Is this What the Casual Gamers Wanted to See?

[Osiris]

There has been a lot of dicussion around casual gamers wanting Blizzard to provide more content. From what I have read here are their general concerns:

-"I don't want to be in some hardcore raiding guild that requires that I consume my entire life to attend, but I resent that epic dressed individuals completely manhandle me in PvP. Why should I have to go to BWL and AQ to do well in this game when it comes to PvP?"

-"We casual gamers don't have enough content. With the exception of silly holiday content, 90% of the new content in this game caters to raiding guilds when in actuality 90% of the subscribers are not in raiding guilds".

So now Blizzard is coming out with a ton of new gear for those who do not raid MC/BWL/AQ/ZG. We have the tier 0.5 gear and a slew of gear that comes from the new Silithus quests.

I seriously doubt that this is what you guys wanted to see. From what I understand, the 0.5 gear requires that you collect the entire blue set, grind a massive amount of stuff and fork out a ton of gold to get what I am guessing is about a 25% boost in stats.

I could be off in my assessment of this stuff, but the bottom line is that it is an insane amount of work for a "casual gamer".

I'm in mostly Bloodfang now and I had nothing but time to kill in mid level instances like UBRS at game launch such since Ony, MC, etc hadn't come out yet. I never collected the full Shadowcraft set and I did almost 500 runs in those places. Then again, I never did try to complete that set.

Then you have the new silithus stuff. A lot of that gear doesn't require that you go into AQ20 or AQ40 can simply be obtained from outdoor quests. Again, obviously to appeal to the more casual gamer. There's a 280 AP (when activated) trinket that can be obtained simply by getting exalted with Cenarion and gathering a bunch of stuff. Welcome to 500 hours of work. Ok, 200 if you're a great grinder.

I see the 0.5 gear as a solution for those who want to better close the gap between UBRS and MC. That is a nasty gap and it is probably in part why Blizzard did this. But I just don't see casual and 500 hours of grinding in the same sentence.

I'm sure there are power gamers that don't join a raiding guild as they don't want to be a part of some incredibly structured environment. I respect that, but I just don't believe that is common.

I guess time will tell, but I just don't see a lot of people doing this quest line.

I'll be honest. I hated the idea that someone who puts one thousandth the time that I've put into UBRS/ZG/Ony/MC/BWL and now AQ can have a ton of great epics and an epic 280 AP trinket. But frankly, now that I have seen a small glimpse of what goes into obtaining those items, I'm not so concerned.

But it's nice to know that with some hard work, players do have the option to bridge that gap.

For those of you that don't feel like your more casual needs are being met, wait until the expansion. It sounds to me like there is so much new content coming that you will need a couple of years to get really bored with it.

[Hateblade]

I know I for one want to go back to those instances. I still have a couple of my old Shadowcraft pieces lying around on a mule character somewhere. Upgrading it to the new "power ranger" blue seems like it would be entertaining. :laugh:

[JoeMuggs]

I think you hit on it in your post its not for the casual gamer it's for the gamer that plays a lot maybe as much you or I, but for w/e reason isn't in a raiding guild (they have a loner personality, they don't like the structure, they don't like the drama that sometimes come with a guild, etc.). I think the wording that I hear a lot causal vs. hardcore players is not the best, what I see is more guild based players and solo based players. Blizzard is attempting to give these solo players something to do in order to keep them as happy paying customers.

[DotComm]

Nobody said anything about the set being for casual gamers. The term Blizzard have used is "non raiders". You can put in a couple of hours a night, maybe a bit longer at weekends, and still get the set. AFAIK you can start the quest with just the bracers, belt and gloves, all of which will be BoE and so purchasable from the AH. Completing that quest will give you an epic pair of gloves, very nice. Likewise, non-raider can mean someone who plays constantly but hasn't found a high end guild yet, only does UBRS etc with their guild. They can then upgrade their set, albeit for a good bit of work.

Blizzard aren't giving out easy epics. If you want the new set, you'll have to work for it. It's not for what I'd call a casual gamer at all, if you put the time in you'll reap the rewards. But it does give you the opportunity to get some nice epics if you're not in a raiding guild, and can only manage a group of 10 max.

Time = loot / money / epics / rank / reputation. Always has done, always will do.

Even tho I'm covered in purple, I intend to finish my SC set (just need chest and gloves) and turn it into DM. I want to look like an extra from Tron!

SB

[Steamboat]

To me, casual gaming is about not being able to give large chunks of time to warcraft. I might in fact play just as much every week as someone in a raiding guild, but the only time available to me is an hour in the morning and 2 hours at night. 5 days a week but I don't know which days.

With that schedule I can never raid because the guild wants a commitment of 5 hours every Wednesday and Thursday night, or something like that.

So I love the 0.5 set because I'm going to be able to do it without pre-scheduling a 5 hour chunk of time. Maybe I'll have to do a bunch of grinding, but that's ok. I will at least still be able to do it.

[swelt]

I agree with DotComm and Steamboat: the true "casual gamer" isn't level 60 and looking for something else to do. However there is a class of gamer that can't commit the hours (and importantly, matched schedules) demanded by raiding guilds. For them, the ability to have continued progression through loosely organised instancing (5man PuGs or small guilds with similar schedules) is very valuable. They are no less skilled/motivated/"hardcore" by nature than raiders, they are just under different time constraints.

Of course, there will always be people that are unhappy that their personal taste isn't accomodated, no game can be all things to all people, but I like the current direction that development is taking.

[Sarnat]

Those quests didn't seem so expensive to me.

The Silithus field duty quests are hardly casual, considering how long it takes to do it. They just dont require RAIDING.

[Krollin]

My biggest problem with what Blizzard have done is that you still need to spend a lot of time grinding which is just mind-numbingly -boring- and not enjoyable at all.

I am not looking for instant gratification, ie walk in, do a simple quest, get Epix.
What I would like to see is things like single-player instances which should be challenging enough to justify the reward you get. Quests that have different ways of completing them are seldom found in the game. They do exist and could be better used to help sort this problem out.

[Loriel]

I think the distinction isn't really between casual and hardcore players, it's between raiders and non-raiders. Some people can put quite a lot of time into this game, but due to RL commitments maybe not 5-6 hours straight (typically needed for a guild just starting MC etc).

So the Tier 0.5 Set is aimed at people who want to get rewarded for doing challenging 5-man and solo content, and I think they did a pretty good job with it.

Blizzard aren't goin to start handing out epics for free, so to me it makes perfect sense that you have to work for it. The old formula of time x effort = reward still applies, but for these you can do a lot of the work solo and the rest in 5-man groups. Good move by Blizzard, I think.

And naturally the half-rare, half epic Tier 0.5 Set will not be as good as the actual Tier 1 set - that would devalue the effort a lot of people are putting in to progress in MC.

I will probably skip this quest chain on my main (60 Priest) as I am currently doing MC and AQ20, so the upgrade will be too nominal to matter. I will however try to get this set completed on my alt (55 Mage). The new set gives the community more choices and options, which can't be a bad thing. If the set doesn't seem worth it to you, don't get it.

[moopy]

I seriously doubt that this is what you guys wanted to see. From what I understand, the 0.5 gear requires that you collect the entire blue set, grind a massive amount of stuff and fork out a ton of gold to get what I am guessing is about a 25% boost in stats.


Good grief. If collecting the tier 0 set is beyond you, maybe you should consider playing another game.. y'know like online backgammon.

It doesn't require a raiding alliance, it doesn't require a guild. The drop rate on set items is huge these days, compared to what it was. We went farming Strat for NR gear last night, and at least three set items dropped in that one outing, and this is far from uncommon.


Complaining that collecting the tier 0 set is beyond you isn't casual gamer, it's dead-at-the-steering-wheel wipe-my-bum-for-me gamer. Excuse me while I work out where I left the smallest violin in the world.

If you can't commit a contiguous hour of your time to the game, don't whine and demand that the game be screwed for everyone else with time management skills. Choose another game which suits you. Dungeoncrawls are one of the fundamental mechanics of the RPG, and if you play an MMORPG, the downside to that is that it can't be paused to suit you, due to the multiplayer nature of the game. Them's the breaks, rock'n'roll deal with it. There are plenty of offline RPGs of enormous quality, or things with simpler online modes with private servers (Neverwinter Nights and the like).

That aside, the tier 0.5 stuff mostly sucks, and isn't worth the amount of gold and stupid items that you have to hand in. The stats aren't all that great, and making some of them epic just pushes the repair cost up. Not so cool for people who only play in 30 minute stretches, as you're bound to be a regular paitient at the surgery of Dr. Wipe. I would be more inclined to keep the tier 0 stuff, and mix it with random blues, or if PvP is your thing, maybe get PvP armour when/if it becomes available to you.


Forcing people to 5-man 5 man instances rather than kiddie raid them, OTOH, is a very good idea. It might well help filter out some of the worst players, who assume that they are God's gift to their class because they can finish a relatively easy instance with twice the number of players that it was designed for, with only five or so wipes. Now, if only a way could be found to stop people just grinding to 60, then maybe the experience for the casual player could be improved. IMHO, the worst thing about being a casual player (and I have my casual phases, and my obsessive ones) is the complete 'tards that you find in pickup groups. Obviously, the kiddie raiders in their ROFLcopters are pretty crappy people, but nothing comes close to the grinders for sheer inability to play, wasting the time and resources of other players in a manner which defies polite description. I swear that people who bought their toons on ebay are often more valuable in a party than the grinders... /cower


Oh, and to Krollin:

There are a fair few quests that can be completed using multiple tactics. Compulsively doing red and orange quests solo for fun forced me to discover a few of those. I can highly recommend this, it's a lot of fun :)

[CobraDie]

Uhh, where to begin.

I think you misunderstood Osiris completely. I think you need to read his post again and maybe edit your post. Collecting 0.5 tier is hardly "beyond" him as he is clad mostly in Blood fang.

Sorry for butting in, but I get irritated with posts like yours. Read what your fellow man has to say, analyze it and THEN post your comments. Judging from his earlier posts I think it's safe to assume we can call him a hardcore gamer and thus not afraid to commit the time it takes to achieve endgame equipment etc.

I think it's a good thing when hardcore gamers try to look at things from a casual players point of view.. as opposed to those going around telling people to play online backgammon instead of being a whiner. Then again.. that's just me.

[Loriel]

Well, moopy's semi-ranting posts are pretty common on the priest forums - my suggestion would be to not take them too literally :)

I do fully agree with the statements regarding the revised instances, i.e. the new 5-man caps on BRD, Strat and Scholo. People will actually have to work to complete them now, in 5 man groups as was originally intended instead of PUG-zerging them with minim effort and skill required. As they are improving the loot tables for these instances, players will hopefully feel rewarded for the effort they now have to put in.

With regards to the set items, Blizzard have stated in their release notes that they will improve the drop rates and also introduce new drops and new bosses/loot tables. I think it is fair to speculate that they will buff BRD a bit, and that the set pieces will drop therein. I noticed that one boss has already been upgraded from a rare spawn to a fixed spawn. Hopefully these changes will make it easier for players to get their tier 0 set items, and also improve the chances to find a group for BRD. People need to run BRD to get their MC attunement and work on the Onyxia chain, while Blacksmiths need to go there for recipes / rep / mining. Beyond this, though, it left a bit to be desired (in terms of loot), so people rarely want to join a random BRD group.

In terms of preparing people for the new (and now more difficult) Strat and Scholo runs, I think Blizzard kindof have to create an equipment source that people can farm to get better blues, including their set pieces - and BRD would fit the bill. Otherwise it would be something of a catch-22 situation: people need to run Strat and Scholo to get blue items, but they also need their blue items to be able to run Strat and Scholo..

For me the game is more about the experiences than it is about the phat lewt, but any piece of equipment that helps me do my job better is a good thing, and I will invest the time needed to get it. A random PUG to 5 man Scholo in mostly greens would be a nasty wipe-a-thon, I think. Personal skill can to some degree compensate for sub par equipment, but some PUGs do not really have that skill level - so getting blue items (set items or others) would help a lot.

[swelt]

Dear god, I hope they don't try to force people into BRD. Most boring, overcomplex, overpopulated dungeon ever! Instead, they should put some set pieces in DM - the best ignored dungeon developed to date. Getting DM into the regular lvl60 circuit rather than making it the place people 'in the know' go to get their gear would be a great step forward in itself.

[Loriel]

I'm not at all crazy about BRD either, and I also think it is overcomplicated and just too big for it to provide a fun experience. So I'm not really hoping that they buff BRD, but that's what I think they will do. Note that I am speculating heavily here.

DM is one of my all time favorite instances, and it is one that has enjoyed very good itemization due to having been capped at 5-man pretty much from the start. DM East should be doable at around BRD levels, so I hope they add set items as loot there as well.

[Reeco]

I think solo, non-grinding stuff would be great for the casual gamer. Content that doesn't require 39 other people, who are organised and committed, would open up a lot of new experiences in the game.

[moopy]

Reeco,

I completely agree. Interesting solo quests are sorely lacking. Take a look at the hunter epic quest which involves trundling around killing demons.. it's very cleverly designed (though not without flaws), but feels really... well, "special" while you're doing it. What's more, no-one else is allowed to directly interfere.

The priest class quest is similar, though can actually be done in a group with other priests (who have the relevant items to even begin the quest). However, doing it alone is an interesting challenge, blizz actually un-nerfed to make it harder a couple of times too, which is rather cool.

Some more well-designed and challenging solo quests like that which actually reward skill would be wonderful. However, rewarding skill isn't a good business model, when you have a time-based subscription system. Currently a lot of the game is built around time sinks, and the tendency is increasing, not decreasing; witness the rep grinding "quests" in AQ or ZG. The trick is to lock people into long hauls and keep them onside declaring their own "pwnage" because they kept killing the same monsters for a couple of months, rather than because they actually bested some fiendish challenge.

However, for casual players, die hard lone wolves, or even people who just want a quiet evening's gaming, some killer solo quests would indeed be excellent. Like I say, blizz can do it, and have done it in the past. While it's fun to solo quests designed for groups of so-so players, sometimes it's nice to be set a proper challenge :)

Oh, and to CobraDie, take a little of your own medicine, work on your own reading comprehension already.

[Krollin]

Oh, and to Krollin:

There are a fair few quests that can be completed using multiple tactics. Compulsively doing red and orange quests solo for fun forced me to discover a few of those. I can highly recommend this, it's a lot of fun :)
What I meant was different paths through quest lines similar to the Lost Master quest in Darkshore.
Different ways of doing the same quest is upto the player of course and anyone can do that now.

[Krollin]

God forbid they make Strat and Scholo any easier.

Scholo in a 5 man group can be a joke sometimes, cleaning it out in 90 minutes is nothing special.

Strat is probably the most challenging 5 man instance in the game now but even then you can push through one side in 2 hours with little difficulty and Strat SS is now becoming easier!

[Coanunn]

I've never made it to "end game" content. My last major attempt was thwarted when my online clan finnaly after 2 years bought into the game and we had enough people to start our own guild actively playing but they all wanted to play on a server I wasn't on and due to having a high percentage of carebears and prettyboy fans they chose a RP server on Alliance side. So here i sit, level 20 in two days of work (OMFG THE ALLIANCE POISON QUEST IS A JOKE! Took me and 4 people to do the horde one at level 21, I solo'ed the alliance on in 3 minutes at level 20.1! Pickpocket the patroling guard, sneak to top of tower, sap elite guard, lockpick box, jump off at top and run out door at sprint. No killing involved! WHAT A JOKE!) and looking at 40 more levels till I can go stand around begging for a pug because my clan and now guild are not into raiding. If any of them ever make 60 I'll be surprised, that is not why they play the game. This leaves me in an awkward position, I can go play an alt in some big raid guild ON ANOTHER SERVER (as we have a one clan one server rule) or I can do PUGs which means I'll probably never see the true "END GAME" content as I don't expect many PUGs to pick up a rogue for those places. So I would love to see more 5 man "END GAME" content. A 5 man dungeon crawl can be just as hard as your big 40 man raid for each person in it. Are we killing ONY? No, but we are doing something that is hard for 5 people rather than hard for 40. That is the content I would like to see added. And gear in a 5 man dungeon that is "END GAME" should be the equivalent of the gear you get from the 40 man dungeons, because it should be just as much work to clear a 5 man with only 5 as it is to clear a 40 man with 40.

So I guess the long and the short of it.. Add more NON-RAID "END GAME" dungeons.

[galzohar]

Of course I don't expect to overcome a small challenge and instantly get an epic, but I also hate the idea of tons of non-challenging work being the way to get epics. There should be a reduction in time consumption and an increase in challenge taken to get non-raid epics.

[moopy]

Krollin,

You think? I always think strat is pretty easy until the end of each respective side. The stitched abomination trap one one side, and the rooms full of scarlet adds on the other certainly do spice things up for the unwary, though.. :)

I have always thought that 5-manning lbrs was more of a challenge, especially the ogres's head on a pike encounter. Plenty of things to trick the unwary, people hardly ever 5-man it, sadly...

Mind, maybe some of it is up to play style and usual group makeup, maybe you just cut through lbrs like a CO2 laser through butter :)

I see what you mean about the quest lines now, sorry, I didn't fully understand before. Part of this is probably due to the fact that I don't really remember the quest chain that you refer to in any detail, I think it was the one could involve making a moonstalker cloak at one point and rescuing a nelf in a cave, was that it?

I think you're right, more branching narrative structure in quests would be a lot of fun- you could have much longer and more dramatic quest lines, especially if there were mutliple routes between the "nodes" of progression; that'd give people an opportunity to pick the route that interested them most. It makes sense anyway, a rogue's way of getting things done should sometimes be very different from a priests, for example...

(awooga! change of tack!)

Sadly, I suspect that they will nerf those high-level instances when making them 5-man only. It's not an evil agenda, it's just good business sense. You make most money when you pitch your content squarely at the middle of the bell curve, so that Jo Average can win in a reasonable amount of time. It's a balancing act, I am sure they want the maximum amount of people playing for as long a subscription period as possible. Make it too easy, and people will finish it quickly, and get bored. Make it too hard, people will throw tantrums and stop playing. I think WoW has always been pitched between these two extremes, it just seems that blizz might have overestimated the mean ability of the player base in the past. I suppose it's fair enough to tweak things to make them as fun for as many people as possible, even if it does irritate me personally.

Scholo has been nerfed many times. It used to be a lot harder. Sometimes I wish that I had been playing since beta, so I would have been able to try some of the dungeons before they were de-clawed at all.

