1601

I don’t want a dungeon for a well put together group of people on vent. I want a dungeon I can pug that has some measure of challenge. I don’t care about the “accomplishment”. I care about being able to stay awake while playing the game.

1602

I had a big long out reply for the both of you, but I don’t really see the point. Blizzard looked at what happened with Cata and took the steps necessary to make the highest number of people who play their game happy. Between regular raiding, LFR, Challenge, Heroic, Scenarios and now Brawler’s Guild there is more variety and even more challenge in the game than ever before. Challenge modes are harder than heroics have ever been, and the Brawler’s will test your skill without question. Regular dungeons have mechanics that can’t be slept on or you will die. There are things to do for those who want challenge, there are things to do for those who want to experience content, there is basically something for (almost) everyone. If you can’t find your niche in the new expansion you are probably one of those people Blizzard is moving away from, design wise. They’ve finally realized that you can’t please everyone, but you damn sure better please the majority, and that’s what they’ve done.

Now, if you want to get me started on their rep bullshit I’ll be the first to cry foul, but in terms of the actual content the game is as good as ever.

1603

It’s not clear to me if this is in earnest, or a really clever parody of the kind of thing the hardcore used to post when casuals were asking for more content to be opened up to them.

1604

It’s totally elitism. I was in a hardcore raiding guild for years. you should have heard them when LK came out with the 10 and 25 versions of everything, --but the gear looked the same.–

These guys didn’t even want the same art on their gear as what the “scrubs” were getting for their 10-mans. They certainly didn’t think everyone should get to see everything.

1605

No kidding. Try killing one of the rare spawns in Pandaria without at least 3 interrupts in your toolkit.

1606

The panda monks are the worst with their heals, ugh. At least with my hunter the rest I’ve faced haven’t been that bad, but a built in tank with AOE damage reduction will do that lol. It is fun finding and trying them out though, is a great feature of MoP.

1607

The point was that back in vanilla and BC you could see how good a person was / his guild was by simply looking at their gear. Linking achievements, displaying titles not in game anymore and mounts has replaced that now.
With transmog the whole thing was getting pointless anyways.

1608

I was in a hardcore raiding guild up to and including WotLK(But I was mostly casual after a few months of TBC), in Vanilla and TBC we had server firsts on pretty much every dungeon/boss. Any members who bragged, talked down to people or just acted like a conceited wanker was gkicked. No questions asked.

We also looked at 10mans as being a great way to keep raiding together as a guild when numbers (inevitably declined).

In my experience, the elitism talked about by people on this thread was incredibly rare in game. The kind of childish player who cared about epics and bragging rights was exactly the kind of player most guilds didn’t want.

1609

I think a lot of people don’t understand why not everyone having everything was important to well “us”: Apart from the guild tag this was the only way to judge people’s abilities and likely performance.
There was no armory to check for achievements, gear, specs etc.
Ninja-Looting was a real problem as there was very little you could do to prevent it. Some fights needed “Free for all” so everyone could pick up items to use (Vashji cores come to mind). In 5-man everyone could roll Need actually just roll as there as no distinction between Need and Greed. There was no other way to gear up for raiding besides doing instances. Few if any crafted items were available of the same quality and certainly not a full set.

If you saw someone with a Ragnaros drop or another deeper MC boss drop you were relatively sure he won’t stand in shit, spread out if needed, can handle adds, focus fire on a target in a group of thrash and do some dps /heals. Same with Onyxia items.

1610

Wonder if AaronSofar is playing.

1611

Challenge modes are straight up more difficult than regular heroics. The reason for the timers is so people would not cheese them by cc 4 out of 5 mobs every pack and killing 1 mob at a time.

1612

You also have to kill a certain number of enemies per area, so you can’t just skip it all.

1613

You are misinformed.

1614

Your gear is apparently downgraded as well.

1615

Well, kinda - it’s scaled to something like iLevel 463 and tier bonuses are disabled. They don’t scale hit down below the hit cap, though.

1616

How is that different from today’s WoW? And who told you that “everyone has everything”? There are still plenty of things for the hardcore to hang their hats on and there are still plenty of things for them to accomplish that most WoW players will never do. Seeing someone walking around with Challenger’s shoulders and their unique glow is no different than seeing them walking around with a boss drop from vanilla WoW. In fact, it’s even better now because that person with the shoulders is guaranteed not to have been carried by 39 other people.

And hitting rank 8 in the Brawlers guild is harder and shows more individual skill than being part of a huge raiding guild did back in the day. Further, if you really care about checking peoples raiding credentials you can still do so just like you always could. Real raiding, with your guild, it much harder and gives much better rewards.

I think people are having a real hard time understanding that making the game more accessible hasn’t made it easier or suddenly given everything to everyone. Like I said, there is more challenge in current day WoW than ever before…if you want it. Seems to me, though, most people don’t really want more challenge unless part of that challenge involves cock blocking the majority of the playerbase from enjoying the same content.

1617

Wait!
I talked about the original outcry in WoTLK not some nutjobs still decrying the fact in MoP!
I totally agree that NOW there are plenty of things available to distinguish from others (titles, achievements, armory).
I talked about the times these things were NOT available.

Back then gear and guild tag was the only thing for a long time (Achievements and Titles (“Hand of A’dal”) came in at the end of BC I think).

1618

I am looking for some advice, I know there is probably no simple way but I am looking for a nice flying mount.

I have 1 toon a level 85 hunter. I generally just level and randomly do stuff that interests me and once I get bored I cancel for a while and then start up again when I fancy a game.

I have all the addons, just started with MoP. I spend a fair amount of time getting the rare pets and am looking out for Gib the monkey at the moment along with doing the daily quest so I can ride a frostsabre mount which is going to take 20 days.

Things I don’t really do are dungeon runs and rep grind, I think I only have 1 or 2 at exalted in all my time. Looking at the game it seems rep grind is the easiest way to get a flying mount that isn’t a Griffin. I do have the celestial mount as well but wouldn’t mind a dragon or anything else.

So any simple advice, I am happy to do a bit of grinding but I will probably starting from a real low point on rep grind so help would be appreciated.

1619

I assume you don’t have access to a guild that’s earned either the Dark Phoenix or the new MoP guild achievement mount? If you join a guild that has either of those, you can just buy them at the guild vendor. After that, yeah, you’re probably looking at either rep grinds (Netherwing for drakes, Sha’tari Skyguard for flying manta rays, the Argent Tournament for the Argent Hippogriff, etc), camping the Time-Lost Proto-Drake (good luck with that!), or doing old dungeon/raid achievements. I suspect Ulduar is probably the easiest meta these days (the Wrath heroic meta probably isn’t particularly hard either but I wonder about Less-rabi, and you’re doing a lot more running around for that).

1620

The last flying mount I unlocked was the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Yes, it’s a reputation grind (Cenarion Expedition), but at level 85 and in a level 25 guild it doesn’t take too long–a few hours a day for 3 or 4 days IIRC. After all the time I’d spent playing WoW I didn’t have a Hippogryph mount so I decided to get one.

I have done the Netherwing Mount grind many times and the Wyrmrest Accord grind for a Red Drake more than once, and those two are rather lengthy.

The easiest way is to buy a mount. I, too, bought a Celestial Steed because I couldn’t stand the stupid looking birds Blood Elves rode. More recently I considered purchasing a Heart of the Aspects mount, but the up-and-down movement of it in flight caused me to change my mind.

Good luck! I hope this helps you out.