6041

You are astonishingly sensitive at times. Not sure why you felt the need to quibble over the definition of something using an example that was irrelevant to the discussion in progress, but hey, it’s your choice.

It’s also very telling that you’re assuming we’re calling you a bad player. Like I said, you’ve clearly got a chip on your shoulder about something but you’re seeing insults where there are none (apart from the sensitive jab, natch)

6042

JM, you just told me that “you were discussing raiding” and even though I specifically said I wasn’t discussing raiding, but five mans, my post didn’t belong in this conversation. This thread is about all of WoW. You don’t get to decide the limitations of what’s discussed in this thread as long as it’s on top to the original thread title, which my message was.

I never said anyone in this thread was calling me a bad player. You project so much at times.

6043

Well, Ryslin/mouselock/etc were talking about raids, but you two are both right in your statements.

6044

Why is gathering 4000 bear asses less work than raiding 1 boss in a raid?

Why? … It is actually , and often more work.

I know the 10man gear is the same as the 25 man gear and I can’t really bring myself to care because BOTH are raids.

I am talking balance between , pvpers, raiders, heroic, and -gasp- those others. You know those others. The rpers, the crafters, the economists , the brother of the guild lead who levels only hunters and plays them well but can’t get away from his nagging wife for a raid.

I -have- pugged raids. I hate it. I get no joy in trying to figure out the accents of myriad folk across the US (and other spots) give me instructions , nor am I really interested in talking to them. Thus the joy of a group kill is lost on me. I do fine in “old school” environments where typing and macro’d instructions are the norm. Remember that, before teamspeak and vent?

Why is it only the raiders have a say in what happens in these games? My example , though crude, was balanced for every kind of play (cept a crafter but I am sure that can be what you are gathering the 4000 bear asses for).

Geeze.

6045

C’mon. In a discussion about the level of skill required to play the game, I agreed with mouselock and said I had raided a fair bit, and that I could tell the difference between a good player and a bad one. The very next post was yours, defining a bad player in a strangely defensive way, where you complained about how people don’t do enough to help “bad” players (defined as players who just suck because they don’t know any better, which you are very keen to not call “bad”). Are you now claiming you just put that out there with no reference to the ongoing conversation? It just popped into your head and you posted it?

I never said anyone in this thread was calling me a bad player. You project so much at times.

Um

Sorry, I guess since I’m not leet enough to discuss raiding I just need to go off and form the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm thread for the rest of us non leet bad players.

Can’t think where I got that from. Along with your post about how you keep failing and people keep being mean to you.

Hey, you want to tell me to not thread cop, go right ahead, it’s a fair comment. But don’t pretend you didn’t get all defensive as soon as anyone mentioned “bad players”. It’s obviously some sort of trigger for you.

6046

Maybe I should ask it this way…

Why is raiding the only accepted norm for getting progression? What can we do to change that, not everyone can, will , want to raid and it will hinder -any- mmo development til that problem can be balanced. You cannot try for niche when a game has gone mainstream. Gaming is not what it was nor are the gamers.

6047

Why is it only the raiders have a say in what happens in these games? My example , though crude, was balanced for every kind of play (cept a crafter but I am sure that can be what you are gathering the 4000 bear asses for).

They don’t. They get a say what happens in raids and have a lot of input into boss fights, but the top-end “raiding elite” (chuckle) have mostly hated the way that Blizzard have opened things up to the common people. Blizzard’s raid progression has changed a lot.

edit:

Why is it only the raiders have a say in what happens in these games? My example , though crude, was balanced for every kind of play (cept a crafter but I am sure that can be what you are gathering the 4000 bear asses for).

5 man heroic tokens? PVP progression?

6048

Your statement was still factually incorrect. If you want to put forth an argument, try putting at least fifteen seconds worth of thought into it.

I am talking balance between , pvpers, raiders, heroic, and -gasp- those others. You know those others. The rpers, the crafters, the economists , the brother of the guild lead who levels only hunters and plays them well but can’t get away from his nagging wife for a raid.