Ah well, mustn't grumble. Nraxxmas soon, more campy undead horror, and blizz are promising that this one will be really hard, so maybe they do love masochists too :)

[Draguss]

Maybe this isn't the thread I should put my 2 cents into?
Some have mentioned about the problems with grouping with "strangers" and then find out they don't have a clue. Yes, I've had that problem.
Back in EQ there was a player that got trashed by others. I watched and figured he was a "young" player. He was not used to playing this type of game and just needed some guidance. I worked with him and he bacame a pretty decent player. The main thing is he got to enjoy the game too. I even got to "play" with his mom a couple of times. She thanked me for helping him cause she was a single parent and the babysitter didn't spend time with him.
I have played with a "older" Shaman in WOW. I have been teaching them how to group with a hunter. We have been having a lot of fun together.
Yes, of course I have grouped with some that never wanted to spend time to learn and I never group with them again. I have grouped with some that play hard and fast but let me play my way.
So I guess I am saying the 5 man group will be a good way for many to play and enjoy the game.

For the Horde

[moopy]

Draguss,

I think we all start off as pretty crappy players anyway, I know I did.

The key thing is if people are polite and co-operative, if you have that luxury, everything else falls into place.

I found out that someone that I sometimes grouped with was the young son of one of my more regular partymates. I was astounded to discover that he was so young, as he mostly stuck in my mind as a pleasant and easygoing player who was good to have around. He was certainly no less mature than some of the "adults" you see playing the game and behaving in a frankly childish sociopathic manner, taking a break from their ROFLflooding to put their kids to bed.

I don't think being young or inexperienced is too bad an affliction, as long as the person concerned doesn't labour under the illusion that they have a divine right to order all the other players around in fragmented txtspk. Hell, that applies to all players, I suppose.

I think you put your finger on it neatly, willingness to learn is key. I know I sometimes take this to extremes by asking far too many stupid questions, but personally I'd rather look stupid for asking questions rather than by ruining the game for others by wiping them constantly.

However, I don't think any amount of clever re-engineering of the game mechanic will solve the fundamental problem of grouping with strangers- a lot of people are rude, lazy and stupid in-game, even people who wouldn't dream of behaving like that in real life. It's the old "internet tough guy" phenomenon.

That aside, I always get as much of a kick from helping people get their head around things that have eluded them as I do winning yet another shiny epic. As long as people are willing to make an effort and meet me half way, rather than demanding that I read the docs and think for them, I find it a very rewsrding process, as well as being good karma.

[Osiris]

Good grief. If collecting the tier 0 set is beyond you, maybe you should consider playing another game.. y'know like online backgammon.

It doesn't require a raiding alliance, it doesn't require a guild. The drop rate on set items is huge these days, compared to what it was. We went farming Strat for NR gear last night, and at least three set items dropped in that one outing, and this is far from uncommon.


Complaining that collecting the tier 0 set is beyond you isn't casual gamer, it's dead-at-the-steering-wheel wipe-my-bum-for-me gamer. Excuse me while I work out where I left the smallest violin in the world.

If you can't commit a contiguous hour of your time to the game, don't whine and demand that the game be screwed for everyone else with time management skills. Choose another game which suits you. Dungeoncrawls are one of the fundamental mechanics of the RPG, and if you play an MMORPG, the downside to that is that it can't be paused to suit you, due to the multiplayer nature of the game. Them's the breaks, rock'n'roll deal with it. There are plenty of offline RPGs of enormous quality, or things with simpler online modes with private servers (Neverwinter Nights and the like).

That aside, the tier 0.5 stuff mostly sucks, and isn't worth the amount of gold and stupid items that you have to hand in. The stats aren't all that great, and making some of them epic just pushes the repair cost up. Not so cool for people who only play in 30 minute stretches, as you're bound to be a regular paitient at the surgery of Dr. Wipe. I would be more inclined to keep the tier 0 stuff, and mix it with random blues, or if PvP is your thing, maybe get PvP armour when/if it becomes available to you.


Forcing people to 5-man 5 man instances rather than kiddie raid them, OTOH, is a very good idea. It might well help filter out some of the worst players, who assume that they are God's gift to their class because they can finish a relatively easy instance with twice the number of players that it was designed for, with only five or so wipes. Now, if only a way could be found to stop people just grinding to 60, then maybe the experience for the casual player could be improved. IMHO, the worst thing about being a casual player (and I have my casual phases, and my obsessive ones) is the complete 'tards that you find in pickup groups. Obviously, the kiddie raiders in their ROFLcopters are pretty crappy people, but nothing comes close to the grinders for sheer inability to play, wasting the time and resources of other players in a manner which defies polite description. I swear that people who bought their toons on ebay are often more valuable in a party than the grinders... /cower


Oh, and to Krollin:

There are a fair few quests that can be completed using multiple tactics. Compulsively doing red and orange quests solo for fun forced me to discover a few of those. I can highly recommend this, it's a lot of fun :)

Cmon, admit it, you're a little embarassed now that you have read more than one sentence of my post.

[moopy]

Hmm, not one bit. However, quoting an entire post to add a rather dull rejoinder does seem rather poor, on the other hand. I suppose it's not a top-post, small mercies and all that.

[Krollin]

Krollin,

You think? I always think strat is pretty easy until the end of each respective side. The stitched abomination trap one one side, and the rooms full of scarlet adds on the other certainly do spice things up for the unwary, though.. :)

Yeah, the approach to the end parts are fairly easy, you have the usual problems with adds and an Eye you don't deal with can spoil your day too.
The end of either Strat side is what makes them harder than Scholo, getting to the bosses in Scholo is a bit more difficult than Strat not by much.

I have always thought that 5-manning lbrs was more of a challenge, especially the ogres's head on a pike encounter. Plenty of things to trick the unwary, people hardly ever 5-man it, sadly...

5 manning LBRS is, apart from the Vulgon(?) summon, is pretty easy.
The head on a pike summon often causes you to be looking on as a spirit. What is nice about that is that it is an encounter you cause to happen, unless you start it off nothing happens.

Mind, maybe some of it is up to play style and usual group makeup, maybe you just cut through lbrs like a CO2 laser through butter :)

Pretty much yeah

I see what you mean about the quest lines now, sorry, I didn't fully understand before. Part of this is probably due to the fact that I don't really remember the quest chain that you refer to in any detail, I think it was the one could involve making a moonstalker cloak at one point and rescuing a nelf in a cave, was that it?

Yeap, thats the quest. When you have provided the cloak you can choose between completing the chain using "stealth" or "force". If you do one you cannot do the other. The alternatives have different rewards too.

I think you're right, more branching narrative structure in quests would be a lot of fun- you could have much longer and more dramatic quest lines, especially if there were mutliple routes between the "nodes" of progression; that'd give people an opportunity to pick the route that interested them most. It makes sense anyway, a rogue's way of getting things done should sometimes be very different from a priests, for example...

The nice thing about it is that it can provide more ways to acheive the same things, like gain rep as well as give chances to get loot.

(awooga! change of tack!)

Sadly, I suspect that they will nerf those high-level instances when making them 5-man only. It's not an evil agenda, it's just good business sense. You make most money when you pitch your content squarely at the middle of the bell curve, so that Jo Average can win in a reasonable amount of time. It's a balancing act, I am sure they want the maximum amount of people playing for as long a subscription period as possible. Make it too easy, and people will finish it quickly, and get bored. Make it too hard, people will throw tantrums and stop playing. I think WoW has always been pitched between these two extremes, it just seems that blizz might have overestimated the mean ability of the player base in the past. I suppose it's fair enough to tweak things to make them as fun for as many people as possible, even if it does irritate me personally.

Scholo has been nerfed many times. It used to be a lot harder. Sometimes I wish that I had been playing since beta, so I would have been able to try some of the dungeons before they were de-clawed at all.

Ah well, mustn't grumble. Nraxxmas soon, more campy undead horror, and blizz are promising that this one will be really hard, so maybe they do love masochists too :)
They don't just nerf the instances, which is a way of making an established player base go to the new, possibly more, challenging content.
The standard of items you get means that they also become easier.

The way things stand at the moment you either grind or you.. grind and hope you can get into a Guild that does Raids...
Poor choices still and the new content is nothing new, there is just more of the same.

[djiss]

I think the change in the patch will be good.
I considere myself as a "Hardcore-casual gamer". I play 3-5h every weekday and 0 to 15 hrs the week end.

I love challenge. I hate carebear.

For me, zerging a instance is nothing. Doing it with some strategy give a feel of achievement. Try to do a full Strath run with 2 warrior (1 prot, 1 arm), 1 pally (retrib), 1 druid (resto) and 1 rogue (me, ass/combat, no imp.Sap).

It was :
- long (took us 2 week, 4-5hrs each time try),
- hard (1 real dps class, no cc vs undead),
- rewarding (15-20 rightous orb, good rep with A.D, drop split into 5 and not 10, an epic, ...)
- a good experience. We use every skill/spell, every trick, everything we had to reach the end-boss. We learnt many thing about each other, the other class, some tactic.
- goddamn FUN! A good stress when you know if 1 die, probably everyone will die not too long after. You cannot just press button 1-2-3 until everything is dead, you need to use your brain too.

Now, these instance will be capped at 5-man. /Cheer Blizz.
The downside, carebear will be on whining-a-thon right after the change.

I hate farming. I mean, I hate doing repeatitive boring quest for month. I farmed BRD for my Barman Shanker. I've done like 6-7 run before getting my first one. First? yep It was so fun I`ve done that until I got 10 Shanker. I know, it useless since the shanker is main hand only so I can use only one... who care. I wasted my time, not yours. And It was not wasted since I had fun to do it. And I loved it cuz, it's hard, and it took only 20min to do. I can do 3 run during my lunch time at work :grin:
If Blizz can mix-up a bit of farming and some challenge, it will just awsome.
Exemple: the warrior quest. You need to farm some elemental in arathi highland, but you dont need to do it for week! And after you need to kill a lil boss. It the kind of quest I like.
Maybe Blizz can add a rare world drop item item (1% chance drop maybe?) who can give a good amount of rep to the faction you want?

I think the problem when Blizz try to had some stuff are:
- people who dont raid want them without having to built a raid group to do it.
- people who dont farm dont want to begin farming for month to get them.
- raider don't want to see joe-everyone running around with stuff equal to their raiding reward.
- if Blizz add stuff a lil bit easier to get it with a 5-man group, raider will get it easily, cause they already can get a group of 40... so 5 is just piece of cake.

Casual player are not bad skilled, they just don't have much time.
What I want to see (for my casual side):
More solo quest. I mean you can ONLY complete them alone. Like you can't finish 5-man quest with a raid group, you can't finish a solo quest with a group.
Blizz can add some rules like:
- you NEED to do a least 80% of the damage. So if you bring a lv 60 to kill thing for you, you fail. Or after you tap the mob, he become immune to every spell/hit who dont come from you.
- You cannot be healed by someone else except yourself (a debuff maybe?). So you can't bring your lev60 Priest friend.
- You can bring friend/group to take care of mob in the zone, you just need to kill the target alone.
A good exemple is the First Aid 225 quest. No one can help you.

A Solo instance. See that as a training room in any capital city. Don't expect have a group to help you. Don't fear to be ganked in middle of fight. YOU ARE ALONE. At the entrance you can grab the quest designed for YOUR class, and you enter a instance adapted to YOUR class and not designed for just 1 coockie-cutter build. It can be a chain, each quest you finish give you a key to go to the next part, like Scarlet Monastery. This kind of instance will test your skill, force you to find a way to resolve the puzzle. Force you to think and use all your ability. Push your class to the limit. It should be doable by a relatively short time, or put a timer for more challenge. Add a top ten best time. Even if you already done it, you can repeat it to beat the time of someone. If you hit the #1 position you got a yell in the capital city, like at Sentinel Hill when you kill Van Cleef. Hardcore gamer will probably finish them with ease and continu with something else. Carebear will just ignore them and whine. But the casual player who want to learn and have some adrenaline rush will be happy. It`s good for people who can play only few hour in row. Instead of running around with no idea what they can do in a short period, or joining a group just to leave in middle cuz they need to go, they can go there. The reward will scale with the level of difficulty of the quest.

[Osiris]

Hmm, not one bit. However, quoting an entire post to add a rather dull rejoinder does seem rather poor, on the other hand. I suppose it's not a top-post, small mercies and all that.

Is the quoting of your post poorer than a War and Peace rant against someone who's post you didn't even read? You should have left embarassing enough alone.

Let's say I was a casual gamer crying about lack of content. So what? An hour of day of focus? I know casual gamers that play this game 6 hours a day and don't achieve much simply because they like to play casually. They like to stop to smell the roses a lot and don't muscle through the pain of pugs or large guilds. The have no desire for power. There's nothing wrong with that just as there is nothing wrong with digging ditches or mopping floors for a living.

On the other hand, a lot of people that come to these forums and some real life friends of mine used to play WoW very casually and are now getting to the point where they want to see some endgame content. I started this thread because the concept of that transition facinates me and there is no better forum than this one for me to explore that concept.

90% of the people who come to these forums are either new or extremely casual. They don't judge or assume for the most part, they just ask questions. The other 10% are like me: People who like to contribute to the rogue community by helping less experienced players learn the finer points of the rogue class.

Of course one in every thousand people that come to these forums aren't looking to learn nor are they willing to help others. They just troll.

I suggest a wresting forum for that. I imagine forums of those sort are purely about opinion and frankly almost never about facts. So you can go there and tell everyone why you think the Undertaker is the best wrestler ever and why they all need to agree with you.

[Aerath]

I'm saddened a bit about these changes...

1) Force me to collect Tier 0 ? WHAT FOR ? It's a crappy set, easily surpassed by DM blues. It doesn't even quite fit my playing style and - frankly - the upgrade to tier 0.5 appears to be hardly worth it.

2) I'm really miffed they are cutting down on the raid instances.
Why ? Because there's people that like to raid together for fun, as a guild, that *gasp* won't get into MC. Or don't want to, at any rate. I have I think 0 loot left in UBRS. I still like going there with a guild run, for the simple reason that it allows us to bring 14 other friends. Now we will constantly have to leave people out of the fun, or - assuming not all can make it - we only have the choice of one Dungeon, instead of doing a scholo/strat/lbrs run for fun.
We had the option to bring lvl 57s along, as we had the space and they wouldn't hurt our chances at completing the instance. They can basically forget about going anywhere other than BRD for the next couple levels. Such fun.

[Giblien]

I think that the whole idea of the "Casual Gamer" in an MMO is somewhat laughable. World of Warcraft is not designed for people to just log onto for a couple hours a week and kill time, it is designed for HARDCORE gamers who devote 10's of hours to the game a week. Personally i don't think people deserve the High End gear if they aren't willing to play the game as much as others. World of Warcraft and other MMO's are a model for anything else in life: You get out of it what you put into it!...If it was easy to gain all of the high end gear, the game would lose its appeal, and get boring like so many other games do in a matter of weeks. They need to stop worrying about the casual gamers, and concentrate on what the hardcore people want. I know from a business standpoint you want to appeal to as many people as possible, but a game like this thrives because of its die-hard, addicted users...not the people who play for a few hours a month.

Giblien
(60 Rogue, Archimonde)

[Valas Azuviir]

World of Warcraft is not designed for people to just log onto for a couple hours a week and kill time, it is designed for HARDCORE gamers who devote 10's of hours to the game a week.


Might want to read up what the Devs have to say about that matter, because they've stated publically and repeatedly that WoW was indeed designed for folks to log on for a few hours and still get a sense of accomplishment. Which is one of the reasons why you can solo to 60.

They wanted to move away, in part, from the EQ mindset of the Raider being God and to hell with everyone else. And judging from the number of customers, they've managed to accomplish that.


They need to stop worrying about the casual gamers, and concentrate on what the hardcore people want. I know from a business standpoint you want to appeal to as many people as possible, but a game like this thrives because of its die-hard, addicted users...not the people who play for a few hours a month.

Giblien
(60 Rogue, Archimonde)

On the contrary, the hardcore players chew through content at an insane pace, they can finish off in a matter of weeks, dungeons or instances which have taken months to design. This leads to the same type of armsrace between players and devs, which lead to the creation, to use EQ as an example, of the PoP expansion, which wasn't done. The Devs essentially cheated and made the mobs/quest impossible to fullfill, because they didn't have the rest of the content ready yet.

Blizzard seems to want no part of such activities, though the initial version of BWL could be deemed a step in the direction mentioned above.

Casual players in the mean time, are just as interested in the game as the hardcores, have extensive social groups with whom they use the game as a chatsystem, and they take far longer to chew through the content. Meaning, less chance of burnout, and because there is still so much content for them to get through, you can take more time with the new material you're cooking up. Plus, because it takes them longer to chew through the content, they're also playing longer.

Longer in the sense of: Whereas, the hardcore raider could chew through some new content in say a month tops. The casual takes say 7 to 8 months, meaning you are gaining an additional subscription time of 6 to 7 months when compared to the hardcore raider.

Meaning, it's casuals who keep the money flowing into the warchest, and not the hardcore raiders.

[Giblien]

I agree that from a financial standpoint it is the casual gamer that keeps the money flowing to the devs, but i sincerly think that a game like this suffers severly if the hardcore gamers are not kept satisfied. Without the hardcore gamers, i think the economy suffers and there are not as many people on to quest with, PvP with ect. I have a hard time finding a decent AV group as it is, i cant imagine how it would be with only casual gamers. I (not a totally hardcore player, but certanly not a casual gamer either) think that people who play casually need to not complain that there is not as much high level gear available to them. Like i said in my previous statement, you get out of something what you put into it, and if they are not spending the same time online as the hardcore people, then they do not deserve the "Uber Gear" or "Phat Lewts". That is what people in this game spende their time doing, levling, and then working toward the best gear. (By the way, i am not meaning to come off as a "flamer" in my statments, i enjoy this conversation, so if you find something in there that is offensive, it is not meant to be...just a good discussion :thumbsup: )

Giblien
(60 Rogue, Archimonde)

[Coanunn]

I think that the whole idea of the "Casual Gamer" in an MMO is somewhat laughable. World of Warcraft is not designed for people to just log onto for a couple hours a week and kill time, it is designed for HARDCORE gamers who devote 10's of hours to the game a week. Personally i don't think people deserve the High End gear if they aren't willing to play the game as much as others. World of Warcraft and other MMO's are a model for anything else in life: You get out of it what you put into it!...If it was easy to gain all of the high end gear, the game would lose its appeal, and get boring like so many other games do in a matter of weeks. They need to stop worrying about the casual gamers, and concentrate on what the hardcore people want. I know from a business standpoint you want to appeal to as many people as possible, but a game like this thrives because of its die-hard, addicted users...not the people who play for a few hours a month.

