Altadin
20Oct/0922

WoW is too easy.

Sorry, Larísa.  But this has been my opinion since the debut of Naxxramas v2.0, and I stand by it now — even if it means I'm one of those unrepentent whiners who has reduced our beloved innkeeper to the use of Internet shorthand.  (Don't feel bad!  I've been known to do it too.  The other day, I even used the word fuck in guild chat.  /shameface)

"Hands on heart, how many of you have actually killed Yogg-Saron 25 man?"  Larísa asks, uncharacteristically blunt.  I imagine her standing in front of a warm and inviting fire, wagging a diminutive finger.  Her pink pigtails bob as she shakes her head in disappointment.

Not quite that many.  As a matter of fact, people seem to have given up [on] him altogether.  I haven't got any scientific evidence that this is the fact, but from what I read on the blogs, it appears that most raiding guilds have stopped aiming for an Ulduar clear. They make ToC, Onyxia, and not much more than that.

Why?  Well, I guess they find him too hard compared to the upgrades he offers.  The wipe/gear quota isn't favorable.  And fine, that's their choice.  But don't come and tell me that the raid instances in Wrath are too easy! 

I understand the point that Larísa is attempting to make, and I certainly appreciate her perspective: few things irk me more than people who pre-judge a situation — which is exactly what Larísa feels those players who complain about content they have yet to fully experience are doing.

I'm not sure I agree.  To me, Larísa's rant begs a question: "How much content do you need to have completed before you're entitled to an opinion?" 

Larísa is prepared to listen only to those who are farming Algalon and clearing ToC hard-modes "without any effort," but I find this position rather short-sighted (and no, that isn't a potshot at gnomes!).

Reading her post, I was reminded of the druid formerly known as Karthis — now Andrew, Of Teeth and Claws — who canceled his subscription relatively early into Ulduar because he knew that hard-modes wouldn't satisfy his hunger for new and challenging content.  Far from finding his perspective irrelevant (to my knowledge, Andrew didn't raid Tier 8 long enough to see Yogg-Saron defeated), I find it telling: someone who loved the game enough to devote a significant amount of his time to writing about it — and, indeed, was widely regarded as a pillar of the druid community (a feral Phaelia, if you will) — has written it off entirely.  

Andrew didn't need to see Wrath to its end to know that WoW was no longer a game he wanted to play.  I may be projecting here (Surreality and Que Sera Sera were in virtual lockstep for most of Tier 7), but it seems to me that his disappointment with Naxxramas and the one-shot wonders (as Keaton calls them) was compounded by months of idle frustration, during which the only real challenge in the game was finding 25 players who were still interested enough in raiding to attempt 3-drake Sarth. 

For Andrew and players like him, Ulduar was a classic example of too little, too late.  Sure, it was harder than Naxxramas — but it wasn't significantly harder, and certainly couldn't hold a Kobold's candle to The Burning Crusade's sophomore tier.

It's players like this that Larísa fails to take into account when she points out that a small percentage of raiders have defeated Yogg-Saron, let alone faced down Algalon or achieved a Tribute to Insanity. 

If the game were truly too easy, She of the Pink Pigtails contends, shouldn't more people have completed it? 

Maybe.  Maybe not. 

Larísa's assumption is that those players who have given up on Yogg-Saron — or Algalon, or hard-mode Anub'arak — have done so either because the content is too hard, or because the wipe/reward ratio isn't high enough to make attempting it worthwhile.  But what about those players who haven't attempted hard-modes, not because they aren't capable of them, but because they simply can't bring themselves to care about the over-tuned versions of under-tuned fights they've done countless times already?

The flaw in Larísa's logic is that correlation does not equal causation: while some players may have given up on Ulduar because ToC 25 renders even hardmode loot obsolete, others are almost certain to have moved on for other reasons — such as boredom, frustration and even disgust with the same recycled content. 

