Well, it's official: World of WarCraft Cataclysm incoming

[Lord Revan]

Here's something I do like of the current patch...it gives people decent gear even unto 5 mans. And I'm not talking about the daily heroic.

As for TBC versus Vanilla. While Sunwell was bustingly stupid hard...it did require something beyond Tank and Spank. So did Kael and Vash. One thing of Ulduar is that the Hard Modes are actually as close to that, with Mimiron Hard being easily Kael/Vash and closer to M'Uru level. And Yogg +0 is a step all unto it's own.

Thus really, living back in the rose colored dreams of Vanilla being the glory days is for fuck ups. The raiding was hellish because of gear cockblocks and 40 numbskulls, regular got SHIT, and PvP was more grindy then leveling in EQ.

I've played WoW since god knowns when, and while I'm somewhat nostalgic about the "old world" I'll admit that about 99% of pre-TBC quests and such need serious rethinking/rebuilding even if they don't blow up the world for pre lvl-60/80 players.

alot of the old world have nice mood (something that TBC lacked IMHO) but lets face it I've done pretty much every lvl 60 raid (some at lvl 70 or 80 but still) and alot of those are not so well designed (btw you need Ony scale cloak for BWL even at lvl 80 remember grinding the mats for those back then I sure do, it was hell back then).

[Oskuro]

The Old World was more classic fantasy than Outland, wich went a bit too far into the bizzarre for my tastes. Northrend, on the other hand, is a return to a proper medieval fantasy setting (even better than the original).

To clarify, I'd like the old geography to be kept in some manner to allow people to explore it a bit (sort of like a larger version of Old Hillsbrad), but most questlines can go die in a fire. Maybe if they ever implement the Emerald Dream they'll make it as a pre-civilization and pre-cataclysm version of Azeroth (as it is supposed to be). Who knows, there are endless possibilities, all to be tainted by the whines of players who want more epic loot and arena content.

[Kuja]

Vanilla WoW raiding was what I like to call the worst of both worlds.

Before you ever set foot in, say, Molten Core, you had to undergo the nightmare of getting a colossal raiding guild set up, getting everyone's attunements knocked out, making sure they were in proper gear and getting them into the straightjacket of the right spec. Then you had to go through the soul-crushing hours of farming potions and materials, hours on end of killing the same mobs, harvesting the same crap, and getting it all into the right place (no guild banks at the time) and making sure nobody made off with the goods or skimped out.

But once you got into the place? Snoooooooooze. All the stress was coordinated on maybe five to ten people at the most (tanks and mainhealers) and everyone else just had to hit a couple buttons once in awhile and not die. I remember Ghost Rider sending me a PM back in the day laughing his burning head off about a guild who had one of their druids actually sit down and stay out of boss fights - because he was providing the Leader of the Pack buff and the guild didn't want to jeapordize losing it. And they got to Nefarion.

...........

When BC came out, Blizzard started to implement some good ideas, but they largely did things half-way, or in some manner didn't follow through completely. They gave hybrids something other to do than heal, but paladins and druids for example still had horrendous itemization problems (druids especially, wearing PVP gear to tank raids). Karazhan and Zul'Aman were ten-man raids, with the former becoming one of the most-run raids of all time, but they were significantly detatched from each other in terms of difficulty and everything else was 25-man. Farming was still omnipresent, though it had been narrowed slightly and resist gear was needed less. In addition, raids could be schizophenic in terms of composition required: some bosses required three or four or even five tanks while others required only one, and this led to people being forced to swap out from boss to boss.

One of their best ideas, though, was the implementation of the first emblem system. With bosses in heroic instances and raids dropping tokens as well as flat gear, a person could buy the gear they needed instead of being purely at the mercy of RNG. Blizzard also made a smart move with the tier tokens, consolidating class drops to give people more opportunity to get gear that they had in vanilla.

In addition, something I'd like to note: with ZA we got the first foreshadowing of the future hard-mode systems we would later see in Wrath. How fast you cleared the first four bosses became how much extra loot you got, including a vanity mount.

..............

So now Wrath is coming out. As Blizzard, you have a smal but very vocal group of raiders who've cleared ZA and Black Temple and maybe Sunwell asking for the difficulty curve to continue upwards. You also have a lot of people who've done less raiding and, of course, people who are new to the game and have never raided before. You can't possibly make the first raids in Northrend on the level of Hyjal or Black Temple; many people would never get past them, quit raiding, and maybe quit the game entirely. Additionally, ten-man raids have proven massively successful and you want more of them, but a ten-man raiding guild can't sustain the kind of farming and class combinations the old-school raiding needed

So we got hard modes, various ways of fighting a boss that amped up both the difficulty level and rewards. We also got the new philosophy of "bring the player, not the class" where Blzizard ruthlessly eliminated the kinds of mechanics that made one class king at a certain job, or slot, or buff. Warriors and rogues howled, but all the hybrids I knew cheered. We got 10 and 25 man raids at every level. Blizzard struck down the old mechanic of potion-chugging and likewise crushed the insane amounts of farming the old raids needed. Resist gear was dropped to an all-time low, reduced to a few pieces of frost gear that in an ideal situation, aren't even mandated. Was it done perfectly? No, of course not. But it was a quantum leap above what we'd had before.