Giblien
(60 Rogue, Archimonde)

FRANKLY I find the above statements insulting! Are you saying that if I can't spend my whole life in a chair glued to my monitor playing wow in YOUR idea of a good playstyle that I don't deserve to enjoy "end game" content when I reach that point? I have multiple level 50 characters in DAOC, and Realm Rank that I have acquired from numerous kills in RvR, and GUESS WHAT? I play that maybe 5 hours a week! I pay for the account so that A) I can play it when I want to do SERIOUS PVP, B) So my friend can have the extra character space to run a Necro Power Level GOD character for when he or guildies want to try a new class/race combination, C) so my friends' son can log in and play a game with his father occasionally. Guess what? In 5 HOURS a week, I have seen all the END GAME content in that game, maxxed my character, and probably my biggest complaint about WoW... I NEVER LOSE MY PVP RANK because some troll living in his mom's basement with no job or life can devote 20 hours a day to Raids and Battelgrounds where he hits 1 key and gains HK's or Epics for it!

Yes, the devoted player should have things like the 40 man raids to go on for the fun of doing those but do not state that just because a player has a life outside the game that he doesn't deserve just as much a chance to get "End Game" content that is tailored more toward them.

/rant off

[djiss]

Valas Azuviir, You just remove the word from my mouth :grin:
I was about to say the same thing to him...

Cuz, if they remove all the casual player, how they`ll pay their develloper to make you new content to explore? Think about it

Have you kissed some casual player and told them how you love them to pay the brand new content for you ? :wink:

--------
BTW guy, remember we got casual and hardcore player, raider and non-raider.

The guy who play 20-30hrs by week, we can't call him a casual player, and if he don't like raiding, he's not a raider too.

If he finished everything except the big 40-man raid, do he deserve to get new content or blizz must tell him to screw off?

[Giblien]

FRANKLY I find the above statements insulting! Are you saying that if I can't spend my whole life in a chair glued to my monitor playing wow in YOUR idea of a good playstyle that I don't deserve to enjoy "end game" content when I reach that point? I have multiple level 50 characters in DAOC, and Realm Rank that I have acquired from numerous kills in RvR, and GUESS WHAT? I play that maybe 5 hours a week! I pay for the account so that A) I can play it when I want to do SERIOUS PVP, B) So my friend can have the extra character space to run a Necro Power Level GOD character for when he or guildies want to try a new class/race combination, C) so my friends' son can log in and play a game with his father occasionally. Guess what? In 5 HOURS a week, I have seen all the END GAME content in that game, maxxed my character, and probably my biggest complaint about WoW... I NEVER LOSE MY PVP RANK because some troll living in his mom's basement with no job or life can devote 20 hours a day to Raids and Battelgrounds where he hits 1 key and gains HK's or Epics for it!

Yes, the devoted player should have things like the 40 man raids to go on for the fun of doing those but do not state that just because a player has a life outside the game that he doesn't deserve just as much a chance to get "End Game" content that is tailored more toward them.

/rant off

All i am trying to say is that you get out of the game what you put into it...and there should not be an "Easy button" for people who do not play the game as far as others. The casual gamer should have to earn his gear just like the hard core gamer. And whining isn't the answer to gettting what you want, working toward it is.

[djiss]

All i am trying to say is that you get out of the game what you put into it...and there should not be an "Easy button" for people who do not play the game as far as others. The casual gamer should have to earn his gear just like the hard core gamer. And whining isn't the answer to gettting what you want, working toward it is.

Dude, they dont want your epic drop, they want more thing to do to stay in the game than running BRS for the next year. They want more challenge doable with a smaller group. I assure you, if every casual player go away, before the end of the year, you'll need to find another game to play.

[Coanunn]

All i am trying to say is that you get out of the game what you put into it...and there should not be an "Easy button" for people who do not play the game as far as others. The casual gamer should have to earn his gear just like the hard core gamer. And whining isn't the answer to gettting what you want, working toward it is.

I am not asking for an easy button I'm asking for a HARD 5 man dungeon that pays off the same as a HARD 40 man dungeon so that those of us who don't enjoy devoting 20 hours a day to a raiding guild style of play so that I might get picked for the next run have options when we reach that stage in the game. And what should it matter if it takes a person a week to get to 60 or 3 years to get there? You think because you don't have other things to do with your time you deserve more rewards that other people paying just as much as you are for the game and getting to the same level in the game you are at do? I mean are you even thinking about what you are saying? CASUAL and Non-Raid doesn't mean they are carebears who are looking for an EASY BUTTON as you put it. I consider myself above a Casual gamer due to the amount of time I spend in game, but I am definately not in a Raid Guild nor is one an option for me. I am not asking them to make the current Raid Zones 5 man, I am asking for new zones designed for 5 man that are just as hard to complete and that the big Raid Zones be normalized to their rewards. From what I'm hearing any idiot can join a good Raid Guild that has a good tank and good healer and gain their epics because there is no real difficulty to these beyond requiring a higher number of people to complete them. One guy has posted they take in non maxxed peeps just for the fun of it. DOES this sound like it's worth an EPIC?

Challenge vs Reward not number of people vs reward or number of hours vs reward.

[Ryste]

My biggest problem with what Blizzard have done is that you still need to spend a lot of time grinding which is just mind-numbingly -boring- and not enjoyable at all.

I am not looking for instant gratification, ie walk in, do a simple quest, get Epix.
What I would like to see is things like single-player instances which should be challenging enough to justify the reward you get. Quests that have different ways of completing them are seldom found in the game. They do exist and could be better used to help sort this problem out.

In case you haven't noticed. Everything is grind, including life.

[Ryste]

I am not asking for an easy button I'm asking for a HARD 5 man dungeon that pays off the same as a HARD 40 man dungeon so that those of us who don't enjoy devoting 20 hours a day to a raiding guild style of play so that I might get picked for the next run have options when we reach that stage in the game. And what should it matter if it takes a person a week to get to 60 or 3 years to get there? You think because you don't have other things to do with your time you deserve more rewards that other people paying just as much as you are for the game and getting to the same level in the game you are at do? I mean are you even thinking about what you are saying? CASUAL and Non-Raid doesn't mean they are carebears who are looking for an EASY BUTTON as you put it. I consider myself above a Casual gamer due to the amount of time I spend in game, but I am definately not in a Raid Guild nor is one an option for me. I am not asking them to make the current Raid Zones 5 man, I am asking for new zones designed for 5 man that are just as hard to complete and that the big Raid Zones be normalized to their rewards. From what I'm hearing any idiot can join a good Raid Guild that has a good tank and good healer and gain their epics because there is no real difficulty to these beyond requiring a higher number of people to complete them. One guy has posted they take in non maxxed peeps just for the fun of it. DOES this sound like it's worth an EPIC?

Challenge vs Reward not number of people vs reward or number of hours vs reward.

How can you create "hard" and "challenge" 5 man instances?

Nothing 5 man, or 1 man is hard in this game. Everything becomes trivial once you learn it, 40 man require ahell lot more learning curve compare to 5 man. (Not that 40 man instances are hard by any means.)

I can practically blind fold my way through 5 man instances you have. As long as the basic make up of a 5 man instance is tank, dps, healer. You can't have it hard.

Look at people who win starcraft, warcraft, unreal tournaments, and ask how often they "practice" their skills in the GAME. People get rewards in games, loot is a form of reward. If they spend more time in a GAME, they get better rewards. Face it, you will never be as good as them, you will never be close.

The only way to get better in starcraft, warcraft, unreal tournament is to practice. That equals more time, and even time won't help some people just because they don't have the skills for it. Just like I am never going to be a basketball genius even if I play 10 hours a day.

The only way to get better in WoW is to raid. That requires you joining a raiding guild, NOT time. Because MC = 6 hours, ZG = 4 hours, Onyxia = 1 hour. That's over 50% of the raiding instances in there. You do not have to go to every raid, you do not have to feel obligated to go, because believe or not, raids go on without you. Since to get better (gear) in WoW does not require time, which is the most valuable commodity, I don't understand why soo many people are *****ing.

[djiss]

How can you create "hard" and "challenge" 5 man instances?

Nothing 5 man, or 1 man is hard in this game. Everything becomes trivial once you learn it, 40 man require ahell lot more learning curve compare to 5 man. (Not that 40 man instances are hard by any means.)

I can practically blind fold my way through 5 man instances you have. As long as the basic make up of a 5 man instance is tank, dps, healer. You can't have it hard.

Yeah it's hard to get and synchronize 40 guy like a ballerina show, but at the end you finish with a big tank, a big DPS dealer a big healer anyway... The boss hit 8 time harder so you need 8 time more dps and 8 time heal to survive...

[Coanunn]

How can you create "hard" and "challenge" 5 man instances?

Nothing 5 man, or 1 man is hard in this game. Everything becomes trivial once you learn it, 40 man require ahell lot more learning curve compare to 5 man. (Not that 40 man instances are hard by any means.)

I can practically blind fold my way through 5 man instances you have. As long as the basic make up of a 5 man instance is tank, dps, healer. You can't have it hard.

How to make a 5 man hard?

Well ...

1) Class specific content, force them to take something other than tank, dps, healer. Perhaps you have to have 3 priests in the group to open a certain area? Maybe you need two rogues to stand at either end of a corridor picking the lock or the party gets trapped inside? Perhaps you HAVE to have a hunter and use Track Hidden to find a otherwise unfindable mob to finish the run? These all make classes more viable for using their skills that no other class has.

2) Create areas in the instance where magic doesn't work and your group must use first aid, and potions to heal, and have non-caster DPS. Create areas where all Melee damage done to mobs is negated but trippled against players in the area of effect of some enchanted stone? Shut off certain abilities in areas.

3) Include bosses that are difficult for the number of players involved.

4) Make all ID's (instance dungeons) scale based on the number of players in them. If you go into MC solo it is set to be difficult for someone your level to do alone but if you go in with a 40 man raid it scales upward so that even trash mobs offer challenge and it is difficult for the 40 man group as a whole.

There are alot of ways you can get creative and make this content difficult despite allowing only 1 or 5 people rather than 20 or 40 to enter it.

I also am of the oppinion that alot of skills get over looked. Why is it that when doing an escort mission with a mage you can't port the escortee to the destination or to a safe location then escort them from there? Why is there no content outside the poison quest that requires you to pick a lock on a chest or door or to pick pocket a mob or even allows those as an option? What about an area of a dungeon that is only accessable through a sealed door, and that door can only be opened by swimming through a maze without any potions or spells cast upon you making a druids shape shift a necessary skill?

Look, I was a dungeon master for a LONG time, don't tell me there isn't a way to make content that is difficult for less than 40 people, I have often run games for 1, 3, 5 people, all the way up to a 17 person tournament game with 2 Game masters just to keep track of everything. MORE people does not make the content better, it just offers the additional difficulties of getting everyone on at the same time to do it, which turns playing this game into a job rather than a hobby.

[Ryste]

How to make a 5 man hard?

Well ...

1) Class specific content, force them to take something other than tank, dps, healer. Perhaps you have to have 3 priests in the group to open a certain area? Maybe you need two rogues to stand at either end of a corridor picking the lock or the party gets trapped inside? Perhaps you HAVE to have a hunter and use Track Hidden to find a otherwise unfindable mob to finish the run? These all make classes more viable for using their skills that no other class has.

2) Create areas in the instance where magic doesn't work and your group must use first aid, and potions to heal, and have non-caster DPS. Create areas where all Melee damage done to mobs is negated but trippled against players in the area of effect of some enchanted stone? Shut off certain abilities in areas.

3) Include bosses that are difficult for the number of players involved.

4) Make all ID's (instance dungeons) scale based on the number of players in them. If you go into MC solo it is set to be difficult for someone your level to do alone but if you go in with a 40 man raid it scales upward so that even trash mobs offer challenge and it is difficult for the 40 man group as a whole.

There are alot of ways you can get creative and make this content difficult despite allowing only 1 or 5 people rather than 20 or 40 to enter it.

I also am of the oppinion that alot of skills get over looked. Why is it that when doing an escort mission with a mage you can't port the escortee to the destination or to a safe location then escort them from there? Why is there no content outside the poison quest that requires you to pick a lock on a chest or door or to pick pocket a mob or even allows those as an option? What about an area of a dungeon that is only accessable through a sealed door, and that door can only be opened by swimming through a maze without any potions or spells cast upon you making a druids shape shift a necessary skill?

Look, I was a dungeon master for a LONG time, don't tell me there isn't a way to make content that is difficult for less than 40 people, I have often run games for 1, 3, 5 people, all the way up to a 17 person tournament game with 2 Game masters just to keep track of everything. MORE people does not make the content better, it just offers the additional difficulties of getting everyone on at the same time to do it, which turns playing this game into a job rather than a hobby.

1) When is limiting the group make up of the encounter consider hard? It's not hard, just forcing you to get certain classes.

2) Once the strategy is out on the web, it's not hard. Certain group combination will always make things easier because you have 5 cap group size and 7 classes to choose from. This is a MMORPG, the designers design with the mind that the encounter walk throughs will hit the web within hours of the new content release. How could you make it still "challenging" even after the walk through is on the web? The answer, require more than 5 people and require coordination. Even then, encounters in any video game is not hard.

3) I won't even comment.

4) Certain class excels at soloing, certain class excels at duoing, certain class excels at trioing. There are always the optimal group, scaling difficulty won't work because people in general will always choose the least risky/most efficient to yield the most reward.

How many group go in instances without a warrior and priest if they can have them?
Some might, because they can't find warrior or priest or they are with friends.

Why should I take 40 people when I can finish the dungeon by myself?
Why should I drive at the speed limit when I can go 200 mph without consequences?

This is not Dungeon and Dragons, I don't want to play D&D. You want either a rogue or an engineer for DM tribute runs. Warlocks make Garr's encounter easier. A game designer can provide choices, but he can not set requirements. Require this and that to be able to do X encounter is bad. We already have enough limitations in the game, we don't need more.

Mazes are not mazes anymore after the 1st hour.

Nobody should treat a game as a job, it's not Blizzard's fault a guild needs to spend 5 consecutive hours in the raid instance.

[Giblien]

You think because you don't have other things to do with your time you deserve more rewards that other people paying just as much as you are for the game and getting to the same level in the game you are at do?

Ok first off, stop saying that i spend my entire life in game, i find THAT insulting, because you know nothing of my playing style, habits, me or my life. The only epic i have is a shadowblade that i bought off the AH. I am not an epic'd out troll living in my mothers basment. In fact, i dunno how much time I will dedicate to raiding. All i am saying is that the people who put in the time deserve the better "lewt". And yes anything that requires only a five man instance would be inherantly easier than a 40 man raid, that is why i feel that...more time and effort = greater reward.

[Coanunn]

Nobody should treat a game as a job, it's not Blizzard's fault a guild needs to spend 5 consecutive hours in the raid instance.

Then who's fault is it? Who can change that so that those of us who can't find 39 other people who have the same 5 hours of their lives to devote to a VIDEO GAME with STRANGERS are allowed to enjoy the rest of the game?

I am not asking that the fun be taken from those who can raid/want to raid/do raid. I am asking for something of equivalent fun and reward for those of us who don't have that option/don't want to raid with 39 strangers.

This is not LIFE, it's a game that we are all paying Blizzard so that we can enjoy it. Those of us unable to play for the amount of time necessary to raid or unwilling to join a raid guild should have some form of content that is worth doing.

It might come as a complete and total surprise to you but it takes 0 skill to go from 1 to 60 in any class in this game, all it takes is time. Even the epics and pvp system only require time. If you do nothing but kill green mobs for 30 minutes a day you can reach 60 and you will soon be able to get epics. I am merely asking for something challenging that my group of friends and I can enjoy that also allows us to do more in the BG than leeach HK's off the group. I can't count the number of times I have gone into a BG and seen some guy standing at spawn long after the match starts soaking HK's because he was given an invite and is doing NOTHING.

But then apparently I am asking for too much to be allowed to enjoy this game without giving up my job, time with my wife, time spent in game with my friends, or any of the countless other things I could do with some of the precious time I have each day.

[AlexanderK]

Some people just want all the rewards without all the work.

If there's no challenge to a game it won't be fun.

The 0.5 tier set can be collected by doing 1 or 2 instances a week, it would only take longer time so the "casual player" dont have to play every day of the week. This is what blizzard intended, the possibility to get epics even though you only play 5-8 hours a week, granted it would take 3 months.

[djiss]

Ok first off, stop saying that i spend my entire life in game, i find THAT insulting, because you know nothing of my playing style, habits, me or my life. The only epic i have is a shadowblade that i bought off the AH. I am not an epic'd out troll living in my mothers basment. In fact, i dunno how much time I will dedicate to raiding. All i am saying is that the people who put in the time deserve the better "lewt". And yes anything that requires only a five man instance would be inherantly easier than a 40 man raid, that is why i feel that...more time and effort = greater reward.

and it insulting when someone tell me to go away and find another game, cuz WoW is not for casual when the designer tell to everyone otherwise. It not YOUR game.

[Ryste]

Then who's fault is it? Who can change that so that those of us who can't find 39 other people who have the same 5 hours of their lives to devote to a VIDEO GAME with STRANGERS are allowed to enjoy the rest of the game?

I am not asking that the fun be taken from those who can raid/want to raid/do raid. I am asking for something of equivalent fun and reward for those of us who don't have that option/don't want to raid with 39 strangers.

This is not LIFE, it's a game that we are all paying Blizzard so that we can enjoy it. Those of us unable to play for the amount of time necessary to raid or unwilling to join a raid guild should have some form of content that is worth doing.

It might come as a complete and total surprise to you but it takes 0 skill to go from 1 to 60 in any class in this game, all it takes is time. Even the epics and pvp system only require time. If you do nothing but kill green mobs for 30 minutes a day you can reach 60 and you will soon be able to get epics. I am merely asking for something challenging that my group of friends and I can enjoy that also allows us to do more in the BG than leeach HK's off the group. I can't count the number of times I have gone into a BG and seen some guy standing at spawn long after the match starts soaking HK's because he was given an invite and is doing NOTHING.

But then apparently I am asking for too much to be allowed to enjoy this game without giving up my job, time with my wife, time spent in game with my friends, or any of the countless other things I could do with some of the precious time I have each day.

First of all, I don't call my guild mates strangers. They might be strangers in real life, but I don't associate my online gaming experience with real life. So while I am in the game, I put my character's life in their hands. However, I don't go out and tell my friends in a party, I just got this purple loot from MC or whatever.

MC/Onyx/ZG40 are on 5 days reset timer. ZG/AQ20 on a 3 days reset timer. I don't understand why some people must spend their whole day in there.

Alot of problem many non-raiders have is that, they actually think they are better than raiders, because all the raiders do are zerg. I can understand why some raiders think they are better than non-raiders based on gears. This creates elitism from both extremes, that's why we have arguments. If I am better than raiders, if me and my friends are better than raiders, why can't I have the same loot as raiders from smaller 5 man instances?