And, really, who can blame them?  After months of progressing through Ulduar, farming Ulduar and cursing Ulduar as the only relevant raid content available, many players — myself included — have no real desire to return to Ulduar to work on hard-modes that look exactly like the familiar, normal modes with one or two gimmicky additions.

The Choice is a Lie

Blizzard's intention with Wrath was to make the raid game accessible to even the most casual of players.  In spite of some initial misgivings as to how this would be accomplished, I think most of us were supportive of that.  After all, it takes a pretty selfish person to say "Nuh uh, no, mine!  Take your grubby little, scrubby little hands out of my raid zones!"  Sure, some of the truly hardcore may have been thinking it — but the majority of us were cautiously optimistic, even hopeful.  We knew that Naxxramas would be easy and attunements were to become relics of the past, but even in the absence of gated content, we expected the difficulty to ramp up with each successive tier. 

Instead, we were introduced to the easy-mode (I'm sorry, is that offensive?) normal-mode/hard-mode dichotomy.

Larísa has extolled its virtues on more than one occasion.  She believes that hard-modes allow individual players and guilds to set the bar at exactly the right height — creating, in essence, a customized gaming experience from a one-size-fits-all kind of a brand.

I'm not buying it.

For me, the problem with hard-modes is that they create the illusion of new content without actually being new content. 

Saresa explains it beautifully:

I want my difficult raids to be new, exciting and fresh.  Killing a boss with a couple more adds, or a little less assistance, or on a timer just doesn’t cut it for me.  I remember in BC, I was always so excited downing a boss.  It was HUGE to see them die for the first time.  Now?  Blah.  Snore.  Even on hard mode it feels like ‘I just killed the tacky, slightly more difficult mode of a boss I’ve already killed’.  There is no exhilaration in hard mode raiding.  Fun?  Oh sure!  But, at the end of the day, the boss is dead, and I just don’t really care.

Trial of the Crusader is a perfect example.  Because new bosses were released at the rate of one per week, by the time we could zone in to Trial of the Grand Crusader, we had already faced (and defeated!) the Beasts of Northrend no less than ten times between ToC 10 and ToC 25.

Do you know what the differences are between the Beasts of Northrend on normal-mode and the Beasts of Nothrend on heroic-mode? 

In heroic-mode, everything hits harder and has more health. 

The bosses enter the arena on timers. 

Fires do DoT damage.

And there is no run-speed buff during Icehowl's charge.

From a practical standpoint, this changes exactly nothing.  The tanks still have to set up a taunt rotation.  The healers still have to heal the tanks through impales and bleed damage and the raid through AoE damage.  Everyone still has to move out of fires and poisons.  No one can stand still and stare Icehowl down as he charges straight at them.

Heroic Beasts of Northrend is the same fight as Beasts of Northrend! 

Harder?  Faster?  More frantic?  Yes. 

Less forgiving?  Most definitely.

New?  Exciting?  Epic?  Not at all.

And therein lies the problem.

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Comments (22) Trackbacks (2)
  1. Ian
    October 20th, 2009 - 15:42

    Assuming hard and normal modes of a raid were released at the same time, would you ever do the normal modes? What would have to be different about the hard modes to cause you to skip straight to them?

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    • Elleiras
      October 20th, 2009 - 16:30

      Great question.

      As much as I’d love to say “Yes, of course! We’d jump straight into the hard-modes and never look back!” … I know it would never happen like that. For one thing, the quality of ToC loot compared to Ulduar loot is just too good. The fifteen free Emblems of Triumph are nothing to sneeze at, either! (And I’m a Tauren with hay fever, so I sneeze at everything!) Larísa was right about that: for a good guild, the effort/reward ratio in normal ToC 25 is too good to pass up.

      I much prefer the TBC model of raiding. I’d love to see Blizzard mimic that by introducing hard-modes first. Give us a few weeks (if not the space of an entire content patch), to attempt the hard-modes. /Then/ nerf the hell out of them, a la Burning Crusade. On paper, that sounds like it would be demoralizing for the casual raiders — but I was a casual raider in TBC and I loved it! As a guild, it gave us something to strive for, with clear goals and recognizeable milestones to celebrate. I really miss that.