..........

Nowadays, if you have 15-20 reliable people, you can start your own raiding guild. Got two tanks? Got two healers? Got some dps? You're on the ten-man scene and yes, if you're good enough, you can go all the way to Yoggy and Anub'arak.

If you're good enough. More and more, the raiding changes have placed the burden of proof where it needs to be: skill. Not your gear - that's freely available. Not availabilty for farming - you don't need that crap. Not because you play a warlock - a mage or a boomkin can do your job. Not because you're fucking the guild leader (although I'm sure that still helps). Because you knew, as the Onyxia wipe animation tells us, "WHERE THE FUCK YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE!" In a ten man, it doesn't take long to realize when someone's not pulling their weight.

(Can you image a boss like Mimiron being released back in the 40-man days, with four phases equally capable of turning you into a grease stain on the floor and a hard mode to boot? People would have screamed bloody murder.)

Skill. Pure skill. That's what a guild should be looking at when they review a new prospect. That's what needs to define a player, be it in PVP or PVE. That's why I applaud "Bring the Player," that's why I applaud 10-man raiding, and that's why applaud the new emblem/token systems. Be skilled or go home.

[Darmalus]

LordOskuro put into words what I was struggling to do. Mood. Mood is what I think I loved the most about the old world. I felt like I was helping to build up this new Horde nation, stomping out the Quillboar and Centaur, securing resources and borders. It wasn't the apocalypse yet, but it was there, looming on the horizon. With Cataclysm coming out, I think that is what I most dread losing, the feeling of a new low level character adding to the world being lost and replaced with just trying to survive.

Still, if they manage to preserve some of the better/important quest lines, and maybe even clean them up to WotLK standards, I guess my new goblin alts will be happy.

Edit: Also, the idea of measuring skill is what I liked the most about the idea of vehicle combat. It can really show you who is paying attention when they can't macro and add-on and over-gear their way out of the challenge. Then I found out the vehicles scaled with gear iLevel, oh well.

[GuppyShark]

Ugh, the vehicle gimmick.

Like it wasn't hard enough to get the people we were carrying to learn the class they've levelled to 80, they had to learn how to fly a dragon or drive a tank too.

[Ghost Rider]

Ugh, the vehicle gimmick.

Like it wasn't hard enough to get the people we were carrying to learn the class they've levelled to 80, they had to learn how to fly a dragon or drive a tank too.

Indeed. What I hated of it was how poorly done it was.

Dragon : You're a sorta Rogue now! Build points, unleash DoT!!! Oh and move in a 3D plane that we never perfected.

Vehicle: Use abilities that have horrible hit detection against a boss with even poorer hit detection. Good thing we gave the boss a AoE ability to rape you slowly!

Horse: Juggle useless cooldowns and hope lag doesn't rape you! Oh and sorry for an inconvient bugs in the match.

Though I add this for the mood people. Sure the mood when it was there wasn't bad. Too bad they never did shit with it and a variety of questlines felt about as satisfying as getting a virtual orgasm. Hell, one of the things TBC was to actually make the transition of 1-20 feel like you were kinda doing something instead of "You saved us....hey look a turtle!".

Again I really think far too many have this rosy view of what was barely there. I really wonder how many people really enjoyed running from one end of a zone to another and it taking somewhere on the order of 20 minutes to start a fucking quest. Then another run back to complete...if you weren't killed.

[Minischoles]

The vehicle gimmick is fun....the first time you do it. By the third or fourth its very quickly become tiresome. Flame Leviathon was fun when we were all in Naxx epics and going around killing things and doing something different for the first time, but eventually it gets boring and the glaring bugs begin to infuriate you.
But no worries, every other patch they manage to completely break vehicle fights (try running Malygos and watch as the dragons despawn in p3, or randomly die)

[Darmalus]

Strangely enough, I enjoy the vehicles, but playing a mage, I think any time I can't be crunched instantly by melee is fun. I think the only quest mechanic that bugged me was the very low drop rate collection quests. I don't mind gather 100 widgets if 1 widget drops off each kill, but if I only need 4 doodads, and doodads have a 5% drop rate, I get annoyed. But for my alts, I really do play through the old world without feeling burdened or annoyed, so I don't think my memory is too rosy.

[Ghost Rider]

Strangely enough, I enjoy the vehicles, but playing a mage, I think any time I can't be crunched instantly by melee is fun. I think the only quest mechanic that bugged me was the very low drop rate collection quests. I don't mind gather 100 widgets if 1 widget drops off each kill, but if I only need 4 doodads, and doodads have a 5% drop rate, I get annoyed. But for my alts, I really do play through the old world without feeling burdened or annoyed, so I don't think my memory is too rosy.