Why should there be balance between people running heroics and people running raids, and RPers, and crafters, and economists?

It’d be a complete paradigm shift of World of Warcraft for absolutely no reason other than to cater to people who think they should have the same gear… for no purpose.

The purpose of gear that you get from raiding is to kill bigger and badder bosses. The purpose of gear in PvP is to be on an equal footing with the other people who put some time in, but to be on a stronger footing than those who don’t.

The purpose of gear in every other area is… nothing. You can do heroics in greens; you can’t do Firelands in blues.

If your complaint is that your epeen shrivels because you’re too incompetent a player to pug raids in epics that Guilds were clearing in greens and blues, and which have since been nerfed twice, then all I can say is that you should go play Second Life.

I -have- pugged raids. I hate it. I get no joy in trying to figure out the accents of myriad folk across the US (and other spots) give me instructions , nor am I really interested in talking to them. Thus the joy of a group kill is lost on me. I do fine in “old school” environments where typing and macro’d instructions are the norm. Remember that, before teamspeak and vent?

No, because there was no such time. Raids back in Classic used TS/vent, so that “old school” environment never existed in World of Warcraft.

Why is it only the raiders have a say in what happens in these games? My example , though crude, was balanced for every kind of play (cept a crafter but I am sure that can be what you are gathering the 4000 bear asses for).

Geeze.

Because that’s the paradigm, and you need a genuinely good reason for changing a paradigm when you bring in a billion dollars a year.

Your argument sucked, your example sucked, and your grammar sucks.

6049

I believe the answer is “So that when I’ve levelled up through the relatively easy process of doing so and have no desire to raid, there’s still something left for me to do as well.” It is, after all, the basis of the model that has put over 10 million people into WoW. Whether or not one can raid, there are valid reasons not to want to.

I’m in agreement with you that I can’t really figure out why a crafter would need the new shiny purple weapons of the current raid tier, though I can understand in certain cases. For example, although I don’t need the power of whatever it is in Firelands that lets druids turn into a fire cat, it rather sucks that I can’t do it on my druid because I’m not a raider. It would suck far less if there were, say, an epic bear form that could come only through archeology so there was some way for a more casual player to have something cool too. Though there’s always the problem that the latter tends to be accessible to “everyone” and the former is only accessible to “raiders”, as if raiding was somehow particularly less accessible than farming 4 billion tradeskill bits for something.

It’d be a complete paradigm shift of World of Warcraft for absolutely no reason other than to cater to people who think they should have the same gear… for no purpose.

Actually, it’d be going back to the paradigm of late beta/early vanilla, where raid gear was supposed to only be cosmetic. Back before all the raid guilds from EQ came over and started dictating upper-end content in WoW. (That’s not a jab, btw… but there’s definitely some correspondence between the raid-heavy endgame uber-alles setup and the upswing of competitive, world-first raiding in WoW. And I still feel EQ did that competitive stuff better for a lot of reasons.)

If your complaint is that your epeen shrivels because you’re too incompetent a player to pug raids in epics that Guilds were clearing in greens and blues, and which have since been nerfed twice, then all I can say is that you should go play Second Life.

No, because there was no such time. Raids back in Classic used TS/vent, so that “old school” environment never existed in World of Warcraft.

And no you’ve lapsed into full-on raider dick mode which is odd because you’re usually more measured than that.

Ultimately, him wanting access to something like epic gear is no different than you thinking he shouldn’t have it if he didn’t “earn” it. You’re effectively saying that your ego is so fragile that you simply can’t be as happy having raided to get your purples if someone else can’t look and say “Wow, isn’t he cool, he had to get those by killing XXX”. I don’t think it’s his e-peen that’s got issues in that case.

