Enchanting- Beating a dead horse?

Terrant · 13-09-2006, 05:32 PM

Maybe this is better off in tradeskills or pvp, but hopefully I picked the right place for my first post.

First off, let me say I love WoW, love my server (Sentinels), yada yada, but as a player on our Battlegrounds, I'm starting to get overly frustrated, mostly because of one tradeskill: Enchanting.

Look, I have a leathercrafter. He makes leather armor. Every piece he has carries a level restriction, to keep a low-level player from having insanely powerful high-level armor. I have a blacksmith and a tailor, and ditto for them. I even have an alchemist, and the same is true for him.

So why is it Enchanting items have no level restriction? Am I the only one to see an imbalance in this? This allows a team from one of the older servers to have a ton of level 19s in WSG, all equipped with agility/lifestealing weapons, speed enhancing boots, hundreds of extra hps and defense, etc.

So yeah, I'm whining about twinks, after a sort. I know most of the time these people have the BEST armor available as well, but to me that seems a far less severe imbalance. I can get most of the armor any twink has at that level with a little effort. What I can't get is the hundreds of gold required to get the kind of enchantments they have. Not without helping out a few Chinese gold farmers, anyway.

To a lesser extent this applies to Engineering as well; but not as badly. Since most of those items at least have a Eng skill requirement, there's some work involved and at least a little restriction to prevent things from being overly ridiculous. But not enchanting. Why, Blizzard?

I'm probably whipping necrotic equine flesh here, but it just astounds me that such an obvious thing has gone on seemingly ignored for so long.

A second request revolves around Cross-server BGs. In theory, this is a pretty cool idea. In practice, it gets irritating. Older servers will always defeat newer ones without question, on the grounds that they have more high-level players who can farm the best gear for their low-level alts. I guess what I'm suggesting here is an ability to choose between cross-server and one-server BGs in the Battlegrounds menus, for those of us that want a fair fight.

I know I'm going to get flamed by people, mostly those with more powerful character on better servers with tons more gold then I will likely ever have. And I know in several months if I get a char or two to 60 and start farming incessantly I can do the same thing as these people. But doesn't anyone like a challenge anymore? A fair fight? Help me out here!

rgirty · 13-09-2006, 05:44 PM

I'm going to try and answer in short to your questions.

People with time to play have the best char/gear and dominate.

The game is built this way. IF enchanting was level restricted, twinks would simply twink themselves with boe blues that would skyrocket in price once again allowing the person with the most time to dominate.

Some casuals try to buy gold to even the score, that sort of thwarts the rule but not entirely.

Something may be done about this, by matching up similiarly geared people to each other in BG's.. i've heard rumor of it.

Also, blizz seems to be proactive in reacting to this kind of complaint. After all thousands of people said "whine whine whine, i don't have 129308915784 hours to become a rank 14 i can never get that gear whine whine whine /complain gripe email complain.. etc"

so, blizz is revamping the honor system to award "points" anyone can get the gear if they get enough "points" i could be wrong here but that is the way i understand it. It works similiar to what they did with argent dawn rewards.

So if enough people whine about twinks i guess something could be done, but in pleasing the 1 million people that are whining about twinks, would you not displease and maybe lose the accounts of the million people who are twinking.

I apologize for this becoming longer than I had anticipated.

Terrant · 13-09-2006, 08:48 PM

I agree with what you're saying, as far as armor and weapons. It doesn't take that much effort to get a good set of blue 10-19 range gear with a little farming.

It's enchantments that are imbalanced. Look at Lifestealing. It requires 300 skill in enchanting to cast, a runed arc rod, and a hefty amount of expensive dusts and such.

At 300 BS, the lowest level-to-wear item is Dark iron leggings (level 55 required)

At 300 alchemy, the lowest to-use items require level 50.

At 300 leathercraft, level 55 again.

300 Engineering? You'd either need to have 300 engineering to use, or level 56+

So why, again, can a kill level 300 enchantment be added to any item of any level? Since armor/weapons have their own item level in addition to a player's level requirement to-wear, why can't Blizz simply put item level restrictions on enchantments?

The similar gear thing might work...kinda hard to define "similar" though in terms of equipment.

rgirty · 13-09-2006, 09:10 PM

I'm not sure why they don't, but if they did the enchanting business would dwindle and blow away.

Terrant · 13-09-2006, 09:57 PM

I doubt that enchanting would die away. Even the low-level enchantments can be pretty useful..and many people still get the weapon auras simply for cosmetics.

It might decrease a bit, but I doubt it would go away completely.

Wasabee · 13-09-2006, 10:21 PM

THey fixed the armor kits to be level specific...they could do the enchants too. (Just make the limit to the gear, not the toon.)

I think it would be a good idea. It would bring balance to the game. People would actually buy enchants for their level.

rgirty · 13-09-2006, 10:27 PM

I think blizz kinda works like an insurance company.

If xx circumstance is going to cost the z$, and xx circumstance is going to cost them x$. Whichever number of dollars is less will get the result.

If enchant twinking makes them more money than level based enchant tweaking then you will see it. If they know they have 500k customers who play mainly to twink you won't see it.

Terrant · 14-09-2006, 04:39 AM

If that were the case, they'd throw the level resitrctions off, say, tier 3 armor, and just let it be done with it. They just never really thought about this issue I think.

Seluhir · 08-10-2006, 11:15 AM

Actually... if a level restriction were implemented on enchantments, the enchanting business would boom.

Simply because people would be buying enchantments AT THEIR LEVEL.

People would know what enchants work best for each level and be able to gear themselves around that, thus meaning more low-mid level enchants sold overall. And since those enchants would become more well known, more low-mid level players would WANT those enchants...

it'd overall make nechanting easier to level, more profitable(I suspect) overall, and a more balanced profession.

Twoflower · 09-10-2006, 06:24 PM

i still dont see how enchants are imbalanced.

EVERYONE can get them.

And for the poor bastard who just got his first char to lvl 11 and wants to check out some BG's and gets oneshottet by a lvl 19 rogue whit imba items and enchants... well, i see nothing wrong whit that. This game IS about items, taht s the design of it. Otherwise we would play guildwars where everyone has exactly the same lvl, items etc... The guy whit the twing rogue has played more / reached more / more experience / more gold to invest etc etc. He is IN the game and has been there for monts or even years. Why would you expect someone who started his lvl 11 priest 2 days ago to have the same chances ? I think this expectation is realy off world.

So, yes, this game favors the geek who spends 10 hours a day playing WoW. And it should, imho. There would be no point in geekness if you arent rewarded for it :) And who would want servers where all the geeks left and only the casuals remain ? Damn, we wouldnt even have random mc groups...