      I’m curious to see how Icecrown will work, with one ID (rather than separate ID’s for normal and heroic) and toggle-switches on each encounter. With the incentive of double-the-emblems removed and hardmode loot an addition rather than replacement for normal-mode loot, we’ll spend less time in a raid zone and hopefully be insulated somewhat from burnout. I’m cautiously optimistic — and very much aware that Blizzard is experiment with different ways to make the easy-mode/hard-mode split.

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  2. Armagon
    October 20th, 2009 - 15:46

    On the one hand, I have to agree with you. I’m thinking of the “It’s boring because it’s nothing new” part. I can understand that people grow tired of this, and I’m also not too excited doing all this again.

    On the one hand I’ve seen people give up on the first night of S3D. Yes, back when it was the hardest fight ingame, Naxx was cleared and S3D awaits and all that. Additionally it’s not just “one small extra gimmick”, actually only the flame wave thingy is the only gimmick that’s staying the same. Positioning, raid composition, timing, everything else is different.

    In general, I liked TBC raiding much more. You had a clear path to progression: “We are 5/5 and 4/9″ – and everyone knew you were hitting your heads against Gurtogg now. And hell did it feel epic to progress in Black Temple.
    Whereas in Ulduar… did you clear it after Yogg? Or do you need Algalon? Does it count without doing a single hardmode? What about if you only did some easier hardmodes, like XT, FL and Hodir?
    If you have a decent DPS, XT hardmode can actually be easier for Tanks and DPS (only the healers are annoyed :P )

    So basically I’m fed up with having to redo content because I want the harder experience. But I’m also fed up with people being in a “raiding guild” and not up for doing any hardmodes at all. Maybe I’m just easily annoyed?

    I never saw Sunwell past Kalecgos. But I am fine with it. I know I’m not hardcore enough for that. We killed half of BT before the nerf and Illidan after, I’m ok with that. It beat “marching through Naxx and Ulduar and seeing everything” by miles.
    Armagon´s last blog ..Shaman: Introduction

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    • Elleiras
      October 20th, 2009 - 16:00

      I’m right there with you.

      As much as I complain about the hardmodes being “nothing new,” I’m still pushing for them for my guild — but that’s not so much because I enjoy them as it is because as things stand now, there is /nothing/ more challenging (and thus rewarding) to do.

      I just recruited a TON of new players, and most of them seem excited by the prospect of going back in time and clearing Ulduar hardmodes, which is good. I guess. But I would still prefer the TBC model.

      Great points about linear raid progression. I agree — about Sarth 3D, too. We had a similar experience and you’re right: that was one fight where hardmode changed everything. Mimiron’s the same way (and not coincidentally, my favorite Uld hardmode).

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  3. Adgamorix
    October 20th, 2009 - 17:25

    IMO much of the community has forgotten what it’s like to wipe for week after week on content. We spent a month – A MONTH – learning Razorgore in BWL. Bosses took multiple resets of trash to master. Now if we don’t knock a boss out in 5 tries, you can hear the whining set in (not in my current guild – but where I came from).

    I agree that the content is easier – and that hard modes are just rehashed content. But then again, I can’t wait until I’m working on Earth Wind and Fire. I love the crazy achievments, and think they add a new twist.

    Want to see all the content? Here’s normal mode. Want the BIS stuff, titles, mounts, etc – here’s the hard mode. Hard mode doesn’t have to be new – it just has to be harder.

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  4. The Renaissance Man
    October 21st, 2009 - 05:33

    I had a nice post detailing the time for first kills between the most difficult encounters in BC and the most difficult encounters of Wrath, that showed wrath to be comperable, and in some cases, more difficult. Then my computer crashed. So I’m just going to sum things up.

    Things are percieved to be easier in wrath for three reasons.