Well hate to break it to some people, nobody is better than anybody else. In fact, raiders can actually work with 39 other people. Non-raiders on the other hand can't even work with more than 4 other people.

I agree totally nothing is "hard" in this game, leveling is boring as hell, I laugh everytime someone say leveling 1-59 is fun.

You (as in non-raiders) know what, give a chance to the raiding guilds, you don't have like them to begin with, but open your mind and accept maybe, just maybe raiding is not what you think.

Do you have to be in every raid to get loot? No.
Do you have to be on for 5 hours consecutively to finish the dungeon? No.

I understand listening to the raider leader explain things are boring. Well, you know what? It doesn't matter if you listen or sleep through the raid, if the raid kill whatever it's after, nobody would ***** at you. Want to have fun with 5 other friends? make sure you don't go to the raid if they aren't in. How hard is that?

[Giblien]

and it insulting when someone tell me to go away and find another game, cuz WoW is not for casual when the designer tell to everyone otherwise. It not YOUR game.

Exactly when did i say that it was MY game? I NEVER said it was my game so don't put words into my mouth. I never told you to quit either, All i was saying is that the game is geared toward those who put more time and effort into it and that the people who put in more effort deserve the greater rewards. So please get your facts straight next time you decide to spew things onto a forum.

[Ryste]

and it insulting when someone tell me to go away and find another game, cuz WoW is not for casual when the designer tell to everyone otherwise. It not YOUR game.

Is stating a fact insult?

Blizzard design a game, just like Honda design a car.

A company must have it's own vision, without it, the company fails. The company also understands it can't pleases all people.

If you go to a Honda dealership, tell them you don't like a single Honda model, demand Honda to redesign based on you. What do they tell you? Go buy a ford.

[Giblien]

Is stating a fact insult?

Blizzard design a game, just like Honda design a car.

A company must have it's own vision, without it, the company fails. The company also understands it can't pleases all people.

If you go to a Honda dealership, tell them you don't like a single Honda model, demand Honda to redesign based on you. What do they tell you? Go buy a ford.

LMAO...GOOD MAN

[djiss]

Well hate to break it to some people, nobody is better than anybody else. In fact, raiders can actually work with 39 other people. Non-raiders on the other hand can't even work with more than 4 other people.

.....

Do you have to be in every raid to get loot? No.
Do you have to be on for 5 hours consecutively to finish the dungeon? No.

I understand listening to the raider leader explain things are boring. Well, you know what? It doesn't matter if you listen or sleep through the raid, if the raid kill whatever it's after, nobody would ***** at you. Want to have fun with 5 other friends? make sure you don't go to the raid if they aren't in. How hard is that?

Cuz mostly raiding guild WANT people to come online often as possible. They mostly look at dedicated player, you must to be there the day they want you on. If you dont come enought, someone else will take the place, he's not better, he got more free time.

I know raid is hard as hell to organise, that WHY some people dont like raid, not because they CANT play with more than 10 players.

[Ryste]

Cuz mostly raiding guild WANT people to come online often as possible. They mostly look at dedicated player, you must to be there the day they want you on. If you dont come enought, someone else will take the place, he's not better, he got more free time.

I know raid is hard as hell to organise, that WHY some people dont like raid, not because they CANT play with more than 10 players.

Ok, so let the person who has 10 hours a day of free time to organize the raid. That's what the guild leaders and officers jobs are.

Raids do go on without you, as much as I would love to think I am an important piece of the universe, things happen without me.

Raids get less restricted as time go on, once things are mastered, it makes little difference whether 40 or 35 people are on. Personally, I don't want all 40 people in a raid all the time, and I always suggest my guild to STOP recruiting.

Less people = more chances for loot.
Less people = when I actually get on 2 hours late for a raid, I may have a spot.

It makes little difference to me whether we have 30 or 40 people on Onyxia raid.

[Coanunn]

You spew this and that about elitism but then you tell us to try raiding. Guess what I have raided in other games back when I was a kid and had all day to play games. I raided all the dragons in DAOC and have seen 2 of the 3 realm dragons die (I swear to god the Hib Dragon is immortal).

Guess what, no where in anything I have posted have I said I want to take ANYTHING from raiders, just that they aren't the only ones PAYING to play this game and therefore are the only ones that deserve rewards.

[Ryste]

You spew this and that about elitism but then you tell us to try raiding. Guess what I have raided in other games back when I was a kid and had all day to play games. I raided all the dragons in DAOC and have seen 2 of the 3 realm dragons die (I swear to god the Hib Dragon is immortal).

Guess what, no where in anything I have posted have I said I want to take ANYTHING from raiders, just that they aren't the only ones PAYING to play this game and therefore are the only ones that deserve rewards.

That's the thing, DAoC raiding is nothing like WoW raiding. WoW is alot harder to exploit than DAoC.

WoW raiding takes as much time as 5 maning scholo or strat.

Raiders are not the only ones paying the game, raiders are the ones paying for the game they likee. I absolutely hate Ford, guess what, I am not going to pay for a Ford. I go out and buy myself a Honda.

I am not telling you to raid... I am asking you to change gear.

You see 1st gear is only design to go up to 30mph.. you are already grinding it to 25mph... maybe you should shift to 2nd and see how it is.

[brandondash]

If you can't commit a contiguous hour of your time to the game, don't whine and demand that the game be screwed for everyone else with time management skills.
This statement is ridiculous. There isn't a single instance in the game after SFK that you can finish in an hour. Anything DM and above are at LEAST two hours for a PUG... and that's without any wipes, which of course you'll have a few of in a PUG... and that doesn't count the half hour to find the group and the half hour to organize the group... oh and the half hour afterwards to put your character in working order again for tomorrow. Don't come back talking about "find a good guild" either because that's what this whole thing is about! "A good guild" is a guild with dozens of 50+ toons on at any given time, with the right class makeup, and who aren't already doing something else... the other accepted name for that is a "raiding guild," which of course casual gamers could never get into even if they tried, which they don't.

Time management skills? Are you effing kidding me? What the hell kinda work hours do YOU hold and how many kids do YOU have? How about this, average schedule for everybody in my ENTIRE OFFICE is out the door at 6am and home after 7pm. Personally I have two kids who also need dinner and help with homework and actual... you know... REAL LIFE ATTENTION. That puts me in front of my computer at roughly 9 pm if I'm lucky. If I have any chance of being productive the next day I'll have to be in bed by 11pm or so. This entire thing skips paying ANY attention to my wife. Yeah great plan there.

How about you zip the lip and actually think before you throw a majority of the WoW population under the bus? A lot of us don't appreciate it.

brandon-

[Valas Azuviir]

I agree that from a financial standpoint it is the casual gamer that keeps the money flowing to the devs, but i sincerly think that a game like this suffers severly if the hardcore gamers are not kept satisfied. Without the hardcore gamers, i think the economy suffers and there are not as many people on to quest with, PvP with ect. I have a hard time finding a decent AV group as it is, i cant imagine how it would be with only casual gamers. I (not a totally hardcore player, but certanly not a casual gamer either) think that people who play casually need to not complain that there is not as much high level gear available to them. Like i said in my previous statement, you get out of something what you put into it, and if they are not spending the same time online as the hardcore people, then they do not deserve the "Uber Gear" or "Phat Lewts". That is what people in this game spende their time doing, levling, and then working toward the best gear. (By the way, i am not meaning to come off as a "flamer" in my statments, i enjoy this conversation, so if you find something in there that is offensive, it is not meant to be...just a good discussion :thumbsup: )

Giblien
(60 Rogue, Archimonde)

The problem you are overlooking though, that by their very nature the hardcore players cannot be satisfied, precisely because they chew through the content so fast. They want more and more stuff to keep them busy.

Just look at some of the complaints seen on say the official forums. Folks have put MC on farm status, still busy with BWL, but already complaining that they got nothing to do and that there need to be more instances they can do with even more phat loot drops. ZG and DM were introduced.. Still complaints. AQ20 + AQ40 introduced.. Still complaints. Once the Burning Crusade is released with its dungeons/instances and what not. More complaints.

EQ went the route of trying to keep the Hardcore raiders satisfied at all costs, end result?? As soon as a game comes along, which caters to the more casual players... *bam* Significant loss of casual gamer subscriptions. *bam* Lot of hardcore raiders defect as well, due to them not being satisfied and feel no longer challenged by the old game.

It's a balancing act between the casuals on the one hand, or perhaps I should call them the non-raiders, and the raiders on the other. With the full realization that the raiders cannot be satisfied all the time.

Ignoring the wishes of the non-raiders, due to being too occupied with the wishes of the raiders, just isn't smart business. And Blizzard realizes that, that's why Narraxas, or however you spell it and I can't be bothered right now to look it up, will be the last raid dungeon introduced into the game, until the release of the expansion.

And there will still be plenty of content added after the 1.11 Naraxxas patch. I mean, considering the class review issue, we're looking at 1.13 at least. Meaning, that the expansion is still quite some way off, and the raiders will have to be satisfied with AQ20, 40 and Naraxxas in that mean time.

Oh and I almost forgot. Some folks need to take a chill pill and remember the forum rules with regards to the non-flaming policy. True, I'm not a Mod, but then do you really want to have that talk with one of the folks in green, just because you let your jets overheat?? :grin:

[Coanunn]

This statement is ridiculous. There isn't a single instance in the game after SFK that you can finish in an hour. Anything DM and above are at LEAST two hours for a PUG... and that's without any wipes, which of course you'll have a few of in a PUG... and that doesn't count the half hour to find the group and the half hour to organize the group... oh and the half hour afterwards to put your character in working order again for tomorrow. Don't come back talking about "find a good guild" either because that's what this whole thing is about! "A good guild" is a guild with dozens of 50+ toons on at any given time, with the right class makeup, and who aren't already doing something else... the other accepted name for that is a "raiding guild," which of course casual gamers could never get into even if they tried, which they don't.

Time management skills? Are you effing kidding me? What the hell kinda work hours do YOU hold and how many kids do YOU have? How about this, average schedule for everybody in my ENTIRE OFFICE is out the door at 6am and home after 7pm. Personally I have two kids who also need dinner and help with homework and actual... you know... REAL LIFE ATTENTION. That puts me in front of my computer at roughly 9 pm if I'm lucky. If I have any chance of being productive the next day I'll have to be in bed by 11pm or so. This entire thing skips paying ANY attention to my wife. Yeah great plan there.

How about you zip the lip and actually think before you throw a majority of the WoW population under the bus? A lot of us don't appreciate it.

brandon-

Finnaly I get the feeling there is someone else in these last 2 pages that understands exactly what it means to not have 5 hours a day of continous time to dedicate to playing this game with strangers.

And before you start talking about "I don't call my guild strangers" realise my guild has been together and active for over 10 years. We have been in several games together and to expect any of us to give up that commraderie or the pride we have in our guild name just so we can join a "good guild" is ridiculous. There should be content designed for the smaller groups that is enjoyable and rewarding end game, there should also be content for the large groups that is enjoyable and rewarding end game.

For those of you saying you can't see leveling as fun in this game perhaps you need to stop, read a quests log and actually enjoy some of the content that does exist as there is a far larger portion of the game designed for the leveling casual gamer than there is even for the non-raid gamers much less the raid guild groups. How many of you have bothered to sit in the poison quest tower and listen to the guards talk? They talk about hating their job as guards in the tower due to the zombies right outside it. Takes a full 5 minutes to listen to the two guards talk back and forth just at the bottom of the tower. There is tons of CASUAL gamer content in this game that are very fun and interesting, why shouldn't the endgame include content that is just as fun for those who aren't raiding?

[brage]

Yeah it's hard to get and synchronize 40 guy like a ballerina show, but at the end you finish with a big tank, a big DPS dealer a big healer anyway... The boss hit 8 time harder so you need 8 time more dps and 8 time heal to survive...

This is true to an extent (read; MC). But... Tried Razorgore? I've yet to see AQ40, but the things I've read about it tells me it's not tank/dps/heal fights like MC.

Now, to my real point, which took about two weeks of reading whine-posts to figure out. The patch isn't directed to casual gamers, it's aimed at the non-raiders who still play much. Because, the REAL casual crowd haven't burned through all the content yet, hell they might still be leveling a character to 60.

Osiris, you seem worried that the quests are too time-consuming for the casual crowd, and that might be true. But for the non-raiding, more or less hardcore crowd, they're pretty well balanced I think. That they lack any new artwork and/or any creativity at all is another issue, but that's coming in the expansion.

[Coanunn]

This is true to an extent (read; MC). But... Tried Razorgore? I've yet to see AQ40, but the things I've read about it tells me it's not tank/dps/heal fights like MC.

Now, to my real point, which took about two weeks of reading whine-posts to figure out. The patch isn't directed to casual gamers, it's aimed at the non-raiders who still play much. Because, the REAL casual crowd haven't burned through all the content yet, hell they might still be leveling a character to 60.

Osiris, you seem worried that the quests are too time-consuming for the casual crowd, and that might be true. But for the non-raiding, more or less hardcore crowd, they're pretty well balanced I think. That they lack any new artwork and/or any creativity at all is another issue, but that's coming in the expansion.

I don't consider myself or my guild any less "hardcore" than a raid guild, we just don't enjoy raids. They don't match our playstyle. Now that being said, I agree that the new non-raid content is a step in the right direction and is by no means "too" time consuming for non-raiders. We play alot, and by not raiding we are grinding stuff outside rather than.. well .. GRINDING stuff inside the raid zone.

I guess my biggest complaint is that from what I hear the gear is shoddy at best in comparison with the raid gear. So this means my time grinding to get it is not worth as much as a raiders time grinding in a raid dungeon to get theirs. Even if I become a master of getting this gear and can put it on farm status for my guild and my whold guild is walking around looking like the cast of tron we won't be able to compete with people who have put in as much time but elected to raid rather than gather this new set.

A few things to consider, for PVP gear, should the best gear be provided to folks who PvP? Make the sets in the BG's that you can get by increasing your reputation with them better perhaps? Make the set you can acquire for reaching the higher ranks worth using in comparison to raid gear?

And before some big raid guild fan says " I spent the last 6 months raiding and you don't deserve to have as good a stuff as me!" think about this.. 1) It takes alot of dedication to raise yourself up the ranks in the PvP system and stay there, we are talking spending all day everyday grinding BG's and ganking while waiting in queue to truely reach the upper echelon. 2) It takes a TON of time to get your reputation up to the highest sets of gear in each BG. 3) If you stop 80% of the player base from being able to compete all you are doing is reducing the number of people who will compete, meaning longer waits for queues and fewer people to face off against.

No one is taking anything away from you raiders that are getting all bent out of shape, we are just asking that the content for non-raiders, which involves a LOT of work to do, be as rewarding as raiding.

Also, as I have said before and others have mentioned, why is all the content designed for grinding and not using other skills that each class has built in.

[Krollin]

The Grind

I don't have a problem with something that takes time to achieve, even when it takes a -long- time to achieve it but I hate having to spend 100's of hours doing the same repetitive things all the time.

Epics

Anyone who is complaining that the best items in the game are not being made available to everyone equally is forgetting that they are actually available to everyone. The thing is that Blizzard, quite rightly, have made it so that the reward is equal the effort you have to put in.
Simply put, if you want this gear you are going to have to work for it and this is good.

All those people who want those items made available through 5 man instances are not going to get them. This would kill off any incentive to form groups large enough to tackle the most challenging content. This would also ruin the game.

[Coanunn]

The Grind

I don't have a problem with something that takes time to achieve, even when it takes a -long- time to achieve it but I hate having to spend 100's of hours doing the same repetitive things all the time.

Epics

Anyone who is complaining that the best items in the game are not being made available to everyone equally is forgetting that they are actually available to everyone. The thing is that Blizzard, quite rightly, have made it so that the reward is equal the effort you have to put in.
Simply put, if you want this gear you are going to have to work for it and this is good.

All those people who want those items made available through 5 man instances are not going to get them. This would kill off any incentive to form groups large enough to tackle the most challenging content. This would also ruin the game.

By this do you mean to say that the effort it takes to push through 100's of hours of repetitive content grinding to get them or the near endless cycle of BG PvP necessary to get to the upper echelon of the rank system are not worthy of equivalent rewards to finding 39 other people with 5 hours to spare? I mean people have stated that once learned non of the big raid instances are difficult to do, that in my mind makes them worth less than the guys fighting for RANK 1 every day against other players. And I am not asking for the SAME gear, just an equivalent reward. Set A is only available by raiding and Set B is only available by grinding and Set C is only available to rank 5 and above but the same skill level player in Set A, B or C is just as hard to kill as one any of the other 3 sets. When players are specifically posting that the set isn't worth getting how are we Non-Raiders supposed to feel about the BIG NEW IMPROVED REWARD we are getting?

[Ryste]

I don't consider myself or my guild any less "hardcore" than a raid guild, we just don't enjoy raids. They don't match our playstyle. Now that being said, I agree that the new non-raid content is a step in the right direction and is by no means "too" time consuming for non-raiders. We play alot, and by not raiding we are grinding stuff outside rather than.. well .. GRINDING stuff inside the raid zone.

I guess my biggest complaint is that from what I hear the gear is shoddy at best in comparison with the raid gear. So this means my time grinding to get it is not worth as much as a raiders time grinding in a raid dungeon to get theirs. Even if I become a master of getting this gear and can put it on farm status for my guild and my whold guild is walking around looking like the cast of tron we won't be able to compete with people who have put in as much time but elected to raid rather than gather this new set.

A few things to consider, for PVP gear, should the best gear be provided to folks who PvP? Make the sets in the BG's that you can get by increasing your reputation with them better perhaps? Make the set you can acquire for reaching the higher ranks worth using in comparison to raid gear?

And before some big raid guild fan says " I spent the last 6 months raiding and you don't deserve to have as good a stuff as me!" think about this.. 1) It takes alot of dedication to raise yourself up the ranks in the PvP system and stay there, we are talking spending all day everyday grinding BG's and ganking while waiting in queue to truely reach the upper echelon. 2) It takes a TON of time to get your reputation up to the highest sets of gear in each BG. 3) If you stop 80% of the player base from being able to compete all you are doing is reducing the number of people who will compete, meaning longer waits for queues and fewer people to face off against.

No one is taking anything away from you raiders that are getting all bent out of shape, we are just asking that the content for non-raiders, which involves a LOT of work to do, be as rewarding as raiding.

Also, as I have said before and others have mentioned, why is all the content designed for grinding and not using other skills that each class has built in.

You still don't get it do you?

If 5 man "hard" instances yield the same amount of reward as 40 man instances, not many people would do 40 man instances.