I’m completely lost as to why someone killing random level 85 bears needs a vorpal sword +97. But I’m just as lost as to why the vorpal sword +97 that you wrested from the grip of “Icky Thing++++” is less meaningful to you because someone else got theirs after killing their 70,000th bear. Both are epic feats of videogame wankery. It’s an odd argument to try to make one “better” than the other.

Me, I’d simply like to see the game expanded so that the idea of casual content to keep pace with new raid content isn’t: “Here, do these same 4 quests for 10 days in a row to unlock a vendor and get an item that you didn’t need to do the first 4 quests, then we’ll give you an additional quest so you can do the same 5 (out of 7! We love you!) quests to unlock another item you didn’t need to do more repetitive quests.”

IOW, my only problem with raids is that at some point Blizzard gave up even trying to make new and -interesting- content for anyone not on the bleeding edge. This is especially noticeable what with 4.1’s 5-mans being heroic only, and the pushing back of Abyssal Maw and any additional 5-mans that were originally talked about back when Cata released.

6050

This, I completely agree with. There should be a more interesting crafting system for vanity items, there could be epic storylines that give gear with some in-story/RP heft, there could be a lot more in the way of 5man / Heroic progression, not to mention more areas with dailies and post-85 quest lines (think Burning Crusade; you’ve got Ogri’la, the dudes in SE Terrokkar, Netherwing…).

For example, although I don’t need the power of whatever it is in Firelands that lets druids turn into a fire cat, it rather sucks that I can’t do it on my druid because I’m not a raider.

And, uh, I don’t get to fly around on the Gladiator mounts because I didn’t get Gladiator last season. And I don’t get to ride around on the AQ door-opener mount because I wasn’t That Guy.

It would suck far less if there were, say, an epic bear form that could come only through archeology so there was some way for a more casual player to have something cool too.

I agree that there should be more content outside of raiding. Epic archaeology quest lines for a BoA mount would be pretty awesome.

Actually, it’d be going back to the paradigm of late beta/early vanilla, where raid gear was supposed to only be cosmetic. Back before all the raid guilds from EQ came over and started dictating upper-end content in WoW. (That’s not a jab, btw… but there’s definitely some correspondence between the raid-heavy endgame uber-alles setup and the upswing of competitive, world-first raiding in WoW. And I still feel EQ did that competitive stuff better for a lot of reasons.)

shrug That’s not what I remember, but I wasn’t that into WoW in the early days of classic, so I’ll take your word for it.

Ultimately, him wanting access to something like epic gear is no different than you thinking he shouldn’t have it if he didn’t “earn” it. You’re effectively saying that your ego is so fragile that you simply can’t be as happy having raided to get your purples if someone else can’t look and say “Wow, isn’t he cool, he had to get those by killing XXX”. I don’t think it’s his e-peen that’s got issues in that case.

Gear is Blizzard’s way of not just forcing people to grind (which is boring) but of gating progression. It’s a way of slowing down peoples’ race to kill the new tier of bosses, and it’s a way of getting players to slow down and experience the previous tier before jumping into the current one. To gear up, even if only for a few runs.

If you’re not raiding, gear has no relevance to you other than its shininess. However, changing the way people get gear so that you earn current-tier HM gear without stepping a foot into raids means that you change the paradigm of gearing up for the next / current tier of raids. That’s a design change that Blizzard’s unlikely to make.

Me, I’d simply like to see the game expanded so that the idea of casual content to keep pace with new raid content isn’t: “Here, do these same 4 quests for 10 days in a row to unlock a vendor and get an item that you didn’t need to do the first 4 quests, then we’ll give you an additional quest so you can do the same 5 (out of 7! We love you!) quests to unlock another item you didn’t need to do more repetitive quests.”

Yeah, those suck. No argument from me on that score. Also, no new Heroics? mutters in annoyance Getting kinda bored of running ZA/ZG to cap out Valors.