    1)Blizzard has become much better at designing encounters that are tuned appropriately and coded correctly. There are no fights that approached the bug riddled unplayable jokes that were release Kael’Thas and Lady Vashj.

    2)Out of game resources have become much better. Addons such as DBM and Omen now work based on known rules, and not approximations. Strategies are well know and splatter all over the internet. Bosskillers has given way to tankspot, and Thotbott to Wowhead. Knowledge is power, and we use it well.

    3)People have been given a choice, and now feel compeled to take the easier path, as if there were no choice. The top guilds hit hard modes immediately. For them, aside from a ceremonial quick clear, there was no easy mode. Inner sanctum threw itself at the Keeper Hard Modes in a desperate attempt to unlock algalon first. They succeded at most, but were stonewalled by Firefighter for 6 weeks. Just because Easy Mode is an option, it doesn’t mean you have to take that option.

    In the end, Larisa was not blunt enough. The top guilds don’t see the casual guilds as equals just because you can down Yogg 25. Hell, 17% of all guilds in the world have done that 40% of raiding guilds. It’s not that impressive. However, blizzard has created new stratification to seperate out the elite from the people who trickle through. 40% of raiding guilds may have downed Yogg 25, but when you talk about guilds that have downed yogg without the explicit buffs you decide to bestow upon yourself, that number dwindles down to less than 1.5%.

    And really, very few of the initial hard modes were just Health increased by X and Damage increased by Y. The simplest of Hard modes were Hodir hard mode, which was initially at a freakish 2 minute speed kill bar that few guilds today could meet. Most fights changed rather drastically. Even Sarth 3D is almost unrecognizable when compared to Sarth 0D. ToC is the outlier, and the problem is that ToC shouldn’t be looked at as a tier raid. It drops tier gear, which is a mistake, but if you were to compare BC to Wrath, T4 (Kara, Mags, Gruul) is T7 (Naxx, OS, and Maly), T5 (SSC, TK) is T8(Ulduar’s 14 boss extravaganza) and T6(MtH, BT, and Sunwell) is T10 (Icecrown’s 12 bosses). What is ToC? ToC is Zul’Aman, the gear reset patch designed to make the endgame tier more accesable through easy raiding. What’s ToGC? An Amani Bear run. Not particularly more difficult, just more extreme, in terms of time, rather than ToGC’s damage.

    The moral of the story, is that the problem does not lie with blizzard’s design. It lies with your use of it. The problem is you. You are taking the easy road, and thinking it’s the hard road. Just because you downed yogg, doesn’t mean you’re the wrath equivilent of a guild farming Kael’Thas. If you look at the rate at which the hardest fights in T5 content got beaten by the top tier guilds versus the rate at which the hardest fights in T8 went down, T8 took longer, by a long shot. T8 was harder than anything in T4-6. The difference is, Blizzard gave the casuals tools to get loot. Not the same loot, but loot nonetheless.

    If you want to relive the experience of BC raiding T6 content when Icecrown drops, then switch the toggle from normal to heroic on the very first day, and refuse to switch it back. If you’re one of those grizzled veterans of Vanilla WoW, who wants to relive the plundering of Naxxramas 40, then turn off DBM and Omen, switch the heroic toggle, and don’t read Wowhead or Wowwiki. All you need to do to make wrath as hard as any stage in wow history is to simply refuse to use the tools you’ve been given since then.
    The Renaissance Man´s last blog ..The Fundamentals of Tanking: Perception in Ulduar

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    • Elleiras
      October 21st, 2009 - 07:01

      Everytime I write about the relative difficulty in Wrath and how it’s impacted my guild, someone who plays more casually than I do accuses me of being an elitist, and someone who plays less casually reminds me that I’m still just a scrub. I think you’re the first person who’s managed to do both at once. :P
      Elleiras´s last blog ..WoW is too easy.

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      • The Renaissance Man
        October 21st, 2009 - 14:07

        It came out a lot softer in my original comment, and it wasn’t my intention to sound quite that harsh now that I look back on the comment I posted. I wash just kinda frustrated because I thought my original comment was pretty much complete, and then murphy struck.

