Broomstick wrote:Wonderful. You see, 90% of the player base is, presumably, NOT having "health problems" and is not off school (or, more typically, work, or even both) a lot of the time which is precisely why the grind had to be reduced.
The grind was reduced, and TBC had the right balance IMO, there was a bit of grinding, but there was also a lot of very easy ways to make money so you could let other people do the grinding for you and just pay a bit extra. Rep grind was way easier (and made heroics easier to get into with the nerf down to heroic, one of the good things Blizzard did as reaching Revered was a huge grind), the only real hard part was the grinding of materials and gold pre Quel'danas.
That's great - IF you can get 25 people together. Remember 40 man raids? I remember people planning them, I don't remember being in one because it was too fucking hard to get 40 people together in one place at one time for long enough to do them. 25 man raids are hard for normal, must-work-for-a-living people to organize. Hence 5 and 10 man.
Oh yes i remember 40man raids, back then just to get the raid numbers 5 or 6 guilds on the server (mine included) joined together to form guildlink and we just raided together, posting teams a week in advance and having that huge a pool of people we managed to raid fairly regularly.
25man raids are not hard if you are in a guild with decent raid times, the guild i've been in since the start and still am raid from 7:30 at night to 10:30. So late enough all but the people who work in places open late or work at night can come raid, as well as people being home from school. Most of the people in the guild work every day. or attend university or college, and yet we still manage to get 25 people to each raid.
Excuse me, while I would like to have a life where I could indulge in "ludicrously hard" games I don't have that life. Neither do most other people between the ages of 18 and 65.
I play a game, I didn't join the fucking military. I'm happy that makes you happy. You're right, when it's done well a 25 man raid is a symphony. Problem is, they're fucking hard to organize with most peoples' schedules and even harder to do often enough for them to be done well. Hence... Blizzard is focusing on smaller groups, with a "heroic" option for those who want the same thing only harder. They're still fine-tuning the concept, but I think it's a workable solution to the problem
25man raids aren't hard to organise around peoples schedules, in a large enough serious raiding guild, the problem is usually having too many people for a raid, and having to be ruthless in who you take.
Raiding is supposed to be hard, its supposed to be the part of the game if you get past the other content. Complete 5mans and heroics and then 10mans? then you move onto 25mans and go into harder content, or stay farming that. Its your choice to not go into 25man, but just because people want to see content, everything (including the 25man which is supposed to be the heroic option) is nerfed down.
All that content 25th November did was 25man (the supposed heroic option) with 21 people, well geared but that kind of gear is closely reached by level 80 gear, some of those 21 weren't even 80 for christs sake. And they clear it in 3 days. 3 days for what is supposed to be the 'hard' content. There is no middle ground yet again, except this time instead of providing both options, having both hardcore and easier, they've just gone for pure easier and it means raiding guilds are going to die off, as no guild likes to farm content for months while awaiting new things. Just look at what happened between BT/MH and Sunwell.
I suppose it escaped you that there will be more WotLK content released, just as there were releases for Classic and TBC.
No it didn't, since as a raid leader i've been looking at this stuff ever since the beta went online so i could be prepared come WOTLK, but unless that new content is released in a month (and whens the last time Blizzard developed a major content patch in less than a month?) it won't be there for a long time, and even then from what i'm reading its one extra raid instance next patch, then Icecrown (and Arthas) in an even later patch. So potentially months and months of having no new pve content.
You're bitching because a "super hardcore" guild blasted through everything. Boo fucking hoo. I'm a guild officer and a raider and it's likely I'll never see the top-end of WotLK until the next expansion (because that's how it happened with Classic and TBC for me). I suspect what you consider "semi-serious" a lot of the rest of us consider "prohibitive time sink". I can NOT support my family and do everything else I need to in my life AND be a hard core raider. Can't be done. Unless you have a shill supplying you with gold and buffs. Nor do I want to do the grinding required - I already have a job, I don't need a second one.