It happened in DAoC SI epic instances, why take 40 man or 20 man when I can do it with 3 people + bot? It has nothing to do with "haha, this proves 40 man raids aren't fun." It's just like working out in real life, I enjoy it, but if I can be in the same shape by running 2 miles a day instead for 5 miles, by god I'll only run 2 miles.

40 man encounters in most part require more coordination and organization than 5 man. 1 person can wipe a the whole raid, 39 other people. You can say well 1 person can wipe a 5 man group also. The difference is, you can drop that 1 person and never group with them again. In a 40 man raid, we can't do the same.

Everything is a grind if you have to do it more than once. Leveling is grind, I leveled my priest and rogue to 60. It was grind even when I quest. Encounters do use class/race specific skills to make them easier.

Magmadar encounter is alot easier with hunters' tranq shot.
Onyxia is alot easier with dwarf priests' fear ward.
Garr encounter is alot easier with warloc's banish.
Razorgore is alot easier with Shamans' totem and warriors' piercing howl talent.

Those are just a few encounters made easier with specific class/race skills, are those encounters doable without them. Absolutely.

Do those encounters become a grind just like 5 man instances after the 1st time. Absolutely.

[Coanunn]

You still don't get it do you?

Fine I don't get it and my input is not important as ONLY RAIDERS MATTER.

/done

[Ryste]

By this do you mean to say that the effort it takes to push through 100's of hours of repetitive content grinding to get them or the near endless cycle of BG PvP necessary to get to the upper echelon of the rank system are not worthy of equivalent rewards to finding 39 other people with 5 hours to spare? I mean people have stated that once learned non of the big raid instances are difficult to do, that in my mind makes them worth less than the guys fighting for RANK 1 every day against other players. And I am not asking for the SAME gear, just an equivalent reward. Set A is only available by raiding and Set B is only available by grinding and Set C is only available to rank 5 and above but the same skill level player in Set A, B or C is just as hard to kill as one any of the other 3 sets. When players are specifically posting that the set isn't worth getting how are we Non-Raiders supposed to feel about the BIG NEW IMPROVED REWARD we are getting?

Winning never gets repetitive. If I win every BG I am in, I will do that everyday without calling it repetitve or a grind.

Don't compare the pvp reward to raid because pvp rewards are based on the server, the faction and the queues. Too many variables across servers. The system itself needs to be more normalized.

Don't compare the 0.5 tier to tier 1 or 2, of course they are not as good. Is it an upgrade compare to tier 0? Yes.

If you don't think it's worth your time to upgrade it, then don't. Nobody is forcing you to do anything.

[moopy]

The way things stand at the moment you either grind or you.. grind and hope you can get into a Guild that does Raids...
Poor choices still and the new content is nothing new, there is just more of the same.

Well, being awkward, I did none of the above, I had loads of fun collecting all the blues I wanted for my first priest, as well completing all the interesting looking 5-man quest lines and the like, and helping others do the same.

I did run out of things to do eventually, which is when the inevitable alt madness kicked it, and I had loads of fun levelling a hunter (sheesh, talk about "easy mode" :shocked: ).

However, you're right, eventually, you do come to a point where you use up all the pre-endgame PvE, and you have to either take the plunge into more PvP madness, or start raiding, assuming that you want to stick with the same character. Ok, so you're left with a few quests like the epic armour quests (the ones which need pristine hide of the beast, carapace, stitchings etc. for various rewards, I am sure you know what I am talking about). However, running UBRS a couple of hundred times with PUGs waiting for a time when it drops and isn't ninjaed isn't exatly stellar entertainment. It's the sort of thing which like AD rep seems to be designed to happen concurrently with normal questing; way too boring to do on its own. Where things like the quests for the Winterspring kitty (oh, how I'd love one of those) fit in, I don't know. That scale of rep grinding really is for people who don't blink very often.

Personally, I enjoy big endgame raids, though I know not everyone does. I am lucky that I am in a really fun guild which runs a mean raid and tries to keep it interesting for everyone, and respects the fact that people have lives outside of the game too, not an easy balance. Other folks might not be so lucky. There is rarely any middle ground between the idiot ROFLcopter guilds and the overly serious guilds with adolescant hitlers as "leaders". Like I say, I am lucky, I have nice people around me, this makes the content work. However, a lot of folks, probably most folks even, don't have that choice.

It's a tricky one though.. Blizz themselves say they want to introduce more content for casual level 60 players.. It seems quite hard to design content which is going to be challenging for a casual 60 with their tier 0 and blue gear, but not too challenging.. If it's too hard, a lot of people will give up, since immediate gratification is more readily available elsewhere by jumping onto a counterstrilke server, with no need for all that preparation, collecting, sneaking about etc.

Personally, I'd love to see some more lv 60 class quests. It always struck me as strange that priests and hunters need an epic drop to start theirs, pallies and warlocks don't, and rogues and druids are left completely in the cold. Some quest chains similar to those, with resolutely solo elements would be a flying start. Of course, however interesting these chains are or could be, it still doesn't address what to do with those characters afterwards. However, I really have no clue there, since I suspect that my brain has been scrambled by too much time in AQ40 (finally got my bug mount, yay).

It's not a dig at you, but you know, it's easy to say "this sucks, it needs fixing", what's harder is to actually think of feasible and constructive alternatives. Out of interest, if you were given a magic wand to wave at the developers, what would you want?

[DarksideKarma]

Yes their should be epics obtained by the people unable to join raiding guilds or to give a lot of time to play Battlegrounds and attempt to hit rank 14. I wouldn't think it fair to not reward everybody who plays the game, and a lot of people want to better their gear but can't because they reach a cap. The rewards though should not be on par with 40 man raid groups or HK grinding.

By their choice or not they don't put in the time and effort that I put in and it would be unfair that they had equal rights to the gear that I received. If that was the case 40 man raiding wouldn't exist and everybody would be capped with the best items. The hardcore players would have them right away and with nothing else to do they would get bored and quit. Blizzard did right by implementing the .5 tier set. It gives epics and upgrades to keep the casual busy and allow them to receive epic sets without having to spend 5-6 hours a day learning an encounter or relying on 39 other people.

Even though the set isn't the greatest in the world it's an upgrade for them and it doesn't rival our tier 1/2 sets and rightfully so. It's a delicate balance that Blizzard has to keep between the casual and hardcore gamer to keep each side happy and I think they're doing a good job by adding these quests and rewards.

[swaldman]

Hmm. I haven't yet reached 60, but here's the way that I see it at present:

- When I get to 60, I probably won't be able to raid due to Having A Life.

- When I play a single-player game, it usually has a limited amount of content and then it's done and finished with.

- On the way to 60, I have enjoyed as much content as many single-player games. OK, the quests aren't very imaginative and so by these standards WoW is pretty sub-standard, but this is made up for by the social element.

- When I reach 60, if I get bored, I can cancel my subscription in the same way that I would finish with a single-player game.

- Alternatively, in the same way that many single-player games let you play twice, once on each side, I could start a new character as Hoarde and play to 60 again. I probably wouldn't, as I would probably get bored, in the same way that I generally don't play the single-player games the second time.

Yes, it would be nice if there were quests after 60. But I figure that if there aren't, and if I can't raid, I can simply stop.

[Ryste]

Hmm. I haven't yet reached 60, but here's the way that I see it at present:

- When I get to 60, I probably won't be able to raid due to Having A Life.

- When I play a single-player game, it usually has a limited amount of content and then it's done and finished with.

- On the way to 60, I have enjoyed as much content as many single-player games. OK, the quests aren't very imaginative and so by these standards WoW is pretty sub-standard, but this is made up for by the social element.

- When I reach 60, if I get bored, I can cancel my subscription in the same way that I would finish with a single-player game.

- Alternatively, in the same way that many single-player games let you play twice, once on each side, I could start a new character as Hoarde and play to 60 again. I probably wouldn't, as I would probably get bored, in the same way that I generally don't play the single-player games the second time.

Yes, it would be nice if there were quests after 60. But I figure that if there aren't, and if I can't raid, I can simply stop.

If by thinking you can't raid because you have a life and raiders don't, makes you feel better, good for you.

[DarksideKarma]

There's also quests after 60 and unlike single player games content continues to be added.

[swaldman]

If by thinking you can't raid because you have a life and raiders don't, makes you feel better, good for you.

*sigh*

OK, sorry if I offended people with this. I was attempting to be faintly humorous. However... so far as I can tell, most raiding guilds like people to be able to commit to certain evenings a week, and so on. This is fair enough as otherwise they would never have enough of the right people on at the same time.

This is not something that I can commit to. Sometimes I arrange to see friends some evenings. Sometimes I have to work late. Sometimes I have to travel abroad for work.

I guess that some people who have a more rigid routine are able to mix WoW raiding and life away from the keyboard. It might be fairer to say that I suspect that I won't be able to raid because my lifestyle is not compatible with raiding. Maybe I'll be proved wrong.

[Ryste]

*sigh*

OK, sorry if I offended people with this. I was attempting to be faintly humorous. However... so far as I can tell, most raiding guilds like people to be able to commit to certain evenings a week, and so on. This is fair enough as otherwise they would never have enough of the right people on at the same time.

This is not something that I can commit to. Sometimes I arrange to see friends some evenings. Sometimes I have to work late. Sometimes I have to travel abroad for work.

I guess that some people who have a more rigid routine are able to mix WoW raiding and life away from the keyboard. It might be fairer to say that I suspect that I won't be able to raid because my lifestyle is not compatible with raiding. Maybe I'll be proved wrong.

Most if not all raiding guilds use Ventrillo or Teamspeak, if you are able to sit down and listen to the raid leader explain a certain encounter for the 1st time for 5 minutes you are fine.

If you are a healer class and actually have lesser level of heals on your hot bar instead of using highest level all the time, you are fine.

If you are a dps class and can understand the concept of agro management, the concept of sustain dps instead of burst dps you are fine.

If you are anyone but the main tank, you bring health pot/mana pot/bandages to raids, you are fine.

[DarksideKarma]

Not all guilds are as strict as you think. Yes, you do have the hardcore guilds that raid 6 days a week from 5-11PM but there are also people that have created guilds with casualness in mind. There's a guild my RL friend runs on my server that raids two days a week. Granted they haven't stepped foot into Blackwing Lair yet they've only been around a few months and have gotten to Ragnaros. Most of these people work, go out, have other engagements but they're able to put aside 10 hours a week to try and clear some content.

Check around on your servers forums and find out who's recruiting and what their schedule is, maybe it's compatible with yours. There are both types of raiders, casual and hardcore. Just like there are guildless casual players and hardcore players. It's up to you to find or create something if you want to encounter the entire content this game has to offer or if you're gonna toss it after you hit 60.

[swaldman]

Not all guilds are as strict as you think. Yes, you do have the hardcore guilds that raid 6 days a week from 5-11PM but there are also people that have created guilds with casualness in mind. There's a guild my RL friend runs on my server that raids two days a week.


That's encouraging. Though the important thing is that they don't get angry if there are occasional weeks when you can't make those days. Maybe there's hope... :-)

[Ryste]

That's encouraging. Though the important thing is that they don't get angry if there are occasional weeks when you can't make those days. Maybe there's hope... :-)

That's what I thought when I first started raiding, but raids go on without you. None of us are inreplaceble..

[Osiris]

I don't consider myself or my guild any less "hardcore" than a raid guild, we just don't enjoy raids. They don't match our playstyle.

A lot of you are getting defensive. Not so much the quote above, but it does demonstrate what I mean.

No one wants to be classified. I hate being called a sales guy or being called a type "A" personality. I'm just who I am.

In 3.0 of my rogue guide I'm going to find a nice politically correct term for raiders and non-raiders. But even with saying "non-raider" someone is going to get offended.

Is Coanunn less "hardcore" than me? Yes. I probably have more money, more level 60's, have done UBRS more times, have more lifetime kills and/or more played time across all of my toons. Does that make me better than him or more important than him? Hell no.

It's no different than me and my CEO. Am I weak or less of a person for not climbing the corporate ladder like he did? No way. My definition of quality of life is much different than his. Not better, not worse.

I choose to have the best toys and kill the toughest bosses. I pay a price to do so. My game experience is MUCH more stressful because of it. I'd love to have one night next week where I don't have to farm for tubers, dreamfoil and cash just to attend a raid. Heck, I'd like to have a day where I don't have to raid. We just opened the gates to AQ so now I have ZG, MC, Ony, BWL, AQ20 and AQ40 to run my guild through. While I type this I have recieved 5 instant messages from guildies asking what were doing tonight.

Frankly I wouldn't mind a day to just go into AV and empty a few quivers on some gnome faces with my hunter.....drunk. :)

It's not that bad, nor does it have to be so hardcore. You don't even have to be in some "mindless zerg guild". You can frankly spend one day a week in MC. Doing so will mean very slow progression, but so what? Go in there on wednesday and kill 2 bosses. Who knows, a year later you might be killing Luci to Rag in less than 3 hours. You don't need to go back in on Thursday and you don't need a 12 hour session on Saturday to beat MC in light blue gear.

I'm not pitching it. Play anyway you folks want. But what facinates me lately is the sudden surge I am seeing of people moving into MC a year after the content was added. Real life friends of mine are calling me on the phone asking for strats for Golemagg, my PM box fills up every day here at WWN. Half of them are "Rate my build" questions and the other half are how do I do XYZ in MC/Ony.

You don't have to be in a guild that makes everyone cough up blood until they can say they are the first to beat every boss on their server.

I think that everyone agrees that there should be an equal risk/reward for raiders and non-raiders and I'm happy to see that the gap has closed just a bit between the two.

Just don't get caught up on silly things like titles. Hardcore and Power Gamer doesn't define the quality of the person. It doesn't even quantify the importance of a gamer.

[brage]

Just wanna add my two cents on the raider/hardcore/no life-issue.

My guild raids three days a week. 20.00-23.00/.30ish, on monday, thursday and sunday, plus a session from 14.00-18.00 on sundays too. We are currently at Chromaggus.

Oh, raiding all those days and hours sound too much for you? Well, no problem. Me for example, I almost never raid sundays, simply because I can't. So basically, I raid around 10 hours a week.

Oh, you don't wanna set aside monday and thursday night? Well, don't, just let the officers know that you are going drinking (I'm attending Uni, so there is quite a bit of drinking, but I try to put that on tuesdays/wednesday/saturday), hanging with mates, dating, working, feeding the kids, or whatever keeps you from attending the raid.

Just try to attend as much as you can, and be 100% there when you do, and the guild isn't any worse off. Maybe this kind of mature, casual raiding guild is rare, but I sure hope there are more of them. Again, the point is: Be casual when it comes to raid days and hours, but be hardcore when you raid, and the guild will progress very, very well.

Edit: Ofcourse we have more hardcore players in the guild too, who raid ZG and AQ20 on the other days. The thing is, even if you only raid 10 hours a week, doesn't mean you can't check the strats and such, thus being very well prepared for encounters.

[Osiris]

Just wanna add my two cents on the raider/hardcore/no life-issue.

My guild raids three days a week. 20.00-23.00/.30ish, on monday, thursday and sunday, plus a session from 14.00-18.00 on sundays too. We are currently at Chromaggus.

Oh, raiding all those days and hours sound too much for you? Well, no problem. Me for example, I almost never raid sundays, simply because I can't. So basically, I raid around 10 hours a week.

Oh, you don't wanna set aside monday and thursday night? Well, don't, just let the officers know that you are going drinking (I'm attending Uni, so there is quite a bit of drinking, but I try to put that on tuesdays/wednesday/saturday), hanging with mates, dating, working, feeding the kids, or whatever keeps you from attending the raid.

Just try to attend as much as you can, and be 100% there when you do, and the guild isn't any worse off. Maybe this kind of mature, casual raiding guild is rare, but I sure hope there are more of them. Again, the point is: Be casual when it comes to raid days and hours, but be hardcore when you raid, and the guild will progress very, very well.

Some guilds just aren't cool with that. If everyone had that attitude (and you're not wrong to feel that way) your guild would have to take 120 different people into these dungeons. In my experience that slows the rate of progression to about one fifth what it would be if you had the same 40 people going in every day.

We have 3 manditory nights a week. I raid on 6 days but I am also the guild leader and raid leader. The average person in my guild has 4 days including friday nights and all day saturday to party it up.

Time management is everything when in a raiding guild.

[Coanunn]

Just wanna add my two cents on the raider/hardcore/no life-issue.

My guild raids three days a week. 20.00-23.00/.30ish, on monday, thursday and sunday, plus a session from 14.00-18.00 on sundays too. We are currently at Chromaggus.

Oh, raiding all those days and hours sound too much for you? Well, no problem. Me for example, I almost never raid sundays, simply because I can't. So basically, I raid around 10 hours a week.

Oh, you don't wanna set aside monday and thursday night? Well, don't, just let the officers know that you are going drinking (I'm attending Uni, so there is quite a bit of drinking, but I try to put that on tuesdays/wednesday/saturday), hanging with mates, dating, working, feeding the kids, or whatever keeps you from attending the raid.

Just try to attend as much as you can, and be 100% there when you do, and the guild isn't any worse off. Maybe this kind of mature, casual raiding guild is rare, but I sure hope there are more of them. Again, the point is: Be casual when it comes to raid days and hours, but be hardcore when you raid, and the guild will progress very, very well.

1) I must be crazy for even attempting to come back to this thread.
2) This is a great post about what makes a RAIDER a CASUAL GAMER too!

Now, here is the point you guys seem to have missed from my earlier posts. I am in a guild! I just gave up leadership of a guild I have been in for over 6 months on WoW that was able to do End Game Content Raids because MY GUILD bought the game. We have played every game we go to as a guild together for 10+ years! We had 10 people finnaly playing so now we have our guild, in less than an hour we had a tabard on every member (that is 10+ gold in one hour at level 1 on a new server with no help or friends playing a faction none of us ever played before. We are not "less hardcore") plus 10 slot bags for everyone. We are very dedicated to the game, but there are several of those people who will possibly never reach level 60 due to having such busy lifestyles they will play this game on average 5 hours a month. One have one member who owns his own race team as well as has a day job, a family farm and is in school for his Masters in programming, when he gets on he blocks off 3-5 hours but then we don't see him again in game or even on vent for 2 weeks or more and lives in Wisconsin while another is a stay at home student in Australia. How do you plan a MC raid with 10 people who may or may not be on at the same time? You don't. We don't have enough people, who can dedicate an hour next sunday at 0200 till 0300 GMT to even have a chance.

We are non-raiders. There is now this new non-raider content. What are we getting as feedback for this gear in testing? "Not worth it, grind 100+ hours for less than a 5% upgrade?" Are we really supposed to feel that Blizzard is encouraging us to join in AV if our gear is going to be so subpar that we have no chance of competing?