        But I mean, I truly believe 99% of the issue here is perception, rather than reality. Think about it this way, if it weren’t normal and heroic mode, or normal mode and hard mode? What if it were explicitly normal mode and easy mode? What if Mimiron starts out with the self destruct switch active and you have to go push the button in order to deactivate it?

        In fact, that’s already how some of those encounters work. Think about Yogg-Saron. Alone in the Darkness is the normal Yogg-Saron encounter. It’s bleeding edge hard. The hardest fight Blizzard’s ever put into the game. It’s too hard for almost everyone. So they included easy mode, all you have to do is walk around and beg these npcs to buff you. You didn’t ask for maeve’s help against Illidan, or the Blue Dragonflight against Kil’Jaeden, those were fight mechanics present in the encounter regardless of your actions. However on Yogg, you must make the explicit choice to take the assistance of the keepers. And it really changes the fundamental nature of the encounter. Simply bringing Thorim down makes the fight exponentially easier. Empowering shadows are no longer an issue, phase three is a cakewalk with him. Bringing Freya down with Thorim makes the fight almost trivial. Not only do you no longer have the 90 second soft enrage in phase 3, now sanity management isn’t an issue. Hodir doesn’t quite change the nature of the fight like Freya or Thorim, but he does give a literal get out of jail free card for the healers. Mimiron does the decursers job for them. And that’s ignoring the 40% health increase, 20% damage out increase, 20% damage in reduction, 20% healing increase, and 20% movement increase. If you’re looking for a challenge, I suggest Alone in the Darkness, if you believe it’s anywhere near the same encounter as three lights then hitting phase three will be an eye opening experience.

        I firmly believe that if a return to BC style progression is something that your raid group desires, and the solution to your qualms is to ignore easy mode. As a fellow raid leader, I know it’s difficult to rouse the troops for hard modes when they can farm normal mode. But with the upcoming patch, you have the opportunity to start fresh. Don’t give the raiders a chance to see just how easy easy mode is, all they’ll know is just how “Heroic” normal mode is. It’s all perception.
        The Renaissance Man´s last blog ..The Fundamentals of Tanking: Perception in Ulduar

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    • Ian
      October 21st, 2009 - 11:52

      As a game designer, you don’t really get the luxury of telling people they’re playing your game wrong. Your job is to make sure the way people feel compelled to play and they way that they are going to have the most fun playing are the same thing. The current design right now doesn’t do that, at least for a specific segment of the audience. While you may believe that segment has a problem, man, everyone has problems, and Blizzard has to design with those problems in mind.

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  5. Light
    October 21st, 2009 - 06:22

    I do not understand why hard mode being the same bosses as normal mode is a big deal. Maybe this is because I came from console and other PC games where harder == more HP or more damage. It is still hard, just not i the way you would like.

    From a business point of view, it is a waste of money to design content that 1% of the population will see. One boss (Algalon) yes, but not a whole entire raid. This is why they stopped doing it.

    The thing I notice the most about WoW players is that they expect Blizzard to hand them everything in terms of how to make the game harder or more interesting. Game too easy? Try solo healing Anub 25 heroic. Don’t wait for Blizzard to do it for you or give you a pat on the back (achievement) for it.

    It’s all in the hands of the player at this point.
    Light´s last blog ..It’s been almost a month…

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    • Elleiras
      October 21st, 2009 - 07:14

      Ironically, the thing /I/ notice about WoW players is that they expect Blizzard to take them on a guided tour of all the content in the game and hand them the best available gear — without expecting them to work (play) for it. :P

      And lest someone accuse me of being some elitist bitch who doesn’t want to share her purple pixels with the masses: No, I’m not in full regalia gear, nor will I ever be in full regalia gear. I’m just not that hardcore. :P But I do want something to aspire to and work towards. I would prefer that the goal was experiencing new and epic content — but since that’s no longer in the cards, I’ll settle for the hardmodes and meta-achievements.

