rep / gold unless exalted / rich enough + 1-2 raid nights per week.
Otherwise people were offline unless they leveled alts.

Now Cata comes and 5 man heroics were HARD outside of guilds.
Blizzard has dialed the difficulty way up and people that hit 85 were running into a brick wall trying to max rep with all relevant factions.
There were / are not enough dailies (no dailies at all for certain factions) to reach the rep for gear otherwise.
Additionally the wait time in LFD was crazy (30 min + for DPS) and a lot of runs fell through after 5 man and 1 wipe putting oneself back to 30 min waiting.
People were used to easy runs and not having to spend much time in WoW during the week.
Why going back to the pre-WoTLK dedication?

This killed my interest in WoW and I played since 2004.
There were not enough “old” people in those 5 man LFD that remember the dedication / smart playing needed to clear Scholo 5 man pre-nerfs in those runs to make a difference.
A shit-ton of WoTLK tanks used to run in, aoe all and tank it until it’s dead overwhelmed everything.

In my opinion this has to be done to stop people like myself leaving:

Blizzard has to dial back difficulty to WoTLK levels for 5 man + 1-2 raids.
OR
Blizzard has to offer an option / way to pair vanilla people in LFD (check the date of achievements or Feats of Strength or something)
OR
Blizzard has to get rid of LFD.

Why LFD?

Because before LFD people had to find each other using channels in the main cities. The main thing that qualified / disqualified you apart from class was your GUILD TAG.
Good guilds were known and people got easily into those runs.
Bad guilds were known and people were easily avoided based on their tag…
Back then I knew if a run would be easy or tasking just by checking the guild tags of the people around myself.
Today you are paired wth people from other servers with guild tags you never seen before and probably will never see again.

Guilds have to matter again apart from the stupid rewards for guild leveling.

I would be ok running LFD with people I know did vanilla content back at level 60. I know those people would understand that wipes can happen and that cc is essential.