Look, I have never said make the same piece of armor available from MC, BWL, AQ20, AQ40, ZG available to non-raiders. Just make gear that is competitive to it. You want the NightSlayer set with all it's bonuses you raid, you want the new non-raid content set you spend the next 100+ hours of your life with your guild group kneed deep in bodies staring at the same terrain and images. Or better yet make a different challenge that is worthy of better gear.

I am not asking that the armor I get be the same, just that it be of a par that makes it so that when I do get enough people on to run a 5man group through the BG on Vent we have a chance of actually doing more than getting one of each of us in the other raid groups and leaching HK's off you raiders. We don't want to be raiders or to wear raider gear, we just don't want to be reduced to being your "fodder" and "pointless" either.

but then I'm probably missing the point that because I'm not a raider in a raid guild I'm not worthy again.

[Ryste]

1) I must be crazy for even attempting to come back to this thread.
2) This is a great post about what makes a RAIDER a CASUAL GAMER too!

Now, here is the point you guys seem to have missed from my earlier posts. I am in a guild! I just gave up leadership of a guild I have been in for over 6 months on WoW that was able to do End Game Content Raids because MY GUILD bought the game. We have played every game we go to as a guild together for 10+ years! We had 10 people finnaly playing so now we have our guild, in less than an hour we had a tabard on every member (that is 10+ gold in one hour at level 1 on a new server with no help or friends playing a faction none of us ever played before. We are not "less hardcore") plus 10 slot bags for everyone. We are very dedicated to the game, but there are several of those people who will possibly never reach level 60 due to having such busy lifestyles they will play this game on average 5 hours a month. One have one member who owns his own race team as well as has a day job, a family farm and is in school for his Masters in programming, when he gets on he blocks off 3-5 hours but then we don't see him again in game or even on vent for 2 weeks or more and lives in Wisconsin while another is a stay at home student in Australia. How do you plan a MC raid with 10 people who may or may not be on at the same time? You don't. We don't have enough people, who can dedicate an hour next sunday at 0200 till 0300 GMT to even have a chance.

We are non-raiders. There is now this new non-raider content. What are we getting as feedback for this gear in testing? "Not worth it, grind 100+ hours for less than a 5% upgrade?" Are we really supposed to feel that Blizzard is encouraging us to join in AV if our gear is going to be so subpar that we have no chance of competing?

Look, I have never said make the same piece of armor available from MC, BWL, AQ20, AQ40, ZG available to non-raiders. Just make gear that is competitive to it. You want the NightSlayer set with all it's bonuses you raid, you want the new non-raid content set you spend the next 100+ hours of your life with your guild group kneed deep in bodies staring at the same terrain and images. Or better yet make a different challenge that is worthy of better gear.

I am not asking that the armor I get be the same, just that it be of a par that makes it so that when I do get enough people on to run a 5man group through the BG on Vent we have a chance of actually doing more than getting one of each of us in the other raid groups and leaching HK's off you raiders. We don't want to be raiders or to wear raider gear, we just don't want to be reduced to being your "fodder" and "pointless" either.

but then I'm probably missing the point that because I'm not a raider in a raid guild I'm not worthy again.

Make an alliance with other guilds.

That's 1 solution, there are plenty of small guilds do 40 man raids with 2, 3, 4 other guilds. You don't need to be all in the same guild to raid.

[Ryste]

Some guilds just aren't cool with that. If everyone had that attitude (and you're not wrong to feel that way) your guild would have to take 120 different people into these dungeons. In my experience that slows the rate of progression to about one fifth what it would be if you had the same 40 people going in every day.

We have 3 manditory nights a week. I raid on 6 days but I am also the guild leader and raid leader. The average person in my guild has 4 days including friday nights and all day saturday to party it up.

Time management is everything when in a raiding guild.

I agree, a static set of people will make progress faster.

For example, last night ZG raid took 5-6 hours to finish than the normal 3.5 hours because we took many new people to the dungeon.

I used that time to spend time with family and let the other people get some experience. I don't raid if I don't want to, it's never mandatory in my guild. We are currently on Vael after about 2 months of raiding.

[brage]

Some guilds just aren't cool with that. If everyone had that attitude (and you're not wrong to feel that way) your guild would have to take 120 different people into these dungeons. In my experience that slows the rate of progression to about one fifth what it would be if you had the same 40 people going in every day.

We have 3 manditory nights a week. I raid on 6 days but I am also the guild leader and raid leader. The average person in my guild has 4 days including friday nights and all day saturday to party it up.

Time management is everything when in a raiding guild.

Well, obviously not every guild feels that way. While we are closing in on 5th place on server progression, we'll never get any server first kills without being more like your guild.

I may have created an image of myself as quite the slacker. This isn't the case. I'm striving for 100% attendance monday and thursday, and I'm pretty close. Those are arguably the most important days too, with BWL progression in sight, instead of MC farming on sundays. In addition, I'm very active on strategy discussion and such.

What I tried to say, was that my guild doesn't kick a person for dropping raids for real life issues. Like I can't attend sundays, quite a few others have the same problem with that day, or other days. Not all guilds demand 90% attendance, as long as you focus and contribute 100% while there.

[DarksideKarma]

The armor is an upgrade for Shadowcraft and it's lesser then Nightslayer. It's in between, it's epic and it can be done with less then 20 people. You don't have to schedule nights to complete it, it can be done at your own pace and on your own terms. Isn't that what you're asking for? Of course it's not worth it to grind 100+ hours to the people that can go to Molten Core, but for the people that can't/wont its perfect.

[Edinho]

Blizzard are going to have more of these problems cropping up. IMO they would have been better to leave it as it was, most people were happy with it. I would like them to address the shockingly poor drops in BRD and lbrs at least make them blue.

Ive been in a mc raiding guild and it just was not for me, maybe it was just too hardcore, i dunno.

For me I just focus on enjoying the game for what it is. Someone said earlier that noone enjoys leveling 1-59, well guess what i do. I certianly enjoy it more than endgame content.

At the end of the day wow is a great game but its nothing new and blizzard are struggling to come up with new ideas, if you are getting fed up of it cancel the subs and find something else. I know i will.

[Rylan]

Wow, there are a lot of clowns in this thread.

Can I tell you hardcore raiders something that might upset you a little? The majority of casual players aren't interested in you. We don't even think about you.

When we see you in IF in all your gear we examine you and guess what? We're looking at the gear, we don't even read your name. You are nothing special to us, you simply do not register on our radar. So by looking down on us you're only fooling yourself, not everyone else. We look at your gear and think "That'd be nice" or "nice stats" but we don't get this burning desire inside of us to have what you have.

The fact that you can get 39 other people together at the same time doesnt mean you're a better player or person. Let's be fair, you aren't even getting that many people together in the first place are you? You wait for someone like Osiris to tell you there's a raid on between X and Y hours and you turn up because you have nothing else to do.

I know it isnt all of you but the sad fact is that a great deal of the hardcore players are sitting in Mums basement, don't have a job, wouldn't know what to do with a girl if they ever met one. These peoples lives are skewed horribly and we have to listen to them whining about how 95% of the playerbase should find another game. Apologies to all of you who do hold down a job and a social life and still find time to do MC and BWL but guaranteed you know who I mean better then I do.

As a casual player I will tell you what I want.

If you spend 8 hours raiding with 40 men to get 1 great epic. I want to be able to split that 8 hours up into 2 sessions of 4 hours and get the same epic, still with 40 people.

If you can get an epic by spending 40 hours in Molten Core I want a 40 hour long quest which can get me something similar.

I'm not saying that I want what you have. I don't care about the gear you have after 3 months of BWL, or that in Battlegrounds you have an advantage. What I do want is for there be some recognition at Blizzard that I've been playing this game since the North American beta, for 20 hours a week and haven't had one single upgrade since I bought my Sword of Zeal off the AH in December. I want someone at Blizzard to recognize the fact that before my SoZ the last upgrade I got was my SC tunic 5 months previous.

I spend hours reading the boards each week, honing my skills, and know more about the class than most rogues I meet. Yet I still have to have inferior equipment to someone who's been playing for 3 months because they joined a MC capable guild the day they reached level 60, and got mollycoddled into epic gear.

What we want is a decent progression - 10 man raids where I can take people who have just reached level 60 and teach them the ropes, 5 man dungeons which can't be zerged to hone those peoples skills and build their gear and 15 man dungeons to teach us all how to work well in a group before ZG and AQ at 20 men to help us perfect. We want raids and quest which brdige the gap to MC and BWL.

I don't want it easy. But when I log on and there are 24 people in my guild online I want us to all be able to go and spend a few hours playing together and get an item which compares proportionately to the item you would get when you logged on to find 38 people online. i.e not as good as yours but better then what we've had for so many months.

[brage]

Awesome generalization there Rylan. This is actually what bugs me the most with WoW, non-raiders somehow thinking most raiders are no-lifers in mom's basement. It's not that I care what you think about me, it's more that such a glaring, arrogant ignorance belongs nowhere.

Take my guild as an example. NO ONE there are sitting at home all day playing. Mature guild leaders, mature players. Everyone is either working full time, or attending Uni or school.

You're saying you inspect me and conclude that I'm a no-lifer? Read my last two posts again, I assure you that you're stupid generalization doesn't hit home AT ALL. Sorry for this vent, but people like you really need to get some grip with reality.

[Rylan]

Read my post again Brage. It isnt directed at people like you so climb down. At no point did I say I inspect you and conclude you're a no lifer. Im saying that we don't inspect you and let your gear consume us as some people would have you believe.

If I can highlight a part of my post for you please read this;
Apologies to all of you who do hold down a job and a social life and still find time to do MC and BWL but guaranteed you know who I mean better then I do.If you hold down a job, have a good social life that's great. Kudos to you.

If you want an awesome generalisation look to those hardcore people who think that casual players want an easy ride and "dont want to have to put the work in". Be honest, are you telling me that you don't know people like this?

People who manage to lead a balanced lifestyle aren't the ones screaming that casual players are whiners or are freeloading. The only people that complain about casual players whining are those people who think that being hardcore makes them special and gives their own life meaning. If you give casual players something that puts them on par with hardcore players you remove the validation from their life.

There is no generalisation in my post Brage. It's very simple.

If you lead a balanced life and still make MC and BWL runs good for you. But don't pretend that there people out there who are raiding seven nights a week, have sucessfull careers and good family/social lives because I won't believe you. There aren't enough hours in each week.

[DarksideKarma]

Wow, there are a lot of clowns in this thread.

Can I tell you hardcore raiders something that might upset you a little? The majority of casual players aren't interested in you. We don't even think about you.

When we see you in IF in all your gear we examine you and guess what? We're looking at the gear, we don't even read your name. You are nothing special to us, you simply do not register on our radar. So by looking down on us you're only fooling yourself, not everyone else. We look at your gear and think "That'd be nice" or "nice stats" but we don't get this burning desire inside of us to have what you have.

The fact that you can get 39 other people together at the same time doesnt mean you're a better player or person. Let's be fair, you aren't even getting that many people together in the first place are you? You wait for someone like Osiris to tell you there's a raid on between X and Y hours and you turn up because you have nothing else to do.

I know it isnt all of you but the sad fact is that a great deal of the hardcore players are sitting in Mums basement, don't have a job, wouldn't know what to do with a girl if they ever met one. These peoples lives are skewed horribly and we have to listen to them whining about how 95% of the playerbase should find another game. Apologies to all of you who do hold down a job and a social life and still find time to do MC and BWL but guaranteed you know who I mean better then I do.

As a casual player I will tell you what I want.

If you spend 8 hours raiding with 40 men to get 1 great epic. I want to be able to split that 8 hours up into 2 sessions of 4 hours and get the same epic, still with 40 people.

If you can get an epic by spending 40 hours in Molten Core I want a 40 hour long quest which can get me something similar.

I'm not saying that I want what you have. I don't care about the gear you have after 3 months of BWL, or that in Battlegrounds you have an advantage. What I do want is for there be some recognition at Blizzard that I've been playing this game since the North American beta, for 20 hours a week and haven't had one single upgrade since I bought my Sword of Zeal off the AH in December. I want someone at Blizzard to recognize the fact that before my SoZ the last upgrade I got was my SC tunic 5 months previous.

I spend hours reading the boards each week, honing my skills, and know more about the class than most rogues I meet. Yet I still have to have inferior equipment to someone who's been playing for 3 months because they joined a MC capable guild the day they reached level 60, and got mollycoddled into epic gear.

What we want is a decent progression - 10 man raids where I can take people who have just reached level 60 and teach them the ropes, 5 man dungeons which can't be zerged to hone those peoples skills and build their gear and 15 man dungeons to teach us all how to work well in a group before ZG and AQ at 20 men to help us perfect. We want raids and quest which brdige the gap to MC and BWL.

I don't want it easy. But when I log on and there are 24 people in my guild online I want us to all be able to go and spend a few hours playing together and get an item which compares proportionately to the item you would get when you logged on to find 38 people online. i.e not as good as yours but better then what we've had for so many months.

It goes both ways Rylan, I'm not really interested in Rogue 7283 that's 5/8 Shadowcraft who spends 10 hours a week in game. Honestly, I'll probably never even see him since the time I spend in game isn't sitting inside of Orgrimmar LFG Scholo/Strat/Rend run. I don't go around inspecting the others because I have the better gear I can just hit C. I don't think I'm a better person, I just play the game differently then the casuals. I play to learn and clear content and to figure out puzzles.

You're right, one person doesn't gather 39 other people. 40 individual people all agree on a time to meet together to work as a team. A leader is nothing without the rest of his followers which I'm sure Osiris can attest to.

If you're asking to split eight hours of one 40 man raid session into two sessions of four hours or 4 sessions of two hours you can do that right now. Im sure you know this, but Molten Core can be done over the course of a week. That's right! Casual player request number one is answered for you.

You spend 20 hours a week playing Warcraft, I spend 25-30 hours a week usually. In those 20 hours you can accomplish a lot of what you're asking for. You get out what you put in. If out of the 20 hours you can commit to a certain day or block of hours you can go to AQ 20, ZG, MC, BWL. Albeit the progression will be slow, you'll have your chances at epics just like everybody else. If you can't commit to a time (which by your post doesn't seem like you have that problem) you can do the quests coming out for epics as well as Silithus quests. Blizzard has the casual gamer in mind hence the releases.
You definately have options to upgrade your gear.

If you have 24 people online when you log on and want to spend a few hours together to get gear proportional to a 40 man whats stopping you from running ZG/AQ20?

[galzohar]

MC/BWL give you a lot more loot per person per time spent than ZG/AQ20, but requires a more solid group. You cannot do MC more than once a week if you can't get almost the same people to show up every time. Although ZG also requires to get the same people every time, you can change groups twice a week rather than just once. I still don't expect people who don't repeatedly play with the same group to down anything beyond snake/bat and maybe raptor.
The problem is casual gamers will never find a group for the 20/40 man instances, not that they don't have the time it actually takes to run them.

[brage]

To DarksideKarma: I think the fact that 4 people must be left out of ZG that stops him from doing this. Assuming they are all lvl 60 that is.

To Rylan: See what DarksideKarma writes? Raiders usually say that casuals don't deserve the same rewards as them, because they put in less effort (usually time, but could be organizing, juggling appointments and such). Casuals (usually) respond by saying that WoW isn't as important as their real life appointments. Well, why should they get equal rewards then? The hardcore raiders prioritize WoW and get epics, the more or less casual non-raiders don't wanna be online that much, thus they don't deserve quite as good equipment.

Here's where tier 0.5 comes in. Takes a good amount of time, which means that the true casuals won't get the anytime soon. Hardcore non-raiders will get them sooner, and be on a more level playing field with the hardcore raiders. The clue here being, people can get them at their own pace, not by scheduling anything (aka raiding).

What bugs me still, is the casuals and their name-calling. Raiders usually simply states that they get better rewards because they put in more effort. Casuals call raiders no-lifers and cry for the same equip. Well, the equip IS there for everyone, you just need to be dedicated. Now it's there for less dedication too, just a little bit worse. Sounds fair? I think it does.

[Rylan]

If you're asking to split eight hours of one 40 man raid session into two sessions of four hours or 4 sessions of two hours you can do that right now. Im sure you know this, but Molten Core can be done over the course of a week. That's right! Casual player request number one is answered for you.But this isnt quite true is it? Because if you split MC into smaller chunks you simply end up clearing the trash to Lucifron over and over.

It doesnt quite work the way it should.

And Brage, you have to be kidding me now. Go read the official forums for 15 minutes and see who are the ones calling names. There's literally dozens of threads which are along the lines of "Hah, casuals are screwed now!" and "That will teach them for whining"

Its not hardcore players ignoring the casuals. It is hardcore players who are ecstatic that people reaching 60 from now on will find it much harder to progress.

Raiders usually simply states that they get better rewards because they put in more effort.Yes, and that we should leave the game because its not designed for us, and that we should shut up and be glad we have blue items.

If you can't commit to a time (which by your post doesn't seem like you have that problem) you can do the quests coming out for epics as well as Silithus quests. Blizzard has the casual gamer in mind hence the releases. You're right. I dont have a problem with time personally but I think the shift from friendly gameplay to 5 man instances, and adding in a 100 hour grind for new quests is lazy. Adding more dungeons that support 10 or 15 men benefits us all. But changing other dungeons, widening the gap between UBRS and MC, and trying to placate people with a long grind for armour which is only marginally better then SC isn't what we were after.

We'd have settled for 2 or 3 more 10 man dungeons we could all benefit from, not a few more 40 man dungeons that only a smaller subset would see.

[Edinho]

I cant help but think Blizzard are completly to blame for this. No matter how you put it MMORPG are hardcore, and are just not geared to casuals. Blizzard know that to keep wow subscribers high they need to please everyone, and they just cant do it imo. I know I can do all the pve content in this game, all it takes is a bit (lot) of time to get a group that can play as a team, warcraft isnt rocket science after all. Me i would love to have epics, but i just cant put in the time to be raiding almost every night.

I cant help but laugh at the hand bags at dawn approach in here. The way i see it there are plainly casuals here that are annoyed they cant get epics, but just dont want to admit at the tinge of jealousy. By the same token there are those that are in MC and BWL claiming they have the social life of a millionaire playboy. :afro:

Seriously if it annoys you that much hit Blizzard hard where it hurts them, cancel the subs and play something else. There was life before wow and there will certainly be better games out there after wow.

[beatnik]

It's not that difficult guys. Is it?

My guild....is based on Friendship not Epixx.

You can join an army...make great friends in that organistion..but stiill..you're there for a communal purpose...no strings attached. the friendship is incidental to your 'career'.

Thus a raiding guild : meh.