      I reserve the right to find killing an old boss in a slightly new way less satisfying (WotLK hardmodes) than defeating a new boss for the first time and unlocking the path to the next one (TBC baseline).
      Elleiras´s last blog ..WoW is too easy.

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  6. lordofthefries
    October 21st, 2009 - 07:20

    I read the original, then your response and the comments it spawned. I know my take on this is probably one based on supposition rather than practice, but I figure I can at least add a little to the discussion.

    I do have to say that I missed TBC raiding. I was just not in the game for almost the entirety of it’s release. So, that part is out for me. However, I do have to say that WotLK raiding is pretty straight forward if you’re not doing hard modes. That said, it really depends on how your relative gear levels and the numbers come together. If you have great tanks and great healers, you’re going to struggle with DPS getting the numbers to beat enrage timers. Or, if you have people that can’t quite get the duties of the fight down (interrupts and what not), then you’re going to have other problems.

    It seems as if Blizzard wanted to make getting through encounters a matter of getting a decent group of players with appropriate levels of gear the only requirement. Hence no attunements anymore and the relative ease of getting decent level stuff (if you’re willing to grind heroics to get it all).

    What does it do to the player base? The thing I’ve seen the most is how impatient they are. They want their drops and they want to move on. There’s no emphasis on doing content that’s hard or interesting. It’s all about getting the phat lewts. I think that for someone like you, Sar, that’s a nice benefit and everyone likes it… but you want to clear content to say, “Look what we did.” At least that’s what I’ve discerned after reading your blogs for a year or so.

    Anyway, I’m devolving into rambling now, so I’ll finish up. Yes, content is easy. My guild killed Koralon 10 man the 2nd week he was out without any work or looking up of mechanics. Yes, this has had effects on the player base. So, I guess that it means it’s up to the people of like mind to find each other and stick to the purpose that they want to accomplish, rather than simply fall in with a crowd and clear content just to clear it.
    lordofthefries´s last blog ..lordofthefries: Blizzard decided to update their anti-gold buying page, it seems. How timely? http://tinyurl.com/2bao6z

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  7. Juzaba
    October 21st, 2009 - 07:59

    I see most of these arguments get rephrased as “The problem is ACTUALLY with players who don’t want to wipe a lot and can’t summon up some huevos.” I agree with The Renaissance Man – that seems much more of an issue with user error.

    People have to accept that Blizzard is unable to produce as much content as we want. It’s just the way it is. Maybe this pisses us off enough that Blizzard no longer deserves our $15/month, but I suspect that most people who want more content will still be paying. Blizzard thinks so too.

    Some hard modes are not all that different from normal mode. Beasts, for example. But Patchwerk 40 wasn’t all that different from Bazzalan, the final boss of RFC. Tank and Spank (I guess you need a couple more tanks), but he hits harder. On the other hand, many of the hardmodes are significantly different, like OS3D or Mimiron. Alternatively, hardmodes negate the preferred tactics of normal mode, like how Faction Champs makes everyone immune to taunt, or how IC forces you to change your kill order.

    I know that some of these are stale, or at the very least, small changes to the easy-mode boss. But would you take the other option of not releasing normal-mode TotC? Would you wish that option on the playerbase? “Blizzard doesn’t make content fast enough for my needs” is about as convincing of an argument as “Blizzard needs to tune all of their content to suit my needs.”

    As an unrelated note, when you mention “causation does not equal causality,” do you mean “correlation” in there? Because common usage literally does equate causation with causality: they are synonyms.

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  8. Frijona
    October 21st, 2009 - 20:32

    This post inspired one of my own. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. The problem is I’ll never actually know where you’re coming from. As a casual player, what Blizzard has done in attempt to make the game more accessible has failed. I’m now at the point where I could start running Naxx. The problem is, no one else is there anymore. Everyone else who has wanted to do it has already done it. It definitely wont work for me to go running in there by myself–and you can’t just jump into something like that without other people. It’s frustrating because here I am wanting to do this content, but I can’t. It’s very lose-lose.
    Frijona´s last blog ..WoW is Too Hard – A Casual’s Perspective

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  9. Larísa
    October 22nd, 2009 - 01:00

    Very well put post! But you still haven’t convinced me. I think we have material for some nightlong discussions in front of the fire at the inn, pondering upon the mysteries and different aspects of raid difficulty.