IOW, my only problem with raids is that at some point Blizzard gave up even trying to make new and -interesting- content for anyone not on the bleeding edge. This is especially noticeable what with 4.1’s 5-mans being heroic only, and the pushing back of Abyssal Maw and any additional 5-mans that were originally talked about back when Cata released.

4.1’s 5mans aren’t really on the bleeding edge any more, but I do agree that Blizzard’s given up making interesting content that’s not raids.

They have, however, completely changed the definition of “bleeding edge”. Leaving aside entirely the total revamp of 1-60 that went through, Cataclysm Heroics and raiding are more “hella casual” than “bleeding edge” compared to TBC. Bleeding edge, to me, means the guys that killed M’uru, which was probably around the same number of Guilds who are in Heroic Firelands right now.

There are plenty of people who are now going to be working through T11 content after the nerfs, and maybe dipping their toes into Firelands to do some of the easier encounters. Vastly more than the term “bleeding edge” represents, and vastly more than ever raided in TBC. Probably even more than did Heroics in Burning Crusade for most of that expansion’s life. :)

6051

Even if the individual user’s experience feels simplistic, the act of creating an environment for hundreds or thousands of users to simultaneously exist is complex. Race x class x spec x gear = number of different graphical, calculation, and world tracking variables to manage. When users want to interact with things, more variables and data tracking. What loot should drop from x monster? At what rate? How many monsters do we need to serve our customer base? What about crafting? More data to modify the character’s variables. Are raw materials easy/hard enough to find? Are players exploiting buffs?

Then, if you’re successful, an expansion. More data, but with a need to maintain consistency and parity with all players and possible race/class/spec/gear iterations. Seems like it would be about as easy as building more skyscrapers on top of an existing skyscraper.

And that’s just the back end. You still need to provide artistically pleasing story and graphical elements.

6052

Most MMOs have very minor differences between races because of the tricky act of “balancing” and being seen to be fair to all sides in the game.

I genuinely don’t think that it’s that complex to create WoW’s class & spec system. You have the holy trinity of DPS, Tank, Healer and ultimately you make decisions based on how you want the gameplay experience to go for each class/spec, but you still have those hard numbers to give you a target.

A tank with x stats (like a raid gear tier) needs to be able to tank y DPS. That’s what it boils down to. The rest of the stuff - AOE vs single target tanking, gear choices, stat weightings (eg do you prefer parry vs dodge) tend to be fairly minor differences designed to give each class their flavour.

Blizzard’s buffs system means they can spread the love when it comes to what each class brings to the game, so it’s actually a fairly homogeneous system compared to the old days. They design the encounters knowing that you’re likely to be able to bring 80% of the buffs in the game, and the raids can easily have 100% with some redundancy. So they sprinkle buffs around and can concentrate on the output of each class - be it DPS or HPS, or incoming DPS tanked - and by necessity they either don’t deviate too much between classes or they have to simplify their raid + group encounters to avoid favouring one particular set.

Compared to many games, MMOs don’t have great visuals and tend to have utterly rudimentary AI, relying heavily on scripting for their boss fights. The most basic of reactive worlds - e.g. WoW’s phasing - is all you get alongside the static nature of 95% of the content. I don’t know what you mean by “artistically pleasing story elements”, though.

It’s worth remembering that Blizzard have basically ditched the idea of making the core game a challenge for 90% of the leveling experience. Any class can sleepwalk their way through the vast majority of quests, so they don’t need to worry much about balancing the classes for their solo content.

Edit: Just to make clear, I’m not disagreeing with you because of our previous spat. I find this an interesting discussion but I am making these points in good faith - I’m not trolling you :)

6053

Blizzard has been trying to find a way to make it easy for veteran players to level their alts without just letting them start characters at the current maximum level (as many would like them to do), as well as make the game more accessible to the more casual player. Those two aims were a success, but in the process I think they lost something which makes it hard for me to enjoy the process anymore. It’s too much on rails for my taste.