'Casual v hardcore' ? Laughable distinction. A friend at work ground his way to 60...joined a raiding guild...got epixx...fine. had to explain to him thereafter over many months what the game mechanics meant...what aggro meant..I can hear many of you dedicated 'non -raiding' players laughing , so I'll say no more.

Do i have the right to comment? I've played more hours of WOW than Osiris etc has...for sure...and my point?

These thousands of hours of effort have been spent, often heartbreakingly,
caring for the aspirations of many people who i have come to deeply love , who's first loyalty is to each other, not gear.

UNDERSTAND THAT?

That means STRUGGLE to do ZG. STRUGGLE to do AQ20..but we do, and we will. But if doing these instances meant putting virtual Christmas presents above real relationships: probably not worth the bother,

Finally: How DARE you resent these people gaining rewards - their input of effort in terms of hours played is usually VASTLY superior to the 'hardcore' - sorry can't stop laughing- 'raiding player'.

Oh my god! A great trinket doesn't drop in AQ! i might have to grind i.e. work to get it...heart is bleeding for you guys..heart is bleeding

Because, you know ,it's a 'I win ' deal. How bloody unfortunate.

Raiding ! = hardcore

Live with it

[Edinho]

My guild....is based on Friendship not Epixx.




Problem is finding a guild like that. A very rare breed. At my age i just want to have a laugh after work etc etc i dont care about getting the uber tier set. So basically i want to come in after work/pub drink some beer, go to an instance, take the mick out of some people, wipe a few times and have a laugh about it. Now show me a bwl and MC guild that has attitude, i bet there arnt many.

OmgZ u wipd uz!! :grrrr:

[brage]

I'm sorry Rylan, but I can honestly say that I don't know a single raider who looks down on casuals/non-raiders. I don't frequent the official boards much though, except for threads about lore and blue posts.

Beatnik: No one here resent you getting rewards. Please don't mistake the raiding crowd here with the raiding crowd who posts on the official boards (aka CS-kiddies).

[brandondash]

If you go to a Honda dealership, tell them you don't like a single Honda model, demand Honda to redesign based on you. What do they tell you? Go buy a ford.
If 90% of the auto market however does the same thing, Honda goes out of business. Raiders are not the majority. They just think they are because they surround themselves with other raiders.

[brandondash]

None of this would be a problem if "phat lewts" didn't directly correlate to pvp superiority. Some of the posts say "live and let live" but that is more or less impossible in this game.

Back in my rocket arena days I could play my 2 hours a night and still hold my own against the hardcore clanners. Did I dominate? No, but I certainly didn't get pasted either.

Not so in this game. A non-raider in WoW is basically guaranteed a terrible pvp experience once they hit 60... and it isn't going to change because that's the system blizzard has set up.

brandon-

[jrichard]

Hmm, a thread that actually pulls me out of my hiatus from posting on any board. :)

That's a hiatus from posting, not playing. I've been play WoW for some time now.

My thoughts on the stuff in this thread so far? Well, few people actually attempted to answer the question osiris asked. My answer is no, it's not even close to what i want. It seems to me after playing awhile that separating players into raiders and non-raiders is far too simplistic an approach. It's better than trying to label players as casual and hardcore, but still leaves much to be desired. We have our raiders, questers, grinders, socialites, pvp'ers, etc. Many of these will overlap. A lot of quest based players also very much enjoy the socializing. Many raiders are of a very decidedly grinding mindset. (sorry, but if your guild is running MC or BWL continually and has it on "farm" status, you're grinding). If you are in such a guild and think that putting in 10 to 20+ hours a week in such a grind means you are putting in more effort than the player questing solo on yellow or orange and above mobs, then we have a basic difference in perception that probably won't be overcome. That's not to say you're putting in less, it's just effort focused in a different direction and it shouldn't be said that direction has some greater intrinsic value than the quester's.

I'm a quester. I can do very well as a part of a group in runs. I know the classes i play and how to serve a group best. On a personal note, how to best serve a group is dependent, imo. on the group's makeup and one thing lacking in the larger raids is the ability to vary the group roles classes play. Just my opinion there. You can check just about any class forum on here and one thing you see consistently is the suggestion to spec one way while leveling and then respec to fit a fairly tightly defined role in large end-game raids. It can be argued that some guilds allow classes to step outside of their defined roles, but in response i'd say they only allow that after the guild has a sufficient number of other players of that class to fill those roles. Or, not until the character has enough high level gear to fill his assigned role and add in some part of an additional role. Just have a look at shadow priests. Awesome damage, but to get a guild to let one go shadow is almost impossible unless they have a lot of priests already and are willing to be "progressive" on the make up of their dps characters in raids.

Perhaps that is where to begin here. Large raid builds have different needs than solo builds. It happens to be the area that i think blizzard does not address very well. Give me, as has been suggested, 40+ hour quest chains. Let them start green, but then each successive step get harder until at the end of it i'm doing orange quests. And for the love of god, let the reward be linked to it's difficulty level when i do it. When i put in the effort (as that seems to be a catch word in this thread) to solo a quest that's orange to me, i've earned something better than the guy who did it 10 levels above me. Next, let that quest difficulty be dependent not just on my level, but on the level of the highest person i've grouped with to do it. Hell, let the reward be reduced a certain amount for everyone i'm grouped with period. It would take some work to hammer out the details as sitting here right now i can think of ways in which people could take advantage of such a system. But, to a certain extent there will always be ways to take advantage of any system and also those who think doing so makes them superior players. Kinda got off the track of this paragraph. :) Back on track now. Just the pvp and pve aspects of the rogue class show a real difference in what equipment rewards could be. PvE, i like chance to dodge. PvP, chance to dodge equates to "want a warrior to kill me" right now. Considering that both the rogues dodge ability and the warrior's overpower ability are fairly intrinsic to the classes concept, i wouldn't expect that to be changed much in the next patches. So , we have places where the equipment rewards could be just as good for each type of rogue, but vastly different in focus. Same thing could be done for raid rewards vs questing rewards. Give me top end equipment as reward for my effort, just make it directed towards that effort. Raid runners get stuff more helpful in raids and less helpful to questing and questers get stuff more helpful to them but less useful in raids.

Massive warning of personal opinion upcoming.......

Way too much of this game is set up for the grinding mindset. These new .5 epics are a huge example of that. Continually running the same raid over and over until everyone has the best gear so that the group can move on to continually running the next raid for gear to do the one after that is a fine example. I don't want grinding quests. Give me the ones that make me travel all around the game world and fight a multitude of different mob types using different strategies to beat them. Let the grinders have their quests and rewards, but let's add some for the questers also. Grinding does take abilities and a mindset different than mine. I can grind, but it bores the bejesus out of me. Raiding takes another different mindset and abilities, but i'm probably just a little to independent (okay, selfish and anti-authority :) ) to do it anywhere near as often as you have to to get the top equipment. That's not to say that either is better or worse than questing, just different and all take effort to do. It's just effort pointed in different directions. Telling me in response to my not liking raiding that i just haven't found the right guild or that it means that i'm not willing to put in effort in this game is basic arrogant bs. Thinking that only raiders really know how to play this game is laughable as i've seen some of those raiders try to quest solo and it's pretty amusing. /end rant

Osiris, i think blizzard could accomodate all these playstyles. None of them is deserving of lesser quality gear due strictly to the the style in which they prefer to play. Hell, even give something to those that just want to sit in the cities and not do any actual killing. I don't know, a few extra dance moves or something. :)

One final thing, smaller instances at endgame wouldn't have to be "easy". I think it would dangerous to judge that idea based off of the experience of taking a group of epic equipped raiders into the current ones. They could easily, as has been mentioned, be designed to take advantage of skills that the raiding builds don't have.

Far too much of this thread so far reminds me of the sickening point the D2 boards got to. The point where all you could get was discussion on PvP and if a person posted a PvE question, they were told that it sucked, was boring and were basically chased away. Play the content you want in the game, but don't pretend that just because you enjoy it more that everyone must be the same.

jrichard

[SuDanger]

The thread is too long to read, so I just post my biggest concern. And its not about T0.5, its about the capping of instances.

I am currently in a oldtimer guild which exists since a bit over 6 years and was created back in old EQ. We are mostly the same core of 5 to 8 people. Current goal is ZG with a nonrandom raid. So we gear up personal, very slowly until we will come to a halt when 1.10 comes out. No way to do something other than 10man ubrs. (we do atm as well) If we get on more than 10 the plus of people is doomed to solo/random whatever. there is lack of at least one 15man dungeon, or better one 10 and one 15man dungeon and I think this should be top priority, else we will never gear up to a 20+
roster. :undecided:

[Spyrer]

Disclaimer: Didn't read all of this, but here are my views

I consider myself a casual gamer. I play 2-3 times a week (which I already thing is alot). Just to further position this: I know that I play my class well. I'm able to keep up with many other rogues with better gear, 99% of the time out-DPSing them in MC.

I'm very good at number-crunching, min-max, etc. I've played paper RPGs, started computers with ZX Spectrum, etc. However, because I'm no longer 13, and also because I played so many games and for so long, I can't really grind anymore.
Beating challenges once is cool, twice is consolidation, after 3-5 times it becomes dead boring.

Let's face it, the single defining characteristic of 90% of the "hardcore raiding players" is: they "like" to grind

MMORPGs are "strange" games. Time is power and gear>skill many times, or at least helps a lot.

However, what is in consideration here is different... why does Blizzard claim to be adding NEW non-raid content and then present us with ZERO new instances?
Why do they talk about a 0.5 Tier set, when it requires a full tier 0 set? And why must it be so weak? Why must unending grind become the answer for eveything? Factions is grind, instances are grind, everything is made by Blizzard to require endless hours of grind.

Grind is a way to cover for lack of content. If ppl had other, more interesting, things to do, they wouldn't want to grind...

[Coanunn]

Well, I think the big qestion isn't is 1.10 bringing what we wanted to see. The big question is why is this getting boiled down to 2 sides. You either grind in an instance or outside one? Why aren't there smaller instances, PVP dungeons, or more world content going in instead of a new grind quest for "non-raiders" or "casuals"?

Personally there are things I would LOVE to see in this game. Player controled boats, player housing where I can buy a guild house, set up a guild bank (including a money box), guild stables, vendor selling player crafted gear that can actually compete (oooo, guess that is 2 in one right there). I would love to see the "best gear" available in more than one way (read grinding in a raid). Perhaps make a dungeon that you have to raid alone, orange or better cons, traps, and a prize at the end that gets you a step closer to an epic, and after 3 or 4 of these you get one piece. What about player made gear that is of epic quality but takes multiple master level crafters to make? And for the members of my guild who will never ever run a single instance some world content that results in something more than go kill 60 of creature x and come back.

Look, the raiders are happy with their content, sure they would love a new dungeon once in awhile so they have something fresh to do, but so would the people who aren't raiding. This post level 60 xp to gold conversion, that is great except there isn't a single level 60 out there that is hurting for gold due to all the time spent raiding/grinding to get anything. The idea that RAIDING is the hardest thing to do in this game is BS, and to pigeon hole the 80% of the player base that doesn't either raid, enjoy raiding, or enjoy raid guilds into one lump "non-raiders" sum isn't enough.

To Osiris' question of a week ago - I don't know if this is what the CASUAL gamers wanted to see, but those of us who aren't raiders aren't happy with the scraps thrown to us any longer. We want some content that is worth doing that doesn't include raiding. We want raids our guilds are capable of doing but are a HUGE challenge so we can feel some fulfillment when we are done even if we don't get an epic drop. There are alot of styles of play and forcing all of those styles to play one of two ways is a cop out.

[Spyrer]

One idea I just had would be to create random dungeons, with random mob placement. The rogues could then actually scout *gasp* and ppl would actually have to think for a change... can you imagine that?

You could pick quests that needed doing in those instances and then gather a group. All would get the quests shared and go in for a try. Something almost like mercenary contracts in a way, possibly with different difficulty levels and dif. group sizes (say from 2 to 10). This alone would create endless possibilities for random quests and instances.

[galzohar]

I wish the end-game dungeons were harder yet wouldn't take so much repetitive clearing to get the juice (loot) out of them. I know this is harder work for blizzard, but making the game better will always be harder than keeping it the way it is.
The only reasons I still play is because I still have content to beat, and still hope for new, better content to come out.

[Ryste]

I wish the end-game dungeons were harder yet wouldn't take so much repetitive clearing to get the juice (loot) out of them. I know this is harder work for blizzard, but making the game better will always be harder than keeping it the way it is.
The only reasons I still play is because I still have content to beat, and still hope for new, better content to come out.

Go to BWL, You see the first 2 bosses without fighting a single trash mob.

[Ryste]

If 90% of the auto market however does the same thing, Honda goes out of business. Raiders are not the majority. They just think they are because they surround themselves with other raiders.

That goes both ways, give me some facts to support that "raiders are not the majority."

Fact, raiders are important and popular enough to generate incentives for Blizzard to create more raid dungeons.

[swaldman]

Way too much of this game is set up for the grinding mindset. These new .5 epics are a huge example of that. Continually running the same raid over and over until everyone has the best gear so that the group can move on to continually running the next raid for gear to do the one after that is a fine example. I don't want grinding quests. Give me the ones that make me travel all around the game world and fight a multitude of different mob types using different strategies to beat them.

Hear here.

Unfortunately..... grinding-type content requires relatively little development work for the same amount of play time (ie pay time). Economically it makes sense.

[Ryste]

Well, I think the big qestion isn't is 1.10 bringing what we wanted to see. The big question is why is this getting boiled down to 2 sides. You either grind in an instance or outside one? Why aren't there smaller instances, PVP dungeons, or more world content going in instead of a new grind quest for "non-raiders" or "casuals"?

Personally there are things I would LOVE to see in this game. Player controled boats, player housing where I can buy a guild house, set up a guild bank (including a money box), guild stables, vendor selling player crafted gear that can actually compete (oooo, guess that is 2 in one right there). I would love to see the "best gear" available in more than one way (read grinding in a raid). Perhaps make a dungeon that you have to raid alone, orange or better cons, traps, and a prize at the end that gets you a step closer to an epic, and after 3 or 4 of these you get one piece. What about player made gear that is of epic quality but takes multiple master level crafters to make? And for the members of my guild who will never ever run a single instance some world content that results in something more than go kill 60 of creature x and come back.

Look, the raiders are happy with their content, sure they would love a new dungeon once in awhile so they have something fresh to do, but so would the people who aren't raiding. This post level 60 xp to gold conversion, that is great except there isn't a single level 60 out there that is hurting for gold due to all the time spent raiding/grinding to get anything. The idea that RAIDING is the hardest thing to do in this game is BS, and to pigeon hole the 80% of the player base that doesn't either raid, enjoy raiding, or enjoy raid guilds into one lump "non-raiders" sum isn't enough.

To Osiris' question of a week ago - I don't know if this is what the CASUAL gamers wanted to see, but those of us who aren't raiders aren't happy with the scraps thrown to us any longer. We want some content that is worth doing that doesn't include raiding. We want raids our guilds are capable of doing but are a HUGE challenge so we can feel some fulfillment when we are done even if we don't get an epic drop. There are alot of styles of play and forcing all of those styles to play one of two ways is a cop out.

I raid average twice a week, I am hurting for gold bad. Between my druid and my mage, I have a total of 35 gold. I can't even respec my mage because I don't have enough golds.

When I log in, I go straight into AB or WSG, because that's what I want to do. How does doing AB or WSG 80% of my play time do to my gold supply? Nothing, and I buy combat pots every 4-5 BGs.

I don't feel that raid dungeons are grinds, it's actually fun to kill things at light speed. That's why Diablo II is still soo popular right? Great loots, blowing stuff up at insane speed. (Mephisto runs)

[moopy]

I am currently in a oldtimer guild which exists since a bit over 6 years and was created back in old EQ. We are mostly the same core of 5 to 8 people. Current goal is ZG with a nonrandom raid. So we gear up personal, very slowly until we will come to a halt when 1.10 comes out. No way to do something other than 10man ubrs. (we do atm as well) If we get on more than 10 the plus of people is doomed to solo/random whatever. there is lack of at least one 15man dungeon, or better one 10 and one 15man dungeon and I think this should be top priority, else we will never gear up to a 20+
roster. :undecided:

Don't worry about it, once people get used to it, you'll forget that you even ran UBRS 15 man. I've done it in a 9 person PUG, with levels as low as 57 without undue difficulty, even on drakki (as long as you explain where to tank him, and the concept of an "aggro reset" mob).

I am starting to suspect that uber players could 5 man it quite easily :)

[Relentles]

Don't worry about it, once people get used to it, you'll forget that you even ran UBRS 15 man. I've done it in a 9 person PUG, with levels as low as 57 without undue difficulty, even on drakki (as long as you explain where to tank him, and the concept of an "aggro reset" mob).

I am starting to suspect that uber players could 5 man it quite easily :)

UBRS has been done by a 3 man group.

Ive done it a few times 5 man, not too hard really. Like you mention though, you need all 5 players to have fairly decent gear.

[brage]

Well, obviously the people going after 0.5 set won't have "fairly decent gear", as you put it, which I assume is tier 1/2.

[SuDanger]

Don't worry about it, once people get used to it, you'll forget that you even ran UBRS 15 man. I've done it in a 9 person PUG, with levels as low as 57 without undue difficulty, even on drakki (as long as you explain where to tank him, and the concept of an "aggro reset" mob).

I am starting to suspect that uber players could 5 man it quite easily :)

You don't see the problem i have. its not 10man UBRS, we do it right now as well, its the missing training grounds for small, slower growing guilds. Right now we have plenty of fields to learn teamplay in the 5man instances with up to 10 and should we fell like and should there be 10+ online willing to to something together we can go UBRS.

After the patch its either go UBRS with 10 or split into 2 groups and go somewhere else. player number 11, 12, 13 and 14 won't have a chance to do anything with the rest. And no we cannot raise manpower to 20 in a week. So Blizzard creates a gap similar to the 20 to 40 man instances.



(I raided and led in EQ with 72 people so I am no stranger to big raids)

[Ludio]

You don't see the problem i have. its not 10man UBRS, we do it right now as well, its the missing training grounds for small, slower growing guilds. Right now we have plenty of fields to learn teamplay in the 5man instances with up to 10 and should we fell like and should there be 10+ online willing to to something together we can go UBRS.

After the patch its either go UBRS with 10 or split into 2 groups and go somewhere else. player number 11, 12, 13 and 14 won't have a chance to do anything with the rest. And no we cannot raise manpower to 20 in a week. So Blizzard creates a gap similar to the 20 to 40 man instances.