Wait...wait...you feel annoyed by quests that are "Gather 10 heads" that are a drop rate of 5% per kill, yet are are not annoyed by the old world. You do remember or are just forgetting that almost all the old world quests were that unless they were "Find this guy" or "Kill this". In fact this is what made me hate the Barrens on my three Horde Alts. It was the stupidest fucking thing to commit genocide on whatever creature to gather 10-15 items that had a 10-15% drop rate, yet if I do a TBC version, I get a 80% drop rate.

So which is it? Are you annoyed by a dumbass mechanic or you don't feel annoyed?

[Darmalus]

This first time through, they didn't annoy me because I didn't know any better. I waited so long to make most of my alts that the drop rate had been increased to 100% for most of those quests by the time I got there. I would have probably been annoyed (and just skipped the area) if I had done it again while the drop rates were really low.

[Broomstick]

They HAVE nerfed the drop rates and rep gains on a lot of old world quests. A very welcome improvement.

I still welcome a revamp of Azeroth, even if I know I won't be 100% happy, because 60-70% happy is better than 30-40% happy.

[Ghost Rider]

This first time through, they didn't annoy me because I didn't know any better. I waited so long to make most of my alts that the drop rate had been increased to 100% for most of those quests by the time I got there. I would have probably been annoyed (and just skipped the area) if I had done it again while the drop rates were really low.

First time through, none of us cared because we were all ignorant.

Next time, everyone avoids it because it was bad. And Blizz didn't change much of the drop beyond going up a couple percent, and this is with a DK doing everything.

Now? You have the ability to actually move through the zone with ease, they've changed entire quests, and then upped the values by a few percent so you aren't as annoyed. Fuck they've removed and changed elites across the board and made it so that 99% of old world elites do not exist anymore. It still stands the old world needed everything the new expansions did and then some to make it palatable on some level. Thus a very rosy view of the old world if you are taking to account of the UPGRADES they have done.

This is why I am glad they are finally doing away with the old world. It needed massive changes, just some of their gameplay choices and returning bosses are still confusing on a level of borderline laziness.

[Crown]

To back up Ghost Rider's point on how crappy the old world is here's an example; there are still cloth items with Agility and Spirit on them!

And for extra points I'll quiz you guys as to who really is a WoW Geek; can anyone tell me why they were in the game in the first place?

[Minischoles]

To back up Ghost Rider's point on how crappy the old world is here's an example; there are still cloth items with Agility and Spirit on them!

And for extra points I'll quiz you guys as to who really is a WoW Geek; can anyone tell me why they were in the game in the first place?

Well they were either for druids (who had shite itemisation even up to TBC) or they were for the priests, who at first were meant to be some kind of melee healer (the original Inner Fire even buffed them with attack power).

Vanilla quests were deliberately designed to be grindy, as a conscious design to keep people playing as long as possible. If the drop rate is low, you have to spend double or triple the time just grinding the same mob, slowly hooking you in more and more.
One of the great things they did with WOTLK is progressive drop rates, which removed a lot of that stupid arbitrary grinding and made it so you might get a little unlucky, but if you do it'll finish quickly soon enough.

[Oskuro]

"You saved us....hey look a turtle!".

Don't you dare mock the turtle quest. It was awesome, you hear me? Awesome!


Agreeing with the game mechanics (quests, rewards, sotrylines) sucking big time (Silithus cultist gear anyone?). The world had a mood potential, with some beautifully rendered terrains (as well as some horrible ones), but we can all agree Blizzard did not milk out all its potential (as made evident by the many unfinished areas). The more I think about it, the more I agree that the re-make of the old world is a positive thing, I just hope they don't kill the mood by having everyone and everything go into "OMFG GRIMDARK END OF THE WORLD!" mode or something.

[ZGundam]

The turtle quest was fun! If only he listened to me when I told him to come THIS way!

I finally got to watch Blizzcon '09 and about class changes. They are getting rid of a bunch of attributes like sprint and armor penetration, and people seemed to like that.

My biggest peeve is guilds and finding one that fits. After all the guild leaders took their mains to make a 'clique' guild and left their mains, this one idiot who always bitched at me to level my DK when I was just enoying myself doing quests and getting rep and achivements and said in public guild chat that he would never, ever go into an instance with me, I left.

Anyone play on Shadow Council recruiting?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Come to the Venture Co Server... Horde actually outnumber alliance here and we Own the battlegrounds

[Steve]

I played on Cenarion Circle myself.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I still say that Billard needs to add the following:

Tamable Bunny Rabbit surrounded by a field of bones, and it only takes damage from AOE attacks... (AOE only power does not transfer over when made into a pet)

The ability to join evil organizations.....

[Steve]

LOL

Someone go get the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch then.