As for class balance, they’ve pretty much given up on the “Hero class” concept that was much in evidence before Death Knights were released in Lich King. Death Knights have been nerfed repeatedly since then, while the classes themselves have moved closer together in function. I suspect that if any new classes are released the differences will be mostly cosmetic (like a Necromancer class that takes on elements of warlocks, mages and shadow priests). It’s too hard to balance them for PvE, let alone for those into team-based PvP.

6054

disagreements abound, it’s the Internet. : )

Really, it’s 2 aspects I’m thinking of. 1) the sheer volume of content an MMO like wow contains. Models, npcs, landscapes, icons, spell effects, quest text, etc. Over the course of 3 expansions, the amount of game objects and variables likely exceeds the complexity of a modern rpg like Mass Effect by several times. An that’s before any data management systems like auctions and in-game mail that must work damn near flawlessly or disaster will result.

But I acknowledge I’m just guessing based on about 2 years of reading patch notes and reference materials. Example: one profession like inscription has over 300 glyphs, the number of total glyphs and glyph types have not been static, nor has the method by which players acquire the techniques. How many full time employees work on this one area? In a single-player game an enhancement system like this would not exist or if it did, would be far easier to implement.

  1. the amount of data that must be tracked and updated simultaneously between servers and multiple clients. Iirc, KOTOR was x-box exclusive because of the 100- Meg plus size of the save file. I’d love to know what the size of an MMO character’s save data is.

All that work and people still dismiss your game as simplistic. : P

6055

Mouselook got my point.

If the gear is only for raiding fine, make another set of similarly looking gear with less stats if it must be for questing/crafting/whatever folks.

The conversation I walked in on a bit back was why is Wow still going if it sucks so much. (I don’t think it sucks but again I am using a general argument)

That vorpal sword of +92 is great for killing the grue, I would like a vorpal sword of +1 to kill pigs with. Why? Cus it is pretty and I roleplay. That is what I do with my spare time in the game, I am willing to spend the hours to get that particular item look let me have it in some way that doesn’t require me yelling at my friends to please for the love of god not step in the fire.

Also I did raid MC. We never used vent. It was perfectly feasible for those -other- servers not to have voice chat if they were raiding MC when everyone else was in BWL.

Somewhere in this conversation the fact that wow has more than just casual raiders and hardcore raiders is lost. Why am I not allowed in the same game world with you just because I do not wish to whack the mole in a coordinated dance routine?

Also , I am female … just to clear up that name confusion. Thou I am sure this will now devolve into “You are one of -those- female gamers aren’t you, have to be she or her right?”

No I don’t ,but I do get confused trying to navigate a thread if I am referred to as he. I apologize for the existence of yet another fault.

6056

Yes, from a data standpoint it’s impressive, and the balancing act looks very intimidating when you think about everything they have to take into account. However, they started with a much smaller data set - and WoW at launch was comical in terms of balance - and have had several years to get to a stable and mature system where they can add new content (eg glyphs) with a clear idea of the effect they wish to see and a clear understanding of how it’ll affect the existing mechanics.

Trying to throw all of moden WoW together from scratch would be a nightmare, which harks back to our conversation about new MMOs - it is pretty hard to develop that side of the game, which is why I’m willing to give them a pass on balance issues as long as they get everything else to a good standard. The slow-grow method has a lot going for it (see also EVE). Just have to hope the customers are happy with what they get at the start :)

6057

Isn’t that what you buy with dungeon tokens?

6058

This made me laugh, so much.

6059

6060

The problem is the kind of work. Why 4000 bear asses? Why not 40000000? It’s just tedious busywork of the worst kind, taking no skill, organization, paying attention or anything, running a hamster wheel for the cheese. It’s not hard, just incredibly time-consuming.

Whereas raiding can be quite hard*, involve decent amounts of skill, and is a social experience.

*I know it’s fashionable to pretend on the WoW boards that only brain-damaged people and macaques can’t raid perfectly and that everything is easy.