(I raided and led in EQ with 72 people so I am no stranger to big raids)


I would suggest finding other similar sized guilds to do a raiding alliance with. When my guild was about 10 people strong we would raid with other similar sized guilds, eventually we decided to merge into a single raiding guild, but staying as an alliance works well too.

[galzohar]

15-man UBRS is already almost 0 teamwork, just like any instance that is ran with more than the minimum people required to do it successfully.

[swelt]

I expect we will also see blizzard try to breathe more life into LBRS. I don't know if it's the same on all servers (I suspect it is) but on mine LBRS ranks up there with DM as one of the most ignored instances. I would not be remotely surprised to see more set pieces and quest lines find their way into LBRS along with some of these new interesting blues. That would also mean there were 2 10 manable instances (LBRS, UBRS) to go with the suite of 5man instances (BRD, Scholo, Strat, DM). Perhaps someone on the test server can correct me if I'm wrong.

[Coanunn]

15-man UBRS is already almost 0 teamwork, just like any instance that is ran with more than the minimum people required to do it successfully.

Two points,

1) I assume this is from someone who's guild has done UBRS several times and knows the instance quite well, not a guild that just got enough members to run it.

2) I also assume this is from someone who can run it with no teamwork and 15 people due to having better gear than what drops in there.

Both of these points show the problem in pointing to UBRS as a 15 manable dungeon for guilds that are growing.

[Loteus]

Get rares more often in non-MC/BWL/20+man instances. Get a crap-load (but similar ones) when actually running 40 man extravaganzas. Basically, make things just as challenging in UBRS/Scholo/Strat/etc... Proportional to the difficulty of 40-mans, but give less epics for the 1) lower amount of raiders needed 2) less amount of time spent in instance and 3) less difficulty managing 15 people vs. 40.

[brandondash]

That goes both ways, give me some facts to support that "raiders are not the majority."
It's simple really. Just do /who 60 each night for a week. On my server at least you'll see three guilds running one of the über instances (mc, bwl, aq). Meanwhile you'll see three or four times that many in UBRS, Strat, Scholo, or AV.

Alternately, you can just take a look around in Ironforge or Orgrimmar. Plenty of epic mounts (implying many hours played) but not plenty of epic weapons (implying they spend their time doing something other than raiding).

[moopy]

It's simple really. Just do /who 60 each night for a week. On my server at least you'll see three guilds running one of the raiding instances. Meanwhile you'll see three or four times that many in UBRS, Strat, Scholo, or AV.


Which is conclusive, of course.

When there are 50 members of my raiding outfit are online, 20 of them in AQ20, and the rest in BG/farming nature resist in maraudon or strat/gathering for their professions, by your rather shaky metric they would be regarded as people who don't raid. The large amount of tier 2 armour rather gives it away, though.

As someone once said, "to every problem, there is a solution which is simple, elegant and wrong".

[brandondash]

I love sarcastic responses.

If you'd like, you can also /who a few players (which I have) and noted their guilds (which I have) and discovered that those guilds are never in the end game instances (which they are not). Then you could if you wanted go to warcraftrealms (which I have) and compared the guilds you noted to the highest aggregate level guilds on your server (which I have) and concluded that while the very highest guilds are in fact raiding guilds - not surprising - their sum population pales in comparison to the sum population of the 60s on your server.

Perhaps my server is an anomoly. My guess is that it isn't.

Is that proof? Not really. It is a base set of observations on which I based my opinion... something I have yet to see you or Ryste provide.

brandon-

[moopy]

I am sure that was intended to be coherent or meaningful, originally. /yawn

On most of the servers upon which I play, the top raiding outfits comprise members of many guilds, your "test" seems largely irrelevant.

You seem to imagine that people have a pressing need to convince you of something; I am not sure that they do. I will just back away slowly and leave you in The Angry Corner until you have all the sugar, coffee or whatever it is out of your system.

[DarksideKarma]

Everybody that wants epics or gear upgrades has a way to obtain them. It just appears you don't want to take the steps required in order to get them. You don't have to play 30 hours a week to get great gear. Someone even posted a few pages back that they played 2-3 days a week and was a casual player yet he's commenting on the fact that he does MC.

Don't want to do a 40 man? Can't field the people? Can't join a guild to do that? 20 man instances are available. Half the people, half the difficulty, but better items then your 5-mans.

Don't have a set time schedule to play? Can't dedicate a few hours at a certain time every week? New quests are being added in 1.10, Silithus maybe?

I mean every problem that Blizzard hears about they've been creating solutions for those types of people. You have to work a little bit for it, and the rewards need to scale in difficulty. Requests are being answered, what more do you want?

[brandondash]

You don't really have to convince me of anything, Moopy. I guess if you'd like me to word my thoughts more succinctly.... the amount of players in "raiding" guilds are outnumbered quite heavily by the amount of players in "casual" guilds. It is quite easy to check using the basic /who command and the stats compiled on www.warcraftrealms.com. My observations certainly aren't conclusive proof.

Re: OP. The .5 tier set makes me happy.

Re: raiders vs casuals. Someone said it was an unfair line to draw. I agree with them.

[Relentles]

Well, obviously the people going after 0.5 set won't have "fairly decent gear", as you put it, which I assume is tier 1/2.

Correct. But I said you need fairly decent gear to do UBRS without many problems as a 5 man group. 10 man - UBRS is not hard as long as you have a half decent group layout. 10 man allows you to bring more than sufficient CC. As people have said the only reason you would take 15 is to make it quicker.

[DevilMonkey]

This is how I see the 0.5 Tier Set.

It is designed for my type of playing... perfectly.

I am a rogue on EU Shadowsong (PvE) and play 4-6 days a week for on average 22 hours. In the evenings I grind a little and chat to guildies, watching the LFG channel in City waiting for a Strat / Scholo / UBRS / LBRS, etc run.

I grind cash while I wait, I get rares and the occasional BoE epic for my time.

OK, so I am in 6 of the 8 sets of Shadowcraft and I am grinding away merrily, watching for a raid to get my last 2 bits. I might get in a group, i might not. I dont mind as long as it doesnt disband because we have no priest.

What does 1.10 offer me. Well, for starters it offers me a target for my grinding. I can login for 3 hours and go fishing for eels, or harvest thorium so I can get a Delicate Arcanite Converter... or grind for cash since the patch needs lots of that. Then we have the instance part, I can jump in a pug which will be very convient on a weekend and do a quest and work for it... again another goal for my evening other than just trying to get some loot. Lets face it, a 5 man strat or scholo run isnt something for 7-10pm on a thursday when I have to be up at work at 4am the next morning.

Mid-week grinding for those items I need for the epics and upgrades. Weekend joining one of the numerous raids that will form for the quests needed.

To me the 1.10 patch will suit me down to the ground. Do I think it will be easy, hell no. Do I think it will be impossible, hell no. I think it will be HARD, it will be a CHALLENGE. And thats why I play, I cant join AQ, BWL, MC or even ZG - very often. WoW adds enough content to keep me happy. Ive been playing regularly since realase and between my 3 chars I still have not covered the content for all horde and alliance with the hours I play.

Admittadly my time in the last couple of months has been cut to 20ish hours a week with my new daughter otherwise I would be in a raiding guild or alliance by now (used to rack up nearly 30-35 hours a week). But outside end-game (with the exception of the odd ZG run) Blizzard have kept enough new content for me, the regular gamer.

Silk
EU Shadowsong

[Hrungnir]

I don't really care about the casual vs hardcore debate. What I'm concerned about is that these changes make the gap for new guilds between 5-mans and raids even bigger.

I'm in a relatively small guild - we can theoretically pull 20 60's at a time, but in nowhere close to the right class balance to run ZG. However, with a few friends from other guilds a 15-man UBRS is doable with maybe one wipe on Drakk and a 10 man strat or scholo is a nightly event. We're together because we're friends, and we take care of each other. Guild membership is determined by the rest of the guild thinking you're a decent person to have around.

Now, when I look at the 3 horde guilds on my server that are running MC/BWL/ZG/AQ regularly, I see an entirely different atmosphere. You have to pass tryouts to get in unless you're a priest or a druid, with the best gear you can get in five man or they won't look at you. They are very competitive, and very focussed on good loot. And while that's perfectly fine for them... I don't really have any desire to leave my guild of friends to beg the raiders to let me in to get better gear.

And of course, since my small guild is based on friendship, not loot, we're not going to be pulling in the kind of players to actually run MC any time soon. Or, you run into the problem my friend's guild has, where they recruit a priest, gear them up, and then have them leave for one of the raiding guilds.

We've tried different runs of ZG with other guild alliances, but if you think that organizing a single guild to run a large instance is tough, multiple guilds makes it even harder. And your class balance is never good, and half of the people haven't done it before, etc. So you wipe a lot, especially since most of the boss encounters in ZG are as difficult or worse than those in MC.

I'm concerned that by eliminating raids in strat and scholo (which, I agree, were a little too easy) and by making UBRS a small raid, there've made the already tiny number of stepping-stone raids even smaller. We may not be able to pull together the class balance to run ZG, but we can have a fun time in UBRS with 15 people (probably 5 of them hunters :P). A 10-man UBRS is going to have strict requirements on its makeup, and it'll now be just about the only place where we can actually go as a guild.

I'm all for making some more challenging small-raid and 5-man instances (I love DM for the challenge, interesting encounters, and good loot), but I really wish they would have added something NEW instead of just making the gap between UBRS and ZG bigger. Another solid 10-man or 15 man instance thats somewhere in between UBRS and ZG would be awesome for small guilds to get their feet wet. The only encounter in all of UBRS that's a challenge even for a pickup group is the last room with Drakk. You can't even compare that to even the easiest of boss fights in ZG. I don't see why there can't be *something* in between.

As for the set gear, I've got my set mostly collected without trying too hard... but I don't wear most of it, because it sucks compared to the gear I picked up in DM and even strat. They'd make a lot more sense if you could upgrade the items that you have instead of having to grind for a hat that you don't want to use anyway.

[Aerath]

Hrungir - you echo my sentiments right to the dot.

:applaud:

Even posted about that on the suggestions forum. I really don't care if they smack BRS/Strat/Scholo and till the patch notes didn't even know BRD could be raided... however I would like at least -some- options to go as a small guild and get our feet wet as it were, rather than being limited to doing UBRS 10 man.

[Krollin]

I think another reason for lowering the player cap for some instances is because the server populations are maturing. The percentage of people unfamiliar with those instances is getting smaller and the standard of equipment people have is improving.

Remember how hard Scholomance used to be? There was a time when only the brave or foolhardy set foot in the place without 9 other people with them. Then they nerfed it. Now they have reduced the player cap.

On the bright side I am looking forward to plundering the new bosses and finding out what the new treasure is.

[Coanunn]

I think another reason for lowering the player cap for some instances is because the server populations are maturing. The percentage of people unfamiliar with those instances is getting smaller and the standard of equipment people have is improving.

Remember how hard Scholomance used to be? There was a time when only the brave or foolhardy set foot in the place without 9 other people with them. Then they nerfed it. Now they have reduced the player cap.

On the bright side I am looking forward to plundering the new bosses and finding out what the new treasure is.

Not sure I agree Krollin, while it is true players who have been around since release (like my pair of 60's on stormreaver) have good gear and know these instances well, when I logged in last night at 11:30 PM EST There was a queue a mile long to get on my server, it was midnight when I was able to log on, I did some stuff with my mule and went to bed. While there are folks in full epic gear, on an epic mount sitting in Stormwind and IronForge, I saw MASSIVE numbers of people in the newbie grounds, UNTWINKED, meaning they are new players. The subscription base is still growing. I think these caps are there now because Blizzard assumes those interested in raiding can quickly and easily find a raiding guild. They are completely over looking the small guild of friends such as was posted above and my own guild who will never have the balance of classes in the right numbers to do an MC run simply because the guild isn't put together for that and the new players won't be joining because we can't offer them l337 gear tomorrow night in a MC run.

I have nothing against raiders, I just find it hard to swallow that you guys who do raid can't understand there are guild out there that while willing to can't and don't WANT to change their guild structure to make it possible. No, the gear in a 10 man instance shouldn't be Tier 1/2, but there should be other ways than doing a 40 man raid to get Tier 1/2 gear too for members of small non-raiding guilds who as a single person want to get that gear. I shouldn't be forced to tell all my friends that I can't be in our guild so that I can get my gear nor should I be forced to tell 5 people they can't run the instance with us because of a cap and have to run it alone. There is more to this game than the 40 man raid zones, but we of the smaller guilds are asking for something between us and the 40 man zone to go do other than a 100 hour grind per person.

[DarksideKarma]

Blizzard is giving you options, it's your choice if you actually want to take them.

If you and 4 of your friends went to play Basketball at the local Y and they had 7 on 7 games going there you either pick up a few more players or you don't play at all. You can't get mad at the Y because you didn't want to involve other people not inside your circle of friends.

[Ryste]

To me, the biggest problem Blizzard has in this game is: There is no alliance system.

An alliance system like DAoC (or better ones) will make this game more social, will help multiple small guilds organize raids easier. Will make raid dungeons more accessible to more people.

I know you can join /channels to talk to other guilds, but there's no incentive, there's no reward or sense of accomplishment.

DAoC's alliance system actually meant something, people in the alliance actually do things together. The alliance had common goals, and the guilds still have their own individuality. There are alliances exist in WoW, but far less than DAoC.

[Krollin]

@Coannun: "I saw MASSIVE numbers of people in the newbie grounds, UNTWINKED, meaning they are new players.". I am not sure how you reach that conclusion. New toons are not worth twinking anyway and a new toon can be driven by an experienced player as well as a new one.
If your server is getting close to opening the AQ Gates then you are going to have a tonne of new toons being created by players from other servers.

[Coanunn]

@Coannun: "I saw MASSIVE numbers of people in the newbie grounds, UNTWINKED, meaning they are new players.". I am not sure how you reach that conclusion. New toons are not worth twinking anyway and a new toon can be driven by an experienced player as well as a new one.
If your server is getting close to opening the AQ Gates then you are going to have a tonne of new toons being created by players from other servers.

By newbie grounds I'm talking the sub level 30 zones which I had to xp through again during the guild move, anyone playing a level 20 who has a level 60 and isn't twinked is either very strict about twinking and "making it on their own" or the level 60 is on another server. In this game, untwinked you can easily reach level 20 in a day of gaming if you know the game and the area, level 10 even if you don't know a thing about that area/class and have to read all the quest logs. To me that says that this influx of numbers in those areas is an expanding of the player base beyond the die-hard raider who didn't make the group tonight and rolled an alt.

@ Darkside: the Y has other courts as well as other options for the 4 of us to do if in your example we went there looking to interact with each other at the Y. You are also missing the point that no-one who seems to be communicating an interest in doing the raids is interested in joining a guild with 40 members and 10 level 60's when they can join a Raid Guild with 100's of level 60's that raid every night.

This isn't entirely blizzards fault, in that the non-raid guild guilds that want to do some raiding for their higher end folks aren't communicating but you can't honestly say that only raiders deserve to experience PvP in high end gear. PvP and raiding are different playstyles in and of themselves and to expect ALL playstyles to change to meet the standard of one group (especially a group that makes up a minority of players) is simply poor logic.

I am not asking that a 5 man group hitting scholo get AQ40 gear, but perhaps tailor raid gear drops toward raiding and tailor these PvP gear drops to be rewards in the PvP system, or create some quests that MUST be done alone for each class that results in epic gear. And for those of you wondering how they can make a truely SOLO quest, put it in an instance.

[galzohar]

What I would really like to see is beefed up 5-man instances. Either new ones or some quests that buff certain parts/bosses/encounters in the instance to make it require serious cooperation and skill. Like MC/ZG this should have some cooldown and have the possibility for some epic loot equivalent to at least T1. Of course the challenge must be high enough to be worthy of the reward.

[Namer18]

a few suggestions I think they should add along with the changes.
1) A level 40-50 instance for 10. That way people could start to learn how to play in a larger group before the end game content.
2) I think another 15 man upper end instance is a reasonable request.
3) A 40 man end game instance with loot comporable to ZG in difficulty, but without any respawns. You couldn't farm rep there, but it would be nice for guilds that want to run multiple shorter raids to the same instance instead of doing it in one night.
4) Better loot on the mobs in the PvP arena in DM

[Hrungnir]

Theoretically, AQ20 and ZG *should* be great for the smaller, less "elite" guilds. But they aren't, really. From what I've read, the boss fights in ZG are actually HARDER than the beginning ones in MC due to their complexity and the coordination required. The trash mobs are a complete joke, but the bosses are tougher, especially for a group wearing all blues.

And AQ20 is apparently designed to give regular raiders something to do on their off nights?

I wish there were something equivalent to the challenge of the trash mobs in MC for a 15 or 20-man group. Sure, those of you who have been farming them for months can clear them with like 20 people now, but most guilds just starting out wipe even getting past the imp bridge. There's nothing like that in terms of coordination and pure difficulty for 15 people to do, unless you want to try to 10-man the ZG trash for some reason.

[Sionzen]

I agree with Osiris in that the new tier .5 stuff is really not for "casual" players. I think thats obvious when you think about it, the problem is the definition of casuals etc.. Its all about the grind in the end. Gotta have a time sink to keep you playing. Its new epix for the non raider 60 types. Casuals should be used for folks who play less than those who farm strath, scholo, and brd, who are sub 60, say 1-2 hour playing sessions a few times a week etc.. The rest I think is best put into "raider" and "non raider".

I have no problem with the new tier .5 stuff. I could see the benefit in going after that gear for some. If I was still a non raider I doubt I would, simply because I know of far better blues than the tier 0 stuff that are either made, world drops, or stuff from DM, UBRS, Strath, Scholo. There are two pairs of leather pants that drop in scholo that are arguably better than the wildheart pants for resto druids for example, let alone feral druids. But, I still see the attraction. If one is or has any intention of being a "raider" and seeing the ultimate end game stuff then tier 0 and .5 are really really pointless. I have most of my wildheart (no hat love from scholo boss) but given that I have epics from MC, it'd be a waste of my time unless I was a masochist. :grin:

My problem is the instance caps. The 5 man caps will make those instances just as time intensive as the uber raids are for many folks. Those non raiders dont always have a guild group ready to go for a 2 hour 5 man run and thus its off to the pug circuit. I understand the need for more of a "challenge" but why not put the .5 stuff as 5-man only? That makes sense to me and that makes it a challenge for "da epix lewtz". Taking away the 10 man zergs hurts folks in many ways as mentioned in other posts. I also see no point in getting a new toon or an alt their set after 1.10 unless they really really tweak the drop rates. No one besides the masochists or newbies who aren't burnt out yet will want to run those instances 5 man to get that crap. At least, I know I won't and I have alts that will likely hit 60 but never see MC, ZG etc..