    One point I keep coming back to is self control, self discipline and taking responsability for your choices. I don’t think the idea to release one boss a week was brilliant. It was a rather lazy way to try to make the content last a bit longer. But if you’re so keen on not getting bored from doing the normal modes, you could have kept working on Algelon achievment stuff in Ulduar while they released them one by one. Then just make the whole instance ONCE on normal mode. And after that immediately start doing the heroic modes, working for the most difficult achievements in there which very very few guilds have done.
    Why blame Blizzard over and over again because YOU choose to grind normal modes until you’re bored. Pretend that those modes don’t exist and you’ll be fine.

    Hm… I may just be repeating what Renaissance man said in his comment above in a better way.

    Anyway. Cheers for some really good discussion!

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  10. falc
    October 26th, 2009 - 07:49

    I too feel that the singular progression that we had in TBC was something that you could set your eye on and that was rewarding in a sense that you couldn’t do a new boss before you got through the last one.

    Also bringing back the attunement or keys in a sense would be a great boon to the community in terms of lore. Those questlines in-between and in instances were interesting and descriptive of why we actually had to go kill end boss X in instance Y. I am not saying it should be the last boss in an instance to drop the key to open the doors of the next instance, especially with yogg being as hard as he is for most casual guilds, but i feel that there should still be a similar system, so that people would actually have to run through some portions of old instances to get the keys and maybe bring along some newer lvl 80-s to help them gear up.

    Currently i feel that blizzard really shot themselves in the foot by making higher lvl badges available from heroics – since now there really is no incentive for new lvl 80-s or old one-s at that to get into naxx. I mean you can just farm your heroics for ilvl 200 epics from those + get almost every slot on your character filled by the very nice Emblem gear (t8.5 pieces and other 226 ilvl goodies from EoC, 213 ilvl pieces from EoV etc). And now they are trying to fix the problem with weekly raid quests, which well feel a bit like yet another grind for badges to get Tier x, from badges that is mandatory for any kind of guild that feels a even a bit serious about raiding. And daily quests are just ,well wrong.

    Sorry about the rant.
    Falc.

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  11. Andrew
    October 26th, 2009 - 08:07

    Just sticking my snout in here to (a) thank you for the link, (b) realize that I somehow missed your transition from Fel Fire to here, and (c) confirm your assumptions about why I left WoW back in May.

    At the time QSS was rolling through the content at a good pace, and hadn’t really gotten stuck on anything. And that was a problem. A huge problem. I’m now happily being challenged by playing DDO permadeath style, and it at least makes me sweat the way WoW raids used to.

    The guy up above – Renaissance Man? – who claims that WotLK fights are on par with TBC fights clearly didn’t raid TBC through the middle of its time. Maybe post-nerf you can make that claim…. but there’s no way that out of the box that is even remotely true. If fights seem harder, perhaps its because the bad habits instilled by easy-mode WotLK raiding have deteriorated raider skill to the point when minor challenges seem monumental. I know that QSS got sloppy sometimes, and a lot of that had to do with getting used to easy game play and forgiving fights. Also, the selective memory about availability of boss guides, etc is patently absurd.

    Finally, the tired old assertion that people who want a challenge should just skip to hard modes are missing the point. WoW raiding is about progression, and you follow the progression curve: normal modes, then hard modes. In fact, hard modes SHOULD be tuned to assume normal mode gear if they’re done properly.

    Anyways….. reading crap like his makes my blood start to boil, and reminds me how thankful I am to have quit.
    Andrew´s last blog ..Site maintenance: label consolidation

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