Yes they're a super hardcore guild, but the gear there in is matched by a fair amount of people, especially since the nerf, or they are just below that in BT/MH gear. Which means effectively, any T6 guild (of which there was a large percentage) can clear all 25man content without any gearing up, without anything done beyond walking in and learning the fights.
Please, you constantly whine on about all this, then don't raid. Why is there this sense of entitlement that people deserve to see content? That content was designed for people with more time, as lower content was designed for people with less time. You can't uniformly nerf all content down. And its not a second job, you act like grinding is this huge problem, but its not. The longest i've ever spent grinding for a raid was 6 hours a day as I had a free week off and the guild needed stuff to get some serious Brutallus attempts going. Usually i'd spend perhaps 45minutes an hour plowing through dailies, maybe having some fun ganking allies, then go to the AH and buy what I needed from people who had time to grind.
Are you going to bitch about the guy who leveled to 80 in 27 hours? Nevermind he had another player out-of-group helping him AND he played 27 hours straight (if it was him and not a team switching off at the keyboard). That's insane AND stupid! Who the fuck has that kind of time to devote to a game? A high school kid? A professional gold-farmer? Who? Seriously, that's not normal.
Why would I bitch about that? he planned out what he wanted to do, and he found someone agreeing to help him out, to attempt something that most people wouldn't want to do. No-one normally does that, but with the achievements brought in and a new expansion, there was an oppurtunity and he took it. Gratz to him for sticking to it for that long, i couldn't do it and I expect a lot of people couldn't. Does he do that every week? doubtful, its a one off for the expansion.
You're acting like any raider spent 8 hours a day grinding mats and then another 8 raiding, before going and sleeping, its just not true, maybe theres a bit of extra grind going into it, and some reading up to learn your class and encounter, but only the super hardcores, like SK and Nihilum ever raided the kind of intense hours you claim.
Me, I've leveled to 72 and it's just a fact of life that with the work week starting likely I'll not see 73 until next week. I don't care. I'm enjoying the ride. Meanwhile, I'll have saved up a nice resting bonus.
I'm taking my time as well, i'm loving having something different to do, and i'm the same, I have essays due soon that I have to finish off researching and writing up before i edit them and submit them. I'll probably hit 75 tomorrow after coming home from Uni, yet i'll have actually put really little time into it.
So what?
Seriously, why the fuck do you care? My Other Half has played WoW three years and his highest character is 63 and has NEVER raided and still wears greens. So fucking what? He has a good time. He's made some friends. Fact is, he will NEVER raid because he is disabled and can't hit the controls fast enough. On the other hand, he's explored all of Azeroth and Outland, which I haven't even now.
Which brings up another point - not everyone plays to raid. Not everyone plays to PvP. We got 12 year olds who haven't the maturity to be in a 25 man organized group. There are disabled folks who have trouble manipulating the keyboard and mouse enough for raiding or PvP but who still like to play. They pay the same price a month you do, and Blizzard is also trying to make them happy, too. Why do you think they instituted the barber shop and the achievements? What do you think there is a toy store in Dalaran or funny foods or all that other stuff? It's for the people who don't or can't raid/PvP, or who enjoy that part of the game in addition to what you enjoy.
Then why the fuck even care if its hard? Seriously, what does it matter if its hard, if you don't play to raid? Ignore raid content and let those of us who have the time and inclination raid and have our fun in the hard stuff, let those of us who like that part experience it instead of whining about it and wanting it nerfed to be more accessible.
Yes they instituted all this stuff, and it is for the more casual player, and its all well and good, but theres absolutely no need to nerf content as well just because the player base is more casual. Raiding has always before been for the people who play it more hardcore.
The fun in playing a game is that it's FUN and not a fucking JOB.
It is fun for a game to be hard. Thats why challenging puzzles or word games are played, thats why crosswords and games like Sudoku are popular, why games are made with harder difficulties. Because the fun in the game is in beating it,
despite it being hard, there's no fun in a game that you can play through in a few hours after spending money on it, wheres the sense of fufillment or fun in having something that easy?
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